I’ve been meaning to try this for a while.

Could probably have done with another flash on camera (or from that general direction). My flash (580EX II) was in the car, activated by pocketwizard remote triggers (Mini TT1 and FlexTT5). I tried a few colours, but blue was the one that turned out best.

Halloween last week was spent at Kate and Dave’s.

Amongst the Halloween-themed treats was this bowl of Vodka Jelly, complete with teeth and eyes.

First off, I went out for the day in Knaresborough a few weeks ago, just as trees were turning to Autumn colours.

The rest from the day can be seen on Flickr.

In the opposite direction there was a full moon, but there wasn’t a reasonable shot of it.  I hoped to get one of the wind turbines with the moon in the background, but by the time I walked up clouds had come to obscure the moon too.  By this time I was cold, so I grabbed a few shots of the wind turbines and headed back to my car.

As I drove away the moon emerged.  Curses!  Being as cold as I was, I decided against giving it another go this time.

Yesterday some flash gel filters arrived from E-Bay (30 for £8) so I’ll be trying some pictures with them – keen to try different colours with the flash inside my car with no direct source at night, apart from street lights; see what it looks like.

Basically I did the above, using a white bin bag instead of tracing paper, and a beer box. It’s not very flexible as it’s quite small, but once I get hold of a bigger box I can try some larger objects. It’s fine for small things though.

Here’s the box itself:

And here are the results:

As ever, you can go to my Photostream by clicking one of the images above.

The fish in my parents’ back garden, looking rather dead, abandoned, drowned…

Warning – foul language throughout.

First place in the Senior TT went to Steve Plater, with second going to Manxman Conner Cummins and third to Gary Johnson.

Pictures are on Flickr, as ever:

Isle of Man Senior TT 2009

Isle of Man TTXP 2009

The upgrade problem comes through O2 somewhat setting expectations with the upgrade from the original iPhone to the iPhone 3G. Naivety on both sides has played a part here – customers in believing that there was an ‘implied’ promise to allow upgrades on the same terms when Apple refresh the product, and O2 in not thinking early adopters would interpret that offer in such a way. O2 have, quite rightly, pointed out the original iPhone was not subsidised, whereas the 3G has been – hence the drop from £269 to £99 for the 8GB. Some foresight from O2 might have allowed them to ensure the terms were absolutely clear; that the upgrade offer from old to 3G was a one-time deal because of the unique manner in which the original was provided. Perhaps also, knowing Apple’s refresh cycle, O2 might have been better off-setting the subsidy over 12 months instead of 18.

So – we shouldn’t have expected O2 to write off the subsidy, and O2 should have been clearer on terms. Mistakes made, lessons learnt – etc. HOWEVER, where O2 are currently failing is in their inability to provide a ‘fair’ means for the fans, early adopters, whatever you want to call them to commit to another 18 month contract without buying their way out of their current one. I’m currently paying £35 per month and my contract expires in February, 2010. It would cost me £315 to buy my way out of that contract – on top of the cost of the £275 iPhone 3G S (32GB as the space is the main factor in my upgrade decision). So, that’s £590 and I’d also be paying £35 per month for my new O2 contract.

A fair deal would be allowing the upgrade while recovering the subsidy cost. Looking at the pay-as-you go costs, the iPhone 3G 16GB would probably cost roughly £400, unsubsidised (between the 3G 8 and 3G S 8 pay-as-you go prices). Given I paid £169 for my iPhone 3G that’s £231 of subsidy (ignoring that O2 will have a margin built in to the pay-monthly cost – so these figures are at most - and give O2 some of that margin on the hardware too!). That’s £13 a month of my contract paying off the subsidy – with 9 months left I’d pay £117 to pay that off. Still not cheap, but a lot more reasonable than £315 – and O2 retain my business and I get a new shiny thing; win-win, right? There are a number of people saying ‘tough, you signed a contract’ on Twitter in response to #o2fail – but I’d argue that good business here would be to offer a deal as I’ve described that addresses O2s costs while not bleeding their loyal customers dry.

Next up is the price of Tethering – and this applies to all iPhone users, new and old. On our “Unlimited Data” service we would be charged £14.68 to use 3GB of data via tethering, or £29.36 for 10GB in a month. The argument from O2 is tethering uses more data. Maybe so, but data is data and when they launched the iPhone O2 couldn’t have been more clearer on what unlimited meant. This is taken from an artle on the Telegraph.co.uk:

”Customers find ‘unlimited with limits’ confusing, plus most people don’t speak in megabits or understand what they equate to,” said O2 UK chief executive Matthew Key.

”So we’ve taken the decision to remove the fair usage cap so that ‘unlimited’ really does mean ‘unlimited’ – this is a market first.”

Well, O2 – you’ve gone and confused your customers as by charging for tethering you’ve essentially said that you’ve yet another definition of “unlimited” that includes “limits”.

O2 = Fail.