Well that’s the holiday over for another 6 months – very cold and wet !!!!! But log fires and good malt whisky helped.

I think UK is getting more than its fair share of rain this year – almost as bad as 1963 if my memory proves me right, at least this time the rain has not turned to snow (yet).

I think the snow of the last few years was better because at least one could keep dry!

Where is global warming (sorry Climate change) when you want it…….. Sorry I must not talk about the cult of Gaia otherwise I could upset a few people.

Hope everyone had a great holiday and looking forward to what 2014 brings in the way of happiness.

My Xmas gift  🙂

Image taken from Nikon UK.

A Nikon 35mm f1.4 AF-s lens for my D800.

A very nice gift from my wife and one that I will look forward to using in the coming months. It will even work on my F4 in Shutter priority or auto mode: says a lot for Nikon backward compatibility, although the lack of aperture ring will take me a while in stopping my fingers going to the lens.

As I have got rather a lot of FLAC audio files on my computer, I thought it time I figured out how I could play them through my audio system.

This is the result of endless research:

The Xmas gift I got for myself.

The Meridian Explorer DAC.

Image from Meridian Audio site.

The Explorer replaces my computer’s sound card with a USB-powered DAC which gives three optional outputs.

3.5mm combination analogue/digital jack with mini Toslink digital optical output and 2-ch analogue line out.
3.5mm jack with variable-level headphone output.

All sorted and I am more than pleased with it, a nice well thought out item that gives me the option of playing my files through my audio system and using the laptop as a control unit from a 2TB hard drive.

I am using it while I write this and I must admit it drives my Stax mini phones a lot better than the inbuilt audio of my computer. Money well spent and one of those items that lived up to all the good reviews it got.

All I must do now is start going through the blog posts that I have missed in the last few weeks. Ho and guess what, I left rain in UK and met rain here in Muscat. Although it did mean an early departure from work so must not complain.

Back on my travels soon, work getting in the way of photography, but I am sure I will find time in the driving for my camera ……..