Chris Worfolk's Blog

My friend Samra recently bought herself an SRL, so we headed down to the river so I could show her how not to take photographs. I’m hardly a tutor, but it was quite nice to be able to share my tips.

Last month, I finally found time to head up to the very excellent York Skeptics. It was good to see a lot of friendly faces and an interesting talk on autism.

While there, I took the opportunity to take some photos and polarise the flip out of them.

Is anyone else rather gutted that Jon Stewart is coming back?

Jon Stewart is a great host for The Daily Show and I enjoy watching him on it. I also blogged about it a few years ago.

But having said that, John Oliver is brilliant!

You might have already seen this…

The best was yet to come, though. When John Oliver took over as guest host for two months while John Stewart was away directing a movie, he truly came into his own. Check this out…

I’m going to go as far as to say I think John Oliver is actually a better host of the show.

We’ve previously used Skype to allow Jane to attend White Rose Speakers meetings virtually while she is in Spain. This time, she connected in from the French Alps and hooked up to the projector, gave us a Giant Jane to provide a speech evaluation.

Further to my rant about Bristol Cameras recently, the new new tripod is finally in my possession and seems to be holding up quite well.

I’m sure I’m that told on the ball head as it is more complicated than simply setting up and having a flat platform. It takes it easier on an uneven surface of course, but it still rather fiddly.

It has a lot of nice features though. All the legs work independently, and the foam padding really makes a difference in the cold. The feed unscrew so you can replace them with spikes (though you have to buy those extra) and there is a retractable hook in the bottom of the centre column for hanging weights/bags to. The legs also have three different settings for how far out they are.

The centre column itself comes all the way up, and then you can even swivel it up to 90 degrees out flat as shown in the picture. It has a pan-only mode too.

As mentioned I got the Giottos ball head version two with it that while fiddly, seems to do its job. It has a pan mode as well, a quick release head and two spirit levels, though they’re a bit slow to move and hard to see once you have the camera on there.

So far I’m pretty happy with it.

On Monday, we held our first meeting of Anxiety Leeds.

I’m pleased to report that it was a success. For a first meeting it actually went very smoothly and the feedback we received on the nigh was positive. We’re not waiting for formal feedback which should hopefully tell a similar story.

The group will be meeting every month on the second Monday. Our next event is on 14 October. The best way to stay in touch us to visit the website and sign up for the mailing list.

For the August meeting of Leeds Skeptics, Kat Ford presented her talk “The Modern Face of Physiognomy”. The talk looked at how we make judgements of people based on their face. Kat was an entertaining speaker and we really enjoyed hosting her.

The talk is also available to watch on Worfolk Lectures.

In August, I went to Goole for a speech workshop organised by Gillian. It was a highly informative day and should really raise the standards at contests in area 15 and 51. So much for any hope of retaining my trophy!

While there, I also took the chance to take some photos. Click for the full sized versions.

A few weeks ago we had a dinner party that was similar to the previous one, except with slightly fewer people and a little bit more food. Or so I thought. Turns out, I did a lot more food.

Thus leaving rather a lot of food left over.

Worked out quite well as I didn’t have to buy sandwiches for a week.

Recently I bought myself a new tripod. I ordered through Bristol Cameras as they were one of the few retailers that said they had what I wanted.

My first experience wasn’t great. I had originally ordered a lens cap from Amazon, but they kept sending me emails saying there was a delay in stock arriving (they never said they had any in but I wasn’t in a hurry), so in the end I cancelled it and ordered from Bristol Cameras instead.

After doing that I got an email from them saying they didn’t have any in, the item had been discontinued and they could replace it with something else but they had no idea when the replacement would be arriving. They don’t have online cancellations, so I had to phone them up and cancel.

This time, when I ordered, I waited four days before they attached a note to my order saying that the item had been discontinued and they didn’t have any, but recommended a replacement item with similar features.

This cost £50 more so I had to phone them up again and make another payment over the phone.

Having done this, the item took another two weeks to arrive. I finally got my tripod, or at least a version similar to what I had ordered, 19 days after placing the original order.

On the positive side, they did answer their phone both times I’ve called them, and here was no big queue, they answered pretty much straight away. But it has felt like a bit of an ordeal, and I think they should be more honest and with no stock information, lead times are a bit of a mystery.