Sent my father an e-mail yesterday, asking for advice on a second-hand 75-300 Sigma lens for the camera that I was sort of tempted to buy. Well, last night he phoned to suggest that as a thank you for this summer’s walk in the woods he’d pay part of the price if I wanted to get a brand new Canon 75-300 lens instead.

Don’t you just love parents?

Actually, my mother filed a protest. Not, she said, because she didn’t think I deserved it, but because he hadn’t offered to get her a thank you present, too…

As I said, don’t you just love parents?

Starting the photography course today. Very much looking forward to it. I’ve also signed up for a dark room introduction course, so maybe I will be doing a bit of b/w photography in addition to the slides soon. I’ll have to do at least one film in order to have something to practice on for the course, so that’s a start. Actually, I think I have an exposed, undeveloped b/w film in the fridge, so I suppose I could use that. I have no idea what sort of pictures are on it, but then I like surprises.

In other news, the tax lists are in (or out, or whatever). You gotta love a country where we figure that one aspect of “open government” (or “open society” possibly) is that all the tax lists are open to the public. Consequently, you can go to, for example, Bergens Tidene, and do a search on your colleague, your obnoxious neighbour, the bully from kindergarden, the guy who really wants to date you but you’re not quite sure you’re interested (you may be now, though… ;) ), basically whoever you like, and find out what their taxable income is and how much money they have in the bank after their debts have been subtracted (though BT seem to be rather busy – maybe because they offer the service for free and other papers charge you?). I’m not normally the gossiping sort and tend to leave other people’s private lives alone unless they want to tell me, but I must admit I think this is rather good fun. I suppose I must have a bit of the voyeur in me after all. Or maybe I’m just appalingly materialistic and revel in a chance to really judge people by what they earn? You’ll have to be the judge of that, I’m not going to offer any justifications. It’s fun. And FrP apparently want to stop this. Yet again I am left to marvel at their ability to come up with a standpoint which is the exact opposite of the one I would have chosen if it had occurred to me that there was a cause to fight at all. Why change it? So we can’t check how much the fat cats earn, or compare the fat cats’ official earnings with the actual amount of money they seem to spend (as with Røkke). Actually, it seems the data protection authorities agree with them, so maybe they have a better reason. Protection of privacy? Hm. Ok. I guess they’ve got a point, though I don’t mind people finding out how much I earn – and before you ask; the listing for me for last year is inaccurate, because I moved from Britain to Norway and only the Norwegian income is listed (the rest, of course, was taxed in Britain). In fact, next year’s list is also going to be an inaccurate reflection of my actual salary, because of the changing jobs and all.

Whohoo, I seem to be getting access to the tax-search page again after the server has been rejecting me a for a while. Obviuosly I’m not the only one who is of a curious nature (and too much of a cheapskate to pay for the service).

Yikes. Some people earn ridiculous amounts of money. Ok, so what else is new, you may ask. Well, it seems some people I actually know earn ridiculous amounts of money. Yikes. Well, in that case, they may feed me if they want (and I won’t say no to that glass of red wine, either).

Voice in my head: Madonna – Material Girl (rather appropriate, don’t you think?)

I need to send one of these.

I wonder if you’re more likely to be a blogger if you suffer from insomnia (or vice versa)? It just seems like so many of the people I read regularly have been having problems getting to sleep lately. I’ve just been through a long period of little and inefficient sleep myself, though I caught up a bit in Scotland (fell into be before ten and therefore tended to wake bright and early – sevenish or so – even the days I was planning to sleep in a bit).

Now, however, I’m back to normal, or what passes for normal in my life, viz. feeling wide awake the moment my head hits the pillow, no matter how droopy my eyelids felt prior to that. Pity I can’t sleep in front of the telly, really, unfortunately, I just get droopy, I don’t actually fall asleep.

Voice in my head: John Lennon – I’m so tired

Went to the Oslo Kamera Klubb meeting this evening, and for the first time I brought slides for the “picture of the evening contest”. The contest rules are as follows: up to two pictures per person (or, rather, member, which is why I didn’t bring any last time, I hadn’t paid my membership fee yet – I have now), the evening’s guest speaker is the sole judge. From the entered pictures (s)he discards between two thirds and three fourths, and then ranks the “winners” into 3rd, 2nd and 1st places (as many of each as (s)he likes), and finally choses one as the picture of the evening. The judge also comments on the pictures, especially the ones that are discarded – pointing out the reasons for why the picture doesn’t quite make it. As each picture is measured against the other pictures that evening, a lot of the comments tend to be “this is a good picture but it is not quite as good as some of the other pictures tonight”, which is a soft option as rejection goes. A good thing too. As I said, I brought my first two pictures today, and neither of them made it, though he hesitated over one of them (reassuringly). It was, of course, interesting to get a professional opinion, and my reasonable self agreed with the judgement, at least as far as most of the winners being better than mine. However, the majority of my various selves are not all that reasonable and were all screaming “WHY? WHY? Unsophisticated idiot! Uncultured moron! Thou foul and pestilent congregation of vapours!” and similar (though less suited for publication) unflattering epithets at the judge, though not out loud, I am happy to say. I guess I could call it an interesting experience, combining character building (the ability to accept constructive criticism being quite useful in life, I’ve been told) with (hopefully) a bettered understanding of the art of photography. I guess I will bring some pictures next time, too – and as it’s “any motive” rather than a theme, maybe I will spend a little more time assessing the potential entries for technical composition rather than appropriateness of motive.

I am also left wondering whether I would have been included in the select few if I’d chosen one of the other pictures I have from that day – same motive, different composition. Cooly assessed, I think it might be a better picture, but I’ve sort of seen it too many times, which is why I left it at home yesterday. Hm.

Anyway, I’m sure the constructive criticism was good for me. Really, I am.

I think.

Thursday night is the first night of the beginner’s course. More constructive criticism in store. Yay! (I think.)

Voice in my head: George Michael singing Freedom

This autumn is going to be way too short. I won’t have time for half the things I want to do, and in addition I suspect I will be putting in extra hours at work, because if I don’t I can’t see how we are possibly going to get everything done.

The servers at work were all down for most of the afternoon, so I was trying to think of something I needed to do that doesn’t involve servers. Unfortunately, the only thing I could think of for a long time was playing around with the layout for this site, which is probably not something my boss would consider constructive use of time. As we don’t really work with web-based projects, I can’t even call it training. I feel a makeover is due, though. I kinda like the “open book” look, but it’s not flexible enough. (Pseudo-technical babble to follow, please skip as appropriate:) The main problem with changing it is the nifty div-boxes on the author pages… I’ve got the code from Dhtml Central, and I’ve got a feeling it’s going to take rather more work than I would like to (or have time to) put in to modify it satisfactorily. On the other hand, the “boxes” are fixed size at the moment, which is not really very good, bacause it means I have to compromise between what will take advantage of a big screen with a high resolution and what will still be readable on a tiny one with 640xwhatnot resolution. Maybe I should just copy not.so.soft and add the disclaimer “For optimum viewing, come over to my house and look at these pages on my monitor.”

And colour scheme… Well, I like the blue. But… Mauve? Green? Orangy? I don’t know. Not.so.soft looks nice with the orange, even though that was not a colour I’d expect to like in a layout dominated by text. And the blue I have at the moment is ripped off from teig.org anyway, so maybe I should find “my own colour” (help! I’m beginning to sound like the marketing department of one of my ex-employers when they changed the logo to an undescribable colour. The benefit, they touted, was that since this was a colour no one else was using, the company could “own” the colour. The drawback, as most of us wanted to point out, was that it was not a particularly nice colour, and that maybe there was a reason no one else was using it…)

So. Need to study some colour charts. If I could have a look at web-monkey, it would help. But, as I think I mentioned, all the servers were down. Now, however, I’m at home. Unfortunately, it is now late, as I have been a good girl and done my translation for Plan Norge. Every few months I get some annual reports and some letters from foster children to foster parents and some letters from forster parents to foster children, and I translate the two first from English to Norwegian and the latter from Norwegian to English. It’s useful, I suppose. The latter is by far the most hilarious and also the most difficult. Apparently the majority of those Norwegians who can’t write a simple letter in English, really can’t write one in Norwegian either. So I have to figure out how to translate it into sensible Norwegian before I can ttranslate it into English. Good for a few laughs, I assure you, but I guess it would be rather a breach of confidence, and, more importantly, really, of good etiquette, to quote any of it here – so you’ll have to take my word for it. Alternatively, you can find your lokal branch of Plan and volunteer as a translator and see for yourself.

Anyway, I need to go to bed.

Voice in my head: How am I supposed to live without you (Michael Bolton – now where did he come from all of a sudden?)

I’m on this mailing list for Blogger Pro users. Most of the messages are of the “why the (insert favourite four-letter word here) doesn’t (insert random Blogger function) work?” variety. There is a lot of slagging off of the Blogger service in general. I started this diary in March and used Blogger (the free version) for a few months. It was great. I lost a few posts, but mostly because my internet connection went down while I was typing without me realising. I could blame Blogger, but I think it would be fairer to blame my ISP or my own stupidity. I got used to typing my entries in a notepad document and cutting and pasting them in. It works fine. I always have anything from 2 to 10 notepad documents hanging around on my desktop anyway, with names that are variations on the word “kladd” (“draft” in Norwegian). Currently, I have “kladd.txt”, “kodekladd.sql” (“codedraft”, easy innit?), “kodekladd.txt”, “sql.txt” and “blogger.txt”. They’re handy for storing random bits of text and code that I may or may not need later. Like random web links. Or the lyrics for Complicated. Or the result of “select table_name from all_tables” from our database. “Blogger.txt” contains the backup for my blogger templates. But I digress, where was I? Oh, yes. The only other problem I ever had with Blogger was the couple of days back in the summer when everything went haywire for almost everyone, and all the custom templates were lost (this is why backups are a good idea) and the archives weren’t publishing at all. The problem was solved more quickly on Pro than on the free service. This seemed to upset a lot of people. For my own part, I figured it would be a good time to give Pro a try. Since I upgraded I haven’t had any problems. I still lose the occasional post because my internet connection drops, but as I have the text in notepad, this is no longer a problem. I just thought I’d mention it. Blogger is getting a lot of bad press (or bad blog, rather), and I think it’s a cracking service. The free version is cracking, not least because it’s FREE. The Pro service is even more cracking, and almost as good as free, anyway, at 30ish dollars a year.

Touch wood, by the way.

Voice in my head: Patience of Angels (Eddi Reader)

I’ve spent much of the day doing some (much needed) tidying, and then I started trying to get some order into my slide collection and that’s where I’ve been for the last five hours…

You see, ages ago, when I first started using slide film, I started numbering all of them, thinking I’d be able to have some sort of an archiving system to make individual pictures easy to locate. Fair enough, a good idea in and of itself. Unfortunately, I never quite got around to do all the data entry necessary. I’ve lost some of the bits of paper with picture lists on them in the interveaning years. At some points I’ve had too many films, some developed and some undeveloped, all at once, and the numbering has gone a bit awry – so that 32 preceedes 25 chronologically. To make matters worse, for quite a while I had two cameras, both with slide film, so some events have got double coverage…

Then, sometime this year, I started A. using the binder pages with slide-size pockets for storage, rather than the confusing boxes, and B. started a proper database using BookCAT (marvellous tool). It’s just that A is expensive and B takes time. So I get these spurts of activity where I get 5 or six films sorted, but I still have a bit to go. This last stint, I think I’ve managed to get all the boxes left in order (by number, not chronology), and there are 25 of them on the florr next to me, all with at least 36 pictures.

Sigh.

If I can just get them catalogued, I can pick up the binder pages necessary (yikes, it’s going to cost a fortune!) when I pick up the next lot of developed slides… From Scotland, and a few places before that… 8 films. There’s another one, almost done, in the camera. I seem to have my work cut out for me…

It’s quite a lot of fun, though frustrating at times. I have a field for “date picture was taken”, but it sometimes gets rather tricky. The 1996 Eurovision Song Contest, for example. When was it? May, I’m sure, but which date? And which date, a week or two before that, did Janne and I go for a walk, take pictures of each other in sunglasses inside at a cafe I can’t identify (which one is it?) and practice our silly walks down by Festningen (the castle)? The fun, of course, comes from seeing the pictures again. In the one’s I’ve just mentioned, I have close-cropped black hair (no, really!). *giggle* And everyone dressed up for the Eurovision party. Gold and glitter deluxe. Great photos. Maybe I’ll scan them for you at some point, though I suspect I had better get permission from the people involved first…

Anyway, getting some order is a good thing. I’ve just joined the Oslo Camera Club, and I expect it will make me take more photos, not less. I’m even starting a photography beginners’ course on Thursday. It should be good. I don’t know half enough about the technicalities of the equipment (my camera has all these nifty manual functions that I never use…) and I’m sure I could do with an second opinion of some of the pictures I’ve taken earlier.

Thing is, there was something else entirely that I was supposed to do today. Ah, well. It’s too late now, it’ll have to wait until tomorrow evening.

Voice in my head: I Believe (Marcella Detroit)

Do you want to be my neighbour?

I look at flats similar in size to my own and reflect how lucky I am. There are only two things wrong with my flat. One is the kitchen. I need to redo it. I meant to redo it in October, but suspect I will now start in November. The other is the lack of a balcony/veranda. However, as it is now October, it will be another six months until I will regret the lack of a balcony/veranda again. Counting my blessings. Yes, so, ok, I’d rather have a villa with two floors and an attic, six bedrooms with adjoining bathrooms, massive kitchen and a library to die for. Even a two-bedroom flat would be nice. But considering what my mortgage and other expenses come to every month, I can’t see how I could do much better in this city. And it seems this city is where I’m staying for a while.

Though the thought of moving to Scotland did occur to me when I had to leave Dufftown on Tuesday.

Voice in my head: Soak up the Sun (or whatever, Sheryl Crow – aargh, go away!)

Why do people persist in depicting penguins in connection with the North Pole? THERE ARE NO PENGUINS IN THE ARCTIC! PENGUINS LIVE IN ANTARCTICA!!!! (Oh, and bits of South America and in New Zealand.) Don’t believe me? Ask the edutainers.

Sorry. Didn’t mean to yell.

(There are also no polar bears in the streets in mainland Norway, but that, at least, would be conceivable.)

Oh joy! I won the wine lottery today, so I now have a bottle of Marqués de Cacéres in my bag. I also have cash, despite being walletless, as I have the money to buy the bottles for next Friday. Not that I was actually planning on spending any money on the way home, but I don’t like being completely without any cash or plastic.

Voice in my head: Baby Blue (Dylan)

Ok, I think the cold may be to blame after all. Today, anyway. My head’s gone all fuzzy and cloudy and I keep sneezing. And, oh, has it been a month already? Does this mean I can go home? Well, maybe. Except I’ve just realised I left my filofax and wallet at home today. Which means I would not have shown my season ticket for the bus if there had been an inspection. And also that I will have no season ticket going home either, and no money to buy a single to cover the journey. Hang on, I think I still have that multi-saver thing in the front pocket of my backpack. Yes! God bless backpacks.

Voice in my head: The Inspector Gadget theme