Notes and Jottings

There’s been some debate on the rather draconian Ask About Money banning that’s been going on recently, especialy at The Property Pin.

It appears that AAM moderators are now handing out bans left, right and centre for just mentioning the property market. One person got the following message:

Forum Message

You have been banned for the following reason:
opening the debate on property market

Date the ban will be lifted: Never

This is rather remarkable considering that the debate was a welcomed part of the forum for a few months, and miju opened the thread many months ago.

(I do have to admit that some of the discussion had been lower quality than usual recently, but I don’t think that accounts for all the banning that has occurred)

It now looks like I’ll be moving to a new company at the start of December; new job, new challenges and opportunities! It’s going to be exciting…

http://www.google.ie/support/jobs/bin/answer.py?answer=34883

たぶん今週ニュースがあります。

Weird, I seem to have lost the last 15 months of entries. Don’t worry, there wasn’t anything that important there! MovableType, eh? Maybe it’s time to write my own.

Well, well, [Google Maps](http://maps.google.com/) now has a [UK/Ireland version](http://maps.google.co.uk/). All the usual Google maps loveliness - with obvious exceptions for Ireland. No mapping outside the major towns and road arteries. Bennettsbridge? Does it exist? Thomastown has a mark, but it’s certainly not the town I once knew, either. I know that Google has to work with the mapping information that’s available for Ireland, and that is sometimes sparse on the ground. [Ordnance Survey Ireland](http://www.osi.ie/) should do better… they certainly have the mapping DATA. *Disclaimer:* I don’t really know that much about the commercial aspect of how to get good Irish mapping, so a lot of what I said is really just noise.

If we consider its ability to recommend directions, ask it for directions from XXXX to O’Connell Street.

Did you mean:

O’Connell Street, the Scottish Borders, The Scottish Borders, Scottish Borders, TD9

O’Connell Close, St. Helens, Merseyside, WA11

Eh, no. I guess with that “.co.uk” designation, it’s not quite ready for Ireland yet. Still, it is pretty! And I bet it works reasonably well in the UK.

Actually… let me think about this a bit more… considering the hacks that are available to overlay you own route on top of a map through Javascript… this could be useful!

The post-Christmas period was spent skiing with my family in Sauze d’Oulx. Usually ski trips involve complete removal from the world at large - not a word about the world outside is heard until the return home. Not this time. The tsunami event unfolded throughout the trip, as the scale of the disaster became horribly apparent. There is little I can say about that currently, as it beggars my imagination to think of the suffering that happened, and that which is ongoing in those countries right now.

Besides that, there was food, there was skiing, I got flu for the last day or two of the trip. And now it’s back to work.

“Nigiritude Ultramarine”:http://www.dashes.com/anil/2004/06/04/nigritude-ultramarine is a competition where the best attempt at search engine optimisation (against Google) gets to win an iPod Well Anil Dash may have started late in the competition, but the best of luck to him! It would be great for somebody from the blogging community to beat the systems people have built up with thousands of fake sites, etc. etc.

So, am I mad? I’m following the advice “given here”:http://www.bythom.com/support.htm, and feeling that yes I am going to need a tripod, and yes a good tripod will work so much better. And I don’t have a car so I might use a small, light tripod where a heavier one would be left at home. So the following is the list of items to be purchased.

# “Gitzo G1228 Tripod”:http://www.gitzo.com/products/metric/tripods/mountaineer/rightscreen.php3
# “Gitzo G1277M centre ball head”:http://www.gitzo.com/products/metric/heads/ball/rightscreen.php3
# “LowePro Mini Trekker AW”:http://www.lowepro.com/pages/series/trekking/minitrkaw.htm

In buying these items, I’m giving up on the idea of buying either a flash or another lens (besides the kit lens for the Nikon D70) for the rest of the year. From what I’ve seen and read, a tripod gives the biggest increase in the number of “possible” shots, compared with the extra options opened by a telephoto lens, or a wide-angle lens, or a good flash. I’m not sure though–anybody have any comments on this?

This “Nikon AF-S VR 70-200 f/2.8 IF-ED”:http://www.europe-nikon.com/details.aspx?countryId=20&languageId=22&prodId=275&catId=121 lens would be a lovely present. Go on, go on. I’ll buy the camera, you buy the lens… it’s a wonderful wonderful lens, perhaps a bit large to bring to parties and suchlike, but hey nothing’s perfect
Okay, you won’t buy that for me, meanie! But I will have to start thinking about getting either a telephoto or zoom telephoto at some stage after I buy my new camera. Or just a plain f/1.8 50mm lens? What *do* I want? Portraits or action shots and wildlife? Every lens has its place. Aaah so much to choose from! And no wonder Nikon and Canon make so much from photographers! As you go up the scale, techy lust becomes even more obvious than usual… though at the end of the day (as many a photographer has said), you just have to go out and shoot, and practice practice practice. Many’s a perfect photo has been taken with a snapshot–the right place, the right time, and an eye for the scene.