jamie goode's wine blog

Monday, December 28, 2009

My new photostream

Here's my new photostream on Flickr, which contains around 180 of my favourite wine pictures.

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Monday, July 30, 2007

Almost summer, and three blind wines


Pictured is Regent's Park this lunchtime, taken with my Pentax *ist DL2 and posted using Google's Picasa (that's what the little coloured logo at the bottom of this post represents). I've been playing around with Flickr a lot, but Picasa seems quite a promising way of dealing with pictures on your computer, rather than on the web.

As you can see, it's almost a summer's day: it feels a bit fresh, but there's some sunshine, and no rain so far. It would be great if we could get some proper summer weather - I expect wine and beer retailers would like it, too. I wonder whether the sustained damp weather has put the brakes on the remarkable rise in rose sales in the UK over the last couple of years.

Last night Fiona tried another three blind wines on me. The first was an oaky white that I reckoned was a really good Chilean Chardonnay. Turned out to be an oaky Grenache Blanc from Domaine Lafage in the Roussillon. What's the point of making Grenache Blanc taste like Chilean Chardonnay? Then a red. Red berries, quite fresh, new worldy, with just a tiny hint of greenness - I called this as a really good Chilean Merlot - turned out to be Dona Dominga's Syrah Carmenere. Very nice, actually. Finally, a crappy South African Cabernet Sauvignon showing oxidation and greenness. It was all over the place and I couldn't get it at all. That's one thing that will always trip a blind taster up - an out of condition wine.

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Friday, July 20, 2007

Adelaide Hills on Flickr

HPIM1604, originally uploaded by Jamie Goode.

I'm posting this picture directly from Flickr. It's one of the latest batch I put up - a set of pictures from a visit in October 2005 when I was the guest of Brian Croser. Budburst has just occurred.

Note added later: posting straight from Flickr doesn't work because the image size is too large for the page design. I've had to go in later and re-input the image manually. Worth a try.

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Friday, July 06, 2007

Flickr rocks!

I've been playing with flickr, and as someone here commented a while back, it's quite addictive. I've now shelled out US$24.95 on a year's subscription to the Pro version, and have been busy uploading pictures onto my page. There's a nifty uploading tool called 'Flickr Uploadr', which is recommended.

I've now got all my Douro pictures online, a collection that numbers 245. There's also a collection of 'wine people', which I've shared with a group of the same name set up by Jim Budd. It's a great utility, and I'll be adding more pics over the coming weeks. There must be a way of integrating the flickr pictures with my website. I need to explore.

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Friday, June 08, 2007

Where is this picture from?

Where is the picture above from? What can you tell me about it? As much detail as possible, please. [The filename will give no clues.]

With the end of my last laptop, I've thought about my IT situation. I earn my living with computers as a tool, so I should plan my IT stuff more efficiently.

Currently, I have one laptop, two desktops at home (which I don't use much), and a wireless network (connected to broadband, security enabled). I also have a desktop for my science editing job.

Backing up consists of dumping stuff at irregular intervals onto the science editing job network (which is rigorously backed up itself). I pick up emails through two accounts on two different machines, into three different mailboxes. This is an unsatisfactory situation, but I should lose one of the accounts when I go fully freelance in a few months.

The most urgent matter is instituting a rigorous, bombproof backing up procedure that I can then follow to the letter, because computers (and particularly hard disks) fail. Then I need to sort out my email: it all needs to come into just one mailbox - the current situation is too complex. And I need to stop using my inbox as a filing system. Once emails are dealt with they need to leave the inbox. I also need to deal with emails as soon as I read them, not read them, decide to reply later, procrastinate, and then forget to reply - which happens too often. It also makes me feel a mixture of weariness and guilt to come to a full inbox each day. If I fail to reply to an email it needs to be through a conscious decision not to reply, and the email needs to be deleted.

We humans are bad at changing. We read about change, talk about change, decide to change, but only seldom do we actually implement personal change. Well, I am going to implement change, and to do this I'm going to set myself achievable sub-goals. The first one is to source and purchase a USB hard disk. I shall use this to act as a back-up and storage device. I shall back up every week, on Sunday evening. I'll let you know how I get on.

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