Early Risers.

[The White Rabbit]

Well, it's been a warm afternoon and it looks like there'll be some more to come. Bird baths cleaned and refilled. The butterflies and bees have been out in force, some snaps were taken. I'll see whether any are any good later. A stock of 'mucky magazines' has been laid in store for the next few days. There is already a respectable pile of material for the tip and various charitable organisations. Hopefully I can reclaim my hall by the end of the week. 

 

A crane has appeared on one of our local building sites. It's a sizeable one, though I'm not sure why they need it. Seems a bit of overkill. It must be very hot in the control cabin at the moment. So any low flying bears, hippos (or other creatures) had better duck if they plan any unannounced noctural visits. Mind the little red lights... 

 

Some paperwork was attempted, though I didn't get too far. I had a better night than many recently, but I did run out of steam a bit this pm. Time to go and plan some shopping, and think about menus favouring salads and cold stuff. We have plenty of spring onions and salad from the garden left but an unfortunate oversight has occurred in not having all the ingredients for a blackberry and apple crumble. And not due to marauding blackbirds and wasps this time! 

[simontaylor484]

@The White Rabbit I wonder if the crane size may be down to the distance away from the crane the lifted material is. Most Bison jobs that had mobile cranes were 1000tonners. Builders tower crane jobs were obviously already supplied with lifting equipment. The first load to a site always had the site paperwork with it, I often checked it to see if you could glean information to have a rough guess how long unloading would take. Normal allowance was around 10t per hour but would be longer if it was builders tower crane as the fitting crew would be fighting for crane use. There were other variables as well such as  having to thread the slabs through structural steelwork

[polybear]

2 hours ago, PupCam said:

Well, best I disappear and start preparing the prawn salad earmarked for this evenings dinner.

 

 

Prawn Salad?  PRAWN SALAD??  You call that Dinner?

And Mrs. P lets you get away with THAT??

 

Yours,

Shocked, of Bear Towers

[simontaylor484]

According to the BBC website Olivia Newton John has died aged 73

[Coombe Barton]

... and then I got arty-farty ...

 

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2022/08/08/postcards-from-the-periphery-2022-18/

[simontaylor484]

After a lot of thought and mental gymnastics I have decided to replace the sickly olive tree that I wrote about the other week.

If they can claim the Flying Moneypit is the same loco I am sure a memorial tree can be replaced 

[monkeysarefun]

7 hours ago, PupCam said:

Anyway, one of the (very poorly) processed photographs from last night helps illustrate my point on the shear number of stars hiding in that relatively bright sky waiting to be prised out of their hideouts with very modest equipment.

 

 

 

That IS impressive! Especially since early spring  autumn (whoops!) is probably one of the least favourable time in the UK  to see the Milky Way in a decent way.

 

Best views of the Milky Way in the UK are apparently  March to May -  look for Scorpio, in that part of the sky you are looking right into the centre of our galaxy.

 

Trying to draw with a trackball is hard, but Scorpio is roughly in red, for you it'll be oriented differently, but once you find it its an easy constellation to identify. 

 

 

 

You dont need magnification, the stars are so far away that a zoom is going to make no difference, in fact a wider field of view will give you more impressive result, this was shot with the wide-angle 16mm equivalent setting on the phone. 

 

IF you are in the market for a new phone and you arent polybear, consider a pixel 6, it has a specific astrophotography mode where it  takes 16  15 second exposure pics and stacks them much like what you are doing. Its party piece over say the iphone is that each shot is re-focussed to allow for the stars movement, unlike simply a long exposure where youd end up with star trails.

It copes with environmental light really well, there is a street light about 10 metres behind the camera, the neighbours porchlight is on which is lighting the tree, but the stars still show up like I'm in the outback.

 

The southern Hemisphere is the best place for milky way shots, if only great great great great grandad pupcam had been sprung  indulging in a spot of silk handkerchief theivery and got sentenced to 7 years in Botany Bay you'd get brilliant pics.

 

 

Edited August 9, 2022 by monkeysarefun

[Ozexpatriate]

26 minutes ago, simontaylor484 said:

According to the BBC website Olivia Newton John has died aged 73

Yes. She had been quite ill for some time, but 73 is far too young. 

 

CNN: Olivia Newton-John, singer and actress, dead at 73 makes this statement:

Quote

The singer revealed in September 2018 that she was treating cancer at the base of her spine. It was her third cancer diagnosis, following bouts with breast cancer in the early '90s and in 2017.

That's two well-known Australian septuagenarian singers in a week. Hopefully there won't be a third.

[Ozexpatriate]

3 hours ago, PupCam said:

Anyway, one of the (very poorly) processed photographs from last night helps illustrate my point on the shear number of stars hiding in that relatively bright sky waiting to be prised out of their hideouts with very modest equipment.

5 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

That IS impressive!

Yes, it is. 

 

Without going down the whole "Space is big, really big" path, it is quite stunning just how much is out there in deep field views. Of course Hubble/Web deep field images are pretty mind-bending but it's nice to see what is possible from the surface, even with all the atmospherics and light pollution. 

[Ozexpatriate]

3 hours ago, PupCam said:

I'm no expert on speed cameras (from either an official or "user's" perspective  😀) but I always believed that measuring the Doppler shift of an RF signal was the principle used by mobile "speed guns" which would actually be essentially instantaneous and hence take a very short distance indeed

I thought all the hand-held "RADAR" guns were actually LASERs these days. The RF guns could be jammed/detected much more easily. LASERs are only on momentarily and are very precise.

 

They are a visible wavelength. (Ask me how I know.)

[brianusa]

1 hour ago, polybear said:

 

Prawn Salad?  PRAWN SALAD??  You call that Dinner?

And Mrs. P lets you get away with THAT??

 

Yours,

Shocked, of Bear Towers

We would call it  an hors d'euvre  or befores🙂

      Brian

[PhilJ W]

Evening all from Estuary-Land. Not done much today, just too darn hot. Haven't contacted the council yet about the garage, I'll be having a closer look at it tomorrow. Now back to Farcebook.

[BSW01]

Good evening everyone 

 

The boiler service guy turned up at about 10:30 and was very quick and efficient. Apart from a new burner gasket, which, as we are on a contract, it was FOC, everything else was fine and that’s it for another 12 months. As I mentioned this morning, the plan was to then head outside to do some gardening. However, Sheila decided to clean the hall stairs and landing, by that I mean a proper clean. All the woodwork, meaning 10 and 1/2 doors and door frames, all skirting boards, dado rails, picture rails, wooden panelling in the hall that enclose the cellar stairs etc the whole lot is spread over 3 floors. But, as Sheila can’t reach the tops of the doors and door frames, I pitched in and did all the high bits, whilst she did the lower bits. To be fair, we normally do this task after the boiler has been serviced and between us both it only took about 90 minutes. 

 

After dinner I cleaned the last remaining items that hadn’t been one, namely the front door, the door frame, the fan light above the front door along with the leaded glass in both and front door and fan light. Luckily, this can all be achieved using just a small set of step ladders and only tales about half an hour. After that, I got changed and then completed the Sainsbury’s Grand Prix. 

[BSW01]

Goodnight all 

[Barry O]

Where did Monday go? Answers on a post card please...

 

Sleep well!

Baz

[monkeysarefun]

5 hours ago, polybear said:

Speed Gun jammers are available....

Apparently the gun displays something like an error message; if the Plod note the car number and it happens again then the driver can expect a visit and a look-see....

....and then they're in Sh1t.  It seems the Courts treat it as "Conspiracy to pervert the course of Justice", for which prison time isn't uncommon.  ISTR one driver giving a two-finger salute to a camera/speed trap once - he ended up stirring Porridge for brekkies for a while.  Not sure if he had a jammer or not. 

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[simontaylor484]

20 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

That is a classic 

[monkeysarefun]

1 hour ago, Ozexpatriate said:

That's two well-known Australian septuagenarian singers in a week. Hopefully there won't be a third.

 

 

Has been a bad week for Australian music. Less well known outside Australia but a big presence here was Archie Roach, who died on the weekend ,sadly only in his 60's. .

 

One of our major indigenous  performers, he had a rotten start to life, he was a member of the "Stolen generation" of indigenous children forcibly removed by authorities from their parents  and placed in orphanages or foster homes.  He battled alcoholism and homelessness in his late teens before establishing a musical career.

 

His most well known song here, the autobiographical "They took the children away" tells this story. 

 

 

 

(We dont usually immediately hear about the deaths of indigenous people due to the media respecting cultural traditions of not mentioning their names or showing their images for a period but the fanily waived that in this instance)

[Ozexpatriate]

5 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

Less well known outside Australia but a big presence here was Archie Roach, who died on the weekend ,sadly only in his 60's.

I had never heard of him. Looking up his biography, it appears that his early recognized work was in the late 1980s after I left Australia.

[Kelly]

Evening all. Hope all are well, if not best wishes as appropriate as usual.

 

Saw the physiotherapist this morning. He was happy with my progress. I don't need to wear the boot and tomorrow we'll see if any of my footwear will actually fit my foot as the ankle is still a bit swollen.

 

I'm now walking around the house with one crutch and no boot. With a definite pronounced limp atm, and it is a bit painful to walk, but to be expected and hopefully it will settle down the more I try. The boot will be kept for outside (I'm thinking especially shows where getting the ankle banged by people not looking is a real possibility!), unless my boots/trainers fit. I'll keep the pair of crutches as when tired/in pain, I will probably need the extra support and they're more stable than a walking stick.

 

Now to enjoy some crumpets with cheese spread and watch Poppy watch me intently as I eat them...

[monkeysarefun]

3 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Yes, it is. 

 

Without going down the whole "Space is big, really big" path, it is quite stunning just how much is out there in deep field views. Of course Hubble/Web deep field images are pretty mind-bending but it's nice to see what is possible from the surface, even with all the atmospherics and light pollution. 

 

I was a bit of an astronomy nerd in my early teens, looking back at the books from then that I still have, the 200 inch Hale reflecting   telescope in  Mount Palomar observatory in California was the pinnacle of our observational abilities. This was essentially the same technology invented way back by Isaac Newton but in  typical big American size.

 

How far we have come since those 1970's books were printed.  Many of the photos in those books taken by it and other major observatories around the world at the time are obtainable by amateurs now if they have deep enough pockets. 

 

@pupcam - mate have you done any post processing on your pics via photoshop/Gimp/Lightroom etc? If not have a look at some online tutorials, you'll be surprised at how much data is hiding in there waiting to be tweaked!  . Most tutes use lightroom, but Gimp is free and  you can bumble your way around it or other packages to find the equivalent settings to pay around with, although I have found a Gimp one on youtube, below.  its pretty much a set sequence of  steps. 

 

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Ozexpatriate said:

I had never heard of him. Looking up his biography, it appears that his early recognized work was in the late 1980s after I left Australia.

 

 

The mid to late 80's were quite a golden time for indigenous bands and artists, Warumpi Band, Yothu Yindi, No Fixed Address, Sunrize band, Coloured Stone all had chart success.

Edited August 9, 2022 by monkeysarefun

[southern42]

Hot here though maybe not as hot as other areas. I did get a bit of muddling done for the first time in days. A bit more of that and I will get my little orange boxes on wheels finished.

And on that optimistic note:

‘ night all and nos da.

Polly

[45568]

8 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

And there was me thinking that Passion Flowers was a book to be read under the bedclothes by boarders at my old school.

 

Jamie

MMMmmmmm!!! Francesca Annis in the movie! Just my vintage!

Cheers from Oz,

Peter C.

[Ozexpatriate]

Today was supposed to be around 33°C with lower temperatures tomorrow. Out walking this morning was much nicer than yesterday (when we eventually hit 38°C), and almost felt like a hint of Autumn in the air. Mid-morning today was cloudy which I think moderated temperatures, and I'd be surprised if we hit the forecast high. (It's around 30°C as of 5:00pm.)

 

It's been nice having a functioning air conditioning system.

 

The week ahead looks warm and summery but not excessively hot. The forecast suggests a chance of thunderstorms on Tuesday evening into Wednesday. I'll believe it when I see it.