This morning I went and sat another Cisco professional exam (BSCI) and got a good pass mark. This one is the last I needed to gain Cisco Certified Design Professional (CCDP).

Over the weekend I read Peoplewear: Productive Projects and Teams (2nd Edition) by Tom deMarco & Timothy Lister. It’s a really good book on how to run development (and projects) within a company, which focuses on the people and environmental issues more than technology. Even though the original edition is now 20 years old (and the second is 10 years), it has not really aged that much (other than talking about COBOL) and still makes a lot of sense.

How about a little tea? by Jon Middleton, on Flickr

After a long lie in this morning we headed into town for some brunch in the place of stodge and onto the National Museum of Scotland.

The we had a good wonder for an about an hour with me taking some pictures with my new 50mm prime lens. This one is of a Japanese Tea House which I’m quite pleased with. However not having a circular polarizing filter was very limiting, as pictures of anything behind glass had really bad reflections.

Yesterday I ended up taking a much needed half day at the office, this followed a busy week at work (I lost track of the number of production releases I ended up writing) and a spending many hours out side of work getting Antipope back up and running following it’s untimely demise.

So we had lunch, I did not turn the computer on following a quick nip to the shops and headed out into the park. Where many pictures were taken (i.e. I filled up my only memory card). Another 1Gb CF card of the same type has now been ordered (for insert really small amount of money) and more larger cards will follow in my next Amazon order. More len(s) will have to wait until the middle of the month, many to let ones finances settle after pay day.

Aurthur’s Seat by Jon Middleton, on Flickr

This morning I did some tweaks to one one of the pictures I took this weekend following a chat with D at work.

I’ve cropped the image tightly in the top right corner to improve the composition (The rule of thirds). Also the levels and white balance has been changed to get some more colour into the clouds.

Really happy with how this one has turned out, it’s changed a ok picture into a really good one.

St Anthony's Chapel by Jon Middleton, on Flickr

Today we made it out into the park with the camera, it was really muddy and happened to be full of cross country runners. While out I managed to fill the memory card (a Gig is not enough for shooting in RAW mode), about half of which was due to leaving the camera in continuous mode from the last set of practice shots.

I’m trying out Flickr and the Aperture export plugin.

This one of the one of the better pictures of the shark’s from Deep Sea World that I took when April and I visited in May this year.

So far there’s only a 5 pictures in the set, a Pro flickr account may very well be required (and a license for the Aperture Export plugin).