Monthly Archives: October 2008

Scanning again

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I’m back to the scanning, already posted the results of doing some holiday snaps from the 80’s.  I also did a bunch of random photo’s hanging around and another set from a CenterParcs holiday in 2002ish.  Today I’m doing CentreParcs from 2000 (which has all-together too many photo’s of ducks, ducklings and swans) and we’ll see what else I get done.

I finally settled on a directory structure for storing them all, one of the challenges I have with this kind of thing is I have to find a structure I’m happy with.  Categorising or structuring data tends to bring out my mild-OCDness.  So I’m going for one directory per year, with one sub-directory per photo set depending on what they were.  If we’re not sure what year they’re from we’ll just sort them by decade (which is usually pretty easy to work out, especially for the pre-1990 ones).

The whole process is really slow going, but I think it’ll be worth it in the long run.  There are more and more options for using, viewing and enjoying photographs on digital media so it’ll be nice to have all of our photo’s scanned in.  To that end, I’m doing even the ones I used to ignore (badly lit, out of focus, etc.) without prejudice.

The top level directory for photo’s I’ve finished scanning, or digital photo’s we already had, is up to 7GB and 2046 files.  There’s easily 5 times more than that to scan in, if not more.  I must have 3-400 photo’s from my university years at the very least.

Here’s a quick shot from our back garden in Nottingham in January 2000 (click for full size).

Holiday like it’s the mid-1980’s

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Took these photo’s on a narrowboat holiday in 1988 sometime in the mid-to-late 80’s.  I think we started near Leek and went through Stoke on Trent and down to Stratford, but we may have gone north to Manchester, I can’t remember.  And yeh, I took a pretty shoddy photo even in those days, I didn’t get any better either.


Narrow Boat Trip – School Holiday

And no, I’m not in any of the photographs, sorry.

Edit: The more I think about this the more I think it must have been earlier than 88?  The photo’s are still in their original packet, which is clearly marked 1988.  But I wonder how long I had the film before getting it developed.  I left school in 1989 after two years in the sixth form, which would mean I started sixth form in September 1987.  I’m 99% sure I went on this holiday long before sixth form, which would mean either early ’87 or even maybe ’86 but I can’t explain why the date on the photo packet is so out unless it’s from a different set of photo’s?

D&D 4th Edition first two encounters

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We ran through a couple of encounters last night in our new roleplaying campaign.  First time we’ve used the 4th edition rules in anger, so all of us were a little slow and spent time referring to stuff in the rulebook.

I have to say, I was surprised it ran as smoothly as it did, the positional issues didn’t affect us as much as I feared, and provided a decent tactical element.  The use of powers instead of basic attacks is the real difference, and it certainly gave my character (straight forward fighter) more options during the fight, without having to rely on feats.  For example, my fighter has two ‘at will’ powers which are essentially regular attacks.  One (Cleave) allows him to hit a second target for a small amount of damage if he hits the first target, and the second causes minor damage to a single target even if the swing misses.  So depending on how many targets are adjacent to him, he gets to pick which makes more sense.

Also, we had a Warlord in the group, who has a power which provides additional damage to basic attacks so during one combat round I used a base attack to benefit from that.

All-in-all the combat seems ok, we’ll see how it ramps up.  At the moment, I still feel bereft without haste, multiple attacks, dual wield and stat increasing spells (Bull’s Strength!) which were such a strong feature of 3rd edition, but I’m sure we’ll get used to them not being there.

The two major things I learned yesterday about 4th edition,

  1. You don’t roll saving throws any more, they work like AC (i.e. they have a static value which the attacker has to beat).  This is going to take some getting used to.  You do still make some saving throw rolls, but they’re a straight d20 and succeed on 10-20 (I think), they’re used when you’re under the effects of spells (for example, sleep).
  2. Everything about combat has bigger damage numbers, and everyone has more hitpoints.  It’s going to take some getting used to.  In earlier editions not being hit was key early on, but in 4th edition everyone has far more hitpoints at first level, including the bad guys.

Oh, and being able to Shift in combat makes much more sense, it may only allow you to move 1-square at a time, but at least you can shift through the enemy without incurring opportunity attacks if you need to.

Kevin Smith in our Letterbox

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Clerks, Clerks II, Chasing Amy and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back arrived this morning, Dogma and Mallrats were posted yesterday so I expect those Tuesday next week.

Will let you know how they work out.

Rambling update

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Made it through to Friday, pretty tired today generally.  Lovely weather outside, bright sunshine, crisp.  Bubbles is out there somewhere baking herself in what are probably the last few days of warm enough sunshine.  She’s got conjunctivitis the poor bugger.  We’ve got some ointment to put on twice a day, she’s been pretty good about it despite the whinging.

Watched Fright Night last night after recording it on Sky+.  Classic movie, how on earth did we find those special effects ((special in the loose sense)) scary?  Not even sure why it’s an 18, I guess some of the more fleshy scenes are the cause of that.  Evan watching stuff like that the experienced is improved with the surround sound, we’re still really pleased with it.

I got sick of paying for a Sky Movies subscription and not watching anything.  It’s because we don’t sit in front of the TV these days unless we’re doing so to watch something we recorded, so I went through the entire week ahead and set 4 movies to record (Clerks II, Fright Night, Deja Vu, American Gangster) and I’m going to try and do that every few days and record anything I’ve not seen or not seen for a while.  Pan’s Labyrinth was on a week or so ago too, so recorded that and not watched it yet, and Hairspray was on Sky Anytime so I’ve ‘recorded’ that for Grete.

Still pleased with the 5.7% HbA1c result.  Found this nice little chart in case you wanted to know more about the test,

HbA1c
Normal/abnormal
Average blood glucose
4-6.5% Normal for those without diabetes 3-8mmol/L
6.5-7.5% Target range for those with diabetes 8-10mmol/L
8-9.5% High 11-14mmol/L
Greater than 9.5% Very high 15 and above

I bought a Marathon bar ((yes, yes I know, but I like living in the 80’s)) on Wednesday to eat after I got the results, either as a celebration or a commiseration depending on how the results went.  Celebration was a good option.  I never ate a lot of chocolate or sweet stuff before being diagnosed, but I did enjoy a Snickers bar every now and then.  Almost amusingly, they don’t have a totally terrible effect on my blood sugar because of the high fat content, but as you can imagine I’ve had about three since I was diagnosed.

Roleplaying tonight, 4th edition D&D, first time we’ve played (rolled characters up last week), so should be interesting.  Always takes a while to get ‘into’ any campaign, never mind one with a new ruleset so I’m expecting tonight to be pretty slow.

My good friend Simes blogged about some TV he’s been watching.  It certainly feels like the TV schedule has picked up, mostly stuffed with American TV.  The Fringe pilot was cool, the Burn Notice pilot was also interesting and we’ll be watching that to see where it goes.  We’ve got quite a wait for the new series of Criminal Minds sadly, but Bones is back on and is as good as ever (I think).

And I’ll leave you with this,

And I think Pirates would kick both their asses.

Clerks II

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This is a deeply religious movie with strong moral overtones and an solid core of existential theory running through it.  Our heroes must come to terms with their place in the world and learn how to stretch their own minds to release their inner sanctity.  Once accomplished, only then will they realise the true nature of the universe and achieve everlasting happiness.

Or, it’s a rather amusing comedy from Kevin Smith about a couple of guys pushing burgers who discover friendship is stronger than a small fire, and that you should look at that which you take for granted for the love you so dearly need.

Funny, light-hearted, good natured and surreal in a Blues Brothers way, Clerks II was worth watching and has given me an appetite to check out Mr Smith’s other films.

Edit: I know right, you’re thinking omfg how can he NOT have seen any Kevin Smith movies? I know, so sue me.  I’m fixing that right now, it was like, I knew they were there, but I just felt, I dunno, ok? right? is that clear?