The weekend before last, in that short window of one nice day among the really awful days we’ve had recently, we went on another walk. We were going to head for the coast, but decided to keep it fairly local, and only a shortish walk as we were both a bit weary for some reason. I thought I was coming down with a cold but it didn’t seem to come to much in the end.

We parked at Wentworth village and walked around the surrounding farmland and countryside belonging to Wentworth Woodhouse. It’s really nice that there is somewhere close by where we can get a decent walk and some fresh air without travelling for miles, even though we usually do go dashing here, there and everywhere.  Even though this was a ‘proper’ walk I still took my camera, but with only one lens.

Well, this was before we set off, obviously. We spotted this Sparrowhawk while eating our breakfast and I dashed for the camera. Amazingly it was still there when I returned, although it’s only a record shot as it refused to turn round and it was taken through dirty double glazing.

Here are a few of the  sights along the way.

A weir that ran under an old stone bridge and flowing into a small lake

Looking back over the Wentworth grounds

Walking through a wood I noticed this backlit group of leaves

Interesting field patterns – also spotted a flock of Redwings circling round

One of the lakes on the Wentworth estate

One of the many follies on the estate – and a bit of autumn colour

The grounds surrounding the house used to be a deer park and there are still some deer to be seen today

This past weekend we hardly moved from the house. We had today off work and we were supposed to be making a plan of action to get out of our current jobs, but I spotted a job that I really needed to apply for so I’ve spent most of my time off updating my CV. I think I have it to my liking now, so I will have another look at it tomorrow and then send it off by email. Closing date is Friday. I will divulge the job details if I am successful. Suffice to say I am keeping everything crossed. If I don’t succeed at least the CV is in a fit state to send to other prospective employers, or to post to various job sites.

I now have the new hard drive in and all necessary programmes installed and I am more-or-less back to normal again – albeit with a few glitches to sort out along the way. Computers don’t always do as you ask them!

We decided to use up some annual leave this week and had Thursday and Friday off work. I’ve also got Monday off. This has enabled me to get a little work done around the house and have some extra time to carry on sorting out my photos. I’m still not sure which editing programme to use and I am struggling to get a decent ‘workflow’. I thought I would convert from RAW using Picture Window and then move to Photoshop CS2 for the remainder of the process, but when I tried to install CS2 I deleted the keygen by mistake (‘cos it was a version given to me – naughty!) and now I cannot install it at all. I then downloaded the trial PS Elements 7 again to try that. I quite like the RAW conversion process, but I HATE the organiser part. It took me ages to figure it out, but it’s not very user-friendly, so I downloaded a trial of a programme called ACDSee Photo Manager. I’ve had ACDSee editor on the PC before, which I bought from a computer fair (probably also bootlegged), but it’s an older version and won’t read the new RAW format of the 40D. This made the process much easier – view the images in ACDSee then open in Elements for RAW conversion and further editing. I will go with this for now, but will have to purchase both programmes if I want to continue to use them.

Anyway, I can now post some images from recent trips. A couple of weeks ago we went up to the Yorkshire Dales and walked the Ingleton Waterfall Trail. I’ve been wanting to do this walk for some time. On arrival at the car park, we decided to sample a scone and a  cup of tea in the café before setting off on the walk. It was quite a pleasant day, so warm clothing was not required – surprising for October. Also, walking up and down all the steps alongside the waterfalls kept us hotter than we would have liked! I know I’ve been a bit mad on waterfalls lately, so I’ll only post a few.

Thornton Force at slow shutter speed
(notice the people standing behind the falls)

And at fast speed to freeze the water

There were a few of these viewing platforms, which were a little disconcerting, to say the least!

But sometimes the rewards were worth it – not seen unless you walked out onto the platforms

On Thursday, as it was a nice morning, we headed off into the Peak District. I’ve given up on trying to get some autumn colour this year, so this was going to be more for a good walk than a photographic trip, although the camera did come with me just in case. We parked in Castleton and started the walk along the Limestone Way in Cavedale, which begins round the back of Peveril Castle. This was quite a steep pull and strewn with rocks. There was also a mini river flowing down the path, making some of the rocks quite slippery.

A short way along the path with the castle on the hilltop

Looking uphill

A little further uphill

Another rest!

Onwards and upwards

On the very tops you get a wonderful view – Win Hill in the distance

It then started to look like rain was coming on, so we cut the walk short and headed back to the car.

A small patch of autumn colour just below Peveril Castle

We didn’t go out of the house at all yesterday, and today I’ve been finishing off photo editing and Keith is sorting out his music files. It was forecast to be quite blustery and wet, but it hasn’t been quite as bad as predicted. Good job, too, as I didn’t want the water to be leaking into the kitchen again! If tomorrow looks OK we might venture out again, but not too sure where yet.

I was a little wary about using Partition Magic, following my disaster with it at work a few weeks ago, but I managed to get the new hard drive divided into three partitions OK, and also set up my email and the network, but I haven’t started loading any programmes yet. This morning’s task was to reconnect the old hard drive and transfer all the data across, but when I booted up it booted into the old hard drive. I think there’s something wrong in the BIOS setup, but I couldn’t figure out what. Anyway, I managed to get a boot menu up and finally got the system to boot into the new drive. I can now see the files on the old drive, so they are now copying over to the new drive. Once that is all done I can format the old drive and it should be OK as a backup drive and hopefully the system will boot into the new drive without any problem.

I did do a stupid thing the other day, which is not a huge problem as the old drive will soon be formatted. When we bought this computer (from a computer fair) I didn’t get the original Windows XP disc, nor did I get a recovery disc (the minimum you should insist on). I usually do insist on an original disc, but because it was so cheap and well-specced, I decided to go ahead. I knew that I could get a disc at a later date and install the OS again if anything went wrong. Of course, I never got round to this until now, but the other day I decided to run a Windows update and by mistake I downloaded the Windows Genuine Advantage which promptly told me that my version of Windows was not genuine! What a surprise. I ahd suspected this for some time, as I have had issues with Media Player not behaving nad being unable to get updates for it. A jolly good job I’d planned to do this upgrade. Once the update had finished, the desktop went black and also had a nag-screen reminding me of my error. I could still use the computer, but it certainly needed sorting out.

While I was at it with the computers, I thought I’d get this laptop sorted out as well. It had Vista Business on, but was sold as a dual-boot system with a choice of also having XP Pro. Having done this before on an old computer, I assumed I would get a screen at boot-up where I could select which OS to boot to, but in fact it was only Vista loaded and to get XP involved using the ‘downgrade’ CD and installing XP and wiping Vista off altogether. I left it to begin with to see what Vista was like, but decided to do the downgrade last weekend. It’s now much quicker to start up and to operate. Wish I’d done it much sooner. Vista was not well-liked, apparently.

We managed to get a workout done this morning, although it was hard work, having not been as diligent about it for a little while. I think we’ll soon get back on track, though.

More later when new drive is operational.

Still trying to keep up, as you can probably tell! Somehow I don’t have the same hours in a day as everyone else and keep lagging behind. Still, I shouldn’t keep on about it. I will just post when I can and my news will just have to be old. I will try not to make it too old, though.

We went out last weekend, but I am still in the throes of photo editing. I’m not too sure about the Picture Window programme for some things. The RAW converter seems OK, but I find myself heading back to Photoshop once it’s converted. I suppose it’s a case of familiarity with it. I have managed to do some batch conversions in PW, but the latest ones did not come out too well, so I’m back to doing them individually – not the speediest of tasks. Consequently, I’ve decided to try Elements again, and I see they have now released version 8. But I have a version 7 trial installed so I will try and get to grips with that and see how I get on. It seems to do most things I want to do without having to have the full PS, although I will probably keep that as well.

I can’t do anything at the moment, though, as I have finally managed to get my new hard drive installed today and I am currently installing my new copy of Windows XP Pro and all my other software. I’ve partitioned the drive and the extendend partitions are being formatted at the moment. It’s taking some time as it’s a 500GB drive. Windows XP went on without any problems, though. When it’s all done I will re-attach my old drive, move all the data across to the new drive and reformat it to be a back-up drive. I’m thinking of adding another GB of memory as well, just for good measure.

For some reason I was quite tired last week and had trouble summoning any enthusiasm for anything. I have been concentrating intently at work, trying to get the new website up and running, so maybe that has something to do with it. I have been sleeping OK, but waking up feeling as if I still needed more sleep. I even missed camera club on Thursday, which I was a bit miffed about. It was a practical night, so we were taking our cameras anyway, but we meet at a community club and they were having a bonfire and fireworks display, so I was hoping also to get some fireworks images. However, we left work a bit late, had our dinner a bit late, and it was raining quite heavily, and I was exhausted, so I didn’t go.

I suppose I really need to get back into my exercise routine, which has been sadly lacking in recent weeks, despite having spent a small fortune on a new piece of exercise equipment. We have used it, but not really intently enough. And I really need to get my healthy eating habits back on track as well – she says, as she downs a nice glass of the red stuff!

We had a bit of a crisis last weekend. Sunday brought quite heavy rain and high winds, which was blowing directly onto the back of the house. I went into the kitchen to find water dripping onto the floor from the point where the kitchen off-shot joins the main house wall. Thankfully, it hasn’t been as bad since, but we have to hope that it will soon dry out. There is some staining on the ceiling, which will have to wait until we can decorate.

Anyway, dinner almost ready, so I’ll close for now and hope that I can get last week’s photos sorted before too long.

Well, I was hoping to get my new hard drive in this weekend, but I had a quick look on the Internet yesterday and discovered that I may have a problem ‘Ghosting’ my existing drive onto the new one as they are different formats (existing drive is IDE and new one is SATA). The copying itself wouldn’t be a problem – I’ve done this a couple of times before with Norton Ghost between two IDE drives, but when IDE data is cloned to a SATA drive, the latter will not boot into Windows. This is apparently because the two drive formats use a different method of communication between the motherboard and Windows XP, so the system will not recognise the cloned operating system partition on the SATA (have I lost you yet?!!). One way round this is to perform a repair installation of Windows XP on the SATA drive, but there we hit a problem as I don’t have the original Windows CD. There is another method highlighted on the Microsoft site, but again I would need the XP disc.

So, I think, this would be an ideal time to upgrade to Windows 7, as the price difference between that and a copy of XP is not that great. I will just install that on the new drive and copy across my data. It would take longer than the cloning method, what with having to reinstall all my programmes, but never mind. On further investigation it seems that this is not going to be as simple as I thought. I ran a system checking tool from the Microsoft site, which told me that a few programmes would not run, and I would need to update my graphics drivers in order for the new interface to run efficiently. If I wanted to use the XP Compatibility Mode (for certain programmes) I would need another GB or RAM.

Also, they have done away with Outlook Express and the new email is web-based. You can integrate all your email accounts – OE, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, etc., into one location but it’s all now done online. So the prospect of having to do lots of messing about prompted me to have a look for a cheaper Windows XP Pro and I did finally manage to find one for the princely sum of £35. This includes delivery, but I paid an extra £6 for urgent delivery in the hope that this will get round the postal strike. I couldn’t really believe this price as it’s over £100 at Amazon. At least I’ll be up and running quite soon and can consider Windows 7 at a later date.

Anyway, with all this surfing and researching, we didn’t get out Saturday. The weather was quite awful in the morning, though, but amazingly it turned quite nice in the afternoon, although it was very windy. So we decided to have a trip out today to see if there was any autumn colour around to photograph. We were a little tired as we had been woken up in the early hours by Keith’s alarm going off!! He’d accidentally switched it on while turning the clock back. It had been set at 3.40am from a few weeks ago when we set off early one morning to catch the sunrise in the Yorkshire Dales. Anyway, we had a cup of tea and showered to wake ourselves up and off we went.

It was still quite windy but there was blue sky. However, when we arrived in the Peak District there were a few showers which kept interrupting the nicer spells. Unfortunately, the trees had not quite turned a nice colour yet – either we are still too early or they are not having a good year. We drove round looking at various woods, but there was nothing too inspiring. Along Cressbrook Dale the trees were almost bare, so the recent winds must have stripped them. We managed a little wander round – not really a proper walk – and took a few photos before deciding to find somewhere to have lunch. We went in the Moon Inn at Stoney Middleton and very nice it was too. We had bangers and mash with Yorkshire puddings and to follow Keith had Bakewell tart and custard and I had sticky toffee pudding with ice cream – delicious. After that we were so stuffed we just came straight home!