Have you noticed you don’t go that often to Tesco’s Photo Centre anymore?
I have.

I used to print a ton of pictures after each holiday… Hmm, memories of good old 35mm films bring a smile to my face.

I believe I am not the only one to start enjoying their photos on their computers and portable gadgets like digital photo frames. Nowadays people do not spend money on printing photos. And why should they? Maybe the only reason to do it would be the need of passport photographs but that’s not every day, is it?

I spoke to a professional photographer who owned 4 printing shops in different towns. He said the photo printing business is going down with a depressingly fast speed. He had to close one of his shops and sell his expensive machines for peanuts. Sad story. I felt sorry for the guy.

I reckon similar fate awaits most printed newspapers and magazines as the majority of the business is choosing the Internet as their medium.
Rupert Murdoch must have felt the pain and he didn’t like it. He saw his chances in paid content and decided to start charging his online readers. Big mistake, methinks, but only time will tell. Needless to say, his websites traffic must have been funny lately.

Pinting – a NO, NO.
Online – YES! YES! YES!

Long version of the classic russian film soundtrack.

A bit of nostalgia familiar only to a certain generation

Enjoy!

I have always regarded banks as a special status companies. Legal entities that are strangers to stupid errors.

Unfortunately I was wrong. I had to be corrected by a UK retail bank.

So what happened? I requested a number of payments to be made by BACS. I duly wrote a letter, crated a nice table and listed all beneficiaries’ names, amounts, bank account details in separate columns. It looked very good.

I faxed the letter ( the same way I did for the last couple of months) and rested assured that everybody will get their money on time.

I had to check something in my Internet Banking a couple of days after. To my greatest surprise I saw a strangely large amount being paid to one of the beneficiaries. Quick investigation in the middle of the night ( how conveniently their customer service was jot 24/7) and I found a very silly mistake made by the bank. They had paid the beneficiary an amount equal to the numbers in the bank account sort code.

The only logical explanation was to conclude that human error was the culprit. OK, but how can I be certain the bank has not made mistakes with my previous fax payments?! Do you expect your bank to make similar errors when handling your cash? I don’t think so!

Unfortunately we can pray the banks don’t make any mistakes.

My Apple iPad was delivered today – one day earlier than the official UK launch, which is tomorrow.

I am very busy in the office right now so no time for playing with it. I left it 3 rooms away in order to avoid temptation but tonight I am going to enjoy a few hours with it.

I hate accounts

Who likes preparing books and accounts? Not me. Thank you very much.

I first saw this guitar in the hands of Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top. What an awkward shape for a guitar, I thought at the time. But somehow in the hands of the Texas blues maestro, this guitar was a tonal explosion despite its looks.

I understand that Billy Gibbons could play the crappiest Squier out there and still nail La Grange like you’ll never be able to, but after seeing him use this guitar for a few years now, I thought there might be some mojo in it.

Let me put this right – this is not a popular guitar, and you won’t find it in every guitar shop. I believe it is less popular in the UK than the US but it’s worth every penny you spend on it (currently around £2,000 – £2,200).

If you love ZZ Top and Billy Gibbons and have 2 grand to spare, this is the huitar you need. Forgot to mention – … only purchase if fan of hot Texas blues, barbeques and mex food .

I am planning to play the Gretsch Billy Bo Jupiter Thunderbird in the near future and post a review here.

Rispek!

To my biggest surprise I recently found out that Pioneer have announced last year (hmm, I must have slipped past this one) they had decided to stop making TVs. I couldn’t believe what I heard (and read)! Pioneer’s TVs have always been occupying the top spot of the quality TV pyramid.

My first flat screen TV was Pioneer’s first generation plasma TV – a 43″ source of pure visual pleasure whether switched on or off. Once you’ve watched the picture you instantly become a Pioneer fan. These guys really knew what they were doing.

At first I thought that Pioneer stopping to make TVs was a joke. How could one of the most successful TVs ever be stopped form manufacturing?!? A quick look at http://www.pioneer.co.uk and I knew it wasn’t just a joke. There were no TVs on their website – all the other quality Pioneer stuff – blu-rays, dvd players, car entertainment systems, but TVs.

It was when I started searching in Google for any press releases when I read all about the company’s financial trouble last year. One article was commenting on the rumour that Panasonic (they actually hold 15% stake in Pioneer) were passed the secret know how of making top quality plasma TVs. The writer has based his opinion on the fact that Panasonic have put surprisingly good TV resembling the latest Pioneer Kuro models. He goes on to say that Panasonic have not been able to achieve such technical specs in the past. It is suspicious that right after Pioneer stopped making TVs Panasonic releases same quality sets. e.

I can only hope it’s true.

Webmastering…Hey, someone has to do it. Well, I like it, but that’s different. I prefer to update my pages myself. Forget the CMS stuff – this is for amateurs and although it’s convenient and quick, gives you less control to everything.

I also like working on weekends and bank holidays. I love the silence. It gets my creative juices running.

Saying this, I remember I need to do some property maintenance at home. Lots of stuff must go into plastic containers and then to storage. I am planning to take photos of all the stuff that doesn’t get used and sell it on ebay. This is called a nice double bonus – you get that much needed free space and people pay you some money for the effort. Melikes

I have reasons to believe that Slash’s playing stands a few galaxies ahead from my guitar skills, as brutally confirmed by the latest assessment of my command of the 6-string instrument.

Rispek, man!

Updated wordpress, installed tweetmeme plugin – no retweets at all …since the last 10 min:^).

For some strange reasons my wordpress blog wouldn’t upgrade automatically hence the manual upgrade. No logical reason behind this inconvenience but I am willing to get to the bottom of it. Hmm, could it be the hosting provider? I don’t have any kind of trouble on wordpress installations on my servers… I must get this checked.