Bills Posts

I had several opportunities to take pictures today. Unfortunately, they weren’t really on my mind. No particular reason, they just weren’t.

It was a fairly active day, I think I did more steps that I have doe for the previous five days. Not doing anything particularly special, just walking in to town, exploring the charity shops and the works – I even bought a couple of books.

We met up with some friends in one of the shops, one of whom had the latest leaflet from the leading party in the council. I have to be honest and say that if the plans for what is replacing the bus station are accurate, it could be really nice. We’ll have to see if it pans out.

Elayne and a friend went to a show in Portsmouth, to save them having to scrabble for a taxi back to the hard and having to contend with rowdy crowds, I said I’d drive round to pick them up. I spoke to a traffic warden to ask where it was safe to park around the guild hall. She said it was nice to speak to someone polite. I still paid for a ticket. In fairness, the traffic wardens disappeared and I didn’t see them again, so I would have got away with it. Oh well.

This is a bit of a placeholder. With the exception that I was going to use the header picture in our upcoming abstract competition in the camera club.

But not after the judge gave us an education on “abstraction” (is that a word)? It’s quite clear in the picture that the base object is a car, and because of that, it can’t be abstract.

What I need to do is have a good play around in photoshop and make any indication that a car is part oof the picture is removed,

On Tuesday, abstract was the other groups subject. I don’t think any of the pictures shown were black and white. I think it could be a bit of a mess. We’ll have to see.

It’s just over a month before winter formally begins on the 21st of December. These last few mornings, the temperature has been in single figures. Plus when there’s a bit of a breeze the windchill felt negative.

I’m bleating – none of that helps me get up for a walk in the morning. In most cases I just don’t feel like it. I need though to go for a walk at some point during the day.

Back in September Elayne and I joined the Gosport Camera Club, mainly because this is an activity we can do together.

The Club season runs from September to May, culminating in the exhibition in the Discovery Centre. The pictures that are shown in the exhibition are chosen over the 8 competitions (4 print and 4 Projected Digital Images (PDIs)), with the 1st, 2nd & 3rd and highly commended being the main subjects.

Elayne and I are putting both prints and PDIs into the various competitions. Elayne has already had a Highly Commended. In the first PDI competition I did put two images in, but something went wrong, and for some reason they were never shown. The competition Sec could not explain what had gone wrong. It was really frustrating, but at least I still have the images available for the next “open” competition.

Tonight, we had prepared two prints each, and had given them to the competition secretary ready for this week’s competition. The prints were being arrayed on the stands ready for the judging and, would you believe it, my prints weren’t there! I went and had a quiet word with the competition sec, and he could remember seeing the prints, but couldn’t explain where they were. Both in a slight panic, we went to our homes to check. Just as I was pulling in to our street Elayne phoned to say the prints had been found – stuck to the back of other prints. Relieved, I returned to the club.

Of the two photos above, both were held back because the judge liked them and wanted to take another look at them (actually the judge held quite a few back – more than usual). Anyhow, he gave Ooops 9.5/10 and Over the Bridge to Sky 8.5.

Not top scorers, but I was well pleased with the results.

On the 14th of August 2020 I decided that I would commit to doing a post a day for a year. I started with 1/365. There was a point where I remembered that 2020 was a leap year, so I changed it to x/366. I probably didn’t have to do that.

It was quite a day when I reached 366/366. I was quite pleased with myself. Of course I kept going. Things have gone very slightly awry since today’s date is 11 November there’s a gap of 90 days between now and the 14th of August, without quite a bit of effort. I think I will just carry on.

I’m not going to stop numbering. It’s nice to have a marker. There is no denying though, that even if I haven’t done the requisite number of posts, I have been doing the blog for four years.

There’s a thought. If I did two blogs a day for 90 days, I’d have caught up.

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.