My Other Interests
Photography
As you will have gathered, I have a passion for walking/climbing and combined with this, photography! You may also now be aware that my photography is not just when I am out on my walks, if I see something that I think might make a nice photo, then I will take the photo, I can always delete it, if it didn't work out.
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In these modern times, most people have a very good camera with them all the time, the technology in mobile phones has come a very long way in a relatively short space of time. My 1st mobile phone was just that, a mobile phone, all you could do with it was make and receive calls. The only reason I had a mobile phone, was that my 1st wife was pregnant with my 1st daughter (Kirsty), I was a delivery driver at the time, so it made sense for me to have a mobile so I could be contacted when needed. That was quite a few years ago (1997).
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Since then I have seen mobile phone technology grow at an alarming rate. to the point we are now at, where we can make and receive calls, but we can also send and receive messages, we can search the internet, we can use it as a GPS tracker, we can play arcade quality games, there seems to be no end to the things we can now do with this small handheld device.
But to get back to what I was saying, they also have a very good camera, to the point that I am surprised companies still make the point and shoot cameras, as the camera on my mobile is as good if not better than a lot of the dedicated cameras in the market place, without having to rob a bank to buy a high end model.
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A lot of people though do not use this new form of technology to it's true potential, I suppose I am also guilty of this at times, but the camera is a great asset to the mobile phone to anyone who likes taking photos, especially for those unexpected photo opportunities that sometimes pop up. The camera on my current mobile (Samsung S10) is a 12 megapixel camera with a f/1.5 - f/2.4 lens. My 1st bridge camera, a Fujifilm Finepix 6900 zoom only had around 3.3 megapixels. The other important bit of technology that has come on leaps and bounds are the memory cards, for my bridge camera the biggest memory card I could get was a Smartmedia (no longer manufactured) 128MB card (to put this another way, I could only get around 4 RAW file photos on this card), modern memory cards are forever evolving, I have recently seen a 1TB micro SD card advertised, my 1st PC only had a 250GB hard drive. My mobile has a 64GB internal memory with the capacity to increase it by adding a Micro SD card up to 256GB, so my mobile phone could have way more memory than my 1st PC if need be.
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So all that technical stuff aside, it would be very rare if I didn't have a camera of some sort with me, like I said above, if I think it would make a nice photo, then I will take the photo. As you will see if you visit my gallery, I have photos of flowers, sunsets, the moon and stars and birds (feathered variety) as well as photos of some of the walks I have been on.
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Just a very small selection of my photos
Music
I didn't get into music until around 1982, when I left school and started work. At work I would hear colleagues talking about this group and that group, and I thought I need to listen to these groups so I can understand what they are talking about. I invested some of my hard earned cash (£25 a week YOP/YTS) and birthday/Christmas money, and bought a music centre (a turntable, cassette deck and radio). When I started to get into music it was groups like Status Quo, Genesis and Queen.
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A friend from work lent me a couple of Iron Maiden albums (Killers & Number of the Beast), back then I was not impressed. Over the years my musical tastes have evolved, I still like to listen to all the music I liked back then, but now my music tastes are very ecliptic, my main genre is Rock, but I also like to listen to acid jazz, electronica, soul and blues, the list is endless really, I have always said it's not the genre I like, it could be just the one track. At the end of the day, we all turn into our parents when it comes to modern music, as in " that's not music! that's just noise".
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My collection of concert tickets
Below is my collection of concert programs. In recent years I have not bought concert programs, the main reason being money, the cost of concert tickets, plus travel and or parking and maybe accommodation, makes it expensive enough. I do like to buy a tour t-shirt though.
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My collection of programmes. I am not sure if I have lost any over the years, or I simply didn't buy one at some of the gigs (money was tight at times).
Below is a list of all the concerts I have been to in date order, there could be a couple missing, my memory not being what it used to be, so this is compiled using what information I still have like ticket stubs or programmes.
* denotes cancelled to be rescheduled
Football
I again was a late starter to football, I remember my dad watching some football on our black & white TV, he also used to do the pools and spot the ball (sometimes I was aloud to do the sot the ball for him). It wasn't until I was around the age of 12 I started to play football, I would always want to play football in P.E. (physical Education), rather than play any of the other sports like cricket, rugby and especially cross country running (I hated that with a vengeance). In the evening or at weekends, me and a friend of mine who lived just up the road from me, would head down to the school playing fields and have a kick about, it was during the kick abouts I found I wasn't a bad goalkeeper, but during the games in P.E. I would always want to play as an outfield player.
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I do not recall when and how I became a Liverpool F.C. supporter, I have always put it down to the fact that they were very successful back in the 70's and 80's, I was like a lot of modern day supporters, that seem to suddenly start supporting Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal or Man City when they became successful. But no matter what the reason, I have continued to support them through their ups and downs.
Fishing
I have recently got back into fishing! My dad taught me how to fish when I was about 10 years old, he was old school when it came to fishing, he taught me how to make floats from feathers, how to tie line to the smallest of hooks (couldn't do that now as my eyesight is not what it use to be), and since then I have found my own way of fishing.
I was never a prolific angler, I always dreamed of catching a really big fish, but to this day, my biggest was a 4lb Barbel caught on the River Kennet right in the centre of Newbury.