Category: St Mo’s

Just an ordinary Scottish day – 16 November 2016

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16-nov

Windy, wet, sun and cold.  Four seasons, sort of Scottish.

Today was Scamp’s turn to have needles stuck in her and lasers fired into her too.  She had to go to the physio to get some treatment for her ankle.  Something to do with her Achilles Tendon, or Archimedes Tendon as I got it wrong.  Like me she wasn’t really all that bothered with the acupuncture needles or the laser and she’s got exercises to do to.  Only five reps, three times a day not ten, three times a day like I had.  That’s a bit unfair, I think.  Sexist or ageist or shoulderist or something.

When we got back, I went for a walk over to St Mo’s in the sun, but ten minutes later the sun disappeared.  I managed a couple of shots before the gloom and rain arrived again.

Spent some more time consolidating my photo collection and being side tracked just looking at the photos.  Attempted to use File Juggler which is supposed to be a filing assistant on the PC.  The best one apparently.  Filing on a computer pivots on the use of folders, as anyone who has work with Windows, OS X or Linux will know only too well.  Unfortunately after trying unsuccessfully for half an hour to move folders using File Juggler, I discovered this on the company website :

Question – Can File Juggler manage folders?

Answer – No, unfortunately not. File Juggler handles only files.
I plan to add this feature later.

This was followed by a link to a page that had nothing at all to do with File Juggler or the author’s apparent abortive attempt to implement this feature, which he seems to feel is not really all that important.  I’m guessing he’s never worked with Hazel on a Mac.  I got all my folders nested exactly as I wanted them in ten minutes flat using a script I’d written in Hazel.  Sometime you just have to leave the PC to do what it does and get the work done on a Mac.

Salsa tonight.  Helping in a beginner’s class at 6.30 then an advanced class at 7.30.  Great fun as always.

Weather to get colder tomorrow.  Pack wooly jumpers, wooly hats, warm gloves and snowshoes JIC and Sim!

So long Leonard – 11 November 2016

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11-nov

On a dismal day like this when I was coming down from another great holiday, the news that Leonard Cohen had died during the night was quite a shock. I’ve been singing his songs in my head all day. I hope, wherever he is, he is happy.

It was cold this morning, just below zero with a blue sky and that sharp feeling of a winter day. However, it didn’t last long and the clouds rolled in, the temperature rose a bit and it began to feel damp and dreary.

Went for a walk over St Mo’s and that provided today’s pics. Spent the rest of the day getting the blog up to date.

Tomorrow will be a better day.

A day of two halves – 22 October 2016

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22-oct

Left home on a bright sunny morning heading for Perth to get essential supplies of tea and coffee.  Scamp was going to a Christmas musical with her aunt.  A Christmas musical in October?  Really, that’s just a wee bit ridiculous.  Yesterday at the Art Galleries I saw my first Christmas tree this year.  Too early, people!

Most of the journey to Perth was fine with great visibility but about ten minutes out of the city the mist came down.  After that the heavens opened up to dump gallons of rain on me.  Well, it felt like it was all just on me, but I suppose others were getting wet too.  It stayed like that for the two hours I stayed in the Fair City.  I’d had enough.  I had my coffee beans, my tea leaves and a piece of cheese as a bonus.  Home was calling.  When I drove back down the road, at exactly the same place where the rain had started, the rain almost stopped.  The rest of the drive was in the dry and when I got home, I got out of the car into sunshine.  I presume the gardens in Perth need the rain.

A roll ’n’ sausage improved my state of mind as it always does.  Went for a walk to St Mo’s with the Nikon to get some photos.  There wasn’t much to see, but lots of little fungi and those big ones too.  The flowers in the wildflower garden are a joy to behold.  Thankfully the gardeners haven’t cut them down with their usual unthinking efficiency.  At least, not yet.

Dinner tonight, once Scamp arrived back was courtesy of Golden Bowl.  Chicken Chop Suey and Fried Rice times two.  Delicious as usual.

img_3461-flickr-1I couldn’t settle on a subject for tonight’s Inktober drawing and then I found it, sitting right in front of me.  What better subject on a Saturday night than a bottle of beer? Difficult because of the symmetry of the bottle and also because glass is difficult to render in pen, I find.  I did use a bit of brushwork to even out the glaze, but other than that it was just pen work.  Quite happy with it.

Tomorrow?  Who knows.  Possibly a walk if the rain stays away in Perth and doesn’t travel down south, but other than that I’m open to suggestions.  Hoping to get some sketching done outside.

The Weather Fairies Lied – 16 October 2016

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16-oct

They promised us sunshine.  I think they must have had their fingers crossed behind their backs.

It started off dull, but we were expecting that.  We knew it would brighten up around midday.  However, when the wee hand was at 12 and the big hand was also at 12, the weather was much the same.  It stayed that way with the occasional bright spell through the afternoon.  I risked a half hour walk later in the afternoon and got a fairly decent portrait of a swan and a shot of a ‘Black Panther’ salute from a bush before the rain put an end to play.

Drove in to Glasgow in bright sunshine, but the sun was low and distracting.  One of those days where you wish it was dull like in the morning.  It might be boring, but at least there’s nothing to blind you.  Salsa was very energetic and very, very enjoyable.  I think Scamp was wondering what was coming next a few times when I started to string two or even three half moves together in a sequence.  It must be really hard being a follower at times.

img_3449-flickrTonight’s Inktober sketch is of some Lisianthus flowers in a vase on the table.  I keep wanting to call them Lissajous which are a totally different kettle of fish.  As far as I can remember, they were produced on an oscilloscope when we were studying AC current at college, back last century some time.  Google it, that’s the best idea.  Anyway ‘flooers’ as I call them are sometimes a picture of last resort, but these ones were quite a challenge.  Pen was a blue Linc Saffron from the Pound Shop.  Quite high quality rollerball pen, made in India.  It has a tendency to smudge when wet, but dries to a water resisting finish, at least the black does.  I’ve been using them for years now.  If you see them on sale, buy a pack.  A pound well spent.  Paper was my favourite Pink Pig sketching book.

Not sure what to expect from the weather tomorrow, but hopefully it will be better than today.

Clingfilm – 11 October 2016

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11-oct-3

A strange title, but hopefully all will become clear – like the clingfilm 😉

Lazy start to the day, but that usually happens on a Tuesday after a busy Monday with two hours of dancing and an hour of driving, then preparing the photos, posting them and then blog writing.  I’m not moaning about, just explaining why we almost broke our self imposed rule of Up By Ten.  The light seemed to be improving in the morning and I grabbed a few shots of the Gazanias in the hanging basket with their covering of raindrops from the showers during the night.

What to do with the rest of the day?  We couldn’t decide where to go, because we had decided we’d go out.  Dinner was sorted and we needed nothing extra for that.  It was finally settled when Scamp said we didn’t have any cling film and that called for a visit to Lakeland.  Scamp also wanted to get some flowers to plant in my raised bed for some winter colour.  We could achieve both aims with a visit to Lakeland and Dobbies just outside Stirling.  What exciting lives we lead when our day revolves around Clingfilm and Pansies!

We came back from Stirling over the Tak ma Doon road.  Usually it’s a scenic road with plenty of opportunities for big-sky landscapes.  Today heavy clouds had rolled in and everywhere was dull.  Oh well, I still had the pics of the Gazanias to fall back on.  Just to make sure, I went out to bother the wildlife in St Mo’s when we got back.  Just missed Mr Grey, but he saw me and was off like as shot.  More snails up trees.  It seems that they favour Ash trees.  Disturbed a couple of deer and this time I got a shot I liked. One young doe ran when she saw me, then turned and watched to make sure I wasn’t following, giving me the chance I needed to take the shot.  I don’t know what kind of fly was on the tree in the other shot.  It looked a bit like a mosquito, but on closer examination, the head looks more like a Jenny Long Legs (Crane Fly).  Don’t know.

Today’s Inktober (Number 11) is of Monday’s Daily Sudoku which was completed yesterday (Monday) and was img_3436-flickrlying on the coffee table in front of me, so, like the hand yesterday, it wasn’t going to go anywhere.  Fred P can do quick portraits or caricatures of people sitting near him in Costa and they always look like the subject.  I just can’t draw fast enough to grab a likeness.  It’s all about confidence I think.  Anyway, I’m happy enough with today’s quick sketch.  Made some more fruit scones tonight.  I did think of sketching one of them, but they move off the plate too quickly.

Don’t know what’s happening tomorrow because we’ve got clingfilm now, so possibly no need to go out.  Jamie G our Salsa teacher is off on business tomorrow, and we don’t know who will be taking the class.  It’s not worth driving for an hour through Glasgow’s Wednesday evening traffic only to find it’s a, how shall I put this, less entertaining teacher.  Maybe we’ll stay in and watch a film instead!

Autumn – 5 October 2016

Posted on by Zogman

Earlier in the week there was mist in the morning and today I noticed that the leaves were turning, but I stuck to my pledge not to photograph the sugar colours and I stuck to my self imposed ban. As you can see, it was flowers that took the brunt of my photography today. It was a nice bright day with good directional light in the afternoon.

Those photos accounted for an hour in the late afternoon the rest of the time was spent farting about on computers. There’s probably a perfectly good verb for wasting your precious time trying to get the electronics inside the CPU and its various siblings to to do your bidding, but ‘farting about’ is an adequate substitute in my opinion. The less said about the detail, the better.

<Rant1>
Drove through horrendous traffic in to Glasgow tonight to get to the STUC building in reasonable time. Nearly knocked a bloke off his bike.

  • Doesn’t he realise that I own the road?
  • Doesn’t he know that I’ve got right of way simply because I could knock him down and kill him with my tonne of pretty coloured steel?
  • Doesn’t he know that the person on the roundabout has right-of-way?
  • Does he want to have “But I’m a cyclist, give me room” chiseled on his tombstone?
    </Rant1>

 

<Rant2>

After losing my temper with the world, the cyclist and Scamp we made it in to the STUC building for salsa class in time, only to find almost the whole building was taken over by an LGBTI group. What the hell does the ‘I’ mean? Isnae sure? It looks like it’s like Countdown:
Consonant, consonant, consonant, consonant, oh, better have a vowel. Rearrange them into a well known phrase or saying. Failing that, decide on a use for the acronym.

</Rant2>

Now mentally knackered after navigating through the traffic and physically knackered after two hours of salsa I’m writing the blog at 11.15pm because the person who runs the salsa class decided undemocratically to make all the classes start half an hour later. Some people are great at business, but are just not people-people, if that makes sense. After you ask folk if a change is ok with them and they tell you that “No, it isn’t”, then that’s the time to have a rethink, not just carry on regardless. That was probably rant 3.

img_3426-flickrI did manage to get a quick sketch done for Inktober 2016. It was a bit of a crash at the last minute, but it was completed. A partly blind drawing, that is you don’t look at the paper when you’re drawing, you just concentrate on the subject. I did correct myself once or twice, but for the most part it was blind drawing. It probably looks like that, but Inktober is not about skill and ability, it’s about putting pen to paper, daily.

Looking for a relaxing day tomorrow. May let the train take the strain. Hoping for even more late sunshine.

Tree Climbing Snails and Rain – 26 September 2016

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26-sept
The plans to go swimming this morning didn’t come to fruition.  Perhaps tomorrow.  I did go to the physio and he was quite impressed with the improvement in my shoulder.  He did however still bend me, shake me and stick the inevitable pins in me to see if he could make me jump.

The day had started out with heavy leaden skies, well, they would be heavy if they were made from lead.  However, when I drove down to the leisure centre, the cloud was clearing and there was a touch of blue sky there.  It didn’t last.  While the physio was pinning me down to the table with his acupuncture needles, I could hear the rain battering on the window. The day was going downhill.

It stayed in that downhill frame of mind for most of the afternoon but by about 4 o’clock I was ready to grab the last little bit of sunshine, because there was some, to get a photo or two.  Actually I got four I was pleased with.  Clockwise from top right:

  1. It’s those tree climbing snails again.  Now the slugs are at it too  Are the snails teaching them?  I still don’t know why they do it other than the human answer – because they’re there.  The best answer I’ve read is that they eat fungus or lichen from the bark of the tree.  The stupidest answer is that they want to get away from the heat of the forest floor – Naw!  It’s Scotland!  We don’t get heat in the forest floor … or anywhere else in late September.
  2. I saw this flower blooming away happily in the midst of nothingness.  Not another flowering shrub or weed for miles around and thought it looked a bit lonely, so I took its picture.
  3. Mr Grey looking hunched over and grumpy.  Well, you would be too if you were stuck in the rain in the middle of a pond in Cumbersheugh with a manic photographer constantly chasing you.  Poor old Mr Grey.
  4. I took this shot because I like cowparsley, not to eat, but to photograph.  It wasn’t until I was looking at the pics on the computer and pixel-peeping (viewing the shots at full magnification to see which is sharpest – not to be confused with Chimping which is a completely different affliction) that I noticed the tiny wee snail on the bottom right of the seedhead. I know it’s really hard to see, but click on the composite and it will take you automagically to my Flickr site where you can see the bigger picture.

As you will see from Mr Grey’s picture, it had started raining while I was out.  It was inevitable because as I was walking over to St Mo’s I’d just been complimenting myself on grabbing an hour in the sun taking photos.  Blue sky and sunshine.  I should have known the rain wasn’t far away.

Wild windy, rainy, sunshiny day forecast tomorrow, then Wednesday will be dreadful.

Wallflower – 14 September 2016

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14-sept

Sitting it out at Salsa because there are too many men in the second class which is an unusual state of affairs. It’s not a problem really as the sweat is running off me as we’ve just completed our second advanced class of the week. I did think of joining Colin’s class, but I’m never sure what it is he’s teaching. Sometimes it’s definitely salsa, sometimes it’s more like bachata, sometimes it’s almost certainly quickstep or tango or something else ballroom and there are times when it’s something entirely different. It’s difficult to see where they blend together. I did do his warm-up which is always a challenge, just keeping up. Tonight was no exception. That probably explains why I’ve reached melting point.

We had intended going to Kirkcaldy on the bus, but lethargy got in the way.  It’s been postponed until another day, a sunny day, because sunny it was not today. After we had dithered around for a while, we decided to go for lunch instead and then went for garden stuff at B&Q.

I had a go at a couple of  small watercolours and finished off an acrylic that’s been languishing against the wall for too long. I may frame it up and see if I’m happy with it. I’ve decided that even for sketching and wash, it’s far, far better to use watercolour paper, even cheap stuff.

I did manage a quick visit to St Mo’s later in the afternoon and was thinking that with the warm, damp weather we should be getting to the season for toadstools and mushrooms when I chanced upon a neat little creamy white umbrella, right in front of me. To get the shot, I wanted a low point of view (POV). That meant I couldn’t check focus through the viewfinder, but one of the Oly designers had considered this eventuality and made the back screen articulate so you can turn it horizontal. Even better, you can set the touch screen to activate the shutter. So clever.

As I mentioned, it was a dull, damp day. I’m hoping tomorrow will be better.

Sunny Sunday – 11 September 2016

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11-septWe went to Glasgow today. Since the buses run to their own timetable on Sundays, we drove in. It was a lovely morning and Scamp thought we might manage to have a coffee outside, but by the time we’d finished shopping, the wind was becoming a bit gusty and we settled for a coffee inside.

Dinner for me was a repeat of yesterday’s, Lamb, Chorizo and Puy Lentil Casserole, but this time made at home. It turned out as good as the Loch Leven Larder’s, if not better. Who am I kidding? Of course it was better! Slow cooked for six hours, it was great. Plenty left over for tomorrow’s dinner and maybe some for lunch later in the week.

I went for a walk to St Mo’s in the late afternoon and got a few shots, but the light was poor by that time and that resulted in a lot of digital noise which you can remove quite easily with Lightroom, but the price you pay is a loss of definition, so it’s a double edged sword. I did see a strange pink blossom at completely the wrong time of year. There were thorns on the stems and on the back of the leaves which look like bramble leaves. The plant seemed to be behaving like a bramble by climbing round other tree branches. Couldn’t believe this was flowering in September in Scotland!

No plans for tomorrow, because like most Mondays it’s eaten up with Gems in the afternoon and salsa at night. Might get some painting done. If not on canvas, then at least on the outside window ledges.

A much more sedate day – 28 August 2016

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28 AugAfter yesterday’s frantic here and there, non-stop, things to do, today was a little respite. After a relaxing morning we watched the Belgian GP from Spa. Plenty of action in the first half, then the new Sky Sports channel seemed to get stuck and we had to go back to the C4 version with laconic David Coultard and the over-excited Ben Edwards to tell us just how exciting it was.

The rest of the afternoon was spent tweaking the gallery feature on the new theme of my blog. What Scamp christened The Summer Look. After getting frustrated with some things working and others not, I took myself off to St Mo’s for a look around. Scamp had meantime driven in to Glasgow to pick up her sister. I didn’t find any deer today and only got decent photos of some insects. Couldn’t get the camera to focus at first, and then realised that it was set on single point focus which is notoriously difficult to fix focus with, but once focus is set, it is really accurate. When I switched to a wider field of view, focusing worked a lot quicker. Hoping for some exercise tomorrow, either in the gym or on the bike, we’ll see which one wins. Like Scamp always says, it all depends on the weather.