For the last eight years I have enjoyed the antics of Doctor Gregory House and I just wanted to take a few lines to say goodbye.

Almost every episode of House has the same basic plot. Patient arrives with weird symptoms, medical team spends most of the episode being abused by House and fails to find a cure, leaving the man himself to have a moment of genius and solve the problem. But the sameness of the plot didn’t matter, because you knew you would be treated to forty five minutes watching a damaged man heaping scorn and ridicule on the rest of humanity; and there can be no better entertainment (in my little world).

A year or so ago I embarked upon a grand strategy to improve my income by uploading photos to stock photography sites. Find some photos that might be useful to buyers, load them to a stock site, wait for their quality assurance Nazis to accept them, and then sit back and watch the sales grow. I loaded several hundred and looked forward to at least doubling my annual income.

And I would have done, if my annual income was around $10. My current balance is $15.61; too small for them to even issue me with a cheque. Another failed enterprise.

Went for a wander with Ian from Pattayadaze. While I saunter along hoping to spot an elfin castle or a rampaging elephant; Ian will linger for an hour next to a bush. There is nothing in the bush as far as I can see, but he then emerges with magnificent photos of a lesser-banded whip python which I can’t spot even when he points it out to me.

After several of these outings I have to confess that he has the eye for spotting small beasties; and the skill to photograph them; and I don’t. So I was very pleased this afternoon when I managed to actually spot something myself without Ian having to drag me by the arm, point, and mutter “look, look, you silly Englishman”.

And here it is:

The sign outside provides a clue; what we have here is an interractive (sic) art museum:

A flurry* of emails asking about the Lensbaby that I used yesterday.

I bought my first Lensbaby when I had only a Canon camera. It was a pretty basic piece of kit.

You moved the bellows up and down to acquire focus, and moved it from side to side to generate swirly effects. There was a lens of sorts inside, and a selection of magnetic rings which your dropped onto the lens to change the aperture. Great fun to use, although keeping focus with your fingers wrapped around the unit was something of a hit and miss affair.

That Lensbaby was sold in the great Canon lens purge of a few years ago. I missed the quirky images it produced and hoped one day that the Lensbaby company would include the Micro-Four Thirds mount in their range. Eventually, they did.

The original lens is still in the lineup and is called the “Muse”. But now there are more sophisticated offerings and I ended up with a “Composer Pro” into which you can insert a selection of optics.

Last Friday I spent about an hour taking photos of Craig and his family playing on SUPs. It was just standing around; and yet on Saturday I could hardly walk. My legs felt like I had climbed a sizeable mountain the day before. It’s the thyroid of course; muscle weakness and exhaustion are just two of the many symptoms.

Today I thought I would try another little outing, an hour or so snapping at Nong Nuch. Lasted about thirty minutes before I was convinced I was going to collapse; but an iced coffee perked me up and I survived. Needed a little lie-down when I got home though.

Just took the GX1 and a Lensbaby:

To Mabrachan reservoir this afternoon to grab some shots of Craig and family on SUPs. On the way back to the car after a lack of light stopped play, I spotted this little post sitter.

Thailand is a fine country and I would not wish to live anywhere else; but it is by no means perfect. Thailand is particularly notorious for the availability of counterfeit goods. Bad business for the manufacturers, something of an attraction for tourists.

Many a visitor must openly discuss how much they are looking forward to purchasing all manner of copied merchandise during their visit; and they won’t be disappointed because there are thousands of Thais who make their living by manufacturing, distributing and selling counterfeit goods.