This area is reserved for my occasional ramblings and musings.
As Britain reels from the effects of Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng’s 2022-09-23 budget, and the pound plummets towards an all-time low against the US Dollar, Mr pie has a sweary but succinct analysis of the shitshow in which we now find ourselves, here in Old Blighty. A less sweary and less amusing analysis…
Due to its construction, ours is quite a difficult house for “whole house Wi-Fi” due to its solid internal dividing walls, downstairs and upstairs. In fact, my first DIY job when we moved in here, back in 2012, was to run Cat 5e Ethernet cables to every room that we were likely to use a…
Today we say a final goodbye to our long reigning Queen. Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, 1926-04-21 ~ 2022-09-08) was Queen of the United Kingdom and fourteen other Commonwealth realms from 1952-02-06 until her death 2022-09-08 16:30 UTC. Her reign of 70 years and 214 days was the longest of any British monarch and the…
Just when we thought the Tories couldn’t possibly inflict anyone worse than Bore Arse upon us, along comes Dim Lizzy. Worst past the post, Liz Truss really is dim. She also changes what she likes to describe as her “mind” as often as some people change their underpants. We’ve seen some piss-poor Tory leaders over…
Like quite a few photographers, I have been flirting with AI (artificial intelligence) digital imaging. Regular readers may even have spotted my Synthetic Stupidity gallery dedicated to the fact that at the moment, publicly available AI graphics tools really aren’t particularly good – even though they are quite good fun to play with. In fact…
I’m a big fan of JuiceMedia’s “Honest Government Ad” series. It’s honest COVID ad is legendary. Granted, Aussie humour often runs a tad close to the proverbial bone at times. But this particular “Honest Ad” is almost too close to the truth to be funny…
I have just been listening to Mr Trump and his supporters explaining the situation concerning all those crates of secret documents that the FBI found in is house at Mar-a Largo. Apparently, the documents were all planted at Mar-a-Lardo by the FBI, they were not at all important, and Mr Trump had declassified them all…
Puzzles me why Brexiteers still conflate use of International System of Units (SI) with the EU? Or why these people still think that the metric system is some how “not British” and kid themselves that they are being “patriotic” by refusing to use it? British Engineers and scientists have been pleading with various British governments…
Today we take a little trip back in time to one of the internet’s oldest and most famous memes: “All Your Base”. AKA “All your base are belong to us“, this internet meme was based on a badly translated phrase from the opening scene of a video game called “Zero Wing“. The phrase first appeared…
JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) format for images has served us well for nearly three decades. But is is essentially a 1990’s format. Today we have better ways of compressing images. The most popular currently is Google’s WEBP (Web Picture) Format. Many modern websites use WebP as its default format for uploaded images that it…
Seems that as London and the midlands – not to mention much of central Europe – sizzle in 40°C temperatures, our planet is to be hit with unusual weather of a different kind: a solar storm. Activity in the upper atmosphere of the sun, known as the ‘corona’, creates huge ‘solar flares’. These generate powerful…
I have been a tad distracted by some rather serious political events that have taken place here in Old Blighty during the last few days. Basically our Prime Minister has decided to “do a Trump” and stay in power even though over fifty members of his government have now resigned in protest over his various…
I’m ashamed to admit that I managed to drop my camera c/w my favourite 14mm-150mm Tamron super-zoom lens yesterday. I failed to secure the camera correctly to the tripod and it fell crashing to the ground, lens-first. Fortunately the camera, a tiny µ4/3 Lumix DMC-GX7, seemed unharmed. Even more fortunate, I generally I use those…
A few folks have asked me what I use to keep our various networking and internet connectivity kit neat and tidy, yet reasonably service friendly. Well, I have to admit that it was rather a muddle for a many years. That was until I decided to make a simple multistorey stainless steel router rack. Moreover,…
Some readers may remember that during lockdown, I wrote an article concerning the large stag beetle grubs I discovered round the back of my shed? Well, it seems the stag beetle grubs have grown up now – well some of them have anyway. I discovered quite a few adults in our garden lately. Yesterday, I…
“I want to move to Linux, so where do I start?” or variants thereof, is one of those frequently asked questions that often land in my in-box and on various fora. Such questions usually come from disgruntled Microsoft Windows users who are fed up with the cost, the privacy breaches, the malware infections and the…
These days almost all digital cameras offer excellent light metering, The old fashioned “light meter” has become a “thing of the past” to a large extent. Nevertheless they do still have their uses. For those still wishing to flirt with light meters but who don’t want to fork-out to the ÂŁ100 or so that a…
It was a lazy Bank Holiday Monday morning and we had just crawled out of bed, when we heard a bit of a splash outside. We opened the curtains and noticed the water in the pond was moving, But we didn’t know why. Fortunately Zoneminder captured the incident from one of our security cameras. So…
This is a remake of an earlier video, driving through the Hungarian M6 / E73 Tunnels, with the soundtrack written by Rob Weller.
How do I calculate the kWH on my studio flash heads? Do I use 300 watts of electricity each time I fire them?
For reasons I won’t bore you with now, my wife and I need to be rather careful regarding respiratory infections. I did my last model shoot 2020-03-08, shut everything down pro tem due to COVID. Amongst other projects, I used the time-out to undertake a fairly major refurbishment of my studio. I wanted to get…
Some interesting questions arose recently on a forum to which I belong. Members were comparing conventional broadcast TV with on-line video sites such as Youtube, and asking… What are people watching on YouTube? Are they watching new material ? Or are they watching old repeats that are be being shown in breach of copyright? Are…
Following on from my post about Szofi and Macus, seems people all over Europe are cheering for them. They’ve become storky superstars! 🙂 Meantime back here in old Blighty, storks’ 360,000 year archaeological relationship with Britain came to an end several centuries ago, when it seems they were hunted to extinction. However, there currently three sites…
“Hey, Hey, Rise-Up!” released on 2022-04-08, is Pink Floyd’s first new song since 1994. It will be used to raise funds for humanitarian causes associated with the warin Ukraine. It samples Andriy Khlyvnyuk, a member of one of Ukraine’s biggest bands, BoomBox, singing in Sofiyskaya Square in Kyiv, in a video clip that went viral….
My wife is Hungarian. Like many folks in central Europe, Hungarians have a particular affinity for white storks. Even during the soviet era, lampposts often had huge plinths welded to the top, so that these massive wild birds can build their nests. Throughout the various COVID lock-downs my wife started following various European stork nests…
