After a busy but lovely day yesterday entertaining our friends A, V and HH (too much eating, drinking and talking - my how the time flew as it always does in splendid company) today was a day of rest and recreation. In our case that meant a six mile walk on the South Downs way to try and counteract the effects of Donna's magnificent Victorian trifle from yesterday's lunch. In this case our walk took us near to Lancing college and Shoreham-by-sea. The weather was magnificent which is a lot more than can be said for yesterday. I am not going to warble on any more. I will leave you with a short video clip that I took this morning, showing the area, the blue sky and the fluffy white clouds - a perfect English summer's day. Turn your sound up and you should be able to hear the Skylarks singing. No, I don't mean the grey and rainy one that you see in cartoons. I mean that I am now the proud owner of my very own cloud server. I am always running out of disk space where I take a lot of photographs plus I have a dodgy disk drive in my collection. So I decided to invest in yet another three terabyte external disk drive but this one is a disk with a difference. You see, it doesn't plug into the computer like most external disk drives. This one plugs into my broadband router instead and is accessed from the PC by the router. So what? Well, it means that as long as my router is turned on I can access my photographs and music over the internet, wherever I am, on whatever device I like. Thus, my music collection is instantly streamable to my mobile phone without having to use a service such as Spotify. If I want to see whatever pictures I have loaded to my own cloud then I can do so. I can bore the knickers off people with impromptu slideshows of my works if I wanted to. It also means that Donna has access to my cloud over the home network and over the Internet in case she needs to retrieve a document. The only drawback is that I have to load the disk up with data so I can scrap the dodgy one and that is taking a bit of a time. Nil desperandum. I will get there and then I can be free to sit under my own little cloud and let it rain pictures, videos and music all over me as I see (and hear) fit. The weekend is upon us and we are expecting, and looking forward to having, guests. Donna has been busy in the kitchen today whilst I have done my best to keep out of her way. I don't know if I will be posting tomorrow or not. Here's a short documentary on an old boy who is determined to build a chopper to attend a particular meeting. I wish I had his dedication! Here's a small tribute to Tom Fugle. Tom Fugle from scott pommier on Vimeo. Some people like to have parties; yet others like to organise events. In both cases there is often a need to advertise them. For children's parties this is often a large bunch of brightly coloured balloons tied to a gatepost or branch of a tree. For other events, a village fĂȘte for instance, some sort of signage is often placed at regular intervals, as locally as just the road the event is happening in or slightly more widespread geographically to try and capture lots of passing people's interest. It was by the means of these sorts of signs that Donna and I came across the classic and vintage car rally at Brinsbury college, the Wiston steam rally and the Knepp Castle weed and wildflower fair. All of these were fun things to go to and we enjoyed them immensely. However, what happens once the event is over? In the days of a major event when the signage was often made of enamelled metal posted by the RAC or the AA, you could guarantee that the signs would be collected up for usage next year. These days though, most of the signs are made of cheap corrugated plastic and it seems as if it is no-one's job to remove them any more. They just seem to collect, get more and more dilapidated until eventually the Council remove them as waste, some other event organiser tears them down so that they can put their signs up later or the signs just sit there and rot! Take the "Paws in the Park" event in Horsham. That was held at the end of May yet the signs are still littering the hedgerows with no imminent removal in sight. How about the kiddies party balloons? They linger, start deflating until there is something resembling a coloured, used condom just hanging there. Why isn't it someone's job to remove these items straight after the event? Why don't the parents do it? Even the local council are into ignoring signage. Just the other day I saw a temporary sign that read "Flood" at a place where flooding does occur (and in Spades this past winter) but the council have neither removed the sign, which is collapsing and getting very ragged, neither have they corrected the cause of the flooding. Another warning sign reads "Ice". Really? In June? Even in England with our shocking summer weather I feel that is a bit optimistic and about as likely as England winning the cricket. I suppose that it has to be better than the plethora of old bedsheets that people would daub with "Happy birthday Brenda 40 today" or whatever, that would then be slung over a motorway bridge annoying Brenda immensely and finally being allowed to fall onto the motorway where it could potentially have caused an accident. It is also better than the mawkish shrines that are popping up along the roadside where fatal accidents have helped improve the gene pool by removing the careless and the stupid. I don't mind if the flowers and ornaments are kept fresh but there is nothing more pitiful than the "So long Freddie, you'll never be forgotten" sign and a bunch of decaying stalks in a cellophane wrapper cable tied to a lamppost. The same lamppost that used to stand upright until Freddie ploughed his motorcycle into it. Is it a sign of the times that signs themselves are becoming articles of rubbish; trash that is tolerated instead of being collected and the perpetrators fined for littering? Let me put up a sign and see if people agree with me over the next year or so. Rant over... Have you ever looked at Facebook and thought "other people's lives are more interesting than mine"? All is not as it may appear to be! What's on your mind? from Shaun Higton on Vimeo. Why do the British do it? We put our heroes on pedestals only to knock them off it a few moments later. I am one of the worst when it comes to jumped up footballers and poncey cricketers but they are not heroes in the true sense of the word. The shower that brought shame to English football deserve all they get as far as I am concerned and shouldn't be allowed to play for England ever again but that is my opinion. No, I am talking about real heroes. Last night we attended a talk about how Field Marshall Montgomery of Alamein led the British armies in Europe from D-Day right through to Victory in Europe day just under a year later. Now I am not saying that Monty was infallible. He did make a grave error over the taking of Antwerp and not clearing the enemy from both sides of the river Scheldt or taking Walcheren island fortress. The enemy then regrouped, entrenched and it wasn't until many hard fought weeks later that the port of Antwerp could be used for unloading and supplying the Allies with much needed fuel and munitions. It probably added three months to the war and cost more lives than it should have done. However, Monty ran a tight ship overall and saw the job through despite fighting the lion's share of the German armour and infantry in Normandy and beyond whilst the Americans broke out of Normandy southwards and moved with considerable speed. Military historians (particularly in the 1980s) grasped the wrong end of the stick and accused Montgomery of being too cautious when what he was actually doing was trying to keep casualties to a minimum. Be aware that by then the British had been fighting for the better part of six years and stocks of available manpower were dwindling rapidly. If he had coerced his men to fight harder and he had pushed them, the casualty rate would have been disastrous. We tend to denigrate our heroes, we laud our enemies for being better when quite the opposite should be done. The only thing I can say is that in centuries to come, Montgomery will be remembered for what he did rather than the manner in which he did it (the same way that we don't question Wellington's methods). So let's hear it loud and proud for the British hero! This is weird to the point of being macabre. Fingers Tale. "FINGERS TALE" from StudioMica on Vimeo. It has been said that empty vessels make the most noise and I do believe that is what I have been doing for the last four and a half years - making noise. This is why, yesterday, I decided quite consciously that I wouldn't write a blog entry. I really didn't have anything to say and you probably don't want to hear about my daily routine when I get stuck for something to scribble about (for your information I booked a vets appointment, booked the catteries for when we go up north for my Lancaster flying experience, I took my camera in to have the sensor cleaned and I exchanged the defective security light - not that interesting). What I am saying here is that for a while, I may not be writing my blog every day. Having said that, there is precious little time to do anything today because we are off to another book talk this evening and Donna wants to visit a place of interest beforehand. Ho hum - no peace for the wicked. Here's a peaceful little video clip. Panoramic time lapse film. It's quite fascinating. It is a simple question but why is it that my greatest ideas come from my dreaming moments on those rare occasions when I actually sleep at night but are utter nonsense once i have woken up? I had some weird dreams last night that could have been due to an excess of British beer or the pâté and Stilton that I had as a light snack before bed time or maybe a combination of both. I dreamed of a series of tubes disguised as grey multi-stacked Portakabins (like you see at many construction sites these days) which created the ability for the person passing through them to travel short or great distances to other piles of grey Portakabins. In my dream it was part of a spectacular, Hollywood-style chase scene which had me trying to escape from various people chasing after me. It was all so vivid and clear as to how they worked and the whole thing ran like a gigantic three dimensional chess game. When I roused this morning, it all seemed very incongruous and not feasible but what I want to know is have I just invented the worlds most incredible piece of teleportation or perhaps on a slightly lower note, have I just dreamed up an amazing plot for a book? Please help me to unravel my brain because I think that I would prefer to have created a transportation system - there's probably more money in it! I was trawling around my favourite Youtube sites when I came across this very short and lovely animated advert for vodka. I hope that you have a great week ahead and that you don't need vodka to get you through it. Ever since Donna "retired" it seems as if we are on a never ending entertainment cycle! Today it was the turn of AP to come down to Chateau Everest. She is a lovely lady and is one of those people who in the course of her life have had so many things go wrong but she keeps on smiling and fighting through. Just a couple of years ago, she lost her husband to Multiple Sclerosis and she still feels his loss most keenly. However it spurred her on to do things new and now, for instance, she is a very accomplished seamstress who thinks nothing of looking at a coat in a shop window that she likes, go home, cut a pattern out of newspaper and then cut and sew a new coat for herself. She really is a lovely lady and what's more she likes a tipple of beer as well. So after picking her up at Horsham station and wandering around town, we came home and I broke open the beer that I purchased yesterday and we had a couple of pints of Darkstar breweries finest - very nice indeed. This does mean that I haven't done a great deal today because Donna and I have spent the vast part of the day talking with our guest. So with little more ado, I will wish you a happy summer solstice and don't forget that the evenings start drawing in again from tomorrow (ain't I a little ray of sunshine?) I found this little bit of film fascinating because the world will be a poorer place when this gentleman and his skill dies. Balan the Blowpipe Maker from Ross Harrison on Vimeo. ...that if you have to remove twenty screws from an inspection plate, all screws will come undone smoothly except for the last one. Once that last screw has been removed, you will find that you have removed the wrong inspection plate. On replacing the screws, you will just about tighten the last one and find that you have forgotten to replace the gasket! I had one of these jobs today. I have been waiting for a few days for a replacement bulkhead light with PIR detector to be delivered and this morning it arrived in Burgess Hill. So I squeezed a few minutes extra into an already busy schedule of preparing for a house guest tomorrow to go and pick it up. Feeling full of enthusiasm, I decided to put it up this afternoon - you know - get the job out of the way. No biggie because it is more or less the same as the old unit and should have swapped over nicely. Out comes the step ladder and a variety of tools "just in case" and the job went reasonably smoothly until I came to switch the unit on. There is a test pattern that one performs to make sure that the light is going to work except that the light was already working straight after I turned the mains back on. I looked at the instructions which mentioned about the sensitivity the unit would have to light and how long it would remain on for and how to adjust this. That is when I found that the unit was unserviceable. The two screws that one turns to adjust the light don't work. So I had to undo everything I had already done, put the old unit back and pack up the new unit so that I can take it back for replacement. It wouldn't surprise me to find that the unit was a dud that had already been brought back. Oh well. I know what I am going to be doing on Monday.
Here's a video to end the week with. The music is all sorts of "Meh!" but the tiny planet effect has been very well done. Have a great weekend. I had a great time today having a chinwag and a cup of tea with an old work friend. It's always nice to get together and chew the fat but of late I have noticed something wrong and it is getting more wrong as time passes. She was always a slightly plump lass at the best of times and given her short stature, it has always made her look a little "round" but all the while it stayed like that, it was fine. Of late though I have noticed that she has stacked on weight. A lot of weight. Given the fact that she is now a middle aged lady and therefore could be having the sorts of problems that middle aged ladies tend to get (e.g. water retention) I might be worrying unduly however she has turned from being cutely plump and curvy into someone who is desperately overweight with a lot more weight and waist inches than is good for her. I know for a fact that she likes her booze so when she goes out with the ladies, she is prone to quaffing quantities of wine, cider, beer and chocolate cream liqueurs. She is also fond of fast foods whether she is going out or is eating at home. All of this has meant an increase in her weight which now is affecting her health. Now don't get me wrong here. As Mister "I've not been slender since I was sixteen" Everest I could be accused of being the pot that calls the kettle black but I do try to keep my weight down now and to take some exercise. The mildest of exercise ( a little bit of light gardening, for instance) will have my friend wheezing and puffing like an old cart horse. In the past I have made light of the matter with her. For instance, I have jokingly offered her frequent amounts of rampant rumpy-pumpy to wear some of the excess avoirdupois off her. I even managed to convince her to get an exercise bike and do a few minutes cycling each day but apart from the very first time I made her get on it a few months back, she hasn't touched it. She has a dog so what could be better than a couple of brisk walks in the morning and evening? However he is a little ball of lard too and he wheezes just as much when he waddles, so that isn't going to do her any good. I thought that the message had finally got through when she plugged her Nintendo Wii into her television and it told her that she hadn't visited the fitness program she uses for almost a year and that her weight is such that she is now clinically obese. Even her doctor has suggested that she could stand to lose a couple of pounds but there is always a good reason why she can't (or won't), the latest one being that she is off on holiday at the end of this month, that she wants to enjoy herself and will start dieting when she returns but I have heard it all before. It's just so much of a shame because she is such a lovely soul, however she is heading for a medical crash of epic proportions unless she starts to do something about it and sooner rather than later. I'll work on what I can say and how I can say it whilst she is away. Now this animation is quite surreal and somewhat macabre. "Bless you" ...because I am having to do it all myself! Isn't it amazing? In the past, people would call at your door every three months to get the electricity meter readings so that you could be billed for the electricity that you have used. Now they try to rook you for more money "based on your past usage" unless... you give them the meter readings... so instead of hiring the man to come around and read your meter, they charge you the same amount of money and get you to do the job instead! Works wonders for the bosses bonuses and shareholders. Another bit of excellent service coming up. I couldn't receive my btinternet emails on my smartphone today. After a couple of attempts to put my password in (knowing that it hadn't changed despite what the error message told me) I fired up my PC and tried it there. No. Same issue except that I received an extra box telling me to visit some cruddy Yahoo! / btinternet mail website to "verify my account details" which I did... end of problem... but being an irritable beggar, I checked via Google and found that a lot of other people have been having the same problem. Now, for all of you btinternet users out there, BT is swapping away from Yahoo! mail (hoo-bloody-ray! About bloody time!) and are swapping back to their own mail services and unless you register your email to your broadband account or pay for a different service then you could lose your email address when they migrate you back to BT mail. Feeling utterly annoyed, I phoned BT to answer a couple of technical questions and finally got through to an Indian support technician who was almost unintelligible and couldn't give me any answers. When I started my BT account almost twenty years ago now, my btinternet email address was linked inextricably to my account but when Yahooligans! got their grubby little mitts in there a few years back (BT must have hired them to provide a service - HA!), it was unlinked. Now, I have to wait until I receive a message from BT telling me that I won't be able to use my Yahoo!-mail-related-btinternet email address until I logon to the BT mail web service instead and if I don't do it at that point, I am likely to lose my btinternet email address that I have been using for almost twenty years. However, they can't tell me when my address will be migrated. It could be as soon as June 24th or later than September. In the meantime, I can still use my email engine (Thunderbird, Outlook or whatever) but I will have to check back in to the web based bt.com email service to see if I have been migrated and see if my email address is still mine. Thanks guys. Another fine example of service where if I don't do it myself then something unpleasant will happen. Now I needed a giggle and this gentleman provided it. He has superimposed himself over a music video for a Britney Spears song. So much more fun than the original which you can find on Youtube if you are that desperate. More power to this gentleman's elbow! I don't know whether I can say a lot. I'm still on a buzz about it and still trying to find the words that I want to say about the whole day. I can give you an itinerary and a bit of spiel about it but I can't put into words just how magical the experience was. It was all very moving. We started the day at the Battle of Britain memorial at Capel le Ferne where we met the organizer of the day's activity, Steve Burt from http://goactionstations.co.uk/ and found out that there was a full house for the Platinum Spitfire experience (i.e. nine of us to fly and nine guests). After a guided tour in the steadily worsening weather we trooped over to Pent Farm airstrip to await the return of the Spitfire Mk V which had been accompanying people from the two morning Silver experience flights. There was time to kill so most of us started chatting amongst ourselves, finding out what our interests were and wondering why, at a Battle of Britain event, that there was a mobile German sausage snack wagon serving up tasty Germanic dinners. It turns out that Steve has a bit of a wry sense of humour and always hires this particular wagon, to show the utter futility of war; where seventy years ago we fought, now we eat their food and chat. With that gorgeous sound of a Merlin engine approaching, I just had time to heft my camera and grab a couple of swift shots as Flight Lieutenant Charlie Brown brought the Spitfire in on a low pass and a banking turn before landing. Lunch was swiftly devoured before we were allowed to inspect the Spitfire at close quarters but there was a definite "No touching!" rule as parts of the aircraft are unbelievably fragile (the doped, Irish linen tail surfaces for example) and other bits are incredibly dangerous (hot exhausts, propellor etc). We were allowed to chat to the pilot, Charlie Brown, who was a very pleasant chap. It turns out that he was due to complete his one thousandth flying hour on Spitfires that very afternoon and when asked how he he would celebrate the event, he said that he would reflect on what an amazing job he has, flying such a gorgeous aircraft. Such a pleasant man and so much nicer than some of the stuck up and arrogant pilots I have met in the past. Lunch over, we drove off in convoy to Lydd airport where we were treated to champagne and canapés and we met our pilot who was to take us up in a Chieftain light aircraft for our Spitfire rendezvous. We watched the previous flight take off and saw the Spitfire come in and tuck up behind them. As the sound of the Merlin engine passed us, one of the ladies had a tear in her eye. Isn't it amazing how time flies? Before we knew it we were aboard our aircraft, taxiing and taking off for our rendezvous. The next forty minutes are a blur. A total blur of emotions and photography. The Spitfire has to be one of the most iconic aircraft of all time and the grace and ease with which she flew alongside us and performed an aerial ballet to allow us all adequate time to photograph her, sometimes coming as close as wingtip to wingtip. For me the most moving part was as we crossed the coast at the Battle of Britain memorial and the most wonderful part was chasing along the White Cliffs of Dover, heading for Hellfire Corner. We passed over the site of RAF Manston, up the Thames Estuary and on reaching Reculver, Charlie Brown bade us farewell and slipped into the clouds above to return to Duxford where the Spitfire is homed as part of the Historic Aircraft Collection. As I wrote previously, I just cannot put into words the emotions that we all felt. Some of the old boys who had worked on these magnificent aircraft in the Second World War were almost in tears, some of us were excited and me... I was just gobsmacked. The remaining flight back to Lydd was just an ordinary flight in a cramped, small aircraft. Even after touchdown when we were reunited with the "guests" (who had been partaking of more champagne and canapés) there was more a sense of inner brooding than excitement from the people who were lucky enough to fly. I am sure that everyone of them is in the same state as myself and trying hard to put it into words. I have put up a small video clip of the flight below (at least you can see how grotty the weather was!) Now all that is left for me to do is fly alongside a Lancaster bomber and that is going to take place in August! Well, what can I say? The weather was absolutely shocking but it didn't detract from the whole event. The weekend started off grey and horrible and apart form a couple of hours of wishy washy sunlight on the evening of Saturday, remained that way. We had put the cats safely into catteries and set off over to East Sussex with all good intention of stopping off at various places on the way. We spent a happy hour or so tootling around the grounds of Hurstmonceux Castle and we were even allowed a quick glimpse into the quadrangle before being ushered out as a private event was about to take place. On the way around the castle grounds we both managed to get munched by biting insects but the walk had its rewards. We caught a fox in the act of sneaking up on a duck in the reeds by one of the many ponds and were there as the foxy whiskered gentleman got his jaws around the fowl and dispatched it. Nature red in tooth and claw and for once, nothing that we could have done about it. Moving on to Battle we stopped off at a pharmacy and bought some insect bite cream and then had a good long walk around the remains of the abbey and the battlefield where Harold fell in 1066. Time for a quick spot of lunch and then off on our way to Rye. It is a charming little town but some of the locals were very rough and ready. We found our guest house in Rye Harbour (very pleasant indeed) and after a well earned nap and a shower we zoomed off into town for a meal. Such an abundance of places to eat but my goodness they are pricey unless you want a Chinese takeaway from a slightly disreputable looking, greasy little shop. We settled for a nice bistro on the first night and had a very pleasant meal. Returning to our guest house we soon became aware of two things. Seagulls don't sleep much and make a lot of noise in the breeding season and England were playing in a late night World Cup football match. There was plenty of drunken cheering going on in the housing estate nearby nearby rising to a crescendo when England scored a goal but thankfully the Italian team put the nail in the coffin and the noise stopped and we had a reasonable night's sleep. Tomorrow is another day and I will tell you more then.
I know, I know. There wasn't a blog entry last night. Do you want to know why? Because I am getting old and forgetful. Actually, that isn't quite right. Certainly not the forgetful bit that is. I have found that as I grow older, I have all good intention of doing something but that something else comes along and nudges that good intention out of the way. Last night, this is what happened. Of an evening we often sit down with a tray on our knees and watch a DVD whilst we eat dinner. If we are just finishing off a film or perhaps watching an episodic feature and that episode is only a mere half an hour long we often sit and watch something else afterwards or maybe I will type a blog entry. Last night I found an old folder full of video clips that I shot on our second visit to Madeira way back in 2007. It was taken with what was then a state of the art, expensive, hard disk video recorder but now your average mobile phone produces better videos. Still, we sat and watched all of the video clips which included several of a very much younger Donna, a few beautiful sunsets and two lots of clips showing the early morning clouds at the Bica da Cana. In a fit of experimentation, I speeded up one of these clips to about four times normal speed and sat and watched in awe at the effect. The only problem is that this experimentation and the nostalgia interfered with my thought processes and out of the metaphorical window went yesterday's blog entry. Never mind because it game me food for thought and I removed the existing video soundtrack and pasted a bit of Pink Floyd music over the top and came up with the little gem you see above. Surely the sight of these gorgeous clouds is worth missing a blog entry for? Now, I won't be around for a couple of days because Donna is taking me to Rye for the weekend for a photography special (but I will tell you all about that on Monday or maybe Tuesday if I get sidetracked!) This is as pretty a piece of animation as I have seen for a good time. "Take On An Idea" Take On An Idea from Fredrik Kasperi on Vimeo. Whilst watching some Youtube clips the other day, I came across some very irritating ones. They have been shot on iPhones. So what? Isn't it just marvellous that people have an Earth shattering and life changing device in their pockets? A device so powerful that not only can it shoot a video of a momentous occasion but has the power to post that video onto the Internet immediately so that the rest of the world can see it. Granted, you are more likely to see videos of cute kitties, playful puppies or squawling brats than scenes of Syrian destruction or Turkish and Ukrainian revolution but it is great that people can do so. What exactly is my beef then? Simply that people will hold their iPhone vertically while filming. You get this very narrow "portrait" format which when you are trying to encompass an event means that you are watching a vertical, narrow subsection of what you want people to see. I am going to ask all the iPhone users out there a simple question. It isn't a trick, more an observational question. What orientation is your television (or PC Monitor) in? That's right, it's horizontal or "landscape" to be more precise. So why don't you turn your mobile phone through ninety degrees and into that format? Even if you only want to have that narrow strip format to ensure that you capture a narrow scene in its entirety, it is better to shoot it in landscape mode. You will get all of your chosen scene in, you might show something of the surroundings which may give extra context for your video and people can still expand it to fill their landscape screen rather than having a small strip expanded just to the maximum height that it can go. Heavens, even people with iPhones can turn their phones horizontal to view a landscape format video so it isn't as if it is device dependent. It is a simple lack of forethought and inadvertently taught by watching others doing it. So, iPhone users, please take note. There are at least two ways you can hold your phone while making a video. Why not go for the best one? Or even get creative and video on an angle for certain shots? Next time, how to get the right exposure for the subject you are videoing... Here's a fascinating animation done (mostly) with tea leaves. "Chinti" Chinti from Natalia Mirzoyan on Vimeo. As ever in life there is much to be learned and always there is something that needs to be mastered before one can progress. Today I came across another example of this when I wanted to edit the video files that I took in Madeira. In particular I wanted to splice together three clips, add some slow motion effects and then add a soundtrack. Normally I would use one of my usual video editing packages but because these clips had been created using a GoPro camera, I wanted to use their native software thus begins yet another learning experience. Thankfully, most of these video editing package use a similar layout so it shouldn't take all that long to grasp the basics. Having said that, I am struggling with creating the slow motion effect that I want even though I have been reading tutorials and watching youtube clips. Oh well. More reading and learning required. I haven't done one of these for a while. A collection of the (mostly) idiotic fails for the month of April 2014. |
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May 2015
AuthorPaul Everest - Shining wit (at least that is what I think they said) |