batteried

A short time ago, my day to day watch battery ran down, so I put it in the pile with all of the other watches with flat batteries. "I really must get it fixed", I was thinking as I wound a trusty analogue watch as a replacement.

The previous time, I ended up buying an inexpensive watch because I was stranded somewhere 'in transit' and when I did eventually get it fixed, the jewellers wanted to charge me a large number of guineas.

So this time I spotted the rack in a store with the tiny batteries. "Easy", I thought, as I looked at all the bubble packs with little pictures of watches on them. But at £1.29, I decided to take a few different sizes of Golden Power Super Silver Oxide, thinking I'd get one to fix my watch and if I was really lucky I'd also be able use the surplus in other defunct watches.

One Swiss Army knife later I'd opened the silent watch and did manage to locate a battery half the thickness of the dead one, which has made the watch go again. But none of the other four will actually fit any of the other broken watches. I'm still 'quids in' compared with the cufflinkeried jewellers, but also slightly annoyed that there's so many different sizes. And that's before I noticed that Amazon sell ten watch batteries for £1.99.

sawdust haze is all around, don't know if I am up or down

Arty shot today by breathing on the glass before I took the picture. I'm trying to recreate the sawdust and paint haze which is still permeating the area where the wardrobe is under construction.

By the time its finished, most of the interior will be hidden by clothes and hopefully by new sliding doors.

Don't breathe in.

Nikon D90 and D3x preview

From time to time rashbre central has spun off other sites; the short term 'rashbre unhinged' which is still around but most of the content has been hidden under a lumpy rug. Then there was 'Dylan Moran for Doctor Who', the collaboration with Christina (temporarily stalled) and even the rather dubious rashbre1.

But now...just when you thought it was safe to get back onto the internet...rashbre snapped. Naturally this is a photographic site self-evident from the title and I'll hope to use it to muse - occasionally- on things photographic.

This site - rashbre central - will continue to be my ten minutes a day blog and the other one will be more like a journal around my fledgling attempts to take snaps whilst holding the camera the right way around.

I'm respectful of the chymical ways of photography, but really want to think about what works well now, in the world of digital, alongside the works of master photographers from the past and the great work of blogging companions who today turn in some fine results.

At this stage it feels like I've just sprocketed up a spool of blank film over on the other site. It will be interesting to see how it eventually develops!

p.s. proper nikon rumours here

therapy

Television this evening, as I've been busy till late all week and the sawdust from the recent wardrobe reconstruction has somehow tripped my hay fever symptoms suggesting a quiet evening with antihistamines.

Anyway, I was filtering advertisements whilst waiting for the excellent Scottish vignette 'Emo' play about a Uni burnout turned furniture store salesman, complete with Clare Grogan and dues paid to Gregory's Girl.

And spotted the SEAT car ad with its rip of 'this boy needs therapy'. Nowadays I wonder if the real originators of these ideas (in this case, the Avalanches) get any reward whilst the often Dutch reproduction houses can legally copy anything for a fee? Yet perhaps this is even more of a conundrum because the Avalanches sampled widely to make their original recording.

But the other advertisement I noticed was for a supermarket chain and fronted by the short car crash one from Top Gear. Well scripted storyline, but if I hadn't concentrated at the end, I don't think I would have known which chain it was promoting.

Whereas the NTSC redubbed Chevrolet 'unicorn' SUV fantasy ad works well and even helps me remember the brand, but doesn't move me any closer to wanting to buy one.

Have it all.



this boy needs therapy here - please admire 'Frontier Psychiatrist'

getting a buzz

I finished around 2 am last night instead of three and have been slaving away today as well. The only 'non phone' company I've had today was when a couple of inquisitive wasps showed up to smell the coffee. I've noticed before that they seem particularly partial to freshly ground columbian and first they were buzzing around outside the opened window and then snuck in for a look. A third one was hovering around outside doing that fast 'U' shaped flight pattern.

Somebody will know why wasps like the smell of 'real' coffee; I know its something that seems to attract them (or at least the ones around here). After they had a good walk around the mug, I eventually tipped the last of the coffee away and within a couple of minutes they'd both headed back to the window and off into the sky.

(reconstruction): you'll have to imagine the wasp inside the mug

not beijing olympic results service, just wordless wednesday

Working till 3am. Need to listen to some of this

sliding

Some noise today whilst the above space begins its transformation into a wardrobe.

After the lounge sofa adventure last year, when the brown sofa from Italy arrived but was giallo (yellow), and 10 weeks later the replacement arrived but was the wrong shape, then perhaps this episode would all run smoothly.

Indeed, the first part proceeded well until the measuring for the doors took place.

Er.


They are the wrong size.
Van trip required.

Short term airy space until the adjusted doors are ready.

Its almost exactly a year since the yellow sofa was finally replaced.

About time for another domestic furnishings drama.

confiture

Sometimes life is a bowl of cherries and at other times it has to be a single strawberry wrapped in milk and white chocolate decorated to look like a tuxedo.

At the moment I'm imagining the latter as an offset to various worldly complexities.

rapid eye

Sleepy silken dreamstate moments
gate waving to another world.
Soft grass, brilliance and mesmerising skies
or dark spikes punched from a cloudy tower.
Its never easy to predict a dream
sometimes tiptoed by the bed's edge
with gentle feathers and warm breeze.
Or boot-ready scraping full on
shattered roofs and lightning spirals.
But better any of these
than a blank space in the night.

dream analysis

spectacle

Today's press claims 4 billion people watched the 2-3 hour Beijing opening ceremony yesterday.

That's 66% of the world's total population. After removing 10% for, say, 0-4 year old children and making an allowance for TV coverage only being to 89% of the world, then we're at circa 5.3bn 'available viewers'. So now we are at 75% of the available population.

I missed it yesterday, because it was screened around midday in my working UK day and then I was out in the evening. So did the people I was with, for similar reasons.

And these folks in Beijing didn't make it either, because the road was blocked off.

Judging from today's pictures in the UK press, it was quite a spectacle.

There seems to be no end of great photo opportunities from the ceremonies as well as the inevitable photography of the passing politicians such as Mr Bush, who stopped by at the womens' beach volleyball.

Naturally there was some offbeat BBC coverage of smog from their hotel window.

And we mustn't forget the sports photography, which also seemed attracted to early coverage of the same sport as some of the politicians. The Norwegian volleyball team has never been so popular.

Of course, some of the early events were on the beach because of the opening ceremony in the stadium. The Bird's Nest Stadium cost $250m and the $40m opening ceremony was 13 months in preparation. China is reported to have spent $40bn on staging the event in total.

Our UK budget is reputedly $18.5bn for construction and around $4bn to run the Games using 'temporary' stadiums in an East London 'dust bowl' according to Tessa Jowell. I'm not sure that she should be using those words actually. She did say that Beijing would be the last iconic stadium, although the one we are building is predicted to cost twice as much. Admittedly these are also the 2007 estimates, so things might have changed.

At least Great Britain's 313 athletes for the Beijing games will be safe in the knowledge that we've reportedly sent 639 public servants to keep them company and to find out how its all done in time for our turn. Gordon Brown only needs 20 aides and Boris is making do with 13.

In fairness, around half of the £6.8m budget travel budget is for the 437 BBC staff providing Beijing television coverage. So the taxpayers' governmental and police based coverage is only 202 people. But you can get your virtual Beijing rashbre central ticket here.

Technorati Tags: rashbre, beijing, opening, ceremony, birdsnest, stadium, dust+bowl, tessa, jowell, bush, volleyball, norway, china, viewers, television,

mountains

Last week I may have been in the mountains, but this week back at work it has felt as if I was still climbing a few.

Monday was the inevitable email mountain, which took a few hours to clear down to the vital few. I also had the peak of a specific activity to scale, which I'd budgeted to take me most of the week. Inevitably another 'peak' appeared almost the moment I arrived in the office, and I'm only expecting to finish it by late Friday.

Then on Wednesday, another unexpected and urgent one appeared on the scene, so by Wednesday evening I had several work mountains ahead of me in the current range. Like in hill walking, you sometimes can't see the next hill ahead because the current one hides it.

Fortunately by today, Friday, I've managed to put down a couple of summit flags and have only one principle one left before I reach a level area.

So below is an 888 picture (8th August 08) reflective of my home working day.