Bills Posts

Really sorry for tonight’s post. Just got back from the radio club and feel absolutely drained, but don’t want to lose my running streak. So tonight’s post is feeble in the extreme. Sorry about this. Will try and do better tomorrow.

Thursdays is one of those days. I do a thing called the Thursday Night Net, which is a regular amateur radio event. If you are on Facebook, look for the GB3IW page. There are literally hundreds of videos of me doing the net. I love it, but one of the frustrations is I have to come up with a topic. Some times I fail to think of something, so it becomes a “Lets talk about anything”. The thing about radio amateurs is they absolutely love to talk about their hobby. You only to utter one word, such as “antenna” or “licence” and you will spark off a discussion that will easily run for an hour.

I went for my usual morning walk. It was to begin with a little nippier than it had been, so I made the decision to put my fleece on. Mistake! Not long in to my walk I started to bake. I only saw one of my regular people. I had lingered on the Haslar Marina Wave Guard to watch the compact cruise ship Seabourn Quest come in to portsmouth. A very attractive ship. I can imagine that service on board would be superb.

The Regular person was the lady with the dog, which now drops the ball at me feet and expects me to play. Of course, I don’t mind at all and and more than happy to do kick the ball a few times, but we both then carry on with our walks.

I was very taken at thee Cockle Ponds this morning. There was a shoal of fish, small fish, at most a centimetre in length, I would estimate that there are millions of them, in a thick band along the side of the south pond. I am looking forward to going back for another look tomorrow.

I see very few people whilst out on my morning walk. I talk to even fewer of them. This morning was a very nice example of encounters that I have whilst out walking. A lady taking her dog for a walk and the dog hasn’t so much taken a fancy to me as needing some expectation management (can a dog warrant expectation management?) so this dog runs up to me and drops his tennis ball which squeaks.

There is no way I am picking this ball up, so I kick it. The dog loves it. Runs for the ball, drops it at my feet again. This has been part of my routine now since the beginning of the week. Yesterday, I kicked the ball and it went in to this dirty old creek, “Oh Dear” I thought. The dog didn’t hesitate, straight in. Came out a real mess. I felt dreadful. She was laughing.

I love it when people stop me and ask me what I’m doing. That happened this morning, this chap took one look at me and said “Can I ask what you are doing” Of course what does it is my “gadget stick” the tripod with the phone mount and the anemometer, and me with my headphones, and a bag with an antenna sticking out. To be honest, I must be quite a sight. I do wonder how many people think “Oh my, do we have a nutter here?”

When I explain what am doing, I usually get a very positive response. Which is nice. We spent a very pleasant couple of minutes chatting and then went on with out walks. Things like that, really do make for a nice morning walk.

If I leave writing a post until last thing in the evening, I then immediately get stuck for something to write. Writing posts earlier de-stresses me. But I still have to think of something to write about.

when I was out walking my usual route, which involves going from the cross street down to the ferry terminal. I walk past the timeline. This morning I stopped and looked at the second line; 1204 – Manor of Gosport created by the Bishop of Westminster.

This got me to thinking about what was happening in that time, so I wanted to find out who the Bishop of Westminster was in 1204, why did they create the Manor of Gosport and what does that mean? So, I’ve started looking at that. Beyond finding out that the Bishop of Westminster in 1204 was Godfrey de Lucy I am only just beginning to touch the subject.

Interestingly (well, I think it is interesting) I’ve done a little exercise of mapping interesting points that are within 50 miles of a certain postcode in Dorset, and there are literally dozens of places, an lot of which are paleo or Neolithic. Now, I acknowledge that I have only done a cursory search for that same things in Hampshire. Obviously there are places of interest all over Hampshire but there does seem to be a shortage of these much older locations. I have read that the shortage of these older sites isn’t because they don’t exist, it’s just because they haven’t been found yet.

I shall carry on looking.

After a couple of weeks of having my morning walks disrupted. I must admit it was a bit difficult last week to get up and go for any walks, I just didn’t feel like it. It was a case of I need to do some exercise.

This mornings walk was a different experience. I was keen to get up and out, it was a lovely warm morning, which made walking in t-shirt and shorts very pleasant. It was a pleasure to get out.

I’m sorry it’s a short post again.

Here’s a thing about YouTube. Why would you post a video on YouTube and not want as many people as possible to watch it? So, you put up a video, how do you get that to happen? It’s all to do with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). That’s “tuning” the video that you post, so that the algorithm that YouTube uses to find videos and identify the content.

there seems to be quite a few parameters to set. Also, I was watching another video that said it is better to have different channels depending upon the content of the video – that allows optimisation.

I think I do have a potential topic, I have created a channel. I’m still playing with it, so I’m not going to post a link just yet. But I will at some point.

When it comes to photography, I am neither adventurous or inventive. I take a picture, and if I am lucky, it is a good picture. I might even take a picture deliberately that turns out to be not bad. I think the header picture for this post is one of my “not too bad” pictures.

The frustration extends from, partially the adventure and invention. Comment above. I certainly won’t blame my kit – I have more than enough equipment to take, if I were capable, some reasonable pictures.

I use a website called 365 project, where people go to post a picture a day. There is a lady who bought a new camera, I think it is a Nikon bridge camera. Now, she is having a field day learning how to use the camera, and she is posting pictures most days, and these pictures are good! Really good. Now, you say well that is to be expected, perhaps she is a professional photographer. I must admit I don’t get that impression, although I am happy to be proved wrong.

She is playing focus, with shutter speed, exposure, and I love all of her pictures, they are brilliant. But, it doesn’t stop me from being envious.

I just wish I had that spark in me to get out and take pictures with the ingenuity that she consistently demonstrates. It won’t stop me from getting out and taking pictures , but it is frustrating. I shall keep trying.

Is there a crisis of confidence behind today’s post? Well, to be honest, yes, there is. But, the only thing I can do is say; I will persist.

It was strange today. I arrived at the waterfront just as the Normandie was coming in through the harbour entrance. The thing was, it took me a bit of time to realise that it was the Normandie – it just looked a lot bigger than what I recalled. It took me by surprise.

I suppose I’m used to seeing the big ferries early in the morning, different light.

I must admit, I do enjoy the lunchtime walks. It makes a change to see people. The high street was busy, this time of the year with there now being quite a few cafes and bars with street seating it makes for a lot of social opportunities I quite like just sitting and watching people. I just don’t have time to do that during the week.

I really appreciate just being able to go for a lunch time stroll.

It hasn’t been the easiest week for morning walking I’ve pretty much had to force myself to get up for the walk. The frustrating thing is that once I am up and out, I enjoy the walk. So, it isn’t the walk so much as the getting up. But then I do get up.

The last few walks has featured the appearance of a dog with a squeaky tennis ball, which as soon as the dog sees me, it hairs toward me, just drops the ball at my feet and then retreats expectantly. I kick the ball, and it chases. It’ll do this several times before I move on. We have a laugh over it.

Even just having a week away, has taken the “Ooomph” out of me, but I am determined to get it back. Sorry, not a good post today.

It was a real struggle to get up for the morning walk. IK really didn’t feel like it. I usually make a joke about my brain and my body disagreeing about going for a walk, but they were both in unison this morning.

Strangely though, I did manage to get up and go for a walk and as usual I quite enjoyed it, although at one point towards the ferry end of the high street I was concerned that I might have an encounter with a town drunk. Luckily though I managed to avoid that.

I have been feeling a bit jaded on the photography front though. My morning pictures over the last few days have been a bit “samey”. On of the websites I look at pretty much every day is called the 365 project, where people commit to posting a picture for a day for a year – but you just carry on at the end of the year. There are people who have been posting for several thousand days, I’m only on 600 odd.

I mention the 365 website because as usual, there are some really good photographers who post there regularly. Really quite puts me to shame.