Category: Technology

Flaming June – 1 June 2019

Posted on by Zogman

Well, maybe not flaming as such, just not raining.

We were still in two minds whether to got to the Italian festival in Glasgow or just have a day somewhere in the dry, with the outside chance of a bit of sun. If we chose the latter, Scamp suggested Stirling or Hamilton. Both curry capitals of central Scotland. Finally, because there are at least some shops still open in Stirling and very few in Hamilton, we chose Stirling.

We went to the Indian Cottage in Stirling and had our usual: Vegetable Pakora followed by Vegetable Dhansak for Scamp and Chicken Pakora followed by Chicken Tikka Chilli Bhuna for me. Almost every time we go to this restaurant, that is what we have.

After lunch we went for a walk round the centre of Stirling. I was looking for a cheap, second hand copy of Good Omens, because the copy I’m reading on my Kindle must have been a publishers advanced copy complete with all the typos and bad typesetting. I looked in vain. It seemed that the hype about the new film of the book had led to all the copies being bought up. Scamp wasn’t looking for anything, but came home with a new ‘holiday and maybe for salsa’ dress.

On the way home we were stopping to get some compost and some ‘chuckies’ which for those readers who are from south of the border are small, possibly rounded stones. The chuckies were to provide drainage for the latest of Scamp’s containers. After a bit of an argument about where we should park and whether we should drive in or reverse in, we got a space. Scamp was right, of course, about driving in – easier access to the boot for loading stuff in. She was wrong about the tiny wee space she expected me to get the Juke in. It’s a wider car than her’s. The compost wasn’t too heavy, but those chuckies certainly were. However, we got them in and got home without breaking a spring. Had to barrow them out of the car and through the house. That gave Scamp time to get the container planted with two Gazanias, a Shooting Star (American Cowslip) and a Geum (Cookie). It looks good. That the second mixed planting she’s done recently and both are looking very natural.

A walk in the unexpected sunshine through St Mo’s gave me a chance to test out the ‘new toy’ and it certainly seemed up to the task. Especially impressive was the way the electronic shutter and automatic focus bracketing made short work of a shot of a tiny wee snail on a tree. It may go up on Flickr later. The only problem is the state of the battery. After about 60 shots it appeared to be losing most of its power. Not surprising really when I noted that it was manufactured in 2014. That makes it five years old. That’s a long time for a battery to be working. Luckily Amazon was offering a decent looking replacement pair plus USB charger for £18. It’s being delivered tomorrow. Not an actual Olympus battery. They cost around £70!

No sketches today. I’m having at least a week off, if I don’t go cold turkey. PoD went to a little dowdy looking fly that sat nicely for me in St Mo’s. No fancy focus stacking, just a straight forward shot.

The end of May – 31 May 2019

Posted on by Zogman

But not the end of the rain!

Today we had planned to go to the Sagra Italiana festival of Italian food in Glasgow. The camera wasn’t being delivered until after 4pm, so that gave us most of the wet day to play with. The rain started seriously about 11am and from then on it was continuous. We reckoned the festival would be a wash out, but drove in to Glasgow anyway. We were right. There were about thirty people wandering around and at least half of them were family members of the girl group who were singing bravely on the stage. At least they were under cover. There’s nothing so desperate as folk trying to look happy and cheerful when the rain is pelting down and all the planning has been for nothing. I think we both felt sorry for everyone concerned.

To cheer us up we went for a pizza in Paesano. It was mobbed, but then again, it wasn’t raining in there. Everyone was warm and dry and being fed and watered. Went to CassArt and bought myself a little paintbox to celebrate the end of Every Day In May. I’ve had great fun doing the drawings and the paintings, but it’s been tough some days to work out how to interpret some of the prompts. I’d do it again. Today’s topic was A Crab. Try as I might, I couldn’t think of anything to draw other than a crustacean. After all, living in the middle of Central Scotland, there aren’t many crabs around here. So it was I wandered the arcades of the InterWeb looking for some decent photos. Eventually settling on an iStock image that was what I was looking for.

Today’s PoD was seen from Ingram Street in Glasgow. The poor bloke sheltering in the portico of the GOMA didn’t look as if he was the model of Domestic Bliss and I think that’s what attracted me to take the shot.

Came home and took charge of the camera from the DPD man. It looked in very good nick and after giving the battery a quick squirt I checked it over a bit more and was very pleased with it. Let the battery charge a bit more and then the warning light started flashing on the charger which indicates a battery fault. I tried it in the camera and it worked for about fifteen minutes before it packed in. I’ve just charged it up again, fully this time, and it seems to be holding its charge this time. Will find out if it’s really working in the morning.

The rain stopped for about ten minutes today, but it’s raining again. Tomorrow is to be dry, but then the rain returns on Sunday. We should make the most of tomorrow, but we’re not making any hard and fast plans yet.

Man seen building an ark in Condorrat – 30 May 2019

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I was wondering today, did it rain on St Swithins day? Then I realised that wasn’t until July. Maybe the rain is just practising.

We drove through the rain to Falkirk today to get some low-sugar muesli and a few other essentials. I thought the brand I usually get, with no added sugar was in the low sugar bracket. Nope, it was in the High bracket, carrying the danger sign of the red shield. What I forgot is that it was the extra fruity version and that extra fruity contains the extra sugar, but because the manufacturer is not actually adding sugar, they are telling the truth, just not the whole truth. There are a lot of devious people out there and they’re not all politicians. Had lunch at Morrisons because they do a lovely roll ’n’ link sausage, plus, Scamp likes their bowl of chips. Back in the car and through the rain once again to arrive back home with not one photo taken.

I’d been watching the progress of a couple of cameras on MPB and WEX, both second-hand sites. Today I made the decision which one to buy and will report back on it after it arrives from the DPD man tomorrow sometime. In case you’re interested, it’s an Olympus E-M1. Please don’t moan about ANOTHER new camera. It’s about five or six years old and originally cost over £1,000. I’m not paying anything like that. Also, it’s over three years since I bought the last Oly.

Started a sketch of a motorbike, today’s topic. An MZ TS 150, the bike I used to own. It was a bit rough, but a reasonable record of the bike. Then I got a bit frantic and dived outside to grab a couple of shots of our Schoolgirl rose in the rain. I’ve just posted it on Flickr and it will be interesting to see how many hopefuls I can trap with the title Schoolgirl In The Rain! It usually works well. It would be fun to see their sad little faces!

Just so you know Hazy, I got an email from A Small Orange this morning asking me to pay $89 for an overdue bill. That’s the bill for the webspace contract I terminated in April and have confirmation that it’s been terminated. I also managed to log back in to ASO and found that my invoice there has been cancelled. Wrote them a nasty email.

I was making Crab Spaghetti for dinner tonight when the ring pull on the tub of white crab meat broke and left me with a plastic tub, metal lid and no way of opening it. Tin opener wouldn’t work on the thin rim. Eventually used my favourite tool, Molegrips to wrench the lid off. Took some photos of the carnage and another nasty email will be on its way tonight.

Schoolgirl eventually became today’s PoD, then after dinner when the swearing about that crab tub had subsided, I painted the proper MZ picture. Great bike. Just really a commuter bike. A two stroke that made a terrible racket and drank oil like it was going out of fashion, but a dream to ride with its flat ‘Vinny’ bars. So called because of its design being based on the legendary Vincent motorcycles. Had to sell it round about 1980 to buy a Reliant Regal 3/30 three wheeler. Tomorrow is the last day of the challenge and, would you believe it, the topic is A Crab. Maybe I should just draw the tub with the half ripped off lid.

Tomorrow we may go to the Sagra Italia event in Glasgow. It looks like being a very wet day, but Scamp thinks everything is under cover. If we decide not to go then we may go on Saturday. We’ve got (free) tickets for both days.

Will it stay or will it go? – 21 May 2019

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Remember the big green plant with the spotty leaves Scamp bought yesterday? Well today it was going back … or was it?

To start the day I wanted to create order from the chaos of my painting room. It needed a good clean out and today was going to be the day for it, despite the blue skies outside and the sunshine outside and partly because Scamp was outside, planning!

After about an hour putting stuff away where it should have been and failing utterly to throw anything out except my old bike boots, and even they are not certain to find their way to the tip, the room did look better. I found the top of the chest of drawers again after a it had been reported missing a few weeks ago. That’s when Scamp came up and told me she was taking the big green plant back. According to the website you had 28 days to take things back. It was too big and was not going to fit in the place under the window she’d intended putting it in. I told her perhaps that 28 day rule didn’t apply to plants and was intended for hardware. She wasn’t to be turned from her path, so she phoned the garden centre and was assured that, Yes you could return plants. So it was settled the big green spotty plant was going back. We stood and looked at the place it was sitting among the other plants she’d arranged in the new space. I didn’t think it looked all that out of place, but we’d forgotten that there was a large unmovable Magnolia Stellata standing in the corner and perhaps she was right the green plant was too big. That’s the I had the light bulb moment. We were looking at the plant, in its pot, standing on the ground. When it was planted it would drop in height by about 200mm (8” in old money). Ah, that made a big difference. Hmm, I could see a sea change happening. Maybe, just maybe it would be alright after all. Her final decision was that we should plant it and revise our decision after a year, or at least a few months. Of course we couldn’t take it back then, but we could just dig it up and dispose of it.

The rest of the day was spent gardening. We put up the pea netting and planted the half a dozen pea plants in the raised bed. I think that’s the raised bed effectively full. The leeks are thickening up nicely, the calabrese is growing well not that we’re killing off the slugs that were attacking it and the kale is settling in nicely. The whole garden is looking good. We even measured out the area for the proposed raised bed / planter for the front garden. It’s probably too big for one single planter and I’m suggesting two beds, each 2m long by about 1.5m wide. It’s still in the sketchy ‘back of a fag packet’ stage. When we move on to Inventor and AutoCad it will become more ‘real’.

We were watching the BBC news at lunchtime when the picture froze on the TV and after a few seconds showed the ‘fault’ screen with a number to call if the program did not return. I phoned. Apparently they were “… receiving more calls than normal and the waiting time is 20 minutes”. The recording went on to suggest we phone back at the quiet time between 2pm and 4pm. It was 2.15 at this point. Not only was the TV disrupted, the broadband was dead too. Without broadband we are helpless these days. You need it to get the number to phone to report that your broadband isn’t working. Also, as we live in a ‘shadow area’ not very well covered by 4G we have to go outside to use the mobile phone to check what’s wrong. Eventually, after half an hour, service was resumed. You never miss the water ‘till the well runs dry!

Went out to St Mo’s for a walk in the sun and to take some photos later in the afternoon. Took a few macro shots, but that’s all. The best one of the buttercup got PoD. Saw two dragonflies, not damselflies, but dragonflies while I was out.  That’s most unusual in May. While I was out Scamp cut the back and front grass and also hoovered the downstairs. I know she reads this, so that’s why I’m saying “Leave some of it for me”. Delegation is the name of the game.

Today’s sketch topic was Something You Collect. So, Weemen (Minifigs) or cameras? Why not both? So that’s what I did. Not my best, but maybe I just need to settle down with it for a few days. That’s what’s happening with the liquorice allsorts sketch from yesterday. It’s growing on me.

Tomorrow, of course, is hopefully dancing in the afternoon and also perhaps at night.

An open door policy – 16 May 2019

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The door opened this morning and has been locked and unlocked a few times now. I call that a success.

Cut my hair after I got up. Number 4 all over. Thankfully Scamp corrected the bits I’d missed, and there were a few. After that I sat for a while in the sunny living room completing today’s Sudoku puzzle and also doing a quick painting of the fruit bowl with the oranges looking shiny and colourful in the sun.

With nothing else to do today and nowhere in particular to go. We finally settled on Stirling, or to be more exact, Waitrose in Stirling for the ‘messages’. I don’t know if you can actually go to Waitrose for ‘messages’. I think you go there to shop, or for shopping. We bucked the trend and went for messages.

Came home and tried to stop at Calders for some more plants. Calders was full, completely full. Not one parking space. Drove home and had lunch. An hour or two later we went back and got the plants and also a hook to hold our refilled hanging basket. Came home via Asda where I was hoping to get a couple of miniatures of whisky. The had none. It looked ominously as if that particular shelf had been cleared on purpose. This needed investigation.

Back home the sun was still shining and while it wasn’t as warm as yesterday, it was certainly shorts and tee shirt weather. So, suitably dressed I went for a walk in St Mo’s. That’s when the camera gave me a “Card Error!” Ejected it and re-inserted. Same result. After trying every thing I could think of, I knew the game was up and went for a non-photography walk over to Condorrat to see if Spar had the miniatures. Nope, they didn’t have them either. Eventually I phoned the Whisky Shop in Glasgow and was told, Yes, they had hundreds of them. The reason for the dearth elsewhere was because of new legislation for licensed premises that means they have to pay an extra fee and some are not willing to do so. Solved. Going in to Glasgow tomorrow to purchase a couple.

Still no photo, but then thought I’d take a few shots of our Strawberry & Cream Aquilegia. Set up the tripod and a few bits and pieces. Used a new card this time and it all went well.  The old card went in the bin.

Sketch theme today was A Messy Place. There are no messy places in this house. ;-). Ok. I lied. It ended up like a development sheet from a Craft & Design project, but that covered the brief. It’s done and on time.

Tomorrow, Glasgow may be the preferred destination.

Out to lunch – 13 May 2019

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Meeting Shona for lunch today.

First, though I took a trip to Bishopbriggs to get myself the shaver adaptor that caused the bother on Friday and also a card reader that would allow me to import the files from my Nikon CP950. The 950 is an ancient digital camera made in 1999 and is one of the best cameras for recording in infrared without adaptation. All you need to do is stick an R72 filter in front of it and shoot away as if it’s not there. An R72 filter is a very, very dark red. It’s so dark it looks totally opaque to the human eye. What it does is restrict almost all the visible light, only allowing through the light in the 720nm area of the spectrum, in other words, infrared. The great thing about infrared is that living green material is rendered as white and skies are black. Fake green ‘leaves’ like camouflage are rendered as black and it was this ability to differentiate fake from real that made it so important during WW2. I just wanted to do fancy stuff to the shots later in Photoshop, but since the CP950 uses Compact Flash memory cards and hardly anybody uses them now, it’s a bit of a problem getting the images into the computer. However, Currys had a card reader with CF capability, so that’s why I was up and out early to get one.

After that and after I’d salivated over the low resolution, but true infrared images, I went to meet Shona. I’d fitted a couple of locks for her in her flat and she was buying me lunch as a ‘Thank You’. We drove up to the new Milano Cafe where she had Spaghetti Carbonara and I had Spaghetti con Polpette ( meatballs). Her Carbonara looked the part, but the sauce in mine was a bit thin. Having said that, there was plenty on the plate and it was a good fun lunch.

Drove Shona home and then went out to get some photos in St Mo’s. Didn’t stay long as I had to exhibit my EDiM photos to Margie, because Gems were in the house today. Saw another red damselfly, a smaller one than yesterday’s, but it was too fast for me and I didn’t manage to capture it. I did get some IR shots with the CP950 which is held together with a heavy duty rubber band, because of a design flaw in the locking mechanism of the battery compartment. It was one of the IR photos that took PoD.

I’d already started on the sketch of the day whose topic was “Your favourite song”. My favourite song was “Raindogs” by Tom Waits and that’s what you see here. A Raindog.

Salsa tonight was energetic and exhausting. The completely new one was “Lotus”, with a reprise of “Lizzy” and “Stormtrooper”. I got the blame for Stormtrooper because the tee shirt I was wearing had a lego stormtrooper on it. Hazy must shoulder part of the blame for that because she’s the one who bought it for me!

Tomorrow looks like an interesting day with temperatures of 22ºc predicted! We may go out somewhere to celebrate.

May the Fourth be with you – 4 May 2019

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The weather fairies warned us that today would be cold with a wind from the Arctic bringing the possibility of sleet and snow. It did feel cold when we woke and despite the blue sky and sunny spells, the temperature didn’t rise much. Since we had nowhere in particular to go, we just had a day at home. Sometimes it’s better to stay home at weekends and do your travelling on weekdays when other folk are working.

Scamp was about to throw out some tulip flowers when I saw the beautiful texture and colour of their petals glowing in the sunshine. I set a camera on the table and taped a bit of tracing paper behind the flowers to allow light through, but soften the view of the living room. It took a few shots and a lot of changes to settings before I got the shot I wanted.

<Technospeak>
I finally decided that one shot wouldn’t do the job. It needed too much depth of field and the only way I was going to get it was by taking at least five shots of the subject. One at the very front petal, one at the extreme back petal and at least three in between. Actually it took seven shots. The technique is called Focus Stacking and takes ages to post-process. The more shots you take, the more accurate your final shot will be, but the more time you’ll be stuck in the computer deleting bits of the different layers. Luckily ON1 2019 has focus stacking built in and the hard work is done for you. Like all AI things, it does need some human intervention to get it exactly right. That’s what I did … for about two hours, but I think the final image was worth the effort.
</Technospeak>

Scamp made her version of Minestrone soup for dinner and I made a lovely Tear ’n’ Share bread to go with it. It was a bit like a focaccia but with tomatoes in it and less oil. It should have had mozzarella in it too, but we only had green and blue mozzarella with a Use By date of the middle of March, so we decided not to use it. The dough was really sloppy but the bread was lovely and so was the soup.

Today’s challenge on EDiM was Star Wars Day. The closest I could get to it was the heads of four Lego Troopies. Just pen for a change and a challenge.

Tomorrow we may go dancing at the Record Factory.

A day in the kitchen – 26 April 2019

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Started about 9.30am and just kept going.

First thing to do was get the Lamb Tagine on the go. After chopping and frying the onions, then adding all the spices and the lamb it all got bunged into a slow cooker with the dates and apricots. Got it up to temperature and took it up to the back bedroom to do its work. That’s the benefit of a slow cooker, it can be working away anywhere with a mains socket.

<Technospeak>
Time for a bit of relaxation playing with some old photographs I’d backed up yesterday to a new USB-C drive. First time I’d used this supposedly revolutionary system. Allegedly capable of 10Mbps compared with the 5Mbps of USB 3. I can’t say I noticed the difference, but the big benefit is the connector to the computer. It’s reversible, unlike the normal male USB connector that only goes one way round. How long has it taken someone to realise how annoying that has been? Anyway, it was great editing those 10 year old D70 photos in new software. So easy to over-process, though.
</Technospeak>

Back in the kitchen it was the pakora. One lot of cauliflower and one lot of onion and potato. Both both lots fried and then stored to cool with some retained for lunch. They tasted fine, with a nice crunchy batter.

Meanwhile Scamp was beating the living daylights out of some cream for a cake that was baking in the oven while an ice-cream maker was churning away in a corner of the living room. Another time-saving machine that can be plugged in anywhere.

By now it was well into the afternoon an I was just about to go out to get some photos when I remembered the bread. It wasn’t bread yet, it was still flour in the cupboard, yeast in another cupboard, butter in the fridge, salt on the work surface and water in the tap. Soon, however they were all in the bowl of the mixer being battered into a bread dough. I kept the dough in the bowl, parked the bowl next to the slow cooker to keep it warm and finally got out for that walk. Halfway through the walk it started to rain. It’d been predicted all morning, but I’d been too busy. Got very few photos, but the PoD was the little pink flowers. Haven’t found out exactly what they are yet, but hopefully someone on Flickr can ID them.

The visitors arrived about 8pm. The pakora had been heating in a too-warm oven for too long, they were frazzled! Luckily Scamp had made some of her “Just Soup” which she served with some bacon on top and it was much, much better than my pakora. The lamb tagine was excellent, even although I say it myself. Scamp’s signature dish of Pears in a Red Wine Sauce served with Yoghurt Ice-cream was even better. Finally the cake was a moist sponge with lemon curd cream. Didn’t like the cream, but the sponge was lovely.

After a long night and an even longer day we dragged ourselves off to bed just after midnight. It was a good night. Not great, just good.

Tomorrow a relaxing day with minimal cooking.

Reunited with an old friend – 25 April 2019

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Start of the prep for tomorrow and the rains came.

Out fairly early this morning, certainly before 10am to get some meat for tomorrow’s Lamb Tagine. Of course, when I was there I also got some sausages and the beef short ribs looked very nice, so I got a couple of them too. The carnivore then drove home.

After that, we got in the Juke and went to Falkirk, stopping on the way to get a couple of bedding plants for Scamp. Not the ones she wanted, but one bee attracter with bright orange flowers and some highly scented sweet peas. Next stop was Falkirk itself and the ring. It had caused the lady some problems soldering in the gold extension piece, and when I tried it on it was just a little bit too big. That didn’t seem to be a problem, because she could take it down just a half size and that fitted perfectly. It was a beautifully shiny, but as Scamp said, I would soon get it looking worn again. It’s already beginning to look better and it doesn’t squeeze my finger like it did before the fall. It became PoD.

Stopped at Morrison’s on the way home for even more food then lunch. Roll ’n’ Sausage for me and a plate of Chips for Scamp. Morrison’s do good cheap no-frills lunches and the coffee is quite drinkable too. When we came out it was raining and it rained on and off all day after that. The garden needs the rain, the first for about three weeks.

Back home I realised I hadn’t picked up my pills, so went for them and also Scamp added more things to the shopping list. I wanted to get another removable hard drive to back up the oldest of my digital photos. These ones date from 2000 up to 2009. In total those nine years of photos take up a measly 160GB. The photos from last year, 2018, used up 226GB! Moore’s Law is a computing term which originated around 1970. The simplified version of this law states that overall processing power for computers will double every two years. It looks like the storage for photos follows that same rule. I drove to Currys in Bishopbriggs to get the one I wanted which has a cable to utilise the USB-C port in the back of the iMac.

When I got home from my visit to Currys Technology Toy Shop, I noticed what looked like a flower head on the path. It wasn’t just the head, it was not one, but two tiny little violas growing in the mossy soil round a manhole cover at the front door. I carefully dug them up and we replanted them in a pot and its soaking up some rain on the back step as I write. I presume the plants came from a self seeding viola in the garden.

It appears that my website is stable and working as anticipated. With that in mind, today I took the decisive step of deleting everything on the old server and after that I cancelled my contract with A Small Orange. It was good fun when it started, but after the previous annual increase of 70% in the bill for my webspace, I felt it was time to look for somewhere new. Basically that’s the reason I gave them for moving on. The deed is done. ASO is no more.

While I was out, Scamp was busy with prep for tomorrow. Tomorrow it’s my turn. Lamb Tagine in the morning and pakora in the afternoon with a break somewhere for some foties, hopefully.

A well filled day – 23 April 2019

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Driving to Falkirk, and back, lunch out (for some), coffee (for some), broken website – now repaired. Just your usual Tuesday.

Very warm during the night, but the temperature was dropping all morning and, when we got out of the car in Falkirk, I was glad I had worn my fleece. Dropped my ring off in the jeweller’s to have it repaired after having it cut from my finger back in March. We will be reunited on Thursday, hopefully. Went to Morrison’s while we were there to buy muesli, hand wash and milk. That, with a few other things, came to just over £70. That’s the way the money goes.

When we came home, Scamp just had time to change before she went out for lunch with her pal Mags. I had an hour to rearrange the mess in the art room before I too went out. No lunch for me just coffee and setting the world to rights with Fred and Val.

By the time I got home, Scamp was too and there was just enough of the day left to wander over to St Mo’s to get some photos. PoD went to a branch with what looks like Wild Cherry blossom. The competitor for the PoD was this shot of a new memorial seat in St Mo’s park. The name on it is Deone, who I think is Deone MacRae who died of cancer in 2013 aged 15. The family put a memorial bench beside Broadwood Loch, but some people didn’t like it and burned it to ashes. You really wonder about the mentality of some people. The new butterfly seat is cut and welded from 6mm steel. I don’t think that will be quite so easy to burn.

After dinner which was a joint effort at a paella, I noticed all the email from the new server was offline, and so was my site. Try as I might, I couldn’t get it to clear itself. I tried a website checker and it showed the site as open. Asked Hazy to check and she got access. Eventually used the chat facility on the new server’s webpage and after some checking on their side I was told that my IP address had been blocked after too many attempts to log in to an email address using different passwords. Actually it was me who was attempting to log in and get Mac Mail to accept the new password. Good to know they are on the ball, but will have to be more careful in future when changing passwords.

That was my busy day. Tomorrow will be equally busy, I’m sure. Hoping to go dancing in the afternoon and maybe in the evening too. The weather fairies say it’s going to get colder and wetter. Oh what fun. Summer’s over for another year perhaps.