Learning to not be afraid of switching off Auto.

Ever since I got my Sony DSC W200  compact camera I have really got into taking pictures.  So when said trusty compact decided to give up the ghost I decided to treat myself to a DSLR.  Along came my Canon 550D (including 30 quid cash back -which was a bonus), it was love at first sight.  The camera is great and took equally great pictures  but, one thing bugged me...my reliance on Auto,  that lovely green icon setting which does everything for you.  For me I just felt that the relationship with my camera could not reach the deep and meaningful level untill I ventured into those other settings....manual, Av, Tv etc....

Vaguely aware of such terms as Aperture, F Stops and ISO and that they contributed to taking a picture that is as far as it went.  I resolved to lose my fear of these terms and go on a beginners photography course.
Lo! and behold GroupOn  came to my rescue offering a Beginners course for £29 at a local photography studio!

So I happily paid, booked and attended a 4 hour Saturday afternoon course at Cherry Red Studios in Camberley.  Aimed at Beginners (though equally handy for those more experienced) the course was led by an enthusiastic photographer who clearly explained all those mysterious terms us Auto junkies are scared off.  The course followed a format but, was very much student led and much time was taken to help us all out individually with our various questions and different cameras.  As the weather was good we also ventured outside to practice and test out some of the techniques we had learnt.

I can now say that whilst I am not a master of all those strange settings, I am not afraid to work with them and have resolved to not use automatic.

So, a big thank you to Cherry Red  and in particular Chantal Storrs-Barbor for opening my eyes to the wonderful world of non-Auto photography.

Belated Happy Star Wars Day

Wishing you all a belated happy Star Wars day and a very merry May the 4th be with you!

I hope that you all celebrated by doing something Star Wars related.  Actually due to the double bank holidays I had quite for got the day  but,  by chance Love Film had sent me Star Wars Force Unleashed 2 and had started to play it.

Sigh,  having to play single player games rather that whoring the multiplayer side of things like I normally is just not as much fun but, hey ho!  surely it cant be that long now?  Come on Sony fix the damn PSN.

Olympic tickets

Well we've been registered for over a year and got the email about applying for tickets a couple of weeks before hand but, we still left it to the last min to apply!

The tickets we applied for were for the

• Opening & closing ceremony (gotta try right!) 
• Track cycling (Men's Omnium 4km Individual Pursuit
  Women's Sprint Qualifying)
• Track cycling (Men's Keirin First Round
  Women's Omnium 3km Individual Pursuit
  Men's Keirin First Round Repechages)
• Athletics (Men's Shot Put Qualifying Rounds - Groups A & B
  Women's Heptathlon 100m Hurdles
  Women's Triple Jump Qualifying Rounds - Groups A & B
  Women's 100m Classification Heats
  Men's 400m Hurdles Round 1
  Women's Heptathlon High Jump - Groups A & B
  Men's Hammer Throw Qualifying Round - Group A
  Women's 400m Round 1
  Men's Hammer Throw Qualifying Round - Group B
  Men's 3000m Steeplechase Round 1)
• Athletics(Men's Decathlon 110m Hurdles
  Women's High Jump Qualifying Round - Groups A & B
  Men's Decathlon Discus Throw - Group A
  Men's Decathlon Discus Throw - Group B
  Men's 4 x 400m Relay Round 1
  Men's Decathlon Pole Vault - Groups A & B)

According to the news the tickets are massively oversubscribed so I really hope we get something but I guess we will have to wait.

PS3 Hard drive installed

Blimey,  how easy was that!

The longest part was the actual backup and restore.

Flip off the flap at the side of the PS3, unscrew the screw with the arrow pointing to it, pull the HD & cradle out, unscrew cable attaching screws, pop in new HD, screw in the screws, slot it back it and boom thats it!

Thats the easiest hardware install I have ever done.

Upgrading my PS3 hard drive.

For whatever reason this has been on my list of things to do for  over a year and I have just not got arround to doing it.  Stupid thing is I have a 340gb laptop hard drive just sitting in a drawer waiting for me.

So,  supposed to be pretty easy and only takes 10 mins or so.

Basically,  I'll use my WD elements external HD (the one that hasn't died that isn't being used as a time machine backup drive)  to backup my PS3.  Following that I think I just have to open the HD bay, pop out the existing 60gb drive,  pop the new one in then restore my system from the backup.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy.  So lets get on an do it then….

Kapow Comic Con pt 2

Continuing my Kapow experience we attended a couple of the panels.  I think given more time I would have liked to have attended the Thor movie panel plus obviously it would have been nice to actually get in for the Marshal Law one but, never mind.

First panel was the Breaking into Comics the Marvel way which despite the lack of CB Cebulski was still a fascinating insight into breaking into comics in general.

The 2nd panel we attended was the Kapow Surprise Panel which was given by Noel Clarke,  who was a most interesting and enthusiastic bloke and throughly enjoyable panel.  We were all left trying to work out which former Dark Horse IP he had just got the rights to film.

My experience of Kapow was a great one,  some problems which I had expected to face were a bit of inexperience in terms of organisation and some issues with queue for panels which despite the confusion was negated by the fact that the panel areas were very sizeable.  Couple of things they could definitely improve on were simple ones:

• If you are going to have a panel, raise the panel area up so people further back than the first 5 rows can actually see the panel guests
• If you are going to have a large screen behind the panel guests  why not actually have it displaying a camera feed of the people talking as opposed to just the event logo!!
• Allow for more room to queue for the panels and the signing areas
• Perhaps have a larger less narrow area for the stands and perhaps next time scale it up a little bit so there can be more stall holders

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed the day and am looking forward to Kapow Comic Con 2012  being even bigger and better.

Kapow Comic Con pt 1

Bit of a late blog entry for this but, last Saturday I was in attendance and the 1st Kapow Comic Con.  The premise behind Kapow was to bring something of the SDCC and the other big US comic cons to the UK. Whilst we have some of our own shows such as MCM which is more gaming and Anime orientated and Memorabilia which is more …well memorabilia,  we do not have a proper London centric comparison to the US experience.

My experience of comic gatherings has been somewhat limited despite collecting for many many years.  Previous experiences have been a few Birmingham comic marts and the 2006 Bot Con  (yes it is a Transformers convention,  but myself and my mate went to meet one of our fave comic artists Mr Geoff Senior ->Who didnt show :( ).  So all in all this was pretty new for me.

Our plan was to go on the first day, show our support for comics in the UK, checkout the con, buy some merch/back issues and attend some of the panels plus avoiding the main cosplay day. (lol).  We aimed to get to the convention for the 10am Marshal Law panel (both being avid ML fans)…..first problem, bloody engineering works, we ended up taking a convuluted route to the Con but, still we got their with a bit of time to spare……enter the 2nd problem……the queue.  Despite being open at 9am  the queue was still huge  so by the time we got in we  were 26 mins late for the ML panel.

Not the best start to the event but, we were pleasently surprise by the venue and the setup.  The Business Design Centre has a slightly unusual layout with the main area of the Con above some central retail units  but, the stall holders were pretty good with alot of the major London stores there plus the stores we buy from on ebay.  In addition to this a 2000AD and Marvel/Panini stand to one side.  grrrr this was how my first money disapeared!  my first score was something of an impulse buy. When I looked through vol 1 of the ABC Warriors Volgon War in nice hardback format  I was so taken I bought the first 3 volumes.  (I'll probably talk more about that trade hardback in a later post).  

My next purchase was from the Marvel / Panini (oh how we all mis a proper Marvel UK) in the shape of the 2nd and 3rd trades of the excellent Captain Britain & MI-13  series. I was fortunate enough to meet the writer, the super nice bloke that is Paul Cornell later on in the day, sporting a beard grown for charity I made sure to tell him how great CB & MI13 was and to ask for some more please!

Paul Cornell