Just slobbing around

Monday. Today wasn’t meant to be a photos day. Today was meant to be a slobbing around day. Y’know, doing lots of nothing much at all, followed by a bit of a rest, and then doing a bit more of nothing much at all. Taking it easy sort of thing.

Which it would have been, had I not discovered I was running short of a couple of essential supplies. Couldn’t be asked to trek into town but, weather being gorgeous, decided that a casual stroll to the nearest shop (in the next village, just short of a mile-and-a-half away, or thereabouts) wouldn’t be too demanding. After all, nothing better to do… just slobbing around.
And, almost without thinking, shrug on the photokit backpack… its become a sort of a habit now.

Mission accomplished and slowly ambling back, was just about to pass a driveway leading to what I’d hitherto thought were fields when I spotted some sort of notice on the gate.

Ah, terrible thing, curiosity. Which of course got the better of me.

Hmm. The gate leads to somewhere named “Shocott Spring”, which apparently is a recently planted area (within the past 18 months or so as I subsequently learned) intended to become a “community woodland”, and part of the Marston Vale Forest.

Wow! Practically the birth of a brand new woodland! The opportunity to take a few pics of this project was just too much to resist. Anyway, its a nice day, and I’ve nothing better to do, so grab the chance!

Encounter a farm worker in my exploration and he it was who told me about the very first plantings. Interesting. So the whole area’s unlikely to resemble anything even approaching a proper wood for at least the next eight or ten years.
So carry on walking and snapping, and come across a couple of guys who’re spraying some sort of stuff over the newly planted saplings. Consent to have their pic taken and carry on about their labour. And they have a companion… a gorgeous black labrador who decides he’s found himself a new friend, and promptly encourages me to throw his ball for him. Which of course I dutifully do. And again. And again. And… oh, you get the idea. But I still manage to snap a few pics in between throws.

Back home with a brand new batch of pics and nothing much better to do, decide I may as well process/upload ‘em.
Hmm. But before I do that there’s a whole bunch of pics already on the computer (from the last few sessions) which really could do with sorting and archiving first. Oh well. Nothing better to do, may as well get on and do that.
Thus passes the next couple of hours or so. And with the last one neatly tucked away I can at last start on the new batch.

Finally get them all transferred from the memory cards and almost finished processing them when I begin to get the first inkling that I can kiss goodbye to any idea of a “slobbing around” day.

Bloody computers! Give me one with about 20Gb RAM and a hundred thousand processors and I might be happy. As it is, my poor little machine just can’t cope with the intensive and prolonged processing I’ve demanded of it, so it goes on strike.
Well, refuses to work, anyway. In fact, refuses to do anything, including rebooting!
So I have to commit the cardinal sin of cutting the power, restarting it, and then wait ages whilst it toils through its self-diagnostic routines (with that horrible doom-laden blue screen) before finally deciding to boot into operating mode. Damn!

However, eventually get back going again, finish off the processing, and start uploading to Flickr.
Which seems to take an inordinately long time. “Odd”, thinks I, but persevere anyway. And the batch upload kicks out just short of the end! Damn (again!).
But don’t panic… check Flickr first to see what’s there.

Hmm. Apart from the last four or so they all seem to be present and correct. Well, at least I can start adding descriptions, tagging etc, can’t I?
No. I can’t! Seems Flickr’s experiencing some sort of glitch which, according to a very new thread in the help forum, is impacting uploading and editing!

Now far be it from me to suggest that this may have anything to do with the recently introduced video uploads feature. However, I can’t help observing that it’d be really nice if they could focus upon getting their core service running reliably and glitch-free before introducing anything new!

But, after much fretting, and writing the draft of this post just to pass the time (after all, I’ve nothing better to do) check Flickr again and it seems to be functioning ok again.

Problem is though, cos of the glitch I then have to individually tag, sort into sets, groups, etc all the pics I’ve just uploaded. A hugely boring task that I normally do as a batch job.

So much for my “slobbing around” day!

You can see the full set here