a lot of stuff and nonsense from eclectech

Splendid! Thanks to all sharing your opinions, please keep them coming!

The current results have cartoons firmly in the lead, followed by scenery. Mutants and flowers are tied in third place.

A few nice suggestions, one particularly fine one involving an animation of Humph on a trampoline using "several tall, narrow images side-by-side to capture it. One of Humph going down, one bending the trampoline, and one of him going back up." I'm rather taken by that idea.

Apologies to the person taking offence at my scenic photos only covering Scotland and England. I know there are very nice places in Wales (not to mention elsewhere in the world), it's just I live in Scotland and have many friends and family in England so I tend to be in those places with my camera frequently enough to get a few decent shots. Nothing personal against Wales, honest!

As a partial explanation of my recent absence there are some new photos of the Lake District online as I was down there for a few days. Nice stomping about the hills and one gorgeous sunset.
Life is a little mad at the moment, but hopefully I'll grab a moment to make something fun soon.I have plans for the wee guy up the way to become a drummer. I just need slightly longer days and I'll be sorted......

Labels: blether, photos

It didn't rain.

It didn't cloud over.

It did get quite cold.

But that didn't matter because it was very lovely. Hooray for the lunar eclipse!

I've been snapping at the zoo too and have some new photos online. I'm quite pleased with a couple of them, the Japanese Macaques and chimpanzees posed nicely. The baboons were fantastic but didn't get close enough for me to do them justice. Next time!

Labels: blether, photos

We ran away to the hills for a few days. In traditional Scottish fashion we had rain, sleet, wind and sunshine; not always at the same time.

It was great.

If you're in the area I recommend the Sea Life Sanctuary near Oban. In a beautiful setting on the shore of Loch Creran it has seals, otters and tons of interesting fish and sea creatures. They do great work helping sick seals back to health and releasing them into the wild and had the most fantastic japanese spider crab and serpulid worm reefs.

Not to mention the otters. Lovely lovely otters.

The creatures at the sea life centre could only be challenged in loveliness by the Highland Cattle in Glen Nevis. They really are spectacularly photogenic beasts and came up to talk to us just as the sun hit the mountainside behind which was nice.

The photo with the rainbow is definitely one of my favourites.


The two photos on the right are of the Commando Memorial at Spean Bridge. A stunning setting looking out over the great Glen it was the location of Commando training during world war two.

Last week I was talking to a man who trained there during the war (he pulled aside his big coat to show his regimental jacket and medals underneath). He looked across the valley and said "I can't look at it without shivering. It was hard." It was very moving, looking out at the statue and the view and listening to someone talk about it from first hand experience. I don't think I'll look at it in quite the same way again.

And on that I will leave, with the promise of videos to come sometime soon to supplement the photos.

Labels: blether, photos, scotland

Too busy to do anything at the moment, which makes no sense at all.

I get to a point where I have so much to do I don't know where to start, and I skirt round the edges doing lots but achieving nothing. Not good for my state of mind.

Anyhow, I was away and now I'm back. If I'm lucky my brain will catch up with me shortly.

To avoid this being a thoroughly self indulgent post about why I've not posted anything (good grief, I'm at the top of a terribly slippy slope here) have a few links of interest.

Rather depressing news from the states (via Miss Prism).

Outstandingly cheeky news from the UK, where the Government plans to exclude details of celebrities' children from a new national child database. They're confident about its security then? Heh.

A few new photos from my whistlestop tour of London. Not much time for photos as I was there for a work meeting but I managed to catch steely eyed stares given to me by the household cavalry, a pigeon and an enormous number of CCTV cameras. They're getting a bit intrusive aren't they? Unpleasant things.

And now I must away; back when I've stopped going round in circles.

Labels: blether, dance, disgruntled, news links, photos

The otters came out to play for me last week and despite my camerawork not being up to their rather fast dashing about I managed to get a spot of video, now online with a snippet of Paul Whiteman and his orchestra as backing (hooray for public domain MP3s!).

Otterly Lovely.

I took lots of photos too.

The highlight of this visit were definitely the joyful otters and the red ruffed lemurs. After spending a while photographing butterflies in the lemur enclosure they graced us with their presence and were very fine company.

Labels: blether, photos, video

I have been making more things for the TUC with Mr DogHorse.

A Very Personal Assistant. A tale of one Pup, his new job and the surprises it holds for him because he didn't check out the company first.

And once you're through with the puppies I've got some new photos of monkeys and apes and meerkats and prairie dogs and everything online too. They're rather cute.

Video of a giant tortoise attempting to hump another the wrong way round might appear online soon too, if you're very lucky.

Labels: flash animation, photos

... is that sometimes you get to see the most gorgeous sunrises.

Another photo of orange gorgeousness.

In amusing news the MPAA might have tried to scare the wrong person into coughing up a couple of thousand dollars for an alleged download of a film. Most people can't afford to go against organisations like the MPAA and RIAA; but they haven't accused a millionnaire of downloading a film he already owned on DVD before. This could well be one to watch.

In confusing news a photo caption on the front page of a recent copy of Computing really surprised me.

"Suffolk believes thick PCs raise security issues for government"

Blimey! I thought. Not only calling the police a threat to national security, but calling them thick too! To be honest Computing suddenly reached new levels of interest for me until I realised I'd read it wrong.

Different meaning of PC. Different meaning of thick. Bah!

Labels: blether, news links, photos

Sometimes it's nice to go round in circles. This panorama was taken at the bottom of the Pass of the Cattle near Applecross. I really need a new tripod to do this properly but blink at the right time and you don't notice the glitch.

More circular scenery.

I've noticed there are an increasing number of blogs that I nose around these days so I have extended my blog list on the left and will continue to add blogs at the point I realise I'm regularly visiting them. For a recent discovery I was rather taken with the minimalist blogging over at Humdrum, this post in particular pulled me in.

Labels: flash animation, neat links, photos

I have been up in the Highlands experiencing peace, tranquility and the lesser known highland caterpillar, also available in glorious desktop adorning size.

Normal service will be resumed once I've caught up with everything, currently anticipated to be early June. Hopefully.

In the meantime you can always have a wee browse through a few photos from the trip.

Labels: blether, desktop wallpaper, photos

I rather enjoyed myself and found many things to make me grin.

• The drawing of St Paul's Cathedral on St Paul's Cathedral. More buildings should contain idealistic self portraits.


• Unexpectedly ending up at the Technology 2.0 post-Emerging Tech gubbins and viewing the splendour of British geekdom with a glass of wine and some pistachio nuts.


• Stumbling across a British branded sex shop in Soho and imagining all the men in bowler hats, drinking tea, discussing the weather and awkwardly twiddling with their moustaches.*


• People laughing and playing hide and seek around Rachel Whiteread's Embankment in Tate Modern.


• Giggling to myself on the tube to Camden after being hit with a blast of my past from across the carriage.


• The Millenium Bridge. Aesthetically pleasing and practical. A thoroughly nice thing.


• The British Museum. Colonial guilt aside it's stuffed so full of splendid STUFF; a wonderful place to wander around.

Inevitably there were a couple of things I wasn't so keen on.

• Corporate tagging. Everywhere. It kept shouting at me; everything seemed to have a corporate link. Unilever explaining how it's like the installation at the Tate was verging on comedy gold mind you.


• Rushing about just a little too much and feeling like I had to leave everywhere, everything and everyone earlier than I would have liked.

Apropos of nothing, this is beautiful and gives me goosebumps.

* I like this image and am steadfastly refusing to imagine an alternative picture of the interior.

Update: Heh, a vaguely related article, even though I was in London for business and just crammed in some fun. I didn't get an Oyster card either.

Labels: blether, neat links, photos

I have been both busy and not-so-busy offline recently. The latter included a few days taking photos in Ardnamurchan, an utterly gorgeous place. It snowed, rained, hailed, tried to blow us into the sea and bathed us in sunshine, sometimes all within 10 minutes. It contains the best foghorn ever, cows with 1980s new romantic fringes, remote graffiti and galloping sheep. If that isn't nice, what is?


In other news, a couple of weeks ago I wrote about the upcoming legislation to remove the need for pesky things like parliament for UK government decisions. There's now a nice succinct site with information about the act and what you can do; Save Parliament!

Labels: blether, photos, scotland

Some of you probably already know that I am a big fan of penguins. They are wonderful creatures and make me grin, particularly when they're being canny at the safari park, shuggling a plank of wood to make a ramp and clambering up onto the wall to their enclosure. Really. It was very special.
Penguin escape - the video (1MB Flash).

I got some nice photos for future editing as well as the video, nearly 2GBs of material by the time I got home. I am very tempted by the idea of a penguin fashion show at the moment, some of the video footage would be perfect, but I have other projects to finish first so I must avoid getting too distracted.

Labels: penguin joy, photos, video