Britain's New Government

Well, its not what I would have wanted for the UK but it has happened wether we like it or not. The Tories are back in power, sort of.

Gordon Brown's exit was very good I thought and I do hope that history will be kind to him, even though the people and the media over the last few years have not.

David Cameron certainly appears to look the part and I am glad that Nick Clegg is there to keep him honest (I hope),

Good luck Britons!

Is New Zealand a 3rd World Country ???

This was written in 2007, not too long ago. I wonder if the author is onto something?

Email Etiquette : People Who Respond to Email's with a Completely Different Subject are Rude!

Here is how it goes. You send an email out to a few people at your workplace or club, or whatever. The email in question has a particular subject heading and the email is on a specific topic. (as most emails are)

The nice people will respond to your query or comment and things get done.

But then your inbox beeps with a message from some rude bastard who decided to completely ignore your original email topic and replies to you on a completely different and often whimsical matter! ..... AND, they make no effort to even change the Subject Line.

At least change the bastard subject line if you are going to just ignore my email and ask me something completely different!

RUDE! I tells you RUDE!

Scotland's Winter Wonderland 2009 : 2010

This is easily some of the best aerial footage I have seen. Scotland got dumped on big time this past Winter with so much snow that it was dubbed a 1 in 30 year event. I missed it! :-(

Samsung ST500 High Resolution Images : Examples

I have been testing out the Samsung ST500 and I have found that it is really very good for a Point and Shoot Camera.

Yes, the camera has the funky front LCD screen and you could argue that this is simply a gimmick, however I have found it quite amusing and somewhat helpful, especially for the countdown timer which displays nice large numbers on it. If you are the type of person who likes to take shots of yourself then you will surely love it.

The camera can go to 12.2 mega pixels however the 9 mega pixel wide setting is the best. It fills the entirety of the rear touch screen which at 3 inches is pretty great.

The images are a little bit noiser than a half decent DSLR but after a little bit of downsize sharpening, the final result is pretty damn good.

I decided to upload 5 example images which I have copied directly from the camera and uploaded to Photobucket Imgur. Unfortunately this compresses the images and destroys all the EXIF data, but they have retained their original resolution.

I did absolutely no post processing on these images whatsoever. Other than the compressed upload, they are exactly what you get from the camera.

Well, it seems as though Imgur also resizes my images. The first image below seemed to be preserved at its original size, but I noticed the rest of my images were shrunk slighly. I give up.

Enjoy the samples below from the ST500. The images you would get yourself will be slightly larger and have 20% better JPEG compresson.

Boris, our Cat
Click Image to Download Full Resolution

New Zealand Fire Service Trucks
Click Image to Download Full Resolution

Itajai Express Cargo Ship
Click Image to Download Full Resolution

Auckland City Ferry Terminal
Click Image to Download Full Resolution

Dove Myer Park, Auckland
Click Image to Download Full Resolution

All Images are copyrighted to Murray Douglas but are completely free to use with attribution.

Guatemala Sinkhole Photoshop Job! 'C'mon!

C'mon guys, seriously. Is this image a photoshop job or what?  Being a somewhat avid Photoshop user, I would suggest hell yes.

Don't get me wrong, I certainly do believe that the  Guatemala Sinkhole exists, but the first image below suggests that it seems to have a perfect cylindrical shape and ends in a giant cave under the Earths crust!

What do you think guys? am I being too skeptical?

 

Guatemala Sinkhole Fake or Real ? 

But this one looks real.... Guatemala Sinkhole 

Guatemala Sinkhole, Hmmmmm

John Key on the leaky homes package

So, the Government has increased their compensation offer to New Zealand leaky home owners. But is it enough?

A fair package would be for the government to provide 100% payment to leaky home owners. Then the Govt can chase up those responsible to get some money back.

The New Zealand Government caused this mess by removing the regulations which should have kept the so called 'innovative and efficient' private sector companies 'honest'.

Successive Governments must therefore take the responsibility.

This is a prime example of why private industry cannot be trusted to regulate itself.