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!