Status-Q

If you’re visiting Salisbury Cathedral, and you want to make sure your photos don’t look too much like those Constable paintings, here are some suggestions:

• Ask any passing peasants, cattle, haywains etc to keep out of the frame
• Take only an 80mm equivalent lens, which means there’s no way you can actually get a shot of the whole cathedral
• Arrive just as it’s getting dark.

(Click for more)

Above Cotignac, Provence.

If there’s a convenient cave in the cliff next to your house, where better to park your Renault 4?

The U.S. edition of Rose’s second novel in the Mary Finch series, The Counterfeit Guest, hits American bookshelves today.

Jeremy Reimer writes a nice Ars Technica piece on why, after more than 20 years of using Microsoft Word, he now almost never uses it.

Is the age of the word-processor drawing to a close?

Thanks to John for the tweet.

Update: Well I never… at the other end of the table here, John was writing a blog post, and we both picked the same subject and independently came up with the same idea for the title!

Just to stop my friends at home from getting too jealous, I should point out that the storm clouds sometimes gather even in Provence in the summer.

Some of the most impressive formations I’ve seen for a long time swirled overhead this morning, and the hills echoed with the low rumble of thunder.

Note that this photo was taken just before 9am this morning at the same spot as my post of a couple of days ago.

Still, I’m not expecting too much sympathy… we jumped in the pool, then had a splendid breakfast brought up by John and Fiona from the town below, and the sun is now shining brightly again…