Having read Jensen’s blog about Microsoft Office 2007 over the last months I’ve been itching to give it a try and see what’s new. At long last Beta 2 is available and I installed it this morning:

First of all I should probably mention that I’m not a big user of MS Office. In fact I only really use Outlook and Word for emailing and rarely launch Excel, Access, Visio and all the rest. Apart from emailing I look at documents and spreadsheets I’m sent, but tend not to actually write them (I’m a web kind of a guy, I prefer HTML to .DOC).

That out of the way, I must say I’m really impressed. Within seconds you can create some really cool, professional looking graphics and suddenly I feel like I want to create a PowerPoint presentation with it to really impress the boss! However, the user interface really is completely different. Those who felt comfortable with the myriad toolbars and buttons will feel completely lost for a while trying to figure out where everything is. This is both good and bad.

It’s good because everything is very sensibly located. You’re never far from where you want to be and commands are logically organised so if you don’t know where something is you’ll be able to find it within a couple of mouse clicks. This brings me onto the bad, which is that until you get used to it, you have to think. Once you’ve mastered using a piece of software you can forget about it and turn all your attention to what you’re actually trying to do (like writing a motivational email or a resignation letter). With Office 2007 you’re going to spend a lot of time initially trying to work out where the hell everything is, meaning you spend less time thinking about what you’re trying to achieve. This will bug a lot of people.

For me it’s great. As a non-heavy Office user I don’t know how to do anything anyway so with a little bit of exploring I’ve come across all kinds of cool things and straight away I look like an Office pro! There are loads of other cool things (live preview being one I like straight away) but it’s early days so I don’t know what’ll turn out to be useful or not yet. I’ll keep you posted…

I wrote John’s Background Switcher for me and while several thousand people use it, it’s still written for me which is why I like it and use it all the time on all the computers I have access to. I always have it set to choose from the most interesting 200 pictures from Flickr on the current day to use as my computer’s wallpaper and I secretly hoped that one time it would select one of my own pictures. And this afternoon it finally happened!

I posted that picture of a Goldfinch on Flickr and just as I was about to shut my desktop down I thought to myself “hang on a minute, that’s my photo!”. I checked the settings (just to make sure I wasn’t pointing it at my own photostream) and sure enough, I was just selecting from the top 200 most interesting pictures of the day! Superb! Shame it was just a picture of a bird and not one of my much more technically challenging landscape shots. Ah well, beggars can’t be choosers!

A few years ago I noticed I hardly ever saw birds in gardens any more. I didn’t know if it was caused by too many cats, pesticides or what, but there were definitely more thrushes, blackbirds, blue tits, finches, sparrows and all the rest flying and singing around gardens when I was a kid.

The last year or so things seem to have turned around and there are a lot more about. This morning my good lady said she could see a colourful bird in the garden, I took a look and it was this little guy (who happily posed for the camera):

After wracking my brains for a while I remembered that it was a Goldfinch, and I hadn’t seen one in probably 10 years! I just hope it’s a sign of things to come.

In other bird news, the duck that’s nesting in my garden is doing rather well. After a brief encounter with a cat the other night she’s happily staying put and sitting on a dozen eggs or so. We’re waiting for the pitter patter of tiny feet in the next couple of weeks and are mounting 24 hour cat patrols to keep her safe. Okay, that last part is a lie - but we’re keeping our eyes peeled!

Over a year and a half ago I decided to grow my hair. I came back from a holiday in California and decided that I’d had enough of the crew cut look and I’d go for the Spanish footballer look instead. What I didn’t appreciate was how hard it was or how long it would take. This is my story…

At first it was okay. From being a centimetre long to an inch was alright, it didn’t look too bad and didn’t require any additional care. But it soon became apparent that I’d have to go to a hairdressers for the first time in five years (my girlfriend used the clippers to cut my hair up until then). When all your hair is the same length it’s not long before you start to grow a rather un-fetching mullet - and that’s not a good look. So I got it cut and was shown the wonders of hair wax and how to use it (I was so out of touch).

The other thing I had to do was start using shampoo again. With a crew cut you don’t need anything other than shower gel but as my hair started growing it soon ended up looking and feeling like straw - so shampoo and conditioner it was!

It also started to interfere with my football playing - getting in my eyes and bugging the hell out of me. So I stole one of my girlfriend’s alice bands which did the trick (although I had to put up with a lot of stick from the guys)! Oh how I dreamed of the days when I could use a length of black elastic in true South American footballer style!

As it continued to grow my hairdresser tried in vain to show me how to blow dry my hair - she failed, I just couldn’t be bothered in the mornings. I did, however, get the hang of straightening irons (my girlfriend’s) so I could relive my days when I used to have straight hair!

Anyway, I’d see people in the street or on TV and use them as my motivation to keep growing it, to not give up and get a short back and sides. Every time someone would get theirs cut (like Dave Beckham) I’d feel it was a small victory for me - they were quitting so I’d carry on! And now it’s gotten to the stage where I can look at people I wanted to emulate like Robert Pires, Michel Salgado and Roddy from Idlewild (I have a photo of the band on my fridge I used as both motivation and to scare my girlfriend) and realise that I’ve made it! It was all worth it! Oh, the sense of achievement! And what a contrast!

Okay, I’m not really that bothered, but I’m glad I stuck with it, it’s been a surprisingly hard thing to do - a short haircut is so tempting and easy to live with and in this day and age where every guy has the same short haircut it’s nice to be a bit different. Even if I have to spend a fortune on shampoo and conditioner!

Warning: Readers of a nervous disposition might want to skip this one. I’m not kidding.

I played in an 11-a-side football match this evening after work. It was organised as our office versus another one of the offices and I’d been looking forward to it for ages. I hadn’t played 11-a-side in years and was relishing the challenge of it all!

Unfortunately I won’t be forgetting it for quite a different reason.

The first half went well, we were 1-0 up, it was a good natured game (i.e. the other guys weren’t trying to kill us) and while I didn’t get a lot of the ball on the left wing, the one time I did get a chance I made a decent run beating their last man, putting a decent cross in that was only just missed by one of our strikers.

Sadly, 56 seconds into the second half our right-back went down under a heavy (although fair, if a little late) challenge from one of their forwards. I knew as soon as he went down that he’d broken his leg because there was an unmistakable cracking sound that echoed around the whole park (I was on the other side of the pitch and it was as clear as a bell). It was like hitting a telegraph pole with a wooden baseball bat - surprisingly loud and something I’ll not forget. So we ran over and he was writhing in agony on the ground - really suffering. Poor guy.

Someone rang an ambulance and it turned up a not-exactly-quick 38 minutes later. Oh, obviously that was the end of the game. The guy who made the challenge was gutted, especially because he wasn’t trying to hurt him, it was a fair tackle, just incredibly unlucky.

I felt so bad for our guy though, he’s got months of rehab and pain ahead of him and it was a bad break as far as leg breaks go - horrible. But it’s persuaded me of one thing, my 11-a-side days are over. I’ll carry on with 5 and 8-a-side but the added dangers of slide-tackles you get with 11-a-side just isn’t worth it. I’m too old for all that thanks and I’ve had enough injuries from playing over the last few years to remind me that I’m not getting any younger.

So don’t expect a new long-haired Scottish winger joining Chelsea in the off-season. I’m not for sale at any price!

We were relaxing on bank holiday monday when we heard a bit of commotion coming from outside. I went to the window and had a look out to discover a couple of Mallards (picture below) strutting around our back garden. The male was quacking at the female, and she was quacking back with her neck compressed into her body while they were chasing each other around. They were clearly courting!

Like the paparazzi that I am I was straight out there with my camera snapping a hundred or so photos of them, thinking of catchy headlines like “Ducks caught in drunken romp shame!” and “Calls for ASBOs for frisky Mallards!”.

Well, that wasn’t the end of the story. One of the girls next door spotted that the ducks have in fact decided to nest in our back garden! You can see the female sitting on some eggs here:

We’ve read up on what to do to help them out, how long the eggs incubate for, when to expect them to hatch and so on - and we’re really looking forward to seeing some wee ducks coming into the world in our own back garden! I’ve never had ducks nesting in my garden before so it should be really interesting. I’ll keep you posted as things develop!

As I was filling my car up with petrol I noticed a handy converter to show me how much petrol is per gallon from the price per litre. As you can see it’s a bit out of date, despite looking relatively shiny and new:

Just goes to show how expensive running a car in the UK is getting. Or maybe it’s a marketing ploy to make you think it’s not quite as expensive as it really is relying on the fact that most people need a calculator to add up!

What with it being a Bank Holiday weekend my girlfriend and I decided to go for a walk. After a quick search on the net we settled on the Ingleton Waterfall Walk. It was around 5 miles so not too bad a distance and, as the name suggests, there are a lot of waterfalls to look at which would mean I could get some nice photos:

Of course, the trouble with taking photographs is you have to take time on each shot. It’s not a case of pointing and clicking. I have to look at the scene and decide on what angle I like, then set up the tripod, the filters (my trusty old ND grads), work out my exposure, click, wait 20 seconds (to get that flowing water shot), have a look at the histogram on the camera and decide if I like it, then continue to the next waterfall and repeat! My good lady was surprisingly patient I must say, what with having to start and stop all the time. The only thing I had to worry about was children knocking into the tripod as we weren’t exactly the only people on the walk!

When I started taking photos I’d feel a bit self conscious putting up a tripod, messing around with filters and such like. But now I don’t even think about it, I don’t worry about the people around me and get on with the job at hand.

What’s really surprised me though is people’s reaction to me when I’ve got the camera out. If I was walking or mountain biking or just looking at things - I’d be pretty much ignored as most people are by strangers. But now with a camera in hand I must be more approachable as I find loads of people just walk up to me, ask what I’m doing and take a genuine interest. It’s really nice and makes it all the more worthwhile as I’ve met a lot of interesting people - some of whom know a hell of a lot more about photography than I do (which, to be fair, wouldn’t be that hard)!