00309 Shot

So we (the Guernsey Smallbore club) were in Jersey this weekend for the annual match against the Jersey lot. I shot pants (I'm using "pants" as a verb here).

93, 98, 96, 95, 95, 95, 95, 98. Now we all though that the markers were a bit tight, but everybody was marked to the same degree of tightness, so there's no complaints there. End of the day, if it 'ain't in the middle, it 'ain't in the middle.

Did I say we lost? No? well maybe I don't want to talk about it. Anyway, here's the scores

And for no other reason that "I can", a selection of signs from the weekend:

And, naturally, other stuff:

It was, however,a good weekend and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Plus, on a trivial note, I got to take a picture of my rifle. I'm not a big "gun head" and I generally see it as a means to an end, but it would seem a shame not to have at least one or two images of it, seeing as it forms part of my life. I've always been of the opinion that guns are very functional things and even though I can appreciate their aesthetic, I'm much more interested in the therapeutic and generally psychological effects of target shooting and how very closely it is allied with things of a meditative nature. Not to mention the respect you have to treat these weapons with to use them safely and properly.

00308 Light in a tent

Simon brought round his light tenty thingamyjig. It's nice. It's like having a macro studio that fits into your bag and then pops up when you want to use it.

I forgot to take any pictures of the slow gin bottle and my hip flask, so I'll nick his when he posts them up.

But I did take picures of the origami stars I've been making as part of a £3 secret Santa. They're so compulsive to make:

But we did get to take pictures of Meriel's neclace that she made with this crazy PMC (precious metal clay) stuff - just add heat and it turns into silver. Real silver. We're rich mwahahahahahahahaha!

00307 I stepped in a solder

Just can't stop the Lomo.

From the sparebots set.

I don't really know if there's any more mileage in this, but things have a funny way of returning if you just put them to the back of your memory for times when you are more inspired.

00306 Straight

ish

00305 Lihou from the kite

Went to Lihou with Kev with the intention of KAPing - his idea, good one too.

Overcast weather. I'm normally thinking, flat light sucks, but since doing the Strobist thing, now I'm thinking that it's just a different kind of light.

Anyway Kev took two gazillion images, give or take. I stuck with 239, it's a nice round number and it reminds me of the time when something or other happened to me involving the number 239 (a story which I often dine out on).

Here's some from the day:

The house is the one that I was going for, but I like stone walls and I can't seen to stop photoshopping and vignetting. It's an infection I picked up from Flickr, I'm sure of it.

Kev's stuff is here and my my, isn't there alot of it.

Also I started looking at page views and stuff every day since the "9V tradgedy" started getting loads of hits. Look:

Man, I love statistics. I keep thinking that I'll start collecting data from some part of my life and then analyse it. The other part of me tells me to make another blurb book, something nice to put in the loo.

00304 Dribble while you work

Unless dribbling is your work.

15 Minutes, that's all I had before I had to pick up the kids from school. They all thought I was crazy, they said it couldn't be done.

But they were wrong.

(although perhaps the main reason for this is because they don't exist)

So I did it



And then I knew that perhaps it shouldn't have been done, because I was late.

00303 Made and Boinged

9V Tragedy is in Make and BoingBoing. I'm just so glad that someone has been able to highlight the plight of these usually ignored catastrophes.

I'm sorry ... I ... don't think I can write any more ... (sniff)

00302 Sparebits = sparebots = nosparetime

Oh no! I seem to be slipping inexorably towards a place where I'll be making junk for no discernable reason for the rest of my life!

I must not make useless objects from things I find lying around.
I must not make useless objects from things I find lying around.
I must not make useless objects from things I find lying around.
I must not make useless objects from things I find lying around.
I must not make useless objects from things I find lying around.

DOH!

At least I'm not on my own, I can see someone else doing it too ...

OH NO! IT'S MY WIFE! BUT WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE CHILDREN?

00301 Sparebots

So me and Meriel got the electronics stuff out and stuck some of the bits together. Needless to say it all got a bit out of hand:

Truth be told I had this macro rig set up (like I went to alot of trouble to stick two pieces of paper together) and it was just looking for something to put in there. I saw something similar on the Make blog, but after searching for hours for it I gave up and just got the bits out.

No, not those bits.

00300 Little men

Found this great cheap way to make a little macro studio from the Strobist blog - what a fantastic resource.

So I got to nicking some of Cara's toys. Knights in Armour and palm trees are meant for each other:



Here's the getup:



Man, there's no fun like cheap fun.

Or expensive fun if you have the cash to go.

The Lomo effect came from this interesting looking page of Photoshop actions. More goodly freeness.

Oh, and I've reached 300 posts. I'll probably celebrate or something.

00299 Stick boats group

At the risk of repeating myself, I've made a stick boats group on Flickr. There's only four of us so far and with winter creeping in I can see pooh stick output diminishing. Hey ho.

00298 Time lapse dribbles

After doing this thing when Meriel's parents were over, I was determined to try it again. I still haven't got quite the right angle, aperture and scale, but it's getting there. Besides which, it's fun, donchaknow.

00297 Fish for everyone

So the trip we had booked in ages ago came up and irt was a superb day - beautiful sunny weather and a massive (by my standards) haul. I took so many home I could barely carry them. I caught mackerel, pollock, bream and turbot, the latter of which was coveted by the other "rod-heads" (don't know if that's a legit phrase, but it'll do).

Did take me around two odd hours to gut, scale and fillet, mind - I'm like an expert and everything now.

And I smell of fish.

00296 Cider strobe

Took my gear to the Foley's Cider press. Not that I had the time to do anything crazy, but I did get to try replacing the light from a standard bulb with my flash (with 3/4 CTO to adjust for the tungsten). Not awesome pictures, but a good start. Bare flash, too, interesting that it was probably the right choice, given that the place is normally lit by just the one incandescent light source.

00295 Bunker strobe

Really mean to do more of this, but my cactus remote is a little sketchy when around steel & ireon reinforced concrete buildings, so I just can't get the range and reliability. Also the proximity of my head to the camera/remote seems to affect the sync. Too close and it doesn't work. Anyhoo, perseverance gave me at least some for of result:

I'll be trying to extend the range some more and then seeing if I can't be a little more creative.

00294 Virtual slideshow gallery

I've got to suss out a better way to do this one. If I could capture a higher resolution animation of the sketchup walkthroughs, I could upscale the quality of this virtual gallery:



The idea (badly represented here) is to have a small room into which you walk. Inside the room chambers lead off left and right to different sets. A bit like a Tardis. I reckon it's just about possible.

00293 Mod the 'mote

The flash trigger I bough was the cheapo version - the alternative being the £300 version, so it doesn't have the 1600 foot range of the expensive one. But it's better now.

There's loads of tutorials about how to mod them, so I bought myself a nice little 433 MHz helical antenna, glued a 4mm nut to the inside of the remote's transmitter casing after drilling a hole for the antenna's thread. Then I soldered a length of wire to the PCB of the transmitter and the other end to the nut and there you go.

Originally I'd get around 15 feet away before the signal gave out, but with the mod I got around 200 feet and could go further. Stuck the flash on a stand and raised it out of one of teh upstairs Veluxes to test it:

Well neat.