A few weeks ago I took an excellent introduction to DSLR photography course, and now I’m asking myself questions like these all the time.

I had planned on just looking at websites and spending some time on my own to learn how to use the camera Anthony had gotten me for Christmas; however, a bit intimidated by all the settings and not knowing where to start, I had mostly let it collect dust on the shelf.

But this course (with Derek from TakeBetterPictures.co.uk) taught me well beyond the basics with my camera and really got me excited about taking pictures.

Derek’s passion for photography was infectious. We covered a lot of ground in two days, including photo composition, the relationship between aperture/shutter speed/ISO, focusing, panning, exposure compensation and white balance amongst other topics, and the time flew by. Julie took the course with me and did a great write-up on her blog.

My favorite part was going out to take photos (near Borough Market), and then coming back in to see what everyone took and hear Derek’s critiques. He’s travelled the world taking photos (and used his own photos to illustrate all sorts of points during his presentations), so it was great to hear his tips on composition and what truly makes a good photo. I was vaguely aware of many of these things from taking daily photos, but having them spelled out was really useful and will hopefully improve my photos from here on out.

I have been taking a good amount of photos lately. Was in Barcelona recently, am now about to leave for Tokyo. I’ll get all these photos posted eventually.

A bit odd that the interviewer had to explain the rationale behind religious schools having more homophobic bullying, and his “cloudy memory” about thinking he hadn’t voted against gay couples adopting when he had is classic PR.

Still, he seems sincerely to be for equality, and that’s important.

And on a less serious note, MyDavidCameron.com is brilliant.

[See on Smugmug]

I use an Eye-Fi card to copy photos from my camera to my computer. I know it isn’t that much more effort to pop the SD card out of the camera and place it into my card reader, but it does make a difference when you’re copying photos often. I have the older ‘Home’ version, which doesn’t post photos automatically to the internet; I like to give my photos a bit of an edit first.

After copying and sorting the photos into folders, I run them through Picasa, editing and starring the best ones to make them daily photos. Then I select the latest starred photos and send them to Smugmug directly from Picasa, where they go into the gallery.

This year I’m attempting to post them on this blog too. I’m experimenting with Tim Linden’s Smugmug Automator plugin. So far it’s just posted the same photo about 20 times, so now it’s time to tinker.

UPDATE: Plugin fail. It doesn’t seem to want to post different photos at regular intervals. Ah well. Thinking of rigging something up with Friendfeed…

I’m doing the Amsterdam marathon on October 18. I’ve been training for it for the past few months, perhaps not as religiously/scientifically as I could have (the New York Times training tool turned out to require too much data entry), but I have been having a pretty good go of it, and my goal time is still 3:20. It’s nice to have something to train for.

Many of my recent runs have been fantastic, and thanks to My Tracks (an app on my Android phone that uses the phone’s GPS) I know exactly how far I’ve gone on my long runs. The longest run so far was over the bank holiday weekend, where I ran from our flat to Hampton Court Palace, which turned out to be 22.64 miles. Anthony cycled along for the whole distance and brought snacks.

This past weekend I had two good runs, one with Anthony (our first time running together ever, surprisingly) on Saturday and one with Anne on Sunday, where I met her in Mile End and we explored east from there–our run was slightly marred by the pack of friendly but slow bikers who crowded the path, but we did lose them eventually and some of the sights along the Limehouse Cut are pretty cool. That run turned out to be nearly 16 miles.

I’ve needed new sneakers for ages, and yesterday I finally got around to picking some up. At Runners Need I learned that I pronate (on the gait analyzing treadmill), so my new sneakers correct that and after the western canal run this morning so far so good.

Now that the marathon is under 3 weeks away, I suppose I should start thinking about tapering. I’ve never been much of a taperer — we’ll see how it goes.

Anthony and I are always looking for an excuse to celebrate, so when we learned that I would be ‘celebrating’ my 10,000th day on earth this week (my 10th kiloday, or metric birthday I suppose you could call it), we booked a table at The Ivy to try it out.

Short verdict — we still prefer The Wolseley for a delicious, upscale, splurge-worthy dinner. Not that The Ivy was bad — to the contrary my rump of Suffolk lamb with creamed polenta & salsa verde was delicious, as were Anthony’s sausages, and the wine we got (Dolcetto d’Alba, Cigliuti, Piedmont 2007 Italy) was fantastic, and the prices weren’t as obscene as we were expecting — but overall the experience just didn’t quite match up with The Wolseley.

The Ivy’s decor is disjointed (and kind of ugly), and the service wasn’t anything to write home about. Because we weren’t regulars we only had the option to book at 6pm or 9:30pm — we chose the latter, which was later than we would have liked. We also didn’t see any celebrities, which (I hesitate to say) is one of the reasons you go to a place like The Ivy. Ah well — overall our dinner was a 7/10, and we’ll probably be back there at some point.

Barbados (14-22 March)

Anthony and I had a fantastic time. So sunny and so relaxing–there was time to just sit around and read, which there never is in London. The beaches were great and our hotel, the All Seasons Resort Europa, was very nice and in a great location (the west ‘Platinum’ coast, which is less touristy than the south coast). I ran a ton and got to see a lot of the island that way. We also had some great dinners at The Tides and The Cliff, and spent one day on a catamaran snorkeling in a coral reef and swimming with sea turtles.

Boat Race Weekend (28-29 March) 

Always great to see all the old boys together around Boat Race time, particularly the guys who flew in for the weekend. On Saturday night there was a loud and rowdy boat party on the Thames. And on Sunday there was a similarly loud and rowdy Boat Race Ball after Oxford won both races.

Easter Weekend (10-13 April)

We definitely took advantage of the time off for Easter. On Thursday night Anthony and I went to Oxford to Alex’s leaving dinner — she’s spending 8 weeks in Malawi traficking orphans for Madonna working at a hospital. Caught up with Jamie, Greg, Martin, Yannis, Robbie, Henry, Nick, Pango and several other Oxford types. Friday night was a very fun at Trash Palace, Saturday night was a late one at Kensington Roof Gardens, then on Sunday we had a fantastic Easter lunch at Dottie and Bianca’s–so much delicious moussaka.

Other highlights

Sara’s Hats, Cats & Spats party at the Albert & Pearl (27 March) — there were many great hats, cats, and cat-themed hats, but not so many spats.

Wired UK Launch Party (31 March) — Anthony was able to snag us invitations. It was fun (and there were great canapes and an open bar), but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this is just the wrong time to launch a high-brow tech magazine.

Dinners — We had Buddy, Sam, Chris E., and Sara over for what turned out to be some very good chicken tacos (2 April). Andrew (sans David) had us over for another rather boozy dinner in Belsize (15 April). And last night we went to Asia de Cuba for Ryan’s birthday–having heard bad things about the one in San Francisco, I was pleasantly surprised. The Asian-Cuban fusion concept actually worked, and the food was very good (highlights: the beef spring rolls and the miso-blackened cod).

Chengdu

And now I’m off to China for just over a week, to race in a regatta with a bunch of guys I rowed with at Yale. I’ve been back on the erg quite a bit in the past six weeks, and it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. Chengdu appears to be the Chicago of China–important internally but not well known internationally. Bianca and Tony have been there before, and Bianca said that the downtown area at night is “seriously surreal in an asian-futuristic-hello-kitty-meets-jetsons kind of way. Everything is pastel neon.” So that should be interesting. And there’s a panda nursery, which makes Anthony insanely jealous. We’ll see about this place.

The past two weeks:

• Awesome morning runs along Regent’s Canal
• Seeing Jamie and Greg and Martin and Alex and Robbie in Oxford and then Alex and Robbie again in London
• Keats is finally back and staying with us while he hunts for a flat
• Preparing for Barbados

We leave for Barbados tomorrow morning. I’m SO. EXCITED. I’m bringing my running shoes, a stack of books, my camera, and that’s about it. No computer, no email, no Facebook, no Twitter. I actually feel slightly anxious about leaving all these modern trappings behind–which means I’m way overdue for a break.

Friday 20 February — Drinks with Carl, Giulia, Claire, Franklin at Akbar, then serious dancing at Trash Palace.

Saturday 21 February — Had Robin and Ali over for brunch, attempted to watch Mishima, a Life in Four Chapters but it was too heavy for Saturday afternoon post-hangover viewing. Wandered into the City attempting to find an ice cream place with Ali but failed. Had Mike B over for dinner; Anthony made a Thai red curry that turned out really well. Then we saw F*cking Men at the King’s Head theatre on Upper Street. It’s an American play about modern gay relationships, and it was pretty good aside from the consistently dodgy American accents and occasionally dodgy acting.

Sunday 22 February — Gym, burritos, pints with Mike W and Daniel at a surprisingly charming pub in Kennington. Well, surprising in that it was in Kennington yet kind of charming.

Tuesday 24 February — AM gym, work, then all you can eat conveyor belt sushi at Habibi Sushi in the City with Dottie, Bianca, Sykes and Fred. Quantity made up for quality.

Thursday 26 February — Amazing run before work along Regent’s Canal, work, then pint, burrito, pint with Ryan, Rob K and Mayumi near Charlotte Street. The black beans at Benito’s Hat were mushy and flavorless.

Friday 27 February — AM gym, work, dinner in Balham at Simon and Kasia’s with Anthony, Jessica and Luke. Simon made some amazing jerk chicken, ribs, salmon and rice & beans. There was very serious arguing about literature and Beyonce.

Saturday 28 February — Had a lovely day with Roisin and Tom. First Anthony and I wandered down to Spitalfields Market to meet them for brunch at Canteen, then we had tea at Coatsie’s before walking back through the City to Clerkenwell. Chilled out at our flat, then attempted to get free burrito’s at Mucho Mas’s reopening, but the line was too long, so we went to Mem and Laz instead. Saw Roisin off then Anthony and I went to Tati and Sam’s housewarming.

Sunday 1 March — Gym in the morning, then Putney (and a mission to get there–3 tube switches) for the Oxford-University of Washington fixture. Was nice to see the usual OUBC suspects and especially Terence, who’s in town this week for work. Oxford won both pieces but UW didn’t make it easy.

Monday 2 March — Anthony and I watched 21 Up, the third part of an ongoing documentary (7 Up) that started filming a group of British kids in 1964 and catches up with them every 7 years. This episode was filmed in 1978. It’s been really interesting (and sometimes sad) to see how these people have changed so far.