Early Risers.

[PhilJ W]

@polybear at work?

[monkeysarefun]

5 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

With the proviso that any phone camera will have a very wide, shallow focal plane. Depth of focus is not something they are good at. 
 

I’ll not be dispensing with the SLRs just yet. The digital sees plenty of use and the film one has no re-sale value and is in perfect order. 

Gotta say, I havent used my SLR for yonks other than for photogrammetry (where the larger sensor and  greater  f stop  produce better results for the photogrammetry software to work with),  or when I need a long telephoto. . The last time I took it out for "normal" photography  I took the same shots with my phone and compared them on my laptop back home  and for all intents and purposes unless I was planning to produce a large physical print I wouldn't bother with lugging the camera around again, such was the  miniscule difference between them.

Edited May 21, 2023 by monkeysarefun

[PhilJ W]

3 hours ago, DaveF said:

This morning it is quite bright and not cold but with  a lot of cloud.  The usual Sunday routine took longer than usual today so I am only just getting around to writing this.

 

I've been to church as usual and came straight home as the beach car park will be packed today for the war weekend and walking from the other car parks would be painful. It will soon be time to have lunch then I hope to settle down witha book perhaps followed later by the James Bond film.

 

The toe feels better today but I am keeping the dressing on probably until tomorrow.  Then I hope it will just need a sticking plaster but I do have some dressings and tape if needed.  It will be nice though not to have two toes taped together.

 

Thanks PhilJW for the note about wider fit shoes slippers,  I am thinking about them next time I need new ones.  So far usually my feet are OK in ordinary wide shoes, but I have noticed more problems in the last couple of years.  At the moment my slippers are OK, the are made by Dunlop according to the label.

 

Below are a few more photos from the Blyth Battery War weekend yesterday.  I expect to hear the sounds of another battle shortly!  You can see how misty it was yesterday.  The misty beach huts are in the background, you saw a clear photo of them the other day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The mist got thicker just as I took this one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David

 

 

I once visited a similar event at the 'Secret nuclear bunker' near Ongar. They had dug a 'WW1 trench' about twelve yards long and six feet deep properly revetted with corrugated iron, pit props and sandbags, it looked quite authentic. Hats off to the guys who dug it into the Essex clay during a dry spell (though they did use a JCB but a lot of it was dug by hand.)

[monkeysarefun]

6 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

And then there is the web browser, e-mail, scientific calculator, health tracker, language translation...... the list goes on

 

Not forgetting GPS! When you think of the huge hurdle it was back over the centuries  to get over the difficulty of calculating longitude accurately, and now to have something you can carry around in your pocket that'll tell you where you are  to arms length accuracy, and tell you exactly how to go to anywhere else. . Cook etc would have had their stockings blown off had they been told what was in the future, imagine what they'd give to have a device that'd go "In 800 miles, At The Rocky Cape, take the second exit" etc. 

 

And 4K video with Gimbal stability...... its nuts when you think about it -  but many people  never seems to, just as long as they have "the Latest" for bragging purposes.

 

No science fiction writer ever came up with such an amazing  Swiss Army knife style device, except for whoever invented the sonic screwdriver, that  has probably developed to the same extent, going from basically a cordless screwdriver to now a magical amazement machine that'll fix any plot difficulty with the push of a button. 

[PhilJ W]

Afternoon all from Estuary-Land. I was going to have a bath this morning but I didn't have a bath towel ready. The one I intended to use is still drying and the others are in the wash or waiting to be laundered. So I'm watching 'The Railway Children' (1970) instead and will have my bath this evening.

[Barry O]

Been a busy bee.. car washed, stock box painted, garage tidied.

 

Next up.. check on a minor repair on beast..

 

Aforementioned stock box

 

[polybear]

1 hour ago, PhilJ W said:

@polybear at work?

 

Excellent - Gold Star awarded.....

 

I sometimes watch programmes like "A Place in the Country" where someone goes looking for a new house; whenever the interior of a Barn Conversion or similar is shown I look at it and think "yeah, nice - but how the bluddy hell do you change the light bulb?" as they're often 20 feet up, with no easy way to access it or get a ladder in.

[Hroth]

3 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

Excellent - Gold Star awarded.....

 

I sometimes watch programmes like "A Place in the Country" where someone goes looking for a new house; whenever the interior of a Barn Conversion or similar is shown I look at it and think "yeah, nice - but how the bluddy hell do you change the light bulb?" as they're often 20 feet up, with no easy way to access it or get a ladder in.

 

Its "How can you afford to heat it?" that passes through my mind!

 

[iL Dottore]

6 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

Excellent - Gold Star awarded.....

 

I sometimes watch programmes like "A Place in the Country" where someone goes looking for a new house; whenever the interior of a Barn Conversion or similar is shown I look at it and think "yeah, nice - but how the bluddy hell do you change the light bulb?" as they're often 20 feet up, with no easy way to access it or get a ladder in.

 

1 minute ago, Hroth said:

 

Its "How can you afford to heat it?" that passes through my mind!

 

Not to mention....

• who cleans the acres of glass windows?
• how do they maintain their modesty with no curtains?
• how can they cook anything in a highly polished kitchen that highlights every single fingerprint - let alone the usual by-products (splatters, crumbs, water droplets, etc) of cooking?

[AndyID]

8 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

I feel sorry, not only for the victim but also for the dog.

 

Very few dogs are born bad or dangerous - they are made that way by their owners. TBH in the event of a fatal dog attack, not only should the dog be euthanised (sad but necessary, by that stage the animal is so damaged that it can never ever be considered safe - poor beastie) but I’d also euthanise the owners. In fact, I would go as far as saying that there are certain dog-owners who should be preemptively euthanised (and the dogs rehabilitated if possible)

 

Strictly speaking that wouldn't be euthanasia. Its purpose and usual definition is to end suffering. 

[AndyID]

7 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

 

There's at least a whole generation, probably more, who take the humble mobile phone for granted, yet it's a miracle of technology and convenience. People don't think about what they can do, and about life before them.

 

When I was at sea, deciding what music to take away was a major decision as I love music and found it one of the important parts of being able to enjoy time off duty. Now I have several hundred CDs stored as FLAC lossless files on my phone and can stream almost anything if I have a connection. And sound quality via a decent pair of headphones or via wifi to well set up speakers is superb, as good as anything.

 

Who remembers the mix tape? People laugh at the humble cassette tape because now we can put playlists together of anything, in superb quality. The issue wasn't that the cassette tape was rubbish, it was a limited format but transformational in making home recording easily accessible to the masses, but people take what is available with current technology for granted and dismiss what we lived with before as rubbish.

 

I have the Kindle app on my phone and have access to hundreds of eBooks I've accumulated, as with music people younger than me now just take it for granted they can carry a library in their pocket. When I was at sea I dreamed of such a capability, as the weight of books meant what reading material to take was even more difficult than for music.

 

The quality of phone cameras is remarkable. Computational photography relies on software development, and companies like Apple and Google have budgets and software expertise that dedicated camera companies can only envy. Quality of imagery from phone cameras is superb.

 

I still have a Fujifilm mirrorless camera which I like for three reasons. The first is that I like having a viewfinder. Especially in a country like Singapore screens wash out on bright days, and bright days with the sun behind you are ideal conditions for taking pictures. The second is that there are still applications where dedicated telephoto and specialised lenses are better. And finally, I just like the tactile feel of a camera. However if I put images side by side taken at the same focal length and in the same conditions there's very little discernible difference and if anything the exposure system of my phone outperforms the camera and gives me more consistent results.

 

And then there is the web browser, e-mail, scientific calculator, health tracker, language translation...... the list goes on. 

 

Nowadays there's a culture of denigrating mobile phones and complaining about their effect on society. I think there's a legitimate issue with device addiction and people doing stupid things because they're so engrossed in their phones they lose all spatial awareness but they're remarkable triumphs of technology which have transformed life. My phone isn't even an Apple of high end phone, it's a mid-range Android phone (OnePlus Nord) I bought a couple of years ago and yet it does everything I want extremely well.

 

Yes, current technology is truly amazing. I'm glad to say that I was a pioneer in microelectronics but I'm not so glad that it has achieved so little in terms of truly educating the majority of the Earth's population. I was hoping that easy access to so much information would have a really positive effect but I fear I was wrong.

 

Seems like a case of "You can lead a horse to water but you can't..... "

[AndyID]

6 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

With the proviso that any phone camera will have a very wide, shallow focal plane. Depth of focus is not something they are good at. 
 

I’ll not be dispensing with the SLRs just yet. The digital sees plenty of use and the film one has no re-sale value and is in perfect order. 

 

I compromised and bought a compact Nikon a few years ago. It's not very heavy, has a proper viewfinder as well as a screen and the zoom lens is excellent. Meanwhile the film SLRs languish in a box. I bought the last one just before everything went digital 😀

[polybear]

37 minutes ago, AndyID said:

I was hoping that easy access to so much information would have a really positive effect but I fear I was wrong.

 

Has the invention of the WWW been a good thing?  On the whole, quite possibly not.

 

 

 

[DaveF]

A short time after my earlier post today's "battle" started, it seemed a bit louder than yesterday and was accompanied by the sound of an air raid siren but the all clear was not sounded at the end of the "battle".  There were the same big bangs, machine gun and rifle fire.

 

While I was cooking lunch, or perhaps more exactly while the beef was in the oven and vegetables in a saucepan I went into the garden and removed some of the honesty which has just finished flowering before it chokes everything else.  You only need a few plants to set seed to provide enough young plants or the garden gets overrun.

 

After lunch it was warm enough to sit in the garden for the first time this year.  Blackbirds, sparrows and starlings were coming and going to drink and bathe in the bird bath, they took no notice of me and the frog was croaking in the pond.  There were some cabbage white and orange tip butterflies and then several small blue butterflies arrived and flew around.  One went into the greenhouse and couldn't find a way out so I took its photo and then gently moved it it outside.  They close their wings when they rest, as far as I can see they are Holly Blues which come into the garden from time to time.  Perhaps they like my holly tree - which is all of 6' tall.  I quite often see them on the Links in summer.  They are small butterflies.

 

Then I sat and read a couple of magazines.  I'm not watching James Bond, I decided to continue reading instead.

 

I think that's it for now, I just have to decide what to have for tea (not much after a big lunch) and look at what I might watch later on.

 

Holly blue (I think) underwing  in greenhouse.    Taken with a Canon Ixus 175 which was handy at the time.  My phone would not focus on it.

 

David

Edited May 21, 2023 by DaveF

[polybear]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Gwiwer]

2 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

@polybear at work?

So long as it's not @grandadbob

[The Lurker]

4 hours ago, Erichill16 said:

What NASA would have given for such miniaturised technology for their Apollo missions.

According to the Apollo 13 film, slide rules were still in use.

 

 

the science fiction books of E E Doc Smith era - or even Robert A Heinlein were not so far wrong then; I always was struck by the apparent incongruity of calculating orbits and re-entry angles with a slide rule; but the ZX81 and the Casio calculator were around by then and so slide rules seemed so old fashioned- I have never had to use one

Edited May 21, 2023 by The Lurker

[Gwiwer]

@polybear said 

 

 

Required in Glasgow. 
 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-65665113

[The Johnster]

4 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

@polybear at work?

 Brace yourself, Rodney. 

Edited May 21, 2023 by The Johnster

[AndyID]

18 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

@polybear said 

 

 

Required in Glasgow. 
 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-65665113

 

Clearly there were not enough signs.

[tigerburnie]

11 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong!

 

Your tame consultant was NOT* playing golf!
 

….he was at his club, enjoying a fine Cuban Cigar and a glass of Macallan Coronation Single Malt (after a very fine lunch of a half-dozen Coffin Bay Oysters, a decent côte de bœuf from the clubs own herd of English Longhorn cattle [grilled medium rare, of course], some creamed spinach and triple cooked chips§ and some spotted-dick and custard for pudding [washed down with a decent claret])

 

* Golf is an expensive way of ruining a perfectly good walk

 

§ the club briefly had a chef who tried to economise by using oven chips, after being pelted by the membership with a dozen plates or more of these frozen abominations, he got the message and left…

When were you last in the UK? you can't smoke inside even in a private club

[pH]

29 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

Required in Glasgow. 
 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-65665113

Is that bridge not hit fairly regularly? The proper left turn for higher vehicles is Nelson Street, a bit further towards the city centre.

[Ozexpatriate]

11 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Very few dogs are born bad or dangerous

I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment that many 'bad' dogs are a result of poor ownership.

 

Nevertheless, *some* dogs are dangerous and not necessarily as a result of training, intentional or otherwise.

 

Dementia is well documented in dogs, which to my thinking is suggestive of the potential for other mental disorders.

 

In my observation (in which I include myself) few dog owners are sufficiently well instructed to train dogs, and lack the patience and consistency to follow through even when they do make an effort (like taking their new dog to obedience class, which is the bare minimum in responsible dog ownership). For the most part, the majority of dog owners rely on the predisposition of dogs to be a 'good boy/girl' in terms of their behaviour.

[TheQ]

First day sailing since 9th April , when the gooseneck got broken.

 

So today, fitted the gooseneck which took some persuasion, literally, hammer and big screw driver. goosenecks are meant to be fitted outside the mast, but you can't get the correct bits as this type of mast went out of production, probably over 40 years ago.

I worked out could be fitted inside the old slider groove, but it needed levering / persuading to get it in. But I got there in the end. It was rivetted in place but with thick aluminium filled epoxy squished between, that was smoothed off with more pressed into produce a smooth joint inside and out.

 

Missed the first race, and although we went out in the second, the boat really wasn't prepared. It wasn't until the 4th race that the boat was going well. There are still a couple of halyards that need rerouting.

 

Next Sunday, no sailing for me as it's Broadland Model Railway Clubs show at Hoveton village hall, 10am to 3pm. Then the following weekend is The 3 Rivers Race..

Definite shortage of sailing for me this year.

[AndyID]

36 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

@polybear said 

 

 

Required in Glasgow. 
 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-65665113

 

"We need to complete a safety inspection of the bridge before trains can use it again. We can only do this once the bus has been removed."

 

Considering how easily the roof was obviously sliced-off I wonder if they are being a wee bit too cautious. Would a temporary speed restriction not be sufficient?