No gods, no kings, no billionaires
One of the many, many things on my ever-growing to-do list is to process all of our photos from Rome this year. (By “process” I mean digital processing. We have a number of manual steps and Photoshop batch jobs we use on all our digital images to generate medium-sized images and thumbnails, and to sort them into date-indexed folders.) But in the meantime, here’s a quick glimpse of one of my favourites…
We bought a new scanner today, an Epson Perfection 1660. We got it from PC World for £119, which is actually less than you would pay at most web shops. Not that I knew that before I went in to the shop. I went along to PC without having done my on-line reasearch to find out what the state of the scanner market is. A foolish move.
But on the other hand, I’m not a professional photographer or a graphic artist, so my needs are pretty basic. In the end, I chose the Epson for the following reasons:
As expected, the software that comes bundled with the scanner is rubbish, but that’s okay because all I need is the basic drivers. I’ll be using Paint Shop Pro 8 for everything else. (More about PSP 8 some other time. I’ve only started working with it, but already I can tell I’m going to love it. It’s slower than 7, and it’s a bit of a resource hog, but being able to write scripts for it makes up for a lot.)
I’ve been selected for Jury Service at the High Court, starting 25th June.
Apparently, just because I’ve been selected doesn’t mean that I will actually have to sit on a jury. The court calls up a pool of jurors, and then selects individuals from this pool on the day a trial starts. So there’s a chance I’ll just be sitting around, waiting to be called. Or I may end up making a decision about someone’s innocence or guilt. Who knows. It might be interesting.
I was over in Glasgow today, on Philip’s stag party. After some warm-up drinks at the Hogshead pub, we went bowling. I’m blaming my poor scores on a mixture of alcohol and an over-enthusiastic throw in the first frame, which hurt my thumb. After that, my I couldn’t find a comfortable grip any more. The thumb is still swollen and ouchie.
After bowling we went for dinner at TGI Friday’s, where we ate an obscene amount of food at obscene prices. I came home soon afterwards, before they progressed to the strip club. Noisy Rangers supporters were screaming aggressive sectarian football chants all the way back, and smoking. The lone conductor never stood a chance of subduing them, but kudos to her for trying anyway.
Here’s something cool and interesting: Bloggus Caesari. It’s a blog supposedly written by Julius Caesar, giving a day-by-day run-down of his exploits and campaigns. It has been running since 2001:
“I’m heading up to Geneva. One of the Gaul tribes is planning on cutting through Roman territory, in an attempt to go and fight some other tribe. I’m the governor of Gaul now, so I have to stop them… I’m caught a little off guard ? there’s only one legion up there, so I’m trying to raise some more at the same time.
“Well, it looks like I might be away more than I’d like, so I decided to set up this blog. My friends in Rome can keep track of what I’m up to amongst the barbarians..”
Caesar talks in a familiar, modern voice, while describing actual historical events from 2000 years ago:
“Suddenly new enemy troop movements are visible. A force about 60,000 strong has concentrated at the most awkward point in our siegeworks: a hill too large to include in our defences, so that the camp there is built at a slight incline. Simultaneously Commius’ cavalry has lined itself up facing the outer wall, while his infantry has left camp in battle order. And now troops once again pour out of Alesia. I’m looking for a position from which I can view all of these developments. This could be the big one.”
I’ll have to get Abi to give me some idea of the “real” time frame of the blog. It looks like the author has gone to some amazing lengths to provide vivid descriptions and thorough details of how Caesar’s campaigns unfolded. What a fantastic idea, and what a wonderful way to learn more about Roman history! (via Brad DeLong)
A useful selection of Windows Registry tweaks at Registry Explorer.