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  Dave 7:37 am on February 12, 2009 Permalink
  Tags: flickr (31)   

  Flickr’s 5th Birthday – a look back 

  

  This article started as a post in the Nottingham Flickr Group so some of the references are based on reading it there…

  It’s Flickr’s fifth birthday today, so I thought it might be nice to start a thread here where we can post some of our memories about using it and perhaps shed a little light on ourselves.

  My first photo was uploaded on March 21st 2005. I remember signing up for Flickr at the end of the previous year and having a play, but not really understanding why it was worth using compared to storing photos in my own gallery on my own web server. I kept going back to look at it though, because around that time there was a lot of interest on the Internet in it and I thought I’m probably missing something – I definitely had the feeling that there was more to this than met the eye – I just wasn’t sure what!

  After I started exchanging comments with people and getting comments back, it started to make more sense. It started to become a lot more fun when these comments ventured off in to just having a laugh with people and sharing enough of these things to start building up mental pictures of these people. So, I was hooked and have been ever since.

  That first photo is not one I particularly like now, but I don’t delete photos from Flickr. My photos are mainly personal mementos – but I do try and make some of them worthwhile too – I’m not precious about my stream of photos though, so there is a big quality mix and no real focus – apart from an obsession with animals that has lasted a fair while now!

  Because of Flickr, I think photography became more than just photography for me – the Flickr part of the equation is a major factor in why I keep doing it. Since 2005, I’ve met loads of people because of Flickr and become friends with quite a few of them (including one "special" one hehe).

  The only down side for me these days is that there is so much stuff I want to look at I just can’t seem to find the time, so I end up only really monitoring a small subset of contacts photos, and browse the others only when I get chance. I’m sure there are loads of great photos that have completely passed me by. Contacts aside, there are millions of extra photos uploaded to Flickr every day, so it’s entirely possible there is a world of photos out there that are right up my alley that I’ll never see.

  So, some links to share. It think one favourite photo from my stream and links to a few other people’s streams that are people that I’ve enjoyed but other people might not have discovered: One of my favourite photos:

  

  I’ve posted nearly 4000 photos, so I can’t really pick a favourite, but it just had to be an animal shot where the animal looked like they were enjoying it!

  Some links to other people’s streams that I think have a consistent high standard and I really enjoy – some of these are friends, but that is a coincidence – I have friends who take lousy photos too! ;) I’m not explaining why I like the photos from these people, have a browse and make your own minds up. One thing that some of them share is more patience and technical ability than I have – I’m quite slapdash generally and I think I can get things that are pleasing compositionally but a bit of a mess on the technical side. Some of these people don’t have that problem…

  http://www.flickr.com/photos/sovietuk

  http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonbradbury

  http://www.flickr.com/photos/roger

  http://www.flickr.com/photos/dazb/

  http://www.flickr.com/photos/primed_minister/

  http://www.flickr.com/photos/photoimage/

  http://www.flickr.com/photos/mpdehaan/

  Big Huge Labs have a tool to generate a page for you which shows off some of your most interesting photos as well as a tag cloud and other stuff – it might be handy to post your own link in your reply so that we can go exploring as well – you can generate the link button here: bighugelabs.com/flickr/dna.php

  

   

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  Dave 2:01 pm on February 8, 2009 Permalink
  Tags: boltonabbey (2), snow (3), yorkshire (24)   

  Bolton Abbey Walk 

  

  On Saturday I went along for our monthly Nottingham Flickr Group walk – this time in the Bolton Abbey area. After a week of horrible driving conditions, Saturday turned out to be the perfect day. The roads were clear, there was no rain or snow showers, no wind and the sky was blue. It was perfect really.

  Our route started at Bolton Abbey and took us up The Valley of Desolation, up further to Simon’s Seat and then down, past The Strid and back to the start.

  

  Because we were all there to take photos as well as enjoy the countryside and the walking, we started off quite slowly and had to pick up pace later in the day to make sure we were back before darkness fell. We left the car park at 9:30am and got back just before 5pm. The route was just over 11 miles and I think it was made harder because it was covered in snow and sometimes ice.

  

  I think we were all happy to get back. I was definitely looking forward to relaxing and getting somewhere comfortable and warm. I think the rest of the group were glad to get back too for the same reason. You can tell when a walk like this is tiring because it takes a while for people to upload the photos afterwards – if you do something overly easy and quick, people are full of energy when they get back and photos spring up on Flickr very quickly – not this time though!

  

  After we got to Simon’s Seat which was the highest point, we stopped for lunch. On the way down it turned out that somebody had a sledge and most of the journey back down to the bottom was spent either sledging or watching people sledge down the hill side. The paths seemed perfect for this.

  This was a really enjoyable day. I slept like a log last night and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone else’s photos when they get posted.

  My Flickr set: Bolton Abbey Walk 02/09

  Everyone else’s photos: upcoming:event=1511634

   
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  Dave 1:38 pm on February 8, 2009 Permalink
  Tags: nottinghamshire (22), sherwood (9), sherwoodforest (2), snow (3)   

  Sherwood in snow 

  

  I’ve spent the last week off work. This coincided with a lot of snow arriving and lots of people having a fairly horrible time travelling. I was without a car for most of the week after my old one died – I had a few days between a hire car going back and my new car arriving, so I spent that by going for a few walks locally.

  On Thursday, the snow was particularly heavy and I went for a walk in Sherwood Forest. It was nice to see a lot of people out and about, playing in the snow. Childhood memories came flooding back. I can remember sledging at the spot below when I was a kid.

  

  Deeper in to the forest, there were hardly any people at all and a lot of the paths were snow covered and footprint free. It was also nearly silent apart from the crunch every time I took another step.

  There are a few more photos from this walk in this Flickr set:
  Sherwood Forest Snow 02/09.

   
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  Dave 5:32 pm on February 5, 2009 Permalink
  Tags: minter, spacegiraffe, tetris, xbla (2), xbox (5)   

  My giraffe is in another castle 

  

  I’ve been playing Space Giraffe on and off for a very long time. I was initially unsure about buying it at all. I played the demo, kind of enjoyed some bits of it, but thought I was dying in ways there was nothing I could do to avoid. It’s easy to get this initial impression because the visuals seem to get in the way of actually playing it.

  When I first tried to play the demo, I barged straight in and tried to play it like Tempest and came to quite a quick sticky end as a result.

  After playing a little more though, it became obvious that there was more going on here than I thought. The visuals weren’t in the way due to some mistake of design, they were in the way deliberately. This wasn’t unfair though, because you are given the information needed to survive if you pay attention. You notice things like the sounds enemies make when they fire, the sounds enemy bullets make when they’ve been knocked off the grid and return, the sound of a flower growing. Even if you’re looking elsewhere to concentrate on something more pressing, you hear these things happening and you see the resulting objects despite their attempts to hide in the psychedelic waves of the level. Instead of just shooting everything and surviving, all of these events started to have significance and it was possible to form strategies.

  This game was a bargain and has become one of my favourite Xbox Live Arcade games. Every time I unlock an achievement in this game it means a lot more to me than some of the ten-a-penny achievements from other lesser games. These achievements have been worked out and earned and it’s been enjoyable getting them.

  There is a PC version available now. http://www.llamasoft.co.uk. There is an option to play with toned down graphics, but you don’t really want to do that – unless you’re a big girls blouse!