Prince Of Wales

Posted on 27th Feb 2007 by essiep

9°C, rain, clearing.

The Prince of Wales inspired little respect in me a few decades ago. Over the last ten years, he has risen greatly in my esteem. Today he said

"Have you got anywhere with McDonald’s, have you tried getting it banned? That’s the key "

It seems that few people have the courage to say something like that. He was in a centre that treats diabetes, see the article: His own "business" affairs have been admirable- actively supporting real farming, eschewing modern factory farming. Decades ago he seemed pompous and out of touch, now he has his niche.

Today has seen the laws banning use of mobile phones while driving stepped up, now it includes a 3-point penalty on the driver’s licence. This practice is possibly the biggest threat to my life in Britain these days.

washed out from the front?

Posted on 25th Feb 2007 by essiep

9°C, showers, some with rainbows. C=only 33 miles

Two things while cycling today.

1/ Passing Catton Hall estate, I was looking towards the river trent. There were two black & white shapes that looked like dead cows on the banks. An odd and disturbing sight so I went to have a look. Getting closer they began to look more like dead horses, piebald ones. Perhaps victims of drowning?

From ten feet away, there they were, lying in the cold grass next to the fast flowing river. Suddenly one then the other got up, clinking their heavy metal chains. They looked startled, the nearest one had the chain wrapped twice round a leg which shook loose as it tried to gallop south along the bank. I decided to back off , clearly I was causing more stress than they needed right then. I felt quite sorry for those two.

2/ Coming back through Whittington I heard s skidding sound, having heard it like that before, I’m conditioned to look behind in case I need to evade. A young motorcyclist was sliding to a halt behind me about 15 yards back. No other vehicles there, I pulled over and went back to see the bloke lying partly under his bike. He was out cold, another guy was on the scene by then too, then another few. It looked like he came round a blind bend, saw me and braked hard loosing the front wheel and going down. A classic front wheel skid I’d say. He was a learner, though with a helmet on he was out cold for a few minutes. We got the bike off him and put it in the church car-park.

There is a technique to braking on wet surfaces, and unless he has faulty brakes/tyres he can’t have done it right. You can’t stay upright with a front wheel skid, back ones are recoverable- front ones never are. So there is no secret to applying less brake to the front wheel on wet roads. In really poor surfaces then don’t use the front wheel at all.

I don’t yet know what injuries he has, a broken leg is possible, and so is concussion. The medics will worry about that.

Inherit the world?

Posted on 24th Feb 2007 by essiep

10°C, showers

So you’re going to inherit the world. We’re trying to be more "green" for the sake of generations to come. Our youngsters are going to inherit the world from us so we’d best hand it over in a worthwhile condition.

In that case why are the youth so often disinterested in green issues.

To illustrate: today we tidied up the house which was left looking like a land-fill site after one of ours left. I found the bin filled just two days after they were last emptied by the council. In one full bin liner was 9 bottles, mostly 2 litre plastic ones. Next to the bin was the plastic/glass recycling bin which was overlooked in favour of the black land-fill bin. this is from the same child who would drive to work only 0.6 miles away, even when the roads were so icy that the chances of an accident were high.

There is no hope of reducing greenouse emissions, nor any other ecological concern. We are wasting our time

10,000 views

Posted on 18th Feb 2007 by essiep

7°C, dull & misty. 68 miles.

Blog: statistics claim 10,000 views today. I knew something was wrong with that feature. Since the new look, the count has been impossible to believe. Now it has jumped 9,000 in one day.

Cold, down to the bone

Posted on 15th Feb 2007 by essiep

10°C, wind & sun. c=42 miles.

Not today, but Tuesday left me Cold down to the bones. I was probably wearinbg just a slightly less than ideal, but over a long period of time (3 hours cycling) I became deeply cold. It took all evening to warm up. I probably needed one of those deep hot Japanese baths to warm up in. Today’s ride was in windy but warmer air- about 2°C higher, no need to wrap up. So, only a degree makes all the difference.

The Horse Stalker picture may be finished. that makes two. I may get round to post ing a "fin" picture of it here. You can then compare with the photoshop prototype in yesterday’s post. I’m a good lad- I promised to get it done during the half-term holiday. Below is a picture taken in RAW format and imported into Photoshop, the image quality is better in some ways, but the skin tones are a bit flat. Clearly a need is there to use that RAW import plugin differently.

Music And Lyrics

Posted on 14th Feb 2007 by essiep

9°C, clear.

Film: we left the cinema trying to remember a film as bad as "Music & lyrics". The Idea was sound, the cast of good heritage- so the ingrediants aren’t against the story. But it was handled as if by a committe, any plot twists or character development were treted with the standard Holywood formula. There was overal, no eye openers, nothing new to the medium of film. Or as a teenager would say – "Boring".

As a critic would say- "forgettable" or as I would – "go and see it if you haven’t got anything better to do".

The cinema was packed.

Linseed: thinking ahead- the painting is drying nicely and I am plotting what next. Below is a photoshopped image from the last post. It’s a way of thinking about the chiarascuro of the image.

Holiday mode=On.

Posted on 12th Feb 2007 by essiep

9°C, showers, some heavy.

This & that: posting to Flickr, shopping and trying to get a builder to repair our roof. Why is it so difficult to return a phone call, or give us the quote promised? What else? Mending things, like the vacuum cleaner.

Il-2 Sturmovic: 1946. Added a patch which as had some strange side-effects to the main game. Apart from the trouble installing it, (due to a bad memory module) it has removed certain custom mission folders in the game, and left others intact. The pattern seems quite strange. The Single missions are gone, but net games are all as before. Que?

Linseed: made a change that could be awkward to complete. I added a hand, see picture, which needs about 4 more layers like the face has had. I have made this mistake before with the painting "Ruff".
It never did look entirely right.

The big melt

Posted on 11th Feb 2007 by essiep

9°C,

, flooding everywhere. C=71miles

Cycling: the snow is all but gone. All the rivers and streams around here are either full of have burst their banks already. Conditions were good for a nice long ride though, the only obstacles were the wind and several floods in the road that I had to wade through.

Overall, it was a day that deserve more photographs, a pocket camera would have been ideal, so I shall shop around.

DIMM slots unreliable

Posted on 9th Feb 2007 by essiep

2ºC, snow thawing.

Started the day Painting: continued with fine tuning, moved the vein on the horse’s muzzle, adde a layer to the man’s face and so on. I have an idea for the background, so that could change tomorrow. this picture will easilty be done in the next few days.
Computer fixes: I just put the RAM card back in this computer to see if it runs ok. After a few false starts, it seems that the problem lies with the slots on the motherboard. The cards don’t seem to be making good electrical contacts, so after some fiddling- they are back in. Now running at 1572 MB I am on the lookout for any signs of a crash. Usually programs start reporting errors. Barring IE6 crashing and loosing my first entry this morning- it’s ok for now.

Flickr: has a more lively community than here. Comments are more forthcoming and the response to my phtogrphs has been very good. There seem to be fewer juvenile spangly-glitter posters than here. In fact, it’s encouraging me to take more interest in my camera. Now I am taking all shots using manual exposure settings and it’s like old times. When I used ot use the Olympus OM2sp I always set exposure and focus manually, it makes you think more about what you are trying to get ina picture. the same works on the digital camera. I bet the quality of my photos will improve as a result.

It’s snowing again.