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The domain switch is complete. Go to garydenness.co.uk to continue to follow this blog and / or update RSS feeds.

Six Months Later

I tired of blogging, so I stopped. Now I find I am tired of not blogging, so I shall resume. A rest is as good as a change. But a rest and a change are better still. I’ve done both. So I thought I’d resume, just as soon as I restored order to this blog. I removed all the Brexit and Trump related posts. But put them here, for posterity.

My final Brexit post was an appropriate place to leave the conversation. I’ve kept the posts to use as my personal arsenal for the many ‘I told you so’ battles that will come. Alas, ‘Itoldyouso.com’ has been taken, so I bought garydenness.eu. Alas, I got an email two weeks after buying the domain that come Brexit day, any .eu domains not registered to an EU based address will be taken back. I’ll have to come up with a solution.

Then I thought I’d also hide all the rubbish posts and re-categorise everything. Several hours of work into that and I received an email from WordPress that my WordPress plan will be renewed in March and thirty something pounds would be removed automatically from my bank account. And actually, I find that I no longer wish to pay for many of the internety things I’ve previously been happy to pay for. Including my WordPress plan.

So I decided to abandon ship and make the unusual jump from WordPress to Blogger. It’s not a route many people travel these days, but Blogger is free. And whilst WordPress is a much more slick and professional product out of the box, Blogger is actually the more flexible and customisable platform. I’m not porting all my posts over to Blogger. It’s too much work, by far. So I’m just going to start again. This blog here on WordPress won’t die. It’ll just sit here as an archive, gathering dust. It’s for the best. I think.

On Wednesday 6th March – just 2 days time – I will switch my garydenness.co.uk domain over to point at the new blog. Domain hosts usually state that this can take up to 48 hours to take effect. From experience, it usually takes just a few minutes. A couple of hours at most. If you followed me here using an RSS feed or on a blogroll, and you still want to follow along, then you will need to update and use the new feed. 

Can you really not wait two days to see what I’ve created over on Blogger? Well, just click here. But best not update any feeds till the domain has been switched over.

Go Indoor Skiing and Snowboarding in Milton Keynes

Snowboarding is a popular sport in the UK. Racing down the mountain side gives you an amazing adrenalin rush. It is a perfect opportunity to push your physical limits. With a new board, pants, jacket, gloves, goggles, helmet, boots, bindings, avalanche gear, backpacks, gadgets, snowboarding gives you the opportunity to look cool too!

However, there has been a significant decrease in the number of people participating in snow sports over the years. According to data published by Statista, from 186,500 in 2008, the number of snow sport participants fell to 142,400 in 2016. At the same time, the number of snow sport participants who received tuition in England grew to 36% in 2016, from 21.8 % in 2012.

Let us take a look at some reasons that are driving people towards snowboarding. 

Make the Most of Vacations

Snowboarding is a popular winter sport. Most people find snowboarding to be one of the best ways to spend their winter vacation with their friends, family or even alone, or simply put the cold to good use. However, it is not possible for everyone to take a long vacation in the winter just to go snowboarding. For all those snow sports enthusiasts, Milton Keynes offers the perfect snowboarding site, Snozone, an outstanding venue for skiing and snowboarding indoors on real snow slopes. One can experience the thrill and adrenaline rush that comes with skiing and snowboarding, regardless of their age and weather, says an expert at Woughton House MGallery by Sofitel, ones of the popular bed and breakfast hotels in Milton Keynes, located in close proximity to Snozone. This is also the hotel where you can try the most authentic English afternoon tea in Milton Keynes. 

The End

Fifteen years, two months and twenty one days ago I wrote my first blog post. Today, I write the last. It’s been fun – mostly – but these days I seem to blog largely for the sake of blogging. And too much of it involves typing angrily into the internet with little real purpose. I wrote that first post as an optimistic 30 year old, about to embark on a backpacking trip of a lifetime through Mexico, full of wonder at the world surrounding me. I write today as a slightly jaded 45 year old, rather fed up with the amount of ignorance and prejudice that has come to the fore, and unconvinced that the planet is heading in the right direction. Fifteen years is quite a long time. The world has changed greatly. As have I. I am sure you have too.

Memories

I’ve used Flickr, as a paying subscriber, for over a decade. And I’ve been a happy subscriber, for two reasons. Firstly, Flickr displays photos beautifully with powerful organisational tools in the background. Secondly, because although Flickr hasn’t done much with regards innovation for years and years, there’s still no other photography sharing site that comes close to beating Flickr’s product. Till now…

Acros

The Fuji X-T20 has a number of film simulations built in, as plenty of cameras do these days. One of them is Acros, reproducing a well loved film for the digital age. When I was reading comparisons between the X-T20 and the new budget Fuji, the X-T100, a recurrent feature of the reviews was disappointment that the Acros simulation was missing from the X-T100. I’ll be honest – I hadn’t heard of Acros before. But seeing as how many fans it has, it seemed silly not to shoot off a few frames with it. Which was a worthwhile exercise. I really like it. I’ll be using it a lot over the coming years, I’m sure.

Girl on a Ferry

Things in photography that just don’t work out. Shooting into the sun. Moving objects in low light. Subjects behind glass. Except sometimes you break the rules and it’s ok, because it just works. Like this one. In my opinion, anyway. Mrs P sat in her seat on the ferry, refusing to come outside on deck in the early morning cold.

Umbrella Brella Brella

Umbrellas make unusual street art. But art is art. And Mary Poppins 2 is on the horizon, so it’s topical. This street is in Cherbourg, a small port in Normandy, not so far from the beaches that the allies stormed on D-Day. Mrs P and I visited on a day trip from Poole, one of the English ports from whence the D-Day troops departed. Our ferry across the channel was a far more relaxed and comfortable affair that the troops enjoyed in 1945. Our greeting at the other end of the cruise was a lot more cordial too. Ferry employees shooting off instructions is considerably more preferable than German soldiers shooting machine guns.

 

 

Adios Adobe

I discovered about six months ago that my Adobe Creative Cloud Photography subscription was a 12 month contract. And not a rolling monthly deal, as I had assumed. My contract renews on August 28th. Or it would have. But I ignored the  offer of 3 months free to encourage me to sign up for another year, and cancelled my subscription. I love Lightroom, but I really don’t need to pay for it anymore. Because these days, I do most of my work on my iPad. So adios Adobe. Sort of. And hola, Adobe. Lightroom is free on the iPad. There is a premium version available – on a rolling monthly deal for £4.49 – but I don’t need the premium features. Free suits my needs and budget.

Fuji 23mm f2.0

I’ve had a Goldilocks moment with my new Fuji X-T20. I bought it with a new prime lens, the weather resistant 23mm f2.0. I’ve had a few prime lenses from the Fuji XF range over the last five years. The 60mm f2.4 was a nice portrait lens, but it was an unnecessary extravagance considering how little I used it. For practical everyday use, the field of view was too narrow. So I sold it. Same goes for my 35mm f1.4. Bit too narrow, but less so and it’s a bright lens so I kept it.

Fuji X-T20 First Impressions

I have no unboxing video for you. I don’t get the fad for unboxing videos. I know what a box looks like. I know how to open a box. Can we just see the product, por favor? I’ve also no intention of producing a series of tutorial videos. They’ve already been done, and done better than I could do. If you’re interested in learning how to get started with an X-T20, I highly recommend watching the relevant videos on Omar Gonzalez’ YouTube channel. I watched a few just before my camera arrived, and they were a very helpful introduction.

Three Years

It is a fine week for anniversaries. On Wednesday, I marked ten years of marriage. And today marks three years since I started my job on the railway. It’s been a good three years. Don’t get me wrong, if they stop paying me, I’ll stop turning up. But as far as jobs go, it’s a good one. It could, however, have been my fourth anniversary. Or fifth. Or sixth. I had three unsuccessful attempts at gainful employment in various roles with London Underground before striking gold with a proper Train Operating Company.

Ten Years

The older one gets, the more one’s calendar seems to fill up with memorable dates. But today’s is special. Ten years ago today, on the 08/08/08, the Beijing Olympics opened with a lavish ceremony. Oh, and Mrs P and I got hitched. A less lavish ceremony in Milwaukee. But just as fabulous. And I bet we’re in better shape than a lot of that Olympic infrastructure. Congratulations to us. And here’s to another decade of happiness. And another after that. And so on.

End of the Line

When Mrs P and I decide to go to London, we catch the train. For us it is free, so there’s not really a decision to make regarding mode of transport. It’s a comfotable way to go, and quick – we’re in the capital in about an hour and fifty minutes. The end of the line for us is Waterloo station, the country’s busiest in terms of passengers entering and exiting. Nearly a hundred million of them every year. We’re doing our bit to try and heave the station over the line into nine digit territory.

Cream Tea Tacvba

We enjoyed a cultural weeked away, did Mrs P and I. There was something very Mexican and something very English in it for both of us. First stop, Shepherds Bush Empire to watch one of Mrs P’s favourite Mexican bands, Cafe Tacuba. Shepherds Bush is a part of west London that has yet to be gentrified, although the flashy new Westfield shopping mall is perhaps a first step in that direction. I quite like Shepherds Bush. It’s like a lot of the London I remember from my childhood. Edgy, alive and full of character.