Out to Barbados

I rolled out of work around 13:00 on a Tuesday, nipped over to Currys to pick up my new MP3 player (a SanDisk Sansa Clip), acquired food (KFC if it matters, bringing the number of times I’ve eaten there in 2008 to 2), grabbed my bags and rolled north up the M1.  About half-way, I realised that I’d left my toiletries bag behind, shrugged and kept on rolling.  Arrived at my parents late in the afternoon, changed cars and we headed to the hotel – right on Manchester airport as it happens.

Hungry Sparrow

Had a celebratory dinner, hit the sack and the next thing I knew it was Wednesday morning.  One shuttle bus to the airport, checked in and found some breakfast.  Mum and Dad browsed in Dixons for some new headphones to shut the plane noise out with – I had purchased some Bose Quiet Comfort 3s the week before, and they had arrived just in time for me to charge the battery.  We ended up using my phone’s Internet connection to determine which of the headphones on sale were worth the money; I really love that feature.  Then we found out that the plane was going to be at least an hour late (something about a sick crew member, though they didn’t annouce that over the speaker), so we sat around in the departure lounge.  Sent a few e-mails to various people in Barbados to let them know that we were running late; another useful feature.

After a rather long flight (almost 9 hours going out to Barbados), we arrived, and blew through Immigration – there are distinct benefits to holding dual passports; I’m Barbadian when flying into Barbados, and British when flying into England.  Picked up our bags, met Gran and Grandad and Jutta outside, and sent Dad onward with Grandad while Mum and I filled in the paperwork for the rental car and my temporary driving license ($10 for 3 months).

Barbados

Palm Trees

Up until Sunday, we relaxed at the apartment, watched the birds and rain, got banking and insurance errands taken care of (so much easier when you’re in the country [and the banking is even easier when your mother and the assistant branch manager are on first-name terms]), and I hung out with some friends on Saturday night (and truth be told, if I didn’t have an early flight out, I would have been there well past midnight). We also paid a visit to Flower Forest – it used to be the family business and has now been bought by the man who runs Earthworks Potteries; we took a walk around (my goodness the trees have matured) and gave him some feedback on what we thought he should do (including shutting down some of the branch paths for the immediate future) to make it a thriving business again.

Sunday morning we rolled down to the airport, and checked in for our LIAT flight to St. Vincent and the Grenadines.  Check-in took an hour, and then LIAT delayed for over an hour due to staffing issues.

St. Vincent

Oh yes, a point of note.  We were going to be chartering a 36 foot monohull (Mugari) for the week; however, the people chartering her the week before ran her aground on a reef at ten in the morning, and the boat that salvaged them managed to pull Mugari off the wrong way, and snapped the rudder clean off, damaged the rudder shaft, and let the rudder float away.  We therefore ended up on a 6 ton, 40 foot Lavezzi catamaran called Tight Five, though at no extra cost to us – well, no cost in cash at least.

Once we cleared St. Vincent’s Immigration and Customs (which are both in a room that’s not more than 60 feet long and 30 feet wide, complete with conveyor for the baggage), we hopped into Phyllis’ Taxi (driven by someone we know, namely Phyllis), waited about 20 minutes for another lot of people (who ended up in a different taxi in the end), and headed off to Barefoot Charters.  After a bit more waiting around (they wanted to give the chart briefings to several crews at once), the cat was brought around to the dock, and we loaded on our bags – I went with the cat back to the mooring while more briefing was being done, and tried to catch a few winks of sleep.  Some more waiting, and the boatboys showed up to sail her out through the channel in the reef that protects Blue Lagoon.  The channel is dredged to just the right depth to allow the cruising yachts out, and is barely 30 feet wide (and Tight Five is 20 feet wide).

Blue Lagoon, St. Vincent

Here starts the drama of the vacation – the guys didn’t tie the dinghy on tight enough, and as we were moving off the mooring to go out via the cut, the dinghy went adrift.  Luckily, someone on shore noticed, so we made a quick about-turn to go and pick it up.  Once we were out of the cut and into the bay, we put the jib up, and the dockhands hopped off, turning the boat over to us.  We set course for Bequia, and crossed a remarkably peaceful Bequia Channel; a nine mile channel between St. Vincent and Bequia that the entire Atlantic Ocean tries to get through, thus accentuating the ocean swells and a decent current (5+ knots).  We did notice, however, that a 40 foot catamaran doesn’t surf down-wave as well as the 40 foot monohull that we used to bring across from Barbados; the reasons are probably numerous, but one of the main problems was a lack of control due to the tiny rudders.

I knew I was on call, but said that I’d like to show up, so Matt kindly guest-listed me in.  With my new phone on hand, I decided a few days ago that I could probably make it, so long as I checked my SMS every 15 minutes or so (and it turned out that 3G signal in Stratford is about non-existent).

Set off with plenty of time to spare, which turned out to be a good idea, as Google’s map was utterly wrong about where Cox’s Yard was.  While pondering the map, I happened to look up, and what do I see but “Cox’s Yard” staring back at me from a building cat-a-corner from where I was.  A quick circuit of the one-way system that is the entrance to Stratford, and I was parked across the river.  Meandered across the bridge, over to the Yard, and hung around waiting for the gig to start.

A really nice part about this performance was that the Yard had limited the seating to roughly 90 people, despite having a capacity of 220+ for the main stage. Small tables had been laid out, with a few chairs and a candle per table.  With the lights turned down, it made a very cosy, intimate atmosphere for listening to some fantastic music.  Katie opened the night, with a new song (America), and then continued with a few of her works that I’d heard before at the GW Festival (including Tongues, Bus Stop and Other Places).  My impression was that she’s still a bit nervous in front of a crowd (even a small one), but it didn’t detract from her performance at all.

After Katie finished, Matt introduced the Street Shepherd Band, who launched right into some wonderful music, including a piece that (paraphrased) ’should never be played outside of a gypsy wedding; seeing as I’ve been playing it for nearly 20 years, that probably explains a lot of things!’. One of the more unique pieces they played had hints of Miles Davis in it – certainly different, but in a good way.  For the second set, Ana Garcia provided the dance for the flamenco, and I was blown away by the energy she brought to the performance.  I am, unfortunately, no expert on flamenco, but I can certainly believe that she’s one of (if not the) top flamenco performers in England.

I now have a standing invitation from Matt to any of the events he’s organising, an invitation that I intend to take up as often as I can.  The photo work was fairly hard without a flash (I enquired ahead of time whether flash or flashless was preferred), and some of the lighting played havoc with the D80’s sensor, but all in all it was an excellent session.  Rolled home around 11 P.M., after pausing to get a long-exposure shot from the bridge out over the river; trying to capture the mist and the swans.

A Most Excellent evening.

Put simply, I love her voice, and I love the album.  It’s full of acoustic guitar work, and her voice and songs belie her age.

Of those four print companies, I can observe the following:

• Kodak and Bonusprint got the greyscale/black and white photo correct
• Photobox and Snapfish added a green tint to the black and white photos
• Photobox’s prints are horribly fuzzy
• Kodak generates a less green-saturated photo than the other three, but may not be an accurate green
• Due to the above, the Kodak print skin-tones are warmer

I still don’t have a calibrated monitor, so some of the colour distortion can be attributed to the fact that what I’m seeing isn’t necessarily right according to sRGB. The softness/blur applied to the Photobox photos rules out their service for me – I supplied them with very high quality JPEGs (which is probably an oxymoron), with all the appropriate sharpening/blurring applied.

On the plus side for Bonusprint, their Windows client accepts TIF files, which means the JPEG compression artifacts won’t be present in any photos I submit as TIF. However, compared to the default Kodak prints, the green saturation is definitely higher, possibly too high. I scanned in sample images from all four print shops, and comparing a single spot between Kodak and Bonusprint, I get (RGB) 117,127,70 from the Bonusprint print, while the Kodak print says 87,108,73 for the same location.

Decisions, decisions.

I’ve been shooting some test shots tonight with it, and I’m starting to wonder how I ever managed without an off-body flash. The flexibility that it’ll give me is incredible – I just need a dim room and some test subjects to get my flash-work down pat. I’ve also worked out how to get the D80 to act as a commander unit when the 600 is sitting on a stand, which is great – my initial trials made me think that it wouldn’t work. I’ll need to build a diffuser for the on-board flash, but that’s actually remarkably easy, I’ve already got a spare white film canister from Jessops (just walked in and asked if they had any :).

Of course, this means that I now have another item to pack in my camera bag, along with a spare set of rechargeable triple-A batteries, but it’ll be worth it. I think the only other items I want now are a good tripod, and perhaps a 50/1.4 or 50/1.8 prime. Oh, and having seen this, an eyecup for the D80 might not be a bad idea either, given I wear glasses. It’s also time to start reading the Strobist blog a lot more. One more link – I love the second comment on this photo, made by the owner of the camera; he’s got a good point, I never use anything other than MASP either (with a slight hit of Auto when I just don’t care).

I lied, one more.

Regarding the assembly of the beast, I’m very impressed with the level of documentation that came with it, and the way various accessories were packaged up. Firstly, the monitor – 22″ LCD made by LG. It arrived in 3 component pieces – the panel, the base and the riser. Slot the riser over the mating on the panel, then over the mating on the base, job done.

Secondly, the Corsair HX520 power supply. The box was properly solid, and contained some very nice foam padding around the actual PSU, a booklet in multiple languages on how to install it, a set of zipties for neatening up the inside of the PC, and a velcro’d pouch with all of the modular cables in it. The pouch made me go ‘oooh’. Sad huh? There’s a good selection of cables in the pouch, including 2 PCI-e power cables, and a dedicated fan only splitter.

Next up, the retail Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and heatsink/fan. Not much to say, other than the fan is nice and quiet, and since when were the pins on the motherboard and not on the CPU?

(And the rain pours down. I hope I’m not in a flood plain.)

I ended up picking the Gigabyte P35C-DS3R motherboard, complete with two RAID controllers, 8 SATA ports, an e-SATA connector (which will be handy if I decide to splurge on a Thecus 2050 later on), and a dirty big heatsink on the chipset. All of the cabling for the drives etc was nicely packaged in individual bags, so getting one set of cables out didn’t mean spilling the lot. The only thing missing was a good number of #6×32 screws – I had to dig into my bag of screws that I’ve accumulated over the years to find some.

The video card was a bit of a surprise – I was expecting it to be a bit bigger (it’s an 8600, rather than an 8800), and was a bit boggled when I couldn’t find a PCI-e power socket on it. I guess the 8600 doesn’t need one. It’s also passively cooled, and seems to be quite happy in the case. I also never realised how large a passive heatsink for a two-slot card can be :)

Finally, the Silverstone TJ04B case. It was well worth the money spent on it, given the decent amount of room, 4 hard drive bays, two 3.5″ external bays and four 5.25″ external bays. It also came with two 120mm fans pre-installed, though they’re dumb fans, so no RPM control. The gloss black finish on the sides is very nice, and I can see fingerprints showing on it already, so I think it needs a bit of a wipe down. The drive slots use sliding catches, so no screwdriver required to perform the install. Just slide the catch back (and apply a bit of force to make it life the metal prongs), slip in the drive and slide the catch forwards. Done.

I’m still installing all the software I need (such as EVE!), but it looks like this will be a very nice machine. Hopefully it will last me several years at least.  The only thing I think I need to get now is a decent USB keyboard.  This PCline (PC World cheapie) is misbehaving.

I signed up for the eMusic trial – 25 downloads, gratis, no DRM, no restrictions of any type. A bit of browsing, and I found some music I liked. *click*. A bit more browsing and I converted my trial subscription to a paid one (£9 for 40 tracks), and started a small downloading spree which included some absolutely classic Bob Marley live tracks.

On with the subject of this post. I’ve been listening to the 30 second samples of a Megan Palmer album, Forget Me Not, and thoroughly enjoying it.So far, my favourite tracks are Portland, Tomorrow’s, Lemonade, and Angelo. In fact, I’ve enjoyed the samples enough that I’ve clicked the download all button and grabbed the entire album. Oh yes, this album isn’t even out yet.To give Zunior a bit more love – they’re a Canadian store, with pure independent releases, and given the exchange rate of $1 CAD being 47p GBP, there’s a good chance I’ll be downloading some music from there as well. Both Zunior and eMusic carry the Nettwerk Records label, and I’m finding some really nice music on that label.

So, what’s in the box?

• Photobank
• Two power adapters, one for the UK market, one for the EU market.
• Lightweight, 80 cm, braided USB cable.
• Carrying case
• Manual in 6 languages – 11 pages per language

The unit weighs about 270g, and measures 11.5 cm by 7.5 cm by 2 cm. It’s not quite pocket sized, but would fit in a jacket pocket quite easily, and possibly larger pockets found on some pairs of slacks or shorts. Based on the weight, I’ll be keeping it in the back or top pocket of my Lowepro Slingshot bag. It came partially charged, and powered up completely in about 4 seconds. The screen powers up first displaying the battery state and then the hard drive spins up to determine the free capacity.

After a minute of inactivity (the manual claims 30 seconds), the unit powers down, which should lend towards a longer battery life. The power switch is slightly raised above the casing, so being in a bag with knobbly bits might continually power it up and down. Unfortunately, the carrying case only has a stiff back, and soft fabric sides, so even in the casing the switch can be activated.

Fire introduces the reader to our own galaxy, with Pham Nuwen of the Qeng Ho showing up in the most unlikely of manners, many thousands of years after Deepness.  A tale is deftly woven of a galaxy split into three zones, the release of an ancient Blight, the destruction and subversion of numerous races (including transcended Powers), and a race against time to reach a medieval society to save the day. The opening pages of the book lay out the general premise – ‘humanity’ sticks its nose into an ancient archive and unleashes an Evil, and also unleashes the weapon to defeat the Evil.  The first chapter introduces the primary ‘alien’ race in such detail that you almost think they’re human, and the story is off to a racing start.
There are no major twists like the ones that feature in Deepness, but the story is well paced, and the fleshing out of the major and minor characters is impressive.  Well worth picking up and reading – ISBN 1-85798-127-8.

Things that broke:

• GUI
• KDE
• Sound
• Networking
• Who knows what else

The GUI required a full reinstall of the ATI proprietary driver, and the removal of xcompmgr from my .xinitrc. However, by blanking .xinitrc, I managed to cause X to fall over in a big heap! It looks like an empty, but present, .xinitrc causes X to try to exec nothing, and it just exits. Not even a ‘.xinitrc specified nothing to execute’! *twitch*

apt-get dist-upgrade decided to remove all of my KDE packages. I don’t know why, it just did. Had to reinstall KDE by hand. Installing KDE didn’t install KDM (GUI login manager), but KDM got removed when KDE got removed. Moreover, KDE’s bottom (for me) panel showed up blank.  All my configuration was gone, and I have to re-create it. *twitch* *twitch*

apt-get dist-upgrade didn’t upgrade the kernel, and this broke ALSA (sound) in mysterious ways. The driver for the sound card refused to load (it turns out), which meant everything sound related didn’t work. A quick browse of the Ubuntu Forums indicated that people had experienced all sorts of weird issues with the Dapper upgrade and sound, and I finally found mention of ‘upgrade the kernel, it should be 2.6.15′. *twitch* *twitch* *twitch*

Next up, after installing the kernel and rebooting, I find that I have no network connectivity. dmesg indicates that tg3 has found eth0, but by the time the OS is up and running, ip addr, ifconfig and pals all tell me that there is no such hardware device as eth0. It’s now eth1! *TWITCH*

I’m afraid to see what else doesn’t work now.