Jonny is now an orange belt!

Yesterday Jonny had another karate grading yesterday. Jonny was a little star and he did well enough to move from yellow to orange belt. It was a very stressful experience though and that was just for me!

Even though this was his 3rd grading it doesn't get any easier for me watching on the sidelines. His gradings are a bit like being in his GCSE exam a few years early and watching him doing the exam but not being able to help him. Very frustrating especially as he would be *very* upset if he didn't pass. He needed to get 55/100 to pass and he got a very impressive 63/100 so it all ended well.

When we got home he wanted to show off his karate skills so we made this video:



I then got him to pose for a few photos too:

Trying out Windows 7 and Windows Live Writer

Over the weekend I’ve taken a step away from the dog that is Vista and upgraded to Windows 7.  And I have to say that so far I am impressed.  It seems to be faster, more intuitive and hasn’t so far crashed like Vista used to regularly.

The upgrade process was also pretty smooth and relatively painless – I was very pleased that I could upgrade Windows 7 over Vista without having to re-install all my programmes and set up my PC from scratch.  I only had two problems with the upgrade and these were that the installation didn’t like my wi-fi software and my anti-virus software.  It asked me to uninstall them before I could upgrade and so I did just that.  The wi-fi software successfully uninstalled but my anti-virus – McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.5i – was still running even though I had uninstalled it.  After a few minutes of searching I found a page on the McAfee site that contained a solution, I needed to copy a line of code into the Run command.  I did this but the code didn’t work, the anti-virus software was still on my PC.  Turned out that the code contained “/q” on the end and that makes the code to do the uninstalling in the background without me seeing anything on the screen.  I removed the “/q” and a series of dialogue boxes popped up which asked me to do things – obviously if these are hidden I couldn’t select my choices and the code did nothing.  So I am writing this in case someone does a search and gets stuck with the McAfee solution, this is what you need to do if you have McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.5i like I had:

Click Start and then type “Run” in the search box at the bottom of the start menu.

- Press Enter on your keyboard

- Type the following (or highlight the text, copy and then paste) then click OK:

msiexec.exe /x {35C03C04-3F1F-42C2-A989-A757EE691F65} REMOVE=ALL REBOOT=R

I am also typing this blog post using Windows Live Writer which is a free download for W7 and allows me to create a blog post without having to sign in to Blogger like I used to.  And the Live Writer seems to be a WSIWYG editor that has automatically detected the formatting of my blog so that as I type this the text looks like it will on my blog. Which is nice.  It would be even nicer if it was included in the installation of W7 though.

There are a whole load of free Windows Live downloads available including an update to Windows Movie Maker called Windows Live Movie Maker which finally corrects the major flaw with the old versions - you can now burn your movie to DVD.  It was always so frustrating that the old version would do everything but that.  Especially as iMovie did this years ago. So well done Microsoft, only about 5 years late, but at least you got there in the end!  However, including this in my W7 upgrade would have been even better.

Anyway I’ll stop now as I want to publish this to see if this wizzy programme works.

EDIT: it worked!  So I will use the Windows Live Writer tool from now on to create my blog posts.

EDIT 2:  Hmm, editing this post in blogger once it's been published has mucked up the formatting.  I'll reserve my judgement on Live Writer then.  Probably won't be using it again....

Fireworks (and a bonfire)

Took Jonny to the fireworks display in Dore this evening.  Dore is about a 30 minute drive from our house so not exactly local but it was worth the drive.  Lots of fireworks and a bonfire too!  Even better was the fact that there was another display very close to Dore at the HSBC ground so we got to see this as well before our display started.  Not bad for £6 for the both of us.

First off was a bonfire:



Then we got to see the HSBC show:



And these were my picks from the main show:

Natasha, "you're fired!"

Natasha, "you're fired!", originally uploaded by SimonButlerPhotography.

A couple of weeks ago I attended a conference in London called Innovate09 for my day job. It was organised by the government to showcase innovation by UK businesses and universities. Mandy made a speech and all of the great and good (and me!) of the innovation world were there.

The day was hosted by Natasha Kaplinsky and included a Q&A session with Sralan. This was very funny for a number of reasons. Firstly Sralan and Amstrad have hardly been the best at innovation - after all his em@iler was a product without a market, his computers always seemed to be "me2" products rather than leaders in the market (and had reliability problems) and his satellite boxes had a reputation for not working properly. The second reason is that Gordon Brown has chosen him as an enterprise champion - he isn't really suited to that role (surely James Dyson would have been a much better choice as he *has* produced a series of innovative products). And the third reason was that despite all these faults he is entertaining. The first question from the audience was along the lines of "Do you think that programmes such as The Apprentice and Dragons Den belittle the value of innovation, science and engineering". Sralan's response? He shouted the questioner down, told him to shut up and asked that the microphone be taken away from such a "loser"! This would be funny at a Sunday market but not now he is a representative for the UK government!

Anyway, I managed to get a seat near the front of the audience but didn't have my main camera with me. So I took a photo of Sralan and Natasha with my iPhone. And you can see that above.

Once the show, sorry I mean Sralan's Q&A session was over I decided not to stay for the evening drinks reception and headed off to the cloak room to pick up my bags. Just as I was given my camera bag Sralan walked straight past me. I did think about asking him if he minded if I included him in my stranger portrait project but he looked in a foul mood as he was berating his assistant so I decided it would be safer all round if I didn't bother.

One photo a day in October - Day 31

Phew.  I've made it!  Those of you who have been paying attention will know that at the beginning of October I decided to take part in a "one photo a day" challenge.  And you will also know that to make things more interesting (and much more difficult!) for me I decided to make each of my photos a portrait of a stranger.   And now it is day 31 and I've managed it.  Each day I took a photo of at least one stranger.

I am even more proud of the fact that none of the photos were candids either - for each one I asked the person first if they would mind if I took their photo.  This was nerve-racking on day 1 but by day 31 it was like second nature and pretty easy.  And I am pleased to say that at least 80% of people I asked said yes which surprised me.  This isn't the first time I've embarked on a project like this - a couple of years ago I took a whole load of photos of people from my village - but this was for my Photography A Level.  When I took the photos 2 years ago I only had to explain that I was doing an A-Level at Hillsborough College for my subjects to become very interested and wanting to help me.  This time I didn't have the crutch of an A-Level project to rely on, just a rather weak excuse of an "art project".  But most people were happy to take part when I explained what I was doing so my initial nervousness quickly disappeared.

Anyway, enough of the self-congratulation. On to the photos from the last day.  Today I headed into Sheffield city centre and took a wander.  I initially headed to the Peace Gardens and spotted a City Centre Ambassador.  I thought he would make an excellent subject for a portrait but I was concerned that he would say no as he was a uniformed official.  But thankfully he said yes and even better he didn't change his expression one bit which was exactly what I hoped would happen:



I then noticed a whole load of students dressed up in Halloween costumes raising money for testicular cancer.  So I donated some money - it was an excellent cause after all - and took a couple of snaps in return:





Because of his expression and eyes I selected the last one as my photo of the day.

That last photo was my 66th stranger portrait photo of the month so I decided to create a mosaic of all 66 as a summary of my month of strangers:



This works better if you view it large or even better if you view it super-large.

So overall I am very proud that I managed to complete the challenge. And I've produced a half decent selection of photos a few that I am really pleased with.  But it was hard work and I think I might put my camera away for a few days before I take another photo.

One photo a day in October - Day 30

The end is almost in sight.  Day 30.  Only 1 more day to go. 

The photo today, like my photo from yesterday, was taken in Grenoside.  Jonny and I went for a short bike ride to the park this afternoon and when we got there I spotted two ladies having a chat at the park entrance.  I decided that they would make great subjects for portraits so I asked them if they minded and after a bit of bemusement they agreed.  It turns out they were from the local history group and were discussing the next committee meeting.  And one of them, Pauline I think she said her name was, was my ex-wife's Sunday school teacher.  The photos I took of Pauline weren't the most flattering so I won't publish them here but this one of her friend seemed much nicer so here it is.  Just a shame she didn't want to look at the camera....

One photo a day in October - Day 29

Day 29.  An eventful day today thanks to the actions of an irresponsible dog owner.  But more about this later.  I only had a chance to photograph one person today and this was the person:



Spent the day at home with Jonny.  Persuaded him to head off to the park for a kick about for an hour or so this afternoon with the two boys who live 3 doors down from us. 

It was at the park that the irresponsible dog owner or more accurately her incontinent dog - almost ruined my day.  I put my camera bag down by one of the goal posts and the dog - not on a lead - came over, cocked it's leg and urinated on it!  To say that I was upset was an understatement.  I found the dog's owner and complained that her dog had pee'd on my expensive camera bag and she wasn't apologetic at all.  It was almost as if it was my problem and not hers.  She even said "that's what dogs do and she doesn't wee as much as most other dogs here".  If it had been my dog I would have at the very least walked over and tried to clean the bag or offer to get it cleaned.  I was livid but I figured I wasn't going to get anywhere with her and she left the park soon afterwards anyway.  Thankfully my Lowepro bag is pretty water proof so no damage was done to my camera or lenses luckily.  I gave the bag a thorough wash when I got home but I may be in the market for a new bag though!

Hopefully tomorrow will be a less eventful day, and I'll be able to take a few more portraits.