These are a few general observations that might be of interest to some people.
At approximately 16:25 UTC today, 2020-11-07, the result of the 2020 US presidential election was finally called. Joe Biden is the 46th President elect of the United States. Apparently Orange Blotus is somewhat displeased and is threatening all sorts of court action and other nonsense. Seems Trump thinks he can bully the United States government…
In fact, I am 416 kilometres away from Barnard Castle, as the crow flies, or about 500km by road. Granted, I very seldom use Google as a search engine. I use privacy-aware searches instead such as DuckDuckGo. I have also been to great lengths to prise my rooted smartphone from Google’s clutches too. But my…
Some of my favourite computers require no PSU, no batteries, no RAM, no disks, no upgrades and they are 100% resistant to all known malware. No, I’m not talking about some newfangled Linux. I’m talking about good old fashioned sliderules. 🙂 Sliderules top to bottom… Top: Darmstadt 304. Despite its German-sounding name, this sliderule was…
Like in that old Kraftwerk song, I have a bit of a penchant for small pocket calculators. These are a few of my oldest examples. In fact the Sharp Elsimate dates back to 1973 and belonged to my late father.
A little thing like Covid was not going to prevent my Zsuzsi creating one of her Easter displays. We photographed the 2020 edition in the garden.
Seems a lot of people are struggling working from home rather than going into the office. Some are suggesting that a daily routine helps them. Personally, I don’t really have a daily routine – providing I can start the day with a strong black coffee and have my daily “number two’s”, then I’m sorted. 🙂…
Evil bastards exploit crisis in order to turn a fast buck Seems Facebook does not have a monopoly on coronavirus misinformation. Just checked a honeypot email account I keep active just to see what spam is currently doing the rounds. In addition to the usual plethora of luscious babes who are dying to have sex…
Left: complete installation including toilet, cistern, isolating valve hose, mounting bracket and the shattaf itself. Right: Close-up of shattaf. It is quite small, measuring approximately 11 cm long and about 6 cm front-to-back. As the coronavirus crisis deepens, seems we also have the deeply undignified spectacle of fully grown adults publicly fighting each other as…
They say “many a true word spoken in jest“. This seems particularly applicable to this short “honest government” video produced by Australia’s JuiceMedia… Background to the video JuiceMedia’s “Honest Government Ad” started life as satire. But its probably the most truthful representation where we are right now with COVID-19. This associated video podcast explains its…
This morning I heard a strange commotion outside the studio window, From the corner of my eye, I could see that the transparent bird feeder appeared to be moving on its own. On close inspection I discovered that the incredibly boisterous and greedy young starlings we have round here had smashed the lid off the…
A strange cloud formation in the northern sky round the back of our house.
Zsuzsi’s Easter display through wacky 60’s filters. I just bought a set of these things cheap on eBay and wanted to try them out…
Cheap and cheerful overhead camera mount for mirrorless camera. I reckon this is actually pretty safe up to about 2kg. Though I normally use a heavy cable tie as an emergency strap.
This is by far my largest and longest focal-length lens. Rumour has it that the MTO 1000 mm catadioptric lens was “standard issue” to KGB surveillance operatives during the Cold War Era. MTO itself also has an interesting history. Seems it started out by making the huge glass reflectors for Russian anti-aircraft arc-lights. It made…
Experimenting with Fujian 35mm f/1.7 CCTV lens. This is a cheap £10.00 lens off eBay. It is designed for CCTV. However with a simple £1.00 “C” to µ4/3 adaptor it fits nicely and works well with my little Lumix DMC GX7. These are some of the results… Actually, I’m a big fan of the…
I was given a pair of broken but usable silver-painted mannequins by a photographer pal. Here are a few snaps of them as they arrived in their new home and saw their first tours of duty in my studio…
Slightly off-the-wall experiment with a pair of broken mannequins and some cheap but effective RGB LED lighting.
2013 was quite an interesting year for me, not least because we finally moved way from my tiny terraced cottage overlooking Southampton common, to a much larger place, where there is enough room for a reasonably usable home studio. Only moved 35km, but it felt like moving to another planet. Of course, it takes a…
Trying to sell our house and move somewhere with a bit more room. However the pictures taken by various estate agents (realtors if you are American) are nothing short of bloody awful. So I thought I’d have a crack at it myself.
I seem to have accumulated quite a lot of old wrist watches that have no straps (or “bands” if you are American). So I needed to figure out a way of being able to use them. Then I saw these straps on eBay. They are genuine leather and they only cost a few quid a…
Back in Hong Kong for a few days. Today we’re in Kowloon visiting the Hong Kong Museum. I must be getting old because I remember seeing a lot of this stuff for sale in Woolworth’s when I was kid
I had Fuji S1, S2 & S3, all of which had dust magnets for sensors! They would get dirty even if I did not remove the lenses, simply from the air that got sucked in by varying the focal length of the lens. However, I cleaned them quite successfully with a vacuum cleaner. However there…
There was an unusually heavy fall of snow overnight. So I thought I would wander across to the Common and grab a few snaps.
Our little Christmas tree looks quite pretty this year. And we decorated it with a very long string of LED lights.
Went out to the New Forest to visit my mother, in the little red MX5. While we were there, I took the opportunity top gather some images of Lepe Beach and the now dilapidated Langley Tavern. I also took a few snaps of my shiny new Eton S350DL multiband radio.
