Suspicion
Whenever I see a chicken, I always think it’s observing me with a deep-seated distrust that I’m in no position to allay1. This is Ethel, incidentally. She lives next door. 1: Yes, I nicked this from Douglas Adam’s excellent Last Chance to See.
Post-industral countryside
Graham Binns posted a photo: Three hundred and sixty-odd days of 2008, day 109 Three East Lancashire towns: on the left, Blackburn, on the right, Oswaldtwistle, where I grew up, and Accrington. Taken from the Grain Road at Belthorn, possibly the most exposed an inhospitable place in the whole of East Lancs, except for today. [...]
A different perspective on a sunset
Graham Binns posted a photo: Three hundred and sixty-odd days of 2008, day 75 Snapped as the setting sun shone in through the bedroom window. Yes, I know I’m well behind on posting these. I’ll catch up soon.
The Stately Gentlebird
Graham Binns posted a photo: Three-hundred and sixty-odd days of 2008, day 22 This is Eric. Well, he’s an Eric. Eric is the generic moniker for all the cock-pheasants (there’s about five of them) that roam around our garden, apart from the black ones (of which there are two), which are called Ernie. Eric and [...]
The long and winding road
Graham Binns posted a photo: Three-hundred and sixty-odd days of 2008, day 16 Actually it’s pretty short as roads go, and is in fact the driveway leading up to our house, which is on an old farm site. This was first time the rain let up today, so I went out with the 18-55mm lens [...]
Say what now?
Graham Binns posted a photo: Three-hundred and sixty-odd days of 2008, day 14 I got a new toy today, a Sigma 30mm/1.4 EX DC HSM lens. Very nice. Very good for portrait work. Heavier than expected. Being alone in the house with no other subjects I decided to muck around a bit with it. This [...]
I’m working on it… honest
Graham Binns posted a photo: Three-hundred and sixty-odd days of 2008, day 13 A stack of stuff that I should be working on, or that I keep meaning to deal with at any rate. From the top: eight old hard drives, still in working order, which I need to wipe before disposing of somehow (there [...]
Hope Springs
Graham Binns posted a photo: Three-hundred and sixty-odd days of 2008, day 11 Note the lack of a sunset. Weather happened. This is north west England: weather often happens. So I left the camera and tripod pretty much alone and picked up the pen and paper for the first time in about two and-a-half months. [...]
In Search of an ND Grad Filter
Graham Binns posted a photo: Three-hundred and sixty-odd days of 2008, day 9 The horrendous weather finally began to break up and bugger off today, much to my relief. The fields at the foot of the hill are flooded by what is still technically the river Lune, and I was trying to get a shot [...]
The End of Christmas
Graham Binns posted a photo: Three-hundred and sixty-odd days of 2008, day six Christmas is gone, the tree is down, the needles have been vacuumed and thrown out. All that’s left is the stand and one forlorn bauble that couldn’t quite bring itself to let go of the holiday spirit.
‘Twas the night before
It's almost ominously quiet in my office right now. Normally there'd be the low, rattling hum of my PC filling the room, masking all the little creaks and burps that the hot water tank, which sits, fenced off in a cupboard in the corner of this fairly tiny work space, makes all through the day [...]
Herbstlich
It occurs to me that, in not following our Northern American brethren in adopting the word 'Fall' to name the third season of the year, and so instead sticking with the more poetic 'Autumn,' we've done ourselves out of a perfectly good verb. So although today in Lancaster Fall has most definitely fallen (Spring springs, [...]
It must be Thursday
I never could get the hang of Thursdays. I have a throbbing headache and, looking out of the window, I saw this: It is possible that the world is going to end in… oh, about twelve minutes time. Don't say you weren't warned. (With apologies to Douglas Adams, natch.)
But sir, ’tis a connection nonetheless
I pay for (upto) 8Mbps broadband. I usually get circa 4.5 – 5Mbps download, 512Kbps – 1Mbps upload. Since we’ve been reconnected (yay!) I’ve had upload speeds of 400-odd Kbps, which is okay, and download speeds of 120Kbps, which is most definitely not. If we assume that in this context 1Kb = 1 kibibyte (i.e. [...]
Winter cometh
Ah, winter. The clocks have gone back, so I got an extra hour’s sleep and still got up at half past nine this morning, the sky is blue, the trees are brown and, best of all, the Blue and Great Tits have started coming to the office window, pecking at the stone frame and waiting [...]
Lazy
05:45: Alarums, etc. Two of them in fact: the clock and my phone. The message? ‘Wake up you lazy devils, you need to be at the gym in 45 minutes.’ Assorted switchings-off, sleep. 06:07: Crack an eyelid, notice the time. The clock reads 06:14 because at some point I set it seven minutes fast. At [...]
In Need of a Towel
My aforementioned Arthur Dentishness was compounded this morning when I drew back the curtains at eight o’clock (in my dressing gown, naturally) and saw a big yellow bulldozer. The world is very strange…
The Dawn Chorus
I was woken at four o’clock this morning by somthing chirrupping and squeaking about six feet above my head. At first I thought it was another mouse in the roof, though I’d never heard them squeak before. Then, after my just-woken befuddlement passed (or at least faded a bit), I realised that it was a [...]
Goosebumps
"Aha!" I hear you all cry, "An update at last!" Well, yes. And yes, I’m going to stick my usual excuse in, which is "Busy, very busy." Also, I’ve developed a stinker of a head cold, which has left my sinuses filled with something not unakin to that white, fish-smelling glue that they give you [...]
From the depths
I’m feeling startlingly full and bloaty at the moment, having eaten just a smallish chicken salad and some ice cream about four hours ago. Strange that. Horribly busy week BUT I did get some editing done. Will update in the morning when I’m less bloaty, a lot less tired and a bit more exercised from [...]
Pieces of Eight
I’m a natural hoarder. It’s a trait that comes from my mother and from my mother’s family. The attic at home used to be chock-full of bits and pieces in cardboard boxes that, for one reason or another, most of which were lost in the mists of time, Mum had put to one side with [...]
Well-read
Have I really read all the books in Amazon’s catalogue? Well of course not, nor am I ever likely to, but Amazon’s front page seems to give the impression that I have because all it’s listing as things I might be interested in are… books that I’ve already bought. From them. They also seem to [...]
Re-learning the basics
It’s funny, but even though I’ve been programming professionally on a day-by-day basis for the past two and a bit years, I’ve only just rediscovered one of the things that I always found difficult about programming when I was doing it as a student (and therefore from home), which was this: I procrastinate. A lot. [...]
Lancaster Evenings
Lancaster Evenings People sometimes ask why I love living in Lancaster (okay, not very often, but for the purposes of this assume they do). That I can get shots like this living here is one reason.
