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It wasn’t a very inspiring day today, and when that happens I usually try to focus on what’s on the ground – the sky isn’t very inspiring! Anyway, I think today’s shot came out quite well.

Not much else to say about it really!

Tomorrow I’m off for the weekend which I will update about sometime next week. That will probably mean I won’t be able to upload any photos until Sunday at the earliest, so if I don’t update anything here – it’s not because I’m not doing the challenge any more!

My latest photos seem to have been taking on a distinctly autumn theme lately! Not really surprising given that it is, in fact, autumn.

Still. Today’s photo is of some orange berries on the border of my workplace. Not sure what kind of berries they are, but they’re a beautiful colour at the moment! We have a tree in the back garden which produces similar berries so I might try and get some photos of those in the next couple of weeks.

Anyway, that’s all for now…

Today’s photo is one of those where something just kind of struck me and it turned out surprisingly well. I think this is another photo which summarises autumn quite well, a combination of the colours and the shadows!

It was a beautiful day for it today at least. Hopefully we’ll get a few more of these autumn days over the next few weeks! It almost makes up for the fact that the nights are drawing in and it’s soon going to be dark when I leave work… never mind!

Today’s photo is of a leaf on the top of a pill box not too far from where I work. I think the focus came out amazingly well somehow. Focus is one thing which I still haven’t really mastered – at least, not on our camera. I think part of the problem is the auto-focus – it doesn’t always seem to pick the thing that you want to focus on. Still, this one came out pretty well!

Anyway, it’s time for another weekend update: it must be Monday! Friday evening was 21 as per usual. Then on Saturday we went round to my parents to help them move house. They’d hired out a van, and we helped with carrying things to and from their old house and the new house. The trickiest thing was a sideboard which seemed to weigh a ton! Still, we got it in the end. After a hard day’s work we sat down and had a well-deserved Chinese takeaway for dinner!

On Sunday we went to church in the morning – but not to Fordham! I was preaching at Greenstead – twice: once at St Matthew’s, and once at St Andrew’s. I think it went fairly well, although I didn’t have masses of time to prepare last week I think I had enough time to at least acquit myself relatively well.

In the afternoon we popped round to see Jo and Evie briefly – as they’re moving back to Preston soon, we wanted to get as much time in with them as possible! – and then we went out to Sunday@6. After that we came back home and chilled out for the rest of the evening – I think we were still quite tired from the previous day!

So there you have it, folks. All for now.

… so goes a lyric from Coldplay’s ‘Trouble’. There seem to be hundreds of spiders around at the moment. Can’t move outside without getting tangled up with a least one! Still they are pretty, particularly when there is dew in the mornings.

I also have another photo for yesterday, but in a break with tradition I won’t put it on here directly. I think I am going to have to start numbering each photo directly otherwise I’m going to lose track!

That’s all from me for now…

Apologies for no Project 365 picture today. We were over in Ipswich helping my parents move house. It was tiring work! Due to tiredness I haven’t had time to upload any photos for today. I did take a couple of photos and I will try and upload them tomorrow. If that is the case, there will be two Project 365 photos tomorrow!

Otherwise, normal service will resume ASAP. I’m knackered. Nighty-night.

Quick one today as I’m rushing to have dinner and get out before youth club! The photo today is of the white flower I posted up a couple of days ago again.

This time it’s from directly above, and there’s a wasp inside!

Anyway, sorry for the briefness of this post – all for now.

It was an absolutely beautiful day today, or at least it was when I went out at lunchtime! The sky was gorgeous, I had to take a few photos with it. I always feel like outdoor photos are so much easier when it’s sunny – it’s kind of difficult to make things look bad!

Anyway, I think I took a few good photos today so if you like have a look on my photostream.

I posted up on Twitter that it was my 42nd photo yesterday. Unfortunately it wasn’t – it was my 43rd! Today is number 44. No Douglas Adams reference I’m afraid… ah well. It won’t be long before I’m 1/6 of the way through this challenge, that’s something to celebrate!

As I mentioned before, we were at a party on Saturday night. The venue had a dancefloor, and the hosts had hired a mobile DJ to come and play some tunes for us to dance to. It was a good evening! However, the DJ did do one or two things which annoyed me slightly, and it put me in mind to write a post about mobile DJing.

Now, I should say before I begin that – although I’ve done my share of DJing, mobile and otherwise – I’m not a professional mobile DJ. However, I’m not writing this as a DJ – I’m writing this as a punter: someone who comes on these nights out and just wants to have a good time. I’m writing this because generally people might moan about a bad DJ to their friends, but they would never actually say anything to the DJ. So, the DJ just goes away believing he (or she) has done a good job and never actually realising that, well, they could improve.

So, this list here isn’t comprehensive, but it will help with some of the more common errors that I’ve seen DJs make in my time. Remember that this list is composed from the point of view of one of the punters, not as a DJ!

1. GET OFF THE MIC. Seriously. I don’t want to hear someone talking over my favourite song, especially not when I’m in the middle of dancing to it. The only time you should be on the mic are when you’re announcing a request, or giving out some other information (e.g. “The bar is now open”, or “ten minutes until last orders” – that kind of thing). Let the music speak for itself.
2. DON’T CUT SONGS SHORT. There is nothing more annoying then having a great time dancing to a song, only to find the DJ cuts it short. It’s especially bad if they then (a) start talking on the mic (see point 1), or (b) cut to a really awful song. This is especially important if a song is getting a good reaction.
3. DON’T PLAY MEDLEYS / MEGAMIXES. They are the spawn of the Devil. I’m not joking here: they should be banned, and the people who created them lined up and shot! I’ve heard a Beatles megamix before which took a load of Beatles songs you would never dance to, and strung them all together in quite a soulless way with a beat underneath. Not surprisingly, no-one danced to it. If you’re going to play an artist, play the original version – not a megamix!
4. LEARN TO MIX (BEATMATCH). This one is only important if you’re going to be play ‘dance’ music – house, trance etc – and you want to try and mix it ‘properly’. To be honest I thought this one would be self-evident, but at the party on Saturday night the DJ played a couple of songs back to back and tried to mix them together without beatmatching – i.e. getting them running at the same tempo – first. The end result was that the people on the dancefloor didn’t know which beat they were dancing to. Now, you could probably get away with this once or twice so it’s not the most important element on the list, but I’d still recommend avoiding mixing songs until you know how to mix them properly.
5. DON’T ‘GO RANDOM’ WITH SONGS. What I mean by this is playing lots of different genres consecutively, with nothing in between. So, for example, playing a rock song, followed by an rnb song, followed by an 80s song, followed by a 60s style song, etc… now I’m not saying this would always be a wrong move, but I would say in general it’s good to try and ensure a smooth flow from one genre to another, rather than jumping erratically. That’s not to say you should never change genre suddenly, but I would suggest maybe doing 3-4 songs of one genre (at least) before moving to another one.
6. THERE IS A VOLUME LEVEL BELOW ‘EAR-BLEEDINGLY LOUD’. Speaking as someone who suffers from tinnitus – volume is important. As in, low volume. Just because you have the capacity to turn the volume up to an incredible volume, doesn’t mean you should! I’d say as a general rule, if after two minutes of listening to music at a particular volume you feel the need to go outside and get away from it, it’s probably too loud. I should point out that a decent sound system will help here – a decent system will give you decent bass and highs without the need to crank the volume. If you cut corners with your sound system, you will run into these kind of problems.

Phew. I don’t think I’ve ever been so preachy! Even when I’m preaching… I hope I don’t come across as too much of an idiot here: I genuinely want to try and help, and sometimes these things are not obvious.

That’s all for now. Maybe one day I will create a new page specifically with this kind of information!

The reason I say “surprise” flower is that it pretty much sprang up overnight! I have no idea what kind of flower it is, but it’s pretty. Given how nature works it’s probably a weed of some kind, but still.

I don’t have much to report for the past few days. I’ve basically just been preparing for a sermon this Sunday on Naaman. It’s an interesting passage, although I just wish I had more time to go into it in more detail!

Still, that’s all for now. Ciao.