Aside from the obvious humour in the above picture-gram it does sum up in a nice way the reason for a shameful lack of articles in recent months, by me, on photogabble. I have not to my greatest knowledge been too busy to post and while I had a bout of illness for the later part of last year; it did not stop me from working. Indeed during my short but notable absence from blogging I have managed to collect over 1000 items of interest to blog about, over 300 of which have been noted as important and even fewer of those I have already written a draft for. This is where I come back to the Microsoft paper-clip and his offer of help, while I may not have a sword with which to fend off a Moblin with, I do have a huge amount of content to write about and very little inclination to do so.

Quite possibly having a “paper-clip” there to give inspiration would do a world of good, it may be considered silly by some but that very idea has been inspiration enough for me to get the 2010 reboot of photogabble finished and a couple of months worth of content scratched out. For a short while I felt what it would be like to be someone with no aspirations and I did not like it, for the past three weeks things have begun to turn around and I have finally begun digging myself out of the rut caused by beings or events unknown, it is scary to think that such a rut can be fallen into rather quickly simply by loosing sight of what you want to become; that is something that I shall endeavour not to enable again.

For a little while the above made me giggle a little bit  because I read it in context that Brittany only shares certain information with friends, but then I realised what it was really trying to get across. I don’t know if this is correct grammar or just my inability to read at that moment in time but it still seems an odd way to word such a sentence. Why not just say: “Brittany’s profile is for private friends only. To learn more about Brittany, add her as a friend.”

]]> http://photogabble.co.uk/2009/06/12/facebook-grammar/feed/ 0 http://photogabble.co.uk/2009/06/06/motorists-on-m4-face-average-speed-cameras/ http://photogabble.co.uk/2009/06/06/motorists-on-m4-face-average-speed-cameras/#comments Sat, 06 Jun 2009 12:52:31 +0000 Carbon Twelve http://photogabble.co.uk/?p=1427

Speed restrictions, for the most part, face an increasing resistance from car owners in their ability to stick to them; constantly I am driving down the M40 doing a steady 70MPH (as registered by a GPS synced speedometer) and I get overtaken by other cars travelling at around 90 to a 100MPH on what can be considered at parts a very windy stretch of road with cross winds that can and have pushed lorries across whole lanes in the past. Now consider the traditional yellow boxed speed camera, we all see them from a mile off, most of us have GPS systems which contain a database of their known locations and in contradiction to what most people say: they do work, people have to slow down for them or risk getting three points and a nice fine.  The problem with these speed cameras is that as soon as people have slowed down for them they accelerate back to what ever speed they had been doing, which proves they were not doing the speed limit because had they been doing so they would have no reason to slow down in the first place!

Now we are seeing a new breed of speed cameras, the average speed recorder which owns no flash and can measure your speed to an incredible accuracy over a distance of several miles by measuring the time it takes you to travel between two points; French toll roads have had a similar system in place which pressed an on the spot fine for speeding between two toll booths. The BBC have reported on the first average speed cameras in Wales being set up and have included a couple of comments by locals which appear to be less aimed at the speed cameras and more at peoples driving ability – or lack thereof.

The first comment that took my eye is the following which appears slightly contradictory with whom it blames for congestion:

The planned roadworks have not even started but the 50mph limit is in force. It is ridiculous, and now average speed cameras! Just another way of raising easy money from the motorists. The 50mph limit will prove to increase congestion on an already congested part of the motorway network, with drivers hogging the middle lane effectively reducing the network to 2 lanes!

There is the typical attack on local authority by stating its more about money collection than actual safety, lest they know how much these systems cost? What is most interesting is the blaming of a 50MPH restriction on an already congested part of the motorway network because of drivers “hogging the middle lane effectively reducing the network to 2 lanes.” This is the real problem, inconsiderate drivers, driving without due care and attention consuming the middle lane forcing other road users to over take into the third lane further slowing down traffic, occasionally causing other motorists to dare undertake which has in the past caused numerous crashes. Ever wondered why you suddenly hit a traffic jam on the motorway which has no apparent cause? The reason often is someone driving at 60MPH in the middle lane, people overtaking at 70MPH and then someone breaking from 90MHP to avoid hitting those overtaking causing a concertina effect slowing down traffic behind until eventually someone stops.

I believe we shouldn’t be attacking the speed enforcement cameras, rather we should be attacking those whom drive like they paid their test instructor to pass them. People who hog the middle lane should be the police’s next target because they are more dangerous than most other road users. Also for the record I believe the national speed limit on most motorways should be 80MPH for the reason that it is already the average speed traveled on the network and thus officially raising it shouldn’t effect road incidients at all.

Image Credit: SPG Media

No this is not a tutorial, although I might write one at some point – this was too simple to do in my opinion but I am sure some beginners would find such a tutorial useful…

At any rate, wkossen asked that someone photoshop a christmas hat onto his twitter avatar and I have done just that. Using the free stock christmas hat photo from Quentin available at sxc.hu with wkossen’s photo I have created the below. This blog post is really just to make it easy to show him. Nothing much else really happening here.

While I am quite tempted to fill this post with photos of just swings and roundabouts, that will have to wait until another day. Instead I am going to rant a little here about the amount of noisy feedback within the blogosphere and inherent lack of referencing within the same domain. See the above photo for example it is a really nice black and white shot of a female form within a blurry urban scene and I would be interested in finding out who took the shot to write a little more here about them and their work. However this is not possible unless my source list their source and then only if that source is the original location. I don’t have all the links I followed to get the above image but it is a good example of the noise on the Internet being that I originally found it on one tumblr post which linked to a weheartit page which linked me to yet another tumblr post. This post then didn’t reference where it got it from which left me at a dead end, it was only by chance that I discovered the same image on vi.sualize.us because it had been linked from yet another tumblr post. A useful feature of vi.sualize.us is that they also show other websites that link to the same photo and within that list was a post at ffffound. It was there that I finally received a flickr link, it was to the photo rather  than the page but using one of the online tools the final source can be found. The photographer is Sasha Nikitin and from looking at her photo stream on flickr she has a nice portfolio of work. I shall be revisiting this and some more of her photography over the coming weeks in one of the photographer features.

“…must use like, one gig of ram like…”

“…incentive fing, like. if you sold like, this numba of books…”

“…because like, i have never used iTunes before…”

“… you wouldn’t, you, you know, would.. n’t, you would not, you know…”

“… can you like, have you got, like word on there?”

“… its woah good, like.”

To be honest this isn’t the worst example I have heard, there have been worst but the above snippet is a good enough example of “speaking like a nob”, the three of them are quite obviously new to all this and not your stereotypical academic, I can’t be so mean to say that they are the physical icon of the modern student; the beer guzzling, all night partying human being, just at uni for the social and expecting little more than a gentleman’s pass. With that said, it is more than a little annoying to have their noisy discussion imposed upon my quiet morning when I am trying to read papers related to my masters work in the quiet room! Nobs.

Edit: just in case you where wondering, it was three guys not a bunch of preppy American teenagers. Just to clarify.

It is a sure sign of the times when a company that has been in buisness for 94 years, survived two world wars and at least one severe economic depresssion goes bust overnight. I agree with Live Jamie when he says he wants his tax dollars to bail out Mothers Cookies rather than AIG, its all fair and well our governments securing the worlds financial markets but how about keeping the small local buisnesses in buisness so people still have a job to wake up to instead of having to beg and steal to feed their families.

I have a pretty secure job and have recently managed to secure my girlfriend one too and in the current economic climate I believe this is what is needed, unfortunately most students do not have this and even more are useless when it comes to managing their finances. So while our government is busy bailing out banks with public money what is to become of an entire generation of fiscally vulnerable people, will this lead to greater unemployment and a raise in crime unseen in decades or even worse complete collapse of the western financial system. Sat in the reception area of my university building the above points of view are a regular occurrence in conversations I’m over hearing between people who come from a wide selection of backgrounds while all having one thing in common – being students.

An interesting point to note is that in history all great civilizations have been seen to peak and then catastrophically fail; a few come to mind, the Egyptians, Roman Empire and most notably the Maya, who appear to have been quite advanced before vanishing off the face of the Earth.

Still you have to laugh, a lot of imaginary money has dissapered today in less than an hour with the FTSE 100 loosing 400 point, right now back to writing articles on photography, philosophy and all that.

Moving to Coventry and attending university has changed that slightly, the line drawn between away and home has been considerably blurred to the point that I now see both locations as home, rather than one or the other. I have been asked to sum up both locations  with an object that represents them, this is a difficult task for me as I have come to feel that Coventry is as much my “home” as living with my parents at the  home they made for me. Physically the two locations are quite different, my parental home is set in rural Kentish countryside and is surrounded on all four corners by green and bird song which in Coventry is replaced with city sprawl and the noise of the seven o’clock number 41 bus rumbling at the bus stop outside. This is however a shallow comparison, physical differences between the two locations aren’t what makes one a different home from the other; arbitrary emotional attachments to both people and places in each location are what make one unique from the other.

My question to you is what means home to you? Not surprisingly to many it is a different place than that where they currently reside, be it their home-land or a place they grew up. Coventry to me is my second home its very different from the parental home but its also where my friends are, a place where I am happy and secure and while these are intangible ideas they are what makes a home for me.

Image Sources: www.freefoto.com & kent-english-homestays.co.uk