Richard's Blog » Life

Towcester Flame Off 2011

Dickie — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 17:38:52 +0000

I only visited the 2011 Flame Off this year on the Saturday, but still managed to take 556 pictures.

Below are a selection of those pictures that I took during the day

This annual event organised by Tuffnell Glass and Totally Beads is held at Towcester racecourse in the Midlands. It’s a great opportunity to meet like minded people, have a curry, and a darn good time… roll on next year!

If you would like to use any of the pictures please ask first.

International Festival of Glass

Dickie — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 18:13:56 +0000

Below are some of the pictures I took during the International Festival of Glass in Stourbridge. Including the Lampwork glass bead fair, British Glass Biennale 2010, and the excellent time Sarah and I had during a glass blowing taster course… Enjoy

All over again

Dickie — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 01:03:56 +0000

Well hopefully this post will not reside on my blog like a bad smell. (the last Journal post was there for 2 and a half years, all on its lonesome) So anyway We have finally completed the 2009 Journal… a bit late I know, but life got in the way (these things happen)

We just have to wait for the printers (M R Printers of Horsham) to run off the 300 or so copies that we need, so I can then post off the members’ copies to them.

It’s been an “interesting” experience, but one that I have enjoyed. I really quite like playing around with design tools. There are so many ways you can do it, and you could spend years tweeking things trying to get them just right, but at the end of the day you need to stop and hand the darn thing over.

Well… I don’t think I will be doing next year’s but I do hope you all enjoy looking at this edition… Happy reading.

GBUK Journal 2009

Dickie — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:40:58 +0000

After rather a long time in the blogging wilderness I though I ought to update everyone on the state of the 2009 GBUK Journal.

Well all the pictures were in during December 2009 and I started on the main layout… All was going well, then Christmas hit! and January was a complete washout from an ability to work on the Journal point of view (for various reasons). So the upshot is, I have just started working on it again.

There is probably about 3-4 days more work to do, and then it can be handed over to the printers. Woo hoo

To whet your appetite, this edition has 80 (yes eight zero) artists’ work this time with some 230 pictures of beads and will be a 52 page A4 book. Please bear with me on this, but you will get your copies, they will be mailed out to you all as soon as I get them back from the printers.

Stay tuned !!

Mastering the Art

Dickie — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 13:26:50 +0000

Well it’s done… A bit late in blogging about it, but I was so tired yesterday.

The mastering took the grand total of 10 hours (or there abouts). Amazing when you consider that the CD we were mastering was only 45 minutes long.

We are very pleased with the result. I was very nervous before we went along, that the quality of our mix, and the general EQ was not workable, but I was pleasantly surprised and in fact I am very pleased with the result. It is far better than I could have possibly imagined. This makes it sound like we were working with rubbish, but I think that I am being hard on myself really. Listening to the CD objectively it really does sound rather good.
Loads of thanks goes to Graham Semark of Cyclone Music Productions again, for a stirling job, including carrying on till 20:00 so that we could finish off. Hat’s off to you mate. I also have to thank Sarah because without her the mix would not have been as good as it is !!

For some more pictures see Sarah’s post on her beadlog

Well I suppose it’s on with the rest of my jobs now… must get the GBUK web site up…!!!

Mixing it up

Dickie — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 20:28:10 +0000

Well… it’s almost done. The mixing of the CD we are working on has been completed. The whole thing was mixed in Sonar in fact it was also recorded entirely in Sonar… I must admit that I had a very nice experience with Sonar recording it… the PC was booted up in the morning, Sonar was opened and was used to record 17 tracks over about 10 hours with no crashes.. no resets or restarts needed !! It just did it’s stuff.
The mixing was equally non-problematic. It’s been a dream. Hard work (about 16 hours worth) but a dream none the less. (in fact if you add in all the tweeking I have been doing over the last year to the recording, then that time would probably go up to more like 50 hours !!)
As far as the quality of the mix is concerned, we will see when we turn up at Grahams to do the mastering, I’m sure there will be plenty of things that we notice on the day.

Because of that I am concidering bringing a laptop with Sonar installed, so that if there are any that are obviously wrong we can remix quickly then export again while he works on another song.

Well I think I need a rest now… the last two days have been manic… our daughter has been a star.. just happily playing on her own while we got on with the task in hand. (extra pocket money and Daddy time due !!)

Now I am completely lost…

Dickie — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 00:04:37 +0000

Ahem… so come on… what the hell was that all about…?
I am of course refering to LOST… (well the final 2 episodes that were shown tonight on C4)
Now I am more confused than I was before. That was certainly an exciting ending, but man how many cliff hangers can they leave you with… especially at the end of a series.
Well at least we only have to wait till spring for the next series.
I just feel annoyed now !!!

Little boxes, little boxes….

Dickie — Sun, 27 Nov 2005 00:55:01 +0000

After a mad day getting up far earlier than should be legally allowed (7:00) to go to one of Sarah’s Jewellery fairs, we also decided to go visit IKEA to get some bits for Sarah and try to sort out and organise our living room. While trying to find our way around the new layout at Croydon’s IKEA, I spotted a rather useful opaque white plastic storage box that will (I hope) be perfect as a light tent for photographing jewellery and beads without all those annoying reflections, and for much less than a light tent.
If it works I may well post the results here and let you know how it worked out.
Getting the right set-up for taking pictures of beads and jewellery is very difficult; we have spent countless hours taking photographs, only to come out with one or two useable ones… (Personally I think Sarah is a bit picky, but hey it’s her stuff so therefore her prerogative I suppose!)
So anyway, these ones are NOT made out of ticky tacky.. but they do all look the same !

Speeding up Firefox

Dickie — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 05:08:09 +0000

Found an interesting post on ryanduff.net on Speeding up Firefox certainly seems useful…

SHE DID IT !!! 71 days 14 hours 18 minutes and 33 seconds

Dickie — Tue, 08 Feb 2005 06:23:39 +0000

Well what a fantastic result… Ellen MacArthur crossed the finishing line in 71 days 14 hours 18 minutes and 33 seconds that’s 1 day 8 hours and 35 mins ahead of Francis Joyon’s time…!!!
What an achievement, I just cannot comprehend the determination and stamina of that girl…. Just fantastic.