Yup – SE have a deservedly shite rep over on ephotozine. Lots of tales of poor customer service, missing goods and three month waits, after which nothing is delivered, with the very occasional, “Well, my order arrived in three weeks and was fine”. Avoid.

Honestly wouldn’t be bothered one whit and would feel gratitude toward the SIL for offering wife and son the opportunity to attend the wedding. Please don’t lay a guilt trip on your wife for wanting to go and enjoy herself – you should be happy for her / your son.

Kids and animals……

Hairy white dog here, and black carpets on the stairs and upstairs… Laminate downstairs which gets swept and mopped. We have an Electrolux Red Pet Special (Dyson bagless style thing) and it’s shit. Do not buy one. The pet hair attatchment is pathetically weedy and in the early days, when we naively continued to attempt to use it, it blocked up with tedious regularity. The motor bunt out about a month out of the 12 month guarantee and it took a whole lot of shouting to get it repaired.

Its main claim to fame was the supposed ability to hoover a full flight of stairs using the crazy-long hose with the body of the machine staying at the bottom. Toss. The hose is fine, but again, the daft, badly designed pet hair attatchment is the weak link.

When you turn it on it blows a huge dust cloud over the room you are trying to clean, even after all the fiddly, minging washable filters have been removed, washed, dried and replaced (I have to take it outside to switch it on). Once running, the noise is akin to being buzzed by a Tornado.

Can’t wait ’til it dies again and we can buy a real cleaner!

Also, lots of yoof-type pubs on Broughton Street (top of Leith Walk) and a couple of oldman boozers too but a good mix of folk in all.

Wear a mask, don’t get it on your hands, buy several tins of clear laquer and yes, easy enough.

Be aware that it’s very hard work – my folks have three self catering cottages on the Isle of Skye [/blatant plug] and it takes my mum and her ‘hired help’ a good chunk of Saturday to clean them to her exacting standards.

They also spend a fair whack on advertising, including listings in the various online directories (which even if you have excellent word-of-mouth referrals, you’ll need to be in).

Personally speaking, I wouldn’t be keen on hiring an annex – I’d always feel like the owners were watching / listening and would far prefer to be in a separate building…

Stuck up the ad on Facebook – ye never know….

Some of those corners looked sketchy as Hell. He’s certainly quite nippy!

Blessed are the cheesemongers.

You say you’ve suffered racial abuse, but you can’t see that having a go at someone for having red hair (a racial characteristic) is nowhere near as bad?

Although your double negatives are confusing, I’ll have you know I’m three quarters Scottish. Racist 😀

geetee – that’s exactly what I’m saying. Not getting involved in the 29er thing….

Point me at a ginger who’s been lynched because of his hair. Very different. It’s only VERY recently that casual racism has been stopped in workplaces / schools – it used to be fine to all gang up on the black kid / worker* and make their lives an absolute misery.

*Still happens here in NE England, but don’t want to get into a South Tyneside style Twitter fiasco so will not be pointing any internet fingers…!

Oh and gee-tee – I don’t doubt your story and appreciate that any form of persecution is very bad news – just making the point that IN COMPARISON to generations of people being killed, injured and persecuted it’s pretty small beans.

Going my Nan’s old slide

Is that a euphimism?

Thanks, but my mind is about as open as it’s ever been – perhaps I should also declare an interest – my Grandad was Singaporian so I spent much of my childhood fighting loads of racist schoolkids (and not out of choice). One persistent offender (Oi – ya fuskin chinkie **** – yer ma still working doon the fuskin whoor-hoose? etc) even tried to run me over when he passed his test, screaming racist abuse all the while…. Still get the odd comment now, from ‘grownups’.

So you’ll forgive me for not changing my stance. Racial hatred is a a nasty, deep-rooted, historically documented issue. Slagging someone off for their hair colour / funny face is just kids’ play in comparison and really shouldn’t be confused.

Lol!!

“…it’s certainly the head of somebody.”

Fred – I have a fat bottom lip (used to be much worse when I was a kid) and if someone takes the mick, I get annoyed, but that’s about it. Facial characteristics / hair colour are simply not in the same league as persecuting someone due to their skin colour, for the historical reasons mentioned on page one. You cannot just discount that. These are two, totally seperate issues. I respect your right to be wrong though 😀

Well, I spose as you’re using racial characteristics (colour of hair, skin, etc), then both equally bad I’d say.

Disagree. I think you have to consider the historical context too – i.e., centuries of suppression, slavery and racial inequality. Gingers are fair game.

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My faith in politicians (of all peruasions) is almost non-existent, but if any of Mr Monkey’s blog is true, it serves to confirm my suspicions that they are pretty much all desperately self-interested, dishonest, power-hungry toads.

That said, I’m glad the council is taking steps to protect its employees…

yes we could ride but some kids on a Halfords special egged on by their mates ..

I’m regularly shown up by fearless young louts on stolen Halfords bikes 🙁

EDIT: actually, I own a Halfords bike (Boardman) 😆

That ^^^ sounds like pretty normal behaviour to me – I’d get pissed off with standing around like a lemon at a checkout too. And if someone cuts me up I tend to go a bit mental – isn’t that normal?! Perhaps I need to punch someone to express my anger.

Guy with a bad headache walks into a pet shop. He asks if they’ve any aspirin and the owner replies, “Sorry mate, the parrots eat ’em all”.

Photium[/url] might be just the thing – I have two of their sites. Template based, but with so many options you never see two the same, support second to none, flawless shopping cart / paypal integration, built in customisable SEO options. £7 a month!

They are aimed at photographers, but work just as well for artists. Free trial too, so no need to spend money if your wife doesn’t get on with it.

Have a look at my profile to see the main site, or have a gander at my other site, http://www.hairydogphotography.co.uk

Had a very wet ride out the Deeside railway track from Aberdeen years ago. It started bucketing and within seconds I was absolutley drenched. It was warm though and after a few minutes sheltering under a bush I thought, “sod it”, and carried on regardless.

Got to the Maryculter Bridge which is huge, and it had a river about two inches deep flowing down it. I began cycling over the bridge when, BAM! Lightning hit the far end of the bridge and the whole road went completely white! Wasn’t scared – just yelled like a loon and went faster – incredibly exhilarating 😀

24 hour garage – held up at gunpoint on the nightshift (uni job). Off licence – working as a manager – held up by a guy with an axe, which was much scarier as he looked utterly mental.

The gun robber was caught, the axe guy never was.

Talk about commitment – he just looks like he’s riding at the outside edge of his (incredible) abilities, all the time!

I thought it was very honest and brave of her, although I must admit to wondering if I’d heard correctly for a mo….

EDIT, wasn’t it “…live with them”?

The Sigma 10-20 is pretty much my walkabout lens now (always on the camera when not using it for work). It’s quite small and lightweight (compared to many of my other lenses), takes a sensible 77mm filter ring like most other pro lenses (so no need to splash out on a new polariser) and does bike shots / landscapey stuff very well. These are the only two I can find at short notice;

I doubt you’d ever regret buying one. As above, they’re great for interior shots too.

Vaseline will also cause it to regurgitate the contents of its stomach. Don’t do that. TBH, I usually just get it with my fingernails and pull. You have to be quick though – if it senses any funny stuff, it’ll burrow in a bit. But yes, tick tweezers are best.

Agree with the “big Jag” comment. There’s a garage on the coast near here (Sunderland way) selling Jags less than 10 years old for sub £3K, much less sometimes. They look stunning – if I was young and daft, I’d buy one!

Not so very long ago, I bought a 3L Cosworth-engined Ford Granada for £300. It went sideways everywhere and scared the sh1t out of the local boy racers in their 2L Corsa biscuit boxes. It also had heated seats – bargain! Sold it to a guy in Edinburgh who ripped out the engine and dropped it into a Capri 🙁

Someone hammered passed me and five other cars while we were waiting at traffic lights and ran the lights, weaving between crossing pedestrians the other day. Didn’t get the have a reg because he was on a bike but would’ve shopped him if I could.

Saw this all the time whilst walking / driving / cycling in Glasgow – was just about annoyed enough to write about it on teh internetz.

-Tom-, Crewlie, great photos (especially liking the light on those lambs) 😀 JohnClimber – what a fantastic set of pics – what are you using to get them?

Here’s one of Kasper my dog, taken in the home studio earlier. Mostly just a technical exercise to try shooting a white subject against a white background…

And here’s the lighting setup;

Also used a NDx8 (!) filter so I could keep the apperture wide open (either f2.8 or f4 IIRC in the photo above). Gave me a bit of a magenta cast, even though it’s a half decent Hoya Pro filter – no worries though – easily corrected in Lightroom.

That National Trust campsite at Langdale is lovely – had a good few trips there. Great old (ancient) pub just down the road too.

There’s another site a few miles before it on the same road – not as nice but good if the NT one is full (it’s small and does fill up fast).

Kevevs – it’s easy; stop typing. We all are (full of shit), but alcohol acts as a laxative for the brain….

Do it. And then hire me to do the visual / environmental impact assessments. I make perhaps a quarter of my living (photographically) from such assignments and would be happy to increase that to a half 🙂

As has been said here before, it’s a lot easier to knock down and dismantle a turbine field, than it is to make safe a nuclear reactor when the next best white sliced idea comes around….

schnullelieber – the composition in that second pic is up there with the greats! Sure it’s always reliant on chance, but if you shoot long enough, and have a feel for it…..

ginganinja – lovely dynamic lines and geometric shapes.

_tom_ is that Hitler?!

And 5th_Elefant – bokeh noted. I got similar results using a vintage Dallameyer projection lens inherited from my grandad. Sadly, it had to be sold and the proceeds passed into the estate when it turned out the lens was worth £1800 🙁

Its main job isn’t as a fast prime, it’s as a pancake. Is there an equivalent Canikon tiny thing?

Yes, sort of…. Nikon produced a series of manual focus, pancake lenses (‘e-series’) but they were aimed at the budget market. I had the 50mm one which came with a Nikon FM and it wasn’t the best….. But it was very small and flat 🙂

That right there is some shit-hot acid. She looked better with the shades on….

Oh no – throwing out prints is a bad idea. Whenever I visit my parents I love looking through all the family albums.

Why not just bin the out of focus, badly exposed prints and make a few albums with the rest of them?

Also worth bearing in mind that every time you change a photograph’s physical media, you’ll lose quality (unless you’re scanning the negatives with an Imacon drum scanner…).

Mr Overshoot – did exactly (almost) the same thing! Fell badly and landed on my right elbow. Had a bit of floating bone which hurt like hell every time I put my arm on (say) a car armrest for the next few years.

Eventually fell over in a drunken stupor, split my elbow open and the bit of bone must have popped out! No more pain. Grand.

Cheap ‘n’ cheerful – blades made of marshmallows. Want a real knife? Go to ronnie sunshines.