Blog 55

A couple of weeks ago I received a panic phone call from S, eldest grandson. His best friend J's laptop was not functioning, it was presenting the dreaded "Blue Screen of Death" read here what this dreaded screen is.

The plea "Granddad can you have a look at the laptop" the concern was that some important projects were stored there and the second plea was can you get it, the laptop, going again so the data can be rescued.

The first job was to get the hard disc drive out of the laptop, this was easily done on this one by removing a blanking plate on the underside of the computer, I placed the drive in a caddy then attached it via USB cable to M's desktop computer which I was rebuilding at the time. The desktop computer wouldn't recognise the disc and during this operation M's computer froze. Not good. Dig out the BootPE disc. Anyway to foreshorten a long story the data was recovered, over 4GB which was written to DVD. The disc was formatted and placed back into the laptop.

Grandson took over at the point and installed Windows XP and copied the data back on to the laptop.

The reason for the photograph is that J and his parents were so grateful for what I and S had done they rewarded me with these items. I believe S chose chocolate. I was initially asked what is my favourite chocolate and since I no longer eat chocolate I suggested that they don't buy anything. However push came to shove and I chose these two items.

The text inside the card written by J "To S's Grandad, thank you for fixing my laptop I am very grateful. From J (S's friend). P.S. I hope you like the sweets."

Blog 54

Collected grandson B yesterday to come to stay for a couple of nights. On the way from his home we called into a local town to collect bread from the Birds shop and I asked him to choose his favourite cake, this is it shown in the photograph on a plate ready to be eaten. Known locally as an "Elephant's Foot" correctly it is a chocolate cream puff. I challenged him to eat it without getting any of the cream on his nose, he managed to eat is successfully. Well done B.

Birds bakery website here

Blog 53

Found these two discarded feathers on my walk this morning, probably from a Blackbird. I thought they would make a nice table top shot, I used the anglepoise lamp and set the camera white balance to tungsten, then created the vignette in Photoshop.

Blog 52

Proprietor of the gents outfitter's shop at the Black Country "Living" Museum.

Blog 51

A visit to the Black Country "Living" Museum on Wednesday 21st July 2010, with friends from Derby City Photographic Club, proved to be a truly fascinating visit. Lots to see and photograph especially the shopkeepers and other people around the site in their living history clothing.

The photograph shown above is inside the decorator supply shop storeroom, the after and before shots are indicative that I used a Nikkor 10.5mm fish-eye lens, then my favourite photo editing program corrected the distortion. The final image was the result of using seven bracketed shots then I used photo editing software to create a High Dynamic Range Image (HDRI).

The Back Country "Living" Museum website is here

Blog 50

It may be a few years old, however it was very amenable to being upgraded to Windows 7. No problems encountered at all.
M, O and J will no doubt get many hours of pleasure using it. Also O will not now have cause for Windows 7 envy!!!

Blog 49

I just love the Gerbera family of flowers, standing proud and with such vibrant colour.
Taken at the table top photography evening at Derby City Photographic Club on Tuesday 13th July 2010.

Blog 48

I suppose I have been in love with this guy since the original Toy Story, he was given to me by a friend and he was in my camera bag whilst my panel of photographs were being assessed for the LRPS distinction. So Buzz Lightyear you brought me luck on that day.

"To Infinity and Beyond"

Blog 47

A visit to Kedleston Hall on Tuesday 6th July and taking the long walk path was a revelation. Lots of butterflies in a feeding frenzy, as well as lots of orchids, I have never seen them growing so close together.

Butterflies include Gatekeeper, Meadow Brown, Large Skipper, Speckled Wood, Ringlet.