For those of us living in my particular hemisphere, there was a total lunar eclipse last night.

Of course, I couldn't resist the temptation to get the camera out, so here are some photos I took, showing the different stages of it.

I'm actually amazed by how many eclipses there apparently are. eclipse.org.uk has a nice little feature which will tell you when other upcoming eclipses are. According to the site, there will be another total lunar eclipse in August of this year, as well as two partial solar eclipses this year alone. Lots more camera fodder.... yum!

"I am not a professional photographer," writes moty66, a Flickr member and Kubrik fan, unknown to me, "but a friend of mine gave me a very nice LEICA M6 & LEICA SUMMICRON-M 1:2/35 mm as gift when I was in Palestine three weeks ago, and I tried to make some pictures with it, I used KODAK TRI-X 400 pro."

Looking for a bit of feedback about his first attempt at black and white photography on the relevant Flickr group, he signs off with "hope to see your comments about them".

So, I click his link and take a look. Unsurprisingly, given his post, the pictures are of Palestine. This one in particular caught me eye - of the infamous wall.

And why not? There's a lot of local activity that websites like Flickr have helped to generate, not least the blossoming Birmingham and budding Black Country Flickrmeet Groups, but what are the effects of attempting to gather all the citizens of the world's photos in one place? For one, I can look at moty66's photos of the Israeli "security fence" as if it were my Aunty passing round her holiday snaps over a cup of tea.

Previously of course, we've relied on newspaper photographers, television news and more recently news websites to provide us with this kind of footage, such as this offering from the BBC. Perhaps this pattern would have been interrupted by the odd exhibition at a local gallery.

So are sites like Flickr going to challenge traditional journalism? Do we need a reporter or photographer to distill what's going on in the world into news bulletins, when we can just ask someone who was there themself?

Until today, I hadn't really thought about social networking sites in quite this way. I think that they have earned themselves a new-found respect.

I've ordered some of these rather nifty-looking "Moo cards" today. They link in with Flickr, and produce a whole bunch of mini business cards with one of my photos on each. They were introduced to me by Simon "Sixball" Hammond a couple of weeks ago, and look like a much more interesting alternative to the usual American Psycho-esque attempts.

This move was also somewhat inspired by a trip I took to Southampton this week, where I ended up scribbling my email address on the back of a piece of ripped off paper. It works, but hey, this gets my photos out there a bit more. Looking forward to them arriving!

I've just done an update of Drupal, the software which runs this site, from version 4.7 to 5.1. Whilst potentially quite boring information, this might mean that there are a few bugs here and there.

If you find any, please let me know!

In fact, I've already noticed one... it seems that the blog categories have stopped working...

Edit: I think most of the bugs are ironed out now. CSS really is quite a mystical beast.

Wahey, I've managed to land myself a nice new desk in the School of Computer Science. My previous one was not particularly conducive to work, being pretty much squeezed in along a wall.

I am now in room 121, for those who are around the school, and have this nice view across the concourse of the building. I'm actually working here quite a lot now too, rather than trying to work from home, as I'd previously been doing.

Oh, and I inherited this nice yucca too!

It's not been an eventful week, except for a couple of things.

Firstly, I woke up yesterday morning to an incredibly sharp pain in the back of my neck. Not really able to move it much all morning, and being in quite a lot of pain, I stayed home and tried to stay as still as possible. Movements seemed to cause cramp-like spasms, which felt like someone was stabbing the back of my head. NHS Direct revealed that in fact I had torticollis, a condition which doesn't seem to be too well understood, but usually clears up in a few days. Well, I still can't move my neck too well today, though the spasms have mainly stopped. I think it'll be a while until my full range of movement returns.

Reading around the common causes of torticollis, I noticed that amongst them were stress and poor posture. I have been spending quite a bit of time arched over a computer this last week, and I wonder if that was a trigger. Well, I'd do almost anything to avoid having this thing again, so perhaps in addition to sitting up straighter, I should take up yoga or something.

Satisfied that my house sale is going through well, I went to see another house this week. I've expressed an interest in a few houses around Stirchley in the last couple of weeks, but am not in a big rush. The one this week needs a lot of work doing to it - and this is reflected in the price. I'm quite excited by the prospect of being able to put in a new kitchen, bathroom, redecorate everywhere etc. but I wonder if this is really the wisest thing to do, considering how busy I am with my PhD research and teaching at the moment. I'm currently trying to gather information about just how much the work would cost... and have yet to make up my mind what I think.

Today saw the second Black Country Flickr Meet, following on from last month's inaugural do in Walsall. I took the reigns for this one, organising a route around Stourbridge, including the canals and old glassworks.

Not having organised one of these meets before, but taking inspiration from the nearby Birmingham Flickrmeet group, I was interested to see how the subject matter was received. All in all, I am very satisfied with how the day went; the weather stayed dry (and even sunny for a while), the buses cooperated, and we managed to get a snoop around inside the Red House Glass Cone, which was well worth the rather pleasant walk up the canal.

On a personal note, I'm also quite pleased with my photos from the day so far, which can be found in this set on Flickr. There is talk of the Black Country Museum for next month's meet, which I'm looking forward to.

As usual, comments on the photos are most welcome!

Yep, I've just bought a +3 close-up filter for my 50mm prime lens!

Not being able to really justify buying myself a proper expensive macro lens right now, I reckon that this might well whet my appetite a little. Here's one of my first shots with it.