Category: Technospeak

Deepan’ Crispan’ Deevan’ – 21 March 2017

Posted on by Zogman

It’s snow, of course and that’s what we woke to today.  Not that deep and not that crisp as the temperature was three above zero and very uneven.  In fact it was just a scraping of show, but then, as I was making the breakfast, the snow returned, blown along by Windy Willie’s wild westerly wind.  Now, that’s what you call alliteration!

Once we realised that we wouldn’t be snowed in any time soon, we decided to go to Falkirk to retrieve a ring, a substitute wedding ring, that Scamp had handed in last week for repair.  Not long after I retired we went to Ayr and Scamp tripped and damaged her hand.  I thought her finger was broken, but it was just badly staved.  So badly staved that the wedding ring had to be cut off because it was restricting the blood supply to her finger.  That was almost three years ago.  It took a long time to get the ring repaired, but today we picked it up from the jeweller looking as good as new.  Driving home was a challenge with torrential rain, hail and sleet driving straight towards us.

When we got home and had lunch, the wet stuff had stopped and the sun had come out again, so it was boots on and out to St Mo’s.  I took the Big Dog with the macro lens and the E-PL5 with a 20mm lens.  A nice combo.  Just waked into the woods and saw two deer grazing down the path.  They were crosswind to me, so didn’t sniff my deodorant I crept down the path walking on the grass, not on the broken twigs, so they didn’t hear me either.  It would have been better to have brought the 300mm Tamron, but the macro gives such good quality results that I wasn’t all that worried.  The landscape is from the 20mm lens, another good quality lens.

Got home and did a bit of messing around painting the hills with snow on them.  Four miniatures in different colour schemes and another four ready for finishing tomorrow.

Tomorrow?  Not got a clue.  According to the weatherman, the snow will be gone and the weather is set fine.  As usual, we’ll see.

Macros – 19 March 2017

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Now, before I get started on macros and stuff, I have to make one thing clear.  My skin is old, I’m comfortable in it, and most of all it is, like me, quite thick.  So the the ‘Tramp’ comment by Scamp yesterday was like water aff a juck’s back.  If you don’t understand that, then sorry, life is too short for me to teach everyone the meaning of everything I say.  I accepted that the ‘Tramp’ comment was made in jest and although it might have appeared that I took offence, that wasn’t the case. Ok.  Can we move on now?

The photos above were the best I got today.  If I’d realised that the weather would stay clear and sunny all day, I might have been encouraged to travel further afield to make more of the conditions, but the weather men and women assured us that it was going to be torrential rain all day.  Give them their due, it did rain heavily during the night, but hardly a drop fell all day and for that I give thanks.  I went for a walk along the Luggie which was a raging brown torrent after the overnight rain.  It was treacherous underfoot.  Very slippy and slimy with mud moving about under my sole pair of boots.  Unfortunately, the old boots had developed a hole in the upper, just where it met (or in this case, didn’t meet) the sole, so after six years of exceptional service they had to go in the bin.  The new ones, just over a year old now are great for waterproofing, but not so good on grip.  My bargain walking trainers are great for grip and waterproofing, but are only trainers.  They don’t give support or keep you ankles dry.  I expect they’ll be fine in  the summer when that day comes.  I liked the detail in the green blobs (moss fruiting bodies) and the desiccated rose hip.  Both were taken with the Sigma 105mm Macro.  Such a good lens.  Never lets you down, always bitingly sharp.  Slow to focus, but I can put up with that.  Doesn’t have anti-shake, but doesn’t seem to need it either.  Comes into its own when focusing closer than about 150mm from the front element.  Truly a gem.

The sketch is an edited view of the bathroom window ledge.  I’ve removed half the junk and obviously a bathroom window wouldn’t have clear glass, but artistic license is a wonderful thing.  It’s not the best sketch I’ve done for my one-a-week, but it’s done and on time (must be done by Sunday).  We were both a bit clumsy to start with, but by the end we were getting much slicker.  Must go and practise our moves for tomorrow’s class.

Dull Day – 16 March 2017

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Macros, that’s what saved the day.  Macros.  Macros, technically, are extreme close-ups where the subject is recorded life size or larger on the film.  At least, that was the definition when everyone used film.  Now that so few photogs use film and the ones that don’t, use a recording element that varies from less than the size of your little finger nail to about 65mm by 45mm, the old definition is worthless.  Let’s just say that it’s an ultra-closeup.  That’s what I went out to photograph today with my trusty D7000 and a Sigma 105mm Macro lens.  The results are above and constitute about 45 minutes of shooting. I was quite pleased with them.

Earlier, Scamp was out singing with Gems and, as predicted yesterday, I slipped the leash for a couple of hours to sketch for a while before going in search of ice cream for pudding tonight.  Other than that, it was the dull day of today’s title.

After dinner (paella, since you’ve asked) I started preparing for tomorrow’s main which is venison casserole with roast root vegetables.  Thank you JIC for giving me the method and timings for that.  They’ve been in for an hour now at gas 5 and are beginning to smell nice.  In fact, I’m just going to check ……… Ok, back now and yes they are done.  Nice and tasty, even the celeriac.  I recommend it to you.  And that’s about all I can say about today.  I should have gone to the gym with a swim afterwards, but I didn’t.  I enjoyed the sketching and so the gym can wait for another day.

I imagine we’ll be busy all day tomorrow preparing the feast and it’s unlikely that the blog will be done on time, so Saturday may be catch-up day DV.

A Posh Lunch – 11 March 2017

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Scamp had booked us a posh lunch today at the Blythswood.  It was an Itison voucher lunch, but a posh one, none the less.  This was our second posh lunch this week.

As it happened, neither of us were over impressed with the Blythswood or the lunch.  Now don’t get me wrong, the food was good, just not great and the surroundings were nice, just not all that impressive.  Maybe we are being over critical or maybe places like this aren’t trying all that hard for the voucher brigade.  I don’t know what the answer is.  The food was Smoked Hake starter for Scamp and Chicken Liver Parfait for me, followed by Chicken Supreme for both of us.  Like I said, good but not great.

After lunch we got the subway out to Byres Road and walked through the Botanic Gardens which are celebrating their bicentenary this year.  Usually we just walk through the Kibble palace, but this time we took in both glasshouses.  Oh, it was almost like being back in Trinidad with the heat and the humidity.  However, alas and alack, when we came out it was just Glasgow humidity.  It was raining.  Not heavy rain, just a Scottish smir.

We thought we had nothing more to do than dodge across the street and go for a drink in Oran Mor.  Unfortunately, that was not to be.  The place was mobbed.  Not a seat to be had anywhere.  Most of the punters seemed to be engrossed in Scotland getting gubbed by the english again, at rugby this time.  Instead of a drink, we walked down Byres Road and got a piece of Tuna for tomorrow’s dinner, then got the subway back into town and walked up to get the bus home.

Just as the driver started the engine, I saw this wee wummin running across the road, arms outstretched like a scarecrow, carrying two bags in one hand and one in the other, trying frantically to catch the driver’s eye.  As he put the bus into reverse to exit the stance, I saw her visibly deflate as she realised that she had another 30 minute wait in front of her, because he wasn’t going to open the bus doors.  I don’t know what she said, but I’m sure it wasn’t “Oh dear”.

<Technospeak>
Back home, I think I’ve parted company with Dropbox.  It seems that my temporary term with 10GB of storage is rapidly coming to an end and the 2GB I’ll have in a week or so just won’t cover my requirements.  So I have to move my backup to Google Drive which generously gives me 15GB.  There is a ‘but’ and the ‘but’ in question is, ‘but it is the very devil to set up’.  I’d read up on it last night and didn’t understand a word.  Tonight I found a YouTube video explaining in words of one syllable how to do it, so I got started.  After an hour and a half of setting up a project, getting a ‘secret’, authorising it, failing, authorising it again, failing, resetting my ‘secret’ before authorising again and this time succeeding, it now seem that I have a new home for my WordPress backup.  I felt a bit like the wee wummin.  I had just thought I’d caught the Google Driver’s eye, but then he pulled out of the stance.  Never mind, it’s done now and I hope the wee wummin is home with her three bags full.
</Technospeak>

Today’s photos are from the Botanic Gardens and also a couple from Tobago.  You see Hazy, Shug and Tam did go on their holidays.

Celtic are at home to Rangers tomorrow.  We’re hoping to go for a walk down “The Green”.  Need to go early to avoid the battles.

AirTable v Bento – 16 January 2017

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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.

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.

First sketch of 2017 – 3 January 2017

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Ordered a sewing machine last week to progress my dressmaking skills. Ordered it from John Lewis in Emba because the Glasgow shop didn’t have it.  I thought it could be delivered to the Glasgow store and I could pick it up from there.  No, they couldn’t do that because the machine was in the Embra shop, not in a warehouse (?)  Maybe that’s a logical reason to JL, but it made no sense to me.  Anyway I wasn’t in a rush to get it and there was no way I was going to drive through Embra to pick it up.  I was told it would be delivered within five working days.  I phoned the Embra shop this morning to find out which day it would be delivered.  Here is a synopsis of the conversation after I’d explained that I wanted to know which day it would arrive:

“It will be delivered within five working days”
“Could you be more precise” I asked?
“Eh no.  We don’t actually deliver it.  Because it’s a small article, it will be delivered by a carrier.” *
“So will I get a phone call or an email to tell me which day it will be delivered?”
*“No, but it will be delivered either today, tomorrow or the next day”
Now surprising as it might seem, I can count to five and then add on the extra days for weekends and holidays.
“So you’re telling me that in a company as large as John Lewis, and in this day and age, you can’t tell me the DAY that my sewing machine will be delivered?”
”Yes, that’s correct.”
“Well, that wasn’t very helpful at all.”

Now, remind me.  This is the 21st century, isn’t it?  Imagine if I was working and had to take five days off my work on the off chance that my sewing machine was going to be delivered that day.  I’ve bought a lot of stuff from JL in  the past, but I’m afraid those days are now in the past.  I had thought of buying an iMac from them because they offer an extra year’s warranty, but as their delivery methods are so archaic, I think I’ll shop elsewhere.

Out at lunchtime for coffee with Fred.  No Val today as he was otherwise engaged.  Good natter with lots of laughter.

Walked over to St Mo’s when I came back and got the first sketch of 2017 completed in about 15 minutes.  I keep meaning to time my sketches.  Must do it with the next one.  Two wee boys were passing St Mo’s when I was sketching.  I heard them laughing and looked up to see one of them posing for me.  I laughed and so did they.  Just wee boys.  An old man passed behind me soon after and he seemed to be struggling along with a stick.  He seemed bemused and looked as if he was wondering what I’d found to draw in this urban landscape.  But that’s it.  It’s Urban Sketching.

I got some sunset shots with the Oly 5 and processed them according to Laura Shoe’s video  and was quite impressed with the effect.  I’ll use that method of combining basic adjustments with an overlay of graduated filter.

June came over for dinner tonight and she and Scamp had a good gossip about everything and anything.

Tomorrow?  Don’t know.  Haven’t seen the weather.

A wild night – 26 December 2016

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Howling wind and rain battering against the window all night it seemed.  Wildly high temperature too.  Almost too hot to sleep.  There really is something wrong with the weather this year.  I’m not a firm believer in Climate Change, but I’m willing to admit that this just is not the weather we are used to having in Scotland in December.  Whether it’s El Niño or the Jet Stream or melting polar ice caps, I don’t know.  I taught Woodwork and Graphics, not Geography, but I know when something isn’t working properly.  Maybe Theresa May will fix it.  There’s as much chance of that as there is of her arguing a profitable exit from the EU, but that’s enough of politics.

The wild winds and heavy rain persisted through the morning, but by afternoon the dry spells were outlasting the wet ones and the temperature was returning to the seasonal normal, so I got my boots on and headed for St Mo’s to get some photos … and some exercise.  Much needed exercise.  I had to shelter for a while under a tree form some heavy rain, but I didn’t mind that because I could see that it was only a shower and there was blue sky behind it.

Other than the swans and some ducks, I saw no other wildlife, and very few of the human variety.  I could hear a motorbike engine coming from the old BMX track, so I presume some wean got a mini scrambler bike for Xmas.

Most of todays photos were taken with the old 105mm macro lens on the Nikon.  I forgot to grab my Oly M5 and stick it in my pocket which meant no real landscape shots, but I did like the B&W shot of the runner, just visible bottom right of the frame.  Much better on Flickr.  Speaking of pocket, I DID put one of my Chrissy Prezzies in my pocket.  Scamp got me a pair of Thinsulate gloves and I’d forgotten just how windproof they are.  Great things to stick in your pocket.

Just like I intended, Scamp suggested pasta for dinner, so it was tomato and bacon pasta.  Nicely low cal.  I did have some of the killer pudding from yesterday, but only a couple of spoonfuls and even they were mainly the biscuit and sherry mix with some fruit.

The wind has dropped considerably tonight and it looks like a fairly decent day tomorrow.  If we manage it, we’ll be up and out early and somewhere nice for a walk.  That would be good, and would probably do us the world of good.

Christmas Eve – 24 December 2016

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For once we stuck to our plan and went in to Glasgow on a freezing cold bus.  Storm Barbara was still lingering around and making its effects felt as the double decker bus wandered across the road, buffeted by her gusts.

In Glasgow, after wandering through John Lewis we headed down Bucky Street then took a left turn to get a pizza in Paesano.  Our pizzas were a bit more rustic than yesterday’s lunch, but equally enjoyable in their own way.  The food was on the table less than 10 minutes after we sat down and it was as good as any pizza I’ve ever tasted and a lot better than many.  Maybe not quite as good as those from Napoli, but that’s only a maybe.

From Paesano we went down to Argyle Street for a coffee in Cafe Nero, then along to St Enoch’s, but the German market was closed.  I’m guessing that it was closed to allow the Polish folk to get home, because we all know there are few Germans in the German markets, as they are all run by Poles.  Hope ‘Pole’ isn’t a derogatory term, because I can’t think of a ‘proper’ name.  Hope it’s not as bad as ‘Scotch’.  I’m not Scotch, I’m Scottish.

With no market to investigate, we headed back up Bucky Street.  I finally got a mini display port to VGA adapter in the accursed Apple shop to try connecting my Mac Book Pro to my old ten year old monitor.  The result wasn’t exactly high fidelity, but it did work and allowed me to test out the possibility of using a desk setup.  Better to try it out for £30 than just dive in to an iMac costing £1400. From the Apple store we walked up through Buchanan Galleries to get the bus home.  A warm bus for a change and it looks like Barbara has kissed us goodbye becaus it was a much less fraught journey home.

Finally got the last copies of my calendar printed earlier tonight, so in the next couple of days they will be punched and clipped together.  After that they can be sent out.

Tomorrow?  Well, I think tomorrow is Christmas Day, so it might snow.  With temperatures in double figures that could be difficult, but we live in hope.