A 'DING' and a crash

2 April

My copy of AP arrived this morning and I began reading it straight away. The editorial by Richard Sibley is about drone use in photography. He compares the heavy regulations for car use and the few regulations that currently apply to drone use. I could see a problem with this straight away; no matter how much regulation is applied to drone use, there will always be those who will ignore them and go ahead anyway. The major difference is in the cost when it comes down to buying a drone against a car I suppose, but forcing pilots to take taring and gain a licence just won’t work, simply because someone will need to police it. Who would that I wonder? Nope, sorry Richard, it just won’t work.

This editorial is a lead in to one of the major articles in the mag, that of the superb images that Anders Andersson gets from his drone. Yes, I agree, there are some excellent images to be gained from using one, as Andersson shows, but that has to be a pretty strong drone to lift a Sony A7 and lens high enough to get the images in this article. The stronger and larger drones of course cost a heck of lot more. A quick look at drone prices on-line and they seem very cheap to me, just the sort to attract the type of person who will not bother with flying regs. Just to be clear, I’m not interested in getting a drone.

Last night I finished reading Simon Whaley’s e-book on how to use the Wunderlist organiser thingy-ma-gig. Simon is a full time writer and he needs to spend a lot of time writer and reaching his subjects. I can see the use of such a product for a man like Simon who needs help in keeping track of his productivity. For me, I could see me spending ages playing with it and getting nothing else done at all. Over all the book itself is well written in an easy reading format and style that should appeal to everyone interested the software. But no, the software is not for me.

Having come to the end of the book, I found the very last word is ‘DING’, which is the sound the software makes when you have finally finished a project. A finished product? I thought, oh yes, but at what point does any writer actually finish a project I wonder? An article is written, accepted and published, that may be finished, for now at least. But what if the contract allows you sell the piece to other outlets? All it would need perhaps is a few tweaks and off it goes to another publisher, and so on. So is there ever a fully finished project? For instance …

Stephen King’s The Stand when it was first published was 100,000 words shorter than he had written. At the time that was due to pricing and technical problems such a large printing involved. The version I read years later had those 100K words put back in. I don’t know where all those words were taken from, but the whole thing certainly made sense to me as I read it. Some popular writers also feel the need to add a foreword to later re-prints to explain that they have made changes to the original because of comments and suggestions made to them. That to make shows some humility in their attitudes to their work in accepting that there might be a better, or different way of saying something.

So when can any of really say we have all heard that final ‘DING’? That depends entirely on the writer and his attitude I suppose. At the moment, I’m not going to worry about it.

Today’s photo then …

A snapper snapped.    

Today’s funny …

My brother read a book about Davy Crockett.
He said, 'Did you know Davy Crockett had three ears?'
I said, 'No, I didn't.'
He said, 'Well he did you know. He had a right ear, a left ear and a wild frontear.'