New Views, New World and New Toys
New Views
Might as well kick off with this one. 
I have finally started to upload the first photos from my South Downs Way walk which I did at the end of July/very beginning of August. I have only uploaded a few from the first day (Saturday 26th July) and the morning/very early afternoon at that! You can view them and others as I post them here:
On The Way to Beauworth (Gander Down)
New World
I wish we would stop sticking our nose in the whole Russia/Georgia thing. I’m not going to debate the whole thing but I don’t think our strong posturing rhetoric and continued focus on this is a good idea when the Government should be focussing on things that matter closer to home.
I’ll say no more than to say the world held its breath for nearly half a century once, and we don’t need a second Cold War.
New Toys
Whims are exciting and sometimes full of folly. Spontaneity is a bit more considered in my book but wholly life affirming at that. I suppose the South Downs Way walk idea came of spontaneity rather than a considered plan for years (I just decided to do it this year and that was that, I did it.) In that vein, I have been playing with two new things this weekend, one ‘free’ and one I bought.
The ‘Free’ One: OpenSUSE 11
I’ve been playing around with OpenSUSE 11.0 with KDE 4.1, and I have to say after Ubuntu 8.04’s disappointment (to me personally, I felt it wasn’t up to LTS standard so I stuck to 7.10 which wasn’t without its problems) — I have found OpenSUSE 11.0 to be really really good.
I haven’t found a single problem with my increasingly venerable but ever reliable and useful ThinkPad T40, so I am very keen to keep it on here for good. It’s a truly excellent release and distribution of Linux. KDE 4 is taking some getting used to as it is such a new system but there are already some clear benefits. I can’t run too many of the special effects as it were as I only have a Radeon 7500 in the notebook but it’s useful enough for a few ‘whizzy’ effects.
Most of all Windows Network shares, wireless, wired lan etc. just all works. Nothing has given me any trouble which is just excellent. Well done on the OpenSUSE 11 team, it’s freaking brilliant so far!
The not quite fee One: Mamiya C330F TLR Camera
This was my spontaneious decision yesterday. I got my first results back from the South Downs Way walk yesterday and I was pleased with them but reminded again that for landscape work I really do need to look into medium format. 35mm is fine enough but to really get the best results, medium format is the way to go.
I think despite for the most part 35mm digital being indisputably champion over 35mm film (and for good reason, but I still love the look of 35mm film, no reason or desire to switch to digital) — most people will agree that it is more economical to stay with film compared to the expense of some digital medium format systems and backs.
So I bought for £59 a Mamiya C330F Twin Lens Reflex (TLR) medium format camera with a 80mm standard lens. And I have to say it’s a lovely thing to work with. I just have to get some film for it now Which I will do tomorrow and then I can hopefully start enjoying using it for landscape work. I don’t have a dedicated light meter to use so I’ll just rely on the Sunny f/16 rule for now (which isn’t too hard to work with, just remember the basics and then you can work the rest out yourself so long as you understand the balance between shutter and aperture values.)
Stay tuned
