Darkroom Dave Has Arrived!

For some time I have been thinking about separating my main website www.davebutcher.co.uk from the technical information in order to improve navigation.

I have been actively working on this, with Andy Oakey my web and marketing man from Sheffield, for a few months and have now completed the main part of the project. My new website for all things technical to do with black and white film photography and darkroom processing and printing is now Live!

The site is called www.darkroomdave.com

I have had to learn a few new skills to bring this to fruition, most notably how to make and edit videos. Most of these are on the Tutorials page which has a mix of text articles and videos.

The technical information from my main website www.davebutcher.co.uk has been copied or moved and updated. This includes some of the FAQ's section and there is a new blog specially for photography and darkroom related items. The last blog post was describing the way I do the videos as I had no idea how to do this just 3 weeks ago!

www.darkroomdave.com seems to work on mobile phones and tablets but as is usual with new sites I'm sure there will be teething problems. Please let me know if you spot anything using my email mono@davebutcher.co.uk. The screenshots here are all from my Google Nexus 10 tablet.

There is also a gallery for darkroom and photography related photos as well as the last 10 photos loaded onto the www.davebutcher.co.uk site. Events are listed more prominently too.

There is a button top right to link directly to my new YouTube video channel and another for my Google+ business page which uses +DavebutcherCoUk as the name.

I hope you find it useful. Dave

Rain Again

It's raining again in the Peak District, some of it heavy. Reservoirs will be rapidly filling up. Fortunately it started after we ran our last photo course of 2011.

Yesterday's post did finally appear on Facebook, about 19 hours after I posted here on Blogger instead of the usual 5 or 6 - so my changes slowed it down. So I still haven't stopped my posts automatically being picked up there. I removed the final links to Facebook from this main blog page, maybe that was where it was getting my id from, can't find it anywhere else on my Google account.

The reason is the Facebook policy on use of pictures posted there. I will continue to post new pictures here but don't want them on Facebook. I don't put pictures on Twitter anyway, the 140 character limit makes it a much more immediate thing so I will just drop links in to this when I have new pictures. Much quicker.

Jan is still doing the Craft in Focus show at Richmond on Thames. Hope the weather is better down there, it usually is!

Blackberry Woes

My Blackberry Curve has been using the battery at an alarming rate over the last month or so. Changing the battery for one from a previous Curve improved matters for a couple of weeks but in the last day or two it is back to eating the battery again.

Vodafone technical support agree that I have a problem, well at least with the Blackberry, and are sending a replacement. Should be here tomorrow but since we are away it will be Monday before I start using it. In the meantime I am carrying a Powermonkey in my pocket which can recharge it several times through the day so I'm never without it.

I also mentioned the problem I am having trying to blog from the Blackberry, click here to see my previous posts, and it isn't getting any easier. Since my blog is with Google and the Blackberry web browser is the main problem he suggested looking at an Android smartphone to replace the Blackberry when the contract is up for renewal in 7 weeks time. Android is partnered with Google which is why they are supposed to work so well together.

Will keep fingers crossed they offer something decent that makes my life easier, well the blogging bit of it anyway!

Problems using Blackberry for Blog

Still having problems using Blackberry for doing my blog. The Blackberry browser keeps hanging so it doesn't load complete web pages. Opera Mini seemed a better option to start with but the more I use it the more it plays up. Now it drops the text completely and clears the clipboard too, this was where I had started to put the text before publishing in case it crashed. Had to step back through the web history to find the text for last blog. This is not a reliable way to blog! Also not what I need before a 4 week photo trip.

Mobile Blogging with a Blackberry

Most of my blog entries are made using my Blackberry smartphone. Unfortunately, it hasn't been easy as screen displays wrap strangely or not at all, buttons don't work reliably and simple things simply fail to work and I lose all of the text. I even changed Blackberry models to try and improve matters.

Over the last few months the problems mostly seem to relate to software. I now have a couple of other apps to use as alternatives to the built in Browser, which still doesn't work and resulted in a blank blog being sent out on Sunday.

This has been written and hopefully sent with Bolt software. Fingers crossed it works! I needed to sort as we have a 4 week trip to New Zealand fast approaching. Will try and get back to regular posts, assuming everything works.

Isn't modern technology wonderful! And people wonder why I still use manual film cameras. Dave Butcher