Bills Posts

This is a photo that I wanted to put into the next competition as a print. Looking at the photo, I think it’s quite a good portrait, but my eyes are immediately drawn to the person in the red coat to the left of the Samba Leader.

What I spent an hour trying to do is remove the person in the red coat. Do you think I can do it? Nope. Tried loads of different things, looked up how to remove backgrounds in youtube, I can delete the whole background, but that removes the context and makes it clearly photoshopped.

I gave up. I can still use the image in the PDI competition that’s coming up, but I will still have the same problem – unless I can learn how to do this. Deep, Deep frustration!

I wrote the above last night, and didn’t post it. That’s not what I’m writing about. Tonight we went to the camera club. It was just a bar night, so a social occasion not a club activity. Colin, one of the members had brought his laptop loaded with photoshop.

He very kindly took us through several procedures including removal of the red coat and the fence line, which I have to say hadn’t registered with me. He made it look very easy, and he was using a 2020 version of photoshop. Since we have the 2025 version, it should be a lot easier.

With a bit of luck, I may still be able to put a couple of prints in to the competition.

It’s not very often I mention work in my blogs, but I’m going to today, but only in the context that I do work. My job is mostly a 9-5 thing, with extensions beyond that when needed, and extensions into the weekend on very extreme cases.

Why am I telliing you this? Well, it’s partly an excuse. Especially at this time of year, when there is no evening light. It means that weekends are the only times available for me to do things like visiting historic places. Even if those places are within the immediate locality of Gosport, given that I might want to record some video, the lack of light precludes evening visits – unless I’m after a certain kind of atmosphere, which doesn’t happen often, but may increasingly so in the future.

It is very easy when we reach the weekend to make the decision to not do anything. This kind of bites you when you’ve been going on about how much you want to get out and visit these sites.

One thing I can do, is spend a bit of time during these dark evenings researching a particular site, in preparation for a weekend visit. If I want to do this, I really need to get on with it.

I’m only a few pages away from finishing the Queen Elizabeth I book that I’m reading. I’m about to encounter the Stewarts, and am wondering which would be the best book to read.. There’s one that sounds quite interesting, All His Spies: The secret world of Robert Cecil – perhaps the 16th Century ‘M’ The Spy Master of the Time.

Last week, I wrote about my trip over to Portsmouth for breakfast with my Amateur Radio friends, and then went on to Waterstones for a browse. I bought a book The Meteorite Hunters. I read about the first 20 pages on the bus, on the way home. It is, quite gripping and at the top of my reading list – except for the fax that my real reading list are the books that I am reading on the historical time line from The Plantagenets to Oliver Cromwell.

My next book should be about James (VI of Scotland, The First of England). But my dilemma is I really want to read the Meteorite Hunters. What to do? As I’m sat writing this, the Meteorite Hunters is next to my keyboard calling out to me. I really enjoyed the first 20 pages, and that just makes it worse.

So, which to read? Well, The Meteorite Hunters is here, on my desk and the next history book is to be identified and ordered, whereas The Meteorite Hunters is here. I think I’ve made my decision.

I should have gone for a walk this morning. There’s no particular reason as to why I didn’t, just being lazy I guess. The previous four mornings were fine, almost fun in some respects. I had done face book posts as well.

The facebook posts can be a bit more personal than here. I’ve been looking at what was happening in the high street. One thing I did last year during the last week of June was to take a walk along the high street noting shops or other commercial units that were out of business.

The mini survey I did showed that there were 112 such units on the high street, of which 11 were shuttered up. The mistake I made was not noting the street numbers of the closed units. Not really much use then.

Why did I do it? And what did I expect to get out of it. To be honest, I think I just wanted to find out what the situation was with the high street, which I feel is not in very good health. I’m going to re do the survey and this time take a bit care over it. As I say, this is all just curiosity.

If the book is correct, the last time I sat as controller on the net was 30 Nov 25, well I did it again tonight. Dave wasn’t able to do the net, and I couldn’t stop myself from offering.

My thought was that if Dave couldn’t do it and nobody else offered (and I’m sure somebody would, I just got there first. I couldn’t offer a topic upfront though, although a couple did suggest themselves.

Then of course, there was the technical problem, but we got over that – nothing to do with my radio, it was at the repeater end.

There is the possibility that I won’t be going for a walk in the morning. There’s a rain warning out for the area. We’ll have to see what it’s like in the morning.

I have been chomping at the bit to go to a full council meeting since the last one. I must admit that after tea it was later than I wanted so I had to rush to the council offices, which luckily are only about 12 minutes away.

I did a little bit of preparation, downloading the agenda pack for the meeting so that I could access it with my iPad in aeroplane mode. My Apple pencil was charged and I was ready to take notes. I also had a notepad with me that I could use.

The session started well, it came out that there were three motions to go through, including a deputation, they were;

• Support for the Climate And Nature Bill
• Support for the “Hands Off Gosport” Campaign
• Support for the Stubbingtonn Study Centre (which is threatened with closure by Hampshire County Council

I knew I would start having problems when the discussions around the motions were finished and the council was ready to move on to the next agenda item. By then it was around quarter past 8, and we had only just scratched the agenda.

With the introduction of next year’s budget and the associated 20-minute speech, followed by the twenty or so minutes offered by the opposition, it was now past 9PM, and discussions around the budget had only just begun and there were at least four or five other items left on the agenda, meaning we could easily be there for another two hours.

Too much I’m afraid. It would be too late, and so, much to my dissatisfaction, I decided to leave. One other thing I wanted to do was after the meeting had (fully) finished, I was going to sit out on the high street and record a few minutes of video giving my impression of the meeting.

Well, I did that – but to be honest it was more about how the whole thing went, but I recorded about 10 minutes worth, which will of course never see the light of day on YouTube.

Tonights Camera Club competition was “Open” for our group, which mean that we could choose any picture we wanted. Mine was the header picture, which I had called “Reflect or photoshop”? Under normal circumstances, the judge would look at it and say It’s a perfectly good reflection and that would be it. But because I’d asked the question the judge paused to think and look at the picture, and said those magic words “I’d like to hold that one back”.

Elayne also had some pictures in the same competition. Now, she has said that I’m not allowed to use her picture, because someone might steal it, because when the judge saw the image, he was really quite taken with it (it is a good picture), and uttered once again, those magic words “I’d like to hold that one back”.

Now, when a judge holds a picture back, that means that once all of the pictures have been seen, they go back to those which have been held because they want to have another look at them and the picture might be in for an award; First, Second, Third or Highly Commended.

I knew that my picture might be technically good, but it wasn’t really special. His second look resulted my picture being scored at 9 – that is 9/10. Good, but not high enough for an award. Of course, I’d be lying if I said that I was fine with not getting an award, who doesn’t want to get one. But, in reality, I knew what the situation with my picture was and it really didn’t deserve an award.

From this you could by now have deduced that if I got a nine, and the title of today’s post 9 and a Third, the Elayne must have got a Third, which means that at the next club night, she’ll get a certificate. You could also conclude that I am very, very proud of her.

I was out for my morning walk. I pretty much followed my normal route. I was quite surprissed at how few people were out and about. Even at the ferry,

I did a little bit of videoing but apart from that and the Gosport Ferry there was absolutely nothing going on, no ships moving not even a fishing vessel of a private craft. The walk had been normal up to the point I reached the bottom of the Haslar Marina Pier Wall. For some reason, I decided to walk up to the end. Something that I have only done a couple of time in the last 15 or so months. Nothing special about it, it was just nice to do it.

When I got back onto dry land, I was going to record a bit of video, but the Morning Chorus was really building up to a beautiful crescendo, much better to listen to than me rabbitting on about something trivial.

I haven’t done anything on Facebook for quite a while but as I was walking by the side of the cockle pond I was suddenly taken by the thought of putting something on FB. Well, I didn’t do it this morning but if I feel the same way tomorrow (assuming I go for a walk) and I have time, I think I will put up something.

As you read tonights post, you will very quickly realise that the picture bears absolutely no link to any of the content of the retest of the post, except perhaps the picture shows the underneath of something, but that link is so tenuous as to be ridiculous.

We paid a visit to our Dorset family today, celebrating Meg’s birthday. We had a lovely meal in the Kings Arms in Stoborough. I cant even remember if I have been inside the pub before. I do though cclearly remember being served through hte window in the car park, the window I think was the off licence part, I can remember buying cockles and (not at the same time) crisps and a pickled egg, and also I seem to recall, the occasional pork pie.

It’s always nice to go to that part of the world, I know it so well. Perhaps the main feature is Creech Barrow, perhaps the highest point in the Isle of Purbeck. But even that has sunk, as the result of mining of clay.

As a kid I can remember sitting by the roadside watching the clay lorries drive by loaded. Do you know, I can’t remember them driving back empty – but they must have come back the same way.

One of the features now very popular with tourists is the Blue Pool. created out of one of the clay pits I’ve just been informed via ChatGPT that the pool is 30ft (9m) deep. Strange, I thought it was much deeper than that. Sadly, I don’t have a picture of the pool. All interesting stuff.

I went over to Portsmouth this morning. Some of our friends from the Isle of Wight Radio Society came over and we went to the Royal Maritime Club for breakfast. TRhe RMC does a very nice buffet breakfast which I thoroughly enjoyed, especially as I didn’t have to pay for it. One of our friends from California, KF4MCG Bill had very generously sent the money across for us. As we usually did (we’ve done this three times now), we retired to the comfy chairs in the central area and sat there for at least an hour, just chatting away. If they come to fruition, Steve M0RQD The Repeater Keeper for GB3IW has some very exciting plans.

After we finished, I walked up to Commercial Road, and spent a bit of time in Waterstones. I always look in the new book section., and a book leapt out at me; The Meteorite Hunters by Joshua Howgego. The book title gives you the subject. I had a look around upstairs but didn’t find anything. Any how, I was heading out of the store, and thought Nope, I”m going to have another look at that book, and of course I bought it.

I wasn’t sure where the fast bus for Fareham stops in the town centre, it was easier to get a bus back to the hard at Gun Wharf, found that the X5 was due to depart after about 15 minutes, I got the book out and started reading. Very good it is too. It also saw me through the journey to Fareham. When you add into the trip, an E1 from Fareham to Gosport, I used my bus pass three times today. So apart from the book, it was a cheap day. Very Nice.