Author Archives: essiep

A Blackbird’s Christmas.

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6°C, clear. C=24 miles.

MSLive failed yesterday, so this post is posthumous.
Cycling: Blackbirds use ground effect whilst in flight to gain extra speed for less effort. Here in the UK that often means using flat hard surfaces like roads. Today, one Blackbird ended its life doing that. It was struck by a car near the River Tame and fell like a rag-doll into the road not far from me. As I rode past I could see that it was still moving, I wasn’t even sure what it was until close.
Like that story I told here a few years ago, I picked it up, in the vague hope that it would recover. No injuries were visible, its heart still beating, and heaving rapid breathes. It’s eyes started to close, and the breathing got lighter, the little yellow beak slowly lowering. After no more than a minute, the breathing stopped, I urged it on to no effect. The moment had passed I thought when its beak opened slightly with a film of saliva in the corner.
I put it on the grass.
Such a beautiful creature, one of the finest songbirds (more so being a male). Such a waste,
The photographs were taken less than a moment after it faded from life

Tarkovsky

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Using YouTube here to decide which Tarkovsky film to get next. This is the one I have on DVD. I’m being equally indecisive about which YouTube clip to include here.
   
Right now, "Andre Rublev is most likley to…

It all reminds me of the time, as a teenager, watching "Solaris". It must have been on TV, long slow and strangely compelling. Perhaps Amazon will do a 2 disc special offer, or something.

The roads are dry, but covered in dark, slippery slimey dirt, someone suggested tyre rubber. Perhaps, poor traction in places.

Parking and crashes

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4°C, grey and E wind.

News story: BBC– This was broadcast on TV this morning. What it doesn’t say in the written article what is is shown clearly in the TV report. This family live in a house facing a long sweeping bend in the road, but on the corner of a road junction. Apparently they have had four parked cars wrecked by joy-riders loosing control on the bend in the road over the last few years.

See the map for the presumed location. My question is this- the cars that were wrecked were parked on the raod as shown in my map? In the UK it’s illegal to park within 15 metres of a road junction, so is the victim’s case affected by the fact that they habitually park in a dangerous place?

Dry ice

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3 dropping to -2°C, low Humidity. C=43 miles

Weather obsessed: I know this is getting repetitive, but we’ve had the same weather for over a week now, the forcast is for another week’s worth.
It’s unbelievably dry around now, the river levels are very low, lower than in the summer, and the cold nights aren’t creating much ice, apart from last Thursday; I drove in on that day.

Earliest Sunset

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14th December has the earliest sunset. We have two almost weeks to see the latest sunrise though.
Date

Sunrise

Sunset

Daylight hours

Change

15-Dec-07

08:12

15:53

7h 41m 46s

– 0m 49s

16-Dec-07

08:13

15:54

7h 41m 04s

– 0m 42s

17-Dec-07

08:13

15:54

7h 40m 28s

– 0m 35s

18-Dec-07

08:14

15:54

7h 39m 59s

– 0m 29s

Uggh! Pollution.

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3°C, no Ice,

One week to go and there is a slight respite from the ice. There is fog around, which has really picked up the traffic pollution so strongly that you can taste it. It’s more of an effort to breathe, the air sems more viscous.

One dog’s nightmare

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-1 to 5°C, dry & v cold.

We know dogs deam, but do they have nightmares too? At about 5am today, I heard this haunting, melancholic one note howl from Rosie. She was sleeping in here, near the door ( as usual) so I knew which dog it was, so I called her over and made a fuss and spoke in a calm voice. She wagged.
 
Ice: there isn’t much ice about because it is so very dry: but it seems that Walsall haven’t gritted their roads today. Under the bridge near school, there was a layer of ice about 1cm thick from field runoff. I braked and stopped just short of this threatening mirror in the road. But it was so bad that it was difficult to even get up on the pavement, with oncoming traffic I didn’t want to fall in front of a car. This weather is due to be the same all week.

Pending requests

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6°C, dull, but mostly dry. No cycling.

Every few days I find links to various womens’ Live_spaces in the pending requests. They have spaces with barely any info and of course I have never heard of them. They always look like some fading porn star, certainly no-one I recognise. This practice looks like some pointless spamming internet scam. No harm in blocking them then!
STALKER, 3rd run-through. (PC game), After a slightly lacklustre start to Bioshock, I’ve restarted a new game in STALKER. There is something particularly rewarding about this game, it must be the mixture of the  setting, atmosphere FPS genre with the RPG elements thrown in. It makes great screenshots, which isn’t that easy to do in Bioshock.

A dull day shining

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7°C, rain, less wind.

As promised- photos of shiny things. They’re pedals, not fitted yet, but I expect they’ll bung up with mud less often. Admire them before they get used, oily and scratched. Today has been a day of rain, lots of it as has most of this week, will it flood soon?
The wet landscape should be good for photographs, but for the lack of light. I’m currently looking into a camera upgrade to solve that problem. Mine isn’t too good when set to higher ASA speeds- it gets rather grainy.
3DS Max: Digger again, oh no! (-oh yes!). Added some scene objects, to give it some space, the mobile phone mast was the most satisfying- mostly because it took a relatively short time to make; then I used a x-ref scene contaiing a Cathedral.
I fancy adding a small flock of birds next. Don’t hold your breath.
  http://img.photobucket.com/player.swf?file=http://vidmg.photobucket.com/albums/v411/EssieP/3Dgraphics/BIGdigger_n96.flv