North East Diary - Durham Doings

Midnight Ramblings

2009-05-04T15:00:00.002+01:00

The blog is now continued as Midnight Ramblings here :

http://neforum2.co.uk/ramblings/

Land of the Giants

2009-03-30T22:21:00.001+01:00

Land of the Giants - who remembers that?
I took this on a sunny day about a fortnight ago. Quite effective i think. Just put the sun behind me.

-- Post From My iPhone

A second income? Here's a nice opportunity!

2009-01-09T08:30:00.008+01:00

At the end of last year, things started to look black on the jobs front. Jobs were starting to go all over the country. I inevitably started to think about what would happen if the worst should happen. I would need a new career.

Coincidentally, i was contacted by a friend who introduced me to the Utility Warehouse. I'd heard of them from some years ago, but not really in this context. I looked into it and the opportunity looked very good. Something that could be started in the spare time and built up over the coming months.

Telecom plus (The Utility Warehouse) are a FTSE250 company who enable people to save money on their utilities, such as gas, electric, phone, broadband and mobile. There's a discount card to save 5% on shopping and petrol, and all the utilities are put on one bill.

To join as a distributor requires a small startup sum (< £200), but this includes a starter kit and all training. Once you sign up a dozen customers in the first 3 months they give you your £200 back. The services pretty much sell themselves, you just show people how it works. You then build teams to maximise your income from it. It's residual income too (every month), so builds steadily over the months. A slow-burner as you gather customers. You could end up with a 2nd income of £200-600 per month after a year. Maybe more, depending on how much effort you put in. I'm finding it really fun and enjoyable at the moment, and i would recommend it to anyone.

To find out more for yourself, see this page: http://www.cheaputils.co.uk/

Posting from my iPhone

2009-01-07T22:11:00.004+01:00

Long time since i wrote anything for the blog, but now i've got this wonderful gadget i can write to the blog from anywhere! The iPhone is the best thing since sliced bread, indeed if the makers of sliced bread had dragged their heels a bit, the expression would have been "its the best thing since the iPhone". It's a great bit of kit. Whether it's gps, diary, email or sms; todo lists, web, or even, perish the thought, the phone, it's dead easy to work and make youself more productive. It stops you using the works pc for 'inappropriate uses', so safeguards jobs and gives you something to do when you're in the netty!

-- Post From My iPhone

Durham City Photos

2008-08-07T08:00:00.001+01:00

I've recently uploaded my latest website to showcase my photos of Durham City. You can access it at either of the following URLs. I'm lucky enough to only live about 6 miles from Durham, and it's one of my favourite places on the Planet. I've taken many photos there over the years and I thought it would be nice to construct a website to show them off. I'll be adding more pages when i've compiled more photos, including some of the DLI Museum, Oriental Museum, Gala Theatre Complex and Durham Churches. I also hope to be able to get a pass to take some photos inside Durham Cathedral.

www.napier.eclipse.co.uk/durhamcityphotos

www.durhamcityphotos.co.uk

Let me know what you think.

FOREX Income - FX Trading for Profit!

2008-07-13T10:34:00.007+01:00

This is a new venture for me. I've seen a lot of things written about FOREX Currency Trading and how it can outperform a lot of other systems of investment, but hadn't really paid it a great deal of attention until a close relative of mine revealed that a good friend of hers was making a fortune in the FOREX markets. In fact she was so impressed that she and her partner decided to opt into a managed system with him. From this, I was inspired to author a new website, telling how you can make a forex trading income yourself.

This new website I've put together gives some details of how the fx trading markets actually work, along with a glossary of commonly used FOREX terms to help out in what is after all a jargon-ridden industry. Stocks and Shares are something that many people have dabbled in, but not many know about the opportunities in the FOREX Markets to make a trading income.

It should be mentioned that you should never risk more capital than you can afford to lose, as the FOREX markets can be more volatile than the normal Stock Market, but following a series of Tools and Techniques and strategies can lower the trading risks considerably.

If you're interested in finding out more about what happens in the FOREX Trading World, take a look at this website :

FOREX Income - FX Trading for Profit!
http://www.neforum2.co.uk/forexincome

Lake District Hotels Wiki Project

2008-06-21T17:20:00.004+01:00

Another new project!

This is going to be a good one. The idea is to catalogue all of the Hotels, Guesthouses and Bed & Breakfasts in the Lake District in Cumbria. What is the motivation for this? Well, there are lots of sites which allow some of the hotels to be viewed, with some even allowing booking, but there doesn't seem to be a comprehensive list, so it's difficult to know if there's a little hidden gem you might have missed.

The whole thing is set up as a Wiki because i'll need help with this one! The software is the same that drives Wikipedia, so it's good and solid. Anyone can sign up to help out, either as an owner/proprietor of a property, or a member of the public wanting to publicise an excellent place they've stayed.

So, if you can help build this directory it would be appreciated, simply sign up for an account and get editing.

Lake District Hotels Wiki
http://www.lakedistrictscene.co.uk

www.dkodigital.co.uk

2008-04-23T14:58:00.006+01:00

Do you own or run a small company or small business in North East England?

Would you like a web page to show off what your small company or small business has to offer, with it's own domain name, web hosting, contact details and email addresses, and have it advertised locally in north east england?

If the answer to all of these questions is 'Yes', then we can help you. Read on.

There is a growing need for small businesses to have a web page, to allow them to effectively package their business for others to view. It doesn't need to be a huge, 40+ page website, but rather more an 'extended advert'. If you advertise in the local press and struggle to fit all that you offer into a tiny box for publication, you'll know what I mean. North East advertising is important to North East business.

www.dkodigital.co.uk

Wall of Sound Classic Rock Disco

2008-04-17T14:11:00.009+01:00

Was talking to a mate of mine on Saturday night. We were at a local pub, the Greyhound in Ferryhill. Every month Brian and Mark run a disco upstairs in the function room, and last weekend was no exception. They always hand a little chitty out with the date of the next bash, along with other info, including a web address. The problem for them was that the website had been put together by another mate, who'd done it on a free hosting system. You can guess what's coming next, the popups.

I logged onto the front page, three popups appeared. I clicked through from the doorway page, three more popups descended on me, none of which had anything at all to do with the subject matter, which was Classic Rock music. I became really frustrated and lost interest in the site, so I told them about it on Saturday. I said i'd have a go at sucking the brains out of the old site and i'd then host it at my own webspace for them. No popups. I even purchased a nice new domain name for them so they could get rid of the free hosting url and have a couple of contact emails for themselves.

So, here it is. A little website dedicated to The Wall of Sound Classic Rock Disco. See what you think, and if you're into this type of stuff, why not come along and join in. The next date is May 3rd and it's the 10th Anniversary fancy dress night.

http://www.wallofsounddisco.co.uk/

Brian and Mark playing classic and new tracks from the spectrum of hard rock/metal genre.

Classic Bands such as : Whitesnake , Journey , Deep Purple , UFO , Judas Priest , Scorpions , Kiss , Guns N Roses.. etc, along with modern acts such as : Within Temptation , Nightwish , Harem Scarem , The Answer , Disturbed.

FREE ENTRY

7:30pm – 11:30pm ( Unless Stated Otherwise )

Check the dates on the home page for future classic rock nights.

Referrals Competition on the North East Forum

2008-04-08T13:50:00.006+01:00

I've been mulling over some ideas for boosting the membership on my forum, and one popular method that keeps being recommended is the referrals competition. Basically, the idea is that members compete against each other to be 'top-dog' and are then rewarded by giving them a prize. I've just installed a new MOD on the forum to allow me to track referrals, so it is now fairly easy to offer this incentive. I've just put out the following message to my members to encourage them to take part.

"At the North East Forum we've just reached 800 members, but we'd like to get past 1,000 soon and grow the community a lot more. Every one of the members will have an email contacts list, personal contacts and email buddies who may also be interested in what is discussed here. We've also just installed a referrals system, which allows us to see if any referrals are being generated and who by. This in turn opens up the possibility of being able to reward members for referring others.

If you click your profile button you'll see that there is now a link available containing your own personal referrals number, for you to send to prospective members - copy this into your emails and ask them to register through this link. When they do, and I verify their membership, you'll be credited with a referral and it'll show up in your stats and under your avatar on any posts you've made. I'll reward the most helpful member three times a year with a cash incentive for referrals (watch out for further details of the reward shortly, it'll be a proportion of our advertising revenue)."

The North East Forum

What a mixed bag!

2008-04-07T13:43:00.010+01:00

It's been a busy start to the new month, but like I say, it's been a very mixed bag. We've been to Stockton (Saturday) and Newcastle (Sunday) this weekend, and as it is now April, the weather has started to play silly buggers and pretends it's winter again. There's been widespread snowfall, not substantial enough to cause drifts and whiteouts, but enough to make you think 'Oh come on now, you've had your chance and you blew it, now give me some sunshine and some warmth like we expect from you'. I'm getting thoroughly sick of the Met Office's Sever Weather Warnings, particularly when these days they seem to be issued for trivial things like heavy showers or patchy fog.

As I said, on Saturday we went to Stockton to try to get a present for Den's mam for her birthday. We eventually came out of B&Q with two garden gnomes and a hedgehog. The hedgehog was just too sassy to resist, and will look fine no matter where she chooses to put him. Prior to hitting B&Q, we took a bit of a detour to Staples on Portrack Lane and spend an hour or so mooching around. Nobody really paid us any attention until we wandered into the computer hardware section, then we got a salesman who was pleasant enough, but spent his time trying to sell us something we didn't really want or need. Why do they do that? The greatest thing about Saturday though, was that my team Sunderland have all but secured their future in the Premier League for next season, after beating Fulham 3-1. There's been some nervous times, but they've finally got their act together and won 3 games off the belt! Awesome!

Sunday, was what you might call fully loaded. We got up about 9:30 and the first job was to fix one of the girls' laptops/iTunes that wasn't burning her cds right, then up to Mam's for dinner (and to deliver the now totally familiar Hedgehog). We had our lunch, then spent the next hour or so with my sister, hanging roller blinds in their conservatory. Then off to Newcastle where the kids wanted to get all their merchandise signed by their favourite band (Elliot Minor) before going to the gig at the Carling Academy on the night. We, of course, went along for the ride. We enjoyed it too, they're not bad, that Elliot Minor (sort of a cross between McFly and Green Day). When we came out it was snowing again, so a careful ride home got us in at just about 11pm. The day had gone.

The North East Forum is down!

2008-03-30T23:49:00.008+01:00

Anyone currently trying to read the North East Forum http://www.neforum2.co.uk/ , will find that it's down at the moment. There's a rather scary sign saying the account has been suspended, but in actual fact it's been taken off the air until the hosts have checked it out further. Apparently the server is being asked to do DNS lookups by the forum software, and the requests are hanging. This is using up all the available lookups on the server and is starting to affect other accounts that share the hosting. There's absolutely nothing I can do at this end, as suspension of the account doesn't even allow me to open in maintenance mode, examine any of my logs, or turn off certain settings. The support guy says he may try moving the forum to a different server overnight, so if anyone is reading this it's likely that it's going to be down until tomorrow. All I can do is apologise and hope we find the problem quickly.

Update : The site has been moved to a new server, with a later level of php and it's now like lightning. He decided it was quicker to move it than spend days trying to work out what was causing those hangups, so we're cooking with gas again.

Bush digital Scart Adaptor DFTA1001

2008-03-30T11:28:00.005+01:00

Been looking for a cheap option to replace my Sky+ box since I dropped my subscription this month (£38 a month was just too expensive), so I made a trip to the Tesco Electricals department and came up with this little gadget. The Bush DFTA 1001 SCART STB digital Freeview receiver allows any TV to receive digital Freeview channels. The receiver simply connects to the SCART socket on my TV and automatically sets up all available Freeview channels on the TV too. Use is easy with the full 7 day electronic programme guide and included remote control.

The great thing about the unit is, that it remains completely unseen behind the TV, save for the little IR detector that connects and sits on top (or in another suitable position) of the television screen to allow the remote control to be used. The picture is quite good for such a small unit, and the EPG is very comprehensive and readable, with programmes listed vertically rather than horizontally like some other systems (Sky being one of them - I thought their EPG was very poor and hasn't really been developed much in years).

I really do need an aerial upgrade to get the best out of it as the signal strength is only 50% at the moment, but this is because my existing aerial is just a terrestrial one, pointing at the local TV mast at Bilsdale. Once this is sorted out, the box will be fully functioning and will give me the full range of channels, although most worked even without a digital aerial.

The price for this at Tesco was £29.95 and there is money off at the moment, so it's a good time to get one if you want a simple but unobtrusive solution.

3 Mobile Broadband

2008-03-27T14:08:00.005+01:00

I've had a laptop for a while now, and I use it to keep abreast of my email and do a bit of blogging, but the drawback of it all is that you need to be in reach of a wireless hotspot to connect to the Net. Not always practical, and no good if you're out in the middle of nowhere. But there is now a solution. A few mobile phone companies (Vodaphone, T-Mobile and 3) are now exploiting the problem by bringing out Mobile Broadband packages. I'm trialling the one from 3 Mobile at the moment.

There's not a great deal to the kit to be honest. All I have is essentially a little modem (about 4" x 2" in size) that I attach to my laptop (or any other PC I want to connect to the internet) by a USB cable. You get a SIM card to insert, like in a mobile phone, and once plugged into the PC it installs the software it needs, basically a connection manager. The first time it's used, all the connections are made and you get online, no problem at all. My connection said it was at 3.6 Mbs and it's great. I've downloaded Safari browser to avoid the IE bloat and it's pretty quick.

The cost is maybe a little prohibitive if you're watching your pennies, it's £25 per month for a 7Gb ceiling (there's also a £15 option for 3Gb), but the freedom it gives you is amazing. You can also send SMS text messages (charged at £0.10 each) with the connection manager, useful if you're mobile battery is flat or you're without it at the time. It's obviously no good for someone who wants to download movies and go on 10 hour surfing sessions, but if you want to read a few forums, send some emails and keep in touch with your business it's ideal. I'm obviously keeping an eye on the traffic I'm using. It says in the user contract that any usage over and above the 7Gb limit will be charged at £0.10 per Mb, which could soon become expensive if I use a couple of extra Gb of data transfer, but it's enough for my needs at the moment. I can use it when i'm on holiday in the UK, and I don't need to take my laptop to any hotspots to ease my frustration.

Easter too early?

2008-03-20T08:19:00.006+01:00

The coming weekend is Easter weekend. It's the earliest I can ever remember this holiday. It's nice that it's not too long to wait for the two short working weeks after Christmas, but as usual, the weather is going to put a damper on things and scupper most enjoyment by sprinking us with snow and introduce cold Northerly winds. In addition to this, our wonderful rail companies are doing maintenance work this weekend, seemingly delighting in causing misery for travellers.

Going back to the early date of Easter, just how early can Easter be? Well, it's worked out celestially, and is defined as the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox. The Vernal Equinox? What the hell is that? It's another name for the Spring Solstice - the day when the sun moves North of the Equator and is overhead at mid-day at the tropic of Cancer. So, the earliest Easter can be is if the Vernal Equinox falls on a Friday 20th March, the full moon is the Saturday 21st and then it's Easter Sunday (22nd). This year, the Vernal Equinox fell on Wednesday 19th, and the full moon is Friday 21st.

Easter Sunday 2008 is on 23rd March and it's only ever possible to be one day earlier. It's the earliest for nearly 100 years and it won't be as early again for 152 more years, so enjoy this special Easter no matter what the weather and the utility companies throw at us.

New URL's for some of my sites

2008-03-18T15:16:00.007+01:00

Some of my sites have recently changed their URLs. Here are the new links.

lake district sports - http://www.neforum2.co.uk/lakedistrictsports
photography shop - http://astore.amazon.co.uk/dkodigital-21
ferryhill weather - http://www.napier.eclipse.co.uk/weather
the chapter newspaper - http://www.thechapter.org/
north east classifieds - http://www.neforum2.co.uk/smf/phpclassifieds/
equity loans- http://www.neforum2.co.uk/equityloans
credit card sharps - http://www.neforum2.co.uk/creditcardsharps

The North East Forum also has some new index lists to enable crawling by bots. The html index is are also useful for a quick list of subjects of discussions.

html index - http://www.neforum2.co.uk/smf/sitemaps/index.php
yahoo url list - http://www.neforum2.co.uk/smf/sitemaps/urllist.php

Windows Live Writer

2008-03-16T19:45:00.003+01:00

I've come across a new program today that allows me to write to my blog from an offline situation. The program is called Live Writer and is part of the Windows Live suite. Downloading is simple if slow, and Windows Live really wants to install lots of other stuff too, but you can deselect them all and only get the Writer program.

Setting up the system is quite easy - it asks for your blog address and it's username/password. Then it detects the blog type and looks at the format of the blog at it's host site to allow the posts to be formed correctly.

You can enter tags/categories, hyperlinks, pictures, tables, maps and video, all from menu options. The client has a built in WYSIWYG interface to make it nice and easy to make it look good without too much effort. A good tool.

Downsize Dave, Adsense and new employer

2008-03-13T14:23:00.007+01:00

What has been happening recently? Well, since Christmas i've been trying to consolidate my online stuff and making sure I get paid every month. This means that I've got to make at least $100 in the previous month through the Google Ads system. My next target is $200 per month, and I'm about half way there so far. I have a great idea for a new website url, in a high paying niche, so i'm testing that now to see what ads i'm likely to be served. This new site could catapult my Adsense earnings to the next level, so I'm keen to get it off the ground as soon as possible. I've also made some code changes so that the North East Forum is more attractive to potential advertisers by displaying text ads on top of the threads as well as the boards and the main index page.

Midway through January I decided that I was going to have to do something about my weight. Sitting behind a computer desk all day is no good for your waistline, so checked into the BMI site and got my details. Yowza! What came out of it was that i'd need to lose 3st. I resolved to do that in 2008, so i'm now blogging my progress at downsizedave.blogspot.com. So far, i've managed to lose nearly a stone and i'm well on target for my schedule of 1lb per week on average. Sadly, my dad's health has declined since I started, but that makes me even more determined to succeed.

Outside of that, the company I work for has been taken over and I now graft for the 3rd largest chemical company in the World!

Netgear Wireless Router

2008-03-12T15:11:00.002+01:00

Managed to get a Netgear Wireless Router for my dad at the weekend at Makro in Washington. I've never been there before, but it was quite impressive, with cheap stuff in bulk. The 48-pack of dark chocolate Flakes were shouting at me as I went past, but somehow I manged to resist buying a year's supply.

Anyhow, tonight I set about installing the router. I did a bit of prep work on the PC last weekend and noticed it had an on-board network card, so thought it would be easy to turn this on in the BIOS, but when I did this, XP detected an Ethernet hardware change, but no-how could I get the driver to load. That meant that the session had to be aborted for the night.

Tomorrow i'll pop down to Tesco and get a cheap PCI Network card. They're only about £5, so not a problem. This should make things a lot easier, as Windows will pick up the card and install the software from standard support drivers.

This time last year

2007-12-03T17:21:00.000+01:00

Because of a discussion going on over on the Net-Weather forum, I thought it would be interesting to see what I wrote here last year about the weather in the first week of December. I always find that people start talking about snow at Christmas at this time of year, and whether we'll see any.

Last year the weather in early December was pretty similar, with gales, gales and more gales battering the country. It didn't look like the weather was in any mood to slow down, but by the week before Christmas we were all treated to freezing fog. This just goes to show that, for cold weather lovers, even rageing zonality in early December doesn't mean cold weather won't make an appearance sometime later in the month. Last year's fog was about a week early to make Christmas a cold affair, but this year ........ it's still too early to tell.

The bookies will do good business relieving people of their hard earned cash as they bet on a White Christmas. The whole definition of a White Christmas is a little crazy, because it means that if a single snowflake falls on the roof of a named Weather Centre (there aren't many of them left now) on the day, then it will be called a 'White Christmas'. Bizarrely, if the country is shrouded in 10ft snowdrifts and freezing in -20degC, but no snow is seen to fall on 25th December, then the opposite applies! Who makes these rules up?

I'm back

2007-12-01T18:13:00.000+01:00

Long time, no see. It's been a while since I've posted here but I'm back now and hopefully will get back to posting more regularly again. Things are getting a bit mad now we're approaching Christmas. I'm still well into the photography and i'm glad to say that flickr photos are now available and I can show them on the blog (see right).

Friday last week saw us at The Ship at Middlestone, nr Spennymoor for our Christmas quiz meal/night out. We'd stashed away nearly £200 over the year and it was to split 7 ways. Tony, being the splendid landlord that he is, agreed to pick us up and drop us off in the pub mini-bus, so everyone was free to have a good slurp without worrying about driving. The grub there is very good - the most expensive meal on the menu is a 12oz Steak and it's only £9.99! Anyone wanting a good pub meal should visit here ASAP.

Have any of you got any pubs you'd like to recommend?

Nikon D40 review

2007-08-28T23:29:00.001+01:00

As promised, my review of the Nikon D40 digital camera. I bought the camera in mid-July from Amazon.co.uk. Price was £329, although a cashback offer on the Nikon website brings this down to £269. It was delivered the same day that the last Harry Potter book was released, and I was quite chuffed when my camera arrived early that morning, before the kids' book which had also been ordered from the same retailer. It was vital that both items were vital because we were leaving for The Lake District that afternoon. I attached the lens and inserted the battery and managed to run off a few shots before we set off.

The Nikon D40 comes in two colours - Black and Silver. The Black model is finished in a sort of Hammerite style, and is quite small, but it still fits snugly into the hands thanks to the substantial grip at the right side of the case. This is also where the battery fits (on the base) and the shutter release button is on the top.

The camera is very easy to use, and has 11 modes available from a dial button to the right of the lens on the top of the casing. The camera can be left to it's own devices by setting the AUTO mode, which is probably where you'll start, but I soon needed to explore the other modes, and you have total control over the shutter speeds, apertures and there are also settings for close ups, portraits, action shots as well as night shooting and flash-free photography. It comes with a 18-55mm kit lens, which is adequate as a starter lens, but the user will soon start looking through camera magazines to find out what others are available to extend it's power.

The flash is built into the camera housing and pops up if the light level is too low. This can be over-ridden with other modes, but is very handy (though limited) if you don't have the seperate Hot-Shoe flashgun. Photos taken with the internal flash are ok, but the range of the flash isn't great, and flash to illuminate objects at greater range will need to include a flashgun. One thing that the camera is great at though, is coping with low light levels by cranking up the ISO rating and provided you can hold the camera still, an incredibly good result can be had even in dingy conditions with no flash.

North East Forum : Top Durham Hangout

2007-08-28T09:16:00.000+01:00

North East England Forum

One of the places I spend a lot of time at is The North East Forum. That's probably understandable, seeing as I am the administrator! I started the site up in 2004. It actually began life as the Ferryhill Forum, but expanded to cover the whole of the North East of England. There's a few people on the site who have been members from the start, and that's quite a difficult thing to expect, to retain loyalty to a site for 3+ years. I've actually made good friends with people on the site, people who i'd never have known about otherwise. We've been out for socials and it's been great to put faces to names.

There's loads of different areas to discuss things, with the old favourites of Sport and Current Affairs being leading lights. The Football section is rife with the rivalry between the North East's 'big 3' clubs (Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough), but it's mainly good natured stuff and that's what we find about the members. Occasionally we may have spats between the members, but that's no different to real life really. The members are mainly UK, but there's also a significant input from Australia, Canada, USA and Denmark.

If you're looking for a place to spend some time online, you'll probably enjoy yourself here. Although it's 'The North East Forum', there's nothing to stop anyone from joining. You don't have to live in the North East of England or have any affiliation whatesoever. There are plenty of sections that aren't geo-specific and we welcome members from other areas of the world.

Sections include : Current Affairs, Party Politics, Global Warming, Weather, Pubs, Barmeals, Hotels, Food, Stories, Jokes, youTube, TV and Films, Book Reviews, Music, Genealogy, Computer Gaming, Electronics, Software, Photos, Fitness and Health, Disabilities, Sport, Internet Bargains, For Sale Ads, Lottery Syndicate, Entrepreneurs and Pets.

Mad Emu photo released

2007-08-02T10:47:00.003+01:00

I just thought i'd like to share this with you all. It's a photo I took in the Lake District last week at Eden Ostrich World. The Emu always looked like he was going to lean forward and have a peck at the camera, so I didn't dwell too long on him. I honestly think that he looks the maddest animal i've ever photographed!

Having control of things like depth of field, aperture and shutter speed on the camera are such a refreshing change again after so long using the compact. I was finding that I wanted to do things with the compact format that I couldn't, and that was getting me frustrated. The Nikon offered me so much more. Don't get me wrong though. The Canon Ixus 50 compact I use has it's place. It's still ideal for those candid shots or discrete ones at gigs or places where you just can't justify the extra bulk of a full size SLR camera. It's also quite rugged and can stand being knocked about a bit, which makes it spot-on for taking fell-walking.

Photographic enthusiasm rekindled

2007-07-20T20:32:00.001+01:00

I've just realised that I haven't posted here for nearly 3 weeks. That's scandalous! I can make no excuses, other than to say that i've been working on other projects, one of which has been to put together the best of my digital photographs and upload them to my flickr account. It's been quite hard, but i've been brutal in my selection process and thought about it as I would if I were a judge in a photographic competition. There's about 200 photos online now and i've broken them into groups by subject. The best thing about flickr is getting comments from your peers, who can leave comments about your masterpieces!

Anyhow, if you want to have a look, it's here

I'm so excited with my new found enthusiasm for my photography hobby that i've just ordered a new camera, a Nikon D40 DSLR. I'm going to give it a good run out in the Lakes next week, then i'll post a review here.