Foreign Perspectives

We didn’t manage to get out to see the rally on Saturday so we’d quite a trek to get to Ansignan to see it on Sunday morning.

As usual in France, all the promotion of the event is in French so there are relatively few foreigners attending what is quite a good rally. The most complete information on the rally is on the French site here which will have the information on the winners etc. in the not too distant future. One interesting consequence of this limitation in the promotion is that Foreign Perspectives achieves top ranking for searches about the rally.

The area over which the rally takes place comprises quite an intricate set of roads so you need to know the area fairly well or have a very good map to work out how to get to the various vantage points. For example, a journey which normally takes about 30 minutes from here ended up taking nearly 90 minutes due to the various diversions for the rally.

Whilst it’s mainly French teams taking part there’s quite a sizeable representation from Spain too.

Quite an interesting event if you’ve over here at the appropriate time next year (probably November 23rd & 24th 2008). Although it’s usually pretty good weather here, the route goes through several rather windy mountain passes so it can be pretty cold if you’re out of the sun.

I read one time on a high profile blog that they recycle old posts if they can’t think of anything new to write on the basis that a) the content of the old post was still valid and b) nobody would notice because they had so many posts on the blog already.

Whilst I don’t do that myself, it isn’t such a copout as you might think on first reading that. Some of my older posts get quite significant amounts of traffic and bringing them to the attention of new subscribers might not be such a bad idea now and again. There’s also the reference nature of some of them and it would probably be useful to do a tidy-up now and again in some cases that takes account of the various comments made.

What do you think? Is it a valid way of moving the blog onwards or is it just a copout?

The prices of digital cameras have had a gentle drop over the last couple of years mainly because they have added features and resolution as otherwise the price drop would have been quite dramatic.

If you just want a general purpose camera then you can get excellent ones around £100 or so these days. Even £30 gets quite a reasonable camera if you choose carefully.

However, the problem that all of these cameras have is that they are relatively slow in taking a photo. At the £30 level you press the button and it can be half a second or more before the image is fully recorded so photos taken with these cameras will generally look a little wavy unless you hold them very still. You definitely can’t photograph moving objects with them.

Move up to £100 and that half second delay drops significantly. There is a delay whilst the camera stores the image but the image is completely captured in one go so you don’t get the wavy lines. No problem with moving objects anymore. Spending more generally gets more megapixels which will let you print larger images.

However, if you try taking a photo of something like a car race you still have problems because of the delay in the camera capturing the image. There won’t be any wavy lines but chances are the car won’t be in the frame completely. If this type of photography is what you like to do then you will probably need to move towards one of the SLR digital cameras which start around £300 or so. There’s quite an overlap in the price range of top end compact digital cameras and SLRs and the two have similar capabilities but the speed of image capture is considerably different and, of course, the SLR cameras let you change the lens.

Typically around the £100 to £200 mark spent on a compact digital camera will get one that will suit most people. If you’re into sports photography you’ll need to take that up to £300 for a digital SLR.

The theory was that we would consider the Christmas break to Valencia as everyones’ present to everyone else.

However, we’re finding that this is one theory that doesn’t hold a whole lot of water. Already the demands for not one but two PSPs are getting incredibly loud and we’ve still a good three weeks to go before the present cut-off time arrives of course.

Buying in Valencia isn’t really an option. In principle, it would be a good idea but realistically we’re not going to be there until late on the Saturday and I don’t fancy our chances competing with Spaniards in the shops on Christmas Eve.

Or, to put it another way, we gotta get the PSP ordered pronto if it’s to be here before Christmas!

Wow. This year has flown in for us alright.

The Open University course, as usual, makes time really fly. Somehow or other I managed to go from being one month ahead in January to a bit of a rush in the final few weeks even though I managed to keep that one month leadtime right through to August. I’m sure that the final course next year will be no different although studying a course in English will be a little peculiar after six years of foreign language courses.

Then there was the three or four day trip to see my parents which turned into a month due to all sorts of administrative hassles that needed sorted out.

And now we’re within four weeks of heading off to Valencia for our Christmas break!