Category: Macro

New Shoes – 25 January 2020

Posted on by Zogman

Off in to Glasgow for a new pair of dancing shoes.

Drove in to town and got parked directly across from the dance shop. Shoes were a good fit and far more comfortable than the old ones they are sort of replacing. Not replacing as much as sharing the limelight with. The old ones will hopefully be off to Timpson’s for new felt soles and heels. I’m going to ask if they will upgrade the memory on them at the same time, because they don’t seem to be retaining the new moves we’re doing!

The rest of the day was spent with taking photos of fence posts over in St Mo’s. Once again there was very little light and once again I forgot to take a portable LED light, so had to resort to using the torch app on the phone. It gives a good light and it’s directional too, the only thing wrong with it is the green colour cast, that’s why I reduced the photo to monochrome. Must check out the LED lights to see if they have a more neutral colour.

Soon it was time to go through the rigmarole of dressing up in 7.3m of itchy, scratchy woollen cloth. We were off tonight to the Tartan Ball. Finally got dressed and on our way. I think we got stopped at every traffic light after we came off the motorway. Parked and walked along to the manky, dirty Classic Grand. Named by someone with an imagination and a sense of humour.

Missed the first salsa hour, but got there in time for the first ceilidh hour. It was hectic. So many clumsy clots stamping out a rhythm that bore no relation to what the band was playing and with steps that the caller had apparently missed out. Bits of it reminded me of a Dashing White Sergeant we taught in Trinidad a few years ago. Some folk just looked as mystified as Blessed Be!

Enjoyed the second salsa hour of the night but as Scamp reminded me later there were much fewer dancers on the floor for that. Strange for an event that was hosted by Academia de Salsa. It was also strange to see very few folk we knew from classes. Perhaps three dance evenings in two months, in addition to normal Sunday Socials is too much. Maybe it’s because we’re not going to classes anymore and losing touch with the crowd.

After the salsa segment, it was back to ceilidh again and more stamping and ignoring of the steps. We’d had enough and Scamp’s shoes had definitely had more than enough. We drove home along an almost empty motorway, most people were still heading in to Glasgow, and arrived home at just after midnight.

As you will have gathered this is a catch-up. Tomorrow (actually today), we’re hoping to practise our waltz and foxtrot for Monday’s class.

Out before 11? Oh yes – 16 January 2020

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Not only was I out before 11am, I was out and back with a card full of photos by 11 today.

The sun was up and so was I. I wasn’t going to waste good light like I did yesterday. Today I was going out to grab some photons and imprison them in an SD card. By the time I was actually going out, I could sense that the light was already fading, but undeterred I walked over the boardwalk and into the trees. I’d nothing really in my head for a photo, but as usual, I found some things. Mostly they were macro things. Wee things you pass by without thinking, but sometimes you have to stop and look and visualise what you could turn them into. That’s how I got today’s PoD. It’s really just an old rotting fence post with some barbed wire wound round it. I liked the different textures in the shot, but light was low, so I used the torch on my phone to give me some much needed light. Later when I was scanning the shots on the computer I realised the torch light had created a green cast. It was fairly easy to remove, but in the process it accentuated the reds in the lichen growing on the stump and also the rust on the wire. That’s what made it PoD. I could have turned it into a monochrome image, my first thought, but then I’d have missed those glorious colours.

Back home and after a morning coffee – much better today Hazy, we planned the rest of the day. I wanted a new pair of dance shoes. I’d say I needed a new pair of dance shoes, but ‘wanted’ is nearer the truth. I ‘need’ to get my old shoes re-soled, but another pair of dance shoes wouldn’t go amiss. Of course, Scamp is aways on the lookout for a new pair of sparkly dance shoes. Drove to the shop following the satnav and found it without any problem. They had the shoes I wanted, but not in my size. Bummer. Worse than that, they were sold out of gents shoe soles too! Double Bummer. The lady took my name and number and said she’d contact me when the shoes came back in to stock, possibly next week. Meanwhile Scamp had chosen one pair for herself and was considering another pair. Eventually she decided to limit herself to just the one pair, with the option to think about the other pair as a possible purchase when I was going to get mine. Devious.

We decided to go for lunch to Frankie & Benny’s for lunch. Since I was denied my dance shoes, I suggested we go to the Bishopbriggs site, where I could peruse the ‘toys’ in Currys after lunch. I’m not looking for anything in particular, but everything in general, usually the best time to window shop. That’s what we did. The satnav again did the heavy lifting and found us a way across a gloomy and dull Glasgow to the retail park. Fish ’n’ Chips for Scamp and Cheese Burger (No Mayo) for me. Lovely. By the time we were coming out, the rain had started. Saw lots of ‘toys’ in Currys, but nothing that was very interesting. Drove home through the gloom and the rain.

There was one more photo taken today and that was the new and updated Christmas Tree fairy. She’s been in need of a makeover for many years and this year she got her wish. New underskirt. Newly washed (twice washed) dress and a new pair of sparkly wings. Most of the work was down to Scamp. Before she goes back in her box and into the loft until next year it seemed like a good idea to give her a photoshoot. I do believe she’s smiling.

Tomorrow we may go out somewhere. It will be cold, but clear for most of the day according to the weather people. We’ll wait and see.

Another year over – 31 December 2019

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And a new one about to begin.

Scamp was a bit better this morning which was a relief. She’s so rarely ill and it takes a lot to floor her, but she said she felt better. Not really well enough to get up and make breakfast, but I’ve got a tally of the number of days she’s been shirking.

It looked cold outside and the temperature was still below zero, so we weren’t in any sort of rush to go out. I did eventually go and bring the car down from where I’d parked it last night and we replaced the de-humidifier which now weighed about 400g more than when we’d put it in. That’s 400ml of water its absorbed over about six months. Actually it’s more than that. We’ve already removed about 200ml by heating it up on a radiator. I think the bag contains salt and clay. The salt being hygroscopic draws in the moisture and the clay prevents it from going back out again. Still, it works well in the wee Nissan. Mine has AC and that pumps out dry air summer and winter, so that dries the windscreen, but what is it about Japanese cars that makes them so susceptible to condensation?

We still needed some stuff for dinner tonight, so we walked down to the shops. Glad we did, because the road was just a carpark. Cars, buses and lorries all getting in each other’s way. It was traffic chaos. We found out why when we went in to M&S Food. People everywhere, probably all the ones who were causing all the road chaos. All madly grabbing things, any things, because haven’t you heard? The shops are all shut tomorrow!! Now these shops weren’t even there a few months ago and nobody died of starvation. Still we have to stockpile just in case they decide to shut the shops for two days. We got enough to make dinner. We didn’t need any more.

Walked back home and had lunch then went out to St Mo’s to take the last photos of 2019, the last photos of this 365 and the last photos of the decade. It was a lovely day. Good light again and a wee bit of frost too, just to add some sparkle. PoD was a picture of a curved grass stem with a water bead caught in a leaf joint.

Came home to find that Scamp was feeling a lot better and was making cakes for tonight. I set to and made the stew to fill tomorrow’s steak pie. A couple of weeks ago I made the prototype, this is the real deal. After that I got two of the apps I use a lot on the Mac installed, but one, the main one, Lightroom is installed, but not registered yet. I’m hoping the new year will bring me a brainwave and I’ll get it done. If not, there are always other ways round things, if you know what I mean.

That’s about it. I think we’re ready to face 2020 now the place has been hoovered, the toilet has been cleaned, the bathroom has too. I think we’re ready.

All The Best to all my readers. I hope 2020 is good to you whoever and wherever you are.

Tomorrow? Probably a late start after a late night tonight. Drink will be taken, I’m sure (it already has been!).

Sunshine! – 30 December 2019

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The sky was clearing when we woke, but it took a while for it to clear completely.

Scamp was feeling a lot better today. Good enough to go for the messages. Rather than face the crowds and the traffic jams, we chose to shop locally in Tesco. I think we nearly emptied the place, judging by the amount of stuff in the trolley we wheeled to Scamp’s car. She had decided to give the Juke the day off because it had worked hard these last few weeks.

After lunch I took the ‘old’ E-M1 out for a spin round St Mo’s and got some lovely light because the clouds had all cleared away and the low sun was warming everything up. Not actual temperature ‘warming’, but colour temperature warming. The Mired value, but you don’t need, or want to know that, do you? Let’s just say it was lovely light during what’s know to photogs as the Golden Hour. Today it was macros again and my favourite and therefore the PoD was one of some moss on the limb of a tree.

By the time I was heading home, Scamp was getting ready for a Gems Christmas/New Year party at Carol’s. A good name to have for this time of year. I wasn’t invited, of course as this was a girls only night, but I was the nominated driver for Scamp and Margie. I was even getting the privilege of driving Scamp’s car, probably to extend the Juke’s holiday. Dropped the ladies off and headed home to do battle with the MacBook Pro again.

This time I was ready. I’d read the script and the the different pieces of software. The first attempt didn’t work. Apparently the secret is to change the system date of the MBP to something about two years ago and try again. I did, and it worked. Panicked after that because although the screen looked right, I had no mouse, no keyboard and no way of progressing with the install. Back to the ‘big’ computer and read the ‘Problems’ section. It was a know problem with a solution. I did a reboot and edited one small tick box before I lost control and voila! MacOS Sierra running on a 2009 MBP. You PC owners may be saying “So?”, but this is a big deal. Apple control what can and can’t be installed on their hardware, but one clever bloke has stymied that. Well done to him. Tomorrow I’ll populate it.

Got the message just about 11pm that a taxi was required. Checked the temperature (actual temperature, not Mired!) and it was -1ºc. Had to scrape Scamp’s car, inside and out!!

When we got back, Scamp was feeling sick. I suspected self-inflicted alcohol induced poisoning, but she said that wasn’t the case. She did look a bit under the weather and went to bed just before midnight. Hope she feels better tomorrow.

If Scamp is feeling better I may go in to Glasgow tomorrow to source some ink for the printer, or then again, I may not. It’s that certain.

The Shortest Day – 22 December 2019

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And it felt like the shortest day too. Very little sunlight finding it’s way to the Scottish earth today.

Apart from having a lot to accomplish today, there wasn’t much incentive to get up and get started, but we did. Calendars to print. Doors to fix. Dinner (mine) to cook. Tidying up to be done. Just normal day to day stuff, but it all seems to mount up some days. Today was that day. Also, there was the usual photo to be taken in almost twilight.

I went to B&Q to get the stuff to fix the door. After lunch I started my dinner – Lamb Shoulder Shank, slow cooked. With that on its way, I went out and took some photos. Mostly macro photos and mostly macro photos of Cladonia lichen. Found some Cladonia Bellidiflora which are like normal green/blue cladonia but with red tips to the crown. Not particularly rare, but it’s a long time since I’ve seen any round here. That pic made PoD. Like I said, there wasn’t much light around and most of the pics were taken at ISO 3200. I know that sounds like technospeak, but to give an indication of the low light, normal photos for most of the year are taken at ISO 200 to 400. 3200 means that there is only about a 1/16th the light available at ISO 200. Dull, dull, dull. Yes, the maths is dull, but the light, more so.

To brighten up this shortest day we watched a BBC re-run of a re-run of a re-run of the five year old Penguins of Madagascar. Still as funny and still finding little quotes throughout the film.

Lamb was lovely and not too fatty. Scamp had salmon as usual. Both of us finished off a bottle of Barolo we’d started last night.

Spoke to JIC later in the evening and were pleased to hear that there wasn’t any serious flooding down by. Sorry to hear that Sim has to work on the 27th in her new job with no holiday allowance as yet.

Well, it was a dull day, but the good news is that after 2am on Monday, the days will start getting longer and Scamp will give a sigh of relief as her SAD husband starts to come out of the long winter tunnel.

No big plans for tomorrow.

The sun returns – 11 December 2019

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It wasn’t lost after all. I was just having a rest yesterday.

I was out early today to make sure of capturing some of those little photons and storing them away in an SD card. Yes, I was taking foties. Scamp had already been out to the doc’s for her medication check and back again. I went over to St Mo’s and got some good light. Grabbed a PoD which is a low down macro shot of some sphagnum moss strands, looking like miniature evergreens. Got back just in time to go out again to meet Colin and Fred for coffee. Scamp was off again to see what the retail paradise that is the Town Centre had to offer the discerning shopper.

The coffee snobs centred around pubs in Glasgow (a common topic among us), books and the NHS. Given that tomorrow is polling day and Fred is a political animal, it was strange that the merits and demerits of the leading campaigners did not enter into our conversation. Maybe it’s not all that strange. I think we’re all a bit jaded with the whole shebang. It’s become a tactical election. Pick the person you don’t want to win and vote for anyone else. Much like the old Scottish football question:
Question – “Who are you supporting in the World Cup?”
Answer – “Anyone who’s playing England!”
(Notice that Scotland is never mentioned. We don’t do the World Cup.)

Drove home into glaringly blinding sunshine to collect Scamp and take her to the doc’s again, this time to get her flu jag. By the time we were coming home, the sun had set and the day was sliding into evening.

When Scamp had been out earlier, she had bought the makings of Stir Fried Prawns with Singapore Noodles. Sounded great. I volunteered to make it. It tasted as good as it sounds. The sauce that came with it was labelled Soy, Chilli and Ginger, but it smelled like simple Brown Sauce, the stuff that comes out of a square bottle with letters HP at the top. The strange thing was it didn’t taste anything like it! Must have been my cooking skills that transformed it.

The weather has turned back to rain again and it’s forecast to further turn to snow during the early hours of tomorrow morning. We’re booked to take Isobel to Monklands in the morning. Let’s hope the snow has gone by then.

A bit more relaxed day – 30 November 2019

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Done my bit for the ‘up early and out’ brigade.

Today was cold, really cold -3ºc when we woke. Sun was shining, but it wasn’t making much of a difference to the frozen cars in the street. Definitely a day for taking things a bit slower.

Finally in the afternoon we decided we needed the basics. Dinner for tonight, some veg and some bread. Dressed for the winter weather which was now a temperate one point something above zero and headed down to the shops. Got the bread, the veg and a chicken for tonight’s dinner and walked back.

After the walk, it didn’t seem all that cold, so rather than taking off all my layers, I simply changed my trainers for boots, grabbed a camera and went to St Mo’s to test out their new footpaths. Actually it was just a compressed hardcore base, not an actual asphalt footpath. Maybe that’s still to come, or maybe that’s as much as the finances will stretch to. After all, NLC councillors annual Christmas junket must be on the horizon now and of course that will take precedence. Anyway, the lighting was good and I got a few moody shots. Enough to give Lightroom and Photo Raw something to get their teeth into.

Got some more detailed shots of the Hair Ice I saw yesterday. Took a quick photo of it on my phone purely to get a GPS fix on it, but the phone placed it about a mile and a half away, in the middle of a housing estate. Weird! But then again, I don’t suppose Mr Android and Mrs Google had ever been to Cumbersheugh, so how would they know.

That was about it for the day. Chicken was lovely. The bread is uneaten as yet and the veg will hopefully go to making soup tomorrow. PoD was a shot of the lovely frosted reed stems poking from a frozen pond, looking like early Christmas trees.

Tomorrow we’re hoping to dance at the Sunday Social in The Record Factory, but it does depend on the weather.

A good talking to – 28 November 2019

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A better day … eventually.

Woke under a cloud, not a literal cloud because the sky was clear, but a rather black cloud that followed me about all morning. Helped Scamp tidy up the back garden. Well, I carried some of the cuttings round to the council compost bin. Cut back the two buddleia bushes and Scamp did all the rest. She didn’t seem to mind that it was cold. She had a big jacket on and I hadn’t, but that wasn’t the point, she never seems to mind the cold, especially when she’s working in the garden. Me? I always feel the cold, except when I’m taking photos of course. It used to be when I was fishing in the winter I wouldn’t feel the cold until my fingers stopped working and I had to go through that pins and needles stage, getting the blood to flow again. I made the excuse that I was going to heat up the soup for lunch and went inside.

After lunch I got her to go through yesterday’s move with me and … damnation, I’d been doing it wrong all that time. I should have been spinning on the ball of my foot. Instead I was walking round. It had the same effect, but my walking method wasn’t right. Should have known that the teacher was right. Teachers are always right, aren’t they. Unless they’re also pupils, then the water get muddied. I think that started the puncturing of the black cloud, that and a good talking to by Scamp. I felt a bit better after that. She then encouraged me (read ‘told me’) to go our for a walk.

Drove to Cumbersheugh station, parked and went for a walk down by the Luggie Water. That’s where the longer and final ‘good talking to’ happened. The remains of my black cloud lifted and dissolved in the wintry sunshine. It’s also where I got today’s PoD which is a wee thistle/dandelion plant’s parachute seedbeds that may or may not manage to blow away and start a new plant where the wind takes them. Came home feeling much, much better.

On the way back, I drove past the school and my old department is now gone. Bulldozed, flattened ready to be crushed to make the hardcore for what will be the playing fields of the new school. I quite like the idea that it will stay there in the campus. Still fulfilling a purpose. Of the destroying tank, there was no sign.

Watched the Elton John documentary tonight and enjoyed every minute. Good to hear someone open up like that. Maybe it’s something we should all do if we can do it to someone we trust. There’s a moral there somewhere.

Tomorrow we have no plans, but it’s going to be cold tonight. Should have put the blanket on the rosemary bush. Probably being a taxi driver for Scamp tomorrow night.

Dull, Foggy and Wet – 24 November 2019

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Typical Sunday!

Drove to B&Q in the morning to get some Jeyes Fluid to clean our smelly dustbin. We’ve definitely got some. I know because I bought it last year. After spending about an hour searching everywhere it could have been we gave up and bit the bullet. I went to B&Q to spend £3.50 on a new bottle. Hardly worth the effort of searching every cupboard in the house, only to come up empty handed. It was just as I reached B&Q that I drove into the fog. The motorway had been misty, but B&Q’s microclimate turned that into thick fog. Drove back out of it on the way home and it remained misty here for the rest of the day.

Took a walk to St Mo’s in the afternoon to try for some moody shots in the rain. The light was a bit too low for the new Teazer2 to do its best work, but the Oly came up trumps and got the best shot of the day, the little spider on its wet web. That became PoD

Spoke to JIC in the evening and discussed managing people, Welsh folk with guns and sports massage! Watched another slow episode of His Dark Materials. It’s certainly dark, but does it have to be so slow? I don’t remember the book dragging on like this. It’s becoming too tedious to watch.

There wasn’t much more you could say about the day, in fact the title of the blog sort of summed it up. Dull, Foggy and Wet. These days, realistically, if you don’t get up and out by about 11am, you’re not going to get any worthwhile photos. That’s what I might do tomorrow.  One good thing that happened was Scamp making a lovely Coq au Vin for dinner.  We were very restrained and managed to keep some for tomorrow’s lunch.  A great sacrifice!

Gems tomorrow and hopefully dancing at night.

A sunny Sunday morning – 17 November 2019

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At last some sun and respite from the wind.

Spent the morning sunbathing in much calmer surroundings. Found that sheltered spot again and claimed the sunbeds we had yesterday. Same ones, same spot and just lay there angling the beds round to face the sun. The wind had dropped considerably overnight. This was the holiday we’d booked!

After lunch I decided to go for a walk over to the Museo de Sal and Scamp came along with me. It took us a lot less time to go there and come back than I usually take. We didn’t actually go in to the museum because we weren’t all that interested, but we did take a few photos around and about it. The walk back was much more pleasant than recently with the reduced wind strength.

Nothing much of interest at night. Dodgy singer who sang with a Polish (?) accent. We were not impressed. Entertainment, with the exception of Pepe and Tina, is not a strong point of this hotel.

PoD was some fluffy flower seed heads. Seen on the way to the Atlantico Centre for some ‘supplies’.

Tomorrow hopefully more sun.