20°C, clouding over

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Is it a planet?

 

Some days it is, some not. Nice to see astronomers arguing over something small.

 

Just realised that I have done no painting for a week! Time dilation effects can occur at any time. I lost a chunk of time this afternoon, it’s hard to explain as I was asleep at the time. It was a ½hour nap that started at 17.00 and finished at 18.30. The weather has been odd today also, I got soaked cycling but the roads didn’t get wet- a day of conundrums.

 

3DS Max: as you’ve seen from the photos, that Biplane looks ok, but on measuring it, all sorts of errors appeared. Some bits were only 1 inch out, but several others were considerably more. It’s taken 2 hours to get that right, plus to make some other modifications. the problem appeared because the undercarriage wouldn’t fold properly into the wing, the pivots/levers were way out.

 

Picture(right) is the new plans imported to max and (left) a render showing the new rounder leading edge on both wings, it was rather angular before. It has nearly reached 6,900 triangles.

22°C, sun & showers

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Image of the day: Visit the zoo. the charm of the beautiful animals made up for the noisy people there. Later in the day produced the most charming image as the rain showers became heavier. the picture is rather hard to discern but it has a Stork standing in an open shed during some quite heavy rain, sheltering. The photo of this looks quite poor on the computer so I wil have to draw it instead. For now, today’s photo is of the other delightful looking creature- the Tapir.

 

Bat-eared foxes are the only Canid to forgo eating meat, instead favouring insects. They specialise in termites and the big ears are for listening to the insects underground. You have ot picture them intently looking down ears focussed on the ground. The only view I could get was of a pack asleep.

 

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Here is some further reading: Tapir Blog

and the list of Tapir facts: What has 14 hooves

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Linseed: bubbles layer. That went well enough, this picture looks like it will be finished tomorrow.

34°C, blimey

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24°C.Perfect

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Unpleasant experience: walking the dogs. I took my camera because the light is just perfect as well  as the cherry trees are ripe with fruit. Then while the dogs were running about one of them came over and said

"are you taking pictures of us? if you are I’m going to take that camera off you"

then it went on. they tried to argue, it’s illegal to take pictures of children,  reply" no it’s not, this is a public place"

The picture is below… the children concerned aren’t even in the same field as me.

 

They followed me home, chanting abuse, obsenities about my mother, paedophiles, wanking. They cicled me as I walked taking pictures with their mobile phones whilst one boy inparticular fired absurd questions at me.

"Does yyour mother know you take pictures of little children and wank over them "

"you’re like Michael Jackson"

 

So what’s happening here:

I guess they are a gang, they are building-up kudos with their peers and enjoying a taste of power that numbers can give. There were about five of them, mostly riding small mountain/bmx bikes.

 

I walked to the nearest phone box and rang the police. Then the boys dissappeared. The police thought that since the gang had gone then it would be safe to go home. My main concern is tha they’s find out where I live. But as I cam out of the phone box, there they were. So I walked to the next phone box which is quite a way off in town.

The police said they would get a patrol car here in about 20 minutes.

that was just over an hour ago.

 

Here are the offending photos, I suppose it needs some contrast adjustment, either to darken the forground trees or to wash out the background. This picture has only been resized, that’s all. The second one is a crop, but since the camera was aimed at the trees, the people in the distance are not clear. the main antagonist is wearing the green tee-shirt

17°C,cloudy & more wind

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Riding home: there was a rabbit in the road. A busy "A" road with rush-hour traffic. Something made me stop to save that rabbit. It took 30ft of braking to stop then put my bike down before running back. As I approached it- the little bunny hopped away- Is "hopping" the best word, it sounds like something you do if you only have one leg, not four.
Anyway,  I got it to hop to the verge so that  I could get back to my bike. But as I went, it hopped back into the road again. After shoo-ing it again, it "boinged" over to the other side of the road – then dove under by lying bike for shelter from the silly bloke wearing shorts and a lycra shirt.
What should I have done at this point? Carry on the rabbit’s game, possibly getting in the way of the cars myself? Or should I have done what I actually did do?
I grabbed the little rabbit & threw it over the hedge into long grass in a farmer’s field. There were quite a few cars stopping by now, and that meant I probably looked quite comical.

Some treacher’s I know stopped and asked if I’m alright- I told them I had just thrown a rabbit over a hedge.

24°C,+some rain

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Anger at the wheel: In one journey I saw two road-rage incidents. Both followed the same pattern-

Two cars, the one in front stops, bloke gets out to shout at the one driving  behind "what’s your f***ing problem" ( an so on). anger stops the traffic, other car-drivers look perplexed. I ride away bemused.

It must be this weather.

 

Linseed: from a fewdays ago- another sea picture. Painted with oil & linseed onto a prepared turps ground, that on A4 canvas paper.

 

 

• Lisa Gerrard– A Thousand Roads ( Film soundtrack)
• Fred Frith: Middle of The Moment    (ditto)
• Fred Frith: Rivers And Tides  (ditto)

• "Round The Clock" by Kaplan
• another one that is too geeky to mention here.

27°C, + humid

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Good deed for the day: I’m coming home through Walsall Wood, there is a wallet on the footpath. I’m picking it up and finding lots of credit cards, money and a driving license for Adam Engle. Hmm, need some thinking, a local woman appears with kids- walking home afer school no doubt. She tells me where the address is- not very far in the direction of Brownhills. So I rides over there, only about 500 yards and he’s walking up to his house. I call out "are you Adam Engle" – he is so the nesxt question- "have you lost something?". Clearly he has no idea so I give him the wallet, there’s no point trying to be clever.

"Thank you very much he says" and I ride home.

 

A close call for him, the helpful woman did say to me- " there’s not many who would do that" – meaning take his wallet back.

I’m sure most people would, but my reply was " it happened to me once so I know what it feels like".

I’d forgotten that incident back in Bristol.

 

…the sun continues to shine but maybe there could be rain later.

 

 

Bessie is still hopping.

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Printer Fury: printed a photo from Keffalonia- no yellow ink came through. So I cleaned the heads by hand, and ran a test page. The driver said "there is enough ink to print 21 pages like the last one". The next print refused to run because "ink is out". I hate this printer, and am saving up for a Hewlet Packard. Epson- you’ve blown it!

21°C,

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Poor wee dog, she’s hopping around with one front leg held up, it seems to be sprained. I wish she could just settle and rest rather than loyally follow me around the house, up and down the stairs and all. On her evening run yesterday she suddenly cried out and started hopping off one front leg. Maybe she turned it over in a pothole – I just didn’t see her do it.

 

driving: to work was funny today, every-so-often I’d clunk my hand into the door reaching for the gear-stick on the wrong side.

23°C,

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Back to the routine: 74 miles cycling though I am still living in Greek time so I woke very early.

I may update the last few entries with tales from Keffalonia, trouble is there is so much to write, I may end up typing none of it. It was probably the best holiday I have ever had. The photos are stunning but not as much as the landscape. I remember thinking during the time we were in Crete ( at least 15 years ago) that the spring must be the best time to visit the Med.

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For a more complete selection of full sized pictures see my photobucket gallery

It surns out that that Sony camera lived up to all my expectations, especially at the larger resolutions. It never ran out of battery power, nor was there any problem with file storage.

 

Driving on the right: Driving a Peugeot 307 has taught me to be more respectful of french cars that cut me up while I’m cycling. The mirrors are so small that the blind-spots are huge. you just can’t rely on them to see other road-users. though I didn’t mind it as a holiday hire-car, 307s are terrible- don’t buy one. the clutch pedal is uneven and unbalanced as are the brakes.