As I Xi It v2.3

After a rather long hiatus from doing any sort of real wildlife photography, I got my layers on popped over to Richmond Park on Saturday to shoot the deer in the snow.

123►

Seeing as its been snowing rather frequently in London and I’ve got that upcoming trip up into Swedish Lapland, I ordered myself a set of Manfrotto snow shoes. Although I have a set of Slik and Gitzo tripod legs, I went for the Manfrotto because a) they were cheaper and b) Gitzo ones were out of stock at the place where I ordered my new ball head. The Manfrotto and Gitzo snow shoes look the same anyway.

You don’t have to use the snow shoes just for snow, I’m sure they’ll work pretty well on dry sand and other soft sediment. They just increase the surface area between the tripod and terrain to reduce sinking. However, I don’t recommend them for use on smooth surfaces such as laminate flooring as they’ll just slide around. I suppose they could be used for the new sport of tripod curling.

They’re reasonably cheap at around £15 and get the job done.

Another snowy situation in London. No BBQ’s today.

Snowy BBQ

More snow fell during the day, in fact its still snowing. It covered over the tracks I made last night.

I had a peep outside my window before bed and my street had a thick covering of snow. I’d say about 4″ depth. It hasn’t snowed that much in years! I think the last time there was real snow must’ve been 2001 or 2002.

Anyways, the snow was more or less unblemished apart from some tracks made by foxes or possibly cats, but I think foxes are more likely.

Well, I spent most of the evening installing Windows XP. It was pretty straightforward, just set the netbook to boot from a USB CD-ROM and away I went! Every thing seems to work. Everything apart from the built-in microphone, but that’s not too important since I don’t think I’ll actually use it. If I’m to Skype, I’ll probably use a headset anyway.

Installed all my programs including this new thing called WeFi. It’s quite neat, it tells you where the closest WiFi hotspot(s) is(are) while you’re WiFi-ing about. Also, if your chums are set up for it, you could see where they are and how close or far they are. If you’re often using public hotspots, I highly recommend this little app.

On a separate note, it’s snowing outside. It’s October and its snowing in London. Brrr… I can’t say that this was anticipated.

WordPress appears to have yet another new release.