mbird

Quite! Funny how it's the same broker I had a gripe with a couple of weeks ago ......

Why not take it indoors, have a goot hot steamy bath to turn the bathroom into a steam room, and then whack the humididifier on full blast in there to see if it collects anything? (note bathrooms and electrickery don't mix, so be careful!)

Something to the effect of "What do I care how much silicon is in the oil, it doesn't mean anything to me".

Hi All As we are starting to look for our first coastal boat, I need some information about having mechanical surveys carried out. When it comes to 1.5L BMC engines, I am fairly happy, but now looking at these big Volvo Penta lumps with outdrives, I get all nervous, as I don't know the first thing. When we find the right boat, I therefore intend to commission a mechanical survey to give some peace of mind. First question - any recommendations of mechanical surveyors? Second question - I have heard varying stories about the benefits of having an oil analysis carried out, ranging from "they are essential" from on broker, and indeed a couple of members on here; to "they are not worth the paper they are written on, don't waste your money" from another broker. What is the consensus here? What can they actually tell you from a drop of oil? Help, as always, is most appreciated

Won't they be very vulnerable though Clive, as many of your boat invariably seem to have people standing on the roof in hats shouting "Aaaargh!" at passing traffic Excellent photo blog though, I share the fascianation of seeing the stages a boat has to go through to be created.

When we bought our boat, Barry, there was no ventilation at all. Being a mid mounted engine, the air was drawn from the bilge. The first thing I did was refitted the crankcase breather to the air filter to help reduce the smell of engine in the boat, and then cut a hole through the hull and fitted a vent approx 8" x 3". No problems at all, and no smells now either.

He he, Now you're talking!!!!

We noticed those too. I'm sure at easter when we passed that way they were being used as moorings for work barges, so we were quite surprised to find they were now available to the public!

I don't know if anyone else watched the Gadget Show last night on channel 5 (repeated later in the week), but a review was done to compare the price and quality of online printing services. Whilst these service may not suit the needs of the pros amongst us, they do offer quite a cheap way of getting prints up to about A3 size at reasonable quality. The tester compared quite a numner of services, and surprisingly quickly discounted the big names like Jessops and Kodak for unacceptable image quality issues. Names like Tesco, Aldi, Photobox and Snapfish all featured in the top 5, with Snapfish being the overall winner. I tend to use Photobox as I have found them fast and reliable, but I may well now give Snapfish a go!

Yuk Good shot though

We were treated to a beautiful misty morning at Geldeston on Thursday last week.

Great to see progress Clive. It is quite fascinating, seeing the birth of another Broads classic

You show off Ian (ps, how can you "sort of" cheat )

Hi Simon I'm one of the amateur togs on here. I use a Canon 50D and only own 2 lenses, but have found the help and encouragement on here and during the organised walks we sometimes have absolutely invaluable. A wedding is one thing I haven't yet got involved in, but would certainly like to learn more about is anyone fancies an unpaid assistant for a day

Thanks Greg Having just returned from a week afloat, the only place I managed to connect my iPod Touch to WiFi was McDonalds in Lowestoft. Even then I was able to read my business emails but not send replies. I tried at the Bridge Inn, Acle, and was unable to get a connection even though the landlady kindly provided the network name and password. I also tried at the New Inn, horning, and could have connected okay. Unfortunatley the service is provided by "The Cloud" which charges £2.99 for 30 minutes, which is extortionate in my book!

That looks really good Luke

Can't you just sit the kettle on one of the engines of that beast of a boat you have Bruce ?

Oh I see , yes that's make sense. I think I'll wait for LR3 full version then, though it might be interesting to see how the RAW files get processed in comparision to LR2.

Something else I noticed too when we went to the boat to clean it in readiness for next week, was the Propex heaters kick out a lot more heat now they're running on Propane

Thanks Bruce. I'll be looking into that one! Don;t you think it's a bit odd not being able to import the catalogues from LR2 though? Does this mean you have either got to export your entire catalogue along with the "sidecar" files, or simply have tow different versions of LR available? I do like the addition of the "grain" effect though. I shot some more gig photos of my friends son's band earlier this week, for their school posters. I had to use a very high ISO (3200) because of the lighting, which added quite a nice grain effect in the monochrome images, like you see in music magazines, but in some instances it still wasn't enough for what I wanted (see below).

Good pics as always Simon! One question though, did you shoot RAW or jpeg? The first photo seems to have a very slight magenta colour cast, but the exif data seems to have been stripped off, so I can't see what the white balance was set too?

I wonder if having a colour balanced monitor helps the subtle shade differences become more noticable????

CHICKEN! Ooo, you're such a girl Lou I got 6, which didn't look to bad compared to the results for my age and gender, considering the range they quoted was from 0 (best) to 1212 (worst)! I have a friend who is colour blind, and regularly wore a bright pink shirt, swearing blind it was blue!

I love the reflecation shot and the gatehouse Simon

Sounds like a grwat weekend, thanks for sharing it. Sorry to hear you were not too impressed with the Maltsters though. We managed to moor up there last weekend for the first time this season. Whilst we didn't eat as it was only a quick stop for a pint or two, we were quite impressed with the friendlyness of the bar staff. We were also extremely please to here they now allow kids in both areas of the bar, and dogs in the lower bar too. That alone will have us paying more visits.