Man Size Watch!

Well, I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I need a new watch and after trying one in John Lewis a few weeks ago decided, yep I’ll have one. So here it is…..

Teh Beast

Essentially it is a gadget, I’ve no real need for Barometric sensing, Altimeter nor a compass. But it’s the sort of things a man requires from a watch, honest!

As usually it didn’t go quite to plan, the strap needs a link taking out. Also John Lewis gave me the wrong instructions.

/Edit. Wasn’t wrong instructions, just the forgot to give me the separate manual!. Still had to go back and get the strap adjusted.

Had a couple of beers and now I couldn’t care less!

As title really. It’s late, 2 cans of Stella later and I care not. Still should go to bed as i’ve got to get up at 07:00.

/Edit

Woke up around 04:00 with a terrible case of the shits, then again at 05:00 and on the half hour for most of the morning.

Shitwatch confirms that the movements are slowly decreasing, but still uncomfortable.

Iomega UltraMax 1TB

It had become obvious that the MacMinis internal HDD was going to run out pretty soon. So where next? I had already purchased a Western Digital My Book (160gb) as a backup device. The My Book works fine, however as the Mini is running out of space I need a Raid 1 device (mirrored drives). I could simply just get another My Book and chain them to together. Mac OS X I think allows you configure this as raid. It would probably work, but still went in search of an all in one solution.

A number of devices are available, but nothing really seemed to offer Raid 1. Most were Raid 0, which simple spans the data across 2 drives for speed reasons. This method has no redundancy built in. Loose a disk, loose the data. After a little bit of searching I found a device by an American company called G-tech. This seemed to fit the bill, however it wasn’t available here. Then by accident I stumbled across Iomega’s website (them of Zip disks!). In the product list was the UltraMac 1TB. Found it in stock online, ordered and waited for despatch. Subsequently found that the store in question did not have it in stock. Cancelled the order and bought it direct from Iomega-Europe.

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Job decision ‘D’ day!

Finally i’ve been offered my existing job.  However the offer comes with the need to fill in an application form.  The application form is the usual please write the bullshit we require.  And its at this point were I know I need to fill this in, but I just can motivate myself to do this.

Of course after the application comes the interview, to be honest it’s crap really.  I’ve done the job on and off (in between project work) for almost 2 years.  But it has to done officially, by officially this means internal advert.  This in turn is applied to by people who really are not suitable for the job.  But good old union time wasting has to be adhered to.

Though to totally forget this cack, I’ll be visiting The Flash Centre in Birmingham today.  Canon are meant to showing the Eos 1D Mark III today, it would be rude not to attend.

Whilst not at all related to the days rant, have a picture of a cute Staffordshire Bull Terrier.

Makes things seem much better.

Adobe Lightroom V1

So it finally arrives (sort of), Adobes Lightroom is now released. V1 on the face doesn’t look too much different from the 4.1 beta. The first thing that is noticeable is the speed. The old 4.1 beta was a little sluggish in it’s operation. Ask it to do a relatively moderate task and it would give you the spinning beachball of death. Though this could be due to me using a MacMini 1.66 ghz Core Duo.

Is it a Photoshop replacement? No, more of a compliment to Photoshop. The main use for Lightroom is as a library. Images can be stored and referenced through metadata and keywords. This I guess is valuable for the pro tog. For me it’ll save me from having to remember dates and locations. But LR is more than just a library. The final release has expanded on the develop side of the application. The options for changing the image are very familiar to anyone that has used Adobe Camera Raw. Colour, sharpness, lens etc are all included within the package. Also the final release has included a spot removal tool. Though i’ve yet to fully test this.

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