the indecision caused by eight crops of five shots

Hmmm. Odd sort of day. It began with a bent-double poke around the cobbles where I lost the wee nut thing for the tripod last night. My hopes were raised by the presence of older-looking bits of hardware and when I reached the spot I though it would be in, there it was. It is now taped in place and I've checked the rest of the adjusting-things for anything else which might decide to jump off into an ill-lit puddle just for a laugh.

As today was a non-working use-up-holiday potter-around-the-town day I was planning on pottering round the town, perhaps pottering up the hill then maybe pottering down again, back round then back over for a bit. In the end I spent most of the morning reading in the garden now that the pikey shouters from the downstairs flat have moved out before heading out to attempt to find one of those pillow things containing buckwheat which grow warm when microwaved for Nicky to stick on her sore shoulder. Seven shops and two hours later I managed to find one; at least I'd had a purpose to walk through town with. I was expecting it to be relatively quiet but for some reason it was all Saturday-level busy. Maybe everyone else took a day off to use up their holiday. Hopefully next Monday will be quieter although it's probably getting close to Easter-holiday-time. Now that I think of it the hill was rather busy too... lots of students in unsuitable hill-clothing were trundling around. For some reason one of them stared at the tripod as he went past but didn't look at me so didn't see my WTF look back.

I've been trying not to consider the lack of a rear-screen viewfinder a problem since upgrading but have come pretty close to accidentally looking optically at the sun a few times now. With a tripod the risk and need is gone: even if your shutter speeds are high enough to prevent blur the tripod can be used to keep the camera in place whilst snapping random test shots and checking the results on the display rather than risking retinal damage. A few wonky test shots later and everything is lined up ready to start damaging the sensor.

A month or two back there were a huge pile of those massive bags used by construction workers and people getting gravel delivered for their gardens. The result appears to be more bloody steps, this time at the top bit of the old streambed gully forming the interesting way to the summit. Whilst it's nice that it finally has proper-official-route designation it was nicer when the path was a little bit more pick-your-own and the gravel in the stream bed could be slid (slided? slidded? slode? slud?) down. If they could just put in a few passing places it would be so much better, given the apparently inadequate aerobic capacity of the modern student.