Bills Posts

The iPhone camera is perfectly adequate for vlogging. I’ve now recorded several videos on it. For the most part, I have everything I need to do vlogging. what I don’t have is the practice or the stories. Both of those are down to me.

One problem I do have is the external microphone – mine is broken, so I need to find another one. Of course, I bought the cheapest one I could find. I’ll give them their due, the model I bought did work well. But then I went for a few weeks without using the mic. It was after that (obviously, making sure it was correctly charged) that it didn’t work again.

Here then, comes my dilemma; I would buy a more expensive microphone, but how much am I going to use it? Well, of course I will, but that’s the question.

This is not a Neolithic site, it’s the garden at Holme for Gardens, which is a place to take a very pleasant stroll, have a browse in the garden centre, there’s some lovely cakes in the shop, and the food in the cafe is delicious. Well worth a visit. And, disappointingly, this is one of the few pictures of anywhere in Dorset that I have.

There are so many places in the county that I want to both re-visit and visit anew, but I want to make those visits worthwhile. I read in article in B&W Photography where the photographer didn’t just take pictures, he liked to write about what or who he photographs. Which strikes me as entirely reasonable.

I have been going on a lot, over the course of this blog about mega and Neolithic sites, without understanding why I have a minor obsession with them, but why? Thing is I don’t really know. Associated with theses sites are ley lines. Perhaps subconsciously I am feeling the energy? Now, I have to be very careful here, as I don’t want to get labelled as, well, slightly mad. Let’s just say that I like the idea of ley lines, and I like the idea that ley lines might be energy paths, and these paths focus on things like Neolithic sites. I like the idea of it. Like I like the idea of faster than light travel. Let’s just leave it at that shall we?

The thing is when I do get around to visiting the sights and sites of Dorset, I may try a bit of creative writing. What do you think?

Even though I’ve put today’s date in the title of today’s entry – there is nothing really special to report about today. We had a nice breakfast of pancakes and whiled away a bit of time watching the starlings on the bird table, and the pigeons trying to get on to the table. You don’t need to worry about the pigeons.

That’s because the starlings are such untidy eaters, that portion of the food always ends up on the ground, some of which the pigeons devour.

All done for breakfast, we got ready to go out. Not far, barely a five minute walk to the Methodist church hall, where the Cats Protection League were holding a 2nd hand book sale. They had their entire stock of books out, I’m not sure, possibly 10 – 15 trays of books? I spent a good bit of time browsing them. No Science Fiction as far as I could see, with the exception of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. I bought Mort, I recall it being one of the funniest books I had read in a while the first time round.

I also bought Bill Bryson’s Life and time of the Thunderbolt Kid, which I think may be a biography, but I’m not sure. I like his work, I find him quite funny. I’ve not read Thunderbolt Kid before, so am looking forward to that. We also had a cup of tea and a piece of cake, it all helps to fill their coffers, and the CPL in Gosport do a very good job.

Beyond that, I went and had a browse around the emporium on Stoke Road. I do like places like that. I didn’t buy anything, but you never know what you are going to find there, so I often have a look though the window, but this was the first time I had been in side.

Getting home, I settled down for what I can only describe as a very lazy afternoon. Reading and trying not to fall asleep, and occasionally failing in that. I think I’m going to a bit busier tomorrow to make up for that. Plus, if I have time I may try and get out for a walk – which I didn’t do today. Like I said, lazy!

I know I can’t feed all birds everywhere, I would see no one, or nothing starve. I can’t even feed all of the local wildlife all of the time. But I do what I can. What that means is that some of local birds and the odd squirrel get a rather nice breakfast of ground up fat ball (which the buggers are refusing to eat when whole but devour with gusto when powdery), ground up peanuts and mealworms.

It seems to work the table is mostly cleared by early evening. There’s usually a residue, but I had cleared old residue, so it was barren.

This time of year we get baby starlings. There were 2 this evening trying to eke out food. I reloaded the table. It’s strange isn’t it? I feel guilty at deriving pleasure & particularly entertainment from something that is just hungry and needs food. Earlier today I was watching the table. There were birds perched on all four sides, and one in the centre with the food. It was defending its store, and attacking anything that attempted to grab a bite. In the end they kind of just piled in and overwhelmed the defender of food.

Anyhow back to this evening there were two baby starlings, both fighting over the now replenished table. They were going at each other so hard that at one point they just fell off the table. Such is nature!

Who is Dave Ford you may well ask? If you don’t use YouTube at all, Dave is one of those people who makes it worthwhile to do so.

Dave has done quite a few videos of his walks, mostly around Dorset, but some around Hampshire as well. He’s out with Logan his whippet usually doing a roughly 5 mile walk around an area of interest.

His videos are well made, well edited, and interesting as he includes a little bit of history. I think I would like to do the same kind of thing but in a slightly different way by adding a bit of drama to my historical descriptions, you know, a bit of arm waving and prancing around – yes, I’d quite like that. Really, there should be plenty of opportunities to practice that here. I really should have a go.

I think what I need to do is identify an interesting area in town, or nearby (plenty of those) do a little bit of research. Haven’t we been here before? Oh good.

Folks I apologise about last nights post. Hopefully, this one is a little better.

I have been distracted and nearly forgot to do my blog. Unforgivable. It’s going to be a dreadful posti am really sorry,

I think I first encountered podcasts around 2003. At that time I had a regular two hour drive to work. I bought my first iPod, Now, I do liked a bit of music, but not much, I know what I like and am not interested in the rest. So what could I put on this wonderful new device?

I can’t remember how I first found out about podcasts, what were they and how did they work, actually thinking about I must have found out about them through iTunes. My computer would have displayed them, and I probably thought something along the lines of “what are these” of course I found quite a few to which I enjoyed listening.

My use of podcasts kind of just tailed off. Every so often I delve in to it, and it seems that the podcast world is still very active, but I’m not as sure that it is as vibrant as in the early days, the focus today is very much on the visual, I’m surprised to find that YouTube started as early as 2005.

Given the success and the persistence of radio, especially after the introduction of television, there is no reason why an audio medium shouldn’t successfully exist along side a visual, and that is the case.

We get to the point in this blog, where I consider my determination to engage with Vlogging, and I cannot ignore my failure to do so. Unlike the written word, blogging where, in terms of success this blog stands as evidence.

I wrote tonight’s blog to show that I haven’t forgotten about Vlogging. I admit though, that I haven’t given much thought about podcasting. Is that something worth thinking about? Possibly.

The perennial problem is what topic? Now if I can blog every day, surely I can do something like a vlog once a month, or even a podcast. I mostly have the tools I need for it. Just me thinking.

It was a lovely bright day. The only job I had to do was to sort this mornings bin, it’s the grey bin – normal household stuff. That done, I had breakfast, but first, I loaded up the bird table. It didn’t take long for the babies to arrive, and the parents weren’t far behind.

It was the usual noisy rabble. And there was a crowd on the ground as well.

We went to The Range. It’s been quite a while since I went there. We had a good look around, and Elayne bought some compost. Peat free of course, and quite smelly.

We went to Lee on Solent for an ice cream. Gosport Borough Council are changing the method that people pay for parking. Using either a mobile phone app or cash. They’ve disabled the wifi, so you have to use a card. It’s a bit messed up. Most frustrating. Very nice ice cream though.

We had a very pleasant afternoon sat in the garden snoozing or reading. Quite relaxing. Followed by the remains of yesterdays BBQ, very nice. I think an entirely apt end to a bank holiday.

I’ve just realised that I have no recent pictures of Starlings. At least the header picture is a bird!

Today being Sunday I delayed loading the bird table for two reasons; the first is the squirrel, they are greedy. I’m happy that they clear the table of the previous days meals, but I’d really prefer to get first sitting at the table, and sometimes can mean waiting until the squirrel gives up eating. The second reason is that yesterday, the starlings were really noisy. It is Sunday. I think having a bunch of baby starlings squawking, still demanding to be fed at 8 or 9 AM would probably be just a bit too noisy for Sunday, so I didn’t want to encourage it.

Of course when I did put the food out, I think it took for about 5 – 10 minutes for the first starling to arrive. From then on they are backwards and forwards, a heaving mass of squabbling feathers.

As the day went on, I’d be making a cup of tea, or doing lunch and look out the door, lined up on the fence would be lined up, squawking. There was one point where I had to go down to the shed. I went out the back door, not only the birds on the fence, but another half a dozen hidden in the bushes burst out and flew off.

I have to say that I feel honoured that we get so many of them. I get a lot of pleasure from watching them.

Up until today, the air has mostly been cold. Today, though it looks as though the sun is breaking through. It’s been quite a pleasant day. We did a little bit in the garden, and then spent some sitting at the bottom of the garden.

First, I put the morning breakfast on the bird table. For once, the squirrels didn’t get a look in. The bird table was absolutely rammed with starlings. It looked like they were on their first family outing, A number of the baby starlings, were clearly identifiable through their light grey feathers. They weren’t engaging in the melee and were still being fed by the adult birds. It was lovely, fascinating and brilliant to watch.

We walked into town. Bought sandwiches and a drink from Gregs and sat at the waterfront for lunch. Just watching the steady stream of small boats moving through the harbour, along with The Victoria of Wight and the St Claire WightLink ferries People were walking along the Esplanade. We indulged in a bit of people-watching.

All in it has been a very pleasant day.