Bills Posts

After yesterday’s wind and rain, todays blue skies have been a delightful change. I had to get out for a walk. Here’s most of my route today;

It was lovely. We have quite a few blue plaques around the town. There’s one that I had seen not long after moving here, but it had disappeared, and then today I just happened to look and there it was. It celebrates Henry Cort who developed a new process “Puddling” for managing wrought iron. I must do something here with other plaques

I walked down to the end of the Haslar Marina Pier wall, from where I did a brief Facebook Live. I walked round to the small lake by the Gosport Ramparts, I stopped on the way to have a chat with one of the towns street cleaners. I see him quite often. It’s nice to be able to say to them “thank you for looking after the town”. I saw this Cormorant sunning themselves at the side of the small lake. I must admit I did get a little too close to them, and they scooted off across the lake. I’d loved to have taken a picture of it, but was too slow. I was sorry I had frightened and disturbed them. They didn’t seem too disturbed though. By the time I’d walked to the other side of the of the lake the bird was back in the same spot, wings raised, gently wafting backwards and forwards.

I walked on round to the Cockle ponds, where I met a local Facebook Friend and we had a brief chat. The cockle ponds are a delightful little area. This group of Canada Geese were making good use of it, have a very placid float;

Today, they would be sharing the lake with members of the Gosport Model sailing club. I pretty much ended the walk near Walpole Park, where this sight met me;

Really frustrating. Do you get this where you are?

If you read my facebook post you may see some of the pictures used here again. Apologies for the duplication.

I’d written a piece about the weather today, or rather my experiences out and about in it – mainly revolving around how good is my wet weather jacket, and how very comfortable the new HoodyFleece, purchased by the Station Manager has been.

Then at the end, I wanted to upload a two versions of the same photo. Of course the pictures in question don’t appear in the image galley, and so I was looking to see ho I can force the gallery to bring in new photos.

In doing so, I lost the text of my post, but… Ah, now you see; I didn’t have a particularly good sleep period for a variety of reasons, have now come over all tired and forgot what I was going to say.

Anyhow, another attempt at pasting a gallery. If this doesn’t work, I shall just leave here.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

I like walking. Not too far mind you. For example, I wouldn’t go on a 30 mile hike. But, I would consider a 5 or 6 mile walk quite happily, I probably push it to 10 miles with the right shoes.

Mon – Fri, I get up at 0540 and go for a walk, about 2 miles, and then at lunchtime, I will go for a 2 – 3 mile walk. Coupled with my 2 – 4 mile commute (2 miles there, 4 miles back if I go the long way, which I usually do gives me a bit of exercise most weekdays. I try and do a walk on the weekends, even if it is only to walk in to town, let’s say about a mile each way. The only thing that is really likely to interrupt this routine is rain – I always cycle to work, regardless, but I may not go for a walk if it’s chucking it down. If there are droplets in the air, I am more likely to walk than not, so there are tolerances in my regime.

Last year in October, I started recording my walks as I read about Walk1000, this is a campaign to encourage people to walk 1,000 miles in a year. In order to do that, you need to walk 2.79 miles per day, every day. Of course if you walk more than 2.79 miles in any one day, that reduces the amount you have to walk on other days. As it happens, I averaged more than that each day, and there were some days where I didn’t walk at all, typically a Sunday, or if it was wet all day. The beginning of last week saw the year come to an end, and my final figure was about 1,340 miles. Which I have to admit surprised me. I didn’t expect to be able to do it.

Because I like doing it, I’m going to continue to record my mileage until the end of the year. But I am also going to formally register for next years walk 1000.

As usual, here are some random pictures, mostly taken on my walks.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Inspiring tonight’s post was tonight’s trip out to the Clanfield observatory. Organised by my amateur radio club. Clanfield is an amateur facility with some amazing resources, doing serious and useful research.

The interest in Astronomy has always stayed with me. Their are few things more beautiful than the night sky and even a simple pair of 10×50 binoculars expands the universe another step.

I can remember when I was quite young, let’s say between 5 and 10, on one cloudless night we had just come back to their home from a trip out, my brother-in-law was trying to show me the Plough, Ursa Major. Of course, I couldn’t grasp it. Now, it is one of the first constellations I look for, and how easy it is to use it as a pointer for the pole star.

I knew of the topic of spectroscopy, but have never really given it much thought. Tonight, I had one of those “Oh!” moments. The amateur astronomer who was doing the presentation specialised in the subject. He showed us in a simplified way how he extracts the spectroscope of an object, such as the Crab Nebula, and how he derived the component parts, surprisingly to me one of the main elements is oxygen, beaten only by hydrogen. Also, because each of those elements had a double peak representing the leading and trailing edges of the nebula, it was possible to work out the rate of expansion. Even after the nova which was the source of the nebula was first observed a thousand years ago, he was able to work out that the nebula is expanding at 1400 miles per second or 3.2 million miles per hour.

Amazing stuff, and a really fascinating evening. The frustration? It was cloudy so we couldn’t use the equipment. But it was good to see.

Some random pictures for you;

The mornings are getting increasingly darker. That is a truism even though the clocks went back a couple of nights back. It’s really nice to have Dawn’s light with me when I go morning walks, even though this is only temporary. I estimate that within 10-15 days, I will be chasing the Dawn again, and I will have to look for subjects that improve my night photography to prevent them from becoming boring. This is based upon the length of the day light hours decreasing by just under four minutes per day at this time of year, in the northern hemisphere of course.

Why talk about this now? It became a topic of discussion on the #Breakfastclub this morning, specifically, there was a period of time, some years ago; 1968-1971 when the change to British Summer Time was abandoned. It was introduced in 1916, apparently intended to make best use of daylight, and to reduce fuel requirements for working.

For me, the clocks changed two days ago, and I have already adjusted to it. Our cats always have a slightly more difficult time with it, because they get fed an hour later (to which they do object) or earlier (to which they don’t object), but within a very number of days, they are back in the normal routine. They have though been known to get fed by one member of the family at 0600, then fed again by another family member at 0700. They have never been known to complain when this happens.

I was at school between 1968-1971, and have absolutely no recollection of the experiment to do away with BSGT. Why would I be expected to? Like many things, it didn’t register – about the only thing I was interested in outside school were the Apollo missions, which I followed avidly.

You will see my ineptitude in nighttime photography over the next few months. This is something I should pay some attention to. In the meantime, here are some more random pictures.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

I want to continue the item about books briefly. This time, focussing on non-fiction. The quantity of books that you own is a subjective number – do you own a lot of books? Relative to any library, no I don’t. But we do have a number. Enough to fill several 9- shelved bookcases.

Why do we have all these books, clearly we don ‘t a hope of reading them all, and more importantly, why in the age of the internet do we even need them? Clearly, we don’t need them. But I love being able to pick up a book and have a browse, and usually you learn something when you do. Everyone laughed at Rumsfeld, but he was correct. You don’t know what you don’t know, until you know it. Books help you with the unanswered, and unknown questions. I should add that although we have a fair number of fiction, most of the books are non-fiction, and they cover a reasonable range of topics.

One thing I did notice yesterday though, was that we only had one book that specifically covered philosophy – Sophies Choice, which I read several years ago, and when I finish my current reading (David Suchet’s biography, Through the Lens) will read again. Of course, I have in a minor way fixed that omission, after a visit to The Works, and a fortuitous gift. The works is a retail store, it sells art and craft materials, toys and books – very cheap books. I acquired two books from there for £3 each; the little book of philosophy and think like a philosopher. OK, I know these are not the works of Descarte or Kant, but I don’t know that much about the subject, and view these as something of an intro. The fortuitous gift? Today, My Father-in-Law gave me a copy of Frederica Sgarbi PhD (in philosophy)’s book; The Philosophy of Cats. I’ve already started reading it. But, I really must continue with David Suchet.

Here are some random pictures.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

I like books. Fiction and non-fiction. I guess if there is a genre that I tend to gravitate towards it’s science fiction. In particular, I like;

Larry Niven, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, E E Doc Smith, James Blish, Ian M Banks, Gordon R. Dickson.

Larry Nivens tales of known spaces are brilliant, including novles like Ringworld and Ringworld Engineers, and outside that universe, I’m currently re-reading Footfall and will probably line up a re-read of another classic Lucifers Hammer.

I love Asimov’s Robots short stories and the foundation series, although I have tried reading Greg Bears extension to that, and I just can’t get in to it – I keep forcing myself to pick the book up, but I’m reaching the stage now, where I really don’t want to.

E E Doc Smiths Space Operas The Lensman, Skylark, D’Alembert series were all absorbed as quickly as I could, and have been re-read.

I think my love of SF probably began when I read a book that my sister had in her book case. I’ve been trying to find it ever since, trouble is I can describe the story, but I can’t remember the title or the author – I think I must have been about 10 when I read it. In Swanage one day, I walked in to a book shop (again, I must have been about 10) and found a Tom Swift Book by Victor Appleton, it was a hardback – I never saw them in paperback. I think there were a series of about 18 of them, they were all listed on the back of each book. I had them all. Then one day at school, I found a Tom Swift Book in the library at school that wasn’t on the list, and on the back had a list of books none of which I recognised.

I m afraid I still hark back to the old books mostly. The Culture series by Ian M. Banks are all an excellent read. A lot of the books nowadays seem to be fantasy, and that doesn’t grab me I’m afraid, although I did like the Dragons of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey. They did though have a basis in science.

James Blish’s Cities in Flight is brilliant, a really good read. Arthur C. Clarke is of course remembered for 2001 A Space Odyssey, but Childhoods End and the Rama series along with his short stories are brilliant.

With Dickson, it’s the Dorsai series. Especially Tactics of Mistake and Soldier Ask Not that I thoroughly enjoyed.

For non-SF, I’m quiter happy to admit that I like Jeffrey Archer, His Kane & Abel, and the Prodigal Daughter are excellent books.

As far as non-fiction is concerned, I’ll leave that for another post.

Here are some random picture s of London, the last two are taken from the Observation Deck at the Shard.

• 

• 

• 

You may have noticed (or perhaps not, seeing as I don’t have quite as many blog readers as somebody who’s famous) that I have been trying to do a post a day asince starting this work. Yesterday was one of a couple of times when I have clearly failed in this endeavour. I sat at the computer for probably about 20 minutes just before retiring for the night desperate to think about something to write. You saw the result. Nothing came.

This is not acceptable. I should be able to find something, anything to write a few words about, look at how easily the words flow from on this, one of the most frightening experiences a writer could have. I think that is the first question; am I a writer. I want to be. I want be a good one. Am I? No. Can I be? I don’t know, but I am happy trying.

Anyhow, writers block; in my case last night, I did try to start a post a couple of times, but the words would just not come, and when they did, I caught myself thinking “I don’t want to read this, why on earth would you?” So I binned the very feeble attempts.

Now, when it comes to writing, I like to have a clear thought in my head as to the topic. Hence tonights article was relatively easy. But, I need a strategy, what to do when I get a case of the block. Well, I think I have one . When the output arrives, you might think the topic or order is a bit weird, but really that’s my problem, not yours.

I set no word limit, I set no particular sequence, I merely wish at the end of the event to have article for which I am happy to press the publish button, and I need to be happy doing that. As is the case with this article. Good evening.

Some random pictures for you.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

I

I think of things to do. I have three photography projects in mind, I’ll write about two of them as I can mostly do those without a lot of external help, the third I need a fair bit of help from a couple of sources, so I’ll keep that one under wraps for the time being.

I used to live in St Neots in Cambridgeshire. Whilst there, I became involved in the Cambridge Community Archive Network (CCAN). It involved charting the community. No involvement for a number of years now, so I expect it has moved on a fair bit by now.

I know there is one chap in Gosport who is trying to do something similar, and I’d said I’d help, and I feel very guilty that I have done nothing about it. My baseline for the project was established in 2017, when I took a walk along Stokes Road here in Gosport, and photographed all the shop frontages (not houses or flats, but did include pubs). The idea is that having established the baseline, I would note if a shop changes role, or redecorates or even closes down and photograph that, this way you would build up a picture of the evolution of the road.

So, the next project, which I will probably be even worse at was conceived when I bought a book of life in 18th & early 19th century Dorset. Just as photography was becoming a practical medium. Pictures of shopkeepers with the hat typical face on pose, hand on hips. I’d quite like to recreate that here.

I had my first opportunity to do that this morning, the owner of a convenience store was stood in his doorway as I walked past at about 0615. It was too good an opportunity to miss, so I asked if I could take his photograph. So, the only question now is, do I try to recreate the atmosphere with a bit of sepia, some noise or just the normal. Colour? Just a bit of fun.

I live on the edge of a major shipping lane.  I take advantage of that.  I like watching the ships. We have;CruiseContainerCargoCar carriersFerriesOil tankersBunkerSailingWarHovercraftLifeboatsPleasure craft (Lots)I enjoy watching them all. So much so, that I registered and act as a node for marine traffic. In particular, in the nice weather, I like to cycle across to the sea wall at the back  of Haslar Hospital with my radio, camera and spotter scope for a couple of hours to watch them. I guess it’s a bit like fishing but without the rods, and my catch is to see a ship.  
On my morning walks it’s normal to see at least one of the Brittany Ferries, usually either the Normandie or the Mon St Michell, very occasionally the Bae De Sein. Then there is the Commodore Clipper, I’m lucky if I see her once a month.  Every so often I’ll see one of the Bunker ships, either the Whitchampion or the JaneyW. Occaisionally, a cruise ship comes in to Portsmouth Harbour, more recently because the channel has been deepened for the carriers, the cruise ships can get a bit bigger. The Reefers are always a favourite to see, this morning for example, there was The Arrow – Reefers? Refrigeration ships.  The containers they carry are chilled because they carry fruit. This makes Portsmouth one the main harbours for importing this. The pilot vessels are hosted at Fort Blockhouse, it’s nice to see them moving. There are of course the Wightlink Ferries and the fast cat over to Ryde. I also see the hovercraft moving out of the Southsea hoverport.  Finally, I mustn’t forget the Gosport Ferries plying their trade  over to Portsmouth.  I never cease to be amazed at the skill the captains have in lining them up. I should also mention the tugs, I follow @TugmasterLloyd on Twitter, he produces some lovely pictures. See, there’s always something interesting to see.