Author Archives: essiep

Wormwood in Staffordshire

Posted on by
Reply
25°C, 1/10 cloud; light NE; C=79 miles

Absinthium: after stopping by the road for a bike adjustment, there it was – a clump of Wormwood. It really does like sandy soil, by the roadside away from other plants; or is it stiffling the others with that Thujone? I brought a piece home to make sure of the identity. You know what it’s like, after spotting one, seeing them everywhere is easy. I want a sample in the garden.

Willington Power Station: only has 5 cooling towers, and nothing else, no generator hall, no chimneys no other buildings. No wonder it looked so ugly last time I passed it- it’s being demolished. It looks like there are plans to put housing on there (as there is everywhere in the UK).

Beautiful day; 79 miles but not very fast.

El Cant De La Sibil

Posted on by
Reply
20°C, clear summer’s day.

Montserrat Figureas: Delivered CD today from France. It came faster than the Amazon sourced order. Sacred music from Southern Frmace in Latin. Thanks to Simon from Can Llouquette for the recommendation. It’s good for; purity and space. It’s not good for; sing-along (thankfully). Teenagers will probably hate it though.

I’m eagerly waiting for Rachmaninov’s Vespers to arrive now. I had one on loan from our music dept. and though the recording is from St. Petersburg, the production made it all sound a bit remote and vague to me.

Rain & mist 1240m high

Posted on by
Reply
16°C, rain

Last Wednesday: mist and rain photo. What an unforgetable day. We’d stopped at a rocky Col to eat, then on hearing pat pat pat of rain, decided to descend. Coming down the south slopes the rain beat, the thuinder roared and we brisky sought lower alitiudes. Between lightining flashes, I coudl see burnt out trunks fo trees, branches of charcoal in places and thought of the lightninhg bolts. Then I looked back. You know those days where light filters between deciduous trees- it becomes green; well, here the mist itself became green. I’ll never forget that moment, I want a waterproof digital camera.

Divert a river

Posted on by
Reply
14°C, rain.

2008-5-16_19-39-2-218

  1. Use object placement tool to put an object on each corner of the river’s origonal course, then save the xml placement file.
  2. Open the xml in notepad, open Google Earth as well.
  3. Open Google Earth, under Tools>Options set Show Lat/long to Universal Transverse Marcator
  4. Put placemarks in the same co-ordinates as the objects, Copy & paste the corordinates from the xml file. In this case, I had to place 6 objects.
  5. Draw the river’s polygon so that it ended at the placemarks.
  6. Complile the KMl to bgl as normal.

This has worked well apart from a road that crosses the river, as well as a ridge in the water that stubbornly refuses to dissappear. I have noticed other ridges further upstream in Miicrosoft’s own river polygons; so maybe there is another fault not of my making.
Kezhma-Siberia

Upload + 24 hours

Posted on by
Reply
17°C, clear afternoon, but fresh E wind.

24 hours on: 361 downloads from AVSim. No direct feedback yet, but for one email requesting a recompile to a previous version of the Sim.
 
River Angara is substantially done now, it is at the fine tuning stage where I’m matching up the new river with the existing one in FSX.
R_Angara join

Release to AVSim

Posted on by
1
22-17°C, clear then suddenly- clouds.

AVSim: This second attempt to upload my FSX Scenery to AVSim is, I hope, more successful than the first. We should be impressed with their professionalism I suppose- the first was rejected because I’d missed some details in the readme file. I have another project to follow soon.
2008-4-26_20-32-21-156

Third

Posted on by
1
27°C, unbroken sunshine, quite humid, no wind: C=78 miles

Portishead : Third
I have really fallen in love with this album, one track in particular.
The Rip:
 As she walks in the room
Scented and tall
Hesitating once more
And as I take on myself
And the bitterness I felt
I realise that love flows
 
Wild, white horses
They will take me away
And the tenderness I feel
Will send the dark underneath
Will I follow?
 
Through the glory of life
I will scatter on the floor
Disappointed and sore
And in my thoughts I have bled
For the riddles I’ve been fed
Another lie moves over
 
Wild, white horses
They will take me away
And the tenderness I feel
Will send the dark underneath
Will I follow?
 
Wild, white horses
They will take me away
And the tenderness I feel
Will send the dark underneath
Will I follow? 

Well wild horses they will take me away
and the tenderness I feel
will send the dark underneath
will I follow?

Seems to express the mood here this weekend; well, you know me & melancholy. The album follows on well from PJ Harvey’s "White Chalk" release recently. Some bits are going to challenge some listeners with their discordant passages. That is why I am so curious to know others’ opinions.
Cycling: I’ve  been a good lad and ridden for 5 hours but got no sunburn, not even a little missed bit or the bald patch! The route was a roundabout one to Ilam Derbyshire, having called in at Dovedale which was far too crowded. Coming home got hard though, I got hungry, and possibly teetering on overheating as I got near home. Moral: take snack-bars next time.
 
FSX: Finished the River Angara, now just adding a few river ports before I release it.