steve – Page 44

September 13, 2009October 2, 2009

Lottery prediction

After watching Derran Brown ‘predict’ the lottery this week I think I may have a go myself.

However rather than use 24 people and automatic writing I be using my tried and trusted pseudo random lottery predictor program* I wrote many years ago in C++. However 2 things are a problem at the moment.

1) The program only worked on MS-DOS
2) Where the hell is the program∆ (apart from the floppies I have – disks that is – please no more viagra links).

So wish me luck, in a) finding and installing a dos program on my Mac b) winning.

*as in tried and working, not that is ever won me any money. Basically it was written before Camelot introduced lucky dips. Once that came out it made my program irrelevant, oh well.

∆it may be lurking on a webpage somewhere!

/edit: found it, it was on my XP backup which in turn was lurking on my Virtualised server!

/edit2: I now have a virtualised DOS PC (MS-Dos 6.22) so will run the lot.exe app on that.

September 13, 2009

Loft, nearly there

As I’ve had a bottle of red and have given up on attempting to play Vivaldi this evening (well the right hand is fine, left is a little variable). Anyway though as the loft is close to completion I though I should post some images from a few weeks ago after it got plastered.

Actually, when I said image I meant YouTube video.

Look out for updates soon (for those that are really interested in loft conversions completed in the style of those weekly build it yourself magazines).

September 12, 2009September 12, 2009

Series 2 of big flying devices…..

….. a new series started, oh around 3 minutes ago.

Sadly I missed the A380 flypast on Saturday 5th September as I was shooting a wedding (which of course you all know I don’t do). However as luck would have it Emirates agreed to bring their Airbus A380 to BHX (Birmingham) to celebrate the 70th birthday of the Airport.

I took a few pics……..

Flying Behemoth

Taken from the old airport looking towards the end of the runway.
Flying Behemoth

Runway was checked after arrival to see if it broke!
Flying Behemoth

Flying Behemoth

Quite a large attendance on the top of the old Multistorey car park. Anyway I didn’t want to wait for take off so I went home. Came back 2 hours later for the take off……

Flying Behemoth

Sadly I went too early to grab a picture of the RAF TriStar that took off. So join me again soon or more like whenever the next big thing turns up.

September 12, 2009September 12, 2009

Fish and me

Not being one for fish I’ve always steered well clear of the slimy things. However on the recent holiday to St Ives we went crabbing. Caught sod all in the way of crabs, but caught 2 mighty fish……

Me and fish

Rachel proud of 'fisherman daddy

Paul G would’ve been proud of me.

August 31, 2009August 31, 2009

Sun, sea, sand and a broken 24-105 f/4 L

As the weather forecasts are usually wrong, we decided to head towards the beach. And we were right to do so, a bit overcast, but the sun eventually shone through.

So please excuse the family snaps…….

St Ives

Managed to bag a bit of wildlife also……

St Ives

Downside, as some of the more observant of you would have spotted is the overexposure of the images. Which is more pronounced in this image……

St Ives

Seems my 24-105 f/4 L doesn’t want to adjust the aperture blades without a fight. I’ve tried the usual cleaning the contacts, but nothing changed. It may be suffering from humidity/sea spray issues. So currently got it wrapped up in a woolly cardy so see if that helps (was told wool is good to help prevent humidity issues in cameras.

Anyway real annoyance is this lens is my primary lens for the blessing I’m shooting on Saturday. I’m not in a position to rent for the weekend as I’m not around until the weekend.

I still have my EF17-40 f/4 L, EF50mm f/1.5 and EF70-200 f/4 L. So I will only struggle if I need 41-49 and 51-70mm. I’m guessing that’s unlikely. We’ll see what happens, you never know wool may conquer.