Roll With It

What's it been, a month since my last post? Poor effort. I don't want to do the whole 'I apologise for being absent, I'll do better next time' spiel, because we've all seen that enough to know that isn't exactly genuine. Especially when I know that I probably won't be able to keep up a higher posting rate on a consistent basis. And besides, I don't like posting too often; I find that when I do so, my posts are pretty boring and run of the mill. A little time to ferment my ideas seems to be for the best. It does suck to not blog and get input from you peeps for so long, but you just gotta (wait for it) roll with it*.

But I do have to say that I've missed how therapeutic it can be, writing a blog post. It's good to just sit back sometimes and put thoughts into text. Plus I'm playing Oasis in the background, and that is always awesome.


I don't have anything on the boiler right now to post that's been formed the way I like. I've got some vague ideas for topics, thanks mainly to posts by other bloggers , but I haven't really gotten around to fleshing them out and I know I wouldn't do them justice if I tried to post about them right now.

So. I reckon I'll just write about what's been going on recently.

We've got a new HOD (Head of Department - head of IT/eLearning, in this case) at work, and that's been interesting. He's really proactive in getting things done that need doing. He's pushing for new tech and improving existing tech that just isn't cutting it, and maximising what's been idling. Which is really good in the sense that the school is being improved. Good in a way, too, that myself and the other tech are doing more work and also doing things we haven't done before. It's great to be out there learning new skills and improving upon others. He's also gotten me into a 4-day scripting/coding course, which is great because that's one of my weak points in IT. I suck at coding. And that's a pretty big Achilles' heel. I've seen the benefits of being able to code and script succesfully, and I want to learn those skills. Looks like I'm about to.

He also bought us new work phones, the new 'Samsung Galaxy Note' phone. Seen them? They're freaking massive. They essentially sit between a smartphone and a tablet. The thing dwarfs my personal 'Samsung Galaxy SII', which is itself noticeably bigger than an iPhone. The Notes' are great phones, but it can take a bit of getting used to due to its sheer size and how it feels in the hand**. It has a stylus though, or 'S Pen', which is great for doodling and navigating through the phone. Because of it and the phone's titan screen, I would be a regular Picasso at Draw Something. Too bad there's no data plans... that and the fact that the phone is, you know, a work phone... No big though. My SII has a large screen anyway, so I still go a'ite.

We had an interesting day at the start of last week, when one of the servers went down. That was cool, because no one could print or mark class rolls. Just a small hiccup. It was down for two days as well, and in the end it was because of one corrupt little file, and it literally takes one command line prompt to fix (once you find out what the problem is)... gotta love technology.

What else has happened? Well, I've bought a few things for my camera over the last month; three books, a wired shutter remote, some filters and a step-down adapter to hold them. The wired shutter release craps all over my older wireless remote - that thing was terrible. It didn't work literally four times out of five. I don't know if it was a weak signal or a defective unit. I'd changed the battery, cupped my hands around it to boost the signal strength and fired it off literally 5cm away pointing directly at the sensor on the camera body and it still fails at life. It's a piece of crap. If you're ever after an off-body shutter release, get a wired one. The cord is more than long enough for most shots (roughly two metres), and it has a 100% success rate. It's around the same price as a wireless remote ($30AU odd), and for the success rate alone it's worth the buy. One users' opinion anyway.

The filters I got are pretty cool, but I haven't yet been out anywhere to give them a good run. They're basically a set of coloured rectangular filters (green, red, blue, orange, purple and three different strength neutral density filters), that slot in front of your lens. The holder/slot thing slots itself onto the step-down adapter rings, which differ in size depending on what lens and filter diameter you're currently using. Which is great, because it negates the need to buy different coloured filters for every lens diameter you have (which is a big thing when you have multiple lenses), and it saves a lot of time as well by you not having to unscrew and re-screw filters from one lens to the other. The filter cup/holder/whatever can hold three filters at once, allowing you to stack different colours, use different graduated ND filters and really use a large number of filter combinations for any given situation. This setup was a great buy, and using filters effectively is I think the next step for me to get to know to 'improve my craft', as such. A lot of the pictures you see taken these days, especially the outdoor landscape ones, are taken whilst using one or more filters. That's something I really want to learn to do, and I'd rather do so on location instead of at home through an image editing program. I don't like using such programs to alter photographs. I've mentioned that in an older post.

You guys probably remember my post a few ones back about my whole religion debacle? Well, first off, I forgot to thank all of you for your input. I was taken back by the thought you guys had put into your comments and how lengthy (in a good way, trust me) they were. I was and am really grateful to all of you for your input and for the help and advice you guys provided me. I am also always blown away by the simple fact that people whom I've never met around the world take the time to read my stuff and relate to it and help or just chime in. A lot of you have become friends, which is crazy when you consider that we've never met and that there's a few continents and an ocean or two between our door steps. It always humbles me, and this is why I love blogging. You guys are awesome. Anyway, I apologise for not thanking you guys for your comments earlier. I mean it when I say it meant a lot to me and really helped me out.

Anyway, I had a good chat to my dad just the other night (probably the first lengthy chat in a while, really), and this religion issue popped up, and we talked it out. I found out why we were 'forced' to go, and it turns out it was a 'lost-in-translation' thing. My dad told me that his one biggest failing as a parent was his and my mum's failure of properly explaining to me and my brother why they take us to church. He was truly disappointed in himself and my mum, rather than in me, and in what he calls his failure of being able to properly communicate why he always wanted us to go to church. It turns out it wasn't for the reason I'd thought, and it's changed its tone completely in my mind, and for the better. So that was something major. Looks like that big elephant in the room has found lodging elsewhere.

Thanks again guys for your input in that whole blog post, if it wasn't for a lot of you saying 'talk it out', I doubt I would have ever brought it up. So yeah, thanks. A lot.

Well, I think that's most of what's happened lately. The things worth mentioning anyway. Hope it wasn't too dull. I hope too that my time between posts doesn't always take a month, but I can't really promise that. And as I said, I don't like rushing stuff out because they always seem under cooked. And besides, I read your blogs as well, so it's not like I've dropped off completely. I hope.

Anyway, hope you guys have had a good week and all. Cheers again for reading.

PS: Just a headsup, this particular song has nothing to do with my post (apart from me tying it in crudely and at the last minute in the first paragraph), but it was playing when I decided to write this post, and it's a damn awesome song anyway, so I feel obliged to share it. Enjoy.

Roll With It
Oasis
(What's the Story) Morning Glory, 1995

*See how I tied in the post title to my content? Yeah you did.
*Crude euphamism not intended, but well met regardless