I arrived home at three o’clock this morning after the long weekend in Sweden. The party was just excellent, helped by the comfortable hotel bed (instead of crashing on the milk-factory floor) and the huge buffet breakfasts as provided by Scandinavian hotels.

As far as results go, our joint Atari demo (in the ‘General Demo’ category, code by Kronky, music by me) came third, winning me a Playmobil nun. w00t for the nuns! My C64 demo wasn’t last, which is definitely success in my book - seeing as how I have used a C64 for less than a year and most of the other entrants had about 20 years experience!

I managed to get a photo of the ‘window’ that I wrote about in my last blog. I love the irony of the aircon unit serving a different area of the factory which is right next to the pile of fallen glass…

And some retro-geek-porn…

After the party ended on Sunday, we had quite a bit of time to kill, so we had a wander around. Some curiosities spotted on the trip…

(Clockwise from top left) Promiscuous Pasta, Swedish Flag Lollies, Sweden’s Southernmost Point, Sauce Bottles You Have To Milk, Angry Workers, Big Bridge.

We also saw the following object. We couldn’t read the Swedish, but its shape and the fact it had two men expressing love on it suggests it’s called something like “The Big Gay Stone of Skåne”…

Oh… and I discovered the knack to getting by in a foreign language you don’t know without reverting to English. The knack was to not care whether I was saying the right words or not, but to say them extremely confidently. I didn’t get too many funny looks and I generally received what I was after in the correct quantity. It was an interesting experience.

You know it’s a good party when…

The C64 party started yesterday and the venue this year really is special. The disused milk factory that it’s being held in is truly abandoned and almost derelict. Hard blue-brick floors with water running across it in places, pipework everywhere, lots of steel and concrete.

During the afternoon, the room was getting a little too hot, so the hosts brought an air-conditioning unit in. Unfortunately, the wall was made of those glass bricks so there was no open window to put the air-con pipe out of.

It wasn’t a problem though, as the host went away and came back 5 minutes later with a hammer and made an open window.

What a time to not have my camera on me.

Pricing makes your brain hurt.

I’ve been figuring out how much to charge such that:

1. I am guaranteed to cover costs
2. My customers aren’t being ripped off
3. My customers aren’t feeling ripped off (yes, this is different from #2)
4. I don’t end up with unsellable stock
5. My lead times aren’t too long
6. My lead times aren’t too short (therefore expensive)
7. My bulk prices are not retarded

But then again, as a friend of mine says…

Dogs chew bones. Babies cry. It costs this much.

There’s actually no need to justify pricing, but it’s slighly more complicated than I initially thought.

That was a fun test, and it’s interesting to see the results. Here is some analysis…

1. Drink of choice

I do actually prefer bitter, but I’m not allowed it due to my gluten intolerance. Therefore cider is the only way to go.

2. Odd socks

It’s probably known that I have just a hint of OCD about me, which could account for the Lilac/Left, Red/Right answer, but maybe my exposure to maritime culture isn’t so well known. Therefore my OCD insists that if I’m wearing red and green odd socks, they must be the correct way round for port and starboard, lest I crash into another vessel.

3. Born

I was born in Ashby, registered (twice) in Coalville and lived in Loughborough, Leicestershire for most of my life. I knew this would be tricky for all but those who know me well.

4. Day Job

I used to make live audio, nearly made mobile phone networks and actually work in telly. I’ve never touched radio. This seemed to be the most common correct answer, so it seems I probably talk about it quite a bit.

5. Commodore 64s

Quite a spread of answers here, but I guess that’s fair enough. I have one I’m happy to use, and one boxed and stored in case of emergency.

6. Cars

This was the most wrongly biassed answer. The BMW attracted most answers - I’m not sure if that’s because it’s the ‘odd one out’ in the list, or because it’s out of character. Well, yes it was, but I did own one. A big black old shape one that my colleagues dubbed my KGB-Mobile.

7. Technical Editor

Nobody guessed Photography or Theology. There was about 50-50 between Minis and Hacking which is reasonable, but Hacking (the right answer) won out. Here ’s the book.

8. Minis

Even I had to look this up! They are, in order, Green ‘81 Pickup, Pageant Blue ‘79 Saloon, Red ‘86 GTM Coupé, Red ‘91 City, Blue ‘70 Pickup, Blue ‘84 Mayfair which I’m still driving.

9. Music

The lovely Betty Boo, of course. Echobelly was the answer with the most wrong guesses in the whole quiz. That’s reasonable, I guess - I’m not averse to a bit of britpop, but I’d rather listen to BB. Coldplay leave me cold and while ‘Dick-a-dum’ is excellent, I’m afraid I’m not Des O’Connor’s greatest fan.

10. Computer Language

I put C# in as an ‘odd one out’ for the guessers, especially since I’m normally known as a sad unix geek. However, my day job is currently programming C# and most people got that right. The right answer was python - I don’t even know what type of language it is, or its intended use. (I’ll go and look it up now!)

I hate these rubbish internet quizzes, so here’s mine… note that it’ll make you sign up if you want to appear on the leaderboard - I don’t know how trustworthy the site is, so I used my spam address.

Create your own friendquiz here

Please note that the following blog and comments are not the place for posting answers or discussion, that time will come as I address each question in future blogs.

It is question time!

Ever had one of those niggling questions about God/Religion/Christianity that you can’t get a straight answer to? Well now you can post related questions here and I will do my best to research them and provide impartial answers, or at least some guidance for further discussion.

Feel free to post anonymously, but please include your real email address which I will not divulge on the site. In fact, if you really want to ensure anonymity, mail your question to me: stu@0105.pygmygοat.net and I’ll put it in the comments for you.

The floor is open…

It’s all about point of view. Many snapshots you see have such a strong formula. The viewpoint is level with the ground in both front-to-back and left-to-right views and usually taken at eye-level above the ground.

In fact, your camera is a space-ship, capable of being in any number of positions and in any number of orientations.

Part I - Background

Firstly, we’ll look at the background and parallax. Because of the way the world of optics works, it’s possible to move a foreground object relative to its background by moving your point of view. Take the horizon, for example - if you hold a camera at eye-level and take a picture of someone the same height as you, the horizon cuts straight through their head, through the middle of their ears and behind their eyes (assuming flat terrain, of course). Likewise other elements of the background may confuse a shot somewhat - like a background signpost seemingly growing out of someone’s head.

Moving your viewpoint moves these background lines and can give a much better balance to the picture. This is before you even start to tilt the camera.

Part one of the challenge is to go out and take at least two pictures of the same subject. The subject should appear in the same position in each of the shots, but the background should move up and down. If possible, try not to tilt the camera. This can be achieved by using a wide-angle and cropping the picture to keep only the part containing the object. If you can’t avoid tilting, don’t worry about it, you’ll just notice that any verticals in the picture will lean towards each other.

Another thing you can do is google for pictures of people on beaches. See how much better the shots are when taken from higher or lower than the eye level of the subject, and how distracting it is when the horizon cuts straight through.

Part II - The Spaceship

Once you have a basic feel for the possibilities, you will now turn your camera into a spaceship. See how many different degrees of movement it can make. You can bank, tilt, turn, move, pitch, yaw. Take it out for a flight, make graceful loops, tilt left and do a steep banking turn, really put on an aerobatic display.

Now that your camera is free to move in all dimensions and doesn’t feel rigidly stuck into a single degree of movement you can take part 2 of the challenge. Take some more shots of your chosen subject. Fly in from above, sweep up from the ground while in a banked turn… think about how the object will look - coming from underneath, it will look large and imposing, if it appears diagonal in the shot it will look more dynamic, from above you may be able to isolate it from the background and remove the horizon altogether.

The only caveat with this sort of free movement is that you need to do it confidently. A small tilt on the horizon, for example, will look like an error. A bold tilt, whether it actually works or not, will look intended.

Unfortunately, this statue was too high up to get a good shot coming downwards towards it, and I’m not in the habit - like many photographers - of carrying a small flight case to both contain my gear and support my weight if I choose to stand on it for extra height. Good luck!

Going into the hairdressers and when they say “What would you like today?”, saying “I’ll leave that up to you.”

I think it’s ok. It’ll need a little training before it works how she intended, but she explained all of that at the time.

And no, I don’t look like Lurch.

I have removed my Google top 20s because searches were hitting these posts instead of useful information. My favourites will remain…

My favourite searches this week:

rectify diy mistakes - Oh dear. A whole world of pain opens up in my imagination.

joining worth monastery sussex - You know, I don’t think the internet is the first place I’d look if I was considering becoming a monk.

dingle fingle - Yup… he’s back again this week. Rich, what have you done?

how to take good amateur wedding photographs - Don’t do it! Put down the camera! Move away from the wedding! Slowly now…

startled bunny image - They probably didn’t find what they wanted from my blog.

And I think my favourite for the week:

gjetost humour - Now, I understand that gjetost is humorous in itself in that it’s the least cheese-like substance in the world which purports to be cheese, but I really can’t imagine a whole body of humour being built around it.

That was a fun day out. I decided to go to Nottingham Mela (Multi-cultural asian-biased festival) to see what I could see. The bus there was free of charge because the driver couldn’t work out whether I could use the trams if he sold me a Network Rider ticket. The tram from Old Market Square up to Forest Fields was then free because the conductor bumped into an old friend half-way up the carriage and failed to get to me in the space of six stops.

The Mela wasn’t packed, but had a good atmosphere with lots of Indian food stalls, music and crafts. There was a main stage (with Midas FOH Console, Klark Teknik Equalisers and XTA Crossovers for those who are interested - GAH! you can take the Stu out of live sound, but you can’t take the live sound out of Stu) with a combination of pro bands and community groups.

I certainly didn’t feel like an imposter today when receiving such comments as:

“‘Scuse me, can you take our photo?” - The lads at the army stand wanted me to take their photo, and offered me a free phone stand if I did so.

“I know you’re working, but can you have a look at this petition?” - Shelter

“Is there any more photogenic music coming up?” - The TV camera lady asked this question - it’s apparantly the polite term for cute kids playing badly, but good for telly.

“How do you get into that?” - A guy asking how you get into photography. I told him to just start and get down to events to see if anything happens - “What, like fights?” he asks. No, I explained, like interesting things to see. “Oh, so you’re like an artist or something?” Yup. I think he got it.

And the most common quote of the day “Are you with the Evening Post?”. I’m even considering getting a T-Shirt made up bearing the legend “No, I’m not with the Evening Post”.

Anyway… a good day, the weather held off. A few pics… click any of them to get the full gallery.