“Zimbabwe’s MDC party says it will carry out its own investigation into the cause of Friday’s crash in which Morgan Tsvangirai’s wife Susan died. But officials have said nothing to suggest they suspect foul play. US embassy officials say the lorry which collided with Mr Tsvangirai’s car belonged to a partner organisation of the US government aid agency USAID. MDC general-secretary Tendai Biti paid tribute to Mrs Tsvangirai, calling her “a mother to us and to our struggle”. On Saturday afternoon, Mr Tsvangirai, 56, left the Harare clinic where he was treated for injuries sustained in the crash.”

OK everyone if you can please donate as much as you can afford to Comic Relief. Either via the website or via text. Please visit the site above for more info.

Here is my list of favourite photographers on the photo sharing site, Flickr.  Some of these I might have listed on previously entries but these will be their Flickr pages.

And don’t forgot my Flickr photo at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/koltregaskes

1. The daily digest of my diggs appeared only on my feed. So if you were reading my web site you wouldn’t even know about the digg digest.

2. I digg about all sorts of things and not just photography. So having it automated was not the best option for a photography site.

I wanted a very easy process that allowed me to post my relevant diggs as a daily digest to my blog. So this is what I’m trying:

Thanks mainly goes to Liam DelaHunty for this. Liam set up a Yahoo Pipes ‘pipe’ that creates a feed of your diggs with URLs linking directly to the web page you’re digging about (instead of the actual digg page). I’ve cloned Liam’s pipe feed here and now subscribe to them via RSSFWD as a daily digest. What RSSFWD allows you to do is receive any RSS feed you like as an e-mail, ie. directly into your inbox instead of your RSS reader. So what I’ve done is subscribe to my 2 pipe feeds and set them up to be sent to me each day as a daily digest.

I can now copy the contents of these e-mails into a blog entry, easily remove my irrelevant diggs and post them here each day. If this works well I can remove the automated diggs feeds from FeedBurner and continue to post the relevant feeds in the fashion below. My next task is to do the same but not just for digg, ie. find a easy way to produce a link round-up of anything I find.

• A gallery is definitely needed. So far attempts to add a Gallery2 gallery to the WordPress site have failed and for the moment the site only has the not-so-great alternative in the way of the Portfolio pages.
• The dreaded adverts. Yep I’m planning to add some, though I hope to have relevant ads and they will only appear on the blog page. I already have Google Adsense ads on the RSS feed page and the previous blog site, and I’ve used Amazon Associates links to CDs, DVDs and books both here and there.
• Externally I need to reorganise my deviantART store page. I’ve enquired into whether they can bulk change things but apparently this is not possible. It means a tedious job of deleting virtually everything that is already there and added the rest of my portfolio photos. If too tedious then I’ll go elsewhere for my store facilities, but we’ll see. (any suggestions on this can be posted here). I plan to upload the bordered versions only for the moment. I will, however, add a comment to each photo saying that if you would like a non-border version please let me know and I’ll add it.
• Again externally or perhaps as an alternative to above I would like to set-up a stock photography account somewhere. I have a list of companies I’m considering: PhotoShelter, Fotolia, TriggerSnappy.co.uk and iStockPhoto. I have already signed up on PhotographersDirect and awaiting feedback on my first 2 submitted photos (but I’m happy just to been granted an initial account). Tips and advice on stock photography is most welcome.
• Small things to be done such as signature bar (to include my important social media links), business cards, letterheads and more important to all these a better logo. I’m no artist, well no digital painter, and so hope an old artist friend can help me out here.
• What site doesn’t have an FAQ (frequently asked questions)? Mine for a start! I have a hidden page already in place and will add to that when/if questions roll in but I hope to have a page that is linked off to articles, such as how I created the site, how I go about taking photos, etc.
• It’s a long way off, if ever, but I might be tempted to add a forum. The Revolution theme comes with ‘free’ one so it’s very possible. But there is no point until there is (if at all) a large amount of readers. It’s currently marked as a ‘nice-to-have’.
• The biggie is, of course, is the photography. I have tons of photos to process, I have plans to go out to events during the year (June to August being the busy time if I can) and I need to carry on reading through and performing all the articles and tutorials I’ve saved (for photography, Photoshop as well as web site, blogging, marketing, advertising, business and social media). I will continue to write up and blog background details on my portfolio photos, continue to participate on Flickr and my other photo-sharing sites, continue to digg and stumble, and of course continue to learn and enjoy everything along the way.

Expect updates to this list in the future.

I know this is not the most appropriate place to put this but there you go. If anyone is interested in a 32in TV head over to the eBay page below. It’s a seller collects so check the details:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESEX:IT&item=330220742725&_trksid=p3984.cSELL.m315.lVI

I’ll be adding lots more, like mini hi-fi, CDs, games, DVDs, books and all sorts of other goodies.

And these were taken when we were going around:

You could use this as a guide to the City of London. If you click on the thumbnails above and then the link to the Flickr pages I’ve added lots and lots of note boxes to the photos to list what everything is. Anyway the trip…

We went up to London Waterloo for a mid-morning timeslot and walked along the South Bank to the Eye. We got a snack to eat in Country Hall as we were a bit early. We then collected our booklet from the desk and joined the queue. The timeslot didn’t seem to matter, we probably could have queued straight away. It was a fairly long queue but moved steadily. After a security search we stepped into a pod. Now you would have thought it would stop and let you on. But no it continuously spins so we literally did hop on (when it lined up to the floor for a mere few seconds!). About 15 or so people got on and the door closed behind us. Then we were off!

The trip around was steady, you weren’t tumbling around the pod but you wished it lasted a little longer. Of course the best bit was when we were at the highest point. I think you get an idea from the photos what you can see. But I reckon if it was a clear day you could see a whole lot further. The weather wasn’t great but the ride on the Eye was amazing!!

We thoroughly enjoyed the day and recommend it to anyone. Tip though, try and go at the not-so-busy times else get a fast track ticket so you don’t have to queue. Expect to have your bags searched before you get onboard and be prepared for it to be busy as the Eye and the surrounding area are very popular.

I hope to go up on the Eye again one day, perhaps a night trip next time.

More photos are of the London Eye from this trip and others are here.

Well I had an interesting day yesterday (as did many others in the UK). I was working out of the Newbury Business Park [West Berkshire, South England] yesterday (not my usual place of work). It had been raining (and raining *hard*) since I woke up at 5am. News filtered through the office at about 1pm or a little earlier that Vodafone’s HQ [I used to work for the telecoms company] had been evacuated as it was flooded and had lost power. People were being sent home because if they couldn’t get home now they would definitely not be able to later.

So I decided to bugger off once it was likely that everyone would be sent home. I stood at the bus stop for 20mins waiting for the VF shuttle bus but nothing. I could hear police and ambulance sirens going back and forth but couldn’t see the road. I overheard form his phone call that the guy next to me had been there for 40mins so definitely something was wrong as shuttles are normally bang on time. The rain stopped just before 2pm so I chose to walk to the train station and by just walking around the corner I could see why there were no buses – cars, lots of them, not moving at all and all the way down the A4 road! I carried on towards the station, on route to Newbury station a colleague walked by saying Thatcham station was completely under water [the station near my home] so I headed for Newbury station to check if I could get home but found this…

You can just about see the track, so that’s a whole lot of water. Guess what, I had to walk home.

I’ve walked home before with a broken bike and also along the canal (there and back) and normally took an hour and a quarter but this was something else. The A4 was only slightly moving when I returned to it to get home. The side coming from Thatcham was fine but heading towards it was near-static. I decided to go down Lower Way [road] as it’s a shorter route to my home near [Thatcham[ station but this was one of the pics I took while going down it.

Basically most of the lower part of Lower Way was like this. People had to walk up on the hill and on the grass to walk along the road. Cars were being turned back up and onto the A4!! A few cars and a van has been abandoned, stuck in the middle of this. It didn’t help that water was furiously gushing down from the hill in 2 or 3 places and that this was all right next to the sewage works (my soaked-through work shoes went straight in the bin when I got back). I had parts of my journey where I was walking in water well over my ankles.

It didn’t get much better once I got off this road and onto Station Road. This and roads off it were totally water logged and you could see people had just given up and parked their car anywhere they could and walked the rest of their journey. I think ti was 2 hours later (could have been a lot more) by the time I came up to my house. I was fearing the worse, thinking my house was flooded but thankfully it wasn’t and have to admit being one of the lucky ones

I didn’t go down to see but Thatcham station was supposed to be even worse than Newbury station. Going pass it this morning it was OK but the grass area at the front of the pub near it had 2 mini swimming pools in it. Parts of roads in my residential estate were still flooded and you could see a few houses with piles of rubbish from their homes sitting outside their doors.

Wow that was some rainfall!

(both these pics were taken with my N73 mobile phone)

UPDATE:

It was a terrible day and we are now told to expect this on a more regularly basis. I was told that Thatcham was one of the worst hit and aerial shots appeared on the BBC news the following days. When I left Vodafone in October I think the HQ was still not fully operational so that shows have much damage that day made.

Country-wide there are still people living out of caravans or temporary accommodation, flood precautions are still not in place in lots of areas but luckily we have not had a day like that since.

My brother and I went down to Goodwood Festival of Speed 2007 near Chicester for the middle day (Saturday 23rd June 2007). We were up early as we thought we’d either get lost like we normally do or we’d get stuck in major traffic. But the journey down was a doddle (apart from a little tour of a roundabout or two) and it’s was dead quiet. The flyer said to look out for signs to the event but we couldn’t see them though we did work it out in the end and rolled into the field/car park close to the top and thus the entrance. So a good start.

We timed it well as behind us we saw the masses starting to come in. After a quick sort around in the car (Neal eating a bit of left over pizza, yuck, and complaining he was cold) we walked up with tickets in hand. Going through the ticket barrier we walked up (there is a lot of walking up) and thankfully got to a food store where we had ourselves a small meal and drink. As soon as that was down us we carried on walking up and came to the old cars section. Great cars but some were still covered in rain spots, tsch.

Hidden nearby (though you could hear them from miles away) were all the cars getting ready for the day. We had a wander and saw old cars and some spectacular supercars. I’m no car enthusiast but this was great and the noise was fantastic!

It wasn’t long before a few started going out for their first runs, we were up close and personal at this point as they drove by and disappeared down to the start.

Eventually after watching some cars race up the hill, itt all cooled down so we carried on walking, yes you guessed it, up! Here is where all the exhibitions were, as well as a skate/BMX board, mini-concert stand (where all the food stands are – naturally we got a bite to eat, well a hot chocolate drink, and I mean hot) and the F1 paddock (which we somehow completely bypassed all day ). The main showpiece, though, was from Toyota. It was pretty amazing to see the set of cars hung up in the air like that.

As we carried on walking up we caught a few of the cars coming down the hill at incredible speeds. But the giant haystacks that protected us from the cars crashing into us were so high we couldn’t see a great deal. Tip: spending extra on stand tickets might be a good idea, though the tickets in general are very expensive. Saying that, we weren’t sure, but it did look like there was a free-entry stand. Unfortunately we didn’t investigate further.

We didn’t take the option as we went up, but at a certain point you can hop onto a tractor shuttle service that carries about 20 people a time up and down the circuit. It starts from about half way up then takes you all the way to the top where you’ll find loads of food stands and the start/finish point of the forest rally. What we did instead was walk it and found small pockets where we could see the main track (and the supercars) a lot clearer – so was worth the effort. We kept going until we go into the forest… and the rally.

For us this was the highlight of the day by far! I’ve never really watched rally car racing but we came away as massive fans! It was fantastic!! We found and stopped off at several points to watch the cars come down. The speed was amazing, the way they skidded around corners, dirt and rocks flying everywhere and all in the middle of a forest. Loved it!! This is where I captured the best photos of the event, the Sun was creeping out a lot of the time but overall it’s pretty dark though the pics came out well.

Sadly, though we of course didn’t know it at the time, it was one of the last times people saw Colin McRae race. RIP. He saw him fly past us at least twice – very cool!

:

We eventually got up top, had some lunch, be it with a bit of rain, and watched a few cars come through the start and finish gates. One or two of them show-boating at the end there.

Then we had to think about heading down (as that’s where our car was that would get us home). This time we did take the shuttle and it’s one of those more interesting rides in a vehicle. The seats weren’t too comfortable, the track was, of course, dirt track and bumpy but the journey was fairly slow and painless. A different way to see the forest methinks.

We were trying to get down the bottom in time to see the Red Arrows. We did but a few minutes before they were due we had a massive downpour of rain!! – I was so glad Neal brought his big golfing umbrella else we would have been soaked. It went on for several minutes and thought the Red Arrows would be cancelled but amazingly it stopped and actually started to clear. It wasn’t long after that the Red Arrows came out and did their stuff. Great display. Though it was cloudy and a lighter day would have helped see them, having them on a background of white cloud helped a bit with their smoke trails. Another tip, make sure you’re not standing behind a big tree, some of the display was lost as we were low down, we moved up a bit which helped a lot but positioning is key.

We thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience, especially the rally cars. I hope to go again and to see more rally rally. We were planning on going to the Wales World Rally Championship (the final round of the WRC) but we ran out of money by then (late November/early December and so it was canned. As for the FoS, we were there for the middle day, so we didn’t get to see the final rounds. Plus the likes of Lewis Hamilton popped up on the third and final day, so perhaps a 2/3 day ticket is needed next time.

More shots are here.

Goodwood Festival of Speed web site is:
htpp://www.goodwood.co.uk/fos/

I’m sure we’ll be there for the 2008 event.

My brother and I enjoyed the Red Bull Air Race on Sunday 29th July 2007. We were up at the crack of dawn, missed the first train out of Edenbridge so drove to Redhill to get up to London. Tube was fine and we found it to be fairly quiet when we first got there (35k turned up in the end, they say). We had bought standing tickets on the South of the river where we could see the end of the ‘track’ and a big screen showing the whole thing.

The day was good but not great. The racing itself was something else (boy do they get low on the river, one of them was supposed to have been 3-4 metres above the water!!). It was excellent to see the light aircraft race down the Thames, flip over and race back up it while dodging the ‘bollards’ or whatever they call them. But the let downs were the commentators who were an American and an over-the-top extreme sport junky Englishman. They just talked and talked and a lot of the time it was rubbish. The music from their so-called DJ was lousy at best and there were huge delays in between each stage, for example. the 12 pilots went out just before 11am as a sort of time trial to kick out 4 of them. This was 1.5 hours, then came at least an hour break (yes of commentary and very little else). They played clips to explain the race and the history, which was fine, but some of the clips were repeats, e.g. a John Travolta clip was played at least 4 times that we saw. There was no indication of when the next stage was starting and they didn’t really lay out the day well (ie. what was going to happen after the prize-giving at 3pm? No idea but it was supposed to be open till 5pm). OK, there were the Red Devils and 2 different helicopters performing some amazing moves in the breaks but the event needed a lot more going on. And they just didn’t have enough food stands, we queued up for burgers for about 25-30mins!!

It wasn’t too crowded, we found it fairly easy to walk about and the weather was good, luckily the expected rain had come overnight. The location was good, the banks of Greenwich are sloppy or had steps so you could see over people in front of you OK.

£30 for a ticket I suppose is cheap-ish in this day and age and paying an extra £10 for a grand stand seat wouldn’t have made much different but it’s high in my book. Shame also that the mass exodus of people was not well organised by the police at North Greenwich underground station. We went around one side of station to get in, stood there for 10mins before they decided to tell everyone that this is an exit only and we needed to go back round the other side. Hey guys, perhaps put up a sign and communicate that we wouldn’t get in this way. I hope they use these events for training for the Olympics in a few years, boy do they not want to screw that up.

I recommend it for a once-off but I’d probably won’t go again if it comes back to the UK.

Check out the site anyway:
redbullairrace.com

Oh and we had an Englishman in the final but sadly lost, tsch.

More photos are here.

My brother and I went on the first Friday of the Wimbledon tennis championships (6th July 2007). We’ve never been before but it was great and we’re hoping to go next year (centre court here we come ).

I train’ed it up from Thatcham while Neal travelled from Croydon – guess which one of us had to get up at 4am? Eventually we met up at Wimbledon tube station where it started to rain, typical!

Luckily we hopped on a shuttle bus that had just turned up. It started to really chuck it down as the bus filled with people. The bus got under way but because of the stupid one-way system and major traffic jams it took us 20mins to go down the road, up, around and back on the road we started just to turn around! It did get quicker as we got closer and we finally arrived at the grounds – wow! They were excellent!

Off the bus we walked up the hill and got on the end of the already huge queue at about 8:30am. We were handed our “queue ticket” to basically say yep you’re not too late and you’ll definitely be getting in today. 2 hours later we were in the grounds!! Some tips for queuing here:-
- take a snack ‘cos you’re gonna get hungry
- make sure you go to the loo beforehand as it could be ages before you see one and
- don’t buy anything while in the queue as you’ll either be told you cannot take it in when you get to the gates or will find it cheaper inside, ie. the event guide.

We, of course, had a security check then went through the turnstiles surprisingly quickly to buy our tickets. £12.

Then we were inside proper. Bang on time for the gates to open and for a mass of people to hurl to their prime spot near a court. No centre or Court 1 seats for us – you have to be either lucky with the ballot months before the tournament or extremely early at the gates (ie. get out your tent and sleep the overnight) to buy them on the day. For us, it was the side courts.

First things first, we were both very hungry by now so grabbed some snacks and drinks from the canteen then sat and watched all these people pour in. It slowed down eventually so we got up and had a walk around.

It was packed! The walking area along the side courts were pretty narrow and we struggled to get down them a lot of the time. We got to Court 9 (ladies doubles match) but it wasn’t too long before the heavens opened up again and we all ran for cover. It chucked it down, so much so that we had to step 10 metres away from the edge of the covering as it blew in – another tip: have a good umbrella (I got one but as we were leaving – doh) and a light raincoat. As soon as it looked like it was about to stop we quickly got back to Court 9 and got seats near the middle (the net). In hindsight perhaps not the best place, I would have perhaps gone for one of the corners but we couldn’t complain. And I think we were on coaching seats but the coaches didn’t turn up do we didn’t have to move. The players soon came out for warm up then the match started proper. Great match, lots of great pics but the Germans won again, lol.

During the match, my brother said the Williams sisters walked behind us. My brother saw them but I missed them – it does help to be 6 foot plus sometimes.

Then this chap called Andy Roddick popped up on the court behind us. He was training with his coach, Jimmy Connors. At this point everyone switched over. A load of us stood up on our seats to then be shouted at to get down by one of the young stewards. Didn’t matter as by then I had loads of shots. I did get a few more from the corner.

Afterwards, we had another walk around, popping in and out of a couple more matches. We were running out of time as I had a train to catch but I made sure we got up to the ex-Henman Hill. Very cool and massive screen but you could tell there was no British player playing as the crowds were pretty quiet.

Sadly we had to leave, so after a little confusion on what was the exit we got off the grounds, round the corner and eventually back on a bus to Wimbledon station.

But as soon as we thought the day was over we saw Roger Federer doing some sort of promo in a small area in front of the station on a specially-built mini-tennis court! We weren’t 100% certain but it must have been him!

Then guess what, yep it started to rain, so as soon as I had my camera out and snapped a couple of pics, Federer stopped playing, packed up and disappeared. I guess we’ll never know…

A great day out and dreaming of getting Centre Court of Court 1 tickets for 2008 already.

More pics of the day are here.

Wimbledon:
www.wimbledon.org/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Championships,_Wimbledon
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Wimbledon_Championships

The main site is:
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/

There is a news in pictures section here:
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?storyID=1513

And a picture of the day section here (with a link to the archives):
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?storyID=6934

Music reviews are here:
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?menuID=4&subID=1452

Plus a good round-up of the Sunday papers is here, erm, every Sunday :
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?menuID=0&subID=7

You can find all these links easily from the main site and there is even a photography page here.

http://www.viralvideochart.com/

“This page is for Wikipedians to list articles that seem a bit unusual. These articles are valuable contributions to the encyclopedia, but are a bit odd, whimsical, or something you wouldn’t expect to find in Encyclopædia Britannica.”

And here’s the link to the articles themselves:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_articles

http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/

It’s basically a price comparison site for supermarket stores in the UK. All the main guys are there (Tesco, ASDA, Ocado and Sainsburys). You start by picking one supermarket, e..g Tesco, and it then gives you the option to import your favourites (if you already use online shopping with them). From here you can either add items from your favourites list or search and add things for yourself. While you’re picking what you want MySupermarket gives you an overall comparison of price from the other 3 supermarkets and you can see if you could get the same basket full of groceries for cheaper from someone else. When you’re done and go view your basket it then gives you cheaper as well as ‘healthy’ alternatives. Swapping is dead simple then you just select to transfer your shopping basket to your supermarket’s web site, login with them and carry on as normal until you’ve made your purchase. It couldn’t be easier unless it picked the items for you.

I’ve ditched using Tesco and now order via MySupermarket, it’s just so handy. OK, other supermarkets (well ASDA) are going to be cheaper but what I like the most is the alternatives you are given. You don’t get that from the Tesco web site.

The article is mainly inconclusive, the one thing it seems to conclude is the more exposure to modern media the greater the change in our minds, especially at a younger age. It makes us smarter and better at some tasks, for example, more complex pre-planning and problem solving is required with the increasing complexity of media presentations and games and their multiple plots and sophisticated layers, but makes us dumber and worse at others. It also says that we can’t get away from the fact that on screen violence fosters off-screen violence. One media it doesn’t mention is music. Music has been said to alter our minds too (for good and for bad) but this, as well as art, are not within this article, shame:

Games:

Regular computer gamers have improved visual attention and can take in more information. They are better able to pay attention to things further apart or rapidly changing and can switch attention more quickly. They have a reduced brain response to, suggesting people begin to see such imagery as more normal. And young people are more emotional aroused when playing violent videogames (though it doesn’t say what emotion, good or bad). Children learn best by demonstration and then imitation, with rewards for getting things right. By way of interaction this is exactly what video games do.

TV:

People are more educated from watching TV programmes, yes even soap operas teach us things (!). A large study confirms previous small studies that high levels of TV viewing when young may contribute to elevated levels of verbal and physical aggression, difficulties with sleep, obesity and long-term risk for obesity-related health problems from a lack of physical exercise and attention and learning difficulties. Basically the more TV watched as a child the more aggressive acts committed as an adult.

Internet:

The Internet amplifies are natural personality traits. The extroverts get even more social and introverts more isolated but it is hard to assess the effect of the Internet on us as it is so varied. We might become more isolated socially but then become more open within online forums.

You are who you are largely because of the way the brain cells wire up in response to the environment and the things you do. If you change the wiring you will change how we think. Young, developing brains are affected the most. But there is no real way to prove anything. The ideal experiment would be to divide a large number of children into groups, expose the different groups to different types or varying amounts of TV or computer games for several years while keeping all other experiences identical, and then follow their progress in life. This will never be possible or, more importantly, ethical.

The article can be found here, again subscribers can view the whole article.

1. Don’t fear the consequences

Almost every decision we make entails predicting the future, we tend to overestimate the impact of decision outcomes when in fact decisions are less intense and briefer than most people imagine. People think a loss will hurt more than a corresponding gain but this is not always true. Try to find someone who has made the same decision or choice and see how they felt. Don’t always play it safe, the worst might not happen – and if it does you have the psychological resilience to cope.

2. Go with your gut instincts

It stands to reason that the extra information can help you make well-informed decisions, at the same time information overload can be a problem. If the choice you face is highly emotive, your instincts may not serve you well. Basically I think its saying here that too much information, too many choices and too much emotion will cloud your judgement so go with your gut instincts in such situations.

3. Consider your emotions

Our brains store emotional memories of past choices, which we use to inform present decisions but trying to make decisions under the influence of an emotion can seriously affect the outcome, e.g. don’t make a decision when angry. Anger can make us impetuous, selfish and risk-prone. One emotion that seems to help, though, is sadness, you tend to take the time to consider the various alternatives on offer, and end up making the best choices. In relation, many studies show that depressed people have the most realistic take on the world. So it’s not all good being happy.

4. Play the devil’s advocate

It is wrong to already have a favoured option that we want to justify instead or making a decision by rationally weighing up the alternatives. Make a good decision, don’t latch on to facts and figures that support the option your already suspect is the best, actively search for evidence that could prove you wrong, however painful that may be.

5. Keep your eye on the ball

With little to go on, we seem more prone to latch onto irrelevancies and let them sway our judgement, e.g. just because an item in a shop says reduced doesn’t mean to say it’s a good deal.

6. Don’t cry over spilt milk

The more we invest in something the more commitment we feel towards it. Always remind yourself the past is the past and what’s spent is spent, stop throwing good money after bad.

7. Look at it another way

I like this one. The choices we make are irrationally coloured by the way the alternatives are presented. There is a stronger bias towards options that involve gains and vice versa. Again this is down to emotion affecting your decision. Look at your options from more than one angle.

8. Beware social pressure

Never assume the group know best. If you find everyone agreeing, play the contrarian. Beware of situations in which you feel little individual responsibility – that is when you are most likely to make irresponsible choices.

9. Limit your options

Touched on above. Too many options can mean making the wrong decision or even doing nothing al all. More choice makes greater demands on your information-processing skills. You are more likely to make a mistake from a greater range of choice. If you’re out to just find ‘good enough’, a lot of the pressure is off and the task of choosing something in the sea of limitless choice becomes manageable. Again ask someone who’s made the same choice and see how they felt.

10. Have someone else choose

Sometimes relinquishing control of decision making can be more satisfying than making the decision yourself.

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Hardware

I recently bought a Rock Extreme CTX Pro laptop. A laptop has been on my luxury-to-buy list for years and I decided to buy one when a much lower than expected VAT bill came my way one month. It’s amazing but eats up battery power like nobody’s business. It’s to get me away from my monster desktop machine upstairs as it’s basically a desktop replacement machine. I have a 64 bit AMD 3200+ 2GHz machine. Quick tip here, don’t buy anything 64 bit, not until 2008 anyway, bloody hard to get drivers (as its too expensive for developers to develop on) and some software will just point-blank refuse to work on it. My machine has a lush 1.5Gb of RAM and a snazzy nVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT gfx card in it. It’s dog slow at the moment. I’m about to upgrade to a 2GHz 3800+ AMD Athlon 64 Dual Core CPU and up the RAM to a total of 2.5Gb.

I’ve bought a Buffalo NAS external hard drive and put all my data files on it (PST, pictures, music, etc). The purpose? So that I can access all this from my desktop and my laptop without having 2 computer on at once. I can log on to mail and browse my files on my laptop without turning on my desktop machine. All I need is the external drive and my wireless router on and Bob’s your Uncle. But yeah, it’s a little slow. I could get a faster wireless router, which might be on the cards but the new spec for wireless isn’t due to be rectified until 2008/2009! It’s not that bad just a little annoying.

Software

The desktop runs Windows XP Pro x64. Personally I cannot seen any difference performance-wise. The software itself is identical to its 32 bit relative. I was eager to upgrade to Vista but Microsoft had stupidly slapped a huge price tag on it so it’s a big no no. Besides, there are no drivers for 64 bit computers. As for my laptop, that runs Media Centre, sorry Center, or MCE. Not much difference to Pro. It has a nice fluffy front end for Media Center for when you’re watching DVDs or TV but nothing else special.

I will be writing up a large list of all my other essential software (non-photography) so keep an eye out for a post on this.

The Vista Question

So upgrade to Vista? I touched on it above but to me it seems far too expensive unless you buy the OEM version and that means a clean install (no upgrade option normally). I have XP Pro on my desktop and MCE on my laptop and that limits me to the Ultimate version. And at £250+ for the upgrade version alone I can safely say I’ll be going for the OEM editions, especially as I will be buying the new Office (full version again) soon. I’ve been beta testing the Office 2007 version – its’ great btw – and the license will run out very soon.

Ignoring the stupid price tag, for me as a 64 bit desktop user it’s a no brainer as currently Vista x64 doesn’t allow any digitally unsigned device drivers to be installed and so I reckon lot of my kit won’t work with it. By the way, all variations, Ultimate, Home, Basic, as well as 32bit and 64bit versions are bundled with ALL versions of Vista on the same CD/DVD, you’re just buying the license key to unlock the version(s). I won’t have the same problem with my laptop but that is down to software and the x64 edition will refuse to run any 16 bit applications, unlike the 32 bit edition. So a bit iffy there as there are still, surprisingly, some apps running at 16bit and I’m sure some essential software for me is 16 bit. It’s recommend that you have 1Gb of RAM and if your hardware works on XP then it “should” work on Vista (32bit version anyway). Performance is supposed to be the same, so it’s not all bad. It has been said, though, that we should check our security software and find Vista updates first. PC Pro says there shouldn’t be any need to install any third party firewall program, especially if you’re using a router. The spyware software isn’t too bad either (though I’ll stick with Spyware Doctor for now). Still no virus software bundled, shame but I’m happy with ZoneAlarm/Avast. DirectX10 sounds like a good deal, especially for development but there aren’t any games for it yet. Only Crysis is on the horizon and that’s not out until April. Vista does look pretty, but not for me not yet. If I get Vista for my laptop then I’ll write an article for my views.

I’m a regular reader of New Scientist, it’s possibly my favourite magazine – it’s fantastic!  Last week’s was no exception.  One article was particularly interesting and shocked me a little bit.  I discovered that this thing called acetaldehyde (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetaldehyde) is very nasty. Acetaldehyde basically is produced by your liver as it breaks down ethanol and causes, among other things, the infamous “hangover”. But there is so much more to it. If you drink, smoke or have bad dental hygiene read on…

Firstly alcohol is bad for your: -

- brain
- kidneys
- gonads
- skeletal muscle
- liver
- heart
- uterus and
- digestive system

Acetaldehyde, which comes from drinking alcohol is also created:-

- from tobacco smoke
- from exhaust fumes
- in foods, such as fresh bread and dairy products such as yogurts
- naturally in ripe fruit, Sherry, Calvados and coffee (Calvados drinkers are twice as likely to get oesophageal or oral cancer compared to win drinkers)
- by the barrel load from bacteria living in your mouth and guts (luckily the body as a battery of detoxifying enzymes that break 99% of it down, but any acetaldehyde molecules are left over it could cause permanent damage to your inners)
- from bad dental hygiene, which could lead to mouth cancer

It also: -

- attacks DNA
- is partly responsible for cancer and liver disease
- is possibly responsible for Alzheimer’s
- linked to rheumatoid arthritis and heart attacks, colon and rectal cancer
- messes up protein structure and function
- is a 30 times more toxic muscle poison (compared to ethanol)
- possibly linked to breast cancer
- is a human carcinogen (any substance which is an agent directly involved in the promotion of cancer), so can trigger mutations and chromosomal problems

If you are Japanese, Chinese, Korean or Taiwanese then it’s even worse. Such people genetically have faulty detoxifying enzymes, so one drink could cause: -

- facial flushing
- elevated heart rate
- diluted blood vessels

Then: -

- dizziness
- headaches
- nausea
- vomiting

Plus people have a higher rate of head and neck cancer and are at greater risk of cancer of the upper gastrointestinal track and liver.  And don’t think that once your hangover is gone you’re safe, cells don’t forget, it could take 20 to 25 years before the affects are felt.

Apart from that acetaldehyde is fine (!!!)

There is possibly a chewing gum and mouthwash that would help fight acetaldehyde, plus a type of sugar but the moral of the story is you’ve got to keep it clean. Don’t drink or smoke or sit near smokers, clean your teeth regularly and don’t breathe in car fumes.