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Stress release

Ever been so strung out that you’ve forgotten what it feels like to be able to take things at your own pace?  It sucks, but returning to ‘normality’ is an excellent feeling.

I took my last AS examination for this period earlier today.  It was comprehension, cunningly disguised in an Applied-ICT-shaped suit.  Before that there was Business, but in between there was a photo job at the opening of Landau’s new ‘Learning Center’ (presumably the old building is now the ‘Eating a nd Dossing Center’) and work at Comet.

This is all following the manic Peak (aka ‘Christmas’) period at Comet.  We were targeted for upwards of £15k per hour at certain points; to put this into perspective, we sometimes manage £45k on a good Saturday.  My employers were gracious enough to provide me with 3 days off, however.  Although 25 December is classed as official holiday time.  And I had to work New Years Day, and Boxing Day, the busiest day of the year.  And on one of the remaining two ‘holiday days’ I was photographing a wedding between 10am and 9.30pm.

The respite is lovely, though.  Despite being back into the swing of being at work or college every single day.  I don’t have to worry about the next batch of 350 wedding photos until next week.  I have more manageable hours at Comet, but extra employment at College as a contracted photographer (more on that later).  Time to relax

Cleaning my processor

Comet salesmen recently all had to undertake training for new ‘Comet on Call’ call-out technician packages. One of the briefs sounds something like the following: “over time, dust can build up inside your computer and slow things down. The dust particles cause your computer’s internal hardware to overheat and become sluggish, or even become permanently damaged”.

I read in a computer magazine some years ago that compressed air is excellent for removing dust from hard-to-reach places. I noticed whilst installing my second hard-drive a month or two ago that my processor fan had become clogged with dust. I managed to find some ‘compressed air canisters’ floating around on ebay and decided that perhaps they would help shift the dust and thereby reduce the maddening volume of my processor fan, which does seem to be getting louder and more strained each week.

The fan system above the processor in my computer was pretty dusty, but also pretty hot, so I decided to wait for it to cool before spraying the compressed air. Lucky I did really: it gave me a chance to read the label properly, and as it turns out, the ‘compressed air’ is actually a chemical mix that is highly flammable. I decided to do a quick spark-check on the residue that I presume shouldn’t really be evident from compressed air, but was being produced in copious amounts from my canister.

Read more…

The redesign…

…is coming

Rhianna Page

Rhi.

This doesn’t seem quite real in a horrible sort of way.

9 days ago I was walking to school with you for exams. I only had one 2-hour exam, but you had something stupid, five or six. We got to the gate and I told you I’d catch you later.

Maybe someday we’ll walk home through the sheets of rain again, talking through our difficulties because it helps.

We miss you, frizz. xxx

Rhianna Page, a student of Landau Forte College, left this world a week ago. She was a caring, intelligent and an amazing person. She made front page of the Derby Evening Telegraph today.

From the article:

“Her sudden death has stunned friends and classmates, who described her has an intelligent, caring girl, who always had a smile on her face.”

I knew Rhi for about three years. I can’t remember where we met, but my first real memory of talking to her was at the Market Square in February 2004. I was wearing a pair of Zoggs goggles and fluffy bunny ears, and she stole the goggles for a photo.

I remember walking home with her in the pouring rain, taking a long diversion through Morley. She came to support us at our first gig, and then my parents gave her a lift back home.

From the article:

“Rhianna page’s [MySpace] has been bombarded with messages and one friend has posted a video tribute to her on the YouTube website.”

Check out Rhi’s MySpace. Unless you’re already added as one of her friends you won’t be able to post a comment, and no-one is around to accept any new friend requests, so the profile is a sort of frozen portrait. The comments are heartwarming and tragic. Watch the music video: Rapture by Hurt.

Wherever you are, frizz, I hope you’re happy. We miss you.

The Great Mustache Disappearing Act

OK, I realize that this blog is ‘on hold’ until after the exams but I think that this one really does need to get out in the open.

I’ve been playing around with photoshop for the past couple of days and concentrating on dishonest portraits. Becky suggested that as a real test to my skills I should try and hide my famous facial hair. I must stress that this is a 5-minute bored-at-midnight job.

Me earlier today, taken with my 400D and 50mm f/1.8 lens by Jess Payne

The theoretical mustache-less-Foy in his natural habitat amongst the computers

I must stress the crudity of this edit. Had I a little more time on my hands I could’ve put together something a little more exciting. Maybe that’s a project for a very, very rainy day. What do you think? I guess I look vaguely normal in the thumbnail to the right. It takes years off me – 3 or 4 years.

DRM is Bad.

As it is nearing the launch of Vista, the latest incarnation of Windows, it seems a good time to warn some passing visitors of one of its most serious flaws: it is defective by design.

Windows Vista is crippled by built-in Digital Rights Management, or DRM. This form of ‘rights management’ has been around for a while now, largely unnoticed by the masses, but it is being bought more and more into the spotlight by the impending launch of Visa, which has DRM integrated deep into the operating system.

DRM is touted to be a necessary practice that works to prevent media pirating and to protect copyrighted work for the creators of original material – songwriters, musicians, actors, that sort of thing. In reality it restricts consumer’s legal ‘fair use’ rights in regards to their purchases, restricts what individuals can do with their purchases, and is used anti-competitively. Read more…