Saturday, October 22, 2016

Hotel to avoid... Courtyard Marriott, Gatwick Airline to avoid... Aer Linugs

A couple of weeks ago, I had the sad news of my mother's passing so I had to go to Britain to attend her funeral. The journey over was somewhat easier than the journey back. Not being in much of a mood to document the journey over, instead I documented the journey back.
 On the way from London, I had noticed there was WiFi available on the trains though sadly by then my tablet battery was almost depleted. On the way back I fared better but noticed that had I had a UK adaptor plug for my USB charger, I could have kept my tablet topped up on the way. As can be seen from the white circle in the photo above, British trains seem to be equipped with electrical plugins now.

Oddly enough, on the way from the station two weeks before to my parents house, the bus that I rode on didn't have WiFi but the other busses in the fleet did have WiFi. Things have progressed. Even Swansea itself looked cleaner and more prosperous since I last visited.

Having said it looked prosperous, I was somewhat disconcerted to see that just about every store in St Helen's road (a down at heel road always) now seemed to consist of brightly colored Arabic and Syrian stores with signs up in English and Arabic. It was equally disconcerting to find my favorite little cafe in the market had vanished and that I could hear Arabic being spoken openly in a town where Welsh used to be commonly heard.
The train passed through many stations on the way to London though I didn't really start taking photos of them until I reached Reading and changed trains to get to Gatwick.
Having reached Gatwick and being entertained by a series of entertaining events that happened outside my window, the next task was to seek out an hotel. I didn't have any reservations made and there was a choice of two hotels. One was the Hilton and the other was a Marriott Courtyard. So, at just about midnight I walked in to get a room for which they charged the princely sum of £100.
The room looked good when I arrived then I noticed none of the trashcans had been emptied - they were all overflowing. Then there were wet towels just dumped in the shower and the bed though vaguely straightened looked like it had been slept in. I called the Front Desk and the Night Manager came up, apologised profusely and spent the next 30 minutes changing sheets, pillowcases, towels and emptying the trashcans. At no point was I ever offered a discount on the exorbitant rate for my filthy room. Thumbs down, Marriott Courtyard Gatwick!
My next stop was some little cafe in Gatwick airport to have breakfast since none was provided at the expensive hotel. That was quite good but at £6 was a little pricy. It served to prepare my stomach for the next of my series of antibiotics. Yes, antibiotics. For a couple of months I'd been unwell. As I work in the US as a schoolbus driver, I do get health insurance but the amount I get paid doesn't cover the co-pay which means I might as well just not have health insurance as I can't afford to use it! Thus, I made use of the fact I'm still a British citizen and used the much maligned National Health Service. I saw the doctor, free and had my medicine, free. That included antibiotics, a pain relieving gel and a steroid.
The flight from Gatwick to Dublin was uneventful aside from the flight attendants coming down the isle like scrounging beggars trying to peddle drinks that should have been free. If I wanted water, I had to pay for it. Needless to say, I arrived in Dublin quite parched and thinking very little of Air Fungus or to give it, its self-imposed name, Aer Lingus.
After disembarking from the Air Fungus plane, things immediately deteriorated. I knew I should have paid extra and flown Delta or United or some civilised airline. The first thing I had to do after walking along miles of corridors to passport control was to walk through the noxious fumes pouring out from the beggars at the airport trying to peddle perfume. There was no other way to pass than to walk through the toxic stench. Needless to say, I was very glad to be carrying strong antihistamines.
Being four hours or more after breakfast, I was again hungry. I got the cheapest food I could find and it was an astounding £9 which is surely some kind of rip-off record. Dublin airport ranks alongside Chicago for being one of the nastiest airports I have ever visited.
The flight droned on forever. In fact, it droned on for far too long. 8 hours on this leg for a flight that took six the other way. That was possibly helped by the fact the pilot flew 100 miles past Chicago airport then turned back to land at Chicago. Perhaps he was asleep having had too much Irish whisky? The seat backs had video screens in which it was possible to see the track that the plane was following. The screens also showed videos but the sound was so appalling I quickly had to give up. WiFi was availble but it needed to be paid via PayPal and PayPal wasn't accepting my password. That was OK though as the battery was almost dead on my tablet. The alleged USB charging port in the back of the seat didn't seem to work either.

Eventually we landed at Chicago where I transferred to another plane - this time to Charlotte. The airport had working USB chargers but the WiFi was set to cut out after 30 minutes with a demand for payment. Then I noticed the smallest soft drinks bottles I'd ever seen being sold for a massive $5 each. Clearly Chicago and Dublin airports are competing with each other to be the most ludicrously expensive!
The view from the plane above Charlotte was very pretty. I wished I'd had my real camera in my pocket rather than just my cellphone as the scene was much more intense to the naked eye than the cellphone shows.

After landing, I located the courtesy phone and arranged a room for the night. Being awake for already somewhere in the region of 26 hours, I was tired and in no condition to drive home. The hotel that answered and had rooms was the Quality Inn. The room was clean and odor free. It was quiet. I had a really good nights sleep.

After leaving, I went to write a review and read some truly horrid reviews. Reviewers were talking about hookers and drug deals etc. That was not the hotel I saw. It was clean, quiet and welcoming. There was some construction in the lobby but that happens at every hotel at some point. So, after dashing off to an appointment rather more hindered than helped by my smart phone's navigation, I eventually drove back home.

Hotel to avoid... Courtyard Marriott, Gatwick
Airline to avoid... Aer Linugs

The church at Halkyn

Today, I was in Halkyn, North Wales where my mother's ashes were to be buried. Though it was hard to part with her, I laid her casket in the hole dug for it. Yes, I did this myself, picking up and carrying the casket from the altar where the service was read to the graveside and lowered it gently into the grave. Yes, it was hard and I had to hold back tears to do it. In a way it was a way of returning my mother to her ancestral home where she may lie for all eternity amongst her family.

She did not have an individual grave. She had requested to be placed beside her father whose ashes were interred in her grandfather's grave. The graveyard was beside a beautiful 19th century church on a hill, overlooking a beautiful estuary.
The church was built in the 19th century in an older style. It's quite small but very impressive inside with very modern sound systems etc. The church had the odd effect of making me happy. It was even equipped with a flush toilet which was rather unusual. Whether the toilet then emptied into a cess pit into which less favored residents of the graveyard are tossed is unknown.
The stained glass windows were as impressive as my secondhand Olympus E-PM1 was at taking pictures of them. I must say that little camera is very impressive. I have to say that it is still in iAuto mode. There's nothing that it hasn't done well so far.
Outside, the church at Halkyn is clearly neo gothic with a tower. In the past, churches with towers were built as defenses for villages should roaming bands of brigands from the Viking lands come through. Most churches now have steeples rather than tower fortifications.
As can be seen here, the view from the church is spectacular. I've not looked at the area on the map but I am impressed. I had very much a feeling of peace, tranquility and happiness when I was here. I'm hoping my mother is now resting in peace.

A job for another day will be to erect a tombstone and to take a photograph of the grave. I did not take a photograph today because the grave was opened before we arrived and because aside from a few handfuls of dirt thrown in by myself, my father and our driver (a family friend), the grave was open and my mother's casket visible. It would have been grossly disrespectful.

Friday, October 21, 2016

Taking pitchers or taking photographs?

It doesn't make much sense these days to talk about f-stops, ISOs and shutter speeds. Out of interest, I put my PM-1 into iAuto mode to see what happened. The result is really quite excellent. Well exposed images that are mostly correctly focused and of good quality.

As long as a camera can produce images like these with the minimum of user interaction then I'd say having to know about things like f-stops etc is not relevant to anybody bar the geeky minority. Now, while I do understand then, having had my first camera from my late aunt in 1973, I'm probably nit the first to question their relevance now.

When automatic exposure cane out in the 1980s followed by automatic focus in the 1990s, I questioned why they didn't go the whole hog and have digital imaging too. They were already halfway there with the magnetic stripe on Super 8 carrying sound recording and with the optical recording of exposure data on APS film.

These days, with smaller sensors the risk of getting an image where only part of the subject is in focus is pretty much gone. Sure, the geeky minority might shingle and complain for that is what they do best but the fact is nobody wants to look at an image that's half way out of focus. It's not art as the short trousered geeky brigade will laughably claim. It's technical description is: crap photography.

The first image, way above, is really well exposed and focused, all in iAuto mode. The photo below is equally well exposed and focused in the same iAuto mode.
The photo below is one of only four disappointing images taken over the past few days. The problem here is that though the camera has tried valiantly to get the blackberries in focus, it really didn't quite know what it was supposed to be doing. Mind, even with an expert at the helm, this would have been an almost impossible task given light levels, time etc. so, though it is disappointing, it's nit actually a terrible photograph. The blackberries are clearly blackberries and uts only when you blow it up that you wonder what on earth the camera has focused on.
These photos were all taken over the last few days near Swansea, Wales on my trip over for my late mother's funeral an internment. Given this is not a photography trip, I took my Olympus EPM-1 with me. Thus far, the straight from camera JPEG images have been astoundingly good. In fact, they're so good, I really question the worth of recording ORF RAW files as well.

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Arrived in sunny Britain

Well, I arrived in Britain last week and have been out with my camera. It's actually just about getting toward fall colors so it's getting to be prettier. I'll post pictures in a week or so, when I get near a computer. My iPad resolutely refuses to handle photos unless I upload them directly from my Mac.

I had a very interesting email yesterday. Apparently Twutterfeed is shutting down on the 31st. Twitterfeed copies my latest blog URL to my thousands of Twitter followers, each of whom ignores every blog entry. In their closing email, Twitterfeed listed various options for replacements. Honestly, since the stats were universally zero, I don't see much point.

Recently, one of my friends wanted me to go back on Twitter. I did and found Twitter to be as dire as ever. There are people that claim to use Twitter successfully but I'm not one of them. Lord knows, I've tried it every which way. I've tried joining topics and just been ignored. I've tried joining political debates and been ignored. It just seems that Twitter is like a soap box. One stands peacefully in a line waiting ones turn while not listening to the guy on the box. Then when it's time, one stands on the box and shouts toward the multitude without realizing that nobody in the line behind is listening and that the few pidgeons pecking away at the crumbs that the park sweeper is busily trying to sweep away while listening to his Sony Walkman aren't paying you any attention.

Indeed, Twitter came out with statistics that allowed me to see the reach of my tweets. Let's just say that the reach was about what I expected. Near enough zero interaction. Given that off and on I've experimented with Social media in general and found it to be totally lacking in the kinds of things I've been looking for, I intend not to waste another second on Twitter and Twitter based twaddle. Being somewhat of a cynic, I do wonder whether Twitter was so named because it's founder Jack Dorsey  reckoned that only twits would use it!

So, while I've been here in Britain, I've been taking some photos but as they're still on the camera, there being absolutely no way to upload them on the hoof to my iPad mini, I cannot yet include any. Certainly the iPad takes good images but unless you want to see what I had for breakfast, I'm not taking that out with me for photos.

This trip, I took my Olympus E-PM1 home to Britain. I've thus far left it on 1600 ISO and iAuto setting. Since the images are largely scenic, it really does seem to be doing a phenomenal job on my occasional walks. It slips nicely into my Barbour jacket pocket. I leave the 14-42 lens on it at all times - not that I actually have another lens anyway. I'm very happy with the apparent results on the screen. Some of the low light focusing has been less than stellar but otherwise, no problems - even with the ludicrously high ISO I preselected.

I am very lucky that on my last trip home in 2011, I took a photo of me with my parents using my Canon XT. That, I believe is probably the only photo I have of the three of us together. I can't take another like that as the whole reason for my trip to Britain this time was to attend my mother's funeral. I miss my mum!


Thursday, October 6, 2016

General update

Since my last blog update much has happened.

Two more of the four LED light bulbs that claimed 10,000 hour life have failed. That makes three out of four. All 3 failed to last a single year of intermittent use in the bathroom. The old incandescent bulb that I never replaced still works well and that has been there for several years. The moral of that story has to be not to waste your hard earned cash on LED bulbs. The savings in electricity are more than offset by the cost of bulbs. Add to that, the bulbs are non recyclable and will quickly become landfill.
I bought a GPS data logger from Amazon. It's the DG-100 by GlobalSat. I put batteries in it and logged some of my journey home. Then I discovered the CD has only software that works on Windows. I downloaded a driver for Mac from the company website and managed to upload a copy of the log to my Mac. As there was no software other than the driver that would work on Mac, the company suggested using google earth. Needless to say, google earth won't run on my Mac. It comes up with runtime errors.

Turning to the manual, it said the Windows software wouldn't run on Windows 8 and according to reviews, won't work on Windows 10 either. Luckily my lady had an old Windows 7 laptop. I dutifully loaded the software and it wouldn't recognize the device.

So, in order to use this $20 marvel of technology, it appears I have to read the file using my Mac, transfer it to a memory stick. Then visit milady to beg use of her old Windows 7 laptop then somehow get the software to read the memory stick file. That seems like a horrible lot of hard work, running from one computer to another in order to work around incompetently written software. I don't think I'm going out on a limb in calling this device a scam. I don't think it has a snowflakes chance of working!

In other news, I had the sad news of my mother's passing. I'd promised to visit this year but in the early part of the year couldn't leave my job to do it. Then in the summer I couldn't afford to go dye to outrageous air fares. Then I got a new job so was planning to visit at Christmas. Airfares are still outrageous at $1000 for a flight at a time when fuel prices have never been lower! Airlines are definitely price gouging!