The Sigmonster cometh.....

..... done deal. On the way next week is a Sigmonster.

EF600mm has gone - not different enough to lighter EF500mm and the 1Ds Mk III had to go - it's a terrible camera - replaced with a 1D Mk III which will be happier stablemate to existing 1D Mk III.

free email.....

..... then outage.

It appears I have been receiving a free email service from my provider for a while now - I didn't realise this until my email stopped working overnight when they did a bit of an upgrade, so a quick online chat to Customer Support (where they very strangely asked for my credit card details in a web based online help chat session - they assured me it was quite secure - I declined!) the problem was fixed.

Of course there was a knock on effect to my Blackberry and email client from the Dark Side - as the email provider has changed password policy my numerical string password wasn't acceptable, so I had to change to a more complex one containing upper and lower case characters and at least 5 numerical characters!?

The upgrade by the service provider includes spam filters so good that very little is getting through..... sadly thats very little email at all is getting through.

UPDATE 29/06 : Further interupted service today, the upgrade appears to have had some effect on the ability of the email servers to stay up for any period of time. Fingers crossed they sort their lives out before I name and shame them...

UPDATE 07/07 : no email getting through since last week, I can mail out, but zero coming in. I've been onto Register.com support again & again - they are utterly crap and full of empty promises of it being fixed "tomorrow", "soon" and "in hours" - no-one will call me back despite numerous requests for someone to do so. They have several tag lines which are really quite wrong "Experience the difference great service can make" not with this lot & "Don't just make a website - make an impact" in my experience a detremental one.....

Rearrange the following - Insult....

.... Injury, Add to.... I wrote about Audi in May and how they wanted £837.20 to replace my cambelt "One of the hardest working components of the engine...." - oh set my mind off and scare me into replacing a part that doesn't present any symptoms why not!

Well, on the way to a meeting yesterday the car suspension started knocking on the front right whenever I went over anything like an uneven road surface. I took it into Audi on the way home and left it with them to investigate.

At least it is a problem that has presented itself and actually has a symptom, rather than the spectre of the unknown as with the cambelt.

Luckily it appears to be a control arm & rubber bush, so relatively cheap. I thought whilst the car is in I may as well have the cambelt done as well, get the whole lot done and dusted - then they tell me "we recommend that when you get the cambelt done that you replace the water pump at the same time as the renewal of the cambelt can put a strain on an old water pump..." - another £250 please!

Looks like the beer budget for the summer has just been blown away by Audi.

24/06 UPDATE : Picked up car today, and not as bad as I thought it might have been, in the end they didn't replace water pump and a few F.O.C. items appeared on bill, so a few beers can be had this summer! I will also probably be able to afford the Audi wheel that has appeared on ebay to replace the one I buckled earlier in the year! Hopefully getting car back to 100% as I want it.

ISIHAC - It's back!

Long awaited, with some feelings that it wouldn't be anything like as good as when Humph was at the helm. With Stephen Fry as guest chairman, it was no suprise that Samantha was otherwise occupied, so the rippling (if not somewhat effeminate perhaps?) Sven was sat on Mr Fry's left hand keeping score.

Overall very good, with the same writing team still in place, with quite a few laugh out loud moments in the 30 minute programme. I did miss the dead-pan delivery of Humph though.

My wheel man.....

.... has been.

A little bubble of corrosion on the two rear wheels and a small kerb mark (unusually for me) on the front left wheel on the Audi have been fixed by my wheel man.

He was gainfully employed all day on mine and my neighbours cars, restoring the alloys back to perfection. The cars always look so much better when the wheels are 100%. If you live in north Hampshire - I can highly recommend him.

Not quite as good as Springwatch footage....

.... but it will do as a start for me.

Seen over the airfield at Thruxton today, one of three Red Kite's in the summer sunshine, hunting on the abundant dead rabbit population, it was a nice sight to behold.

The place gets a bit congested sometimes, not with aircraft but with a huge number of raptors like the Red Kite & Buzzards galore.

I will re-visit and take a more prepared approach to photographing them soon.