http://kingofthemountains.blogsome.com From the wilds of Wales Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:25:14 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I spent a fair chunk of Saturday adding marker posts to a nearby unsurfaced right of way. I did this as part of a volunteer effort drawing its members from several groups, the posts and permission to install them being provided by the local County Council. The posts are intended ... http://kingofthemountains.blogsome.com/2009/09/29/mud-and-markers/ If, like me, you’ve just bought a digital SLR camera then you may well have picked one that can use older film lenses. First, a caveat: Not all can do this with equal success. You may get some slightly unpredictable results. In my experience Pentax are fine, but I can’t ... http://kingofthemountains.blogsome.com/2009/09/11/were-going-on-a-lens-hunt/ I’ve had my Km for a couple of months now, and shot around 500 images. The Km is Pentax’s budget digital SLR camera, borrowing its name from a 1970s vintage mechanical SLR. In the rest of the world it sells as the K2000, again a name partially borrowed from that ... http://kingofthemountains.blogsome.com/2009/09/10/pentax-k-m-a-review/ A regular source of entertainment for pretty much the whole planet, would be an accurate summing up of local newspaper letters pages. Being unable to string a coherent argument together and having political views that Stalin would have considered authoritarian are no barriers to expression in this media. Let’s look ... http://kingofthemountains.blogsome.com/2009/02/20/there-are-some-very-worrying-people-out-there/ I’ve been wandering the excellent Peeron website devoted to Lego for a while now, but only recently got around to looking at the scanned catalogues they have. Specifically, the 1985 one. I was three years old in 1985, and can’t remember much about it beyond a few fragmented mental images of ... http://kingofthemountains.blogsome.com/2009/01/26/nostalgia-applied-to-small-plastic-bricks/ Unless you’ve been living in a tree for the past month or so you’ll probably have noticed the furore over two BBC Radio 2 presenters and an ill-judged prank phone call. The furore is almost entirely a media witch-hunt on the part of tabloid journalists who smelled blood and decided ... http://kingofthemountains.blogsome.com/2008/11/20/the-rise-of-the-self-righteously-indignant/ The above gibberish is, allegedly, CB radio at its finest. However, in over a year of owning such a device I have yet to hear anyone I know using the slang. I was born a bit too late for the great CB craze of the ’80s, so reading about it on ... http://kingofthemountains.blogsome.com/2008/11/18/breaker-breaker-10-4-good-neighbour/ I’ve been watching with interest the debate as to how video games should be classified. At present, there is a voluntary code that most games manufacturers follow. Calls have been made for the BBFC to be given the job of applying age ratings to games. None of the commentators have mentioned ... http://kingofthemountains.blogsome.com/2008/07/31/thats-classified/ I watched the news reports of the Quantas 747 with a hole in it as they were coming in. What’s amusing is the media reaction. We’ve had the usual stuff about "terror at 30000 feet" and "passengers feared for their lives". Problem is, we also have video footage. It doesn’t really ... http://kingofthemountains.blogsome.com/2008/07/27/on-a-conspicous-lack-of-panic/ The headphone socket on my MP3 player has become somewhat unreliable. Now, most people would just bin a four year old device. But I don’t intend to. The battery still holds a charge. The hard disk is still turning quietly. The broken part, and I know this because I’ve managed to ... http://kingofthemountains.blogsome.com/2008/05/29/beating-the-forced-upgrades/