Author: iandick

The West Wing Weekly

The West Wing is one of my favourite TV series. First broadcast in 1999 it was smart, funny, heart warming, fast, deep and different to everything else around at the time. It appealed to the politics geek in me and showed a US president that was totally different to Bush who was in power during much of the programs run.

Despite my love I’ve never watched the whole run again…until now.

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The West Wing Weekly is a podcast from NPR that will break down each episode starting at episode one. The first episode of the podcast launched today and is hosted by Joshua Malina and Hrishikesh Airway. Malina played Will Bailey on the last four series of The West Wing so should be able to offer great insight into those episodes.

So each week I’m going to watch one episode of The West Wing and then catch up on the podcast. I can’t wait! The podcast can be easily found and subscribed too in Overcast by searching for West Wing Weekly or even in iTunes via this link. Anyone else jumping in?

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Busy busy at the moment. looking forward to some time off at Easter.

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Kilchurn Castle

A couple of weeks ago I set off early to visit Kilchurn Castle. The plan was to get some good photo’s as the sun rose and as it was a clear night it should be worth setting the alarm for.

Kilchurn Castle

The drive up was fine but due to the freezing temperatures and the quiet roads there was a few slippy moments on the way. By the time I parked up it was minus 7. Brrrrr. The scenery and location was amazing and I setup the camera waiting for the sun to rise properly. There were only a couple of others around on the other bank of the loch and it was eerily quiet.

Loch Awe

Well it was eerily quiet until i fired up the drone. I’d read that the drone didn’t like the cold and that turned out to be true. Battery life took a bit of a hit and I also got warnings about the temperature and also one of the motors. I carried on though and it was fine and I got some not bad shots.

However my lack of touch friendly gloves meant I flew without wearing any and my hands were frozen. Even the next day my fingertips were still numb. Idiot. I also missed out on many shots that I had wanted to take, partly cause I rushed and partly due to the batteries dropping quicker than usual. Next time I head out I’ll do a bit more planning upfront. It wasn’t just the drone…I missed a few great images with my camera that when I looked back through the photo’s I’d taken were obvious. Experience I guess but I was ticked off at making the effort to get there and miss some pic’s.

If you are looking for a fantastic old castle to visit that was built in the 1400’s then give Kilchurn a go. I plan to visit again sometime in the future and maybe try and get those shots I missed a fortnight ago but I’ve a lot of other places to visit before I return to Kilchurn. Onwards.

Backpocket

A bumper update as I took a break last week.

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I’ve been floored with manflu since Friday so i’m a bit behind with reads but there’s still enough good stuff this week. Onwards.

1 Million

It ticked over earlier this week but I finally got over 1 million views on Flickr.

flickr_stats

I’ve been on Flickr for years and still have my grandfathered in pro account but sometimes I wonder why I don’t just switch to the free offering. I’ve also looked at other sites like 500px as Flickr has stuttered again recently and just looks to be in the wrong hands at Yahoo.

I don’t even know if thats a little or a lot of views but every so often I get a little thrill when a photo I’ve taken is being used elsewhere on the internet.

As for most viewed photo….it’s not even a photo!

Games

Over 10 years ago I put up this image of my favourite 25 games. Since then it’s had over 100,000 views – not too shabby. Frustratingly the old Flickr notes feature meany I’d overplayed the image with notes about each of the games but that feature is no longer supported.

Thats the niggle with Flickr. It feels like they are doing enough to keep the service going but Google Photo’s and to a lesser extent Photos on Apple are showing the way.

So while a milestone for me has been reached this could be the year of the big photo migration. Come on Yahoo, show Flickr a bit of love.

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A bit behind on my reads this week due to work but still some interesting posts and a great Star Wars video. Enjoy.

Day One 2

One of my favourite app’s across Mac and iOS got a really nice update this week. Day One is a journaling app that I’ve used for the last few years and version 2 brings quite the upgrade.

On first launch on either platform you’ll notice that you can no longer sync using iCloud or Dropbox. Instead Day One uses it’s own sync platform. Import your entries from Day One, setup an account and then sync. I found the process to be fast considering I’ve over 800 entries within my current journal.

The previous version had support for only one journal and relied on tags to separate out entries. I had tags for work, movies and runs. Version 2 still supports tags but now supports up to ten journals which can be individually coloured so I’ve setup individual journals and it makes for a much better experience.

Journal entries haven’t seen much change but each entry can now have up to 10 photo’s which is Day One’s 2 ‘finally’ feature.

These are paid updates and both versions are available for 50% off for one week only. iOS is fairly priced but Mac feels a bit steep for relatively little change – £14.99 rising to £29.99 in a weeks time. Future upgrades are promised though.

Day One 2 is an admittedly pricey app but one I can’t do without. It’s polished and if you value journalling of any kind it’s well worth a look.