Paul’s blog

An ingenious method of viewing flickr photos on Google earth is a little servlet was coded by Rob Roy. Below is a quote from Rob’s flickr group.

The FlickrFly servlet lets you fly in Google Earth to the location of a geotagged photo in Flickr. Optional tags let you control the viewpoint in Google Earth.

Add your geotagged and FlickrFly-linked photos to this group’s pool so we can explore the world together.

The only rule is that your photo must contain:
* the physical location where the photo was taken (either as geo:lat/geo:lon tags, or stored in the EXIF data), and
* a link to FlickrFly.

Optional but highly encouraged:
* Additional tags to control the viewpoint (ge:heading, ge:tilt and ge:range) so it matches the photo.

You can find full FlickrFly documentation at:

http://www.roblog.com/flickrfly-docs/

The only problem I have is getting it to work. There seems to be something stopping the connection on my computer but I cannot seem to track this down. With Rob’s help I tried:

In Firefox - config-file:
* Enter “about:config” in the address-line.
* Search the line “network.http.sendRefererHeader”
* Value should be set to “1″ (or possibly “2)

I have also tried whilst NIS has beed disabled, trying FF and IE. Now I am at a loss, which some might say is my usual state!

Update:This is now fixed

I got it to work! I retried something which I did ages ago and played around with NIS Privacy controls. This time I added both Flickr and Roblog, permitting everything. Tried again and it worked! Must of still been blocking the script when I disabled NIS yesterday - somewhat confused by that.

My sister and family came down for the weekend to visit, and hopefully a good time was had by all. On Saturday we travelled down to London to do the tourist thing. Our first stop being the Tower of London, this was the second time I have visited the tower and its an attraction which doesn’t disappoint. Next we travelled by tube to Westminister to cross the river and board the London Eye. The last time I went on this attraction the queues stretched of hundreds of people. Luckly this time the queue was slight and we got on relatively easily. The only problem we had was the booking computer was down, but they accepted the print out of the online booking as entry. Onboard I took a stupid amount of pictures as usual, and everyone enjoyed the ride. Our next stop was a brief visit to Trafalgar square. Some of this was cordoned off in prepartion for the Nelson celebrations. We then walked North as Thomas wanted to visit Hamley’s. The children enjoyed this store, and so did the adults! Tired, we decided to venture home.

On Sunday we decided to visit Chinnor and take a train ride. This was enjoyed by everyone. Hungry we stopped at the ‘Lions at Bledlow’ for Sunday lunch. Much to our suprise the food was on our tables about five minutes after ordering. Next we walked off our lunch by taking a stroll through the village. Our next stop was Coombe hill, the highest point of the Chilterns. This allowed the children to run around in a safe environment. Thereafter we returned home, and a little later Geoff, Carole, Thomas and Rebecca returned home with, hopefully, happy memories of their visit.

Yesterday I at last received my new digital camera. A nice and shiny Canon EOS 350D. On opening the box my first thoughts were to read the instructions first before I begin to use this beast in anger. Imagine my dismay (thats putting it mildly but my Mum maybe reading, if so “Hi Mum!”) when finding no English instructions were included! I had French, German, and Italian. At least if they included Hungarian I could ask Évi. I bought the camera from the website pixmania.co.uk note the UK part!. However it seems the company is based in France, and this is where the camera was sent from. I read their FAQ page to discover that some models might not include English instructions!

Also CANON digital cameras, PENTAX and EPSON products and a few other models occasionally do not come with English instructions. This is always indicated in the technical information of the product and links to the English downloads are provided.

Why was this not mentioned when I was buying the camera? Probably because they know people will shop elsewhere.

A link was provided for a PDF version of the manual. This you could only download once, but the file did not download and now I cannot access the link.

I also have not received the memory card yet. Hence I have a camera I have no usable instructions for and no way of saving pictures on. Yesterday should of been a happy day, reading the instructions then putting them into action, enjoying my new plaything. Pixmania has ruined that for me.

On Sunday Évi and I went on our usual Sunday stroll. This time we ensured it would not last anywhere as near as the 7 hour hike we endured the previous Sunday. We choose a three mile walk around Watlington hill which began in the National Trust car park on the hill. The pictures shown are taken on the descent down the hill, as you can see there were wonderful views to be seen. At the halfway point we were quiet hungary so decided to take a slight detour to Watlington itself. A Sunday roast in a local pub was top of our agenda, the only trouble being I had only my debit card as a means of payment. Typically the first pub didn’t take plastic, which was a blessing in disguise as the sawdust on the floor would of ruined the food. The second place we saw turned out to be a house with a pub sign! Luckly the third place ticked all the boxes and we enjoyed a lamb roast, pudding and coffee which was all include in the meal. Of course I had a beer as well. It was such a nice day that we sat outside to enjoy our meal. Here we saw upto nine Red Kites flying overhead.
After we were fully fed we continued our stroll around the Oxfordshire countryside returning to the car some hours later.

Other News Right out of the blue Lonnie Donovan got in touch. He seems to be doing well at RAF Valley reliving his youth. Tires me out just thinking about it!

My sister and family are staying the weekend. Not enough room in our house so we hired the contact house, this is only next door. I hope that my new digi camera will arrive today so I can take it to London when we go on Saturday.

Last week I was on a Perception/Questionmark course in London. This was on the Northern line which, as luck would have it, closed on the Thursday. Grrrrr

Sorry its been so long since my last post but things keep cropping up.

Details of our latest walk.

According to the book “Walking in Buckinghamshire”, Walk 19 - Hughenden should take 3 hours. It took us 7 hours and we didn’t even complete the whole route! OK we did have a pub lunch in Speen, and we did stop for a pint at ‘The Harrow’, but do we really walk that slow…

…of course it could be because of me taking photos every other step.