Bills Posts

I’m supposed to write about the weather tonight. Over the last 4 days it has been cold. Very cold, and it snowed. OK, not much and it was all gone within 24 hours, but it was cold. Now I may come back to the weather, but in the meantime there’s something else I want to write about.

I have to admit that I didn’t think my plan would fall to bits almost with minutes of making my commitment to iphone projects last night. I definitely do want to do it, but unfortunately, not with that book.

The first and most important thing was that within the first two pages, it had stated that the book was aimed at users of the iphone 4 & 5. I use an iPhone 12. Well, I suppose a camera is a camera and it is the technique that is important so that it is 7 generations obsolete doesn’t really matter. Well it didn’t except that whilst the book did have just a little bit about technique, it didn’t have projects. It’s those that I really wanted.

The book was obviously one that was given away free with a magazine, because the other thing it was trying to convince you to do was to buy apps – that are probably discontinued now and also bits of equipment, like lens attachments – which are also probably no longer available. All in all, not a great success. I’m not giving up.

The mission now is to find a book that meets the needs. I don’t really care about equipment, except that the book must be no more than one or two generations behind. It must have technique and projects. So I am now on a mission to find the book. The commitment I made last night is on hold, but most definitely not forgotten. A little bit of research is needed.

The weather? Well, it’s going to be cold for at least the two or three days. An opportunity for some cold weather pictures. Hopefully.

Oh, and I know that for this blog, tomorrow is a special day.

OK, I have been looking for this book, I knew it was somewhere in the house, and i found it tonight;

I have not opened it, I have no idea what it is like inside.

But, how is this for a commitment; Wednesday Nights are the night I write about photography. On a Wednesday, I will start reading a chapter. Over the following week I will try to do what the book suggests, including any projects. I will report on progress or completion of the project each successive week until the project is complete, if I can do it in a week then I will do so. I’ll start reading this one tonight. Let’s see how it goes.

This is a street near where I live. It’s a preservation area, which means that the occupants of the houses have to maintain a certain standard. It’s understandable why. It’s a lovely area.

It thought this one would be OK as a black and white;

I don’t think it’s too bad – It’s a pity though about the TV antenna. Something it appears you can’t escape even in a conservation area.

In my mornings walks I pass along several streets with different character; residential, open, quite wide roads with homes side on, several tower blocks, shops, churches etc. I really should be doing more to explore opportunities here. There will be lots of them. It’s getting my eyes used to seeing those opportunities.

There’s one particular website I follow. Personally I think it is a bit strange, but it never ceases to be interesting, here’s a link;

http://workingpictures.blogspot.com/2021/02/shrink-your-bill.html

Now I think I probably aspire to something a little more artistic. But, who can define artistry – this has been discussed on a number of blogs I follow, and even goes back 25 years to when I was on Compuserve; what is and isn’t art? We had some quite strong arguments back then. It was interesting, entertaining and definitely educational.

I think the lessons I need to take is to just take pictures, but I acknowledge that I do need to think about composition as well. I’ve been a bit busy over the last few weeks but with a bit of luck I should be able to do something about my photographic abilities.

It snowed. Not much, but it’s there. Luckily it was very patchy which meant that walking was easy, I didn’t find icy pavements anywhere. The forecast for the next 24 hours is more cold temperatures but no more snow for this area. Hopefully when it does freeze (has it thawed? I doubt it, it has been cold all day) the pavements will have been dry and I will be able to walk tomorrow.

I hunted out my balaclava for this morning’s walk. It just made things so much more comfortable. There wasn’t much going on at the waterfront. I had missed the Mon St Michell coming in. That’s because I went the anti-clockwise way around the circuit. I like going that way round. It means that after I give my weather report to the #Breakfastclub, it is the short leg home, probably about a mile and a nice cup of tea. These last two mornings in particular have proved the value of going that way, given how cold it has been.

Just thinking about it, I haven’t visited The Falklands Gardens, the Tidal Clock and the fountains. Haven’t taken pictures in that area for quite a while now. Must change that.

It was cold this morning. With a negative temperature as I left the house and a stiff breeze blowing giving a -5C windchill, I could have done with a bit better cover on my head. I need to look out my balaclava, it’s a nice bright blue one. It’s somewhere about.

Tonight, I am supposed to write about my current book, but ordinarily I would be writing about one of my magazines, Country Walking turned jump last week. I’ve read it, and enjoyed doing so. But, unlike most editions, this month’s didn’t having me jumping up and down with enthusiasm. Normally, there’s an article or two that drives me to write.

We went out for a walk on Saturday. Not by chance, we walked past Richard Martin’s Gallery. For quite a while now, there has been, well not a book, a collection of leaflets by the Gosport Historical Records Society, I presume the fore runner to the Gosport Society. The leaflets were written in the Seventies. Fifty years ago. This is a history book.

I’m still on the first leaflet. The first article was a reproduction of an article written in 1802 about a person entering Gosport for the first time. Let’s just say it wasn’t very complimentary. It was mainly a sanitary affair. A very interesting read.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6eSemzgW8c

OK, something a bit different tonight, and I don’t know if this is going to work. Me playing with Vlogging. I went out and recorded this this afternoon. I did go out for a walk, and I was so focussed on doing the videoing that I didn’t take any pictures, so here’s a picture I took on the Misty morning walk earlier this week;

It wasn’t too bad a week for walking, even though it did rain on one day and I didn’t leave the house at all. I still managed to clock up 24 miles. OK, I know that people do a lot more than that, but it’s more than I needed to do for the Walk 1000 challenge.

I do confess, that it is really difficult to get up some mornings, and usually it’s midweek for some reason. But having a challenge does help and I do feel guilty when I don’t go for it.

I think the best walk of the week was the one where there was silence apart from my footsteps and a single bird singing. There was just something really calming about that moment and that was quite special. Having said that though, it is very rare that I don’t enjoy an walk. There is always a sense of satisfaction when I get home.

Today, I walked the normal anti-clockwise version of the walk I do during the week. It was very nice to do it in day, it certainly made a bit of a change.

Next week promises to be interesting. It looks like it is going to be quite cold. It’ll be a case of making sure I wrap up warm.

Another picture of yesterday’s misty morning. Unrelated to the main topic of today’s post, about which I don’t have a lot to say.

With regard to the vlogg, I really do have nothing to add. I have done nothing at all about it. Well, I have thought a little bit about it. I’ve kind of decided that you don’t really want five minutes of me talking to the camera. What do I want to give you? Education (arrogant of me) relaxation (yeah, I don’t think I’d be good at that) entertainment (to be honest, I’d be even less effective at that). I must admit, there is a pressure building up in side me, so I am going to have to do something about it soon.

I included Downton Abbey in the title as I wanted to say something about this TV series. Today, we watched the film. The end of an era. Over the last few weeks we have gone through the six seasons and various sub-episodes, finishing today with the movie.

Over the weeks I have to love the characters in the programme and have been captivated by the story. I confess that I did not expect to enjoy it, but we both became involved in the series very quickly. I am very sad that evenings and weekends will no longer involve deciding whether to watch one, or because of the gripping story follow on with the next episode. We often watched two because we couldn’t wait. I think it’s fair to say that the only other series which has generated any kind of equivalent pleasure is Star Trek.

I usually do this blog between 7 & 8 in the evening (I am tonight). At the moment, we have Michael Portillo’s Great British Railway Journeys running in the background. It’s the episode from the London Victoria to Abbey Wood. As it happens, this episode was talking about the state of the Thames in the 1800s, at the time being the open air sewer of London. Just a little unpleasant!

Early in the 1800’s the effluent of Londoners was collected and sold as fertiliser to the countryside. Then the clipper ships started bringing Guano back from South America, as I have been reading in the Clippers (Book of the week). The Guano was a better quality than the London Poo, As the london stuff was no longer required, it had nowhere else other than the river to go. I must admit I never expected to find a link to The Clipper from a programme about railway journeys. Interesting,

It started as a clear morning, but I approached the waterfront it turned into a very misty morning. I like misty mornings. They add a sense of mystery to the day. It was a very pleasant walk.

Now, the title of today’s post isn’t what you might think, a reversion to an early writing clock – oh well, perhaps it is in a way. This is really about an application called Day one – it’s a journaling app. I started using the app nigh on ten years ago. But it was about 5 years ago that I cottoned on to a concept. I called it Locality (my domain localitystories comes from it). Locality came about that I could integrate my interest in ship watching, amateur radio, photography, my interest in the local area, my desire to write, could be integrated into a single topic.

I started using day one because I wanted to write “online” and I wanted to do a blog but, to be honest I didn’t have the guts to go into the public domain. I have barely used Day one since starting this blog. which since I am getting my daily writing “fix” here is I suppose understandable. I had though put a lot of effort into organising my locality admin structure in Day One, tags, projects, pictures, writings. I had a lot of fun doing it. But, I really needed to do something like this to make sure I at least attempted to do some reasonable writing every day.

I have no idea if you think what I am writing is reasonable. I have some followers which is really really nice, so I hope you enjoy it.

If the truth is told, is isn’t really much of a secret because I am happy to talk about it to anybody, at the drop of a hat. It’s something that entertains me nearly every day and I suspect that if people were honest (which to be fair, pretty much everybody is in this case) they get a lot of pleasure from it as well.

It’s something that most people can do without any problem, any time of the day or night and it always brings me pleasure. Well, I suppose I’d better tell you what it is. It’s something related to a feature in this morning’s picture, and probably in most of my pictures. No, it isn’t ship watching. That’s no secret, everyone knows that. Nope, I am Member No. 04462 of the Cloud Appreciation Society. Who doesn’t enjoy watching the clouds. Everything from the thin whispy cirrus clouds that occur high in the sky, through to the deeply impressive CumuloNimbus clouds, the thundercloud. I love them all. After all, who doesn’t enjoy a few minutes on a nice day, when there is a fair bit of blue sky, laying back and seeing the dragon, or the dog, or an island in the clouds? I know I do.

Of course it is clouds that is the link with today’s topic – the weather, Yesterday was different, it was one of those mornings where you look out the window and decide that you aren’t going for a walk because it is tipping down. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to it I must admit. But it must have been raining for a fair bit of the day because the ground was sodden. Frustratingly, I didn’t do a lot of steps. I Made up for it today though, so I’m quite pleased with that.

It’s fair to say I think that there aren’t many days where I am put off walking because of the weather. I even go out and walk in the rain, in a proper raincoat of course. I just tend not to do it for my early morning walks before work.

It appears there is the possibility of snow in Hampshire over the weekend. Some areas of the county to the north have had at least one reasonably sized dusting. Apparently, it may come further south this next time, possibly even to Gosport. Let’s see what happens.

It’s a bit of a dilemma. I confess to feeling a little bit guilty. The thing is, I have a perfectly good DSLR camera, a Nikon. I have talked about my early cameras, culminating really in the Cannon AE1. I sold it. I can’t remember why. I probably needed the money.

The D5300 is nowhere near the top of the range, but it is a Nikon, and I had always wanted one. It’s a beautiful camera, and I have loved using it. But I barely touch it any more. I haven’t felt the need to, I think I probably will though when the weather starts getting better and I don’t feel guilty about going and spending a couple off hours at the Sea Wall.

I have been an iphone devotee since they first came out. I even changed the provider that I had been with for the best part of ten years because they weren’t going to sell them. A couple of years ago, I thought I would give android a chance. Because of the reputation of the camera I bought a Huawei P20 Pro, wonderful camera, I loved the colour rendering and the night mode. It made the iPhone 6 I had at the time look pathetic. Trouble was I didn’t really like Android. Nothing wrong with it, just couldn’t get on with it really. Anyhow, as you will now know, I am back with apple. “Institutionally content” I think is probably about right. And I do like the camera. Thing is though, doesn’t matter what I have I’m no better a photographer. So I am looking for a book, or something on line – phone photography. I know I said that last week. Chances are I’ll say it again next week. But I am looking.

It’s worth saying that I am perhaps overly critical of myself. I enjoy what I do. I know I could do it better, but that doesn’t stop me.