Heroes

I was on facebook the other night and noticed a invite from living social to name my five heroes from history. Its proving to be an enjoyable exercise trying to pick just five individuals the first picks were a gang of civilization smashing mass murderers. From their it got steadily more baffling i tried to be politically correct you know artists and great thinkers who have contributed something to the development of human civilzation and then i thought about trying to divide human civilization up in to fields. Still for science you are choosing from De Vinci, Newton, Gallileo or Darwin to name a few off hand then in the Arts; De Vinci ( again), Michelangleo, Van Goch. So its already quite a shortlist and then theres the fact that while i admire these guys ( and sadly they are all guys) they dont fire up my imagination that privilige belongs to the original gang of blood thirsty adventurers and swashbucklers. So now i am trying to decide what my definition of a Hero is and then pick my five.

Still at this point i would like to salute the bloke who finished the quiz already and chose Batman as one of his five historical heroes.

The Gemmells

David Gemmell the realtively famous in his field fantasy author sadly passed away a few years ago. In his honour the David Gemmell Legend Award for Fantasy was created and had its first awards ceremony this year.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jun/19/1

Good choice. Joe Abercrombie was a worthy contestant but i didnt care for his attitude to his characters. Having said that i will be checking out his new book.

Took my camera out today for the first time. impressions? The Auto Focus seems to pull to the right, or perhaps it knows something i dont. The SD Memory card is only 2 Gz but it easily held 192 images. Check out the wings on this....

Glass

Looking a bit further in to DSLR and their functions - there are so many varieties of lens ( or glass as the cognesti call them) that it's quite bewildering. What i need to do is familiarise myself with the lens that comes with the kit, its weaknesses and strengths and take it from there.

I already have an idea for my first photographic "project".

The Book of the New Sun

I have been re-reading this classic work recently. Although i remember reading the four books in the series as they were published i am uncertain whether or not i have read them again since then. Its certainly been enjoyable though following the wanderings of Severian the Torturer across the face of Urth. There is a sequel to the series which i will probably read next i dont remember it to well which isnt a good sign.

Merchant City , Glasgow, June 13th 2009

Taken on Saturday morning with my Canon Powershot A70. While i was taking this picture a van drew up beside me and a bunch of Asian tourists jumped out and started photographing everything that moved including each other.

June 15th 2009

Went to Merchant City Cameras in Glasgow today after much internal debate and a great deal of website surveying i decided to go for a nice little Nikon D40. Paid my deposit and i will be picking Nicky up from the shop on Saturday.