Category: Technospeak

Driving through the rain – 3 May 2021

Posted on by Zogman

Taking Scamp for her second Jag.

It has been a horrible day as far as the weather is concerned. It’s been raining since about 11am. It was actually raining before that, but only a light drizzle, but by 11 o’clock it was getting into its stride and it was being chased along by a gusty wind. I was working at the computer for most of the morning, checking out what had happened to the blog last night. It seemed from the email I got from WordPress that there was a glitch in the theme I use on the blog, either that or in one of the presets. I updated all the presets but the problem persisted. After I updated the theme, the problem disappeared. I’d visions of me having to call in the Web Monkey this morning, but all seemed well. I also took the time to post the first two sketches for EDiM in Flickr. I usually post them in EDiM in Facebook, but I think I’m personna non grata there after having an argument with the admins last year. Not to worry, Flickr it is this year and possibly Instagram too if I get the time.

After lunch we got ready and braved the weather to get to the car then we were off to East Kilbride. The rain was non-stop and sometimes it almost overpowered the wipers in their superfast mode.  The satnav chose a strange route to the vaccination centre and then dumped us at a T junction with a message to the effect that ‘you have reached your destination’. I chose to go right and right was right for once, the sports centre that had been commandeered was just over the hill. Dropped Scamp off and went looking for a space in the tinycar park. Not one to be found. Drove into a housing estate across the road and found a space there almost right away. Less than ten minutes later I got the call from Scamp to come and collect her. Almost thirty minutes to get there and it was all over in ten! At least it’s done now and we’re almost covered. Drove back through the same heavy rain which is still falling as I write this.  More worryingly, driving through East Kilbride, the rain turned to sleet.  Thankfully we only have rain here tonight.

Back home I struggled to get three carrots painted in watercolour. Working with tube paint is totally different from using pans. The liquid, or semi-liquid paint is much stronger than the pans, it doesn’t need scrubbed to break through the tough skin that forms on pans, but it does tend to be a lot more messy on the palette. I’ll try to persevere with it for at least the first week. Carrots will be posted tomorrow hopefully.

There was no opportunity to get an outside shot today. I tried photographing one of Scamp’s Grape Hyacinths on the back step. I was sitting inside, of course. I’m not that daft! This was about 7pm and the light had gone, despite the fact that sunset wasn’t for another hour and a half. I gave up on that with grainy images. Finally, I chose to photograph one of Scamp’s carnations, a cut flower bunch that sits on the window ledge in the kitchen. This was a 10sec exposure on a tripod at ISO 125. That was just an ‘aide memoire’ for me for next time. The resulting photo was the 5,000th I’ve taken with the Sony, since I got it last year!

Right, it’s been a terrible day and I’m going to bed to wake refreshed tomorrow because tomorrow is Star Wars Day! No plans other than getting pictures done and photos taken. That will be enough, but a walk in the dry would be good too!

Mothers Day – 14 March 2021

Posted on by Zogman

So like mothers all over the UK, Scamp had her breakfast in bed.

I joined her for a while, but I had ’Things To Do’. Things like finishing today’s Sudoku and making the dough for flatbread to have with tonight’s dinner. Things like clearing away the clutter from the back bedroom. All of which gave me no time to think about cleaning the sensor of the Sony A7M2. Anything to stop me from doing it. Luckily, Hazy phoned to wish her mum a happy Mothers Day. She also gave us an update on the new kitchen which appears to be nearing completion.

After the phone call, Scamp decided we should go for a walk. The length of the walk and the destination would depend on whether or not the rain stayed off. I had my doubts that we would get far before that happened and on this occasion I was right. We had hardly got 100 yards before the first drops fell, but we were out now and the destination was set at St Mo’s Park. Probably the shortest walk and definitely the most sensible, after our foray into the wilderness of Palacerigg during the week.

We did a circuit of the pond, saw some geese that were feeding on the grass beside the path which is quite unusual as they normally stay in the pond itself being carefully monitored by the two resident swans. There were two serious looking fishermen with serious looking kit. First time I’ve seen pole fishing being done at the pond. Most people who fish the pond carry the usual kit which is a spinning rod and reel and a selection of spinners, plus the inevitable half bottle of Buckfast. More serious ones bring a seat and an umbrella, a coarse fishing rod and reel with a collection of floats and half a dozen cans of lager. The blokes today were using fishing poles made of fibreglass or more probably carbon fibre, massive things about ten metres long. They had purpose build and chrome plated rod rests too. Most significantly, neither of them had any alcoholic beverages visible about them. Obviously serious, but not ‘real’ fishermen.

We left them to their Sunday morning entertainment and did two circuits of the pond, sheltering under one of the big conifers between circuits when the rain got too heavy. We declared that two rounds of the pond was sufficient and went home for lunch.

<Technospeak>
With the walk and lunch out of the way, there was no excuse. It was time to perform open heart surgery on the Sony. It’s not that I haven’t done this operation before. Anyone who owns a DSLR or a modern mirrorless camera with more than one lens has had problems with dust on the sensor. Called “Dust Bunnies” they are the irritating black spots that appear on photos. It’s not that I have had any serious problems with the cleaning process either. I did make a tiny scratch on the glass once, but it never made a bit of difference to any of my photos. The process is simple. Remove the camera lens. Put a couple of drops of extortionately priced sensor cleaning liquid on an equally extortionately priced sensor swab. Gently wipe the swab across the camera sensor. Flip the swab over and wipe it again in the opposite direction. Put the swab in the bin. With a bit of luck, you’re done. If not, you might need to go through the operation again with another gold dust swab.

I did all that and was happy with the result. Not perfectly clean, because the sensor never remains perfectly clean, there will always be bunnies somewhere and the replicate at an alarming rate, especially when you change lenses a lot, like I do. Maybe that’s why they’re called ‘bunnies’!
</Technospeak>

I was doing dinner tonight, but it was a simple Holy Cow curry. Simplest curries I’ve ever made. I commend them to you. I also made flat bread to go with it. Scamp did dessert which was meringue nests with tinned apricots. Tastes much better than it sounds.

Dance class tonight was checking on our Waltz and Rumba then Tango. Only about seven or eight steps, but so much to remember, like bend your knees, turn your feet out, tuck your right foot into your left instep. It seemed such a performance for half a dozen or so steps, but it did feel more like a performance than either rumba or waltz did. This was a whole new ball game.

PoD was a photo of catkins over St Mo’s. I took it after I’d done the open heart surgery on the Sony. Just to test that most of the bunnies had gone and that it’s little heart wasn’t broken. If that means nothing to you, it’s because you skipped the interesting Technospeak section!

No plans for tomorrow yet because we have a Tesco order coming some time in the afternoon.

A day for recharging batteries – 31 January 2021

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After the biz of yesterday, we both agreed we needed a slower pace today.

We did think of going out for a walk in the morning, but although it was bright enough, it was cold and there was a scattering of snow on  the ground, so we talked ourselves out of it. I think I might have eaten just a little too much yesterday, so a light lunch was called for. On Friday I’d bought half a sourdough loaf I don’t really like sourdough bread to eat on its own, but toasted it is delicious, so we had scrambled egg on toast.

Feeling a lot better, I settled down to documenting yesterday’s highlights. My usual readers will probably have read all about it by now. Scamp was pruning the greenery that was covering some of the blooms we got yesterday and that made the display look even better. With photos and blog posted, I decided it was safe to go for a walk in St Mo’s. Nobody had moved from their parking spot today and I was loathe to give up my space and have to park by the side of the road when I got back from somewhere more interesting than St Mo’s. Besides, I’d left it a bit late and the light was already fading.

<Technospeak>
I walked round the pond, then out through the woodland looking for likely subjects. I wanted to try out a new focusing method on the Sony, called “Back Button Focusing”. I’d read about it before, but it seemed a bit complicated to set up although most photogs seem happy with the results. Basically, you nominate a button to be your focusing button and remove the shutter button’s ability to refresh focus. Then you can take your time focusing using the back button and when you’re happy, press the shutter to take the photo. It only took me about ten minutes to set it up and it did seem to work as described. I took some photos using it, but couldn’t work out how to return the setup to the camera default where a half press on the shutter sets focus. I decided the light was fading too much and I was almost sure I had at least one shot on the card that would make PoD, so I set off for home.  It had indeed worked. Most of the photos I’d take were solidly in focus. After re-reading the instructions I found the magic button on the camera that would not only return it to normal service, but could be used to switch on the Back Button Focusing again. PoD turned out to be a monochrome leaf dangling pitifully from a branch with new buds starting to form. The old and the new.
</Technospeak>

After yesterday’s overindulgence, tonight’s dinner was a much pared down affair. A simple Spaghetti a la Carbonara. It might have been even better if I’d cooked the spaghetti properly, but it was edible.

Dancing class tonight centred on the rumba routine we’d been learning and I’d been dreading. We had a practise before the class and it was going fine until the music started, then it went to pot. However by the end of the lesson it was looking and feeling much better. I actually enjoyed it.

Spoke to JIC and found out that Vixen now has an injured shoulder, caused, according to JIC, by her having two speeds, Full Ahead and Stop. After being out walks with her I can understand that.

A gentler G&T each tonight and an early(ish) bed again. Temperature is already heading towards zero. More snow predicted for tomorrow, the first day of February and the start of the 28 Drawings Later challenge on FB.

Will the rain never end? – 24 November 2020

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Just another day of seemingly unremitting rain and wind.

I’m beginning to see a pattern forming from these incessant lows being driven across the Atlantic to dump their rain on us. They seem to come in three day bursts. Sometimes we almost have a dry morning. Sometimes almost a dry afternoon, but the ‘almost’ is always there. Then there are a couple of cold, dry, sunny days or sometimes only one of those before the next train of wets lands. Personally I blame Trump.

I’d downloaded a potential saviour for the old NAS hard disk, but unfortunately it didn’t live up to the hype, which was unusual because I’ve bought the same sort of software from this company before and it’s been faultless. Not today. I’m not going to rant on about this, so don’t skip ahead. All I’m going to say is I’ve found a workaround. Not an elegant one, but it does work and I’m now on the lookout for a replacement NAS.

Scamp went to Tesco today and got soaked just walking from house to car to shop and then the same coming back. You don’t have to be out in this wind driven rain for long to get soaked. After lunch I reckoned I’d get a half hour of light before darkness fell and I was just about right. I took a total of 9 photos and one of them, with Scamp’s cropping suggestion made PoD.

Today’s sketch was generated by the letter ‘D’ and it was Driver, as in Screwdriver. It could have been Dugs, Diamonds or Donald (selfie), but for some reason I chose screwDriver. I think it looks a bit bent, this screwdriver, but who has never used a screwdriver to open a paint can or two? Some say today’s choice is a con or a cop-out, but “C” was yesterday.

Dinner tonight was mince ‘n’ tatties for me and cabbage ‘n’ tatties for Scamp.  Not the most elegant food, but filling and very tasty.  I still had to have a great deal of assistance from Scamp to cook the mince, but my head was still trying to get round the problems of Linux and Unix.  If that means nothing to you, then you are lucky.

Tomorrow may be the first of two dry(ish) days. We must wait and see about that.

Another early(ish) rise – 23 November 2020

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Off to get some paint, not watercolour and not for me.

Shona is getting her living room painted and needed transport to get the half a dozen tins of paint from B&Q. I didn’t think it would be open, because away back in March it was closed for the first few weeks of Lockdown. It was open today but there was no queue. Found the paint after a hunt round the shelves. Organisation is not the watchword in this B&Q by the look of things. Drove back to her flat and carried the tins up the stair, dumped them and headed back to coffee in our house, our good deed done for the day.

<Technospeak>
I waited a while before I started interrogating the NAS drive again, but I was fairly sure it would work this time. It didn’t. I couldn’t get in through the control panel (called a Dashboard). I couldn’t get in through my homemade access app that’s worked for the last three years. I couldn’t get in through the low-level Network app in Utilities. I eventually succumbed to the inevitable and sourced a video that showed how to get into the case without the use of a claw hammer. That worked quite neatly. The upshot was the drive is undamaged, but it’s formatted to Linux and the partitions are Linux too. One person suggested booting into a Linux distro and using that to access the files. It works, but I can’t work out how to download them from there. More research needed.
</Tecnospeak>

By the time I’d gone through all these hoops, it was too late to get any photos, so after dinner I took the NAS hard drive and set up the tabletop you see here. If in doubt, use minifigs to set up something to laugh at. This one brightened my night. Well, that and the remains of yesterday’s wine.

Today’s sketch is brought to you by the letter ‘C’.  It could have been Citrus, Coconut or Camera, but I finally settled for two carrots.  Pencil sketch with a splash of watercolour.  I was fairly happy with the final result.  Managed to post it to Instagram from the computer, using Developer Tools in Chrome.  Nice little workaround.

That was about it for a really dull, depressing day. I’m sure my Italian Pal who understands Linux will have a solution to my problem. I’ll email him tomorrow. A wee challenge for him.

Tomorrow we have no plans. There may be dry spells in the rainstorms that are blowing in from the Atlantic. We might manage to catch one of those dry spells for a walk.

An improving picture

Posted on by Zogman

It started off dull, but then the sun found a way through.

Spent most of the morning struggling with the Sony menu system and after reading many pages on the net, began to see how to control this full frame beast. Managed to get two Nikon lenses working with it, but the third, the long zoom was uncontrollable and I gave up in frustration and had lunch.

Scamp suggested a walk to calm my nerves, I think and I agreed. We walked a circuit of Broadwood Loch, stopping a couple of times to get some shots. The best one I got IMO was what you see here as PoD. It’s a view of the loch from the car park using the old Nikon 10 – 20mm lens on the Sony A7.

<Technospeak>

The problems are:

  1. The ‘Type G’ lens has no aperture ring, so aperture has to be controlled with a ring on the adaptor. Therefore you, the photog, have no idea what aperture is set and are shooting by eye.
  2. The lens is an APS-C which means the coverage of the lens is meant to be for a smaller sensor than the full frame sensor, so what you get is a sharp image enclosed in a circular frame with a dark surround.

In other words, it’s a bit hit and miss, mostly miss up until now. With that said, once the image has been cropped and exposure adjusted, it looks fairly reasonable, if a bit distorted. Later in the afternoon I discovered that Sony had thought about point 2 above and included a switch, buried deep in the labyrinth of the menu system, to adjust exposure for APS-C lenses. Too late for the afternoon’s photo session.
</Technospeak >

OK JIC, you can come back into the fold again

It was a very pleasant walk for all the photo babble. Sun was shining, birds were singing. A beautiful October day.

However, I’m afraid the lovely A7 has to go back to JL this week. I don’t know who owned it before me, but they didn’t know or care how to keep it clean. Today’s sunshine revealed hundreds of dust bunnies all over the sensor. You don’t notice them on dull days, but on bright days they come out to play. If I was conscientious I’d get out my cleaning swabs and give it a good scrub, but not after I’d paid good money for it. It was cheap, but not that cheap. Lovely though the gradation of tones is, it has to go back and well within the 30 days too. However, before it does go, I’m going to have a good look at that APS-C setting (the one JIC doesn’t know about, because he skipped that part of the blog.)

Dinner tonight was Scamp’s Just Soup followed by Mushroom Risotto. Soup was up to Scamp’s usual high standard, risotto could have been better, a bit stodgy.

Spoke to JIC and got the lowdown on interview technique and things going on down south. Scamp booked a house we’re hoping to have for a week at Easter 2021 all being well.

Today’s Inktober sketch was a Radio. I chose Scamp’s DAB radio. The drawing is a bit rough, but it’s good enough.

Tomorrow it’s going to be dull and wet. I may go to the butchers in Muirhead and get some carnivore food. It will stop me mourning the loss of a dream camera.

The Teacher and the Teacher – 9 September 2020

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Out after a quick coffee this morning to meet John.

Drove to Chatelherault to meet John. We were going for a walk in the Chatelherault Estate to talk about cameras, apertures, shutter speeds and the mysteries of ISOs. Things I’ve been using for years and years, but never really had the chance to explain to anyone. Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve talked about them to lots of folk, but very few of them listened. Even fewer understood a word I said. Someone said of photogs, that they could conduct an entire conversation using just letters and numbers. I’m not sure that’s entirely correct, but there is a semblance of truth in it.

We started off going over the Duke’s Bridge and on past Cadzow Castle which is pretty much a ruin now. It would appear that the restoration has hit a roadblock, judging by the fact that nature has more or less covered the scaffolding that was erected about ten years ago. John took us up to the Cadzow Oaks which are much more impressive than the ruined castle. They are reckoned to be over 800 years old and as someone commented, they look like how you’d imagine Ents to look in The Hobbit. They surround an area of earthworks that may have been the groundwork for a castle that would predate Cadzow Castle and may have been Roman in origin.

Ah, but we weren’t out to do historical stuff, we were there to take photos. The weather was mixed. While we were sitting talking beside the oaks the light was constantly changing, making it difficult to get any decent shots. That’s my excuse anyway. I tried to explain the basics of exposure, using the triangle of Aperture, Shutter speed and ISO. I don’t know if I covered it all that well and I’m sure I didn’t explain it as lucidly as I’d have liked, but it was a decent day, and we were out for a walk. While we were photographing leaves and moss on an old (not oak) log a woman stopped to comment on the shapes the lichen was making. She had a dog with her. A white dog with a face like a lamb. When I got home that’s how I described it to Mr Google and he informed me it was a Bedlington Terrier. We, John and I went for coffee and a cake before we parted company. He was determined to walk home, I was driving.

Got a bit of a fright on the M73 passing a Land Rover which was tootling along doing about 50mph while I was in the outside land doing a neat 70mph. Then the Land Rover started sliding across into my lane. Whoever was driving must have seen me at the last minute and swerved back into their lane as I took evasive action. In my rear view mirror I saw them indicate and fishtail onto the hard shoulder. Glad of the dash cam which caught the incident nicely! The clip is now downloaded just in case.

Dinner tonight was chicken stir fry made by Scamp of course. I don’t do stir fry. I won’t say can’t I can, just not as good as Scamp. After that we watched the final episode of Series 3 of Line Of Duty. Irritatingly, halfway through it I remembered how it ended. It didn’t detract from the build up though.

PoD was of ivy growing on the Juke’s Bridge at Chatelherault.

Tomorrow we may go to Glasgow, just for the run and the dash cam will be on!

Making the jump to Lightspeed – 18 August 2020

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New modem today. A little prezzy from Mr Branson

It was a lady from Yodel who handed Scamp the box just before lunch. Over lunch I digested the instructions as well as bacon and an egg. It seemed too easy. Switch off and disconnect the old modem. Connect, plug in and switch on the new one. They even supplied a plastic spanner for the disconnection/connection. Then we waited as little coloured lights flashed across the front of the new black box. Finally they settled down to a plain white (on light) and a couple of green lights. After that and after typing in the long password we were in!

Before the switch over the stats were:

Latency 24ms. Download speed 66.4Mbps. Upload speed 9.8Mbps

After the switch over:

Latency 30ms. Download speed 104.6Mbps. Upload speed 9.6Mbps

Yes, it’s all gobbledegook to me too, but the download speed was over what we’d been promised, so a 6ms lag in response was forgivable … for now.

With everything ticking along smoothly and both our phones now connected to the new black box we went out for a walk. Just to be on the safe side we both packed a light wet weather jacket, because heavy rain was forecast for the later afternoon. We needn’t have bothered, the rain kindly waited until we’d walked round the boardwalk at Broadwood Loch, walked over the dam, continued down and round the exercise machine circuit (no, we didn’t use any of the machines) and on up to the shops to get some fruit, then home. It was after all that, that the rain came. Lightly at first, then heavier until it was good wetting rain. Scamp had decided not to risk cutting the grass when we got home and I’m sure she knows it was the right thing to do. It means she’ll be out there tomorrow testing the grass to see if it’s dry enough for a short cut.

We spent the evening introducing the various electronic devices in the house to the new black box in the corner. Still got some to do, but it’s all a lot easier than when I brought a little bit of circuit board home one Sunday afternoon long ago, plugged it into the back of my home built PC and found the Internet.

PoD was a panorama of Broadwood Loch made in Lightroom from six frames and with a more interesting sky than nature provided today. That’s what software is for. Ansel Adams reputedly said that “Making a photograph only starts with the camera.” A wise man.

Tomorrow Scamp may be grass cutting. I’m thinking I may be painting. All that may change, of course. It will depend on the weather.

Confusion Reigns – 3 August 2020

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Confusion may have reigned, but there wasn’t much actual rain. A bit, but not much.

I’d promised to clean up the inside of the car and that’s what I did first this morning. It’s not sparkling clean, but it’s not nearly as dirty and messy as it was. Not quite in the JIC category, more … lived in!

With the future of the Juke in mind, I phoned Nissan to check if I was actually booked in for a meeting tomorrow (not Thursday as I’d reported in yesterday’s blog). I seemed to confuse the receptionist because I didn’t have a department or a sales person she could transfer the call to. She eventually just passed it on to the first available sales person. I then proceeded to confuse him too. Eventually I cut to the chase and asked him: “Do you have an appointment scheduled for me to visit tomorrow?” He said “No.” Not the answer I wanted, but at least we were getting somewhere. He now wanted to hand this confusing and possibly confused customer over to someone else. He opened my file and found the salesman I dealt with three years ago when I bought the Juke. He said he’d contact him and get him to phone me later. I think he went out to have lunch then and left his phone deliberately in the office. Locked in a drawer, no doubt.

Scamp wasn’t feeling so good today. She had been feeling sick during the night and hadn’t slept much. For those reasons, she had a light lunch, and so did I because I was still trying to get my head round what had happened. To clarify things we started looking at options for loans or money transfers, basically working out what was the easiest way to deal with the offloading or keeping of the Juke. With my head spinning in a different way now I suggested we take a run to Bishopbriggs to buy a 2 Terabyte removable drive to let me back up the MacBook Pro and the iMac using Time Machine. It’s an old but reliable way of backing up your entire Apple computer with more options than there are with Carbon Copier. Don’t roll your eyes JIC, I’m not going deep into the technicalities. Carbon Copier is a disaster recovery tool. Time Machine is a file recovery tool. Anyway, we drove to Bishopbriggs and bought the cheapest one I could find with a reputable make.

Back home again, I was just about to go on a ‘beastie hunt’ when my phone rang and it was the salesman who sold me the Juke trying to unravel the mess. The phone call I got last week from Renault finance was actually telling me about a discount event that runs from Wednesday 5th until Saturday. They had got their wires crossed and had also been booking people for the event from today and causing a lot of problems as a result. To simplify things I agreed that we’d to to the VIP event which will also feature an extra discount (probably less than 1%). So, I have until Wednesday to get rid of the remaining seagull crap, dust the inside of the car. Wash it down and tidy up the boot. I might get the seagull crap removed. The rest? No chance!

There were no beasties posing for photos today. The bees were too busy, the beetles were beetling about, the ladybirds were lazing, even the flowers were fading. I came home almost empty handed and with no quality work.

Scamp was feeling better by dinner time and had some light tomato spaghetti. After dinner I was making my coffee when I spotted him. There is a Cyberman in my coffee machine! It took me a few seconds to prise him out and half an hour to get a tripod and camera positioned so that I could record his existence. What you see above is living proof that Cybermen exist!

Later we found that series 1 episode 1 of Line of Duty was on BBC 1 (also on iPlayer). It’s a totally believable storyline about corruption in the police and must be the best cop series on TV. I think we started watching it from about halfway through series 2 or maybe we started at series 3. Worth watching if you haven’t seen it before.

Right, so we aren’t going to Stirling tomorrow. In fact, by the looks of the weather we won’t be going anywhere tomorrow. Certainly not without a good Goretex jacket. It’s going to be wet and windy.

Feeling a bit run down – 2 July 2020

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You know how some days you feel a bit lacklustre and not exactly full of energy. That’s how Scamp’s wee red car felt today.

We had spent the morning lounging around and too lazy to do much. Although the wonders of shopping in Glasgow were drawing us in to the big city, inertia was holding us fast. Eventually we decided that today was a lovely sunny day after a few wet and dull days, and we should both make the most of it. Tomorrow promises to be wet and windy. That might be a better day to wander round the shops. Our decision was to go and do some food shopping because Scamp was chef tonight, then I might go out for a run on the Dewdrop. Scamp’s car hadn’t turned a wheel for about a month, so she offered to drive, except …

When she turned the key in the ignition the starter coughed a few times and then went silent. She tried again and it was like a death rattle. Lifted the bonnet, but there was nothing to see. After my recent problems with the Juke, I suspected a flat battery. Scamp tried phoning for the AA which is run through our bank, but there was a 20min wait in a queue, even to find out if we were covered for home start. I phoned Jim Dickson our go-to place for all car consumables to find out how much a new battery would cost. It was a lot less than Kwik Fit or AA were quoting, like a hundred pounds less in the case of the AA.

After a fair bit of swearing and about half an hour’s work the old battery came out and I took it for a run to see what Mr Dickson would say about it. He (or as it turned out, she because it was Ms Dickson who was in charge today) said yes, they had one in stock and for once it was the cheap one we needed. Back home I wrestled the new battery into place and nearly wrecked a Torx spanner tightening the retaining bolt. Before I connected the terminals back in place I did check with Mr Google who told me that I was correct in assuming that the negative terminal was the first to be connected. I don’t know where I’d remembered that from, because it’s a very long time since I’ve replaced a battery in a car. With everything connected, the key turned, the engine started an Scamp had a smile on her face again.

Work done, I had an hour to spend walking over St Mo’s before dinner. Came back and sat in the garden with a pint of Guinness while the chef prepared dinner which turned out to be a lovely Paneer Curry. Quite the best curry I’ve had in a long time. I must get the recipe!

While I was out I got today’s PoD which is a seven spot ladybird. Managed a shot of a hoverfly masquerading as a bee too. I took the ladybird with a conventional shot, but the hoverfly was captured using Post Focus. It’s really an extremely short video that allows you to select one frame to download and turn into a JPEG file. Yes, JIC I know that’s Technospeak and you weren’t warned. Sorry. Just call it Black Magic! That’s how it seems to me and I know how it works.

Because of the battery problems, I didn’t really get round to doing a sketch until just before I started the blog, but it is done and will be posted tomorrow, all being well. Also tomorrow we may go in to Glasgow if the rain isn’t too heavy.