This weeks photo is an Eddie I took whilst trying out a fast prime.

It’s hot a whole lot different to any other Eddie photo but I love this one because the lighting somehow seems perfect, and depth is great and it looks somehow soft and pleasant in a way I can’t even explain.

It’s the weekend before Guy Fawkes which means, fireworks after bangy bang fireworks.

Eddie isn’t in a good way, he’s become incredibly submissive, I can prod and poke him in ways that irritate him madly normally, resulting in deep bloody bites, but at the moment he just bows his head and sighs. Tears my heart apart.

Want proof, well that pic has him rejecting a Pollo pizza, and you see that blue bell shaped toy around his neck? It’s filled with fresh chicken…. he hasn’t touched it.

There was a crufts preview show yesterday and there was a PBGV, these dog people pronounce the Vendéen bit of PBGV in such a peculiar fashion. I love the markings on this one, but it’s not as handsome, or cute as our Eddie obviously, I mean, what dog is. And I dun like the way they’ve cut and combed its face. OMG, it wags its tail exactly like Eddie does!

You know those country walk books? They usually start at a pub and end at a pub, its great! Well we thought we’d do a very bizarre route today, it’s odd because it snakes around Sheffield City Centre, not very country. Anyway, got some nice photo’s of the place en route.

Nice bus stop, see that number?  I think it’s a mobile number, maybe virgin.  Anyway, darez you to call it.  Remember if you’re international to prefix 044 and knock off the first 0.

It was a bittersweet walk for Eddie, the urban sites and sounds were interesting for him, but through the people busy thoroughfare’s (and the sales are on) he got a bit stressed out and went into this odd clearing-his-nose fit that he does when he’s really freaked out.  Actually, speaking of this, can any vet’s explain to me what he’s doing?

This is the christmas card we sent to family and friends this year and it went down really really well.

Almost everyone it was sent to phoned up to say “OMG I loved the card!”.

Problem is now we’ve done it once, we’re going to have to make a custom christmas card every year from now on.

I’ve forgotten to add the first letter style to the new theme, I like having a chunky first letter. All Olde English. Oh heck. Ah well. I was going to quickly write some things I’ve been meaning to blog but all of a suddenly my mind has gone blank. I discovered a bottle of nicely chilled white wine rather too early in the day…. Not to mention the Leffe. Oh Jez I think I’m an alchoholic.

Eddie does a good Che Guevara.. My newly found obsession with photography is getting more expensive. I now have the DSLR, the kit 14-45mm lens, a tripod and from today a remote control so that I can take pictures on the tripod without risking shaking the camera when pressing the shutter release. The next purchase will be a 45-150mm lens. And then maybe even a macro. Crikey. Well, I say expensive but I’m still a tight arse, I saved a fiver, yes 5 square pounds by purchasing the remote second hand on Ebay. I’m slightly regretting being so stingy though because I’m not finding it to be terribly reliable. I dunno if the battery is running low or what, but I doubt that because it’s supposed to last 5 years and an obscene amount of uses before the battery fails. Hmm, I suppose it’s possible it has been pressed continuously during transit or storage. Also, the zoom and exposure buttons don’t do anything, only the shutter button, I don’t need them though so I don’t care about this. Also, it didn’t come with the instructions and I had to scour the t’internet for a PDF.

KDE on Mac. Someone, or some people have ported KDE, and the QT foundation to Mac OS X. This is more than just an X11 recompile and I’m quite excited about the possiblities. When you launch one of the KDE apps it fits in really well with the Mac environment, the app’s icon is displayed in the Dock as it should be and the app’s menu bar correctly uses the mac’s at the top of the screen rather than being contained within the window. This is a great step in the right direction for a true cross-platform GUI, and one that doesn’t rely on some smelly, slow interperated language. I think this was it but now i’m not entirely sure because i tried it a week or so ago and forgot to note the URL. Sorry Susan.
Tesco Office. Tesco, the UK’s #1 supermarket, a shop which makes me shudder… is going to be selling it’s own branded cut-price software, including an Office clone and some anti-virus security bundle. When I first heard about this I thought oooooh I bet it’s OpenOffice, that’ll do the open source crowd some great PR. Unfortunately it isn’t, Tesco’s Office is going to be based on Ability Office, which as far as I can tell is a Windows only wanky shameful MS Office rip-off.

The other day I had an absolute nightmare walking Eddie.

We were half the way around a circlular route in the woods, probably about half a mile into it when this other dog comes bolting up to me barking its mouth off and Eddie, ever dutiful in protecting his owner fled the scene.  2 Women arrived apologising and saying they’ll put their barking dog on the lead ‘cos its in a funny mood.

Eddie was nowhere to be seen so I stood there and waited for him to come back whilst occasionally calling out.  After what felt like forever I gave up waiting and went off running back in search of him.  I caught up with the 2 women, their dog was still yapping at everything and the bitches had gone and let it back of the lead!  Stupid, because obviously Eddie will have carried on running away from it.  So I carried on running past them and Eddie was still nowhere to be seen even as I reached the entrance to the woodland, I thought ’shit’ cos I released he might have aimed to cross a road on the way back home.  So I carried on, ran accross the busy road and this guy calls out to me, “hey, is that your dog?!” and there he was, staring at me from down this school path I use to get to the woods.  When I got to him he cried out desperately as he made a fuss of me.  I bet he had run straight across the road without looking, and I wish there was footage because I wager he will have narrowly missed being run over

I started a Flickr group today called “Basset Griffon Vendéen.”  Bet ya can’t guess what it’s about?  It’s already got 4 members, although admittedly 2 of them are me, one to set it up and one to test that its joinable lol.  Thing is, the 2 people who have joined have already posted enough photo’s to knock poor Eddie off the first page!

The funnest thing about it though is that you can rename “admin” and “member”.  I’ve called them “Grand” and “Petit” (a breed joke), but it’s a little ironic because that means I’m “Grand” because i’m the Admin but the photo’s I’ve added are of Eddie, who’s a “Petit”.

I urge everyone to take a look at this group because this breed is still very much unknown to the extent of being rare and yet every single specimen is cuter than the cutest thing you can imagine! And I wish to spread the word and make this breed more well known because do you know what?  It’s so unknown that some breeders amazingly have trouble selling an entire litter and they end up having to hold on to some of them beyond their puppy years and the older the puppy is the harder it is to sell.  And I dread to think what becomes of them.

I think I might have to stop visiting ebay unless I’m selling, it’s just way too easy to get caught up in the moment.

I’ve been wanting a DSLR camera for yonks and yonks but always I spent hours on ebay not quite finding a deal to suite, or that was quite cheap enough for such a penny pincher as I am and then my sensible side kicks in and I suddenly realise I don’t need a new camera anyway and what the hell would I do with it?

Unfortunately the other day, my sensible side forgot to kick in and I ended up buying one. I bought an Olympus E-300, and it was a bargain make no mistake, it was actually less than half the retail value. OK, it’s not the latest model but even when I factor all that in I still can’t see how it was anything other than cheap. And condition wise you would swear it was brand new never been used.

My biggest problem, and possibly the one thing that makes me regret the purchase is that this thing is freaking HUGE! I knew DSLR’s were big but I was not prepared for this. Just look at it compared to my mum’s Pentax Optio S45, and the S45 is quite chunky for an Optio, and it isn’t further away, it’s balancing on top of it.
Apparently DSLR pro’s dislike this particular camera because the shape doesn’t scream traditional DSLR, it hasn’t the usual bump at the top where the view-finder is because Olympus decided to come up with a new way of getting the image to the view-finder. But I really like the design, looks wise… if it wasn’t so freaking Enormous!

The camera is 8MP which is high, but it wasn’t really the resolution, or even the image quality that I wanted it for, it was for the speed of a pro-ish camera and the flexibility, and the way you can get away with pictures in low light more than you can with a compact. This photo of eddie was only the second photo I ever took with it! And it’s a work of art! Seriously I think I’ve justified the purchase with that one image. i’ve tons to learn though, I don’t know what half the photography terminology means.

I haven’t posted any photo’s of Eddie in an age, we went on a walk in Derbyshire that was very pleasant indeed.

The walk started at the Druids Inn, or at least I think that was what the pub/restaurant is called, its a swanky place which has recently been taken over the same guy who runs the Thyme restaurant in Sheffield, if the nosh is only even half as good as Thyme it would be well worth checking out, and you couldn’t possibly ask for more idelic surroundings.

There were some Bronze Age stones laid out in a circler manor half through the walk, possibly meant to be the highlight but it just looked like some weathered stones to me, still you do get the eerie feeling that some witchcraft had taken place and Eddie seemed right in there.

More Derbyshire pr0n. Speaking of Eddie, he’s got some mysterious growth in between the pads of one of his paws and he gets vicious if you fiddle with it, I think it might be a blister, but it’s most unlike any blister i’ve ever had. Still, I think I’d have weird growths on my feet if I walked everywhere bare-foot. It’s his own silly fault for being a dog.