I have spent the last two posts using and praising Adobe Lightroom 2.

Now to paste Norton Internet Security. Over the past week I have installed Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Adobe Lightroom 2 – little did I know the problems awaiting me on Monday. The regular Monday night full scan from Norton said it had a software error, and then crashed – so I tried support. They took control of my PC, deleted files that I think I wanted but they said were causing the issue, did not give me enough detail to contact them so I had to queue for over an hour again. Eventually I found the issue myself – the Adobe foreign language help files were somehow causing Norton to crash – deleting them fixed the issue. I spent over 6 hours today online to Norton support and got no-where!!! I finally found and worked round the problem myself. To cap it all there is no way for me to tell Norton of the bug they have without going through another few hours of hell, I don’t think they are interested in customers.
DO NOT BUY NORTON.

I have spent some time over the past two days playing with Adobe Lightroom 2. This is an immense improvement over Lightroom 1 – which I loved and have used extensively ever since it ‘grew’ out of Pixmantec RawShooter – a previous favorite of mine. I used the new gradient tool in this image which I took whilst at Claire’s last week. It balanced the bright window and its glare perfectly. I also added a little vignette. Here is the original photo and the modified one
 

We started today by driving to Llangennith at the end of the Gower to visit a produce market. We got some Gower Salt Marsh Lamb to try tonight. After a tea and a some cake (very good) we then went to Rhosilli Beach nearby. Here Robert and Claire flew the kite Maria brought last time she visited Claire.

Lunch then beckoned and we drove to the centre of the Gower where there is a high viewpoint. No sooner had we opened the sandwiches than we were surrounded by hungry ‘wild’ ponies. Here is one of the foals.

In the afternoon we visited the local Wildfowl and Wetlands Centre – guess the chick in the last picture!

For those who don’t know what the strange creature above is, it is a moorhen chick.
The day was rounded off by going to see Mamma Mia at the local Odeon.

I have been working hard recently to finish a project for work, no time for anything else. I checked in the project on Wednesday afternoon so I was allowed to have a brief vacation. Robert came home early this morning and we then packed the car and came down to Gorseinon to visit Claire. Once here (and the car unloaded) the first thing we did was to go to Mumbles and have a Gelato ice cream (Claire joined us after work).
This is a view across Swansea bay.

Today we went shopping and then to Patchings. I took photographs of the new bears and this one of the bear Maria made last week.

I then fed the birds and took several photographs of them on the feeders.

This evening we went to see Mama Mia – a movie I thoroughly recommend – I haven’t laughed so much in ages – the first movie I can remember where the audience applauded at the end. We came out happy and singing the Abba songs.