Blog has moved

My blog has now moved! WordPress offer great free hosting but for me I wanted more control over what I can do with it, and I just love Google Analytics, so I’ve moved to non-WordPress hosting.

The new web address is mattjnewman.com.

Camera filters

If you don’t already know I’m quite the photography buff. I’ve experimented with lenses, I’ve experimented with tripods, but until the other day I’d never experimented with filters.

I’d read up a little on filters but couldn’t really see the point in them. The UV one didn’t seem to do much other than protect the lens, but I felt that protecting the lens is easy enough if you simply take care of it. I also didn’t see the point in the red, yellow and blue filters. They seemed nothing but a waste of money, and some of them are very expensive.

My brother-in-law is really into his filters and he’d mentioned an infrared (IR) filter he’d got for Christmas from his wife (my sister) and that it produced some outstanding photographs. Admittedly I didn’t give IR filters much thought after he told me, but when I arrived at theirs in Ireland last Wednesday he gave me an IR filter he’d picked up dirt cheap on eBay that he later found out didn’t fit his Canon lens but that did fit my Nikon D40’s lens. The morning after I gave it a try and after a little tweaking I found it took some truly awesome photographs.

First a little on how they work…

IR filters work by blocking the visible light and allowing only the near-infrared light above their designated wavelengths to pass through the filter into the lens. It’s something the human eye cannot see as it is in the band of the electromagnetic spectrum at 700-1200 nm (0.7-1.2µ) wavelengths. When most people think of infrared they think of thermal imaging, but that’s not the infrared my camera’s filter deals with.

Below is an example of an infrared photograph I’ve taken.

The photo has been put through Adobe Photoshop to turn it monochrome, but the rest is the camera and the filter at work. It looks like it’s been snowing, but in reality it hasn’t. The sky also looks very dark, but in reality it wasn’t. What the filter did was only let in near-infra red light and blocked all visible light, and for reasons I’m not too sure of foliage shows up as if it’s covered in snow. It’s possible to get the sky to show up a vivid blue but I haven’t figured it out yet. It may require the more expensive Hoya R72 IR filter, only time will tell.

The below photo is the same concept but with a couple of TV remotes.

The lights on the left of the photo were from a DVD remote and the lights on the right were from a Sky+ remote. The photo was taken over 20 seconds and I was moving the remotes up and down and close and far away from the camera.

IR filters are a cheap way to really shake up your photography. My lens was free courtesy of my brother-in-law, but they can be had for less than a tenner on eBay. The Hoya R72 that I’m after costs £20 from Amazon, which is a bargain given what it can do to your photos.

Now I’ve caught the filter bug I’ve been having a look at a few other filters I’d like to get my paws on. First there’s the polarising filter, which cuts out reflections from shiny surfaces (such as windows, cars, water etc) and darkens the sky and costs £25 for a Hoya Circular Polarising filter from Amazon. I’d also like to get the Hoya SHMC PRO-1 Digital UV filter which costs 21 from Amazon and absorbs the UV rays which often make outdoor photographs appear hazy and indistinct, as well as protecting the lens from damage.

So for less than £50 it’s possible to really change the way your photographs look. If you’re into your photography and you have a DSLR camera (or SLR if you’re old school) I strongly urge you to at least check out the IR filter.

9 Things I love about Ireland

1.) The hospitality. From what I’ve found in (fairly) rural Ireland is whenever a neighbour, friend or relative pops round to say hello they bring food or drink with them. Sometimes it’s just a packet of biscuits, but it’s a lovely gesture that I don’t think I’ve ever seen in the UK.

2.) The water, and the fact it’s free. I didn’t like the water so much when it was polluted for ages in Galway, but still.

3.) The roads. I love driving on Irish roads. They’re lumpy, bumpy, rough and wild. In winter they use salt for seasoning, not gritting, and street lights are quite the rarity out in the sticks. Then there’s the speed limits that are in kilometres per hour – rural roads are 100 km/h and driving on them tricks me into thinking I’m going awesomely fast when I’m only really doing 62 mph. Doing 120 km/h (75 mph) on the new motorways feels like I’m doing a breakneck speed, when it’s almost no different to what I do on UK motorways. Maybe because the pace of life here is so much slower and more relaxed than in the UK that 75 mph feels absurdly quick.

4.) The accent. Oh how I love it. It’s classed as the world’s sexiest for a reason.

5.) The scenery is a mixture of stunning, breathtaking, boring and grim. But the countryside here can look both barren, grim and breathtaking all at once. Just look at the photo below. Click to see a bigger version.

6.) The euro. It’s a fantastic currency that the UK will have soon enough.

7.) Supermac’s. Supermac’s is a fast food chain like McDonalds but that are exclusive to Ireland and Northern Ireland. They sell almost every type of fast food going ranging from standard burgers to the Philly Cheesesteak to pizza to sausage and chips. Their Philly Cheesesteak with sweet chili sauce is quite possibly the nicest thing I have ever tasted.

8.) The Saw Doctors. The Saw Doctors are an Irish folk rock band from Tuam in County Galway who are one of the greatest bands in the world. You may not have heard of them, but their music is stunning. One of their best songs – “N17” (about the N17 road from Collooney in County Sligo to Galway) is a road I had long wanted to drive whilst listening to the song – an achievement I managed last November on the N17 to Ireland West Airport Knock. Win!

9.) Everyone seems to be really laid back and relaxed. As an Englishman who has driven on Irish roads it’s interesting to get stuck behind someone going slow because I can get very irate very quickly. A lot of rural Irish roads have these sort of hard shoulders to move over to so faster moving traffic can overtake, but many don’t use them. Instead they just go slow. Massive queues can form and nobody seems to care, except the irate Englishman.

Update – I forgot a tenth… bread! Bread in Ireland is quite simply the best bread I have ever tasted. It’s so soft and makes perfect sandwiches.

Saint Patrick’s Day

I go to Ireland a couple of times a year, and for a while now I had wanted to experience Saint Patrick’s Day in Ireland. Being an Englishman I don’t usually celebrate Saint George’s Day, what with the English having a tendency to shun such a day.

So my experience of Saint Patrick’s Day a few days ago in a small town in County Mayo in Ireland was very much a pleasant surprise. About 2,000 or so people live in this town and I swear almost everyone turned out to see the parade through the town. It was a fantastic sight that can be found every Saint Patrick’s Day in every village, town and city across the entire country. The entire place shuts down for it.

The above photo was pretty much the front of the parade. What followed was a seemingly endless stream of school children marching, local companies with large floats with the weirdest and most wonderful themes, and the odd hopelessly lost driver who accidentally turned onto the parade route.

Everyone was out in force – Irish, English, Polish, Ukrainian, and they all looked to be having a fantastic time. Even the Irish Travelling community were there to see the parade.

The above photo was one of the oddest floats I’ve ever seen. A bunch of builders putting up a wall with one sign saying “2 more years will surely kill us” and another saying “we get the job done eventually”.

It was a delightful experience and I just wish we had the same thing in England. It’d be so nice to see entire villages and towns turn out for a Saint George’s Day parade, but we don’t even get the day off work.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow I will blog about my first ever Saint Patrick’s Day in Ireland. It was rather good. Right now I’m watching Lost whilst drinking a bottle of Carlsberg Export and eating chocolate cake.

On board

I’m currently typing this about 32,000 ft in the air on board a Boeing 737 just over Dublin. Can’t post this blogpost up here though but I did manage to take a photo of the snow-capped Snowdonia. Well I will if I can figure out how to attach it.

It’s a shame I can’t see anything out of the windows because of cloud cover, but I hope to get a video once the cloud clears.

It also costs £6.50 for a ‘hot meal’ and a beer, which is pretty steep. I best get used to such prices considering I’ll be in the eurozone in a few minutes. Going to have a nice wee pint of Guinness at the airport when I arrive. Should nicely clear out my bank account.

Airports

I’m currently sat waiting to board my flight to Ireland at Manchester Airport and I’ve made a few observations.

1.) It’s stupidly warm in departures. Do they do this on purpose? I was warm enough to spend £1.65 on a bottle of Coke. It doesn’t help that the sun is streaming through the large windows, but whenever I’ve been here it’s been uncomfortably warm inside no matter what the weather is outside.

2.) The police look weird. They look like normal police at first glance, but then the unmistakable sight of their submachine guns is both unnerving and reassuring. It’s not a common sight where I come from, in fact it’s something I’ve never seen anywhere but an airport. They’re reassuring because it shows they’re ready to put down terrorist scum, but they’re unnerving because their fingers were on the trigger of their guns. Just waiting to unleash fury.

3.) Why must I get here two hours prior to departure? It took me a few minutes to check in and five minutes to get through security. I’ve been bored waiting around for half an hour already and I’ve got another hour to wait.

I’m not keen on flying so I just want to be in Ireland already!

Christopher Chope – you’re a disgrace

Last Friday a landmark move to protect the world’s poorest countries from ‘vulture funds’ was blocked by a lone Tory MP – Christopher Chope.

A ‘vulture fund’ is a name given to investment companies who buy up defaulted third-world debt and sue for immediate repayment. Put mildly they’re not very nice companies. In fact they’re pretty evil.

And now these ‘vulture funds’ have a supporter – Christopher Chope. So if you are a third-world country and you’re being sued by an investment firm for immediate repayment of debt you know who you can pin the blame on. He claims the Commons hadn’t had enough time to debate the bill, but that’s a load of bollocks. Nobody else had any objections and there were other Tories present!

Come on Christchurch, kick this disgrace of an MP to the kerb and elect someone who doesn’t want to screw the poorest countries in the world out of every penny they have.

Reading online comments may cause irreparable damage to your faith in humanity

I have a little motto when it comes to participating in online discussions in forums –

Warning: Reading online forums may cause irreparable damage to your faith in humanity.

It just does doesn’t it? The forums I’ve participated in over the years have been well stocked with what I’d term crazy people. I don’t mean people with mental illnesses, I mean people who are either completely racist, sexist, homophobic or just want to upset as many people as possible. Every forum has them and they often make the atmosphere so intolerable that you end up leaving. Yup, I’ve left plenty.

But it’s not just forums that suffer this. It’s become anything with a comments box, be it the BBC News website, an online newspaper, or blogs. Especially blogs.

Most blogs tend to be immune from this sort of nonsense. The more obscure the blogger the more immune they are. On one end of the spectrum there’s me, and I’m immune. On the other end of the spectrum there’s Guido and his dripping with shit ‘blog’ (I use the term blog lightly in his case). Many of the commenters on his ‘blog’ appear to be either children or people suffering from a highly advanced form of coprolalia due to their compulsive use of profanity. After a few comments on any given blogpost I have sufficiently lost enough of my faith in humanity.

Another place this happens a lot is Tom Harris’s blog, but that’s mostly Tories are other assorted swivel-eyed loons attempting to bait him.

It can be comical, however. On the Daily Mail website at least one person will comment on a news story with something like “if I were in charge I’d hang the lot”, regardless of the subject. It might be about Katie Price, it might be about Prince Charles, it might even be about a heroic cat.

I think websites should do away with giving users the ability to comment. If the bulk of comments aren’t constructive why bother with them? Moderating them is a pain as it’s time consuming, so just do away with them entirely. You don’t write comments in a book do you? I don’t. I rarely do it on websites, with the only exception being Sam Ellis’s blog. I’ve also realised that very few people comment on blogposts regardless of how good the blogposts are. My blogposts are awesome (tongue firmly in cheek there, son) and I’ve had only 63 comments out of 797 views, meaning 1 in every 12.65 viewers leaves a comment. Although 20 of those comments will be my own, so make that 43 comments out of 797 views, or 1 in 18.53 viewers. Sam is responsible for 30 of those 43 comments and he only comments out of courtesy, meaning 13 comments out of 797 views are from proper readers, or 1 in 61.3 viewers. As my blog gets an average of 10.8 views per day that’s almost one comment every six days. Why do I even bother?

I’m going to take a stand and remove the ability to comment on my blogposts. I’ll see how it goes.

Update – I’ve been persuaded to bring back the ability to comment on new blogposts. They can stay… for now.

Panic! Twitter won’t work!

Each time I try to access the Twitter website I am greeted by this message:

Soon?! It’s been happening all day! I can only get access in tiny window that don’t last more than a few minutes. I NEED MY FIX OF TWITTER DAMMIT!