PaulSeward.com

Tramptastic

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.

Posted in A photo a day - 2012 | 1 Comment »

Eat Me

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!

Posted in A photo a day - 2012 | Comments Off

Ripple Cripple

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.

Posted in A photo a day - 2012 | Comments Off

44 Watts

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.

Posted in A photo a day - 2012, Phones | Comments Off

Catchup – 17th Jan

Lunch!

Posted in A photo a day - 2012 | Comments Off

Catchup – 16th Jan

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.

Posted in A photo a day - 2012 | Comments Off

Catchup – 15th Jan

I’ve been a bit busy with other things this week, so whilst I’ve been shooting and uploading I haven’t managed to blog any of the photos.  Anyway, yet another food shot – although this one tasted much nicer than it looked.

Posted in A photo a day - 2012 | Comments Off

Railway Robin

It was a lovely frosty morning today, and at the railway this we saw this robin as we were loading up the car.  It was very tame, and would have landed on Ians hand (if he hadn’t flinched as the robin flew towards him) so this shot was taken from about 2 feet away.

Posted in A photo a day - 2012 | 1 Comment »

More food

This time, it’s a risotto with roasted butternut squash and potato.  Again the lighting was slightly hurried, but at least you can see the steam.

Posted in A photo a day - 2012 | Comments Off

Lazy supper

I’m having a lazy evening this evening, and couldn’t be bothered with putting much effort into cooking anything new – so I got some of last nights left over pizza sauce, and a couple of slices of the bread I baked last night and threw together some poshed up cheese on toast.  The lighting for this shot was similarly thrown together in a couple of minutes while I waited for the cheese to melt.

The rest of the sauce is now in the freezer, to use as the base of a pasta sauce at some point in the future.

While I type this, I’m watching an episode of The Paul Daniels Magic Show from 1985.  It’s an absolute classic, and has Pauls marvellous chop-cup and linking rings routines (can’t find a link to the rings, sorry) it has Air Jazz with their club passing routine, and it’s got Tom Noddy doing his bubble routine.  There are a couple of less interesting set pieces as well.

I must have watched this particular episode as a kid.  I know this because when I was about 13, I was performing a linking rings routine and had pinched several of the bits of Pauls patter.  I distinctly remember being impressed by Tom Noddy and Pauls chop cup routine – which I still rate as one of my favourite ever cup/ball routines.  Every time I see it, it makes me want to finally buy the decent set of cups I’ve been promising myself since 1999.

The show was on air for 15 years between 1979 and 1994, yet I can only find 3 complete shows online anywhere.  I’ve got bits of it knocking around on VHS somewhere (individual acts etc) but no more complete shows.  If you’ve got any, please do let me know.  I’d love to see more of it!

Posted in A photo a day - 2012 | Comments Off