More messing with black and white

Not done very much photo-wise the past few days. So it must be a withdrawal symptom that prompted me into having another mess around with some black and white conversions.

Here’s a slideshow of this little series (five pics in all).

And talking of slideshows… sometimes I think I’m a bit of a dipstick. Er… strike that. I know I’m a bit of a dipstick. Most of the time.

For when I first mentioned about linking to Flickr’s slideshow feature from here on the blog I felt it necessary to point out that, because I’m now only uploading relatively small sizes to Flickr, and because the slideshow displays them full-screen, quality isn’t brilliant.

Oops.

How the hell could I have missed that link in the top right-hand corner of the slideshow? The one that says “Options”. Cos clicking on that brings up a little panel that offers the following…

• Embiggen small things to fill screen
• Always show title and description
• Play backwards

There’s also a selector for choosing the speed of the slideshow.

So, to overcome this “quality issue” I’d recommend de-selecting (cos it seems to be selected by default) the “Embiggen small things to fill screen” option. Then you should see them at the size I uploaded them… 640px on the longest side.

And while we’re on the subject, where’d that bloody word “embiggen” come from? Is it even a proper word? I seem to have come across it a fair bit recently and every time I do it irritates me even more. Why use it? What’s the point? What’s so wrong with the perfectly acceptable word “enlarge”?

“I think I’ll go and get some embiggenments of these prints done.” Just doesn’t sound right, does it? Embigments maybe? Sounds marginally better… but it’s still not right!

No doubt it’ll be another of those damn Yank manglings of the language again. Pah! I suppose they think it makes them sound clever or “cool”. It doesn’t. Just makes ’em sound stupidly illiterate. Well… even more stupidly illiterate. As though they don’t know the correct words for things.

Addendum: Hah! Thought as much. I’ve just looked this up. It’s a bloody nonce-word coined for the American animated cartoon series “The Simpsons”. And now of course loads of people seem to be using it. Typical. Absolutely bloody typical. Damn Yank “culture”… or should I say anti-culture? Can no-one speak proper English anymore, like wot I do?

Well, you won’t catch me using it again. If I need to say enlarge I’ll say “enlarge”, not some stupid made-up word like emb….. no, I positively refuse!

Another addendum: I’m now secretly relishing the fact that it’s defined as a “nonce-word”… beautiful double entendre. Heh heh.