I would offer to post some pics, but our cheap webcam makes her look all blurry….

I do have a tale, which I’ve related here before; are you sitting comfortably?

I took a job near Kildrummy in rural Aberdeenshire. The brief was to run to the top of various large hills / mountains in the region and take panoramic photos (for wind farm developments). Most of these hills were of no interest to ramblers and the only way up them was to heather-bash, often up near vertical inclines. Careful study of OS maps usually allowed me to join estate landrover tracks at various points and when I found such a track it was a huge relief to me. I worried also about my dog’s ability to run up cliffs through rough, snow-laden heather all day.

Anyhoo, on one such jaunt, on day 12 of the expedition, Kasper the dog jumped a good foot in the air. We had been going a good two hours at a very fast pace and had finally found the landrover track bisecting the hill. There was a massive poo. There’s no other way to say it. It looked like a fox poo but much fatter, longer and full of deer hair.

I took a photo of it next to my foot for posterity (it was a good few inches longer than my size nine boot) and we carried on at breakneck speed to finish the job in hand. All the way up this remote and uninteresting path, Kasper behaved like a puppy – leaping and hunting and frequently looking back down the path, growling. As the gloaming set in on the descent, I spent more time looking behind me than looking forward and had a few tumbles – I felt watched.

Three days later I ran into the water baillif for the local area. I’d been trying to avoid him. He was a big lad, with a big beard and a crimson whisky drinkers’ face. I’d seen him several times over the course of the job – he always seemed to be trying to encourage his ancient Landrover into ever greater feats of speed to catch up with me but we only ever saw each other in passing.

On this day though, the viewpoint I was instructed to capture was a roadside one (easy money!). He pulled up and basically demanded my life story which didn’t take long. Disappointed that I was not a poacher, he drew the story (and the photo) of the big, hairy poo out of me.

According to him, there are two big cats running around the Cairngorms but he’s only seen one of them. “Ye never ken fit’s stravaigin’ aboot in those hills”, he warned. Cue 40 minutes of big cat sighting stories and thereafter a whole evening of fishermans’ tales round the fire later in the evening in the local hotel. The telling factors for me were; the unusual poo and the correlating details of “…the white tip on its tail twitching from side to side as it stuck its nose in a bush”; details which were corroberated by both the bailiff and many guests at the hotel.

Sadly, all the images I took on the memory cards, including the giant poo, are the property of an Edinburgh-based consultation company. Personally, I’m convinced that there are plenty of big cats raking about in the less visited regions.

TLDR is perfectly acceptable.

+1 for expanding foam. I used it on my garage roof where there were several large holes. I applied it during a heavy rain shower ( I was literally pushing the nozzle into 3″ of water) and it set like stone.

You might want to wait a while if you’re hoping to introduce fish to the pond as I understand it’s pretty toxic.

Maybe so, but the email they sent to acknowledge the order was an exercise in vagueness about stock levels;

This email is only an acknowledgement that we have received your order.

The order has now been passed to our dispatch team to be processed and payment will be taken once we have confirmed the items are in stock.

And,

PLEASE NOTE: ORDERS ARE SUBJECT TO STOCK AVAILABILITY AND WE WILL ONLY DEBIT YOUR CARD FOR THE GOODS WE CAN SUPPLY.

And,

Placing an order with us does not guarantee availability. We will, of course, make every effort to fulfil your order and if this is not possible we will let you know as soon as possible.

It almost sounds like they’re pretty sure they don’t have the stock.

EDIT: and as a sales tactic, it works on a few different levels it seems – if they tell you there are shoes in a particular branch and you go to have a mooch, chances are you’ll end up buying something anyway, even when there aren’t. Plus the ‘fore-mentioned SEO benefits of all the inbound links from FB, forums, Twitter etc. Doesn’t smell right to me.

No email here either. Do we think the whole thing is perhaps a marketing scam to get their site up Google’s rankings with an extraordinarily high number of page visits? Drop in an almost-too-good-to-be-true deal on their website, and let social networking do the rest?

If so, it’s a pretty shoddy way of marketing 👿

Tried installing Chrome on the laptop (running Vista) three or four times, and it just plain don’t work. Constant crashing.

Hmm. My browser has been crashing every time I visit 123reg.com but I’ve had STW open every attempt too… Will close STW for a mo, try again and let you know if it works…

EDIT; no, 123reg.com is definitely the culprit in my case…

Lucky for some. Mrs Removed is cooking a huuuuugely elaborate Ottolengi veggie special. It needs two hours cooking time and about 30 different ingredients.

I’m sure there are many people who love Ottolenghi’s recipes, but it’s utterly wasted on me (carnivore). I’d honestly rather have a Maccy Dees 🙁 I know, I’m a total ingrate.

We ‘board’ other peoples’ dogs through a franchise type business (holiday cover sort of thing). Yesterday, a lady arranged to bring her dog round to meet our dog and see the house. We took the dogs out for a quick walk which skirts the edge of a grass football pitch.

Her dog took a massive dump about six feet from the edge of the pitch. She watched then asked, “So do you pick them up here then?” I was gobsmacked and had to supply her with a bag as she doesn’t carry any… This is quite an intelligent, well-travelled lady too…

Shit. Better go to bed. Got a wedding at 1pm tomorrow. Will supply pie chart tomorrow.

Now if you’d said that in the first place, I’d have made a pie chart consisting of how much I may / might / do / do not / have a problem with gingers.

Oi! Tomzo! NOOO!! Are you new here?!

Sorry, sorry, sorry. You’re quite right – I did misunderstand the brief. How’s this?

Wait!

Beer is good!

Copyright Mrs Toast, as ever. Oh wait! Forgot the text. *sucks teeth* That’ll cost ye dear…

And that’s why photos are such cool things. Anyone can take them without any special knowledge, artistic vision or creative flair, and so long as the subject evokes emotion (either in the photographer or a viewer), it’s worked!

It’s also occasionally frustrating to social photographers such as myself – years spent learning a skill are often ridden over roughshod by the reaction to Aunty Flo’s snap of a bride (or a kid) on Facebook because of just that emotional connection…

Don’t get me wrong – I see hundreds of images literally every day taken by pros and amateaurs alike which provoke a response in me (a good few on this thread too!). Anyway, I do love this thread, despite spending hours on photo forums full of pros, very keen amateurs whose cameras cost more than mine and true artists to boot. So do carry on please 🙂

Al – pretty ‘ordinary’ fit really… I’d say, narrowish if pressed, but they have a one-lace system which actually works very well at moulding the shoe round your foot. I live* in mine and they last very well (working and lots of walking rather than running).

*EDIT, I don’t actually reside in them, like the old woman who lived in a shoe.

Cheers! That’s insnely cheap! Love those trainers and get them half price from work (P/T ski slope lackey) but that’s even cheaper – ordered two pairs…

Ban #2 in the offing? 😀

As an aside, I didn’t find it but a human head was found in the field entrance where my mum kept her llamas

.

No photographic evidence, but during a two month tour of France and Spain, my two mates and I had to walk through a field in the middle of nowhere to avoid a huge motorway intersection. In the corner of one of the fields was a caravan, a huge pile of empty bottles, another huge pile of empty tin cans and a mental Alsation dog.

We changed tack, pushing our bikes along a ditch to avoid ‘foresaid crazed dog and came accross three bin bags – each bag was divulging itself of its contents; one had legs, one had a torso and one was the shape of a football.

We held a hushed and hurried meeting at the far end of the field, got back in the saddle and didn’t look back ’til Andorra. 😐

Not after 45 days – that’s the cut-off point…

You could try emailing the seller and; a) appealing to his better nature (although it sounds unlikely) or b) doing the whole small claims thing. I’ve refunded a buyer after two months after constant pestering and odd emails, but really just to get him off my back (three emails a day!). There was nothing wrong with the item but it is possible to grind someone down, if you C(an)BE.

But other than that, I reckon you’re probably SOOL (definition of that.) after 45 days.

Have you contacted the seller at all?

I remember watching that animation with mrs Removed. ‘Twas brilliant! Is it still online then?

The Lady in Black, Dominoes Pizzas, Big Fat Gypsy Wedding + red wine, bed. Very conventional at chez-removed this year.

Willard and Edric64 – sorry to hear those tales of woe – hope your lots improve quicksmart.

Well, as promised above ^^^ Not long back from Singers, KL and Penang. Singers is very civilised, Penang is exciting and KL feels like a small city drenched in sweat. But not in a bad way.

Given the choice, I’d hit Penang every time. I’m very aware that this destination doesn’t feature in your shortlist and that your free flight won’t go anywhere near the place, but there it is. There just seems to be so much scope for exploration there which isn’t present in your shortlisted choices.

If I had to choose from the two though, KL every time.

Done! Will look forward to jealously watching your vids! As for good ways of giving stuff away, photo competitions on a specific theme seem to work well for lots of FB pages.

Had a quick look through the computer and don’t seem to have very many photos of me doing the stuff I love – I’m usually on the other side of the camera… Anyway, here’s some embarrasing shit.

Yup – MSE and bin Norton.

Earthlings, narrated by Joaquin Pheonix is a fantastic watch – very i8nformative.

Watch the full film for free here.

Not for the faint hearted. Makes you think, and also significantly reduces the total of your next few supermarket bills (because the meat section makes you want to vomit).

I do have some sympathy with the way Hammy feels, but not with his proposed methods of addressing the issues.

I spent a few days in Glasgow last year. One morning I sat at the hotel’s bacony and enjoyed a coffee and a tab. I was surprised (my blood didn’t boil and neither did my urine approach boiling point, my gast wasn’t flabbered and I had no desire to change the laws of the land) by the huge shoals of cyclists running the red light of the pedestrian crossing below the balcony.

As a cyclist, it was embarassing. Cyclists were weaving between pedestrians through a red light – not one of them stopped. The next day was the same, and the next.

OK, so it seemed to be the accepted way of getting around – it’s been normalised, drivers, cyclists and peds all expect it. Doesn’t make it right.

How else do you explain a facebook valuation of 100Bn

Well, I’m a one-man-band, small-fry business and I spent at least £500 on FB advertising alone last year…

Last week’s episode had one of my all time favourite bits of telly – the bit where the cop jumps behind the wheel of his car and raps out, “WOOP! WOOP!, Das da sound of da police!”. Brilliant!

Slight annoyance, driver is obviously a c0ck. No damage done – just one of those things. Forget about it IMHO.

That ain’t shit. Just returned from the Chinese New Year celebrations in Penang, Malaysia, where a couple of really scary looking clowns were making assault rifles out of balloons and handing them out to kids for FREE! Blue for boys, pink for girls.

Come Armageddon, I’d rather have the chainsaw gun though.

Jedi’s courses[/url]. Must say I’ve never heard anything but glowing praise from those who have invested.

Too many names to remember, but polarisandy’s untitled shot of the playpark is phenomenal – shapes, angles, layers and a real sense of mystery. Nice tonal range too.

I posted the same question a few years ago when I first had to replace the pads in my juicy 7s. Some helpful soul told me just to ram the pads in very hard with the clip in place. Lo and behold, it works! Never had a moment’s trouble since, even with SS pads.