This was the first wedding that I’ve been to in a while where I have not been the photographer in some capacity. It was nice to avoid the pressure! The disadvantage of course is that I was not always — not often — in the right place for the best shot.

It still didn’t stop my trying.

This weeks PhotoFriday challenge is “Little.” My entry is a little traffic jam, taken in Covent Garden market.

I didn’t have an entry in last weeks challenge so you don’t have to feel guilty for not voting for me.

I’m 75% of the way to becoming a dad for the first time. What better way of displaying that progress — for a programmer at least — than as a Mac application? (Not currently available in the App Store.)

Cars, this weeks PhotoFriday theme, seem such every-day sights that it’s easy to think that they’re not worth taking pictures of unless it’s something exotic. However, for some reason, I was taking pictures of the local shopping centre, so I have this image of a bunch of cars.

There’s no need to feel guilty for not voting for me in last weeks challenge since I didn’t get the time to post an entry.

• The IBM PC is 30 today – Look how far we’ve come in thirty years…
• photoshoplooter – I think this is a typically British response to the rioting currently going on around the UK this week.

As soon as I saw the theme for this weeks challenge, “Gloomy,” I knew which image I needed to use. I took it only a couple of weeks ago on the way to work and is a great representation of the kind of summer we’ve been having so far. Pretty gloomy, eh?

Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Sharp Focus.” I’m entry 151.

Today the Daily Mail is complaining about a joke that was broadcast on the News Quiz in October last year. (Is it still considered news six months after the event?)

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend reading the article, so, to summarise:

1. Broadcasting a joke that implies, but doesn’t use, a swear word is bad
2. But printing the same joke in a newspaper is okay
3. Broadcasting scantily clad women dancing is bad
4. But printing pictures of the same is okay
5. Putting quotes around a word to indicate disdain is good writing
6. A single complaint represents The Silent Majority
7. Mob rule would be a good thing
8. Potentially causing offence is grounds for severe sanctions
9. (But see bullets two and four for exceptions)
10. Knee-jerk liberals — whatever they are — are a wide-spread problem
11. Knee-jerk tabloids are okay
12. Personal responsibility is good
13. (Unless we have to exercise it ourselves)
14. Your opinion is wrong
15. Mine is right
16. Banning stuff that we don’t like represents freedom
17. Stating things as fact makes them true
18. Black is white
19. We’ve always been at war with Eastasia

I may have veered off target a little at the end but I think that’s pretty close to the core of the article. Did I miss anything?

Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Manufactured.” I’m number 161.

It was nothing like as dramatic as my iBook dying one evening, but there was no getting around the fact that my nearly five year old MacBook was no longer up to the tasks that I was trying to throw at it. Developing applications, even for resource limited devices such as the iPhone, needs a pretty substantial piece of Mac software called Xcode. My photography pushed me towards getting Aperture to manage all my pictures. It’s great, but it did have a tendency to grind to a halt when it was least convenient.

The short version of this post is: congratulation to the happy couple! Enjoy your honeymoon and see you when you get back. The longer version follows…

A month ago I drove up to the midlands for a wedding where I had been asked to be the photographer. It’s not the first time that this has happened but it is the first time that I’ve been the “official” photographer and it’s also the first time where the wedding has been in a church, white dress, limo and all.