Free? Is it sustainable?...

I was wondering, while doing another piece of research about the Windows Live services, how much the cost of the service must be to Microsoft. At the end of the day, ‘Windows Live’ encompasses a huge amount of services, used by a very large number of people worldwide. This has associated physical costs, in physical storage space of each user’s data, to transfer costs of the bandwidth used to move this data from server to server, from server to user and so on. People every day just rely on freely available web-services such as Windows Live Hotmail (and GMail),...

on a completely unrelated note…...

Because I just know that people were concened about this, I thought I’d just issue an update. I have in fact replaced the front lens-cap for my EF 17-40mm f/4L USM. gotcha! I sadly lost the front lens cap at Bristol cricket grounds while having fun getting sunburnt, being english, drinking pints, and watching cricket. It feel down the stadium thing, and while I could see it, it wasn’t accessible I dunno why I waited so long to replace it, but I will say that the lack of a lens cap hasn’t really affected anything at all. I got a replacement 77mm front cap,...

7 is Vista, 7 is the Mojave Experiment....

What? Yeah. Damn straight. 7 is just Vista. That might seem like an odd thing to say from someone regularly lambasted for being pro-MS. But it’s ultimately true; Vista was a revolutionarily different leap over XP’s relative simplicity and middle-ages approach to design, resourcing and use in general. 7, by contrast to Vista, and by contrast to Vista’s contrast to XP (that’s a hell of a lot of contrast), is merely evolutionary. Is this a bad thing? No. Vista was an absolutely great design architecturally, and from a security standpoint, and didn’t...

Processed Delta 3200...

Finally got around to uploading the Delta 3200. I had two rolls in, and due to a limitation of my slightly broken A-1, it stops shooting past 28 or so frames. Great when I have to pay for 36/exp roll film and 36/exp development. Nonetheless, it’s fun to shoot with. There are some uh, sensitive shots that will not be posted, as they involve drunk people and to protect their innocence (I believe the correct term in use by Crown Prosecution is ‘not guilty’ rather than innocent), they’ll stay stuck away and exist only on the negatives and the copies on my...

Happy again!...

In a borderline bipolar set of up/down/up events, I’m happy again. The X1i is being replaced on insurance (<3), and I should probably have a new one some time next week. All’s well that ends well? Maybe. And I managed to sort out the pathing issue, so now G2 is integrated into WP, allowing me to easily post images

And now I’m sad :(...

My beautiful Sony Ericsson X1i was nicked in Tescos. I delivered a remote device wipe over Exchange, had O2 bar the SIM and block the handset’s IMEI, took the details to the police and let them deal with it. Hopefully I’ll be able to claim on insurance. Was stolen under full CCTV which helps

Am I happy? Hell yeah!...

I’ve been meaning to get this done for a while now, because I’ve had the rolls sitting around for best part of a month. Two rolls of Ilford Delta 3200, a very fast black and white film. Amazing staff, gives you nightvision on a camera, and it has an incredible, elegant grain to it that’s not obtrusive. Anyways, I knew where to get it developed, I just hadn’t got around to it. So today, I rang The Darkroom, a film development and print company in Cheltenham. They looked great from the site, but when I rang up and talked to them, even better. They live...

HCCBs....

HCCBs. It doesn’t really sound very cool or exciting, does it. In fact, neither does ‘High-Capacity-Colour-Barcode’. Worse yet, even the general principle of a barcode is fairly…well, boring. They’re just the little lines you get on stuff in Sainsbury’s. And you know, with RFID, why would anyone even care about barcodes, or even bother to innovate them. Because we still live in a very heavy printed world. RFID isn’t taking over any time soon. And HCCBs, they’re freaking awesome. They’re cool. The idea is cool, the concept...

I am Andrew Stockdale....

Unfortunately, I’m not the only one. Significantly better known that myself is, Andrew James Stockdale, lead singer of the Australian band Wolfmother (who are also quite good). By sheer coincedence, we also actually share a the same middle name. Other people with the same name are the photographer Andrew Stockdale, which as far as I gather is American.  Being a photographer myself, this does further cloud who is who. Finally, there’s the late Vice-Admiral James Stockdale, highly decorated US Naval Officer. As a result, my individuality on the internet is kind of...