I have not taken a photograph in ages. This is because I decided, quite wisely, that I am a shit photographer. However, even the crappest of photographers will luck in eventually if they point and click often enough, and so it turns out that one of my photographs has been included in the latest edition of the Schmap Glasgow Guide.

I have to confess to not having heard of Schmap before being included. But it seems pretty cool. It seems to be an online travel guide with helpful maps and photographs taken from Flickr. It’s funny to think of one of my photographs being included here, because there are some really awesome photographs among the selection.

The photograph of mine that has been included was one of the ones I took of House for an Art Lover, which I highly recommend visiting.

• House for an Art Lover
• Flickr page for the photograph

Cool photo of the eclipse! (Via.)

Incredible Hurricane Katrina photographs.

Ah, Vicky has documented part of a typical day. I’ll be getting used to these sights again from next week onwards…

Today my friend and I went on a walk from my house along the coast to Aberdour, which is about ten miles. To kind of give it perspective for those who don’t know Fife, here is a map, although we did not take that route (because, as I said, we went along the coast).

One interesting aspect of the walk was the fact the journey to Kinghorn, which once felt like a mammoth walk, seemed to go by really quickly; I barely noticed it.

We hit a problem between Kinghorn and Burntisland though. We attempted to reach Burntisland via Pettycur Bay, where we ended up in quite a nasty hailstorm (the weather had previously been sunny with just a few spots of rain). There we found what had appeared to be an abandoned rucksack, and a tent closer to the tide in the distance. I found it so strange just lying there in the middle of the beach that I took a photograph of it.

Then I turned round and there was somebody sitting there all along. Doh. He must have thought that I was well weird.

Anyway, we carried on until the beach just sort of stopped, and there was nothing between the Firth of Forth and Burntisland but a sea wall. We couldn’t find any way of getting further inland, so we had to walk all the way back to Kinghorn. Not a very successful period then.

We then sped on to reach Aberdour, taking just a couple of breaks. All-in-all we spent about three hours walking. I like doing that sort of thing. It really feels like you’ve achieved something. The thing is, though, it leaves me down on energy for the rest of the day…

(More photos from today are on Flickr.)

I’m posting this in every single category to make sure everybody who might need this gets it.

I’ve decided that my categories are a mess, and tomorrow I’m going to attempt to clean them up a bit. I’ll be creating new categories, deleting rubbish old ones, and changing where they go. Some posts might end up in different places. Just a heads up, because it does mean that some feed URLs, and indeed website URLs, will change.

I went through to Glasgow with my parents today, which is why I’m a bit too tired to blog properly.

We went to see Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s House for an Art Lover. For those who don’t know (like me before I was dragged along), it was an entry into a sort of ‘dream house’ kind of competition in a German magazine, at the very start of the twentieth century. Mackintosh’s fantastic design was disqualified because he submitted some of his drawings too late. Doh.

In the 1980s somebody, seemingly randomly, decided he was going to build Mackintosh’s dream. And there it is, positioned in Bellahouston Park, a little piece of beauty amidst all the hustle and bustle of the city (Ibrox Stadium is just a stone’s throw away). There was one part in the audio guide when you stand on a balcony outside the music room which said something along the lines of, “Imagine sitting in the night air with the doors open listening to the music.” I couldn’t quite manage to imagine that because of the traffic noise.

I was particularly struck by the music room. Most of the rooms are dark brown or silvery — the music room is white all over, and it really hits you. It’s quite ornate and certainly very beautiful. The piano is just stunning. Mackintosh was clearly an imaginative guy! I was very impressed.

It only cost £3.50 to get in aswell. Bargain! I got some nice photos out of it aswell.

(One person was overheard leaving the House for an Art Lover saying, “…but I got the impression that not all of the furniture was original.” Doh — none of it’s original!)

I’ve not been blogging very much recently, and when I have it’s more often than not been about Formula 1. I even wrote a lengthy post about a Formula 1 video game just there!

It’s partly because I can’t think of anything to write about, but mostly because the holiday, as I’ve been telling everybody (and it really does feel like everybody) has been so hectic!

Usually I find holidays so terribly boring, but somehow I keep on finding stuff to do. Never a dull moment, and if there is then I’ll just do that thing that I’ve been meaning to do for ages anyway.

This evening we had the police round because some fucking wanker was shooting through my window. I was out of the room last night when a pellet hit my Rothko print which I only just photographed a couple of weeks ago. Glass everywhere. You can imagine what I thought when my friends said “it just fell off the wall.” At the same time the window was making terrible creaking noises; I thought the window was going to break aswell, so I closed it.

Last night and this morning / afternoon I was busy. When we got back this evening and my mother took a look she realised that what I had thought was a screw was actually some kind of pellet. There were three of them. That’s what the noises at the window were aswell. That also explained the funny mark on the top of the window sill. My window was being bloody shot at; the ones that came in through the gap caused damage to two walls and a picture.

It’s not the damage that angers me though. There were five people in my room last night. Having seen the marks on the walls, I am in no doubt that somebody would have been seriously injured if they had been hit.

Oh well. On a lighter note here is a picture I took from Stirling Castle today.

I just had a look at the front page of this blog and found that the eight previous posts are all asides. Oops.

I’ve not been blogging so much because it’s summer, which is a time when you sort of get a life and stuff.

I’ve been on three separate excursions, all somewhere along the coast of Fife, armed with a camera. Take a look if you want — I promise you they’re not all as boring as that first one.

I’ve been using Autostitch, which is an excellent program that stitches together photographs automatically. You know, when something’s too big and you have to take a few photos to get it all in. The results are fantastic.

Isn’t that just great? The program is ridiculously simple to use aswell — highly recommended! I think I first heard about Autostitch on New Links, so thanks to them aswell!

Life Insurance free quotes

I can’t think of anything to write about. But I did go out and take a few photos, and I submitted one to the Geograph website.

It turns out that there are quite a few from the surrounding area; Kirkcaldy just seems to take up more square kilometres than I thought!

Meanwhile, here’s another nice photo I took in the garden (click the link for the bigger version and Flickr toys).

Geograph is a very interesting project collecting photographs representing every square kilometre in the British Isles.

At the moment there are three for Kirkcaldy (although technically two of them are for Dysart and one of them is practically there anyway).

I might go out and take some photographs for it now! I just need to find a pretty part of Kirkcaldy…

Via New Links.

Some of these are easy to explain. Others are just ?????

one two three four five six seven

Via.

I spent more than twelve hours in bed last night. That’s more than half of the day for crying out loud!

My mother told me to go on a walk, and my friend David wanted to go on a walk aswell. We decided to go to West Wemyss in the end, a tiny town just to the east of Kirkcaldy.

It’s a good excuse to get away from the noise of Kirkcaldy — the Links Market (apprently Europe’s biggest street fair) is in town at the moment).

It was a freezing cold day though, and very windy, especially on the beach facing out towards the North Sea. It was well worth it though.

The strangest thing was undoubtedly the Irn Bru coloured burn. I don’t quite understand the rusty colour. I’ve passed this burn before, and I never noticed such a funny colour.

Here’s the whole set of photographs.

I’ve created a new ‘personal’ category. I don’t usually write about boring things like that. My hand might get bitten off if I talk about other folk aswell, so I tent not to do that either these days. But we’ll see what happens with that. Personal stuff used to go in the ‘miscellany’ category; goodness knows what that’ll be used for now…

Yesterday I went with my parents to Callander in central Scotland. It’s not the first time I’ve been there, but the magnificent Ben Ledi particularly stood out yesterday. It may officially be summer time, but there was still a nip in the air yesterday. The snowcap present on Ben Ledi meant that it was impossible to miss.

Callander is a tiny town, but it always seems to be incredibly busy. Lots of people. It’s such a beautiful area. The photos aren’t great; unfortunately the sun went in before my camera came out.

Finally signed up for a Flickr account. I’d had a wee look around before, but I never seemed that fussed. But I thought I might as well give it a go. I don’t know how often I’ll use it though; I don’t take photos that often.

I’ve started off by uploading three photos I took on a really lovely day a few weeks ago, but which I never got round to blogging.

Here’s the link for my photos.

Last weekend I climbed Bishophill with a couple of friends. It is definitely one of my favourite places - and only about twenty minutes away by car!

Click for pictures.

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