Over the past two or three years you will have noted my moans about trying to get access to the Internet when away on holiday. This year we decided to get mobile broadband from Virgin so that we could at least get access to email, etc when we were away. This has worked fine although the differing levels of access (GPRS, 3G and HSDPA) make a big difference to the effectiveness of the tool. What has been amazingly different this time is that we can get free wifi access from all over Center Parcs. I am sitting in the chalet just now and have been able to upload photos to Flickr, check my email and all sorts of other things at a fairly good speed. Well done to Center Parcs. We ave not spent the holiday sitting on the Internet but it has been great being able to get access when we wanted it.
Tomorrow we are off to Keilder Water. I suspect the access won't be as easy for the rest of the week.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Useful Phone Apps
I have had a bit of a love / hate relationship with the mobile phone. As I have a Blackberry for work I don't ten to use my own a huge amount except when I am on holiday. As a result I have always been reluctant to spend a huge amount on a device that I don't use an awful lot. How many text messages can you send to Twitter when you are away anyway?
Well, we are on holiday just now. We have spent a few days near Carlisle and now we are at Center Parcs near Penrith for the weekend before moving on to Keilder next week. During the week we have managed to do a fair number of geocaches as we have been around Hadrian's wall, etc. Whilst doing this I have actually found what I think may be the first useful phone application I have ever seen. My son, Alistair, was using the Geocache Navigator by Trimble on his Nokia 5800. This combined the built in GPS along with GPRS to display the geocache information for all the caches close to you. This is considerably more sophisticated that our method of doing all the research before we go on a trip, transferring the coordinate details to our Garmin Etrex and printing off a wad of paper with all the details on them. As a result of Alistair's phone app we were able to add a number of caches that we would not otherwise have been able to do.
So there we go, I have found a useful phone app. Will it make me upgrade my phone so that I can get one that will run this app? I doubt it. It's a lot of money just for that. We will just have to take Alistair with us when we go out geocaching.
By the way, a red squirrel is sitting staring at me through thepatio window. I shall have to go and get the long lens on my camera.
Well, we are on holiday just now. We have spent a few days near Carlisle and now we are at Center Parcs near Penrith for the weekend before moving on to Keilder next week. During the week we have managed to do a fair number of geocaches as we have been around Hadrian's wall, etc. Whilst doing this I have actually found what I think may be the first useful phone application I have ever seen. My son, Alistair, was using the Geocache Navigator by Trimble on his Nokia 5800. This combined the built in GPS along with GPRS to display the geocache information for all the caches close to you. This is considerably more sophisticated that our method of doing all the research before we go on a trip, transferring the coordinate details to our Garmin Etrex and printing off a wad of paper with all the details on them. As a result of Alistair's phone app we were able to add a number of caches that we would not otherwise have been able to do.
So there we go, I have found a useful phone app. Will it make me upgrade my phone so that I can get one that will run this app? I doubt it. It's a lot of money just for that. We will just have to take Alistair with us when we go out geocaching.
By the way, a red squirrel is sitting staring at me through thepatio window. I shall have to go and get the long lens on my camera.
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Playing with Brightness and Other Waffle
Holiday time is great. I have been off work for a day before we go on holiday. Rather than packing I have been fiddling with a few photos. In order to get the pure white background I took the photo on a piece of white paper. Once I got the RAW image into the computer I adjusted the brightness to make sure it didn't look grey. As a result it looks a little overexposed but I quite like the effect. I added my name to the image in the photo editing part of Flickr called Picnik.
We are away down south on Tuesday. Firstly we are staying close to Carlisle for three nights. On Friday we head to Center Parcs at Penrith. On Monday we move on to Keilder Water in Northumberland. It will be a nice break. We intend to walk, do some geocaching and take lots of photographs. For the first time we have mobile broadband so we shall see how the Internet access goes.
See you when we get back.
We are away down south on Tuesday. Firstly we are staying close to Carlisle for three nights. On Friday we head to Center Parcs at Penrith. On Monday we move on to Keilder Water in Northumberland. It will be a nice break. We intend to walk, do some geocaching and take lots of photographs. For the first time we have mobile broadband so we shall see how the Internet access goes.
See you when we get back.
Monday, July 06, 2009
Improving your Photography
I have been listening to a regular podcast by Chris Marquardt called Tips from the Top Floor for a while now. He covers all aspects of digital photography. The podcast is great and has helped my development extensively over my time of listening.Recently he has started doing a bite sized daily tip for improving your photography. This is great if you just have a few minutes and want to grab hold of a single idea as you go. You can subscribe to the feed on iTunes or go directly to the AudioBoo site to listen online. Chris also sends a tweet (@chrismarquardt) when he has uploaded a new tip.
Here is a sample to whet your appetite:
Great uses of web 2.0 to share and learn. Thanks a lot, Chris.
Friday, July 03, 2009
More Than Just a Dictionary
This blog post from the Ted blog describes an interesting online tool called Wordnik.
Much more than just a dictionary!
Have a look.
TED Blog: Erin McKean launches Wordnik -- the revolutionary online dictionary
Shared via AddThis
Much more than just a dictionary!
Have a look.
TED Blog: Erin McKean launches Wordnik -- the revolutionary online dictionary
Shared via AddThis
Monday, June 29, 2009
A 21st Century Event
Weddings have changed since we got married 23 years ago. When we got married there was an official photographer and a few folk took a few other photos on their film cameras. The service was actually recorded on an audio cassette but there was no video or any other new fangled ideas!Contrast that with Fiona and Russell's wedding on Saturday. I borrowed a dozen digital cameras from one of our schools so that we could put one on each of the tables at the reception. We then encouraged folk to take lots of photos. They did! It will take weeks to sort through them all. Along with the
pictures Faye took with my camera we currently have about 10G of images to wade through. That's before we get the promised ones from a number of friends with fancy cameras! Add to that the Flickr group we have set up so that anyone with a digital camera and a digital camera could upload their images and messages to the group to share with each other. Who knows how many will have eventually.The real cultural change however may be more fundamental than that. The groom sent a tweet within minutes of signing the schedule announcing to the world that he was now a married man. This was closely followed by a similar tweet from one of the ushers confirmed that the deed had indeed been done.
A very different generation. Of course all of that was just an excuse to show off some more photos!
Sunday, June 28, 2009
The Wedding
This is a wee bit of a departure for this blog but I am afraid anyone who reds this is going to have to suffer an endless stream of photos of my daughter's wedding. We have thousands of photographs as we put a digital camera on every table at the reception. The number of people who now have good cameras also means that there are countless more. We have created a Flicr group where the whole lot will appear eventually. It's going to take weeks to sort them all out.
The Flickr group is here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/shieldswedding/
The Flickr group is here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/shieldswedding/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
