April 29, 2004
April 28, 2004
My two dogs
OK, so I'm not a semi-professional photographer, although the previous photo did look very like Amber. This is my best first attempt at getting both dogs to stand still for long enough to compose and shoot on my new Canon Powershot S1 (highly recommended). The trouble is when they're out for a walk they just move about all the time so it's damn hard to get a good shot without a second person!
The dog in the foreground is an English Setter (tricolour), a ten year old called Bluebell. She came from Norfolk and was going to be called Lavender until my brother pointed out the rather unfortunate abbreviated forms! Her great-grandsire was Crufts Supreme Champion in 1977 so she is very well bred.The other dog is a six year old Irish or Red Setter called, for obvious reasons, Amber. She came more locally from Stock Farm.
You can get a bigger picture by clicking on this one, but it is nearly 1MB!
April 22, 2004
Earth from the Air to close
This is a brilliant exhibition of aerial photos of fascinating bits of the planet, in the open air, with the backdrop of Gilbert Scott's magnificent Natural History Museum. It's not just a load of photos (at size about A-0.2 if you know what I mean), although some of the photos are incredible. There is also an ecological message behind each one, some rather more serious than others, and some very thought-provoking indeed. Some of the proceeds from any sales of postcards, posters etc go to a charity to provide clean drinking water to the 40% who don't currently have it. These are also available from the website at www.earthfromtheair.com if you don't make it.
The exhibition is 3 minutes walk from South Kensington tube, it's open till 10 at night (beautifully lit after dark) and it's FREE! But... you've only got ten days left, 'cos on 3rd May they're packing it all up to start a national tour - in Birmingham of all places. So GO! This weekend!
April 19, 2004
Is e greater than pi?
There are those who, surprisingly, believe that e (2.7182...) is greater than pi (3.1415...). Perhaps they have their reasons? Of course if you accept the (somewhat spurious) argument that pi is approximately 2, then there is no contest! Comments welcome on this issue.
April 15, 2004
Grammar Quiz
I've just taken the Grammar Quiz from Mr Payne's website links - an excellent item, highlighting many of my personal bugbears, and the result was that I am a Grammar God - but of course you knew that anyway!
April 14, 2004
Website is here!
Finally after several long months of waiting, the Count's website is up and running. Thanks are due entirely to Mr Payne, the assiduous webmaster of mrpayne.com (see Links). Fortified by a delicious beef casserole, along with quantities of fine red wine and programming juice (aka strong coffee), Mr Payne worked tirelessly into the dusk yesterday to create this weblog.
Of course it would have helped greatly if 123-reg had given us the correct instructions for the FTP client - including the 2! - but otherwise the operation ran very smoothly after this glaring omission was rectified. This is my attempt at putting a fairly long message on the weblog, as the page formatting doesn't seem to quite work properly unless there is a full set of text on the left hand side.
Mr Payne is also of course a very fine teacher and I learned much in the process about how weblogs work, and various other net bits and pieces. Sometime later I plan to work out how to add further links, and then I may have some more to say about why they are there.
For the moment I would merely like to register my grateful thanks to Mr Payne for his efforts, and indeed for the Wolf Blass which is drinking beautifully this afternoon.
Weight today: 21st 3lb (down 23lb)
