Expensive drive to office

I usually take the bus to work but yesterday I needed to get home early for my kids’ parents’ evening. I drove into the city centre and parked in a nearby open air car park.

When I returned to my car later that day I found that the rear of my car had been smashed into resulting in the front being shunted into metal railings.

That’s not the end of my expense though, the car park ticket that had been placed on the dashboard had slipped away and on my windscreen was a £50 fine for non payment of parking.

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ALL SOLD: ebay items for sale – cameras, lenses, bike carrier

Canon Digital SLR Camera EOS 300D: www.ebay.co.uk/itm/200893626178
2 Lenses (EF-S 17-85mm IS USM & EF 75-300mm Mk III), 2 Batteries, Remote, 420EX Flash, Mini-Tripod

Canon Digital SLR Camera EOS 500D: www.ebay.co.uk/itm/200893511049
Canon EOS 500D, 15.1MP, Perfect Condition, Digital SLR Camera

Bike Carrier: www.ebay.co.uk/itm/200893298746
AutoMaxi Rider High 3 Bike Carrier

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Phone camera test – 808 vs SGS3 (vs N8)

Having recently moved office I’m now in the fortunate position of having a window seat on the third floor. This gives me a view, albeit unspectacular, across part of Sheffield city towards Dom Valley Stadium (“hi Jess!”) and Meadowhall.

There’s a building a few hundred metres away which obscures a significant part of my view but it also makes an excellent subject for camera tests and comparisons.

Here’s are quick snaps of the building using my main phone, a Nokia 808 PureView, a Samsung Galaxy S3 and my previous main phone from 2010 the a Nokia N8 (in orange).

— Images to be added —

As you can see, the 808 PureView is in another league even when the photo was taken at 2MP. The SGS3’s image was taken at full 8MP resolution and has poor detail to say the least. The N8 image is 12MP and much closer to the 808’s quality.

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Zelda – Ocarina of Time

On the 25th of December 1998 I was given a Nintendo 64 and Zelda – Ocarina of Time.

After a few months and more than sixty hours of gameplay (I’m a thorough adventurer) I believed that gaming nirvana had been achieved.

Yesterday, fourteen years later, I downloaded the same game for the Wii Virtual Console. Nintendo have doubled the graphics resolution (to 640×480) and the power of the Wii (compared to the N64) results in a significantly higher and more consistent frame-rate. The game adventure is identical to the original and it struck home once again how magnificent this game was is.

Had a little trouble at first with progress saving, but soon discovered I’d been pressing B to confirm the save action instead of A.

Using Wii Classic Controller.

It’s also great how the VC version of the game fills a widescreen TV without stretching the image horizontally.

I’ll add pictures later.

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Troglodite Geocache

Found a great Geocache yesterday. The adventure-type ones are the most fun and this one involved muddy trails, climbing, caves and big spiders.

http://coord.info/GC2PQQ5

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GeoCaching with the Leechy Gang!

Having discovered GeoCaching recently we’ve become fans after just one, quite successful, outing.

http://geocaching.com

After a quick sign-up and app download (CacheMe for Nokia phones) off we went to our nearest GeoCache. We homed in on the specified co-ordinates and checked the hints and pictures. After five minutes poking bushes we spotted the cache! The kids were really excited and they soon had the lid off to see what was inside.

Apparently that was an easy one.

We signed the logbook, replaced the cache and checked the map for the next nearest which turned out to be a 5-star difficulty terrain!

We all had great fun for the whole day.

Here are a few photos:

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