Trefonen

As you may be aware (and if you're not - pay attention!) I have a Flickr account.

I am strictly amateur, and use the site mostly to capture pics of my loved ones. However, I do occasionally also record 'social history' in the shape of streets, shops, houses, etc. as they are. It's amazing how things can change without us realising it, and then we are suddenly looking at a place that we no longer recognise.

One such picture is 'Trefonen Road' and it is a wholly unremarkable shot (I'm sure you will agree) of a few windows in Morda, with the street sign clearly visible. It was shot from outside the Miners Arms (Drill, as was) and was taken with a partly sly attitude, serving as a commentary on how dead the area is. Truth be told, there really is bugger all in Morda. The aforementioned pub doesn't open every night; there is a 'social club' next to the football ground, and then there was the shop.

But, as I would guess with most people, vanity is one of the main drivers for my browsing activity, and I was stunned to see that there were over 500 views of my Flickr pictures during a single day one week not so long ago. One of these was my shot 'Trefonen Road' and - looking a little more deeply - I saw that the picture had been used on a travel website, which for some reason provided people with information about the village of Trefonen.

My original description read - 'Morda's only shop. Now closed down' but I felt so bad for the people of the area that I had to change it, and so it says 'Now that this photo has 'gone viral' I feel I should report that the shop is either now open or will be very soon. Happy days!' I believe this to be true

You can count on me

Not wishing to tempt fate, as this is written in advance of publication, I'm still apparently alive, and would like to wish a happy 2009 to you all by continuing to spout my inane drivel for as long as my arthritic fingers are able to bash away at the keys.

To begin the year, a subject which is a personal favourite (though not so with some sections of my readership) and a statistical update. I was successful in completing 100 posts for this last year, to go with the 100 in the truncated year in which I started blogging. I am worryingly satisfied with the symmetry of this, but there you go. There could be worse things to be obsessive about, I guess.

I have had less success with my Flickr photos and Twitter posts, where I currently stand at 889 and 736 respectively. It feels important for me to complete rounded numbers for each site where I am able to control the result myself (the - pathetically small - number of hits on this blog for example, would be exempt from this rounding requirement) so I will see where I am before the year turns and try and stop at an appropriate point.

I'm never going to reach 1,000 pictures on Flickr, and I almost feel reluctant to go beyond 900 now. Another point which is nagging at me is that there are several sets of numbers for the Flickr account, depending on who is accessing it. Although I see 889 photos, the public see less (534) those in my family (882) and those of my friends (779) all see different totals.

As for the sublime Twitter, it seems unlikely (I'm no Chris Applegate or Stephen Fry) that I will even get to 800 tweets, so may opt to stop at 750, though even that seems optimistic right now.

A relatively new kid on the block for me is YouTube, where I have posted 60 vids in total, though again, a large majority of these are not available for all to see.

All in all, it's been an average year, speaking from an internet profile point of view, with some encouraging stats on my Flickr pics but a disappointingly low response level on the blog. I know that I have had less time to lavish on my posts, so that may go some way to explaining things. In any case, I still harbour fantasies of being able to Kottke-ise my life, despite the worrying world financial situation, an dlook forward to that life on the beach with a wireless iMac, a panama hat and a pipe. Here's to 2009.

Visibility

A kid in a candy shop could go either way; scarf everything in sight till the vomit comes rising into the mouth, or become so overwhelmed with the choices that he is stunned into inaction - forever dithering over the bewildering choice in front of him. I knew it would happen. It had to. Now I don't know where to turn first, and will be forever stuck in a loop.

Up to now (in order) there was always:

my Gmail account and then (depending on the contents thereof):
any new tweets;
then Flickr;
then this blog.

And always climaxing with music. Sweet music.



Which leads me down its dusky highways to who knows where. It's a wonderful, mysterious adventure...

But that's an aside. The elephant in the room these days is Facebook. It's an incredibly powerful thing, a hyper-fast networking tool, and a revealer of awful truths. The past does not lie when it stares you in the face, and those who were there will have no truck with your bullshit, my friend. Oh no. I still can't quite come to terms with it. People at work have asked to become my friends, but I have so far chosen to ignore them, because some other of my FB friends could easily post something (whether it be in word or picture form) which would compromise my, erm, integrity in the office.

Some names and faces have swum out of the ether, from the mists of the almost forgotten, and seeing and hearing them has caused a whole rush of memories. In some ways, I wish I had never joined, though I am impressed by the slick interfaces and ease of use. As I knew it would, it has to an extent taken over, and those other online loves of my life have suffered as a result. But I know just as well that I will never be able to stop.

Zimbabwe

Well, what a weekend.

Took part in a sponsored cycle ride to help with raising money for educational materials in Zimbabwe. I'm quite proud as it was the fact of me sending a link from the Grauniad to an expat Zim colleague at work which inspired him to organise the ride.

We went along the Thames Path from Richmond to Windsor (about 30 miles) with a brief stop at Walton-on-Thames. In all, it took about 3 and a half hours, and it was a stonking day. There was only one English person there other than me, with the rest comprised of Kiwis, Aussies and Zims. About 20 riders started out. I was handsomely supported at Hampton Court, bunting was strung from the bridge and a brass band played Kumbaya as we free-wheeled past. Then we stopped off at Walton for a burger and then on we went. One had to take an alternative route due to unsuitable tyres and one developed a puncture just outside Windsor, but a replacement bike was found, and she was able to complete the course. Two of the people on the ride had their bikes stolen (don't I know how that feels?) the night before we started out, but managed to hire some in time. I felt pretty knackered yesterday, but not too bad this morning. I will be posting a Flickr pool tomorrow, but here are a couple of shots:


On top of that, the best City performance for 30 years! Oh yes!!

bikes

Irritations

Update - 2/10/07. Google have responded to my phish report. The account was a spoof Gmail account in addition to being a phish. I hope they track 'em down and cut their balls off. That will make things better for people.

This week, I will write of passwords.

Like a lot of folks round here, I divide my UGC activities between home and (ahem) work. As I am a Mac user at home, and a Windows sufferer in the office, this means I am also cross-platform, though this is increasingly less of an issue.

One example is my Gmail account, which is probably the one I access most often. At home on the Mac, the little box next to 'Remember Me On This Computer' (BTW, I haven't checked the box on that last link. It may not be wise, but if you do so, please tell me what happened) is checked, but I recently changed all of my passwords and the Mac remembers the old one, so if I am not watchful, I have the (admittedly small) inconvenience of going to the password verification page once the first attempt fails. I have tried removing the check, thinking to enter the new password the next time and then to re-check the box, but still, the old password keeps auto-filling.

At work, auto-fill is not an option on almost all website logins (cookies and security or something - I do know that this can be a problem, especially in a shared workstation environment) BUT my Gmail login page remembers the new password anyway.

On the subject of Gmail, spam seems to be on the increase. Not a problem for a long while, but I've had 2 spasms recently, and 1 rather lame attempt at phishing (the email purported to be from The Bank Of America and, as a valued customer - snort - they were seeking to verify my account details. It came from another Gmail account - not even bankofamerica@gmail.com, but some cruddy name and number combination - and the copyright symbol at the bottom was actually a @)

Now, on to Twitter. On the Mac, Twitter autofills my user name and password as soon as I enter the first letter of the former - 3 keystrokes and I'm in. Lovely. At work, I have to tap away manually.

Metafilter - at home, I appear to have (missus) an automatic login - as soon as I hit Login hard enough, I'm straight in, which doesn't seem right as anyone could get in there far too easily. Know what I mean? MeFi doesn't even have a 'Remember Me On This Computer' option. Go figure. At work, manual entry is again required. On a daily basis.

Flickr is OK despite what some people I know have said about entering a lost password hell of Kafkaesque proportions. I log into 2 accounts, and at home, it simply remembers the last name I logged in under, with an option to change user name if necessary. At work, manual completion again. It's all very odd - no doubt due to IP addresses, firewall verifications, etc. etc.

Broken camera

UPDATE 2 - 9/9/07

Well, it was an amazing shop, really old school, just stuffed with lenses and camera parts, and two blokes hunched over a workbench. I was told that the camera would need a new focus mechanism and that this would cost £79 plus VAT.

So I went and bought a new Samsung L700 from Curry's for a ton, and gave the old one to my mate, who reckons he can fix it. I remain to be convinced.


UPDATE - 7/9/07

Well, if you know me, you can probably guess how the repair went...

Those screws are tiny and I lost the first one I took out almost immediately. Ho hum.

I am going to pay a visit to these guys later on.

I feel a tad pissed off because my camera is broken. No biggy in the scheme of things I know, but I have been starting to really enjoy taking pictures and posting them to Flickr.

I bought the camera, a Nikon Coolpix P2, back in February for £109. It's not particularly high spec, and I admit that I never even used the big selling point of the Wi-Fi connectivity. But, it did more than enough for me.

I dropped it (more than once, as it goes) and finally it came up with a Lens Error message which I couldn't make go away. I took it back to the shop for repair, but alas there is much evidence of the drops it has endured, so it would 'fall' outside the warranty terms for free repair. Get this though. The rather severe lady behind the counter told me that a repair would cost anything between £150 and £200! Where is the sense in that? The damn thing only cost a one-er when I bought it.

"That's the thing with digitals," she said, "lenses, displays, you've had it. Sorry."

What a load of bollocks. Anyway, I've bought a set of watchmaker's screwdrivers and I'm going to have a bash myself. Nothing to lose after all.

Halt! Who goes there?

So yesterday, for reasons not to be revealed, I found myself in the Redbridge area of our fine capital. Being an amateur blogger and even more amateur photographer, I take an interest in urban landscapes and seek to find some images which might fit the London-Alt group on Flickr, or which are simply of interest to me.

The picture below, which although after all didn't turn out that interesting, did lead to the occurrence of an amusing little vignette of modern life.

After snapping the shot, I walked on looking for some more potential shots, when I heard a voice from behind me:

"Excuse me..."

Looking down the road, I could see a small man running towards me in a fairly agitated state. I stopped and waited for him to catch up. I smiled as he approached.

"You were taking a picture of our building..."
"Yes."
"Well, you do know that you were seen by our CCTV cameras taking this picture?"
"Oh."
"Obviously, we're a very high security company, and so I was just wondering why you were taking pictures."
"It's a hobby," I said, pulling out my phone and opening the pictures file as I spoke so that I could show him an example. "I take pictures of urban images..."
"Yes, but you do realise that you were captured on our cameras?"
"Oh. Look, here's one..." it was a picture of a building on the Cally Road. He looked at it, but didn't seem particularly impressed.
"We saw you taking pictures of our building."
"You said," I said. "I was interested in that thing at the top - don't know what it's called, sorry..."
"Ah, the menorah," the look on his face clearly indicated that he thought I was a schmuck "The... candlestick."
"Look," I said, "I'll be happy to delete it if you like. It's not that good anyway..."
"It's not a question of deleting it," he said, "It's just, you should be aware that we take security very seriously."
Oh right." I was unsure what to say next and he didn't appear to have anything else to say, so I started walking away.
"Just so as you know," he said from a distance, "You have been photographed. Taking a picture of our building. You are on camera."
It seemed an odd kind of threat in this day and age.




photos

Flickr's probably better...

This evening, took a cycle ride with my daughters to a local park. Summer hasn't really happened yet, and the weather has been VERY wet, but this was a truly beautiful evening, and I got to feeling all arty.

The shots below are of a building near my house, all part of the property deal to develop the new Emirates Stadium, just around the corner.

It's a strange aluminium structure, but when the sun shines on it, it's quite striking. Easy to forget that it sits on top of a waste transfer station.





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