Got my LaCie 319 yesterday, so managed to get it plugged in last night when I got back from the Go Kart track and pub….

The good news is the screen works, and I couldn’t spot any dead pixels. The colour as it stands looks good too, and text on the screen is nice and sharp.

The bad news is the colorimeter that came with it (a LaCie blue eye pro) was broken in two pieces, so that has to get returned (once I proven to LaCie that it is indeed broken). This is a bit of a pain as I have a batch of photos to process from a friends wedding this weekend, and I was rather hoping to have my screen all setup and ready to go.

So not too chuffed.

The good thing is that I’ve given my desk a bit if a tidy (still a long way to go though), and getting rid of my old Dell 19″ CRT has freed up a lot of well-needed space.
Yay!

Tags: lacie

I was saddened to hear that the Youngs brewery is planning on stopping the sale of Pilgrim brewery beer in the Rising Sun pub in Epsom.

This is probably my favorite pub at the moment, given that the ale from the Pilgrim brewery is delicious and it is a no smoking pub.

I signed the petition a couple of weeks ago, but it seems this isn’t enough to stop Youngs:

“We spent £900,000 to buy this pub and we haven’t bought it to sell other peoples beer. If people don’t like it, they can drink somewhere else.

We have 210 pubs, and have never before come across a case where someone has refused to comply with our conditions.”
A Young’s spokesperson

I have nothing against Young and Co as a brewery — they make some very nice beer — but I do feel it is against the interest of real ale drinkers to make any changes to this great Surrey pub. So if you like real ale and think this little gem of a pub should be saved, join in the fight!

More information can be found here:

• The Pilgrim Brewery
• Save the Riser
• CAMRA Surrey

Tags: real ale, petition

I seem to be encountering lots of web site screw-ups these days. Today it is AXA Insurance’s turn.

I just did a google search for camera insurance (I want to get my gear covered), and in the google ads on the side of the results page was a link to AXA Insurance. “OK” I thought, “let’s give it a whiz”.

I’m having a hard time making this sound interesting, so to cut the story short, I visited their site and got a wonderful template page, complete with Lorem ipsum text, holding images and so on.

So my question is this: if AXA Insurance can afford to just throw money away at pointless adverts, why can’t they reduce their premiums too? (Or improve their customer service…)

Tags: axa insurance, lorem ipsum, screw up

Related Link: Car Insurance free quotes

It’s inevitable. Rain = Wimbledon.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to make this observation today, but I felt I had to say it. Not a fan of tennis — the sooner it’s over the better in my opinion.

One nice thing about this weather is how it reminds me of holidays in the Lake District. I’m in desperate need of a holiday at the moment, so the brief journey through some of the hills and lanes of Surrey in the rain this morning was a nice distraction from the thought of another week at work… Talking of which, I’d better press on.

Tags: tennis, wimbledon, rain

Don’t you just love Windows? I’ve just been looking on a fairly popular online store running IIS on Windows, but it appears to be having some problems:

…snip…
Dim Connectview, RSview, Queryview, qtyview, line_totalview, subtpriceview, full_totalview, clientidview
clientidview = Request.Cookies(”user”)
Set Connectview = Server.CreateObject(”ADODB.Connection”)
Connectview.ConnectionString = “Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;” & “Data Source=D:stagingbasketdb******.mdb”
Connectview.Open
Set RSview = Server.CreateObject(”ADODB.Recordset”)
Queryview = “SELECT * FROM basket WHERE Clientid =’”& clientidview & “‘ “
RSview.Open Queryview, Connectview
…etc…

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Well I’ve finally taken the plunge and ordered my first TFT display - a Lacie 319. On the face of it it’s not the best specification in the world (only 1280×1024 screen resolution and not that bright), but if you dig a bit deeper you’ll see it offers a CRT-grade color gamut which I’m hoping will actually be as good as it sounds.

The screen comes with a colour calibrator and a hood too, so the theory is I should be able to get good colour rendition in my images. Anyway, if this works well I may think about getting a higher resolution 20″ one in a few months

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my-blog-as-a-graph, uploaded by Mark Sweeting.

Everyone seems to be doing this at the moment, so I thought I would join in. It doesn’t really tell you anything useful about your site, but it’s quite nice to look at.

I have more, there is a huge public list, and you can even make your own.

Why hasn’t someone invented a recipe service where they email you a (new) recipe each day? Maybe they have. I get so fed up making the same meal every day, and I’m sure I can’t be the only one.

It’s not that I don’t like cooking — I quite enjoy it actually — but I don’t like cooking for one. And making loads of dishes for one little meal seems stupid to me too.

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