Why Dont You Blog?

If you are looking for a holiday to the south of France anytime soon, can I suggest you stop by Clairac for at least a visit. It is a gorgeous little town - you can see some shots of it on Flickr.

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Popularity: 19% [?]

Not wishing to rub it in to all the people who are discovering that “Global Warming” is a misnomer that only survived because it is more “catchy” than Human Influenced Climate Change and certainly not wishing to disparage the suffering and loss people are sustaining as a result of the widespread floods in the UK, I thought it would be nice to share a holiday snap taken today:

You see there are places in the world where it is not raining! [tags]Photos, Photographs, Holiday, Sun, Climate Change, Global Warming, Seaside, Nikon, D80[/tags]

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Popularity: 26% [?]

Well, after a somewhat wet holiday all the WhyDontYou contributors are now back home safe and sound.

It seems our Atheistic comments here, while being studiously ignored by the Abrahamic deity were noticed by a few more elemental Gods… Obviously our lack of sacrifices to Mithras and general irreverence ensured that every day we were subjected to almost Biblical downpours. At one point it became comical - every time we were in the car it was brilliant sunshine, as soon as we got out the clouds appeared and the rain began. Seriously. Add to this a week where we had no access to the internet but every single day a thousand and one religious-nonsense blog topics forced themselves upon us. The Gods were truly displeased.

That aside, it was great fun and about a zillion photographs were taken. In fact, it has prompted me even more towards buying a “real” camera, and now I am stuck with the difficult decision between two entry level Digital SLR cameras. I have narrowed it down to a choice between the Nikon D40x and the Canon EOS 400D.  I have found the Nikon for about£15 cheaper than the Canon now (because of the Nikon cashback offer) so that looks favourite - for now. If anyone has any experience of either I would be interested to hear it. The next hurdle will be where to buy it from

Anyway, enough rambling for now. Hopefully normal service will resume in the morning.

[tags]Holiday, Deities, Mithras, WhyDontYou, Technology, Nikon, Canon, D40x, EOS, EOS 400D, Camera, Digital Camera, Digital SLR, SLR[/tags]

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Popularity: 32% [?]

Just to let the faithful readers (both of you) here know, by wonderful coincidence all the authors here will be away on holiday over the period 1 July - 8 July, so it is quite unlikely there will be any posts.

Hopefully we will all come back refreshed, full of philosophical and atheistic vitriol and have loads of photographs to share.

Bet you cant wait…

[tags]WhyDontYou, Holiday, Site admin, General, Why Dont You[/tags]

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Popularity: 21% [?]

After my last rant, I realised I had been ranting (on and off line) about this topic a bit too much so I have decided to post some nice, pleasant, pictures with a summer feel to try and cheer myself up. I blame the near constant rain and cold for my SAD out look (yes, I need a holiday)

All these pictures were taken at National Trust properties, if you live in the UK and enjoy going round stunning landscapes, houses and castles at the weekend (or mid week), then you really should consider joining the National Trust and / or English Heritage.

The first photo was taken with a Nokia N73 Cameraphone, the rest with a Kodak Z650 digital camera. All were untouched in photoshop (unusual for me now) but resized to 600px wide by Advanced Batch Converter. I have finally given in and gone for Adobe Lightroom so I may end up playing with that a lot more over the weekend.

Obviously, if people feel willing to donate towards my purchase of a real digital SLR (Nikon D80 appeals to me) then, I am never too proud to accept handouts .

[tags]adobe, holiday, national-trust, photographs, photography, photos, photoshop, phone camera, nokia-n73, nokia, n73, lightroom, kodak-z650, technology, SAD, Sunshine, Happy[/tags]

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Popularity: 34% [?]

Disney Castle at Night,
originally uploaded by WarAxe.

I look at pictures like this (found on flickr) and it just reminds me how much I need to get away on holiday. The picture is gorgeous and pretty much captures all the Magic Kingdom castle in all it’s glory. If you have never been it is well worth a visit. Seriously. If you have kids, all the better — at least then you get less strange looks…

It has been over two years since I had an overseas holiday, and all I have had in that time is five day breaks to various parts of the UK! At least the breaks have let me take loads of photos of various castles and the like, but I am sure you can agree, it really is not the same.

I am toying with going to Florida for my holidays around the end of September / start of October. Does any one have any local knowledge which could be useful?

Would it be better for me to arrange things like car hire in the UK before I go (and go flights only) or are Fly-Drives discounted enough to make that worth while?

[tags]Disney, Holiday, Vacation, Castles, Florida, Photos, Photographs, Flickr, Disneyworld, Walt Disney, Magic Kingdom, Fly-Drive[/tags]

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Popularity: 49% [?]

This post was inspired by a cake I ate today. It was so miraculously kitsch it should have its own weblog. It wouldn’t fit on a scanner without serious damage to its hull integrity, So no picture.

You’ll have to imagine a birds’ net made of meringue, filled with cream and studded with fake bark made from shredded chocolate, interspersed with those tiny chocolate eggs that have a hard shell that’s patterned to look like the eggs of imaginary but colourful bird species.

This brought to mind the chocolate anatomically correct Jesus that offended Catholics.

Shouldn’t ornithologists be campaigning about this cake? Maybe, representing their most cherished idols in confectionery format is just water off a ducks’ back to ornithologists but I believe they should be warned.

Shameless Why Don’t You blog-promotion. This was last year’s Blog Easter message. I’ve posted the link in the absence of a currently working site-map or site search thanks to various upgrade attempts or the will to write a fresh Easter message for our faithful.

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Popularity: 22% [?]