It's Sunday evening again, riding the doldrums you feel in anticipation of starting another working week. Ah, well.

Last week, I hit a 1000-mile milestone since I started logging my cycle rides in March this year. I'm trying to make the month of September an "Oyster-free" month, where if I'm not working from home or visiting a customer, I'm cycling to work (13 miles each way) rather than take the train/Underground. I'm half-way through so far. Last week I covered 104 miles during the week cycling to and from work over 4 days. Best I ever achieved was 3 days in a week, and that has only ever happened once in 5 years. My body complained big time though - waking up each morning over the weekend feeling like I've been cudgelled black and blue all over. Not bed, eh? - For a slightly over-weight mildly asthmatic forty-something year old that never participated in any form of sport in his youth!  As you've no doubt figured out, yes, cycling is another passion of mine (not that you could tell by looking at me though!).

I also got busy setting up my 3 wireless D-Link cameras that arrived during the week too. They are now accessible wirelessly via my iPhone and from any internet connection, although I'm yet to install them in their permanent locations around the house. The downside is, they have to be connected to a mains power supply and the power cables that come with them are only about 2m long. Still scratching my head how I'm goint to extend the cables and run them round to the power sockets unobtrusively.

On the photography front, got all over excited with the delivery of my Nikon R1C1 during the week. A great piece of kit, I understand, for macro photography. Unfortunately, I discovered the flash units do not come supplied with batteries, so I thought I'd just rock up to a supermarket and buy the appropriate batteries. Was I wrong! They are meant to use CR123A lithium batteries, and after doing the rounds in vain at Costco, Argos, PC World and B&Q, had to settle for ordering them online. So, it will be some time before I can personally explore its capabilities.

On the plus side, to complement working in macro, I purchased a full copy of the Helicon Focus software without bothering to go through a trial period. What really attracted me to the software was its capability to remotely control my camera for focus bracketing via the interface on my monitor. It comes very well recommended in many of the public forums I researched. After a lot of initial difficulty, I eventually found out the remote control functionality would not work with my D3s but preferred my D90 instead! I haven't figured out why, but it's looking like my macro work will have to be done using my cropped sensor camera rather than the preferred full frame one. Can't win them all. I hope to devote some time during the next weekend to try out a few things and if it turns out well, probably post some of the results on here. 

Until then....