GEEKISH NOTES.
I have noticed that some bloggers are having difficulties uploading pictures to their blogs, this may be due to using internet explorer particularly with if you are still using Windows XP.
In a general sense I think this due to the wealth level in Thanet where a substantial number of people are using old computers and operating systems, this means that the latest version of Internet Explorer, version 9 is something they can’t install.
As far as I can see from my web statistics the average Thanet user is using out of date and unsupported software, myself included. There is no easy way for me to update I have four scanners and five printers, most of which don’t work properly with Windows 7 drivers.
Fortunately the solution for blogger and images is to download and use the Google Chrome browser and use this to publish your blog posts, this also overcomes problems with copying and pasting into the blogger publisher.
RAMBLE.
The weather was to unpredictable for anything much today, I had contemplated the French Weekend in Sandwich, but didn’t fancy wet children and cameras.
Sorry about this if you were on tenterhooks for some pictures, they will mostly be gardens at Quex as one can go into he house when it rains, on this sort of day Quex is really the only place in Thanet that the children will tolerate for several hours.
The Turner Contemporary usually has some sort of indoor activity for children, but the other adults just get bored after about half an hour of the gallery, it just isn’t really big enough to make a family day of.
My own approach to art galleries and museums, photographing and sketching exhibits and the people looking at them, usually causes some sort of problem eventually.
For instance photographing the events like the Dancing Queens or the Margate Meltdown seems to be no problem at all, even getting in really close for the videos or asking people to pose seems to be very acceptable.
In and around historical attractions the security soon become agitated and in art galleries people are inclined to start behaving like primitives who think you are trying to steal either their souls or the essence of the exhibited art.
Gardens seem to be an exception, a sort of neutral ground.
Fortunately here in Thanet people have got used to me and seeing the pictures on the web, but there is nonetheless a tension or strain involved with taking photographs that doesn’t seem to be present when photographing gardens.
QUEX, MUSEUM, HOUSE, GARDEN, BARN.
Although primarily the museum is a natural history museum of the stuffed animal and bones type, not something that is really my bag, although it provides considerable entertainment for my children. There is a considerable cultural artefact oriental china collection, which from an arts point of view rivals anything I have ever seen from the point of view of diversity.
I would think most people would be entertained by the collection for several hours, oh yes there is also a considerable weapons collection, once again not really my bag.
Photography isn’t allowed in the museum so you will just have to take my word for it that it is worth going.
The house is very much a medium sized Regency Country House with about eight largish rooms open to the public, at one time more of it was open, including the nursery and a bit of the below stairs part.
It is furnished in the manner of gentry of the time,parts of it with an oriental influence, there are some interesting clocks, maritime paintings and associated Napoleonic items, a Congreve Clock in the library. The atmosphere of the house and the friendliness of the staff make it pleasant to visit with children.
The gardens are my favourite part and despite the rather iffy weather today I managed to take some pictures, links to them below.
As gardens in East Kent go these rate among the best, I am still learning the buttons on my replacement camera but I hope the pictures give you some idea.
We ate at Quex Barn, this is on the way into Quex Park there is a shop where thy sell quality produce and a restaurant that is very good, food and drink for four adults and two children coming out at under £10 per head, link takes you to the pictures.
This is a good place to eat if you have children, the staff are very friendly and accommodating.
On the way home we stopped off at the Spitfire and Hurricane Memorial Museum, this has free entrance, link to the pictures below.
I can't even install IE 7 onto my ancient computer, let alone IE 9. I have no trouble uploading photos to my blog via the latest Firefox though (I know you don't like Firefox). Enjoyed your pics as always.
ReplyDeletePeter I subscribe to the computers from schools scheme, this laptop was sold off by one of the Thanet secondary schools for £80 and has all the popular browsers installed.
ReplyDeleteI wasn’t happy about the previous version of Firefox as anyone could extract the saved passwords from it, this has been rectified with the latest version, so if you are running Firefox I recommend you ensure you have the latest version installed.
In a general sense running an out of date browser represents a security risk as obviously security updates are only written for the latest version.
The main problem with Firefox is when you paste into it from a word-processing program, computer encoding appears and the spacing goes out the window.
With bloggers spellchecker spelling in American this can produce problems for the ordinary blogger, from my point of view, publishing press releases sent to me in numerous different formats it’s a nightmare.
Glad you enjoyed the pictures, I think I am beginning to get the knack of the camera, I have to be able to use it very fast on these occasions where I have children with me as the pictures are usually taken very quickly, moving with the pack as it were.
This camera has the advantage that not only can one change the aperture and shutter speed very fast but one can also do this to the film speed, I think I prefer it to any camera I have had before.
What camera aree you using now Michael ? The piccies are nice. I love the Quex Barn and I love the Breakfast they dish up.
ReplyDeleteDon a Pentax K-r this is essentially a thing that looks and behaves like conventional Pentax film camera but has a digital memory card instead of a film.
ReplyDeleteI have previously had several digital cameras that looked like conventional professional film cameras, the problem was they didn’t really behave like them.
The last one was pretty good it was as margarine is to butter, very good quality margarine, so that you didn’t even start to notice the difference for about a month, after which you were unaccountably less hungry.
This K-r thing however better than my best ever film camera which was a Nikon F.
I don’t really know how the other digital cameras that are about compare as you can’t easily try them out.
If you have big shaky hands, need reading glasses and have very little patience then this is the one for you. Take it out of the packet and put it on auto press a large button takes a picture, the delay is about the same as a conventional camera so the think you were taking the picture of is still there.
Want to do something demanding like change to a different sensitivity film, you turn the big knob on top to Sv and twiddle the thing like a radio volume know underneath it, iso 200 to 12800 comes up on a screen you can read without your reading glasses
sounds good and the images are great but I put that down to the photographer.
ReplyDelete