Usually by ticking all the diversity boxes, having a bit of paper to say they can turn a computer on without injuring themselves, and being willing to put up with local government office politics!

It might be "faster and easier" to work without a safety line, but it does tend to mean that you only lose your grip once...

I suspect it might be due to the large Italian immigrant community in the USA, who presumably introduced the vegetable and therefore named it. We meanwhile picked it up from France and therefore use the French name.

Might eggplant be a mangled translation of the Italian name for it? From the same approach that brought you "Wipers" for Ypres as used by WW1 Tommys.

Weirdly the only lens I have which takes 62mm filters is an old Tokina AT-X 28-85mm. Don't suppose Tokina may have had something to do with it? I remember reading that Hoya make their glass...

I love the way that Pentax have gone back to the 52mm filter for their kit lenses. Just like the original K series!

Do they do mail order?

Our local charity shops/junk shops are hopeless for old cameras. I did talk to a chap who collects mechanical Nikon bodies a while ago, he reckons that they do get them but they've got a list of people who they've promised to "let you know if anything turns up".

How on earth does that work? I've only recently bought a flash and I've yet to move beyond "Excellent, I can shoot handheld in low light without horrible noise or camera shake!"

Best settings to "freeze" the tractor will be the fastest shutter speed you can manage, which will be dependent on the widest aperture of your lens and the highest ISO of your camera. From what I've read the K-x has excellent high-ISO performance so you can crank it up a fair bit before noise starts posing a problem.

I would strongly advise a tripod or monopod, especially if it's cold as shivering can be a bit too much for the shake reduction system to iron out!

Our Tesco has a lot of gift/jumbo boxes of chocolate and some mince pies so far, didn't notice anything else Xmas-related today (although they seem to have more Lego than previously).

I have just managed to take some horrifically soft photos with a good lens (SMC K 28mm f3.5) by trying the suggestion I'd heard that if you align the orange numbers the lens becomes a focus-free one. No it doesn't, at least not on digital!

You won't capture the tractor and the light streaks at the same time. You can either use your widest aperture and highest ISO in order to get a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the tractor, or you can use a slow shutter speed to get the light trails.

I was able to get light trails on vehicles moving at around 30mph by using a thirty second exposure, although that was in unusual lighting conditions including snow and a few street lights for illumination.

You could try borrowing a bearded dragon, they love spiders.

At a guess it's a makers mark of some sort - you'd probably need a gun expert to identify it.