Photos of Phones and Phonographs (occasionally)
Ian and I went for a wander around Bristol Cathedral today, a really lovely building. Unfortunately it was overcast and I didn’t have a tripod with me or anything so the interior shots I got weren’t great, and I’m not really happy with this exterior shot either. I don’t have anything else up my sleeve tonight for “religion” week though.
Not until I can work out how to take a photo of “vi vs emacs” anyway
This weeks photo-challenge theme is “religion” I’m not especially religious (I tend to describe myself as ignostic) but one of the many things I’ve done in my life is read The Bible from cover to cover. There’s some great stuff in there (and there’s some crazy stuff in there) and I really do recommend reading it if you haven’t already done so.
Ezekiel 23:20 though, is probably my favourite verse. It’s got various translations, but the only copy of the Bible I had to hand was the “Good News” translation, which is as follows:
“She was filled with lust for oversexed men with large sex organs and all the lustfulness of stallions”
Although I think I like the “New International Version” translation better. It has a wonderful turn of phrase.
I’m not entirely sure where I was going with this.
On my way back from pottering around doing other things, I stopped off at 7 Sisters as the sun was going down. This is the result. I’ve taken this shot before, more than once, so -1 point for creativity.
I went to the BoB show tonight (well, last night as I’m writing this tomorrow) It was better than usual, with some surprisingly well thought out acts. It was BoB though, so as ever the lighting was just about adequate (but not good enough for my camera to wrestle with) This was 1/25th of a second, at “OMGSUPEREXTRAHIGHISO!!!!” (It’s labelled as H1.0 but seems to be a stop above ISO1600)
My D80 is noisy as hell above ISO400 and the shots were mostly unusable. So I decided to use it as an opportunity to muck about with film textures. Initially, I was looking for scans of film grain/waterspots/dust/scratches just to dirty it up a bit. But I found some scans of daguerreotypes and thought they suited this character. So, 5 layers of mucking about later, and I’ve got the above.
It looks a bit filtery for my liking, but it’ll do for the moment.
For the first time in ages, I’ve shot something specifically for this weeks photo-challenge. Having not eaten any for over 20 years, it did surprise me just how unappetising alphabetti spaghetti is.
Anyway, talking of food, I’m 20 days in and still a veggie. My list of “new foods to cook more often” probably has 4 or 5 new entries on it, so it’s working out quite nicely. Still got lots of new food ideas to try though!
Erm, I’m not sure about that title. Anyway, this is Damian Hirsts Charity statue, as reflected in the fountain outside the Vic Rooms opposite.
Also, I’ve just watched the 1984 version of The Philadelphia Experiment – which is ace.
Not so much a photo today as a bit of research. I’ve been building aVOIP server so that I can connect my 1950s phone exchanges to the internet and make free phone calls through them to like-minded friends. I’ve built the box with a view to making it as low power as I can.
Unfortunately because of the requirements of the telephony interface card, it’s not quite as low powered as I’d hoped.
According to the power meter I borrowed of Jonathan, power draw is about 100W during booting, but settles down to a very stable 44W once everything is up and running. Putting a call through the box pushes that consumption up to about 47W which isn’t bad either. Plugging some numbers in to http://www.lightbulbs-direct.com/article/energy-saving/ works out that it would cost me £63 a year to run the box permanently – or about a fiver a month.
It wouldn’t be on 24/7 all year (I’d probably switch it off if I went away for a week or something) but even if I did that’s not a huge wodge of cash.
I can probably get the power consumption down a bit further if I can find a PSU that’s a bit smarter with its power management, but I’m not sure I can shave a whole lot off 44W really.
Lunch!
It was a frosty morning, and I got all the way to the train station before realising I didn’t have my season ticket, or my wallet (so no way of buying a ticket) and had to tramp all the way home again and get the late train to work. On the way home, I stopped by this tree and took this shot.