Category: Dancing

In The Wild – 18 January 2017

Posted on by Zogman

 

Today we drove to The Fort in what used to be Provanhall in Easterhouse.  Where Scamp was brought up.  It certainly doesn’t look like it now.  It’s a Retail Park.  We were just getting out of the house for a while because it was depressingly dull and the howling dogs next door were doing my head in.  People who want dogs as a status symbol and who go out to work leaving neighbours to put up with their howling should be prevented from keeping pets.  They obviously don’t care about them and leave others to suffer from their noise pollution.  Maybe NLC will be visiting them soon.

While Scamp wandered round the shops, she left me in the creche that is Waterstones book shop.  It’s just a small book shop, but has some interesting new drawing books and it was one of them I tried to enter into my new app, Airtable.  That’s when the honeymoon ended.  I couldn’t get a signal on my iPhone.  Unusual in a shop these days when everywhere seems to offer ’free’ WiFi.  Yes, it is free, but you have to ask for the password and obtaining it is sometimes like pulling teeth or stone exsanguination.  Today was different, no 3G or 4G and no WiFi and therefore, no Airtable because it needs to download your database from ‘the cloud’.  I opened Bento and it obligingly added my book to the database I’ve been using for about five years.  When I returned home and Googled “No offline access Airtable” I found that over 40 people had registered the same complaint and the desire for that offline access.  I filled in the questionnaire and became number 44 in the list.  I don’t expect much will be done in the short term to fix this, but what is the point of making an app for a portable device that demand internet access.  In a perfect world, 24/7 internet would be the norm, but I live in Scotland where even the trains don’t run on New Year’s Day.  We’re one step away from horses pulling carts along the street.  What surprised me most though was the number of complaints from users in the US.  It appears that away from the cities, they are as bereft of trustworthy internet access as we are here.
So…. The search for a replacement for Bento continues.

When we came back from The Fort and I’d taken the wrong turn coming out of the carpark for the 100th time, there was just enough light to grab some shots of Mr Grey at St Mo’s.  Then the light mysteriously disappeared and I headed home for mince and tatties with ‘roop’  (AKA Beetroot).  But I didn’t do a treasure hunt, JIC 😉

I was a helper at Shan’s beginners salsa tonight.  Oh dear, I wonder why these poor beginners keep coming back.  This is not entertainment or education, this is purgatory.  Badly explained, badly demonstrated dance moves with as little humour as Marcus Wareing.  I felt embarrassed to be helping in this class and I don’t think I’ll be back again.  Jamie G’s class by comparison was a bundle of laughs as it always is.  Unlike normal classes, all the moves tonight had ‘real’ names, and mostly Spanish names too.  Great fun.  Nobody ridiculed or made to feel small.  He always denegrates himself rather than pour scorn on others.  A great teacher.  Many could learn from him.

Being a roadie for tomorrow Gems tomorrow when they head the bill at the Link on Cumbersheugh.

AirTable v Bento – 16 January 2017

Posted on by Zogman

Another aimless day mostly spent under grey skies with the occasional shower of rain falling to give a bit of variety.

I spent most of the morning working with and learning to use AirTable, a multi-platform database that Hazy alerted me to.  Up until recently I’d used Bento,  the delightfully simple database for IOS and OSX.  I don’t use it much on the Mac, but it’s always there on my phone, especially the books database.  If I’m browsing in Waterstones and see a new book I like the look of, I type its name into my Bento Books Database, along with the author.  Then, when I have the time, I look it up on Amazon to see a price I’m willing to pay.  More recently, I have started looking in my local library e-book list to see if there is anything there.  Unfortunately, NLC library don’t have a great deal of e-books in THEIR database yet, but it’s always worth a look.  Once I’ve borrowed or bought a book, I tick it off as ‘Checked Out’ then later when I’ve read it or junked it I mark it either ‘Keep’ or ‘Drop’.  All done on Bento.  Unfortunately, Bento was itself ‘Dropped’ by Filemaker for reasons best known to themselves in 2013 (ish) and users were encouraged to replace it with Filemaker Go which is free, but really requires Filemaker Pro which costs around £170.  A hefty price to pay for a book database.  Enter AirTable which seems to fit the bill of price (free for non-commercial) and power.  I had a bit of a problem getting my Bento database into it, but with some HazyHelp, it worked a treat.  The main problem was that Bento on the phone wouldn’t sync with Bento on the Mac.  I gave up looking for a solution and in the end, just typed in the details I was missing.  Not comes the big test, when I take it out in the wild tomorrow to see if it cuts the mustard!

Went for a walk down the Luggie Water in the later afternoon, while Gems were invading the house, but saw very little apart from the ‘Ripples’ shot.  Drove up to Hulks Road, a wild bit of country road on the outskirts of Cumbersheugh, and got some lovely light on the landscape after such a dull day.  That’s where the rest of the shots came from.

Salsa tonight was a disaster.  I couldn’t remember the move we did last week, despite having watched our record of it before we went out.  Worse still, we did Chi-wa-wa (sic) which I know and like, and I couldn’t get that either.  I must have been one of the few leaders who actually knew the move, but was the only one who couldn’t get it right.  Embarrassing?  Just a little.  Lots of folk there tonight who hadn’t been to class for ages.  Good to see.  Scamp and I went for a coffee and a soft drink with Catherine and Linda after class to catch up with everybody’s news.

Tomorrow we may go to Perth for coffee and the run.  Weather looks as if it will cooperate.

Antiques – 11 January 2017

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It was a wild morning after a wild night with high winds and driving rain and the dogs next door were howling.  Decided that going out was better than staying in, so we drove out along to Larkhall and from there we went down to Garrion Bridge.  Scamp fancied a coffee in the antiques centre / garden centre there.  Apparently one of ‘Gems’ had recommended it, saying she goes there regularly.

It was a barn of a place.  It used to be a fruit farm years ago and I suppose the giant shed where  the antiques centre is housed was a storage barn and also a place for keeping the plants over the winter.  Today it housed mainly ‘grey hairs’ out for a couple of hours drive in the wind and rain and stopped off for a coffee and a bowl of soup.  For us it was a roll ’n’ sausage and a roll ’n’ scrambled egg.  You can sort out for yourselves who the recipients were!  When we were done we went for a walk around the different shops within the building.  It all seemed confused and confusing.  Just a jumble of tat, and the usual garden centre nonsense, mixed up with a handicrafts area with “DO NOT TOUCH” signs and clear plastic bags of wool everywhere, an ‘Art Gallery’ (‘nuf said) and lots of doggy and horsey things.  They even had a dog coat made in the style of a kilt!  I kid you not.  You can see I got a photo to prove it.

I’d never been in an antiques shop before, not a ‘real’ one anyway.  I’ve wandered round a few jumble sales and car-boot sales, but not an actual antiques shop.  If the first area could be defined as ‘tat’, this was old tat, dirty old tat in some cases.  The prices were not as high as I’d expected, but neither was the quality.  I kept thinking of things we’ve go up in the loft or in the spare room.  Some of those are now antiques.  Maybe we should sell them and get some cash.

As we were near Hamilton, I thought we should stop at Chatelherault on the way back and hopefully get more pics there.  It was cold with occasional glimpses of sun, but a gale blowing.  We found the cafe, had a cup of hot chocolate, took a few pics and came home.

Tonight was salsa with gridlock on the motorway first.  Managed to take the diversion along Royston Road and got there in time.  Took two classes, 6.30 beginners and 7.30 advanced.  Great fun in both.  Still windy when we drove home and with snow and sleet mixed in.

Hoping for less wind tomorrow and more sun.

It Rained – 9 January 2017

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All day it rained. Sometimes fine, not quite drizzle.  Sometimes heavy, chucking it down in buckets rain.  Sometime it rained through sunshine.  Sometimes it it dropped, no, chucked, hail down from on high.  It rained as only Scotland can.

In the morning I attempted to repair the damage I’d unwittingly done to Mac Mail last night.  By the end of last night after an hour and a half’s work I’d managed to get my main email address working.  I gave up and went to bed.  By the end of today’s morning shift I’d all the accounts working and the email data recovered from all of them.  Thank heavens for that.  I now know that you cannot boot from a secondary disk, no matter what the cloning program says.

After lunch I did a bit of sewing, fixing the pockets on another pair of jeans.  That’s two down one more to go.  Then it’s on to the bow tie.  That may need a bit more practise.  At that point, I began to feel the effects of last night’s lack of sleep and went for a quick snooze.  A quick snooze that lasted for about two and a half hours.

Salsa tonight was a physical and mental challenge.  Who knew dancing could be so stressful.

Let’s hope that tomorrow is drier than today.

A Dull Day – 8 January 2017

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The dull day was probably what gave me the incentive to get the new sewing machine out and finally attempt to fix the pocket on a pair of jeans.

I’d ‘had a go’ at fixing it a week or so ago, but after researching the problem on the ‘net, I felt more confident that the method I’d seen would solve the problem.  Actually I’d seen two different methods, and I was going to attempt the easier and less complicated one.  That tutorial didn’t have that confidence destroying phrase “This is the tricky bit”.  I liked that.  After half an hour or so of sewing, re-threading the needle and more sewing, but without swearing, I now have a fair degree of confidence in the longevity of my repair, or Alteration as I described it recently in FB.  Hope you don’t read this Joyce.  I’d hate to disabuse you of the notion that I’ve taken up dressmaking in a professional capacity.  I’m hoping to fix a couple of pairs of jeans and also make myself a bow tie.  Little Black Dresses for Scamp may take a bit more time.  So, one down, another three to go!

I was going stir crazy, so in the afternoon I drove down to Auchinstarry and walked along the canal, through the plantation to the railway walk, then back along a different railway walk to the carpark again.  It really was a dull day.  I’d set my Nikon to a Manual exposure of 1/500th sec @ f9 and a floating ISO the other day.  That meant the D7000 calculated it would require an ISO of 25600 today.  That’s in the ‘WTF let’s have a go’ range.  You’ll get a picture, but you may not be able to see it in all the digital noise.  It produced the picture at the top and the one at the bottom right in the mosaic.  I’ve deliberately converted the top one to mono because it disguises the grain/digital-noise that the high ISO produces.  The other pic, my favourite and therefore PoD was at a much lower ISO of 4000 and taken with the Oly 5.  It was resting on the stonework of an old bridge and also had a much shorter lens, so could be relied upon to give a sharp image at a low shutter speed.  Sorry JIC, edging into technospeak again.  Sim will understand.

The bridge itself was interesting from another point of view.  All along the top edge are what I’d describe as lens shaped cuts which look like the shapes you’d get if you were sharpening a knife or a scythe.  Could that be what caused them?  I’ll photograph them the next time I’m crossing the bridge on a sunny day.  Also inscribed on the top of a stone near the middle of the bridge are the initials  ‘IW’.  They have been carved with care into the stone and both letters have serifs on them.  Often, old graffiti has these serifs and shows that care has been taken when carving them.  Intriguing.

First Sunday Social of 2017 today and I was really rusty.  Thank goodness classes start tomorrow.  We both need the exercise and the practise.

No idea what the weather is to be tomorrow.  Hopefully kinder to photographers than it’s been today.

Golden Light – 19 December 2016

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Today dawned, like the rest with a dull, grey cloudy sky.  It didn’t look as if it was going to get any better and it lived up to that promise, in fact it got worse.  A heavy mist came down obliterating any view that had been there.

I decided to make the best of the day and print off a first copy of my 2017 calendar.  Unfortunately, El Capitan doesn’t want to work with my Canon ip4500 printer.  Canon don’t want to supply a driver and Apple don’t care about any hardware more than seven years old as I already know.  A quick search of the internet confirmed my suspicions that there is no workaround for the problem, apart from buying a new printer.  I did manage to get the calendar printed by converting my Pages file into a PDF and using this to print it off on my old Tosh laptop.  A laptop much more than seven years old.  Despite my disappointment, or maybe because of it, I drove in to Glasgow hoping that Staples could supply me with a magenta cartridge for my ancient printer.  They could at £16.95.  Rather expensive when you find that Amazon can supply a three cart set for £26.  So Stalples is going out of business?  I think I can see why.  I didn’t buy their overpriced cart.  One interesting thing I found out is that Epson sell a 3 in 1 printer for £189, complete with two years’ worth of ink  No more dinky ink cartridges, this thing works with bottles of ink.  It sounds like a good investment as long as Apple don’t make it obsolete halfway through my second or third bottle of ink.  I’m really beginning to become pissed off with Apple’s devotion to designed obsolescence.  I may bite the bullet and go back to Mickysoft.  It’s slow and sluggish, but at least the OS just works.  Something I used to say about Apple, but not any longer.

When I was driving home my mood was lifted by the golden light making everything glow.  Now, that’s more like it.  The clouds had blown away, the mist had lifted and the sun was setting with a beautiful glancing light.  Instead of heading straight home, I took the road less travelled and with better views of the landscape.  That’s where the photo of the trees came from.  Even the mist earlier in the day had produced the water beads on the car roof and gave me one shot in the bag before I left for Glasgow.

Salsa tonight was a Christmas Extravaganza, one of JamieGal’s specialities with dancing, games, glow-sticks, silly hats and prizes.  He’d previously issued an open invitation to dancers past and present, from our school and from any other and none and there was a great party spirit.  Fun for all, that’s just his way.  Brilliant.  One of the best teachers I’ve had the pleasure to meet.

Tomorrow?  Maybe a swim.

Dull Day, Dynamite Dancing – 18 December 2016

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What a dull day.  From time we got up until dusk, the sky was a dull overall grey and the light levels were atrocious.  As a result, we didn’t go anywhere in the morning.

We were going in to salsa in the afternoon, the last one of the year, and as we hadn’t moved for the early part of the day, we decided to go in early and make the most of the uplifting salsa.  We did really need that uplift today.  Also for a change Scamp suggested that we park at Cowcaddens and walk up Sausageroll street to the Garage.  Since this is panto season and the Garage is a block away from one of the biggest pantomime venues, it is alway a problem getting on street parking in December.  Great idea.  So that is what we did.  We parked at Cowcaddens, walked around town for a while and then landed in Cuba at the Garage.

Excellent music and energy from everyone there.  Couldn’t have felt any different from the dull drab weather outside.  Had a brilliant time as always and came out almost two hours later feeling on top of the world.  Salsa does that for me.

Dinner was soup, Hake with broccoli and potato wedges followed by creme caramel, then Guinness Cake with chocolate sauce and cream.  That must have put back all the calories I lost in the Garage.

No plans for tomorrow, but I might go for a swim if I’ve got time.

A day of nothing done – 14 December 2016

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Today was a lazy day.  Scamp’s meeting with Nancy was called off as the trains from Larky were also off.  Jackie left to head back up to Skye and texted us when she was on the bus to say that Mairi had passed her driving test first time!  Congrats to her.  I don’t know if she’d dare to ask her dad if she could borrow the car tonight!  We drove to Bishopbriggs to get some essential stuff.

Made the decision to donate my Tamron 18-200mm lens to Val.  His need is greater than mine and it might just brighten his day.

Salsa at night was great, although as an aftermath of the Salsa Ball on Sunday, the classes were small.  Had great fun.  JamieG was looking for Christmas songs – salsa style for the extravaganza of parties next week.  Good luck with that.

I don’t suppose it was a day of nothing done, really.  Oh and today’s photo is Fairy Nuff who lives in my cabinet most of the year and spreads her own kind of magic from her place on the tree at Christmas.  That’s Christmas with a ‘C’.

Ice and a Fiery Temper – 5 December 2016

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5-dec

Woke this morning to sub-zero temperatures, ok it was -0.7º, but it was below zero and that counts.

By the time I got up and showered, the temp had risen to just above zero and it was brightening up nicely, so I wrapped up warm and grabbed the Nikon to go get some photos of the urban deer.  It was a good plan,  the only thing missing was the aforementioned deer.  They weren’t to be seen.  Imagine that, they were up and out before me!  Amazing.  Got some photos of some backlit weeds – backlighting is always good in the low winter sun.  When we were in Glasgow yesterday, I was sort of admiring some photos by a photog who was using 00 gauge figures in a variety of situations.  ‘Sort of’ because I wasn’t impressed with the actual photos which were unremarkable, but I’d forgotten about my own attempts with these tiny figures.  I kept seeing situations this morning where I could pose my mini-men.  I’m intending digging them out tonight and having a go at some mini-men scenarios tomorrow when I have the house to myself.

Photos turned out better than I’d hoped.  I think my favourite was the skating Coot.  It reminded me of the painting “Revd Dr Robert Walker (1755 – 1808) Skating on Duddingston Loch” by Sir Henry Raeburn (Google it).  It doesn’t really look like it, it just reminds me of it.  That was my favourite, but PoD goes to the frozen feather.

This afternoon when Gems were doing their singing practise I went to the gym and the pool for an hour or so.  It was a very pleasant hour or so too.  Sauna wasn’t all that hot, but the steam room was.  Even managed a few lengths.

Kizomba tonight was the end of the road for me.  I’ve taken as much as I can take of assistant teacher, Levis’s Mr Cool antics.  Yes, he’s quite stylish, but when the class has just managed to achieve even numbers because Kaye, the teacher, is dancing, that is not the time for Mr Cool to cut in and push a paying customer, me, out to be a wallflower.  I don’t like being the wallflower and I don’t do it quietly now.  That’s why I made a fuss tonight and complained to his boss about his attitude.  I also told her that was the reason I wasn’t coming back.  It did seem to cause a bit of a kerfuffle and an extended discussion with Shannon under whose auspices the class runs.  It also forced Levis to come and apologise to me although he didn’t seem to understand why.  It made no difference to me.  That was my last Kizomba class with them.  Maybe I’m just a silly old man to him.  He’ll find out I’m a vociferous and angry old man too.  I feel sorry for Scamp, because she was enjoying the class.  I wasn’t and I’d already told her I would give it until Christmas and then evaluate the situation.

The foregoing left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, but it had to be resolved.  There’s no point in complaining to Scamp and shouting the odds.  Better to get these things out in the open then, maybe they will learn from their mistakes.  Salsa took the bad taste away and with three new moves to remember and Jamie Gal’s inevitable tall stories , it didn’t take long to put a smile back on my face.

Tomorrow is another day and it’s going to be a painting day, I think.  Well, that and a trip into Glasgow to retrieve Scamp’s boots that she left at the STUC tonight!

Santas on Parade – 4 December 2016

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dec-4

We were driving into Glasgow when we saw a sign:   “Warning! Santas Running”  Hmm.  Looks like a Santa run.  I couldn’t pass up the opportunity of a PoD and that’s how it turned out.

After checking with the NLC volunteers, it turned out that the fun run had just started, but as we were about halfway round the course, we had a while to wait before the first runner, oops, Santas arrived.  These aren’t the real Santas by the way, but are some of his fleet footed assistants.  Having said that, Santa was only a few miles away in Falkirk yesterday, so I wouldn’t put it past the old fella to have sneaked in to the fun-run.  We watched for a while and Scamp got into the spirit of things and was happily cheering them on their way, while secretly wishing she’d heard about it earlier and had managed to wangle a Santa suit and an entrance number for herself.  Me?  I’d hold the jackets.  Lots more Santa pics on my Flickr page.

Once I’d got a few photos and was sure I had at least one contender for PoD, we drove the rest of the way in to Glasgow.  Scamp had the bright idea of parking at Cowcaddens and getting the Subway to St Enoch’s.  A stormer of an idea as it turned out when we saw the queues for different parking places around the town.  Just to clarify, Glasgow is a city, but it’s always been known as The Town or more likely, The Toon.  After we’d wandered round what is, apparently, the Medieval Part of Glasgow, down by Clyde Street and I’d taken some photos of extremely non-Medieval buildings, we had a coffee and headed for home.  Glasgow on a Sunday in December is no fun.  It’s full of shoppers and disappointed looking foreigners hoping to see men in kilts everywhere.  Thankfully the ‘Bastard Drummers’ were nowhere to be seen or heard.  Not even the mad “Bowie & Bolan” bloke who neither sounds nor looks like Bowie or Bolan was in evidence.  Thankfully again.

Came home and relaxed for a while before getting ready for the Sunday Social.  The highlight of the week for us.  Had a great time as usual and met an old friend (Kul) there, once we managed to get parked – nightmare during panto season – and basically that was it for Sunday.  Beautiful day with plenty of sunshine, although a bit cold.  Currently 0.3ºc with snow forecast.

Tomorrow is Monday with all the hustle and bustle that Mondays bring.