David's Blog

As great as digital photography is, viewing pictures on screen is never quite as good as actually sitting and looking at them on paper. Modern inkjet printers are excellent at producing high quality results, but there’s still something usually missing from the prints. It’s usually a flatness, and a general lack of ‘pop’.

I’d been meaning to try one of the many online services for some time, but hadn’t ever got that far. I finally decided to bite the bullet and give Bonusprint a go. Computer Shopper magazine had reviewed them favourably some time ago, so they seemed like a good bet.

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Oh great. So, now just taking simple photos gets you hounded for no good reason. I’m always careful where I take photos anyway, and only do so in public spaces. Even then, I’m wary of taking photos with people in (they spoil the shot anyway, as far as I’m concerned!).

I think I’d be inclined to do much the same as the person mentioned in the article though. Go along with it, then bitch, wail, and complain until blue in the face. There’s little point getting your collar felt just to prove a point.

BBC NEWS | Magazine | Innocent photographer or terrorist?

My Media Centre has been giving me gyp for a while. I decided to reinstall Windows a few weeks back as I was having some really weird problems with video codecs. Turns out, ffdshow doesn’t work well with Vista Media Center on dual core processors, and the video turns into a stuttery mess. It DID work, but suddenly decided it didn’t want to.

So I decided the best bet was to zap everything and start again. I reinstalled Windows, but the first problem I saw was said install took the best part of five hours to complete! Not good.

I reinstalled all the other junk and everything seemed OK, but I found the Bluray drive constantly reading itself. I first blamed the Pinnacle software that came with my TV card, but it wasn’t that. I noticed this in the Event log:

“Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort0, was issued.”

This came from a process called ‘nvstor32′ – part of the onboard driver set. Every time this was in the event log, it coincided with the Bluray drive resetting itself, along with a quite pronounced stutter to the system whilst the hard drive and Bluray drives reset themselves.

Not good.

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So, the other week at work, I came out to my car to drive home, and found a dirty great big scratch down the front offside wing! I didn’t look malicious, and the car was parked in a pretty open area. My guess is somebody got out of their car with some bags or something, turned around, and whack.

Still, I end up having to pay!

That being said, I got this guy to come fix it. He did a pretty good job, considering the fact a sudden hailstorm came crashing down on us just as he was finishing. Still, it looks good!

The colour looks different because it was taken at a different time of day, so the sun was reflecting off the houses. You couldn’t tell it was there though. It’s a pretty good job!

IT HAPPENED AGAIN!!!

I booked time off work, and I end up with a frickin’ cold! I’ve been sitting around since Saturday sniffling, coughing, and blowing my nose lots. So, you know, a great way to spend time off!

This is why you don’t build server rooms below ground level…