The birds were catching more fish than we were, but at least we could see we were in the right place. Is summer here at last?
Sea fishing
Looks like the remains of a torture scene, doesn’t it? I had a bit of an accident with a hook. I got a treble from a large plug embedded deep in my finger, up to the bend, and the barb had grabbed the flesh rather tightly. It came out of my finger eventually after much twiddling, twisting, pulling, pushing, tweaking and more pulling with a pair of rusty pliers. After about 10 minutes of leaking blood all over the place I was planning to cut it out but it didn’t quite come to that.
I did catch a small, very pretty wrasse shortly after all that.
Ice cream
Believe it or not, he couldn’t eat all that.
Caddyshack
Favourite article of this week: Bill Murray was stopped in the early hours of the morning by police and tested for drink driving by police in Stockholm. He’d nicked a golf cart after watching the Scandinavian Masters golf tournament to drive back to his hotel.
Given that the top speed of a golf cart really isn’t a lot, I’d say good lad. The man’s writing his own legends.
BBC article.
Excercise ‘must be tough to work’
Apparently people are confused about exercise and health. I’d go along with that, noticing a large number of large and slow people suddenly appearing outdoors on the cycle paths when the weather becomes pleasant. While a BBC article reports that it is unclear whether one should perform light exercise for half an hour, three times a week or do something more strenuous more often, I’d guess that many people opt for light exercise around three times a year. Sorry, I’m in a cruel mood because I cycled into work in heavy rain this morning and my waterproof trousers are crap.
Recent studies indicate that “to be healthy, you really do need to break into a sweat when you exercise”.
The American College of Sports Medicine reports, “People should do at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise five days a week, or 20 minutes of vigorous exercise, like jogging, three days a week”.
It is now recommended that weekly exercise “should include vigorous (jogging) and moderate aerobic exercise (a brisk walk), as well as twice-weekly activities, such as weight training, which maintain or increase muscular strength and endurance.” Is it all really that hard? I always thought exercise was fun.
BBC article.
More?
Due January 18th. Ish.
New Apple Keyboard
This thing is even skinnier and sexier in real life, and very tactile. I didn’t expect the keys to feel as good as they do. I’ve got that “new apple hardware” smell back in my study! (And I really will sort out this desk one day).
Photos, photos, everywhere
I’ve got photos all over the web. They’re on my website, on Jack’s website, on Flickr, and on Facebook. I’ve held back against Flickr and Facebook for a long time because of my desire to keep things simple and in one place, but Flickr is just so simple and cool for sharing with a limited audience, geotagging and the like that I had to give it a go. So far Facebook is pretty empty, but its genius is in tagging faces with Facebook IDs, so linking all photos of a person on Facebook to one profile. Jack’s website is made with Apple software, just to see how it works, and my website is Movable Type powered. The Apple software is gorgeous to use and just keeps getting better, but the Movable Type platform is pretty much what I started with and so I shall continue. It feels much better suited to straight forward blogging than iWeb in its current incarnation, although I expect iWeb to grow and grow in future years (but I’ll bet it retains its original simplicity).
Of all the places that I publish photos online to I like my website the best because I tend to put items of personal interest up here and it’s then interesting in later years to peruse the past. My full photo collections on hard disks are large and aren’t annotated with as much text as those on my website. As I built this site myself it will have greater longevity than the latest social networking fad. It is more a of a pain to upload batches of photos though, and what I put on this site is open for all to see, so some self imposed censorship is important. Just like my frontal lobes’ job in real life.
So Apple have released an updated version of their excellent iPhoto software, with a new web gallery component that adds further difficulty to my choice.
“Group participation. Visitors to your Web Gallery can not only view your photos, they can contribute their own (with your permission, of course). So your collection keeps growing, for all visitors to enjoy.”
“Keep yourself in sync. iPhoto synchronizes your .Mac Web Gallery with your iPhoto library. When others add photos to your Web Gallery, their photos appear in your computer. When you add a photo to your published album, it’s uploaded to your Web Gallery. Automatically.”
Brilliant, but naturally it works with the .Mac service, and I assume it is closed off to .Mac only. Take a look at the sample online gallery and you’ll see that it works very much like a slick desktop application. It’s a beautiful way to very easily share photos online, but it has much to compete with. If .Mac was cheaper I’d go for it and link it into my site. Maybe I will anyway. The new version of iLife is very cheap with an educational discount, and I’m not finished looking at all the updates to it and to .Mac yet.
I just wish more of my friends and family used macs and .Mac.
BBC Mondays
After headlining the affects of Friday afternoon skiving on the British economy, the BBC website today asks, “Got the Monday blues?” and offers “Another stressful week on the coalface to get through? Brighten up your day with BBC comedy clips.” So now they’re encouraging Monday morning skiving!
Fair enough.
BBC comedy clips online.
On the beach
Fishing by the sea.
Thinking?