Tag Archive for 'Travel'

Blurb

Published on May 18, 2009 in Life and Photos. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

(Note: I’ve been meaning to post this for ages. Now, finally getting around to posting…!)

There is a huge difference between sticking photos into a photo album and the amazing service offered by Blurb.com

I originally found the site through Flickr.com – they have links to various printing companies and Blurb was one so I decided to check it out.

The process involved couldn’t have been simpler – the final product, couldn’t be better.

To start, download the “BookSmart” software, which is currently only available for Windows XP/Vista & Mac OS. I will forgive them for not offering a Linux version of the software.. But ideally this should be sorted sooner rather than later.

The BookSmart software is used to build a photobook from scratch, allowing you arrange photos and text in a number of pre-defined templates. It’s very customisable but I kept it simple for my first book.

booksmart_frontpage

I chose the best photos from my trip to Toronto and New York and compiled them into a 40 page book. The result is like I said before amazing, it’s a professional quality book. I got 4 printed and gave them to the guys we went on the trip with for their birthdays, the ultimate in personalised and unique gifts I’d say.

There are five different sizes of book you can create and an option is given for soft back or hard back and the inclusion of a dust jacket etc. Pricing of the books is done on how many pages the book will contain, starting from as little as £10.

You can view my final product or at least the first few pages of it at http://www.blurb.com/books/366876

The only real let down for me was the ink used is pretty dark, when I do my next book I’ll try to adjust the photos and make them a little bit lighter to compensate. Obviously the higher quality photos you use the better quality the final prints are and as such it takes absolutely ages to get the thing uploaded to their servers once you’ve finished the layout. Having said that, I used some photos taken on my old Nokia 6680 which is only 1.3MP and they came out alright – the images taking up the entire page though were 7.1MP from Kat’s Pentax Optio M30

It does say to get 1 book printed first on it’s own if you’re going to do a bulk order – so you can check how it looks. I opted not to and just went for it… then found when I received them through the post that I’d used one photo twice. Oops.. But luckily hardly anyone notices! It’d suck if you got 20 printed and they all had a typo on though. So make sure you double triple check it before you upload…

Happy book making!

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The night my key broke off…

Published on March 16, 2009 in Life. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .
My car is cursed?

^ Click for a bigger version.

It’s time for another car related story…

This happened a few weeks ago, about a week after I’d passed my test.

I’d gone to Kathryn’s for dinner and she wanted me to pick up some wine and other bits from Tesco, so I drove down there – got the wine, got the other bits and went to pay. I got ID’d for the booze… Apparently they got caught selling alcohol to a minor recently and the bloke got fired and the shop had a massive fine etc.. That was when I realised I’d left my passport at Kat’s house and hadn’t yet got my new driving license back from the DSA so had no ID on me. Ugh! Typical.

I drove back to her place to pick up my passport and went all the way back to the shop, it’s not that far but it was a wasted journey – went back to the till, showed my passport which proves I am infact 21 years old and thus got the wine. Fantastic. Bit frustrating having to to and fro though. Got back in my car, turned the key in a bit of a hurry and…. *snap*. Argh. The key had broken off in the ignition.

I panicked about for a bit and wondered what the hell I was going to do. After sitting around for a while I calmed down and actually tried to turn the key – the broken bit still connected to the bit lodged inside and it still started the car. Luckily. I was able to drive back to Kat’s place with the rest of the key on the passenger seat.

In the end I had to drive all the way back to my house, get my spare key so I could lock the car door for the night. Went over to Kat’s parents place the following morning and her Dad being the genius he is managed to get the bit of the key out of the ignition slot with some tiny screwdrivers… And the above photo was taken after he’d managed to shift it out slightly. Got a new key cut for £7 and it’s been fine so far!