Collision between car and lorry on A9
Thu Apr 1st - 11:49am
I was up 'til the wee hours on Tuesday night so didn't wake up until about 2pm on Wednesday, and immediately had to dash out to a serious collision on the A9 near Newtonmore a couple of miles away. The collision, between a lorry and a car, had left a male occupant of the car in hospital with head injuries and a female occupant in hospital with less severe injuries.
Had to wait for around 3 hours before I could get the pics, and had stupidly forgotten to take anything to eat or drink. It was like manna from heaven when I hunted around my car and found a stray can of Irn Bru under the passenger seat. Best can of Irn Bru I've ever tasted!
Pics were used in The Sun and the Press & Journal.
Inverness Half Marathon
Mon Mar 15th - 10:41am
Yesterday was the Inverness Half Marathon. I went and covered it on spec, sending pics off to the papers regularly throughout the day, and staying right to the end to get pics of the 1st-place man and woman, along with plenty of info about both of them. Did a solid afternoon's work that I was very happy with.
Sadly our national papers have a reputation for not caring about the Highlands unless it's bad news, and they haven't done anything to change that reputation today. Despite over 1,100 people taking part in this race, and hundreds more turning up to watch, every single one of the national papers decided that nobody would be interested in reading about the race or seeing photos from it.
Sunday 14 March 2010: The start of the Inverness Half Marathon was signalled by members of the 105th Regiment Royal Artillery (volunteers) 212 (Highland) Battery E Troop from Arbroath, using a 105mm L118 lightgun.
Sunday 14 March 2010: Pictured are the 1st-place male and female runners in the Inverness Half Marathon. First male with a finishing time of 1h:8m:3s was 31-year-old Ben Livesey, a Nimrod navigator based at RAF Kinloss. Ben first ran and won the Inverness Half Marathon in 2006. He finished in 2nd place for the next three years, so this year he has reclaimed his crown. (Ben Livesey tel: *****) First female with a finishing time of 1h:20m:9s was 46-year-old Melissa Whyte, a staff nurse at Raigmore Hospital. This was Melissa's first time competing in the Inverness Half Marathon, although in 2009 she finished first in all three of a series of 10K races in Nairn, Elgin and Forres. She also took 1st place in another 10K race in Nairn last week. Her family is now encouraging her to take part in the London Marathon. (Melissa Whyte tel: *****)
Police: We know you’re right, so don’t pay the fine!
Wed Mar 10th - 10:39pm
Mind if I use my blog to have a whinge?
Okay so we're down in Glasgow for a few days. Naturally we're using sat-nav to get around, and that got us in trouble today in the city centre as it told us to turn left at a junction which sent us along a bus-only lane. We were then immediately stopped by the police and given a £30 fine.
According to the police officers there were two "clearly displayed" no-left-turn signs on the building opposite the junction, a thick white line down the middle of the road which "indicates that one side of the road is a bus lane", and the lane itself was "marked as a bus lane".
Here's the view from the junction:
After I went back and took that photo, I showed it to the police officers and they immediately accepted that there were no signs on the building opposite, there was no line in the middle of the road, and the bus lane itself wasn't marked in any way. They accepted that the only sign was the blue "bus only" sign facing down the hill, which is almost side-on when seen from the junction.
So presumably the fine could be cancelled?
Wrong! They had been told to come and hand out fines to anyone turning left at that junction, so that's what they had to do. But they both advised me not to pay the fine, saying that it was unlikely to ever go to court, and even if it did then I was likely to win if I used the photograph as evidence.
What a waste of time and police resources!
(There was actually a no-left-turn sign at the junction, but it was high up and further back than usual so I didn't even notice it when I first went back to take that photo. In fact it was so easy to miss that the police didn't even know it was there.)
As you can see from the next photo, other people made the same mistake:
In the 20 minutes or so that we were there, talking to the police and taking photos, I'd estimate that 9 out of every 10 drivers coming out of that junction turned left, came up the hill and got stopped by the police. Pretty clear evidence, I'd say, that the no-left-turn isn't clearly marked and therefore drivers shouldn't be fined for making an honest mistake.
What I'd like to know is: Once the police realised that the junction signage was inadequate, why did they continue to stop people and fine them?
And how many thousands of pounds in fines are being handed out every day on that one stretch of road, when the problem could be fixed simply by putting up a few signs where drivers might actually see them?
Whinge over 
Kilted skiing at Cairngorm Mountain
Sat Mar 6th - 4:24pm
Congratulations to everyone who took part in the kilted skiing record attempt at Cairngorm Mountain this morning. I really enjoyed being there to see 235 skiers and snowboarders of all ages, sizes and species (yes!) doing the righteous kilt thing in style. There was a great atmosphere and it was well organised, especially having the pipers and drummer leading the procession down to the finish line.
Read about it on the BBC and STV news sites.
So I’ll be needing a press card then…
Sat Mar 6th - 1:41am
Working in the Highlands, which is a huge area with a small population, you don't really need a press card. Most of the police know all the photographers and so long as you behave yourself, which we all do, there's never any problem.
Today I was covering a fire at a furniture store in Grantown, after receiving the usual media alert from the police press office. There was only one other photographer there and we were both playing by the rules, only going where the police allowed us to go and not getting in the way at all. As far as I'm aware, neither of us did anything wrong and there was no reason for any police officer to object to us being there.
Then up walked Inspector Attitude and confronted me. He was immediately combative. This is how the conversation went:
Him: Are you press?
Me: I am, yes.
Him: Show me your credentials.
Me: I'm freelance. I don't have credentials.
Him: You don't have any ID at all?
Me: I've got ID, I just don't have press credentials because I'm freelance.
Him: (Taking hold of me and pushing me.) Don't give me any of your nonsense.
Me: Excuse me?
At which point someone started talking to him on his radio and he left me alone. Later on he came over to where both myself and the other photographer were standing, and asked us to move even further back, but he was polite that time.
I've known for as long as I've been in this business that British press cards are effectively worthless because anyone can get one, whether they're press or not, so I've never bothered getting one. Plus I've only ever been asked for a press card once before, and that time was also by a policeman with an aggressive attitude who was trying to be obstructive.
Two times is two times too many though. Probably best if I just get the silly card and show it to any policeman daft enough to think it means something. If it lets me get on with my job without wasting time on stupid arguments then I guess it will be worth it. I just hope I don't have to pay some astronomical "membership fee" to whichever 'gatekeeper' I end up getting it from.
Anyway, even with the hassles, I got all the pics I wanted. (I should point out that the policeman in the first pic isn't the one who confronted me. This guy was friendly and polite, as the police nearly always are.)
Sport Relief bike ride and Carrbridge loco removal
Tue Mar 2nd - 3:25pm
Yesterday was insane. On Sunday night at 8pm I got a booking for a job in John O'Groats, over 160 miles away, and I had to be there for 8am. The job was covering the start of the Sport Relief celebrity bike ride.
The agency that I was covering the event for supplies photos to a lot of celebrity magazines and tabloid newspapers, so I tried to get photos that those publications would be interested in, such as this shot of David Walliams signing autographs:
Current media darling Miranda Hart:
And some gratuitous butt shots of Davina McCall:
Fearne Cotton kept a low profile and I didn't see her come out to mingle with the crowd at all, so there wasn't much opportunity for good pics of her:
Local school kids had turned out in force to give their support, so once the celebs had set off I got a group shot of the kids to send to the local paper:
So that was the John O'Groats job done.
On the way home I headed for the scene of a road accident near Invergordon, but it had been cleared up by the time I got there. I stopped in Inverness for a couple of hours to do a bit of shopping, then continued south.
And by pure luck, the time spent in Inverness meant that I reached Carrbridge just as the derailed locomotive was being taken away by road. I did a U-turn on the A9, headed back to the first layby, grabbed my camera and ran back along the A9 to get some shots of the loco and the queues of traffic. Maybe there's a good reason for the timing, but I thought it was quite bizarre that the loco was being moved at 5pm when it would surely cause a lot of inconvnience to motorists.
It was a very long day. I got home at about 6:30pm, sent the loco pics off to the papers, had a quick bite to eat, and sat on the settee for a game of Grand Theft Auto. I woke up 2 hours later, still sitting upright on the settee. I'd pretty much been running on adrenaline for the past 24 hours. Went to bed and slept for 11 hours.
Would happily do the same again tomorrow
Locomotive lifted from Carrbridge derailment site
Sun Feb 14th - 3:50pm
The derailed 167-tonne locomotive at Carrbridge train station was lifted last night, by a team from Port Services using a specialist crane that can lift up to 1,000 tonnes. I had reliable information that the lift would be happening that night, but still you never know exactly how fast these heavy-lift operations will go so I turned up at midnight, found the best angle, and waited with my flask of soup
It was around 3am when the lift began:
After the loco was raised by about 20-feet there was a lot of banging noises from near the crane so the loco was lowered again while adjustments were made. Then the lift began for real. The next photo was used by the BBC as their "Big Picture" for today. Nice to see a wide shot being used, as it tends to be mostly tight shots that are used nowadays. I think a wide shot can often tell the story better.
And the next photo was used on the STV News web site.
The photos have all been sent to the national newspapers too so hopefully some will be used tomorrow. I'm fairly sure this next one won't be used, but I like it because of the composition with the guys sitting on the vehicle at the right of the frame.
Close-up of the loco being loaded on to a transporter which will take it by road to wherever it's going:
As preparation for the night shoot I had gone along to the site on Saturday afternoon. There was nobody around so I took the opportunity to go down to where the loco had come to rest. Naturally I called my better half to let her know what I was doing, so if she didn't hear from me in 10 minutes then something was wrong. You should always do that if you're going alone in to any situation where there's an element of risk. (Or just don't put yourself in that situation.)
I also made a panorama of the whole site. It was a 60-megapixel composite of 35 photos, showing a full 180-degrees, although it looked a little silly having the road at both sides of the picture so I cropped it to this middle section.
Click here to see a larger version
This is how the full 180-degree view looked:
And for novelty value, here's a 53-megapixel panorama made from 24 photos showing the scene where the locomotive has been stranded for nearly six weeks.
Click here to see a larger version
The curious case of Tesco and non-alcoholic drinks
Thu Feb 4th - 9:49pm
There have been two quirky stories about Tesco in the news recently, one about them banning shoppers from wearing pyjamas and another about a 24-year-old woman being asked for ID because she wanted to buy a slice of quiche.
We had our own run-in with a strange Tesco policy the other night. My girlfriend Katie wanted to buy some non-alcoholic cider, but the self-service checkout refused the sale because it was apparently classed as an alcoholic drink which can't be sold after 10pm:
Now you might think this is a simple computer error. After all the product does clearly state ALCOHOL-FREE right there in big writing on the front label.
But no! The manager of the store got involved and told us that the product is correctly classed as an alcoholic drink because, according to the (very) small print on the back of the label, it can contain up to 0.05% alcohol. If he authorised the sale, he said, he would lose his job and be hit with a £5,000 fine.
What's really bizarre, though, is that I was able to go and pick up a can of Shandy Bass, which contains TEN TIMES as much alcohol (0.5%) and the self-service checkout was quite happy for me to pay my 49p and leave with the product:
3D visualisation: Perfume bottle on satin sheet
Wed Feb 3rd - 7:42pm
My second project for learning 3DS Max was to design a fairly simple object with non-standard, non-symmetrical geometry, and build it exactly how I envisaged it, ie: working out how to create a specific structure in 3D, not just pulling a shape in random directions until I eventually found something that was nearly right. I'm going to want to do this commercially one day, and sooner rather than later, so I need to be able to work to a designer's exact specifications.
I decided to create a perfume bottle, as this would involve a few other challenges to keep things interesting, such as making a semi-opaque glass material, and putting a logo on the bottle. And I made it a bit harder for myself by displaying the perfume bottle on a satin sheet, draped over a block, which involved learning about 'cloth' materials in Max. So quite a tricky project for a beginner, but I'd say the result is fairly good. Click to enlarge:
Here's how the scene looked in Max:
Note that the logo isn't simply 'typed' in to the scene. It had to be created separately as a texture and added to a plane, which was then meticulously manipulated to fit the shape of the bottle. There may be an easier way to achieve the same effect, but here's what I did:
The litte ridges at the bottom of the bottle were produced using a displacement map. But if I had applied that map to the whole of the glass material then it would have created weird ridges all over the top and bottom of the bottle, so I only added it to a 'ring' of faces around the bottom of the bottle. That introduced a new challenge: Manually editing the texture co-ordinates (UVs) for those faces. That was a lot easier than I expected.
Designing the satin sheet was fun as Max includes material simulation, so I only needed to create the flat sheet and then tell Max to drape it over the box. I'm not 100% happy with the satin material I created as it looks a little too much like plastic to me, but the intricacies of material design aren't the priority at this stage.
The struggle of the ethical smartphone power-user
Thu Apr 1st - 12:13am
Sorry this isn't some hilarious April Fools prank, but…
Living and working in the Scottish Highlands, I move frequently throughout the day to areas of differing cellphone service.
For example, at home, I only get a signal if I leave the phone near the window. A mile away in the nature reserve where I walk the dog, I get a great signal. Up in Inverness, you can go from a full-strength 3G signal to "no service" within a couple of hundred yards. Overall the average signal strength around the Highlands might be best described as slow and patchy.
Which is a problem, because I use an iPhone. Supposedly the best phone available, except it suffers from two significant faults.
That gives me two good reasons to dump the iPhone and move to a better phone.
But there's a much better reason…
See, there already exists a very good solution to the slow Safari problem. A snazzy little mobile web browser called Opera Mini has been released for the iPhone. Using unique compression technology it can be five or six times faster than Safari and works well on slow connections.
But alas, this is an iPhone, so when I say that Opera has been "released", what I mean is that it was submitted to the App Store for Apple's approval. Apple is notorious for taking a very long time to approve apps, and is widely despised for rejecting them for seemingly random reasons. Especially if the App is designed to replace one of Apple's own apps, and does the job better.
At the time of writing, with possibly tens of thousands of "power-user" iPhone owners waiting for Opera Mini to be approved, Apple has stalled it in the review process for over eight days. This is bad customer service. Terrible.
Now it's a fair bet that Apple will reject Opera. And lots of people will be very angry, and Apple won't care, because they never do. We've already bought our £400 phones, or tied ourselves in to expensive carrier contracts, so Apple's existing customers don't count. The only people that Apple cares about are its future customers, and that's why it's so important for Apple to maintain the facade that its own software is the best available.
But even if Opera does eventually get accepted, that won't make a great deal of difference to me. I have already had my eyes opened to the fact that being an ethical consumer is incompatible with being an Apple customer.
Now, I'm not alone in feeling this way. And we're all faced with the same dilemma: The iPhone has a great interface and a damn-near-perfect touchscreen. Pretty much any alternative phone will be an egronomical downgrade. You'll end up with something clunky and overly-complicated, with a plastic screen that you have to press on too hard. And you'll lose the lovely pinch-to-zoom functionality that makes web browsing a joy on a small screen.
That's the way it was up until very recently. But now there are some viable alternatives to the iPhone, all of them made by HTC.
So after spending way too much time researching "iPhone alternatives", here's what I would humbly suggest is the range of options available. With all of these you'll get a nice interface, a hard screen that you don't have to press on, and multi-touch capabilities for pinch-to-zoom and other gesturing functions. Plus the very important ability to customise them, and run any add-on software you want, without permission! Price for each is around £400.
HTC Desire
Not easy to find in the UK yet, but should be in the next couple of weeks. I haven't been able to get my hands on one yet but every review I've read and watched compares it to the Nexus One and says it's better. Based on Google's Android operating system but doesn't have voice search which is reportedly a deliberate restriction by Google as they want to keep it for their own handsets.
HTC Legend
Lots of people love this phone so have a look at it for yourself, but personally I don't like the design so I'm not even considering it. Functionality and interface are very similar to the Desire. If you can live with the horrible 'lip' at the bottom of the handset then this is definitely worth considering, it's purely the lip that I don't like.
Nexus One
In theory the most desirable of the three for geeks like me, as it's a 'pure' Android phone, and it's the best looking with an aluminium case. However, Google is already showing up on the ethical consumer's warning radar, and I'm a bit p**sed off at them for using some of my photographs and then making me fight them for payment, so personally I think I'll give the Nexus One a miss.
(The older and somewhat plasticky HD2 is nearly there, although its screen is a little on the small side compared to the alternatives, and it's a Windows-based phone which some people, myself included, shy away from. No problem with Wndows, just not on a phone, thanks.)
For me, then, it's looking like the Desire is the way to go. I'll get my grubby paws on one soon and report back. If the touchscreen is as nice to use as the iPhone then chances are it will be coming home with me that very day, so I'll write more about it once I've lived with it for a while.
Bottom line: If you're a dissatisfied iPhone user / Apple customer, but you've been dismayed by the rubbish alternatives coming out over the last year, then it's time to take another trip to the phone shop and see the latest offerings. There are some very nice mobiles out there.
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