Lazy Robot

The sun has started being a little more present lately, so some mornings are actually quite pleasant. On one such morning I decided to have a wander up the canal. The clouds made everything look a bit Toy Story, and the low sun gave a lovely light and contrast to everything else. Of course, it wasn't sunny everywhere. But even in the darker places, such as right underneath Leeds railway station, the sun had a go at peeking in.

I was recently asked if I could help out providing an image for a magazine article about stress management. For reasons as yet undiscovered the requested image would be of the USS Enterprise flying through a storm in space. Unfortunately I didn't have a lot of time (just a couple of hours), but I did have a very nice model of the Enterprise D I could use to build the image around. Thinking fast, I rigged up a rather slapdash rig consisting of a black reflector backdrop, an umbrella and stand from which dangled the model by a thread, and a couple of strobes. One light above, diffused, to provide the key light, and another, reflected and lower power, to fill some of the very dark shadows. It ended up all looking something like this: Using a fast shutter, f/16 and cunning flash positioning I managed to keep the background black and give the model suitably textured lighting so it didn't have that flat, uniform, shadowless appearance of, well, a model. The narrow aperture obv...

One of the things a fan of music must do is put themselves through the annual trial of trying to figure out which of the albums they bought/borrowed/stole this year are the best. It took me until about March last year. This year I have been a little more proactive and have produced a list already. I bought 55 albums this year. I also acquired a further 58 through freebies, promos, borrowings and artists giving me stuff. That's a lot of stuff to choose from. I was considering limiting my self only to stuff released this year, but decided that some things were too good to leave off despite them being discovered by me this year, although released some time in the past. This didn't end up making the job any easier. Anyway, after much deliberating, thinking, changing of minds and giving up in disgust, I have produced a list of 10 albums split evenly across "metal" and "non-metal", as well as a handful of "honourable mentions." So, without further a...

A bit of a change of pace on the blog. I've not posted anything remotely nerdy for ages, so here is a post containing four very nerdy things: functional programming, Haskell, Scala and Twitter interview questions. The Twitter interview in question was not mine, but instead was one posted about by Michael Kozakov on his blog post " I Failed a Twitter Interview ." So, interview questions, eh? This Michael fella thinks he failed the interview by getting the question wrong, but you and I know that's not how it works. The interviewer is more interested in finding out how you go about solving problems than whether you get this particular problem right. After all, unless they have some nasty leaky roof scenario, I can't imagine there being a particular pressing need for Twitter to need their interview candidates to get this one spot on. That all being said, I don't much care about the problem solving technique. I care about figuring it out and making a really exp...

It's Autumn! Autumn is awesome. Autumn is the season of dark mornings, dark evenings, dark ... daytimes. Dark, generally. And damp. And generally ick. I love it. It's my favourite season. Not least because taking pictures of the lovely golden autumn light is an absolute delight and being out in the cold, fresh air actually makes me feel alert and awake, unlike the muggy, heavy sluggishness that comes with a hot summer. The best thing about everything being dark, and damp, and ick, is that mushrooms grow. I've had a long-standing love of photographing mushrooms and other fungi, and this year is no exception. The first of many is right here: Lovely. Here are a few more, just for good measure.

Bank holiday Monday saw us walking around the Shropshire Union Canal. Well, a very small portion of it near the Grindley Brook Staircase Lock, anyway. One of the bridges on that stretch of the canal (bridge 27, if you hadn't guessed, which is actually more of a tunnel) has an unusual architecture in that the brickwork is built into a spiral along the length of the tunnel rather than a more traditional cylinder. The effect of the light hitting the bricks gives the whole thing a wormhole-like appearance, like a swirling vortex to another realm. All very Whovian. Looking under the bridge The effect of the swirling brickwork inside