christopher-hill.com

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More Pictures

I've uploaded more pictures from my trip. If you've already seen the first batch, start here. Very train heavy this batch, which will annoy Christian and please my dad. To be honest, I couldn't really be bothered with taking many photos for the first few days, and limited myself to taking a few snaps at stations, which is why this batch is so train heavy. The guy in the cabin next to mine is a decent photographer, so maybe at some stage he'll have some interesting pictures of this bit of the journey on his site when he returns. In the mean time check out his photos.

Friday, September 30, 2005 9:42 PM 0 comments

Holiday Photos


Sheffield Station
Originally uploaded by chill.
Right then, I had planned on uploading my journal and photos side by side on a day by day basis, but people have been nagging me about the photos, so I am concentrating on them first. The first three days of my trip are now uploaded to my Sheffield to Shanghai Photo Set.

Thursday, September 29, 2005 10:02 PM 0 comments

I'm back


Sunrise over Ulaan Baator
Originally uploaded by chill.
I'm back then. Shame that the whole moblogging thing never worked out, but I did keep a journal using another technology called a "pen" and "paper". I'll try and publish the journal on the Shanghai site as soon as possible.
The trip was, as you might imagine, fantastic. I feel like I have been away for ages I've seen so much. It is hard to single out the best day, though the 24 hours spent crossing Mongolia would be somewhere near the top of the list. I got up at sunrise to say goodbye to people leaving the train at Ulaan Baator and snapped this photo of the polluting factories in the world's coldest capital city from the train window. After Ulaan Baator, the train snaked its way through snowy mountains before desceneding into the Gobi Desert. The desert was relentless, punctuated by the occasional camel or Ger camp.

Tuesday, September 27, 2005 8:10 AM 0 comments

Holiday

I am on holiday. In my absence, I'll try and keep my travel blog updated here.

Thursday, September 08, 2005 7:22 PM 0 comments

Geoblogging

One of the principal reasons for me using Firebox is the huge array of extensions available. Here's a quick list of what I use...
Ad Block, Flashblock, Sage (RSS reader), Spellbound (spell checker), Bandwidth Tester, Minesweeper, Card Games, Blockfall (Tetris).
The best of all is Greasemonkey - which I finally got round to installing this other night. Basically it allows you to inject DHTML into web pages, and there are a lot of pre-written scripts. One I'm particularly interested in is for Geo-tagging Flickr images via Google Maps, so in future if you look at my photos in Flickr, you may notice the Long-Lat coordinates of where the photo was taken. The script also submits the image to geobloggers.com, a world wide listing of geo-tagged objects.

Sunday, September 04, 2005 10:15 AM 0 comments

Rivelin


Rivelin
Originally uploaded by chill.
I'm out in "the field" now. Bole Hill in fact, looking down a foggy Rivelin valley. I think it is going to be a nice day, the sun is just starting to burn all this cloud away. One minor problem with blogging pictures like this is that in daylight it is hard to see the photo on the screen. In order to capture some detail in the valley, I've bracketed down a full stop, but can't tell if that is too much. And my thumbs hurt now too!

Edit - OK, I'm back and pleased with the results there. The exposure is fine, but I have overdone it with the white balance, over-warming the photo.

9:39 AM 0 comments

Moblogging!


Moblogging!
My new mobile means I can finally try my hand at some regular moblogging. This post is just to test it all works before I try it in the field.

Edit - Success! Not a bad result, the image quality is a little noisy, which is to be expected given that it is a fairly low light shot (and, you know, a camera phone). A little underexposed too, but the cool thing about this phone is that exposure times can be adjusted. In fact, you get all the features you'd expect on an entry level digital camera; white balance settings, a flash (of sorts), macro mode (used here of course), and other gubbins that I'll probably never use.

8:42 AM 0 comments

New Mobile

I've finally got me a new mobile. Last week, Orange basically told me they didn't want my custom any more buy giving me a ridiculous price to upgrade to the SPV 550. I'm glad they did now, as it forced me to think a bit more clearly about which phone is best for me, and which is the most economical tarrif/network. That phone is the Sony Ericsson K750i, for the simple reason that the camera is head and shoulders above anything else on the market right now. As for the actual "being a phone" part, it has rave reviews there too, so hopefully I'll be happy with it. Time will tell of course.

Saturday, September 03, 2005 6:22 PM 0 comments

The Age of the Spider

In spider news, I have caught two more of the those giant killer spiders, the last one being the biggest yet, approximately the size of a small child*. This time I released them into the wild rather than allowing them to die (of natural causes). Just when I'd got over that, I went to Flickr and saw in the "Your Contacts' Photos" section some photos of similar spider taken by Tony. It appears they're coming for him too. As predicted by Kemp, The Age of the Spider is upon us. One thing is for certain, there is no stopping them, the spiders will soon be here in abundance. And I for one welcome our new giant arachnid overlords. I would like to remind them that a trusted software developer would be very useful in creating an information network to help spread their message of fear and subservience.
*'s toy spider

9:48 AM 1 comments