Back from holiday.

From the sublime to the ridiculous – the weather that is………

I had a good holiday despite all the rain (the novelty wears off after a few days!) but now I am back and getting hit by the heat: no pleasing some people.

Have a new graphics card for my PC but, no I am not going to say another word – it works and does the job reasonably well: but my new Laptop ………..  😀

A whole month and no computer, a lot of catching up to do. I am sure there are some great posts for me to see and read.

Then back out with the camera and a public holiday coming up soon.

New Graphics card.

On holiday in a few days  so will be away for a whole month……!

Looking at the weather in UK, maybe I should pack some sunshine as we certainly have enough here – 47c when I got into the car for my trip home from work today.

Will also pick up a new Graphics card, it would seem that the computer I use for image processing is OLD and anything electronic and more than a couple of years old should be consigned to the bin…… “sorry sir no call for cards with that connector, buy a new computer” For someone who still uses an Nikon F2 SB, words like that are an anathema; a bit like my Land rover Discovery Tdi 200 before I gave up trying to find spares here. It must have been the most environmentally friendly vehicle on the planet, built in 1994, but no “sorry sir no call…….”

I cannot understand this idea that because it is new it must be better (consumerism me thinks) look up Thorstein Bunde Veblen for a thought on this subject.

End of rant… maybe I am becoming a ‘grumpy old man’ some may say I already am!

 

My graphics card has died.

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr……….. Or if you like then add all the expletives that you can think of. My graphics card has died. That will teach me; I am sure this is payback time for spending hours in the dark-room doing real photography instead of basic number crunching. My monitor went blank – let us just say that a couple of hours and the covers off; I found the culprit. The circuit cards on board cooling fan was on its last legs so the main video ‘chip’ has cooked……! Now I could blame the ACU in my house for not being efficient enough, well it is over 40c outside. But if the truth was known, I have not been diligent – a quick once over with the Hoover is not good enough. I just forgot the little fan on the board so it has probably been struggling for a few months now. Ho well, it’s only money and time while I buy and fit a new one; at least I can post this from my phone. The wonder of technology ‘Moore’s Law’ is definitely proving to be right when I compare now with the 60’s or even 70’s.

NASA | SDO’s Ultra-high Definition View of 2012 Venus Transit – YouTube.

 

This from the NASA Goddard site.

On June 5 2012, SDO collected images of the rarest predictable solar event–the transit of Venus across the face of the sun.  This event happens in pairs eight years apart that are separated from each other by 105 or 121 years.  The last transit was in 2004 and the next will not happen until 2117.

 

Some remarkable footage…….!

Mutrah Corniche Pre Cyclone Gonu.

Two things about this image: note the lack of litter (Muscat is a very clean place, even now with all the trappings of modernity) & the other was that most of this Corniche got washed away during cyclone Gonu. It has since been re-built and most of the old buildings and Souk survived, but that was more luck that judgement! A rather traumatic experience for a lot of people; the death toll was considerably under stated by the worlds media.