I revceived this by email today and thought it was amusing. It’s attributed to John Cleese, I’m not sure how accurate that is but I found it funny all the same. I thought I’d share it here.
ALERTS TO THREATS IN 2012 EUROPE : BY JOHN CLEESE
The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent events in Syria and
have therefore raised their security level from "Miffed" to "Peeved." Soon,
though, security levels may be raised yet again to "Irritated" or even "A
Bit Cross." The English have not been "A Bit Cross" since the blitz in 1940
when tea supplies nearly ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from
"Tiresome" to "A Bloody Nuisance." The last time the British issued a
"Bloody Nuisance" warning level was in 1588, when threatened by the Spanish
Armada.
The Scots have raised their threat level from "Pissed Off" to "Let’s get
the Bastards." They don’t have any other levels. This is the reason they
have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 300 years..
The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror
alert level from "Run" to "Hide." The only two higher levels in France are
"Collaborate" and "Surrender." The rise was precipitated by a recent fire
that destroyed France ‘s white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the
country’s military capability.
Italy has increased the alert level from "Shout Loudly and Excitedly" to
"Elaborate Military Posturing." Two more levels remain: "Ineffective Combat
Operations" and "Change Sides."
The Germans have increased their alert state from "Disdainful Arrogance" to
"Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs." They also have two higher
levels: "Invade a Neighbor" and "Lose."
Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual; the only threat
they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels .
The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy.
These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy
can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.
Australia , meanwhile, has raised its security level from "No worries" to
"She’ll be alright, Mate." Two more escalation levels remain: "Crikey! I
think we’ll need to cancel the barbie this weekend!" and "The barbie is
cancelled." So far no situation has ever warranted use of the last final
escalation level.
John Cleese – British writer, actor and tall person
A final thought -" Greece is collapsing, the Iranians are getting
aggressive, and Rome is in disarray. Welcome back to 430 BC."
Well that’s the first week back at work out of the way after my run of working every other week through March. I don’t have any more time booked off now until early June and that seems an awfully long way off!
As always seems to be the case, the weekend is over all too soon and it’s back to work tomorrow. We had a quite productive weekend, getting the house back in order now Kay’s stuff is moving back and getting more of it moved over from the other house. The majority of stuff is back now with just a few of the larger items that require a van to move over.
As usual on Sundays we were out shooting. This week was a trip down to Droitwich to shoot at Severn Valley. Its quite a long journey for us, about one hundred miles each way but in my opinion its worth it. Severn Valley have a great wood which apparently used to be a Japanese water garden at some point in the past. I’m not sure how much truth there is to that but that’s what I was told this weekend.
As for the shoot, once again it was a great course which I thoroughly enjoyed. My only slight criticism, if it is even a criticism, would be a shot where one can score double points by hitting a target from a “gold” peg. I don’t really like this kind of thing as basically the whole days shooting comes down to one lucky shot (If a particular person manages to hit the target"). Thankfully yesterday, none of the top 3 in my class actually hit the lucky shot so in my view the result was a fair reflection on the days competition.
I shot fairly well in the morning, averaging 16.5 points per target for the first 20 targets. As has become the norm, this dropped off in the afternoon although some of it was down to a more difficult set of targets, not just the tiredness I get from being over-bowed although that did manifest itself toward the end of the day. I did manage to put up just enough points to scrape a second place, although I only scraped it on spots! Still, second is second and I was quite pleased with the result considering how close I was to first place and who I beat in to third. I still can’t wait for the new bow to be ready though.
Speaking of new bows, I have been loaned a lighter weight flatbow for next weekends shoot. Hopefully this will give me a better idea of how much weight I want to drop for my new bow. Just hope I can get some arrows to come out of it fairly well. Having said that, I’m not expecting much from next weeks shoot, other than to be able to comfortably draw the bow for the whole course.
I really need to remember to update this blog more often, I’ve just noticed it’s nearly 6 months since my last update. Time just seems to pass so quickly these days. I must be getting old.
After my recent spell of working one week on and one week off I’m now back to working full time. I hate the first week back after any length of time off, really takes it out of me. Thankfully, it’s still quite busy at the office so there’s plenty to keep me occupied and stop the time dragging. I’ll still be glad when this week is over though!
As for my time off, I didn’t really achieve as much as I’d hoped to. The first week was pretty much spent winding down from work. I made it out a couple of times with my camera but generally just spent the week lounging around. Well, what are holidays for?
The second week was mainly spent getting the house ready for the yearly Landlord inspection. While this normally doesn’t take much time, it took a bit longer this year. The main reason for this was the damage caused by the litter of puppies that arrived just before Christmas. Thankfully, all but one of the puppies have now been re-homed but the trail of destruction left behind was quite extensive.
Last week was the final week of my extended holiday period. The plan was to get all Kay’s stuff moved back in to the house. What I didn’t count on was coming down with a particularly bad bout of flu. I spend most of Tuesday in bed having very odd dreams and generally hoping to die. The rest of the week wasn’t quite that bad but by no means was I up to doing much.
We did get a fair bit of stuff moved back to the house, but not as much as we’d hoped so there’s still a fair bit to move, not to mention the cleaning before we can hand the house back over. Hopefully once that’s done I can actually spend some time relaxing.
Still, only 6 weeks after this one and I’ve got another week off!
It became apparent at the Scottish Champs this year that what I suspected about being over-bowed with my flatbow was in fact the case.
I was pretty happy with my performance on the Saturday. I finished the 36 target 3D course with a score 622, averaging out at 17.2 points a target which is pretty good for a flatbow, particularly one shot by me! On the second day I started out a bit shaky, but after eighteen targets was still averaging a pretty respectable 16.1 points per target (pretty happy with that on paper face targets). This all went down hill for the last eighteen targets. I could feel myself starting to struggle to hold my anchor point and realised I was getting tired. My average started to drop and on the last half of the course I could only manage 13.5 points per target which 
is much less than I consider acceptable.
Despite my collapse in the afternoon of day 2, I still managed to finish a personal best 5th place, albeit 100 points off the pace over the two days.
I was off work the week after the Scottish Champs, so I decided to get in touch with Andy Soars and put the wheels in motion to get a new bow made. After a trip down to his workshop to get my bow weighed and my draw measured we got most of the specifications for my new bow sorted, including woods, limbs and grip. I’ve gone for another Zeta, this time the Zeta C (with carbon) as I love the Zeta Mk2 I currently shoot. I just need to make a decision on how much draw weight to drop off the new bow. I have until the beginning of June to figure that out and hopefully Andy will have completed the new bow by the beginning of July. I’m looking forward to it!
As I got another free ticket this year, I decided to make another trip to the Focus on Imaging show at the NEC. I think the fact that I had some spare cash and was looking to buy a couple of lenses might also have had something to do with the decision to make the trip down to Birmingham.
The show itself was pretty much the same as the last two years with most people clamouring around the Canon and Nikon stands. Since Nikon had just launched the D800 I decided to queue up to get my hands on it. Have to say, apart from the sensor specs it was pretty uninspiring, the sample output was impressive but this is to be expected from a 36mp sensor.
I had a wander around most of the trade stands to see if there were any bargains to be had but to be honest, most of the prices were only a little below what I can find stuff on the internet for. As I mentioned earlier, I was in the market for a couple of new lenses and was hoping to save some cash buying them at the show. Unfortunately, the savings were minimal. I was after a Sigma 150-500mm telephoto and Sigma 10-20mm wide angle lens. The first I managed to find at about a £25 saving on the cheapest web price. The wide angle lens I could find any cheaper than an online retailer.
After a quick look around at the new tripod ranges and some soft boxes I decided to buy the telephoto lens from Jacobs and beat a retreat from the NEC. On the whole I was pretty disappointed with the show this year. I’m not sure if I’ll bother making the journey next year.
I purchased this bag earlier in the year when it became apparent that the current back pack I was using (the lowepro fastpack 200) was no longer big enough to carry all the lenses I like to use on a regular basis.
The fastpack was my first camera back pack and I purchased it when I was mainly using my Sigma 18-250mm and my Tamron 90mm macro lens. These two lenses along with my Nikon D40 fitted easily along with the other day to day accessories I usually carry around. When I added the Tamron 17-50mm and Nikon 70-300mm to my lens collection it became clear I needed a bag with a little more space.
As I started looking for a replacement I considered what I needed from a bag. I didn’t need a large bag for all of my kit. I already own a Tamrac Expedition 6x if I’m carrying a lot of kit. I did consider a straight upgrade for the fastpack 250 or 300 but one of the things I didn’t like about the fastpack was the fact I needed to take it off to get access to the camera or additional lenses. After a bit of research I decided to get the Slingshot. I had seen the smaller slingshot previously and like the idea of being able to simply slid the bag around on my shoulder and get my camera or spare lenses without having to take the bag off completely.
When it arrived it took some time messing around with the internal dividers to get them arranged in such a way that would accommodate the combination of camera and lenses I wanted to carry. Despite some of the user reviews stating that the bag would hold a mediam DSLR with a 300mm lens. I tried it with my D7000 and the Nikon 70-300mm zoom lens attached and found that the width of the bag wasn’t quite sufficient. I could however get my D7000 with a 17-50mm attached along with my Nikon 70-300mm, Tamron 90mm and Sigma 18-250mm all in the bottom section of the bag.
The top section of the bag is big enough to hold a filter case, charger, compact camera or any number of other accessories you need to carry with you. There is also a front pouch to hold spare batteries and cables along with two SD card pockets in the inside of the main flap. On the side of the bag there is a strap and foot pocket to attach a small/medium tripod.
When loaded with my kit, this bag actually gets quite heavy at around 10kg. Up until this last weekend, I hadn’t carried this pack around for any extended period of time. Over the weekend I’ve carried this pack for 3 days on average for about 6 hours of the day. I can honestly say it’s one of the most comfortable packs I’ve used. The main should strap is very well padded and when the 3 point strap is clipped in to place, the pack stays securely in place and distributes the weight evenly over your back and shoulders.
If you need a new camera day pack, I would highly recommend this one.
I had the misfortune to be in London on a Cisco training course a few weeks ago and had a little spare time in the evenings. I decided to get out and about and take a few photographs around the Victoria Embankment area. Luckily the weather was pretty good while we were there so the light in the evening made for some good dusk/sunset photographs.
Below are a few of the photographs I took. There are more in the gallery.
With all the stuff I’ve got going on lately I haven’t had much time to get my camera out, so I decided to make some time last Saturday.
The sun was shining and the garden was full of interesting stuff. After a while of not taking photographs I was surprised by how many things I though I could make an interesting image out of. There was also no shortage of insects around.
There are a few thumbnails below, full size versions are available in the gallery.
bee, butterfly, flower, garden, photography
This year will be my third South West challenge and my first shooting AFB. I have to say, I’m really looking forward to this one. Having completed both of the previous years, I know know what to expect and I don’t find the idea so daunting. The only thing I’m worried about this year is being able to complete the whole eight days with my flatbow. I’ve gone up a fair amount of poundage from the recurve I shot last year and sometimes find myself struggling at the end of a two day shoot so I need to make sure I keep the energy levels up this year and stay hydrated. I’ll probably take the recurve as a backup anyway.
For those of you outside the archery world that read this and have no clue what I’m babbling about, I’ll give you an overview of the South West Challenge.
The South West Challenge is eight days of field archery spread out over a nine day period. You basically shoot two two day competitions, have a day off and then shoot another two two day competitions. These competitions are put on by four different archery clubs based around the Devon/Cornwall area. For those that don’t know, Devon isn’t a particularly flat area so not only do you need to be able to shoot for eight days, you also need to make it over the sometimes difficult terrain of the courses. To make it just that bit more tiring, we will also be sleeping in a tent the whole time!
The map below shows the location of the courses and the places we will be staying
The course this year are being put on by:
- Day 1 & 2 : Elmtree Archers
- Day 3 & 4 : Tavistock Company of Archers
- Day 5 & 6 : Ballands Bowmen
- Day 7 & 8 : Westcombe Field Archers
I’ll try to post some updates and pictures during the week but I won’t promise anything.
2011, Challenge, Devon, Field Archery, NFAS, South West
I’ve been moving my websites around servers recently to try and improve performance and response times. I’ve also enabled some reporting on the access log files to try and find out what particular stuff you guys are accessing. There were a couple of errors in those logs pointing to some wav files I had on the old version of my website. I’d forgotten about these and proceeded to dig them out. After listening to them yesterday they still make me laugh. If you need a laugh, go ahead and give them a listen, they never fail to cheer me up. Enjoy.
Armageddon
Things Yoda might say in bed
