Bills Posts

The really frustrating thing is that I need to get out for a walk every day. I’m not doing this, but I need to.

The most obvious time for me to get out is around 0600. The problem with that is, especially this time of the year, it’s cold and dark (I wouldn’t walk anyway if it’s wet and to be honest, I just don’t want to get up.

I could go out after work. The problem with that is that I’ve usually had enough by then and just want to spend time with my wife (she would be asleep if I went out in the morning). A solution would be to be at work for 0700, stop at 0800 to go for a walk, resuming at 0900, that way I can still finish early. That may be a plan. I’ll have to think about it.

Tomorrow is a slightly special day for the blog. I’m hoping that I have a good post ready.

We have a competition coming up in the camera club. The subject is abstract. To be honest, I’m not really sure what that means when it comes to photos.

A couple of weeks ago the club night was about abstract. There are a couple of people in the club who are really quite good in the topic and did a bit of a presentation and then there were some practical demonstrations. Some of the kit we were shown was a bit expensive, but very good.

I think it’s obvious what the subject of the header photo is. I’ve added a bit of night time long exposure and in-camera-movement along with conversion to mono.

That’ll do for one of my entries.

One of those evenings I’m afraid when absolutely nothing comes to mind.

I really cant think of anything to write about,.

It’s Thursday, so it’s the Thursday Night Net, between 2000 and 2100-ish, Dave, G7EPE opens the net with a call for participants and people pile in. Tonight there were 12 of us, and the topic for discussion was what programming software do we like to use for our radios and come to that, what don’t we like.

In a lot of cases, the manufacturers of the radios supply software that is downloadable for free off the company website. You’d think a lot of people would go down that route, but actually there’s one particular American company that produces consistently excellent software for a huge variety of radios, you have to pay a few dollars for it, but nobody minds because it works so well.

There’s another free product. called Chirp, which is generally used to programme handhelds. It can tackle a huge range of different manufacturers and radios, and whilst it does the job very well, it can be a bit quirky. I must admit, I didn’t have the latest version, which I do now, but can’t find the cable – I may have thrown it out. I’ve ordered another, that should be with me tomorrow.

I’ll have to do a post about the Haslar Sea wall. Haven’t been there for literally years. Wrong time of year at them moment. But I’ll leave anything more about it until later.

We have the bird table, the hanging feeder and the suet ball feeder. I try to make sure that all three are loaded, at least first thing in the morning. Well, I would if I needed to.

The hanging feeders aren’t being used. It’s most frustrating. I did move them, about two feet out from the hedge, I left them there a few weeks, no birds. I moved the back, no birds. I’ve had no problems with the bird table, if anything, I’ve had to take measures to keep pigeons off, but I wanted the squirrels and the starlings to keep at it.

I bought some chicken wire, trouble was it was only plastic. I think it lasted about a day. Even though the holes in the wire were big enough for the squirrels to get in, they obviously saw it as a barrier and bit through it. It was effective at keeping the pigeons out, but only whilst it hadn’t been chewed to bits.

For the time being, as it’s getting cold and presumably, insect availability is reducing. I’ve removed all measures to stop anything from getting on the table. Somebody is taking advantage of that.

I managed to get up this morning for a walk. It was dark and cold – not freezing though. I followed the normal route, along Mumby Road, down Clarence and then cut through to the cross streets, and on down the high street. There’s a lot of wortk being done to the Lloyds Bank building. I won’t take pictures of that.

I arrived at the waterfront, to see a large cruise liner making the turn up to a berth. If I had arrived ten minutes earlier, I would have been able to watch it go by, oh well.

The rest of the walk went very quietly. You could almost describe it as boring. A bit off putting if I were being honest. But then the main purpose of the walk is exercise, not excitement. There’s no issue in looking for change, but there should also be no issue in not finding it.

IT’s just a case of remembering that.

This then is my baseboard, for another of my projects, the model railway layout. This is a very slow time project, that I am going with carefully. This baseboard won’t be my final layout, its about a quarter of a metre too short, and about the same too narrow, which means that with this board I can’t build a loop. But, that is OK – I do have the board which will carry my final layout.

This board will serve a very valuable service, I will build a particular type of layout called an Inglenook layout. This is just a number of sidings, no loop, where inglenook shunting problems can be played out.

But the main thing is that in building this type of layout, I will make many mistakes and hopefully learn many things, such as;

• how to lay track
• how to install a points motor
• How to wire the layout for Digitial Command & Control (the system I will be using)

And many other things. The great thing is that I will take photos as I go along, documenting my progress, with possibly a few videos, especially when I get frustrated as I get things wrong. Lots of fun in the offing.

The really great thing is that whilst I am doing this, I will be able to have my radio on, listening for shoutouts! Sounds ideal.

The plan, then, was to have a plan for what I was going to write about over the last week, so that I didn’t end up with writers block, as I would always have at least a topic heading.

How closely do you think I stuck to the plan? Out of 5 topics, I only wrote about one – amateur radio. Now that has been a success, plus I have now gone public about the camera club. I was planning to do the Bramble net, but that starts at 1930 and ends at 2100, which coincides with the camera club times.

That’s a pity, but at least there’s the Thursday Night Net and the Confusion Net on Sundays, plus of course, there’s just having the radio on and either calling out or responding to a call. So, plenty of opportunity.

So, what about the coming week? Well, obviously I still have the headings that I haven’t used. One of them in particular I am keen to get going with. Let’s see how it goes.

I wanted to give my bus pass a bit of an outing today, I decided that I would walk to the nearest bus stop and if there were people waiting then so would I. Well, there were, so I paused to look in a shop window when a Fareham bus went sailing past. Nobody had waved it down, it appears they weren’t in the queue. Oh well. I walked into town.

If I get to Gosports new Interchange, near the old bus station, and there’s either an E1 or an E2 I’ll get on that, there wasn’t so I took a picture of the old bus station, which is now boarded up I’m assuming that demolition will start very soon now. There were no busses in the interchange. I got on the next ferry and went across to Portsmouth. I walked up to Commercial Road. I’m looking for a macro lens for Elayne (Meg, do not offer but thank you if you even thought it), her camera is so old now, that you can only buy second hand, so the London Camera Exchange and the CEX stores were places to visit, nope – nothing. I had some noodles for lunch, and then headed for Waterstones, a pleasant hour or so’s browsing, before looking for a bus to Fareham.

Not knowing from where to catch a bus to Fareham, I jumped on the next bus back to the hard. There’s lots of work being done on the bus station, so busses aren’t pulling in there. Where do I get an X3 or X4 the direct busses, no idea. As I was walking toward the information desk a number 3 pulled up. It’s going to Fareham, but not by any kind of direct route. Still, I get on. At least it’s got a charging port for my phone, I don’t really need it, but a top up is always good.

Apart from nearly being involved in a collision, which was definitely not the bus drivers fault, but involved horns and some road rage with lively language (from the idiot that nearly hit us) it was quite a pleasant journey. Luckily, when we arrived at Fareham, I was able to get straight on an E2. Quite an eventful day.

We both miss Rascal, our black cat. He left us on the 23rd of March 23. He’s never been far from our hearts. Today, we went to The Ark, a local animal sanctury to see a black kitten, he was one of three. A lovely little cat, just four months old, very lively.

There was another kitten there, who was gorgeous, lovely markings, and looking desperately like she wanted love.

The trouble is that we were very worried as to how our 11 year old Misty would take to the introduction of a strange cat. She’s always been a bit territorial, even with the cats that she has lived with, and there have been a few.

Anyhow, we have sadly decided that we are not going to get another cat, we don’t want to upset Misty.

CF4M, ah yes, my new radio uses it – I’m not going to explain what it is beyond it being a digital mode, there is obviously more to it than that. Linked into that on certain Yaesu radios the way analogue and digital modes interact is called Fusion (big over-simplifications here). Anyhow, on a sunday evening one of my friends, Pete (2E1PHW) runs a net called “The Confusion Net” – I think it may be because the regulars are confused about fusion. Anyhow, I’m going to try to get in to say Hello.