As I set off, on an almost 3 hour walk, the village was empty of vehicles – quite a ghost town.
In the park and along the river there were many people enjoying the fine weather. Everyone was keeping their distance.
It would be a great shame if the government locked us all down because of the few who gather en masse.
Pictures taken on a lovely Spring morning on a 4-5 mile walk through Nonsuch Park to the Hogsmill River at Ewell, and back.
The bookshops are closed, the libraries are closed, and there are only a few books waiting to be read, so I thought I’d try downloading an e-book for viewing on the iPad.
I found an app called Libby, which links to my local library account, and decided to start with George Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying, a book I last read 50 years ago!
The app works really well, both for finding e-books and for the actual reading. My old iPad is rather heavy but I worked out how best to hold it for a comfortable reading position. It was surprisingly easy to read the e-book, in fact I think the larger text and fewer words on each page improved my reading concentration. Or perhaps I was just enjoying the novel so much.
So a successful trial, at no cost, and when I’ve finished my current paperback novel I’ll look out for another e-book from the library.
Taken at 9pm, the stars / earth must have moved during the 30 second shutter speed!
An interesting article in today’s Guardian reports on how scientists at the University of Reading are asking Britons with time on their hands to help digitise historic rainfall data. “Under the Rainfall Rescue project, volunteers will fill the gaps in British digital weather records between the 1820s and the 1950s by transcribing observations from scans of the old paper records.”
I’ve done a fair amount of data entry in my working life so I thought why not. If I’m not reading or blogging I’d only be playing Klondike on the Washington Post website!
Here’s an example of the procedure I have to follow. It’s all quite straightforward.
Two beautiful actors edited around a terrific piece of music.
I came across a blog I used to follow only to find that the last post was back in October last year. It was just a typical post, nothing to indicate it would be the last post, so why the sudden ending? I’ve come across other blogs which just end. If I was going to stop posting I’m sure I would do a sign-off post.
In some cases, I guess, something sudden has happened to bring about the abrupt ending. With this in mind I’ve decided to write a last post that will automatically appear at some time in the future. So I’ll set the date to be published as 1 month in the future and every now and again I’ll remember to push that date back so as it’s still in 1 month’s time. All I have to do now is decide what to put in my last post.
With 15 minutes to fill, pictures of ponds and daffodils, shot with an iPhone app that saves images in raw format.
I took these pictures in Beddington Park on a cold, miserable and grey morning. It used to be a rather scruffy park but now it’s really quite pretty.
I accidentally took the pictures with a filter on the iPhone camera app and they came out horrible, so I deleted them. I then discovered that the iPhone allows you to undo changes and so the damage done by the filter could be reversed after un-deleting. There was still a lot of work necessary in Photoshop to enhance the colours on such a sunless day. I may have gone a bit to far with the colour enhancements – artist’s prerogative!
I took this picture just before 9pm – it was very dark, but 15 seconds exposure, ISO 400, f/6.3 and manual focus, it’s amazing what a little camera can capture. Plus a little help from Photoshop!
Until the ‘social distancing’ becomes a ‘curfew’ it’s still possible to enjoy the parks and countryside. This morning, a walk in the park and a browse past the art gallery turned up a couple of nice images.
Some pictures spontaneously taken with the iPhone as we walked along, before the lock down….
