Sunday, June 05, 2011

Forgotten Blog

It's been so long since I bothered, I'd actually forgotten that I used to have a blog. Just stumbled across it from somewhere and was having a read.

I still have the same problem though - most of the stuff I want to write about is work related, and so not stuff for public consumption.

I may make the effort again soon.....


.....or has the world moved on to something new, and blogs have been replaced by something better?

..and does anyone care?? ;-)

Monday, May 03, 2010

New location

Just testing that the migration has worked and that new posts actually appear on the new host!

Friday, April 30, 2010

Moving the blog

Well, due to blogger changing the way it works I have to change the way my blog works.

I've read all the info on how to make sure it all works exactly as it is now, but then thought i was too much hassle for what I might loose - especially as very few people read here anyway (mostly because I hardly ever post)

Things that may change;

pictures may disappear leaving broken links
the url may change (but I'll put a new linking page here if it does
it may take a while to settle


Lets just go for it and see what happens ;-)

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Where have all the blogs gone?

Well, it's been a long time since I posted a blog entry on here.

Why?

Well, first I got really side tracked n to Twitter, so all my updates went on there. This was great because most of my comments were quite short and Twitter was ideal for those.

Then I just got busy and haven't posted on Twitter much recently either.


The problem is that when work is busy, that's the main thing to comment on, but as I work as an IT Trainer this is the one thing I can't really post anything about ie my students!! That sort of left it all a bit quiet.

Hopefully there will be more later, as I'm always intending to write something, just not at this minute ;-)

Thursday, October 08, 2009

Another beautiful morning

Another beautiful morning that my camera phone can't do justice to.

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Weird things on the social network

A funny thing happened on Twitter last night. Someone that I was following tweeted "I'm having a video chat here" and a link, so I followed the link and found myself in a chat room. It was clearly an automated tweet sent by the chat room software, but I followed it anyway.

The was one other person in the chat room as guest (I changed my nickname to my twitter name). Very quickly after @FlemmingDoerksen followed my link into the chat room and the guest announced he didn't know us and was off.
So now Flemming and myself found ourselves randomly in a chat room, the original reason long gone. We started chatting, then realised there was no video. We quickly found out neither of us had a camera or microphone on our computer!

As we laughed about this more people started joining the chat. My twitter status updates my facebook status and these were friends from facebook joining to see my video chat.
Soon we had several people in this video chat, all of whom had followed the link from the previous person and no one had video or audio.

We started wondering how big this would get - the viral spread of something quite pointless and not even interesting.

Maybe we'll try this again deliberately to see what happens and do it a little earlier so we don't have to cut it off short to go to bed.

All in all it was a complete Social Media #fail as far as the video chat and having any point, but it seemed quite a success in attracting a crowd to an accident - maybe that's the real use of social media ;-)

Tim.C

#fail #socialmedia #twitter

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

UK Coeliac Blog Sites

I've just discovered, coutesy of Twitter, the Goodness Direct website.

On this site is a link to their blog (http://blog.goodnessdirect.co.uk/) which also looks quite interesting.

However, the latest post is of particular interest as the author has listed some other UK based blogs about coeliac disease.

Have a look and see if you can find a useful blog that gets updated a bit more often than mine!

Have fun reading

Tim.C



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Saturday, April 25, 2009

D of E supervising

Well this weekend I'm out supervising a D of E Bronze expedition.

It's not all bad though - the rain has stopped and the sun has come out, the kids aren't getting lost, and we're just about to have lunch in a very nice pub that does GF food I can eat. Lovely!

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Friday, April 24, 2009

How to...the Bridgnorth Model photo

I've been asked by a few people how I did the photo in the previous post. I admitted that I used a website rather than do it manually as I was feeling lazy.

Anyway, the site I used for this photo was http://tiltshiftmaker.com/

It's fairly easy to do yourself in a photo editing package.

Basically;

Create a graduated mask from the middle to the edge, and apply a lens blur effect - this makes it look like there's less depth of field which is what you get when using a macro lens close up on a model.

Then you can increase the colour saturation slightly, which make things look more like they've been painted than real.

The combination of these two effects and a good choice of starting picture will give an illusion that will fool your eyes into seeing it as a model.

High up wide angle views make good pictures - my favourites are with trains!

Have fun, and don't forget to share your pictures if they're any good!

Tim.C


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Wednesday, April 15, 2009

A Model of Bridgenorth?

I love what you can do with a bit of photo editing software.  This is a real photo of Bridgenorth, fiddled with to make it look like a model.

Actually I cheated a little bit as I didn't do it manually as I've found a website that will do it for you and in most cases is s good as doing it yourself.


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Saturday, February 07, 2009

Managing the Human factor in information Security by David Lacey

I received my copy of David Lacey's new book this morning, just as I was taking the kids out swimming.

I did manage to get as far as the intro, though, and I'm looking forward to getting stuck in properly later.

A few years ago in my more sheltered world I thought I was the only person that realised that most IT problems, and especially security, were due to human factors (aka 'the idiot behind the keyboard'). Then I discovered his blog and I realised I wasn't going mad and that other people also realised about the 'Human Factor' (just not the staff and managers I was working with at the time!)

Now as an IT trainer I try and get this across to all my students, whatever course they're on, in the hope that there may be less 'idiots' out there in the future.

Anyway, I'm off to read more of the book and I'll try to post more comments here later.

The Book;
Managing the Human factor in information Security by David Lacey

The Blog;
David Lacey's IT Security Blog

Tim.C


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Tuesday, December 02, 2008

1st Day of Advent


1st Day of Advent
Originally uploaded by Tim.C

My first photo for the Advent Released project for 2008.

Find out more at the Worship Released forum thread about it.

Tim.C

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Saturday, November 15, 2008

Vista and Ubuntu

Interestingly, Ubuntu has jumped into the lead in a way I didn't expect. These systems are installed on a laptop with that horrible invention, the track pad to control the mouse - how I hate those things. Suprisingly, it was Ubuntu that installed a driver that would also work to scroll the page when you run your finger along the edge - Vista, although installing a working driver, didn't enable the scroll feature.
This means that at work I've had to plug in a USB mouse to be able to cope.

I would normally expected this to be the other way around!

Unfortunately, I haven't yet found a setting in either OS that will stop it taking a tap as a click, so I'm forever accidentally highlighting or dragging or opening things I didn't want to. Give me a track point anyday - they're the ones with the nipple in the middle of the keyboard, and I find these much easier to use.

There still isn't enough between them for either to come out in front.......but watch this space.

Tim.C

Thursday, November 13, 2008

The Matrix Runs On Windows

Thanks to Wulf and his blog for taking me to this video.....I thought it was so funny.

The Matrix Runs On Windows

Tim.C



Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Ububtu or Vista

Well, I'm currently using XP Pro at work, but now I have a (fairly) new laptop to use.

I thought I'd take the opportunity to see how Ubuntu and Vista compare when all else is equal - ie same machine, same task etc.

The story so far....

Vista installed really easy from the CD whilst I watched TV. I skipped the licence key (it's in a draw at work, so I'll do that later).
Vista appears to have picked up all the hardware etc, and I connected on to my WiFi straight away. Windows then started updating itself automatically. So far so good. I haven't risked SP1 yet, as I've been told there are issues with this type of laptop - so that can wait until I do some research.

With Ubuntu I decided to go with the 32bit version (just to be safe - I'm after an easy ride to start with) and I had 8.04 on a CD - so in that went, and all installed easily and setup the laptop for dual boot. The only issue being that I couldn't manage to connect to my WiFi.
Is this giving the lead to Vista? Well only slightly. As soon as I plugged a wired network connection into the laptop I was online, and shortly after I was downloading updates (automatically). Then I notice a pop up message about drivers and realised it was offering to install new drivers for the WiFi, along with an explanation that these were proprietary drivers, not open source, and so weren't included with the distro. Fair enough - especially as a couple of key clicks later I was online wireless.

So all square so far.



Also I think I should mention that this is biased in some ways. I really want to end up showing that Ubuntu is a usable system and a viable alternative to XP/Vista for normal use.
However, Vista is likely to be favoured for simplicity simply because of my previous experience. Whilst I'm a relative noob on Linux having played on and off for years but still at user level, I have umpteen years proper experience of Microsoft software - in fact MCP MCSA MCSE MCT - and that makes Vista well within my comfort zone.



More as I progress...


Tim.C currently booted into Ubuntu

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Wednesday, October 29, 2008

These's snow on them there hills!

As usual, the camera on my phone can't do the view justice. But what a lovely sight to wake up to.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Cloud formation

Not sure how clear this picture will be as I'm sending it straight from my phone.

Anyway, a really nice example of clouds being formed in the lee of a big hill.

Friday, October 17, 2008

The Tweet Song collection

I haven't been great recently updating things like my blog or twitter for various time related issues.

However I just realised that quit a few of my recent Tweets (Twitter updates which also update my status on facebook) have had a theme - and not just the theme of inane waffle as usual.

Maybe it's because I've just been posting the quick thoughts in my mind at the time rather than 'considered comment' - but isn't that the point of Twitter?

Anyway, I seem to keep putting lyrics from songs that I have going through my haed at the time (and there are many).
Today's (which made me think of all this) is "I'm on the bus to nowhere..."

I wonder if I could start a craze like the Tweet using only 4 words" that happened a while back, or the 'Tweet (talk) like a pirate day'?

At least my family aren't complaining that I'm actually singing the songs out loud - well, not as much anyway!

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Tents

I'm not sure about the lads' new tent!

So cute

So cute, and luckily the photo doesn't capture the smeel - poooeeee!