Bills Posts

We had an enjoyable evening at the Camera Club. Tonight was the first of the seasons PDI (Projected Digital Image) competitions.Elayne and I both had three images in the round.

The header image scored 9.5 points. It had been held back to the end of the competition, I was excited as that meant it could be considered for an award.

Unfortunately, the one thing the judge didn’t like about it was the background, so no award this time, but I was pleased with the hold back and the 9.5 – so no complaints there.

Elayne has made the decision that she is going to focus on trying to take better pictures this year, so that she has fresh material for next year. We have both been delving in to our archives for competition pictures.

Of course, in order to get some decent pictures, we need to create opportunities. That means doing something – even if it is just going for a walk. You never know what you will see. Plus, if you are carrying your phone, these days, you are pretty much guaranteed to have a reasonable (actually a really quite good) camera with you. So, no excuse.

Get out there, have your phone with you. Create those opportunities.

September was Aurora’s Birthday. We bought a couple of metallised balloons for the party. It’s over a month ago, and these two balloons, whilst slowly deflating are still floating. Their decreasing bouyancy is partially aggravated by the string holding them down. I cut the string off one of them, it’s now clinging to the ceiling, like the other.

Why am I going on about these balloons? Well mainly because they are fascinating. I. was wondering if they would show us air currents in the house. If they are still floating over the next few days, I might have a go at seeng what they do.

That kind of leads me on, in a very tenuous way, to the weather. I have a weather station. in the garden, it looks quite neat, it’s good to see the anemometer whizzing round when the wind blows and the vane telling me the wind direction (provided it’s not southerly – distorted by the house), but that is pretty much all it does. It’s time for a replacement. I might get one for Christmas. I do have one that I quite like the look of, but I am still researching.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

I’ve done a fair few courses on Future Learn. They are quite good. But I am reaching the point where I am running out of topics which I am interested in. There are some courses which I could consider doing again, but not for a while. They are something to come back to.

I was surprised to find that The Open University offers around 900 courses free. I’ve just started exploring those. I am sure there are some that will appeal to me.

I had heard that some of the major American universities offer free courses. In fact, i signed up to do a course from Harvard. To be fair, I realised that I wasn’t that interested in the course, it took me about a week to realise. I’ve withdrawn now. I may go back to the institution in the future, but not yet.

I have really gone out of my way to stress that I have no desire to write fiction. Well, that isn’t 100% true, occasionally a thought passes through my mind, followed by “Could that be a short story or a book”?

I am about to risk a Ratner moment, by saying that of late, I have becomed concerned about the quality of my writing, I am concerned about it, and would like to improve it. I have started to look into how to do this. Ironically, it appears that the tools and methods fiction writers use can equally apply to non-fiction.

On of the problems of my writing (I think) is that I tend to be what I call “Reportish” very linear, straight facts, no embellishments, metaphors, scenic writing etc. It’s a dry style that isn’t that entertaining (if you are still with me, thank you).

I think I need to be more open to different ways of writing, but as implied by the title of today’s post, that will require some imagination and originality. These are qualities that I do not possess to any great extent. Can I do anything about that? Not sure, but I can at least try.

I really should have gone for a walk today. I’ve been following a slightly different pattern during the week. Instead of going for a walk at 6AM, I’ve been going to work, clocking off at around 8 and back to work for 9. I find it easier to get up and go to the office than go for a walk at that time.

Going for a walk at 8 has been different. Of course, it is a different group of people that you see, fewer dog walkers people rushing to work. I haven’t worked out yet who are regular ramblers.

Just over 8 weeks now until the 16th of December. Elayne r has a bit of a Cafe Culture, I think I will as well in addition to the things we will do together. One thing I am going to practice is a bit of people watching – should be fun.

I’ve never been to an event like this before. But, I’ve seen TED talks on YouTube. But those were huge events, in a vast arena, and tickets can cost thousands (reflected in the types of speaker (US Presidents, former that is, for example).

The thing about TEDx is that it is locally organised and funded. Tickets are much cheaper, and as was the case with all 14 of our speakers today, locally based. But in some cases, famous, a lady who had sailed around the world, and another who had swam around The Isle of Wight.

Not every speaker was famous, there was the dog walker who spoke of the social community between walkers. I spoke to him after, I could absolutely relate to what he was talking about, even though I’m not a dog owner.

All 14 speakers were really interesting to listen to. IT was interesting to be told that there had been 109 applicants to speak, 37 people had been auditioned, leading to the 14 final speakers, who had been worked with for 6 months, and it showed in the professionalism of the presentations.

It was a really enjoyable day, and I think there are plans for another, next year. Definitely up for that.

Thursday will be an interesting day. I’ve taken a days leave because it’s the first Gosport TEDx Event, and I have a ticket.

I first heard of TED talks several years ago, but it is only in the last couple of years that I learned the TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, but in reality, the range of TED talks is massive and I think most, if not all are available on line.

My interest in TED talks increased significantly when I read Chris Anderson’s book about public speaking and to be quite honest reading from a sceptical position, it really didn’t take me long to become a total convert to TED Talks, and have very much wanted to go to a TED session. When I found out about TEDx from the book, I googled to find out where they were being held in the UK, only to find that one was being arranged for Gosport.

So, here we are. I’ll let you know how we get on tomorrow.

I think the title of the post pretty much sums it up[ really. Of course a large chunk of the day was taken up with work. I won’t write about that. I watched a bit of TV. I didn’t go to the camera club, I just sat downstairs and watched TV.

I’m a bit annoyed with myself, I could have gone on the Bramble net. I didn’t even think of it until just now. Never done that one before, so would have been good.

I could have gone for a walk this morning, but didn’t. No particular reason other than my heel and Achilles tendon were a bit tender, and I didn’t want to aggravate them.

I’ll try again tomorrow

For some reason, I seem to be determined to build a relationship between this blog, and my facebook posts. I don’t really know why, and in doing so, I appear to be making a rod for my own back. I see no reason why the two can’t be entirely independent. After all, they do serve different purposes.

I think my facebook posts are usually light hearted and a bit more personal that the blog. I can after all, exercise a degree of control over who sees them, which is exactly not the case here, but that also means that here, I can write about some of my more peculiar ideas – such as the desire to vlog, interest in earth mysteries and the like.

I think that things will change when I retire, I have some thoughts about things that I want to do. Of course, reality will intrude, but let’s see how things work out.

I managed to do posts to FB over the weekend, quite pleased with that. They were a bit diary-like, as I hadn’t gone in to town. But that was OK. I’m going to see if I can keep it going, doing the posts in the afternoon certainly helps, but I still think I would prefer to do them straight after the morning walk – provided I have time of course.

We had a delightful Fox encounter today, I’m not going to reproduce his antics here. But it was clearly enjoying our garden and seemed quite relaxed. I died comment that the fox seemed quite healthy, which was nice, but I know that they can suffer badly from mange, I know our neighbour feeds the fox – I’m assuming that it’s this one as I think they are quite territorial. I may look into seeing if there is a powder or something that can be mixed with the food to stop the mange – should it appear.

The birds are ignoring the food on the table and in the hangers again. I’m hoping that they will pick up on it again, as I think we are moving into that time when natural food isn’t quite as abundant.

Looking ahead, I’ve bought a new shoulder bag. It’s a bit bigger than the NASA bag, but I don’t want it to get too heavy. I am playing with ideas.

The week ahead promises to be interesting what with updates on the high street and the bus station, but Thursday in particular will be a focus – it’s the day of Gosport’s TEDx event, I have a ticket and a day off booked. Really looking forward to it.