Pig Sty Avenue

Thanks to mammara for blipping this earlier today: Múm "Rhubarbidoo" Fatcat Records Lovely.

Saltcoats Sea Front 4 , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . Click on this for a lovely comments thread. There's them that know, and them that don't know, and them that don't even know that they don't know. Or something.

I've ordered a couple of rolls of ADOX 120 - one each of 25 and 50 iso - from retrophotographic .

The Sporti 4 I took to London developed a light leak through the red window, and the whole roll of 35mm turned bad. Bugger. I'll shelve it until I can get some 127. The flash is working (though we need to wait to see if it's synching) on the Sporti 6, and I'll finish that roll today if I get time.

This was the real highlight of a weekend in London, far outshining Godot . I've been meaning to get to the Globe since it re-opened, but this was the first time. Splendid, splendid, splendid. It reminded me a little of the community theatre companies who came to our secondary modern school - that sense of being involved in the drama which was being specifically staged for you . The Capulets were all brilliant, giving that sense of a domestic crisis rapidly escalating to tragedy. Mercutio was an upper class rugger bugger, funny for a while but you probably wouldn't want to meet him. And there's so much going on: a tragedy indeed where the cause is people not minding their own business, on the one hand, and being young and foolish on the other. The line that stuck with me, though, made me wonder if it was placed as light relief to an Elizabethan audience at the death scene: "O churl! drunk all, and left no friendly drop/To help me after?" The Archbishop of

Last weekend was in London, and I managed to get a ticket for Godot at the Haymarket, Theatre Royal . Brilliant cast, of course. Someone said the next day when I was telling them, "Oh, isn't that the 'happy' Godot?" Well, yes. Inasmuchas it could be. It troubles me, though, the grip that Becket keeps on the play from beyond the grave. That in itself is a marvellous piece of theatre. The Gallery was infested with posh Sixth Formers. Most were enjoying the play but one of them spent the second act typing on her Blackberry when she wasn't whispering to her neighbour. And an American gentlemen next to me left after the first Act, bored or believing it was over, I don't know which.

I don't agree with this list . But it's interesting.

The Ilford Sporti six that I got this already exposed film from , I put a roll of HP5+ through it and got nothing out of it. So I put it on a shelf. And then I realized whilst tinkering with the newer Sporti 4 what a dramatic effect a wee bit of WD40 could have. So I got it off the shelf and began tinkering. It's a bit less primitive than the other Sportis, and most of the shutter mechanism cannot be got at because it's moulded into the bakelite lens housing. However, I managed to dab some WD40 onto the back of the shutter, and it trickled down and stopped it from sticking open - which it had been doing. However, it still stick open when the camera's upside down, which enabled me to clean the inside of the lens (with a damp low fibre cloth on the handle end of a paintbrush. Test roll's in now. We'll see.

Language Testing Online Table of Contents Alert A new issue of Language Testing is available online: 1 July 2009; Vol. 26, No. 3 The below Table of Contents is available online at: http://ltj.sagepub.com/content/vol26/issue3/?etoc Are two heads better than one? Pair work in L2 assessment contexts Lynda Taylor and Gillian Wigglesworth Language Testing 2009;26 325-339 http://ltj.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/26/3/325 Interacting in pairs in a test of oral proficiency: Co-constructing a better performance Lindsay Brooks Language Testing 2009;26 341-366 http://ltj.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/26/3/341 The influence of interlocutor proficiency in a paired oral assessment Larry Davis Language Testing 2009;26 367-396 http://ltj.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/26/3/367 Co-constructed interaction in a paired speaking test: The rater's perspective Lyn May Language Testing 2009;26 397-421 http://ltj.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/26/3/397 A

So may I introduce to you the act you've known for all these years… , originally uploaded by Lawrie M . That's DMU.

Will be cycling. I've set up a DMU spin-off group . And this bloke 's supposed to have loads of good craic. Now I just need the actual bike.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Late Junction is the heighth of civilization. Starving Weirdos is the latest thing I've discovered there.

I appear to have moved to Tehran .

"I'm buttered and mashed with pins" (7) I've been in touch with a couple of teaching establishments, emails courtesy of Important Exam Board, about the data for the dissertation. (IEB don't want to be involved further because "we have had a lot of problems doing this sort of thing in the past so are now not going to do so – sorry." Hmm.) So I emailed the people tonight and got the idea when they were asking about the details that it would be an idea to have a wiki for this, where candidates or teachers could download the test questions, to print for the written tests, and to do electronically for the keyboard tests. So here's the germ of it . I'll sleep on the idea and build it tomorrow.

At this juncture, when I've nearly settled the gear I'm going to be using, and am a couple of months away from finishing the MA and having more time, it's worth reminding oneself of Mr Ray-Jones' eleven notes to himself : * BE MORE AGGRESSIVE * GET MORE INVOLVED (TALK TO PEOPLE) * STAY WITH THE SUBJECT MATTER (BE PATIENT) * TAKE SIMPLER PICTURES * SEE IF EVERYTHING IN BACKGROUND RELATES TO SUBJECT MATTER * VARY COMPOSITIONS AND ANGLES MORE * BE MORE AWARE OF COMPOSITION * DON'T TAKE BORING PICTURES * GET IN CLOSER (USE 50mm LENS {or LESS, hard to make out in notes}) * WATCH CAMERA SHAKE (shoot 250sec or above) * DON'T SHOOT TOO MUCH * NOT ALL AT EYE LEVEL

Sporti 4 35mm test roll 7 , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . I put a whole roll of 35mm (Ilford Pan F 50) through the Sporti 4, with the flash, and it didn't synch once. Perhaps it would with a flash gun, but I'm hoarding my 20 or so flash bulbs. What I'm after is a kind of flash-gun look, where the background is in deep shadow, and the foreground overlit. And I want to do that with a very simple camera like the Sporti 4, to get the vignetting and other distortions. The irony is, to get this, I'm probably going to have to buy a sophisticated electronic flash which is programmable and has a PC connexion, all to put on top of a plastic box with a plastic lens with a cardboard shutter.

Sporti 4 35mm test roll 1 , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . I had the front off the "new" Sporti 4 last night. The shutter was sticking - especially if you used the camera sideways. A quick squirt of WD40 seemed to do the job, but only the next test roll of 35mm will tell. Everything was well overexposed, and was rescued in Photoshop. Still, I really like this one. Hopefully the next one will be better, and will justify buying some Efke 127.

I've got a roll of Ilford Delta (?) 100 iso in it now, as a test - 35mm of course. But I'm pretty sure the shutter's sticking a bit - which means it lags behind the button being pressed by a second or two. The flash goes off immediately, so it won't be synching. I remember taking an original Sporti to bits last year and that my first thoughts were that the mechanism was made of cardboard. It's not, of course, but it's not robust, either. But I may as well give it a go - try some WD40 perhaps? - because what I really want this for is lo-fi flash shots. This site refers to the shutter mechanism being "a bit flimsy". Indeed. I've also done something which would be unforgivable in a better quality camera, and rubbed a finger over the lens: I'm pretty sure it's plastic. Which, in a postmodern world, is a bonus.

Found Verichrome Pan 5 , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . This is from the roll that was in the Ilford Sporti 4 I got yesterday. I'd love to know what that liner is. I'm going to use the Sporti 4 to do 35mm sprocket hole pics - I've got five rolls of 35mm in the press, anyway. A 35mm cartridge fits in very snugly - more so than in the Coronet 4x4 I was using for sprocket hole pics. AND the Sporti 4 has a cold shoe and flash pc link. Mind you, whether the flash synchs or not is another matter. All these things I do when I should be writing exam items or my dissertation. I ought to be idle and rich, me.

Lest there be any doubt about my feelings. I had told anyone who'd listen when he first took over: He's made a packet in business, he'll know what to do. The scale of my error in saying that is breathtaking. Not only has he made a complete arse of owning a football club, he's now making an arse of selling one, for the second time . Say you'd spent quarter of a million on a house. It turns out to have dry rot AND subsidence problems, and there's a recession, so now it's only worth £90,000. Would you cut your losses? Personally, I'd get a bank loan, deal with the problems, wait for the economy to pick up, and then sell the fucker at a tidy profit. Newcastle United's situation is a lot like the Labour Party's, or even UK PLC. The wind turns and the people in charge are fucked. Stumped. Clueless. The culture of capitalism is that fuckwits, cowards and twats get to be in charge.

Just to complete the Ilford Sporti experience, I've gone and got a Sporti 4. It takes 127, so I need to spend over a fiver a roll, here - five times what the camera cost. Efke film comes from Croatia, and I bet it costs buttons there.

2nd test roll 5 , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . I've been looking at these again, and this one seems to be the business. Sharp and properly contrasted. That's the orange filter. Next step is to go out and get some sky in the frame. I really want a red filter, but this one will do for now.

2nd test roll 11 , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . That's the Agfa, with yellow filter.

Note to self. Check this out .

I've had an epiphany or something. The Australians are right: the British, especially the English, DO whinge all the time. Complain, complain, complain. For example, a man was on telly about his business partner who was missing over the Atlantic in that French plane , and all he could talk about was how no-one appeared to be answering the phone at Air France. Once you realise this, and open your ears, all you hear is whinging. Nobody ever gets a cloth out to clear up the spilt milk, they just stand around crying over it. Like that Caroline Flint. She doesn't get promoted so she alleges mysoginy . She'd been singing a different song the day before. I wonder if there are any ESOL or Language Testing jobs in Australia?

I can't blame him , really. The tension is very wearing.

Another bastard bites the dust . Kind of. I doubt she'll be signing up for tax credits anytime soon, scum has a habit of floating on top. However, one can take comfort in the fact that she looked seriously pissed off at Prime Minister's Questions this afternoon. If I sound bitter, I am. It grinds my gears that someone who will tell blatant lies to bump up her expenses, which I pay, gets to tell me what herbs I can have in my kitchen. She should have had the odd spliff herself, and laid off the arse-kissing. Cartoon from Alex Hughes Cartoons and Caricatures.

The Pictorialists were those photographers who saw photography as a form of art - and did not believe in too literal a capture of images. The movement started in the 1880s, and was over by the time of the Great War. The F64 group (their name is that of the tiniest aperture) came a generation later, in the early 30s, and thought that "The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh." The photo on the left there is the work of Sally Mann, from her book What Remains , which could be regarded as a contemporary form of Pictorialism. References were made to these two schools of thought in photography by a contributer to this thread on Flickr, solodogs , who likened Holga users to the Pictorialists, and Leica users to the F64s. It's a point of view with something to recommend it. As my contribution to that thread was to compare my now-departed Leic

Something I need to follow up , when I get time.

This is a note-to-self, to get some Efke film, in due course. They still do 127. I've found some in Berlin and Sagreb, online. That is all.

...of developments at St James's, I encountered this . Which made me smile; a bit.

This is a family movie, in a sense. My maternal Granda, a ship's stoker, saw the film whilst ashore in France in the mid 50s. He had no French but he loved it, and when he got home told everyone who'd listen about this brilliant film he'd seen in France. He wasn't even sure of the title, but thought it might have been something like A Diabolical Plot . Towards the end of the 50s, my Mam and Dad went to the pictures as a courting couple and saw a French film called The Fiends - the story was strangely familiar, and Mam realized that it was the same film her Dad had been going on about for years. This time, of course, it had subtitles, and so was easier to follow... And thus the film went down in family history. Mam and Dad saw it again one late night on telly in the 70s. Whenever a discussion about thrillers comes up, they will both say that nothing can compare with The Fiends and Granda would have said the same to his dying day. It's on order from Amazon - i