I haven’t done one of these for a while, partly as I haven’t been going in depth into Flickr too much recently. But anyway, here are my most recent favourites. I think my favourite of these has to be this one from a team of Spanish students who designed and built a weather balloon and camera combo, sent it off into the atmosphere and then retrieve the camera and develop the shots. It’s a beautiful, beautiful shot!

After hardly being on the internet for a week or two by September, I finally got round to getting a desk and then setting up with computer and three fuctioning HDs. Found quite a few more new photographers on Flickr that I really like recently, and among this month’s shots my favourites are probably this cool cat from Recep-bg and this one from Zeissism. This shot is amazing. Fantastic portrait.

I’ve been looking at Flickr a lot again recently, probably as a result of having too much free time as the school term winds down. A lot of the shots I have enjoyed the most this month too have been taken with Leica’s and Hasselblads. Really starting to get hungry for one. Anyway, my favourites among these are probably this one from Tommy Oshima and this one from drewvalenti. This shot of the Floating Mosque in Malaysia is basically perfect, and one that I wish I had taken. Oh, to be somewhere like that, with that sky and a camera!

I didn’t post these last month, so here are my favourites from the previous month. A lot of lovely photos here, the ones I like best are probably this one from CK22 and this one from *kit*. This shot of London is also beautiful and a good example of how HDR doesn’t have to be blown-out unreality. Recently, I find that I like Leica and Hasselblad shots more and more. I may have to investigate a 30th birthday present to myself in one of those areas!

I’ve found myself favouriting less photos this month than the couple of month’s previously. I’m not sure why – probably partly due to being busier at work than I would like. These are my favourites from April; I think my favourites are the “Riding the Skies” shot from “ezee” and the untitled shot from “nsbkaizen”. Good work. I haven’t been taking many photos myself lately either, other than snapshots, but I need to start again. No time right now.

**** is wondering how to tell everyone that **** is pregnant.

Wonderful, and made me incredibly annoyed to know that I would never be able to come up with such a cool way of announcing a pregnancy or indeed anything else.

However, recently, it seems like whenever I have turned to Facebook, I have been greeted with numerous updates from one (in particular) of my contacts that always go something like this (and these are actual examples):

****is on a tiny island 50 miles of the coast of Fiji. Hammock outside, my own beach…this is the life!!!!

Or like this frequently repeated gem:

****is getting back on that jet plane…

So, number one. Firstly, and most obviously, the fact that I was not on an island in the Pacific when I read this, but was sitting, damp, in a freezing cold school, hands bleeding from trying to stop rabid children from biting each other, yet strangely bored to the point of repeating poking myself in the eyes for something to do, after rushing through typhoon rains to get the chance to do all this on time, made me moderately furious. Secondly, (and possibly, no, certainly more annoyingly), if I was on a tiny island 50 miles off the coast of Fiji with hammock and my own beach, the last thing on my mind would be to pick up my mobile phone (which I certainly would never have brought to a tiny island in the first place), and tell fucking Facebook all about it.

After taking out my annoyance on some innocents for an hour or two, I calmed down and realised I should feel a little sorry for the person involved. If the best thing he can come up with to entertain himself on a Pacific island is to connect to Facebook and mobblog about it, then he deserves all the breaks he (annoyingly) seems to be getting. That, or he needs to be humanely put-down for failing to come up with anything better to do.

Maybe it’s only me, but I just find the language in the second example plain offensive. I have actually been finding it hard not to write out my own Facebook message response along the lines of:

Olly hopes that jet plane falls out of the fucking sky as wonderfully apt punishment for calling it that jet plane.

I mean, who actually says that? I’m getting back on that jet plane. He probably snorts an ovine grunt of pleasure after saying it too, like a over confident swaggering prick that’s never been told to shut the fuck up. He might as well just tattoo C.*.*.T on his forehead and be done with it. I think that when writing this, he probably sees himself as a cross between Rick at the end of Casablanca, and the slightly-disturbing-in-an-incest-sort-of-way Star Wars poster with Leia clinging to Luke’s leg; he’s got to get back on that jet plane. Perhaps I am taking it a little too seriously, but the whole nature of Facebook status updates is to announce personal news to people, (possibly why mine normally involve buying video games or being annoyed), and if possible, things that people would want to hear, so to use phrases like “that jet plane” and “I got smashed”, (and various other updates all about a job that involves rugby of all things – a sport that for some reason my mind inextricably links to a: Pedophilia, b: French-revolution era bourgeoisie and c: lager) really goes against the whole idea of the status message and leaves no option but for “friendship” deletion. That, or the realization that maybe I don’t like facebook so much after all…

Nb. Actually, while writing this, I thought I better check my own facebook status update history to make sure that I was living up to my usual levels of hypocrisy, and of the 16 updates that are still stored, about 3 could be accused of this same crime – as long as you consider “Olly is in Beijing” to be as bad as “****is on a tiny island blah blah blah”, which I don’t – But my apologies to anyone I have made as annoyed as I have been – please feel free to unfriendify me. Also I have no idea of the intentions of the person who wrote these status updates…they could have been done in an “ironic” style…but I doubt it.