Musings of a Demented Soul - Andy Barrow

quite a lot has been happening recently at work, so not really had the chance to enter much here. There has been another reason this week why I haven’t posted anything. I got a promotion to IT Support Officer. I am responsible for support issues within the RFD Group here in Australia. WA, Karatha, Vic, NSW and Brisbane. One of our well established colleagues resigned to lead a life of peace and quiet and seek out new challenges. With her leaving the company left quite a big gap in the role she played. However, I could not fill her shoes with the knowledge she has gained, thus leaving a space for change. I was offered the role last Friday and was given the weekend to consider the move. I will remain in Sydney, but may require little jaunts to the various States from time to time, although not mentioned, it pretty much goes without saying, that I will be required to visit the other States.

My new role commences next week, so off with the Hi Viz clothing for something more business like and a whole new set of challenges and things to learn. The job comes with a Laptop and a phone, sounds good, but i am sure I will regret the phone at some point. I will also be responsible for help in co-ordination of the server relocation here to Sydney and a new phone system. We will be moving onto a new email server - brand new and exchange. These are all the things happening the forthcomming months.

Sacred? Maybe a little. i have been out of the game for a while, so will need to brush up on the skills I had and learn new ones. Looking forward to the challenge? Yes! Whilst I enjoyed working in the Stores, my role evolved from that of basic stock picking and packaging/posting out to customers. It became more admin with receipting stock so that the sales team could invoice/bill the customers. Raising requisitions for stock, arranging pickups, Booking goods in when Chris was on vacation. Ordering stock was one of the key features of my old role.

I will miss the freedom of the stores and the banter we had. It was a very good atmosphere to be submerged into, no doubt the next person will enjoy the humour we all shared.

The announcement was made today by the MD, stating my new role and when it commenced. Sadly some people didn’t listen and gave me a call today…. Ahh well, some things will never change. So onwards and upwards.

I wrote earlier on the differences between SLR and DSLR, the benefits of both still quite valid. I recently watched a program ‘Selling Houses Australia’ which during one of the many Ad breaks, Sony ran an advert on their DSLR’s. So naturally i went and looked them up on the site. I was expecting silly prices but found a favourable price. Better spec than the Canon I have, higher pixel ISO ratings were higher and Spot Metering.

http://dslr.sony.com.au/SonyAlpha/range_camera_a350_specs.htm

The flash video intro is worthy of a look too!

http://dslr.sony.com.au/SonyAlpha/

Now from my previous post, Dentist was mentioned as was Dentures. Now in case you are wondering if I wouldnt look out of place as an extra in the Film Deliverance, you would be right, except I don’t have a pretty mouth boy, I aint gonna squeal for no fekker!!! Its not that I didn’t look after the old fangs, its down to ONE BAD DENTIST!!!!! A female dentist who was based in Penketh, Cheshire UK. She almost drowned me in Novacaine - she used a leaky Syringe, the big shiny silver one used to pin your head to the seat when they inject you. A name and shame time

Mrs A P Carden
Rose Cottage Dental Surgery 179 Warrington Road
Penketh Cheshire WA5 2EN

 - Butcher!, Useless nasty dentist. Dislocated my jaw, snapped a tooth off and left the root, jagged in my gum and had the nerve to say ” if you have any problems you will need to see a dental surgeon” hmm, but what was on the name plaque outside Mrs Carden Dental Surgeon?!?!?!?!

4 days I had a face like elephant man and even got an audition because of it (the last part was a joke, in case you are wondering). So you see, my mouth never smiles because I can’t, because I need to see a Dentist, who can actually do their job, not inflict pain, suffering and actually do what they are supposed to do. Lets say, that if I was to go into a waiting room, my heart rate would triple, blood pressure would sky rocket and I would probably run like a marathon athelete on steroids, out of the said waiting room an never be seen again. Ahhhh, Phobia. Fear of the Fear.

Now I do recall, that the address given is now used by someone else and the Butcher has since moved on. I had a converstion with some woman whom had just been into the Dentist and we both spoke about her. It appeared that she was disliked and should have practised plastering or butchery as a dentist she most definitelty was not.

Yet another entry starting off with… not posted anything here for a while. So, whilst I have neglected to fill my blog with my usual inane ramblings, I have been messing around with facebook. It makes a welcome change from writing here and only getting the occaisional comment. Last friday saw me start with a heavy cold or some bloody flu germ. The weather here has certainly managed to breed a few of these bugs. Lucky for me, or not as the case maybe, that it happened on the weekend and not midweek. Sadly the option of going into work on the Monday did not go to plan, Sunday night started me on the path of pain and not being able to sleep, let alone eat. An Abcsess put paid to any chance of sleep and what bit of snooze time was broken again with the need to get out of bed again and take another pain killer. Monday saw me getting more drugs to kill the infection, thus far I have had only a few bouts of real pain and the swelling has now decreased. Today was the first day I managed to eat solids.

Yes its time to get myself to a dentist The teeth are in need of replacing with something less permanent, the good old Dentures, Oh Joy! So whats with people being people. Well, without going into too much detail, purely because my blog is now known to more people in work than I had hoped, I will have to skip certain details, you will have to use the old imagination and fill in the blanks. Now I can put up with mood swings and loud personalities, I have dealt and endured all that for most of my working life. I can even put up with, to a certain degree, people who just have no manners or have such an attitude that would try the patience of a saint. What I do find hard is people who can be nice one day and do a complete 180 and become an anal whinging git the next.

I work in Sydney or a suburb of Sydney, I have lived in Sydney for 4 years now and love it. Yes its not perfect, but compaired to where I came from, its a damn site better and I am all the happier for being here. Period. Now I know that peoples attitudes differed somewhat back in the UK, dependant upon where you lived, as did the sense of humour, also based on where you lived and what you did for a living, ie; office humour, workshop humour and so on. Australia, in case you ‘didn’t’ know is a big place and is divided up into different states and territories, oh and not forgetting Tassie, Tasmania, that little bit that broke away from Victoria many millenia ago (just a wild guess and based on having no bloody idea if true or not.)

Each State has its way of life, albeit based upon the way of life that Most, if not all Aussies live by. However, it seems to me that differing states have a different outlook on other states and also adopt a different attitude. same can be said for where I used to live, the habitual hate/dislike/not really bothered attitude between the North and South. Engllish hating the Welsh and vice versa, Scottish hating the English and the Irish not liking the English to a degree, Bloody English upstarts

Anyway, it came to my attention today that a certain person had suddenly lost the sense of humour chip 1.1 and had replaced with anal and short term delusions of grandeur plugin 3.6, making this person reach a sphincter rating of 9.9, surely this person must remember certain e-mails contianing humourous jokes and passing on likings to a certain vehicle to ‘ALL’ at the comapnies e-mail domain. then suddenly has a disliking to a certain comment, and read only in a reply by someone else to 4 or 5 people in the CC field, saw my comment then saw their arse over it. let me make myself clear, ‘Dude’ is not offensive and the context of the e-mail was humourous as was the reply to me. which also includes 4 other people. I find it hard to believe that people can change. If it had been a Boss and I had called him/her a useless waste of space, then yes, I would expect some friction. My comment was in good taste and had no undertones of dislike or taking the piss (’taking the piss’ one of Australias main competitive sports…after Cricket, Rugby, Tennis, Golf, swimming….et all)

Myself, have been called many things, some would take offense too, but I merely expect, because I am a Pome, its par for the course, so just get on with it. If I had taken offense to all the things said to me in jest, I would be up for murder. These people who take themselves so serious. Get a grip! Pull your head in or out of your arse, because you are not really that important, its your own insecurities, buy a comfort blanket or just bloody grow up.

Rant Over!

It has been a short while since I last posted on here. I have been busy with Facebook. The reason why I have been busy with facebook is simple. Friendsreunited have gone free, so anyone can register on there and take full advantage of the features. Every now and again I get e-mails telling me that someone new has joined, so I log onto reunited and check out whos who. I managed to find a few more people and drop them a message to say Hi and find out what they are upto these days.

I was told that most of the people I worked with at U-NET/Via Not Works were on facebook, so I edited my profile and added a few people I knew, which led onto a few more and more. I have been so tied up with it, chatting to an Old mate Shaun, whom I used to work Night Shift with, all those years ago. It has been fun stomping down memory lane. So whats this got to do with Vista vs XP or vice versa?

It was easier trying to find these people than it is to find work arounds or do simple things that I could do in XP. I decided that i would try and edit/create my own theme, so I downloaded some server software so i could trial out my ideas and test my own designs on things not relating to my blog. My main site has been dormant for years, I felt it was time to do something about it. Even if its a basic homepage with a few gadgets and gismos, until i can add something worthy of the bandwidth (as if this isn’t).

I tried 2 lots of server apps, Xampp and Wamp Server. Both looking good, easy to install, but windows Vista does like to mess with your head. So having used Xamp before and know it works well, I tried that, no success. Tried installing Wordpress and 500 server errors all the time, tried running as Admin, made no difference.

Music Software had serious issues too. Sadly no more as I have deleted them off the system, kinda defeats me having a shiny new fast laptop. So my decision is to replace Vista with XP. I just need to ensure that all the gizzmos work under XP. So tonight I have breathed life back into an old machine, in various states of decay. Currently sitting on a format of 74% so not long to go before Xp begins to install. I used a Maxtor CD to erase the drive and format etc. Now windaz is doing the same. Just to make sure. I really do miss FDISK, such a wonderful tool to have in your arsenal.

Still waiting on Mickey Soft to get back to me, called them 6 days ago, still no response. But hey, i kinda new that would happen. I complained that Vista was the spawn of satan and rather than moving forward, I was taking wacking big leaps backwards. I suppose I didn’t help my cause?

81% and maybe i can do some actual design work and trial it out on a system that will allow me to.

Sam and myself had decided to make the most of a Sunday I believe and go for a drive. We made our way through the trough of Bowland and headed off to Lancaster. Why? Because we could and so we did. Armed with my camera and a few rolls of film, I managed to capture some good photographs. This one below is of a vintage motorbike, for the bike enthusiasts here (if only that were true), you maybe able to pick out the make and model.

Copyright Andy’s Home Studios © 2008

as you can imagine, when you move from one house to the next and even from one country to another, stuff gets misplaced. Thankfully I have located some 35mm colour negatives that contain one foto that I was very proud of. It was taken on the Minolta Dynax 8000i using the 135mm lens and fully open. The film is kodak 400 and as far as I can tell is intact. The picture is of a little girl and her Grandad, who had taken her to the river in Lancaster, a day in which myself and Sam had just gone out for a drive. It pretty much shows each of their weaknesses and their strengths, frailty of age, yet strong in care and love, the little girl whose legs were just managing to walk and her trust in her carer. See for yourself
Copyright Andy’s Home Studio’s ©2008

I have added new links which I felt worthy of getting listed. i am in the process of looking to add more links in the photographic section, I just need to find like minded peeps for Music. I may also need to look at blogs on Diving too, which will be another interest of mine soon…when the weather picks up,too much rain at the moment I don’t want to get wet :-)

After moving furniture around and doing a bit of organising of the crap we still posses. It was deemed a good idea to purchase yet another Large drive, to hopefully convert all our DVDs onto something more Scratch Resistant. One more Terabyte drive please. I do believe that would only cover some of the DVDs still yet to be stored.

Lets face it, DVDs are a pain in the ass. They still scratch easy, just like Cd’s. They can become corrupted by heat or Cold including damp or Humid conditions. They can become scratched by use and by the drive they are in. They can be incorrectly handled, as most of the DVDs we receive from Bigpond movies are. Scratches the size of Georges river and finger prints, which I really don’t want to imagine how or by whom and what they were doing.

It amazes me how some people have NO idea on how to handle an ‘Optical’ disc. It also amazes me why people have to touch the bloody screen on your TFT…..WHY?!?!?! Don’t Do IT!! EVER!! Its annoying!!!!

After using both kinds of camera, I find myself asking questions. While I love the features and the shoot/keep/delete option of DSLR, I was trying to compare the two. I started off with a very basic SLR many years ago. The Praktica MTL 5 B was as basic an SLR you will get. Shutter speed of 1/1000th and the 50mm lens which was Tessar 2.8/50 Carl Zeiss Jena and produced some nice shots. The appature was a maximum of f22 if memory serves me correctly. Flash sync was a respectable 1/125th of a second and you could attatch a remote direct into the Shutter release. Manual wind on only and TTL metering based on an average light level. Of course you could use a light meter if you so desired.

The grand cost of my camera was around 50 pounds sterling. I have taken many a happy snap and some more serious shots on it. sadly the camera no longer sits by my side. I moved upto a Minolta kit. The XD7 and accessories. Powerwinder 3.5fps and 50mm, 28mm, 135mm. The 50mm lens had issues, I think it had been knocked or worse. Thankfully I located a replacement and for a good price. The Minolta XD7 or XD11 in the US never let me down and always produced some good photographs and slides. I used to go out on a walk and reel off 5 - 7 rolls of film, sometimes more. The days when processing was hard to find a decent and cheap provider.

There were times when you would dread picking up your prints, as you would know there would be a quality control sticker smeared all over your prints, because you know you told them when you dropped them off to be processed, that you had used filters and other techniques, but no! Would they listen? No! So what you had laboured to produce was a beautiful label - sticky - really sticky over your work of art. Ahh but why not use Slides. Ahh Hmm Yes, tried that and they would invariably slice the slide the wrong way, because as a budding semi pro you would use a technique called moving the camera round to a vertical condition - namely Portrait and Landscape. Luckily Kodak didn’t always screw you over they sometimes managed to get the orrientation right.

Which now brings me onto my next two favourite cameras. Yes Minolta again and one of them being my all time favourite. Dynax 7000i and the still current in my arsenal Dynax 8000i.

Firstly the 7000i was superb and as far as I know the only camera in its time to boast plugin cards, along with the 8000i. I used to have 2 7000i’s and had the chance at getting my 8000i which was second hand. I also managed to get the big flash gun for it, again Minolta with strobe and zoom and slave options. The 7000i helped me cut my teeth into Portraits both Pet and human, plus a Christening which went really well. Mostly my time was spent taking landscape and candid shots. My only complaint about the 7000i was the viewfinder, it always appeared dark for some reason, moreso after using the 8000i.

And onto the 8000i. What can I say. I still have it. It works, it does all I ask of it and if it stuffs up a shot, then its my fault. I have taken many photo’s on this camera, not once has it been serviced, which doesnt really concern me, as it never really gets hard worked. I love the feel and weight of the camera, its 1/8000th of a second top shutter speed down to Bulb and remote allows me even longer. The 3 lenses 50mm, 35-105 and 135mm. The 135 is f2,8 and gives me all the light I need for what I use. The 50mm is f1.7, again a nice quick responsive lens and sharp. The 35 to 105 is nice, never really like the zoom lenses, they always seem plastic to me.

Ok, so I suppose at some point I have to move onto DSLR. Granted there are many models, Canon, Nikon et al, all vying for the top spot, but one thing lets them all down. After all its all point and shoot, if you mess up the shot, you can always delete, preview on your PC/Mac decide and move on. Where is the fun in that? Yes it cheats the overpriced processing companies who invairably stuff your fotos up anyway.

Having used the Dynax 8000i and placed it alongside the canon 400D, only for the fact that processing is expensive, I would still use the Dynax and not have bought the Canon.

Don’t get me wrong. The Canon is a great camera, it has lots of features, too many to be messing around with whilst you are out. Trying to remember the Manual whilst out and about is a nightmare. KISS - Keep it Simple Stupid!!

Yes the top wheel has plenty of options and yes you can choose B&W and Sepia and natural, vivid and so on. But it would be nice to hold a camera and not have to fiddle around too much. Spot metering would be good to have (Dynax 8000i does), focus is just below par of the 8000i, for a camera older than the Canon, it is a bit dissapointing. Predictive Focusing? Doesnt appear to be as good or at all (Dynax wipes the floor with all other brands for that).

This is the one thing that annoys me about DSLR’s You really have to pay through the nose to get a compairable camera based on SLR’s from the past. Why? The Technology is there, here and now, yet they simply refuse to allow this tech into cameras available for the general public. If you are a Pro Photographer, sure. spending $4000.00 plus on a body is acceptable, yet for someone who wants this tech because they are an Amateur photographer or Semi Pro, can you imagine the questions you have to ask yourself?

My Point is. Camera Manufacturers love to extort money from the little guy. The electronics is most probably in the camera you have now, just no room on the outside of the camera to add the feature. Its time for people to say no and get these money hungry companies to give us what we want, without a stupid price tag, keep it real!