kelseybacon.com

I am positive that I wrote three e-mails today.  I am off to bed now, and I have not one reply.  It is as though it never happened.  What does that mean?  Nothing sinister, I am sure.  Even though the recipients are in three completely separate parts of the United States, two out East, but a Thousand miles apart, and one in the West, only a Thousand miles from the Coast.  Nothing sinister, like the United States fell into the Ocean, leaving only a sliver of land called California hanging there alone in the sea.  Surely not!

Actually, I am off to bed, and while I have not yet heard back from three friends, only two of them reply normally within a day, and that is not predictable, especially as both have been forecast for good weather today!  I hope that both are out enjoying it!  I would be if we had it in England, ever…

Yours,

Mr. Doom  (LOL)

I set up the new photo blog on Blogspot and am going to use it now in place of the Pixelpost blog I WAS going to use.  This should work out better simply because it is someone else’s job to keep the blog up and running, and not mine!  This means of course that I can focus on content and not on operability.  Yay!  So, I moved in copies of the images I had posted so far on the Pixelpost blog and have edited the daylights out of the template, though I am sure I will do more as I post more. 

So the PhotoBlog is there for the pictures, and this one is here for the articles and information.  It is separate, but allows me a place to focus on image content for the sake of visitors to my website.  I think it makes sense, anyway.  Two Red Bull’s later…

So, watch for more articles based around my photography here in the future, and I WILL be including relevant pictures!  In fact, maybe now is the time to really pump this up!  I’d better have loads more Red Bull handy!  Maybe it is time to change the template here too… Stay tuned!

The images in this posting are moved in from the old blog I was keeping on my site, but as that proved to bee too troublesome, They are being put where I know I have a greater chance of reliability.

I have been at work yesterday trying to refresh the website yet again.  It is not about content at this point, but design.  I want fresh, easy to navigate and clean. I got it yesterday on an html editor, and uploaded it.  I left it last night and when I came down this morning the Photoblog did not work anymore.  Was I happy?  No.  Do I know why?  No.  Have I tried to fix it?  Have I failed at that?  Yes to both.  I cannot delete the entire file structure either, so how do I start all over again?  I don’t know.  I am going to have to figure it out and do just that today though.  But first, I think I need to spend a little time away and relax a bit, or a certain computer might get damaged.  With any luck I will have  a repaired photoblog up and running today, and with any real luck, I will find a simpler one.  The one I have been using is nice, but the backend work is a bit daunting.  So I want to stay away from that again because of situations like this one.

On Saturday morning I caught a train from Worcester to Gloucester to take some photos and have a look at the Cathedral and the historic Docks.  The Cathedral’s website says that the Cathedral was started in 1089, and it says that in 1216, nine year old Henry the III was crowned king there.  King Edward II is buried in Gloucester Cathedral, though it was an abbey then, until Henry VIII ordered the abbey surrendered in 1540 and the monastery dissolved.  From January 1541 the newly formed Cathedral became the seat of the Bishop of Gloucester.  Bishop Hooper was burned at the stake here in in 1555 under the orders of Catholic Queen Mary.  Rather than remodelling or rebuilding, the Cathedral was conserved and maintained only during the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries. 

John Stafford Smith was a choirboy in the Cathedral as a child, his father being the organist.  Smith wrote a tune called “Anacreon” which Francis Scott Key set the Star Spangled Banner to during the siege of Baltimore. 

There are many other historical facts about the Cathedral, and interesting people interred there, but in modern times it is known for starring in many scenes as Hogwarts in the “Harry Potter” films.  The Cloisters were used in the Philosopher’s Stone (Sorcerer’s Stone in the USA) and the Chamber of Secrets.  The door to the Gryfindor’s Common Room is also here, as are the columns Harry and Ron hid behind when the troll headed to the girl’s bathroom. 

The Halls of Hogwarts

The Hiding Place from the Troll is under the arches on the right. 

There are other locations as well, but the rest of the photos to follow are views of the historic Cathedral. 

This is the detail of the ceiling of the Cloisters. 

I hope that you have enjoyed the views of one of the beautiful cathedrals of England. 

It is Bank Holiday Monday and we are all just hanging about.  It is May the Fourth, so of course we are all watching Star  Wars as our family SW day.  May the Fourth Be With you!

Katrina being off all this week, I am still able to go spend a day out, but I don’t know where yet, or how to get there.  I would love to do a train journey, but I spent all my allowance this weekend on a Nikon SB-900 flash.  It is a lot of money for one, and I begrudge having to spend it, but I got a great price on a sale.  That will arrive earlier this week with any luck!  Cancel that, I just checked on the website and it is on back-order.  That’s what they get for putting it on sale for less than £300.  Looks like I am free to go out.  Where, where, where?  No money, no flash…  Might be best to dig the bike out of the shed and see where I end up, especially in town! 

Yesterday I found the Nikon SB-900 on the Jessops site for £290.  That is a damned site cheaper than I have found it anyplace else!  It should be here early in the week.  I will be able to tell you how it is!  With this little addition, I am actually able to do a low end wedding job, AT LAST!!!  (By that, I mean I am comfortable that I am equipped well enough not to do a hash job of it!)

Our house sits at an angle rather than at True North.  On the compass, it is approximately 13 degrees.  In more lay terms, it is nearly North, but the front door points just a little to the East.  In even more simple terms, it means that as of TODAY, there is sun shining through the North facing windows of my house and onto my computer monitor.  I am going to be putting up with this for the rest of the summer now!  Actually, it should be only till about the 9th of August since that is the same number of days after the Summer Solstice as we are before it now.  Let’s see if that simplistic calculation works by putting a reminder into Outlook, shall I? 

A new friend has been added to my Facebook account from years gone by.  Andrea Sheppard looked me up and asked if I remembered her.  I did…  I had thought of her not two weeks prior!  We met and sort of got to know each other a very tiny bit when we were kids, but then spent years not talking to each other.  You know how it is to be a kid.  We were in the Broomfield pressure cooker too, so that didn’t help!  Despite the fact we never talked, there was nothing not to like about Andrea.  She was just going her own way.  So, all of a sudden we are kids again, picking up where we left off when I went to her grandma’s house in the fifth or sixth grade.  I am happy.  It is one of those situations where if I could go back and change it, I would.  Now we can, so we are suddenly chatting and getting on like old friends.  Well, life is too short not too… 

Kelsey

I have just made the changes to the size of the text column and the colours of the background and the post titles and blog title.  I was looking for something with a bit more contrast and that captures the feeling of sunset, or that late twilight period a bit more.  I think the blue of the background gets that while the orange brings in the colours of clouds during sunset.  Hopefully the extra text width will translate into more picture space too! 

Today we went to Pat’s house to water the plants, then walked along the canal towpath to come home.  I shot some pictures, all in camera raw format.  I have set up to be able to manipulate the RAW files, so it is high time I use that new found power! 

I have not written in a journal properly for some time now.  I suppose it is because I have just been lazy about it.  But do I want to admit that in a public forum?  Probably not?  So I will have to get out a paper journal and write it down there. 

We are meant to be filing paperwork for visas, but we have just been so tired lately that it has been impossible to fill it out and check for accuracy on these important documents.  On Monday, for example, Kiry had a bad belly and yelled for seven hours or so straight.  I could tell it was nothing serious, but as it turns out, she is a bit of a wimp.  She puked up in the afternoon and that was the end of the yelling.  But it left my nerves in a bit of tatters. 

Every moment I have had free for the last week I have had my camera in my hand.  It has a new lens on it and I have  not been this excited about photography for years.  It is a Nikon 50mm f/1.8.  That 1.8 means everything on this baby!  I can get such shallow depth of field and shoot indoors in very low existing light.  I have been so stunned by this lens (for only £119) that I am now seriously considering another prime.  It is too much to get a telephoto.  But a few primes can add up to what I need and get me a great start on portraits and maybe a wedding or two.  I need money from this so I can afford the good lenses in telephoto.