phillsacre.me.uk

This weekend was a good one, not just because it was slightly longer than usual! On Friday night we went to 21 to help out as per usual. Then on Saturday morning, we headed out to Flatford to meet up with Alex, Elisa, Dan and Alison.

We had a picnic in a nearby field, and then hired out a couple of boats and had an hour rowing on the river. You can see some photos of that on my Flickr account.

Afterwards we wandered over to Dedham and had a cream tea at the tea rooms there (can’t remember what they were called, just down the street from the Sun Inn). Tip: if you go there for a cream tea, one between two is enough unless you are exceptionally hungry: the scones are HUGE!

Anyway. That was a rather pleasant way to spend the afternoon :) On Sunday, we went to church in the morning, and then in the afternoon headed out to Snape Maltings to hear the University of Essex Choir performing Verdi’s Requiem.

It was beautiful! Although I’d heard it on CD beforehand, it was nothing compared to the live performance. The choir was bolstered by some of the Royal Choral Society, and delivered a tremendous performance – particularly the famous ‘Dies Irae, Dies Illa’.

On Monday afternoon we walked the Wivenhoe Trail over to Anne-Marie’s, where we spent the afternoon watching “Takin’ Over the Asylum”. It was the first series that David Tennant did (his big break), and it was very good! Well written and directed. It was a bit like a Scottish version of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” – except that it wasn’t depressing. Quite moving actually. And very funny in places!

So there you go, that was our bank holiday weekend. Back at work today, ah well – at least it’s only a four day week!

One of the annoying things about Facebook is the way it displays photos: at a very low resolution! You can upload photos at full resolution, but with Facebook you can only get a fairly low-res 600×450 (approx) resolution.

What I want to know is — why? Why this ridiculous restriction? Every other online photo service which I’ve used (Yahoo! Photos and Flickr) let you download the full resolution.

The only thing I can think of is that if people can’t download the full resolution photo from Facebook, they’ll be forced to use Facebook’s “Photo Prints” service (at least, I think Facebook has one!). But they could at least give you the option of getting photos in a slightly higher res (i.e., 1024 x 768) without too much fear of people doing that. And other photo sites offer you the option of getting prints and downloading the full-resolution version.

This weekend was good fun. On Saturday, Phil’s parents came up to help us with the garden. We planted a few new shrubs and things, including some Seedums (if that’s how you spell it) and a Cotinus (again, not sure about spelling). We also planted a couple of little trees which I’m not even going to attempt to spell, but they’re basically miniature fruit trees! We have one apple tree and one plum tree. I’ve got some photos of all of them on my PC which I shall upload to Flickr later.

In the evening we relaxed a bit, and watched “Thank God You’re Here” (which I’ve mentioned here before…)

On Sunday we went to church in the morning, and then came back home for lunch. In the afternoon we went for a rather nice walk around Bourne Mill, but this time I brought the camera! There will be some photos of that on Flickr later on as well.

In the evening we went to the lent service at St Albright’s. It was the second in a seven-part series, led by Andy Saville, on the “I Am”s of Jesus – this one was on “I Am the Light of the World”. It was very good!

Afterwards we came back home to have dinner and we watched ‘Lark Rise to Candleford’ followed by ‘Run, Fatboy, Run’ (which I’ve just bought on DVD). Run, Fatboy, Run is a really good film, it was definitely worth buying!

And, that’s just about everything for this weekend. All for now…