• Now On Velum

  Wednesday 14th of September 2022

  This blog was originally set up using Ghost 0.3.2, and then pretty much never updated. There have been many, many updates to Ghost since that 2015 release, which I’ve basically ignored as I wasn’t using the managed installation on their servers, and had made several modifications to the default Casper theme, and honestly couldn’t be bothered to deal with the hassle of upgrading. Now, Ghost was p…

  • blog
  • development
  • programming
  • rust
  • software
  • velum

  Comments: 0

• Exploring the 7Artisans 25mm f/1.8

  Saturday 15th of February 2020

  About 2 months ago, I got the 7Artisans 25mm f/1.8 lens as a Christmas present from my wife. I’d been eyeing it up for a while, wondering if a fully manual lens would really be my thing. Considering I already own the two Fuji 23mm lenses (so more or less the same focal length), I wasn’t sure I really needed it. This is a remarkably inexpensive lens though: £79 from Amazon UK, so even if I didn’t r…

  • 25mm
  • 7artisans
  • beach
  • documentary
  • emily
  • hopton
  • lenses
  • norwich
  • photography
  • street-photography
  • zoe

  Comments: 0

• Backlog: September 2018

  Monday 4th of November 2019

  September is when the Raveningham Country Fair takes place, so of course we took Em to see it. There’s lots to see — steam engines, birds of prey, arts and crafts, and classic cars. steam engines at Raveningham Country Fair bird of prey Zoe and Em and a shiny rainbow unicorn Since she’s quite mobile by this point, Em loves looking around the garden and garage. She obviously has no sense of self-pres…

  • backlog
  • beach
  • bird
  • boat
  • country-fair
  • great-yarmouth
  • london
  • raveningham
  • sea
  • september
  • ship
  • steam-engine

  Comments: 0

• Backlog: August 2018

  Saturday 7th of September 2019

  After the heatwave of the previous month, it was nice to enjoy more normal (for England) summer temperatures. One of the best things about our new house is how close it is to the sea; there’s a nice thirty-minute little circuit I can do daily on my lunch break to help clear my mind and get some exercise. drain in the sea wall My parents were also getting well settled into their new bungalow a shor…

  • august
  • backlog
  • emily
  • holiday
  • hopton
  • liverpool
  • new-brighton
  • north-west
  • parkgate
  • west-kirby

  Comments: 0

• Backlog: July 2018

  Friday 17th of May 2019

  By July we’d finally moved in to our new house and unpacked most of our things. Em playing with my headphones We’d also started to explore the town and surrounding area. Hopton church farm buildings off the footpath from Hopton to Gorleston neighbour’s car overrun with brambles Em was getting a lot more mobile now – she could crawl quite easily, and was experimenting more and more with standing up…

  • backlog
  • beach
  • black-and-white
  • church
  • emily
  • great-yarmouth
  • heatwave
  • hopton
  • hot
  • lowestoft

  Comments: 0

• Backlog: June 2018

  Saturday 20th of April 2019

  June feels simultaneously yesterday and years ago. A lot has changed, not least of all Emily, who back then couldn’t even crawl. We were also still living in a rented house, too, which we knew wouldn’t be enough now that we had Em; plans were in motion, though: we’d decided on our new house and were in the (long, long) process of buying it. Emily trying to undo Zoe’s shoes Normanston Park pipes ne…

  • 2018
  • backlog
  • emily
  • london
  • lowestoft

  Comments: 0

• Still here: photos from Hoylake

  Tuesday 16th of April 2019

  I have been lax updating this, I know. Looking after an 18 month old really takes it out of you, such that I’ve not really had the motivation to write blog posts. I’ve still been making pictures, but for now they exist almost exclusively within my Capture One library. To break the fast, here’s some pictures from Hoylake I took during a visit to Zoe’s parents in Cheshire. I’ll make an effort in the…

  • beach
  • birkenhead
  • black-and-white
  • hoylake
  • lifeboat
  • merseyside
  • sandyacht
  • sea
  • sunny

  Comments: 0

• QA Testing

  Monday 3rd of December 2018

  As a software developer I spend a lot of time writing defensive code: routines to check user input and handle it when it isn’t what’s expected. This blog post by Bill Sempf illustrates the kind of absurd lengths we sometimes have to go to if we want our software to be secure. I’ve reproduced some of the best responses here. A Quality Assurance engineer walks into a bar… orders a beer. orders 0…

  • programming
  • qa
  • software-development

  Comments: 2

• Now with EXIF

  Thursday 7th of June 2018

  I got to thinking earlier how it’d be handy to have a small popover thing on my photos that shows the focal length, shutter speed, aperture and ISO of the shot. Turns out, there’s a JavaScript library that can read EXIF data, and it’s super simple to use. About half an hour of tweaking later and it’s done. Here’s a picture of my daughter looking unimpressed, to demonstrate: Emily looking unimpress…

  • data
  • exif
  • metadata
  • photography

  Comments: 0

• Hugin for panoramas: GW2 edition

  Wednesday 6th of June 2018

  A long while back I wrote a guide to using the free panorama software Hugin with World of Warcraft screenshots. This guide is basically just an updated version of that, only using Guild Wars 2 as the screenshot source since I don’t play WoW any more. Get Hugin Hugin can be downloaded from its SourceForge page: https://hugin.sourceforge.io/ Install it in the usual manner – the default options are…

  • city
  • divinitys-reach
  • guide
  • guild-wars-2
  • gw2
  • hugin
  • panorama
  • screenshot

  Comments: 0

• Summer streets of London

  Friday 1st of June 2018

  My work held its annual “let’s all see how we did this year” meetup thing recently, except this one was much shorter than in previously, running only from 13:00 to 16:00. This meant a) I could get up at a normal time, since my train was at 7:30 and not, like, 5:00 or something ridiculous, and b) I could have a bit of time afterwards to explore London while I waited for my 19:00 train. My colleague…

  • black-and-white
  • london
  • street-photography
  • summer

  Comments: 0

• Carlton Marshes in fog

  Saturday 26th of May 2018

  Another post with pictures from long after I made them! Getting to be a habit, although I’m not completely sure it’s a bad one: letting the pictures stew for a bit blurs the experience of when I took them, forcing me to see them for what they are in themselves, uncoloured by my memories of the time. I’m mostly serious, but it’s still partly an excuse for not updating my blog. Anyway. Carlton Marsh…

  • black-and-white
  • carlton-marshes
  • fog
  • nature-reserve
  • suffolk
  • walk

  Comments: 0

• Lowestoft before summer

  Wednesday 16th of May 2018

  Winter didn’t want to let go this year, clinging on until well into April. It’s finally given over to Summer, which is a relief, both to my mood and to our energy bills. cold rocky groyne lifeguard station deserted beach small painted human figures on a fence stacked scaffolding poles abandoned sofa and armchair

  • cold
  • lowestoft
  • winter

  Comments: 0

• Yarmouth: remainder

  Sunday 15th of April 2018

  I have rather been lax with my blog upkeep of late – looking after a 5-month-old baby will tend to have that effect. Still, Em is doing great, and even though I’ve not been posting, I have still been shooting. Not that this post is about anything recent: it’s a collection of ‘miscellaneous’ pictures from our weekend away in Great Yarmouth a while back. big G from a ‘BINGO’ sign reflections in ch…

  • gorleston
  • great-yarmouth
  • holiday
  • off-season
  • seafront
  • seaside
  • winter

  Comments: 0

• Yarmouth: fronts

  Wednesday 21st of March 2018

  A month ago, Zoe and I needed a break: work was stressing me out, and Zoe was having to take on all the housework duties. Since Emily was only 4 months old at the time, we didn’t want to go far, so settled on Great Yarmouth, since it’s only a short drive from where we live. February is not exactly tourist season, what with the freezing wind and frequent gloomy wet weather, but the chance to relax …

  • cold
  • great-yarmouth
  • off-season
  • promenade
  • seafront
  • shiny
  • tourism
  • winter
  • winter-sun
  • yarmouth

  Comments: 0