bitsofbobs

Been using my dads old Pentax k1000 camera over past few weeks. He gave it to me years ago (he always like to remind me how I broke it in 1986 and he had to buy a new body for it), I even did a proper photography course with it, but am a bit rusty on it now. I loaded it with some ilford black and white 400 film. It’s pretty cheap to buy and always available at about £4 a roll for 36 exp. The film cost about £6 to get developed and printed on small 6×4. Got some great shots with it though. Go look on flickr. Also for all the geeks here’s more info on the camera.

What a weekend. A friend of mine I used to work with in Aberdeen came up from London to visit for the weekend. The plan was simple. “whatever”. James arrived on friday night and I was choked full of manflu, and he was feeling worse for wear after travelling 500 miles at 100 mph backwards. So friday night was cup of tea banter. Woke up on Saturday relatively early start and a massive fry up. The mission head to Central station and see what happens. Next train + ferry to place that holds fun potential…Arran. Awesome. Quickly on train and before we knew it on a particularly cold and wet ferry over to Arran. Uh oh. Somehow as soon as we stepped off the ferry there was instant sunshine and blue skies. Brilliant. We pottered around Brodick for a while before heading to the tourist information centre to find out what was going on. Turns out we arrived in the middle of a walking festival…apparently you can have a festival of walking. It was here we found out the last ferry home was at 1920…fail. That didn’t leave much time. The woman in the tourism office told us that accomadation on the island was scarce but she pulled a favour and got us a family room over in blackwaterfoot on the west of the Island. Awesome. I love random Adventure. Bit of time to kill before bus arrived more photo taking on the beach…here, disaster. My digital camera battery died. Noooooooooooooooooo (think platoon) bought the battery charger but not the power cable…fail. From here I asked every shop if they had the cable, was running out of places fast. Last stop, Books and crafts, to be more precise a helpful old man at the back of the shop. They didn’t actually sell any of these cables but he did have the cable minus plug and gave me a plug. Brilliant. Bus through the middle of Arran to blackwaterfoot where we were loaned a screwdriver to make my battery charger. We were in business. Brilliant.

Blackwaterfoot itself was a lovely wee place, a massive strecth of beach that lead to kings caves, A massive Cave carved out by the sea. Worth a look with A relatively challenging walk (which could, as we found out, be avoided). A full day of photography and walking in the sunshine finished with a roast dinner and a pint.

Up bright and early for our breakfast and a bit of banter with the other guests. Todays mission. The goatfell, Arrans tallest peak. Just a little under munro height. We headed off and caught the bus that took us round the north of the Island via Lochranza which looked lovely. More banter on the bus with a travelling couple also keen on Photography doing the same walk as us. We arrived in Corrie on the east of the Island to start the walk. The path up was amazing. All the stones had been arranged to the point where it was almost cobbled to the summit. Good banter all the way up from travelling couple pierro (italian studying in sterling) and Jackie (Australian living in London) The last 300m were a killer. Massive steep steps and lots of pulling up. Took about 3 hrs to hit the summit from Corrie.

The views from the top were amazing. Best day for it. Clear skies, could even see northern Ireland. Strange as a few others from work were climbing around Arrocher and were caught in drizzle and poor visability…nae luck. From the top we set off back to the ferry. A 6 mile walk back to Brodick. Nice wee walk back over streams, through forrest and finally back onto beach all in a t-shirt. Great stuff. One last visit to make. Back to the books and craft shop to return the power cable (assembled of course) just incase someone else gets caught out. Ferry back. Perfect timing for a perfectly random weekend of “whatever”. Shattered now.

I love doodling. Following some recent doodling work at work, a workmate asked for a doodle for his facebook group, Fathers for golf. That was the brief. The payment: A case of beer and a packet of haribo star mix. Awesome. Feel free to drop me an email or leave a comment if you want any artwork doodled. I loves it!

This weekend I’ve been in Dundee. Been ages since I last made it to christerrys domain. I arrived on Friday we just sat and drank played computer games. But who knew Saturday was going to be a scorcher. Up bright and early and straight out the door to Broughty ferry for breakfast. A nice little cafe called toast. Sat outside and ate. Free coffee refils…jackpot. From here we still didn’t really have a plan what to do. Already by the sea it was decided we had to go fly a kite. TO MY AMAZEMENT CHRISTERRY HAS NEVER FLOWN A KITE. so it was settled. Off to toymaster for a £3 winnie the poo kite…YAS! It was here we noticed quite alot of air traffic and old planes flying about. RAF leuchers was on not far down the road. Let’s do it. Nice scenic coastal route to Leuchers. Bit of traffic not too bad though. Got to the end of the line where they were directing into RAF leuchers. £20 to get in…”turn round christerry, turn round!” Just before this turn off was another one to a coastal path. JACKPOT Abig empty field to get parked near with hay bales fresh for hungover sleeping and plane watching.

There wasn’t much we didn’t see (other than maybe sleeping for a bit, hungover) We decided pretty quick planes with propellers were rubbish but jets were awesome. Was an amazing day of sunshine and were both satisfied with our random field over beach choice. It was still pretty early in the day and we decided that we’d pretty much seen all there was to see, then the red arrows turn up they’re always good. Seen them and headed back for more adventure. next stop 3 miles down the road tentsmuir.

What a place this was. A big massive stretch of beautiful beach off a massive big forrest. £1 to park. OOfff. Straight in the sea, still big planes flying over. Pretty cool. Eventually we headed off to meet a late running Sam before heading into Dundee bit tipsy. Dancing until silly AM then finally returning home only to switch all the lights off, crawl into a sleeping bags the wrong way and race down 2 flights of stairs. I won. Fundee

Another great/potentially useless camera app for the Iphone, ZxCam. I love this I had a zx spectrum myself and always remember waiting for those painfull first few minutes for your game to load the loading graphics, and being in awe of the seven colours with 2 levels of brightness + black capabilities. Now some boffin has made a free app for your Iphone that takes your picture then allows you to convert it to those same spectrum graphics. I love it. It’s pretty basic…but so was my spectrum. Find it here.

I have been a busy bunny of late. So decided to take some time out with a bit of arts and crafts. I picked up a packet of eberhardFaber efaplast light (phew) I didn’t realise at the time they did a range of modelling clay. This stuff is cool though, it has the consistency of icing and is really light. The best thing about it is the fact it doesn’t really dry solid it still maintains a slight spongyness so you have ages to model it. Also you can use water to smooth out any cracks or bumps but to be honest it didn’t really crack. I’ve used air drying clay before which I found really dry and cracked easily, mostly when you were nearly finished. So this is perfect for just messing around with.

Always with my doodles I end up drawing squirms they’re my favourite, so this was an exercise to get them 2d to 3d. I’m really happy with how it worked out. I used just any old paints I had lying around (there’s lots of arts and craft stuff lying around, hidden behind the sofa) so a big tube of white gouache and some crappy water colours to mix in. This stuff was great fun and didn’t make any mess making it perfect for just playing about, even if you don’t know what you’re doing. Big tick, and I’m off to try some of the other products.