In bullet-point form, because I'm not capable of anything else right now.

• Banshee is being an arse on Karmic on my desktop machine. Can't figure out why. It freezes up when playing big files (podcasts are particularly affected by this), plays too fast sometimes (so it sounds like I'm fast-forwarding through songs) and other times just crashes for no apparent reason.
• So, I've switched back to Amarok in the mean time, though I don't particularly like Amarok 2, and the way its UI behaves is irritating to me at the moment.
• I've more-or-less, bar some work for the reviewer, fixed bug 471974 which should mean that bugs with lots of subscribers shouldn't time out any more. Hurrah for asynchronicity.
• People keep marking as favourites old photos of mine on Flickr, from the days before I considered myself worthy of having people in front of my lens. Not that I don't appreciate it, but I'd rather people liked the newer stuff.
• I had a crisis of confidence last night (again; how boring you must think me) about photography, mostly, and where I think I want to be. I've made peace - for now - with that particular demon; I don't know quite where I want to go but I think I know some of the things I want to do on the way.
• I've been playing a bit with Tumblr today. I quite like it's simple interface, and I suspect I'd use something like that quite a lot for things bigger-than-a-tweet-but-smaller-than-a-blog-post. Haven't quite worked out how to fit it in with what I do though; maybe aggregating everything together through FeedBurner is the way to go.
• I finished reading Michael Moorcock's Gloriana last night. Good book but didn't really grab me all that much. Somehow it just didn't quite sit right with me, and I don't know why.
• Started reading The Lies of Locke Lamora today, for the second time (I never finished it the first time round because I foolishly left the book on a plane in Schoenefeld Airport in Berlin). It's just as good as I remember.

Anyway, tired, can't think, going to do something that requires no brain.

Bullet points, because I'm not in much of a mindset for much else.

Dear Buddha, please bring me a pony and a plastic rocket and:

• A D700x, which, no, hasn't been announced yet, but about which a Nikon rep made encouraging but vague noises about at Calumet's Manchester mini tradeshow yesterday (blog post and photos to come on that). I think that'll be my next upgrade, almost certainly.
• Some Bowens Gemini heads (I'm leaning towards the 500R/500R kit, but it's still pricey). I had been toying with the idea of Elinchrom Rangers but playing with the Bowens units yesterday I came to really quite like their rugged versatility.
• A Sun-sniper strap - they're hard to get hold of in the UK, or at least from Calumet. Might try The Flash Centre instead but they use CityLink for deliveries.
• A bucket with time in it, please.
• Oh, and if you've the spare cash, I'd quite like a Hasselblad H4D. I played with HD3II yesterday and am now getting seriously turned on to the idea of medium format.

 

In amongst all the programming (for money), programming (for free), writing a second novel (still not convinced that I'm actually doing that yet but it's a nice journal so I better flaming had be), amateur photography, sleeping, eating and having a life that I seem to be doing at the moment, I'm in the mood for some changes to the site.

So to that end I've got a list of things that I want to change:

1. Style - the templates are dull and boring, even if I did used to think they were quietly understated. They aren't, end of story.
2. More Stuff, dammit! (As in more than just a blog, at least).
3. Integration of external stuff - Flickr, Twitter et. al. - so that you good people don't have to ferret around for it.
4. Possibly - though I'm not sure yet - putting the source up for download so that all you schmuck who want to use the same code that I use can do. Of course, you could also take the opportunity to point out where I went wrong and improve on it, which is also welcome (though don't expect me to always be cheerfully happy about it).

If you've got any ideas that you want to add just drop a comment here.

I have much that I want to blog about but I've had less than eight hours sleep in the last two days and it's making things a bit blurry about now. I will get round to the bit about religion and how it can cause problems in conversation. And now I think I'll shut my eyes and ponder whether or not to integrate Flickr and Twitter and all the other e?rs with the main posts feed on the blog.

Which is probably too much for this time in the morning, but whilst I'm alive I can but think, can't I.

Or I might think about fairy tales. Yes, that seems more likely. 

I've been saving up a couple of things to post. No, that's a lie. I've been meaning to post about a couple of things but keep finding other things to do. So I'm going to do bullet points instead for the sake of brevity. I might expand upon them later.

• Flickr is playing silly buggers with Violet Blue's photo stream.
  This doesn't affect me much since I use Flickr infrequently at best, but provides yet another example of social networking sites screwing up when it comes to censorship.
  [Edit]: Some people complaied that Violet's site isn't Work Safe. I'm semi sorry for not warning you (be thankful this isn't warrenellis.com).
  
  
• Modern parents are wrapping their kids in cotton wool (figuratively speaking).
  We knew this already, of course, because the world is Much Worse than it was in my day (i.e. around 1991). Strangely, my friends and I managed okay. But the media must be right, mustn't it?
  
  
• The Bible has been attacked as "obscene" in Hong Kong (via Warren Ellis ).
  I'll be honest: this one just amuses me.
  
  
• Wormwood, Gentleman Corpse looks, and is generally, amazing.
  More on this and Sandman and graphic novels in general to come.
  
  
• Cool things are coming for django_xmlrpc, including some excellent work by Reza Mohammadi. Well, I think they're cool anyway.
  
  
• Oh, and I set a date for starting Novel-the-Second. Isn't that exciting?
  

That's it for now. Off to Manchester tomorrow for the cricket. Take care in the meantime. Don't get eaten by anything will you?