Exciting times and change are upon us. Well, me anyway. My mother’s mother already lives with us and has her own rooms downstairs in our house. My father’s mother is slowly becoming more dependent on others to help so after a long chat we offered to have an extension built with a living room, bedroom and facilities in which she can live while being under our roof. It was all finalised and we’d been in talks with the architect and builders for a while, suffice to say they started on the 3rd August.

I thought it would be a nice idea to document the build progress with photos, which not only gives us a record of how things are going, but also satisfies and adds water to my photography drought.

The plan is as follows (lots of pics in this post I’m afraid):

So that’s what we are looking at in design form, we’re very lucky in that the plot of land we have still leaves us with a nice garden at the back of the house (this is going on the side).

The main issue we’re facing at the moment has been with the grabber lorry which has been coming to collected the excavated earth from the front of the house. In theory he was meant to be coming twice a day to clear everything but he hasn’t been, which means we’re a little backed up. The digger and dump truck have had to go back today as they’ve finished their hire period yet we still have another load of two of earth sitting in the middle of the site.

Currently the two chaps are working on the footings for the extension and are laying down the blocks on top of the concrete. It’s strange watching it all take shape.

The estimated build time for the whole project is 8-10 weeks. Which, at the rate things are going, is looking about right, providing we don’t have any more backing up due to late arrivals of things.

I can’t help but feel the whole thing looks smaller than I thought it was going to be but I may be thinking differently when the walls start going up. The main issue we’re going to face, I think, is trying to get the gas company to relocate the meter. There’s still lots to be done, moving of boiler and venting from the kitchen are the two main ones which aren’t self-contained within the new annexe.

It’s certainly been interesting watching the garden transform. The garden was raised above the floor of the house by about 2ft so there was a lot of excavation to be done to bring everything down to the correct level…and then some for the footings.

The only picture we managed to get before the build work started wasn’t the best but it is all in dire need of attention. Well…was…

You can see the rest of my images in my Extension set on Flickr, which will be updated daily or every other day if I don’t get round to it daily.

Today’s feature is a blog/person, namely Aranea, written by a friend of mine and before you all click on the link to go and have a look, I must warn you, it’s all in Swedish. I met Andrea whilst playing WoW ages ago and we get on brilliantly, she was even kind enough to alert me to the Spirit Beast’s location which I detailed on here last year – so I am, of course, indebted to her. Haha.

Like me, she has been taking photos for ages but hadn’t done anything semi-seriously until she got her Nikon – a D80 in her case – last year. I remember chatting to her about the purchase and what lenses she should get…with much e-window-shopping from me at all the pretty lenses. “Yes, you want this 600mm lens…because it’s awesome, just don’t look at the price!”

With both Andrea and I having Nikon cameras of similar designs (my D70 to her D80) I was able to help her get used to and hopefully get the best out of her camera with the experience I’ve had using mine. An SLR can be quite daunting when you first unpack it and see all of the buttons and dials covering it but a quick ‘point-and-tell’ session cleared up some questions and had her on the way to really getting into the SLR-ness of the D80.

I’ve been interested in seeing the pictures she takes and I’m glad she comes to me with questions about photography as it’s one of my passions and I do love talking about it. I’m also glad she shows me some of the “bad” pictures she takes. Taking bad pictures is very good for improving your photography. If you can look at your own photos with a critical eye you can easily work out what to do to improve your next ones.

I’ve known people ‘get into’ photography and their photos improve with their speed of learning and the number of shots they take, which is understandable. Some people have a fast learning curve and some have a slower one. Photography should be about working at your pace so don’t try and improve massively overnight, it won’t happen. What’s been most impressive to see is Andrea’s quality of photography improve in such a short period of time. She recently purchased a 50mm lens, which is also my favourite lens, and her images took a noticeable leap forward in quality. Helped by an obvious natural eye for photography and a good image, it’s been an absolute pleasure to help out and watch the progress of her photography.

Aranea is her new blog, it’s very new and I’m looking forward to seeing more of her photos being posted up there, even if I’m not entirely sure what she’s talking about! Thank goodness for Google Translate?

G x

Suffice to say, I’m in a bit of an uncharacteristic mood so have been avoiding social interaction for the most part so I don’t go off on a rant about something. This did give me the chance, however, to think more about my novel and to get out and take some photos for Compose, Expose, Upload, which I have been meaning to do for some time.

The novel is coming on well (in my head at least) and I’m trying to sort out plot points, different perspectives and background information in my head currently – although I should probably write it down! In fact, I think I might do that today. Good plan. About time too! I may post up a couple of sections from the novel at some point, but bear in mind they’re first drafts which are very rough…thoughts on this? Should I keep it to myself?

Going back to the photos I took…they’ve been posted up on Compose, Expose, Upload (<- click that link to see them) and my Flickr if you’d like to have a look. I do like this time of year but for photography it’s more a love/hate relationship. I love it because it can produce some lovely frosty and misty shots which just look gorgeous. Also, the sun tends to be low in the sky so you end up with lovely long shadows. On the other hand, the weather is usually less than ideal and often makes everything look incredibly dull. This is fine if you’re taking more ‘moody’ shots but otherwise it makes them look a tad flat and boring.

On the subject of photos, I’m really looking forward to receiving my Moo Mini Cards, which I bought a couple of days ago. They’re mini-business card type things with my photos from Flickr on them. I’ll talk more about them when they arrive though.

Right, I need to put my irritability to good use and direct my grumpy demeanour at someone who works at PC World.

Toodles.

G x

But yes, rejoice, another update from yours truly – you don’t have to rejoice, I’d prefer it if you didn’t! – but alas, it is a shameless plug.

I’ve mentioned Andy before in these digital pages and his blog url is over there -> under my links section so there’s no excuse for not knowing who he is! Anyway, he and I have decided to merge our collective knowledge and expertise with photography and create our own blog, cunningly entitled Compose, Expose, Upload, which can be found at www.CEUblog.co.uk. And in-keeping with the times, we have a Flickr gallery in which we will upload all the photos used on the blog to be viewed slightly larger…we like to call this our Flickrfolio! *chortle* ahem!

We launched it today and we’re very much looking forward to getting stuck in, taking photos, critiquing them and generally bringing you folk some tips and hopefully some inspiration for your own photography.

I will still be carrying on with LMRT and I will, of course, let you lovely folk know whenever I post something on CEUblog! Not that I should have to because you’ll be subscribing to the RSS feed won’t you? Yes? Good, glad to hear it!

G x

I’ll start with the important one though. I’d like you to look at this if you can spare 15mins. I’ve had a link to Christian Payne’s website over on the right (OurManInside) since I started this blog but I’ve never really talked about his photography or other activities. Now, however, he’d like to have more publicity for his latest project and I’m more than happy to oblige.

In mid-January 2008, with the support of the United Nations High Commission For Refugees (UNHCR), Christian travelled to Amman, Jordan to photography and record a few Iraqi refugee families trapped in a no-man’s land; asylum seekers, looking for refuge, too afraid to return to their blood-soaked country.

Please visit OURMANINSIDE.com and watch the video. It’s under 15mins long so you have no excuse, really. Watch it while eating a banana or a sandwich if you must.

Secondly, in a completely different train of thought. Pop over to Stephen Fry’s website and download his latest podgram. It’s about dancing and never before have I found myself listening to a podcast with such a degree of  enthusiasm. I found myself agreeing with nearly everything he said about his detest for dancing. Listen to it, it’s utterly fabulous. A bit like Kate Beckinsale, but funnier – as far as I know. Does she dance or like dancing? Hmm.

Lastly for today, I Stumbled a fantastic website last night about temperature. It’s a sliding scale which takes you from absolute zero all the way up to planck temperature with information in between for varying temperatures. It’s entitled “A Sense of Scale” and can be found here.

Enjoy!

I’ve never had anyone email or contact me asking for permission to use one of my photographs for something so it was a very nice feeling. They wanted my image to accompany an article to be written on writer’s block – something, if you’ve been reading this blog from the beginning, you’ll know I’m all too familiar with!

I had a look around the site and they seem like my sort of folk so I happily allowed them use of my image.

The end result is that they kindly emailed me today with the link to the finished article, which you can see here.

digg story

So, yes, the Mac arrived “on time” on Monday morning and was VERY easy to set up. I’ll cut to the chase…I’m a Mac convert. I’ve liked Macs for a long time but I’ve never had the funds to do a complete transfer over from PCs; I still don’t, which is why I’ve only bought a Mini rather than a Mac Pro – that’s to come at a later date.

It is slightly confusing to be using two mice and two keyboards but with some sort of order and practice I’ll get there. The Mac keyboard is especially lovely to type on, despite the @ and ” keys being the wrong way round, that does catch me out quite often; with this in mind, I think I may even transfer my novel over onto here, just so I can use this keyboard. However, the mouse does seem to be a little bit dim-witted when trying to make fine adjustments. I don’t have the same problem with my PC mouse and I tried swapping them, ending up with the same results. Not sure what the problem is but this may make Photoshop work quite tricky. Time will tell I suppose.

I’ve spent most of the day networking the PC and the Mac together and transferring the 16 odd gigabytes of websites and photography over from PC to Mac. I think once Christmas is out of the way, I’ll be able to get back to work. I have a few websites to make to pay for the Mini and get myself a new television, so it’ll be interesting to see how well the Mini copes with it.

There was a slight moment of shock, the reason for which I am still a little confused about, when I realised my photography looks totally different on the Mac than it does on the PC. As you can see in the above left picture, the monitor on the right (Mac) looks much bluer than the monitor on the left (PC). The camera didn’t pick everything up but the Mac monitor seems to be generally much clearer, crisper, brighter and slightly more saturated.

I’m not sure whether it’s the colour profile, the graphics card, the age of the monitor or even the build of the monitor – glass vs matt – but it’s certainly something I’m concerned about. Many of the ‘darker’ pictures I’ve taken now show up incorrectly exposed and the colour on some of the others looks a bit off. I think I may have to either invest in a monitor calibration tool or a new monitor for the PC. We shall see.

On the whole though, I love it. Advice? Buy a Mac!

In other news, a friend of mine showed me a fantastic musical double-act earlier today, called Igudesman & Joo. A comedy concert I suppose you could dub it; their show seems to contain equal amounts of humour and classical music, very cleverly combined.

For more info and videos, visit www.igudesmanandjoo.com

Also, I use Firefox on my Mac which, if you don’t, is a great browser. Check out Stephen Fry’s blog to find out how best to ‘pimp your browser‘.

digg story