The Mystery of Flickr Pricing

I'm a strong believer in paying for stuff I use on the internet. I really like the idea of a service provider having a stake in making me happy. I've been a Flickr Pro member since 2005. But I'm not sure if I'm going to continue.

I've just received a notification that my Flickr Pro subscription is up for renewal, which is fair enough. But what isn't fair is how they appear to be hiding the cost of this. If I click on the "information link" in the notification email (which doesn't tell me the cost) I get a page which tells me of the "benefits" of a subscription. But nothing about the price. Even the FAQ page is useless in this respect (see above).

Turns out that I have to pay nearly fifty dollars a year to stay on the "Pro" service level, which strikes me as rather expensive. Having had a look at the benefits over the free service I don't think anyone would want to pay for that. So I'll be cancelling my Pro subscription. If the charge had been twenty and they had been up-front about it there's a very good chance that I'd have stuck with it.

Pipe Closure

Well, we got closure on our pipe situation. Just as I suspected, a tiny hole had opened up in the copper. This was in the process of getting bigger when we noticed it.

The good news is that it could have been worse. The bad news is that we now have a smoking crater where the downstairs toilet used to be. We'll have to wait for it to dry out a bit before we put the floor back in.

Winchester Cathedral

Since we were just down the road from it, we took a trip to Winchester today. Lovely town. Got a great big cathedral in the middle. Yesterday we were in Salisbury, today Winchester. I reckon this is cathedral country. 

Anyhoo, it is a lovely place. It is huge, with a fantastic atmosphere. It is also the resting place of Jane Austen and there is a lovely memorial to her. 

They also have some fantastic stained glass windows. I had a go at taking pictures of one or two. They are surprisingly tricky to get right. I ended up taking different exposures and then merging them to get something that looks reasonable. 

Driving Fun at Thruxton

Today was a special day for one of the family. Number one son got his birthday treat, in the form of a driving experience at Thruxton. Thruxton is a lovely little racing circuit in the south of England, near Salisbury. They have a number of experiences you can sign up for, including a chance to drive something like the car you can see above. 

Number one son didn't get to drive the Lambo (as we call them) but he did get a twirl in a Porsche and a Formula Renault racing car. He had a great time, and we had just as much fun watching him whizz around the track and trying to take photographs. 

We all attended the briefing for the racers and I worked had to absorb all the advice about corner apexes and car balance. I'm sure these'll come in handy for driving the Cube to work. 

Leaky Pipe Fun

So, we were all set for a few days away. Bags packed. Cameras charged. Route planned. Then I heard myself asking a question that nobody wants to hear just before a trip away.

"Can you hear running water?"

Number one wife was even less happy to hear me ask than I was. But the thing about questions like this is that you can't really un-ask them. Instead you have to twiddle stop-cocks and faff around until you've determined that yes, there is water running when it isn't supposed to.  And now you are half an our late leaving. Not good.

We've been here before a few times. It seems that our house was made with pipe with a penchant for leakiness. So we turned the water off at source, left a key for the plumber and headed off into the distance. 

Who knows what we will come back to? But at least it shouldn't be underwater.

When is Next Tuesday?

Outlook is kind of clever. It will find phrases in emails and offer to do sensible things with them. If it sees "11:00 next Tuesday" it will offer the option to make an appointment for that date.

Thing is, if you get the email on a Monday a human knows that "next Tuesday" is a week tomorrow, not tomorrow. Since if it was tomorrow the sender would have said "tomorrow" rather than "next Tuesday".

If you see what I mean.

Unfortunately Outlook doesn't. Which is why I had some minor palpitations when something I thought was comfortably distant in the future appeared a lot sooner than I was expecting....

Needy OneDrive

I love Windows 10. Working well for me. Apart from the way that OneDrive has suddenly become all needy on me. Nary a day goes by without one of the files that I've worked with throwing up a cry for help like the one above. Usually I can fix this by just opening and closing the document, but it is a bit annoying to have to do this.

One thing I have noticed is that if you get a "Couldn't contact the server to get the latest version" message (which I seem to get a lot more often than I should) you can go into the files menu and force Word to use either the server or the local version, removing a potential conflict. But then I usually end up saving everything in a different file anyway just to be safe which is a bit annoying.

But then again, OneDrive did save my bacon today when I, ahem, made slightly more dramatic changes to a file than I intended. All I had to do was drop onto the OneDrive site and pull back the previous version, which was very nice.

Toads at Hull

If you do visit the campus you should take a look in the new Art Gallery attached to the library. As well as some lovely paintings they also have displays of all the Larkin Toads that were displayed around the city a few years ago and recently brought back together for a reunion. You can also meet up with one of the original toads that you can just see peeking out of the right hand side of this picture.

Saturday Open Day

We're holding a couple of special open days this weekend for admissions candidates. We used the lobby of the spiffy new library to set up and show off our new 3D stuff, which includes a chance to walk round our new student accommodation that hasn't been built yet.

I went fully suited up, and was even complemented on my sharp attire. Mike was doing tours and I was manning the fort with some summer interns who did a great job of showing off the tech.

Throw Away Pictures

I'm rubbish at throwing things away. We are in the middle of some domestic renovation that has forced us to confront the huge amount of stuff that we've accumulated over the years. I've found things I haven't touched for years, and I'm still loth to chuck them out.

However, I have found a way to ease the pain of passing in this situation.. I'm taking pictures of the stuff before it goes in the bin. Then I make them into collages, like the one above. The perfect end to this would be to print the collage out and throw it away I suppose....

Irrelevant Picture

We've been away for a couple of days and today we drove back. The picture above has nothing to do with any of this. But I do rather like it.

I took the shot last week in London. When she gave me the key the girl at the check-in said "I've given you one of our nice rooms, with a great view". At the time I wondered if this was the best possible pitch she could have used as it might call into question other rooms in the place, but she wasn't wrong about the view. It will be even more interesting when they finish building whatever it is they're building.

Clifton and Balloons

Today we spent some time wandering around Clifton, which is a lovely place to be. I've always had fond memories of the place, what with it being where we had our wedding reception a remarkably long time ago.  This is the view of the Clifton Suspension Bridge from the Clifton Hotel terrace, which always brings back memories.

Just around the corner is Royal York Crescent, where number one wife used to live. Great place.

It just so happened that today was the start of the Bristol Balloon festival. We've tried to go and take a look before, but this time we satisfied ourselves with some long distance views over the city.

No More Sock Safaris

Now that we are starting to move things back into the bedroom things are returning to normal. It seems quite luxurious to be able to reach into a drawer and pull out a pair of socks, rather than going on a hunt around the house to find some.

Quick on the Drawer

I made nine drawers tonight. By the end I had a little production line where I worked on the same part of each drawer before moving on to the next one.

I've got one of the drawers slightly wrong, in that the drawer bottom (the thing you can see being slid into the drawer in the diagram) is the wrong way up. But at the moment I don't care that much. Because I've finished making drawers.

Coping with a Skewed Universe

Today I was fitting handles to doors. As you can see. Note that the handles line up exactly. Turns out that there are two ways you can make the door handles of your wardrobes line up.

1. Fit the handles in the centre of the door and then make the doors line up. (difficult to impossible outside of laboratory conditions)
2. Fit the doors and then put the handles in the place where they line up. (easy if you stick some tape across the gap and then use this to line the holes up).

I much prefer the second method. Experience has taught me that when you put big things into houses the concepts of "level" and "right angle" kind of go out of the window. This frequently means that you can't get furniture to line up with the floor and ceiling because they are already wrong at the start.

So you have to go for the solution that looks right. If you look very closely at the very top of our wardrobes you'll notice that the doors are very slightly out of alignment. But the handles are perfect, and those are the bits you focus on.

Drills that Hunt in Pairs

Went up town to buy some drills and bits and bobs today. It's the kind of thing you do when in the middle of a DIY project. Turns out that the drills I wanted were only sold in packs of two.

I've no idea why they don't just sell one on its own. I'm unlikely to break drills this size. Although I guess it is quite possible I could lose one.

Chipboard Superman

By day he is a meek mannered Computer Science Lecturer. But by night he picks up his electric screwdriver and assembles Ikea furniture.

Or at least he does until the bedroom is finished.

Press Reviews and Colds

I don't mind having a cold. It's the getting of it I don't like. For me there is a stage where your body knows that something is wrong and is trying to work out what is going on. Then the throat and the nose kick in to make it clear what is happening. But for me this is a good thing, it means that I can begin the process of getting better. 

Yesterday I was in stage one. Today I'm in stage 2. Of course, life being that it is, today was also when I had to go into town first thing to do a paper review thingy with Radio Humberside. It was great fun, and this time the picture that I took with the fat lens actually came out. 

Birthday Fun, Gadgets and Furniture

Had a great birthday. Got some gadgets, had nice food. Even found time to buy a bunch of furniture. So busy having a good time that I didn't get around to taking any photographs. 

Which has got to be a good thing. 

Thanks to everyone who sent me their best wishes. Much appreciated. 

Hymers School Summer Students Visit

We had some visitors today all the way from China. They are summer school students who are visiting Hymers College in Hull.  I did a talk about developing for the Arduino which was great fun (at least I enjoyed it) even though I managed to break one of my props half way through the session.

Thanks for coming folks, and I hope you enjoyed your visit to the university.