Andy Cunningham

Occasionally, anyways.

This picture on Wikipedia shows an attachment point to connect the Space Shuttle to the 747 used to transport it cross country if it lands in California.

Yes, I’m messing with the theme.  It’s time for a change, but I can’t decide what I like.  Please bear with me.

well. if would be funny if it wasn’t so accurate.

If this was the view from your back door, you’d be pretty satisfied with life, wouldn’t you?

This imposing building is the mansion at Mount Vernon, close to Washington DC and was the home of George Washington.

As reported on the Southgate ARC website:

RAYNET assist in Lake District marathon

When I got my Canon 400D a year ago, the intention was to have a minimal travel camera that had the option of having some more sophisticated accessories for less portable times.

To be honest my initial purchase of the camera and a 28-135mm lens (along with the “kit” lens of 18-55) has been excellent value and I’ve taken lots of pictures with it in the last year or so.

The biggest limitation turned out to be the built in flash.  There were three occasions in as many weeks recently when I’d wished I had a “proper” flash to light up a larger area, and so I decided into invest in a flashgun.  After much deliberation I went for the top of the range Canon 580EX II and the external mounting bracket.

There whole combination is fairly weighty – I wouldn’t like to drag around a 1D with that lot – but it does elevate the 400D into being a pro-looking camera that I can use anywhere.

I also want to increase the zoom options for the lens, both at the wide and telephoto ends of the scale.

For the wide end I’m looking at the Canon 10-22mm or the comparable Tamron.

For the telephoto end there are a couple of options but not much that’s a good compromise between price and performance.  For the longer zoom I really want Image Stabilisation, and Canon’s near-silent USM makes a big different in usability and feel.

Most likely option is the 70-300mm IS USM, though another option is to go with their new 18-200mm lens which would make a fantastic travel lens (just take the one).

This church at 16th and P streets in Washington DC is Foundry Church.  It was funded by Henry Foxall,an Englishman who lived much of his live in the USA around the late 1700s.

I look this photo a couple of weeks ago on a visit to the city.

Henry Foxall was my 6th-Great Uncle.

I’ve always claimed they only ever made the first half of ‘The Italian Job’.

My job took me to the RSA Conference in London this year where the theme of the conference was the life and work of Alan Turing.  This painfully shy genius helped turn the tide of the Second World War from a cold hut at the now famous site of Bletchley Park.

As part of the theme, Bletchley provided an Enigma machine as well as a number of other variations, some of where were in use as late as the 1970s.

The collision, of course, is that the Enigma messages were sent via morse code.  Thinking about being able to send and received encrypted messages – just random strings of letters – and the whole process of using the machine to code and decode them, gives a whole new level of respect for the difficulties in communication just 60 years ago.