In your underwear?

16°C, rain showers, plus sunny bits.


Favourite news story: BBC Size FF? You could get a rabbit in there!
Priceless!
The Whalesong is familiar; it must have been sampled innumerable times over the years since it was recorded (1970), Kate Bush, Pink Floyd and all the others.

Whale song

15°C, even more rain. Really big drops that make bubbles in puddles. Endless.


Amazon: awaiting a CD of Whalesong, but I don’t know if I can play it. I fear it may be too melacholic,
or worse…


 
I love this scene, it also seems appropriate today.

Rain

15°C, rain, C. only 26 miles


Look! It’s out there…rain
rainSunday
Only rode 26 miles on the bike today. 4 showers and approaching thunder. I was wetted!

St. Kilda for FSX

26°C, warm sunny day, but rain now.


FSX scenery: I’ve just put together a cluster of islands for FSX: St. Kilda off the west coast of Scotland. There was nothing by default in the Sim, but this has worked a treat. The water texture must have suppressed the 3D mesh because the topography is very convincing. I don’t yet know whether that is a result of the add-on mesh, it may be flat in standard installations. It could probably do with a coastline texture, normally I don’t bother with those but it would give that slightly foamy wave pattern on the rocks.
2008-7-1_21-35-11-546

Sense of proportion

22°C, warm, light SW wind and 3/10 cloud.


Funny how: looking at that picture of the underpainting on the silver screen shows up how out of proportion it is. Oh well, another layer has gone on it today- the body shape should be better; but you’ll have to wait for a photo.

Assassin’s Creed: has no "difficulty setting". It appears to be adaptive, that is- the difficulty adjusts to the players gameplay. Perhaps the number of "deaths" is calculated somehow. The result is a reduction in the number of opponants seen in a city. Or at least I think so- firstly I speculated on the characters dissappearing on replay because of some randomised coding in the game.

Vilhelm Hammershøi : (1864-1916),Interesting exhibition in the VA, London. See Michael Palin. There is a common bridge with Fantin LaTour- not the plant pictures though. There is a very calm melacholy about all the pictures I have seen, the muted colours and natual light that is seen lees often these days. We’re used ot artificial light and the flat tonal surface that gives, this however creates a deep 3 dimensional space which couldn’t be done with geometry/perspective alone. The pictures are quiet, very quiet, full of thought and perception; it’s a time for contemplation.

ham56-6217

52

16°C, light cloud & SW wind


52 downloads: overnight, 10 hours that is. I can’t imagine the River Angara will be as popular as the Chernobyl scenery files were, fewer people will fly to an area that’s not very famous. Chernobyl will have been puplicised by a few FPS games set there over the past year or so (CoD4, Stalker). River Angara is probably largely unknown, but its ommission is glaring should a flight simmer stumble upon it. One forum writer said it was also missing in the previous version FS9.

Uploaded scenery for FSX

18°C, Changable, mosrly bright


FSX scenery: Uploaded the River Angara file tonight. Thus:
River Angara, Siberia
Scenery for FSX: to replace a 380 miles section of this major river that drains from Lake Baikal in Siberia to the North.
From  N58° 57.191′ / E101° 14.592′
to:
N58° 6.028′ /  E92° 59.629′
The default section of the river are left untouched.
The default scenery shows this river empty, except for coastlines. For a waterway that is up to 3 miles wide, and a source of hydro-electric power, this is some omission. This scenery fills the gap. I have tried to set the river’s shape to fit seamlessly with the default water shapes, this includes using a similar number of corner points.
As a bonus, I have placed autogen polygons to represent the some of the bigger villages/towns from Kezhma to Strelka.
To install, simply drop these files into your addon scenery folder and run FSX. Make sure, of course, that Addon scenery is listed in the Scenery manager.
The optional file VFR Bratsk R_Angara can be placed in:
My Documents>Flight Simulator X Files
It is a flight plan you can use to make finding the river easier if you are unfamiliar with Siberia.
Hope they like it, the last one has now just about reached 1,000 downloads from one site, good eh?
The Harlech & Llanbedr area is starting to look right. It should be ready fairly soon, I’ll show you another day.

Solaris

18°C, rain


Solaris: a film by Tarkovsky, as you know, I like Tarkovsky’s films. This one was released around the time of Kubrik’s 2001 a Space Odessy. Solaris has dated less well  than the American counterpart, is my initial opinion. That means that Stalker rates more highly for me. Cinematography is where this film-makers appeal lies for me. He shoots moving pictures, and each shot in the film could be printed as a picture and seen in its own right. Stalker has better pictures – I would say.

Indistrial brownscape

18°C, strong winds (West); 56 miles cycling


Very strong Westerlies all day, though warm & dry. It must be tough in the northern apporaches, sinkings happen on days like this.
Oh what now- another picture of Mugwort. It’s becoming more obvious which are mugwort and which are wormwood. As the mugworts mature, the top surfaces are getting darker, while the workwood keeps that silvery green on both sides. they will flower soon, one is white the other yellow.
/unramble.

Brakspear

12°C, rain.


"Like full-on rain innit": Mid-summer’s day, and little chance of seeing the sun today.
Brakspear: one of the most bitter drinks I can recall. Remarkable, none of that slightly sour after-taste that some beers can leave; as bitter as Rocket (the lettuce leaf). Bitterness can be so refreshing.
River Angara: just about ready for upload, final Beta testing right now. I hope the slightly ridged join doesn’t show up when the river meets the R. Yenitsey. I’m inlcuding a flight plan file with this one so those unfamiliar with Russia can find it. Apparently, this missing section of river mas missing in FS9 as well as FS10. How did that go unnoticed? It’s en-route from Irkutsk/Bratsk to the Tunguska Event site.
Any suggestions what I could put in to mark that meteor impact site? Remember the object was an air-burst, so there is no crater.
R_Angara-Yenitsey