Thursday, November 09, 2006

Big bangs, Autumn and elections

Just a quick post I've added some more photos to my Flickr account, a set I took last Friday at a fireworks party; only just got around to looking through them. I was using a Canon Powershot A620, which I've only recently acquired, and had it set to the special "Firework" mode. This seemed to result in a standard 2 second exposure. Seeing as I was holding this manually and it was bloody cold I was surprised to get anything other then a blurry mess. The first few were a bit hit and miss, but then I learned to press the shutter just before the explosion and well there are the results. The original photos are 3072x2304, but of course the free account only goes up to the 1024 region. If demand is high enough I could port them over to Zazzle ;)

Autumn has finally arrived here this week, in that the trees are actually changing colour. Leaves have been falling for a while now, but for the most part the trees had remained green or simply lost all their leaves. There has been worried talk that the sudden cold would shock the trees, but to paraphrase a friend (whom I hope won't mind me lifting his comment)

Some probably won't make it, yeah. That's the nature of, uh, nature
If we come back in the Spring and they're all dead then we're in trouble, but I doubt that'll happen.

Finally in case you've been living on another planet or under a rock for the past few days the results of the election are in - yep Ortega has been voted back as Nicaragua's president. What, you thought I was going to talk about some other election? Well the BBC news covered that one no problem; long chats, plenty of video footage, two on-the-spot correspondents, and an interview with the US Ambassador. Nicaragua? He's been voted back in, he promises to eliminate poverty, the US say funds will only be forthcoming if democracy is maintained.
There have been hints by the Americans that Mr Ortega could find favour again with his northern neighbour, if he is a transparent democrat and co-operative partner.
In other words - let us in to buy up all your utilities and strip-mine your country and we'll sell you some electronic voting machines for the next election . Ah business as usual.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not wanting to nit-pick, but the quotation says "if he is a transparent democrat," and then you go on to suggest he would be sold some U.S. electronic voting machines. These two concepts are not compatible.

FlipC said...

Ah depends on whose definition of "transparent" we're using. After all if it's transparent that also means we can't see it.

BTW I meant to ask do you want the link to your site added to my list on the left-hand side?