I went to see this film with two of the guys from work last night, and we all had high hopes for this film.

What can  I say, we were all VERY disappointed, the script sucked big style.  It was nice to see Karen Allen making another appearance, but the Shia LaBoef character “Mutt” was weak at best and a real down point for me.

Yes, there were lots of action scenes which were entertaining, but nothing that really stands out, and the CGI was not really up to scratch.

Most amusing part was Indy surviving a nuclear blast in a fridge that was blown a considerable distance through the air, then climbing out of the fridge as though nothing much had happened, despite his senior years.

A high point for me was seeing Neil Flynn (the Janitor in scrubs) playing an FBI agent :oD

The low point was basically that the mythical City of Gold was a place that Aliens were worshipped as gods.  I guess thats no less plausible than the Ark of the Covenant in when you think about it, but the whole alien thing just didn’t do it for me I’m afraid.

My view is don’t waste your money on seeing this at the cinema or your internet bandwidth downloading a dodgy copy.  Its not worth it.

Second worst film I’ve seen this year, Cloverfield still being number one.

Today, I thought that as the weather forecast was good that I’d take a trip to Noar Hill (SU 742 319) to see if I could find an photograph the Musk Orchid.

Immediately after entering the reserve gate, I was greeted by a marvellous Pyramidal Orchid in full flower and a short walk up the hill revealed what I initially thought was a stand of the Musk Orchids.  However, a closer inspection revealed them to be common Twayblades, but a closer inspection revealed the tiny Musk Orchids growing in amongst the Twayblades.

I given the small size of the Musk Orchid & its greenish yellow colouration, I was expecting to be searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack, but the sheer size of the colony at Noar Hill makes these diminutive orchids relatively easy to find, though you really need to keep to the worn paths to avoid tepping on them.

Not far from the Musk Orchids was a beautiful example of a Bee Orchid, which was an added bonus & later on I found an Albino Fragrant Orchid.

Despite the fact that I was tempted to search the beech hanger for the Greater Butterfly Orchid, I resisted & returned to the car to make a short journey to The Warren (SU 729 284).

The Warren is famous for being one of only three sites in the UK where the Red Helleborine (Cephalanthera rubra) can be found.  Unfortunately time was at a premium and prevented me from exploring the reserve fully so the Red Helleborine eluded me this time, but I did find some nice examples of Greater Butterfly Orchid (Platanthera chlorantha).

Despite not finding the Red Helleborine, a plant that I have wanted to see since first seeing a photograph in my youth, I was very pleased with my outing & headed home for lunch.

I’ve recently taken delivery of a new XPS M1530 notebook that I’ve lusted after for ages.  I decided to opt for one of the XPS models as Dell are offering the M1330 with Ubuntu 7.04, and the M1530 uses largely the same components, so I figured that I’d be able to install Ubuntu easily enough.

Well, after making sure that I’d backed up everything on Vista, I resized the partition using Acronis Disk Director to create some unformatted free space & put in the Ubuntu CD.

Everything went well, though I had to opt for the manual partitioning option as I wanted a separate /usr partition.

On starting the machine up, the first problem was the well documented touchpad issue (my unit shipped with revision A08 of the BIOS), but that was simply remedied by adding the following to the lines pointing to the Linux kernel in the grub menu.lst file.

i8042.nomux=1

Rebooting again revealed a fixed touchpad :o)

Next issue was installing a bluetooth mouse, the instructions for which were easily found using Google.

Finally I needed to configure the internal microphone as although it is installed, its not turned on by default.

I’ve now got a functioning laptop (I’m not too bothered that there are problems with the fingerprint reader & multimedia keys as I seldom use the latter & I’m sure that there will soon be fixes for the biometric sensor.

So far everything has been stable, it boots in half the time that it takes Vista & even with all of the graphical bells & whistles of Compiz installed, it still runs much better than Vista.

I’m by no means a Linux afficionado, but if I can manage to get a laptop configured with a minimum of hassle, then I have high hopes for the rise of Ubuntu & the fall of the MS Windows Bloatware.

After visiting the reserve yesterday to photograph the Lady, Monkey & Lady/Monkey hybrids, I returned today to help out with some voluntary work.

Today, like yesterday was an absolute scorcher, so thankfully Chris, the warden, didn’t have anything too strenuous lined up & most of the work revolved around identifying which of the orchids were in flower & mapping any new plants.  My little group of 4 found 5 new flowering plants in just two of the 10m grid squares used to map the orchid population, so that was pleasing.

Later in the afternoon, we were given some very good views of some Green Hairstreaks, which are the best views that I’ve had in years.   There were also plenty of Small Heath, Brimstone, Orange Tip, Dingy Skipper and I saw a single specimen of Grizzled Skipper as well.

We finished off working at about 15:00, had something to eat, then Chris very kindly gave me a lift back to the train station.

Whilst walking back to the house from the station today, I saw my first Swifts of the year. I can’t say that I’ve been looking hard, but these were certainly the first that I noticed.

Today I decided that I’d go hunting for the Purple Pitcher Plant (Sarracenia purpurea) which has colonised Holmsley Bog in the New Forest.  I remember searching for this as a teenager, a few years after it was discovered at this location, without success I might add.

However, the specimens are now of such a size that you’d have to be blind to miss it.  In addition to the main plant (about 3 feet in diameter), I counted about another 17 smaller plants, so I can see how this plant has become an invasive pest in parts of Cumbria.

The plants were obviously not at their best after the winter, but still impressive, and I will make sure that I return here later in the year when they are in flower, as that must be an impressive sight.

After leaving this location, I called in at the New Forest Reptillary just outside Lyndhurst.  At the moment, there is an exhibit manned by RSPB volunteers showing a Goshawk on the nest, and I spent an interesting hour or so talking to the volunteers, who were very knowledgable.  I also spent some time here photographing the various reptiles & managed to get some good shots of the Sand Lizard, Grass Snake & Adders.

In the afternoon, I decided that I’d take a trip down to Hatchet Pond, where I knew that another of my favourite springtime plants grew.  Although the name Bogbean isn’t particularly inspiring the actual flower is rather a pretty star shaped white flower whose petals are covered in hairs, whilst the three, smooth edged leaflets look like bean leaves hence the “Bean” part of the name.

I decided to take Woody, the dog, with me as he really loves the water &  Hatchet Pond is one of his favourite places for a walk.

The Bogbean grows on the NE side of Hatchet pond & really cannot be missed, its extent is even clearly visible on Google Earth if you find Hatchet Pond in the browser.

However, photographing the flowers proved to be quite difficult, crouching shin deep in mud and water holding the camera & long lens in one hand and a dog on an extending lead in the other.  How the camera didn’t end up lens down in the pond with me still attached is unknown.

The photographs were not too bad and can be seen below.

As the weather forecast for Saturday was good, I decided that I’d take a trip down to Durlston Country Park to see the Early Spider Orchids.

We had a pleasant drive down and arrived about an hour after setting off which was quicker than I expected. A quick trip to the information centre provided the information on where to find the Early Spider Orchids, as well as the Green Winged Orchids, Early Gentian & Adders Tongue Fern.

Finding the aforementioned items was however a completely different matter. The Early Spider Orchids were easily found as were numerous Early Purple Orchids, but the Green Winged Orchid proved more elusive until a trip back to the visitor centre revealed that we hadn’t walked far enough out.

After running into a volunteer out in the field we managed to locate the Early Gentian & Adders Tongue Fern, the Early Gentian being much smaller than I was expecting, then we moved out past the lighthouse to see the Green Winged Orchids which were plentiful.

So all in all, it was a successful outing with 3 orchid species seen, and the sightings of the Adders Tongue Fern & Early Gentian being a really nice bonus.

A good start to the 2008 Orchid Season.

Its a bit later than last year, but I figured that this was the last weekend that I’d have chance to photograph the Snakeshead Fritillary before the season was over.

I set off from Oxford Station and arrived at Iffley Meadow after about half an hours walk. The day was pleasant enough, overcast but bright & as a result quite good for photography.

This time, I walked around the whole of the site & found all the best spots for these stunning plants, but I have to say that I was a bit late in the season as most of them were past their best.

Nonetheless, I managed to get some good images, a couple of which can be seen below.

Today was my first time volunteering witht he BBOWT workparty at Hartslock in Oxfordshire.  I spend a lot of time on this reserve with my camera & so I figured that it was time I gave something back.

As I’d been out dancing at Totton the night before, I had to drive up from Woodlands, which took me about 1.5 hours.  As there had been quite a lot of rain recently, I decided no to risk the drive to the reserve & parked at Goring & Streatley station and walked the 1.5 miles to the reserve.

When I arrived, the workparty was already underway with two groups.  One group was mapping the location of the Monkey Orchids whilst the other was doing scrub clearance on the newly acquired plot.

I opted for mapping the orchids & learnt a lot about how to identify the various different species that grow on the site just from the leaves.

After a very heavy shower, Chris (the warden) decided that we’d best avoid the orchid slope, so we went across to help with the scrub clearance.

On the way over, we saw a fantastic show of Pasque Flowers, but unfortunately I only had a camera phone with me.

The Lady & Monkey orchids are growing well, though they are about 2 weeks behind where they were at this time last year.  There was no sign of the White Helleborines at all, but the Twayblades were also growing very well.

After the scrub clearance, we called it a day at about 14:00 & after some more tips on identifying the orchids from the leaves, I managed to get a lift back to the station & ate lunch, before driving home.

A thoroughly rewarding day.  I’m hoping that I shall be able to make this a regular thing.