Pig Sty Avenue

I can start to blog again: the Wi-Fi broadband satellite thingummy seems to be working, (touches wood), after several days of false starts and frustration. It's much slower than cable broadband back home but, wtf, it'll do. Listen live radio works, but sound shite. Podcasts can be downloaded, more or less in the time it would take to listen to them. No telly at the moment, either. I'm enjoying reading. It feels good to be away from booze and information overload. I'm sleeping soundly.

I heard a bird calling out the back of the bungalow tonight - it was very intriguing. I had a shufty at Birds of Britain and Europe (Includes North Africa and Middle East) , and thought it might be a Scops Owl. So I had a listen to all the scops owls here , and the closest I can get is the Pemba Scops owl, Otus pembaensis , which sounds like this . But that can't be right, because it's limited to an island in Tanzania... It must be some other sort... There are lots . The one in the picture there is a white faced scops owl, found in Gambia. Luckily, I got a recording of it, (amr format on my mobile phone). I'll get around to converting it to mp3, park it somewhere, and provide a link in the next couple of days.

WTF is this all about? I'm a Brit abroad wanting to watch a bit of telly... AND, I pay my Licence back home, I might add, whilst I'm here. But oh, no. Bastards. Thanks to khadijateri for the heads up on this. Nice way of spreading our culture abroad, eh?

shop with big mannequin , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . In a side street, just off September 1st St. That one in the middle, she's great, isn't she? Somewhere between scary, funny and awe-inspiring.

We've got satellite broadband. It sort of connects sometimes. Like now, for example, when, after an evening of unsuccessful page loads, it suddenly starts to work just as I'm ready to toddle off to bed. Looks like this bloke has been having strangely parallel experiences...

38 , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . ...but getting an Internet connexion isn't proving easy. I'm miles from an internet cafe, but I can get a Wi-Fi at work, balanced on a wall. No telly either. So I'm listening to Libyan radio, which has music to make Andy Kershaw wet his pants, quite often. Reading a lot.

Chinon xpro (3) , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . The things I put this child through!

Well, it's not that bad, but this is becoming a pre-occupation. (Non camera nerds: the back button is at the top left-hand corner of your browser - you should click on it now ). Here's what I thought about it back in January '07 , but searching for "Leica" on this blog shows that it was on my mind as long ago as October '05 ; (the link on that page is broken - from memory the "Leica" I had in mind was a glorified point and shoot with the Leica name but little else: I knew feck-all about cameras back then). The subject popped up again in October 2006 (when I wrote that this was one of the "subjects that make your wife's eyes glaze over, or even cause her to leave the room", and as such a good example of the utility of blogging), and again in November that year . I still haven't won the lottery but I have come to the realisation that photography should be fun. Which in turn means that I needn't worry about taking brilliant

This cheered me up on a stressful day!

Is going into business . So if you need to make a speech of any sort, get in touch with him . I would stake my liver on his honesty, integrity and ability; and on the fact that he's a big numpty. Good look, matey!

Libya's very close, at last. So it's important to see people afore I go. To this end, I met up with a couple of mates tonight, and one of them suggested North . I'd never been there before so I had a shufty at the relevant entry on the Burglar's Dog . He's got it right. The whole porn thing. And nothing but lager: I had a couple of pints of Edelweiss, (which has a stupid glass like that Erdinger )... ffs

Playing around with the dear old Chinon , I've been using the D50 as an elaborate focus checker and light meter. It's instructional. The first photo was taken on the DSLR from the same spot as the Chinon. The settings were the same, except that the d50 only goes to 200 ISO whereas the film I was using was 100 - and that's why the second photo is less exposed; (it's also cross-processed). The striking thing though is the frame. Both are taken with a fixed 50mm lens. There's no cropping. You can see that the analog camera has a much bigger frame. I had wondered what the fuss was when Canon came up with a "full frame" sensor . Voila. Is it? Taken hand held with the Nikon D50. Click on the pic to see the exif data. Taken with the Chinon from the same vantage point. Tripod. Same settings, except for ISO.

I've spent a frustrating time trying to scan negs into a conventional scanner. The problem is the light source. So, if I'm really going to get into film, I'll need to get a film scanner. I couldn't justify the cost just now, but might do so soon to fill the quiet of a dry Libyan weekend. The Canoscan 8600f goes for about £120. The Epson 4490 is a tad more. Don't know if I'll get either of those in Libya, and the postal situation is still uncertain. I've encountered several references to Digital Ice . Something else to research...

No, it's nothing to do with wearing the other gender's clothes in a darkroom. Savvo gave me six rolls of 35mm slide film a few weeks back, so I might as well have a go at xpro with the Chinon. I like the dreamlike quality of the images it can produce, and, actually, I dreamt about it last night.

53420004 , originally uploaded by /pɪgstaɪævnjuː/ . I at last got my first film developed. Brilliant. More about this later.

I was quite intrigued by this post from Curly . I'm not sure that he's right to say that this is the The Don. The locals (I'm one of them) call it The Dene, though it was called "Calf Close Burn" on a Tyneside street map from the early 70s (which caused hilarity amongst us kids on Hedworth Estate, saying we'd go "down the Calf Close Burn" in a faux posh voice for weeks after we made that discovery; it was also interesting as an example of the way Authority names things differently to ordinary people). The Don is also fed by the stream which flows past Lukes Lane and Valley View, and by the one that flows past the real Pig Sty Avenue... But I think Curly's right - the stream that flows through Hedworth is "The Don" if anything is.

succesful photo of pancake tossing , originally uploaded by /pɪgstaɪævnjuː/ . For Lent this year, I'm giving up chocolate and butter. I expect to be in Libya soon, so I'll be giving up alcohol for the foreseeable future anyway. But, I know from experience that one tends to substitute the occasional pint with the occasional mars bar. And butter, well, it's just too good, isn't it?

the survivors , originally uploaded by /pɪgstaɪævnjuː/ . I was over-wintering my s divinorum plants in the greenhouse. I was working away from home and neglected to check the propane levels. The gas ran out, there were several severe frosts and every plant went black and died. Except for these. Maybe, on the basis of natural selection, these plants will eventually produce frost hardy daughters... Or something.

Usually The Food Programme gets on my nerves - like a lot of Radio 4, though I love it dearly, it's so middle class. However, it was interesting this morning, interviewing Michael Pollan about the shite we eat. What he said is all true, of course: we should just eat real, food (anything with more than five ingredients is unlikely to be worthwhile), and a lot of the supermarket food isn't actually anything your great-granny would recognise as such. And with the allotment and being an adequate cook I'm well onto the case, but the trouble is finding the time. I'm looking forward to retirement before we can really eat well. Or a lottery win. Mind you, the food in Libya's good. This contract, we have a house with a kitchen and a garden, and I'm looking forward to learning the Arabic for food names and eating really well. And as the allotment and the chickens are going to be in The Old Man's hands for the next couple of years, I might even get some chicken

flyer , originally uploaded by zombizi . The preview's on 7th March 7-10pm. I'm not going to be within several thousand miles of Bristol by then. Which is a pity because this bloke is brilliant and disturbing. Seriously, if you can get to Bristol, do.

These are the things that stop me and The Old Man getting bored during the winter. It seems I last blogged about it in September . Since then The Old Man has spoken to the people in Haydon Bridge . There is indeed nothing to prevent you breeding your own blackrocks, and, let's put it politely, anyone who says otherwise is simply trying to uphold their current monopoly. We've become converts to Practical Poultry - the back numbers are a mine of information. So we read up on Barred Plymouth Rocks and Rhode Island Reds. The probable way ahead is to buy a good RIR cock, and half a dozen BPR hens. They'll of course produce eggs for us meanwhile, but will in due course produce blackrocks, too; (the BPRs are easily broody, apparently).