renaissance man
The rather cool Scary Pockets collective have done some excellent funky Joni covers.
Hey, Joni – as Sonic Youth sang (on their Daydream Nation album) – what do you think?
Guest singer Rett Madison even manages to look a bit Joni here!
I think it’s great to see the young cats – and a few older ones, like Larry Goldings!) – still diggin’ the greatest female artist of our (all?) times.
We had thunder, lightning, and heavy rain, around 2-3am, last night. I went out at about 8am this morning, and the above is what I saw, pond wise.
Will it stay away, or gradually fill up and settle? I have sealed the liner. So I kind of expect it to slowly drain. It’d be fab if it didn’t require sealing.
We shall see…
Here are four images derived from the 360° snaps I took on my Ricoh Theta. I love these! In the first, the camera’s on the table by the window, and I’ve opted for a ‘looking back towards the door’ view.
I also wanted to vary the lighting of the room plenty. Above we have just two sidelights. Below, even cosier, just a single bedside lamp, and some strings of LEDs.
I shot more photos from the next position, with the Theta precariously balanced atop the TV. And in the one below, the overhead bed light looks almost aggressively bright! Might need to make a shade for it?
Strangely, the embedded 360° pics I put up using Algori 360 only allow for a ‘flat’ spin around the image, on a horizontal plane. Whereas, within Theta’s own software (Theta+), the images can be looked at fully in the round, zooming in or out – the more you zoom out the more fish-eyed it gets – and at various aspect ratios.
All of which makes for a great deal of fun!
The view above is great for seeing the LED light strings, and the bed. Whereas the image directly below is a good way to appreciate the irregular shape of this room. Oh, and the safety feature, that is the CO and smoke detector.
As mentioned above, already, I tried to vary the lighting. And in the final shot of this post, this helps accentuate the cosy string of LED lights on the bed-head. All in all, I really love these images. I think they make the room look nice.
Or perhaps it’s just that they capture qualities of the room that are nice!? Whatever! I do love what the Theta brings to the photographic party.
All these pics are possibly going to useful if/when we decide to let this room. Teresa’s v keen! I don’t really want to do it. But economic pressures may force my hand.
This is bit of an experiment! And so far a bit of a confusing one.
I’m trying to put up 360° photos, taken on my groovy Ricoh Theta camera. I’m sure I’ve done so before. Although exactly how I don’t recall.
This time I’ve added two WP features; are they both plug-ins!? I really don’t know! One, called Gutenberg may or may not be. The other, Algori 360, moist serpently is.
Anyhoo, downloading, installing and activating them wasn’t straightforward, leastways not for a non-tech-nerd like me.
And it seems that although I’ve installed both, I can only access their combined functionality – and thereby embed 360° photos – by use if the web-based version of WP, and via the iPhone app version.
Having said that, I’m writing this in the latter. But where the 360° image ought to be, instead I see this:
The other issue is that I wanted to ace a single post with multiple 360° pictures. But I think Algori 360 only supports (or, I’d say, allows/facilitates) one such image per post (or is that page!?).
I hope I can find an easier and more amenable to my own designs way!
I’m wondering whether I ought to move my military history and mini-military hobbies stuff over to my main sebpalmer.com area?
I’m finding that I can do WordPress ok on my iPhone, but Google Blogspot stuff is harder to do. And so my activity on AQOS (aquestionofscale.blogspot) has fallen into desuetude.
This is partly ‘cause I do very little on my iMac any more. And that’s for two main reasons: a general antipathy to computer based travails; and my iMac being old, and running shite.
* As pictured on the inner dust-jacket of an edition of his work entitled, 1812, which narrates the Russian campaign…
Anyway, I was looking at AQOS, to see what books by Antony Brett-James I’d read and reviewed. And I was mighty surprised to see that, whilst I’ve read two, and I’m now reading a third, I appear not to have reviewed any of them!?
I’m startled. I usually always review any Napoleonic literature I read. It may be that I did reviews but they only went up on Amazon.co.uk. If so, they may be lost forever, as Amazon deleted all my (thousands of) reviews, when they booted me off Vine. No explanation ever given!
Considering the many hours unpaid work that went in to so many of my reviews – esp’ the stuff on non-Vine things, like music and literature/military history – I think this was/is pretty shoddy.
I did back up some of my reviews. But not all of them, alas. There’s a lesson to be learned there, methinks; always keep my own copy of any such writings!
So, last night, I thought reading some Napoleonic history might help me sleep. I chose this book. It didn’t help me sleep! But I did enjoy what little reading I managed to do.
* He knew the cost of war first. Not just fighting in it. But losing his brother, Ivor, two years his junior, who died in the Sicily campaign (I think?), 1943.
I’ve certainly both got and have read Brett-James’ 1812, subtitled Eyewitness Accounts of Napoleon’s Defeat in Russia.
I can’t believe I haven’t written a review of it!? I’ll have to have a root around in my digital archives, and see if I can find anything. Of else read and review it again?
I had started Europe Against Napoleon, some time back. But – very unusually for me – I’d not finished it. I think this belongs to my fairly recent reading burn-out phase.
It’s now later the same day, and after a shift delivering for Amazon Flex, I got back into the pond. Literally.
It’s also less blindingly bright. That, and using the ‘pano’ function on the iPhone, have allowed me to get pics that, I think, convey what’s happening more clearly.
When I was out, delivering, my darling wife – who has opposed this pond project petty vehemently at times – cut some weed-suppressing fabric to rough size. I finagled it a bit, and… ‘wallah’, as TV chefs like to say…
I’m torn – as indeed is the pond liner itself, alas – ‘twixt trying to glue the pond liner, as is, together, and hopefully achieve a hermetically sealed whole, or thinking of this as layer #2 (layer #1 being the green fabric), and getting some new undamaged stuff as a final layer? Trouble is, I am/we are trying to do this on a budget of £0!
Sitting in the green-room, a fire crackling in the potbelly stove, Chester slurping water from an outside bowl, and squirrels noisily munching chestnuts in a neighbouring garden, life feels pretty good.
It’s forecast – or ‘fivecast’ as my dad liked to say, thrice upon a time – to rain tomorrow. I hope it chucks down, and fills our new ponds! It’ll be interesting to see if it rapidly drains away, or slowly fills.
I also hope that once filled with water, it’ll pull the layers of lining down. And only then will I go round the edges, trimming it off.
I’ve left two areas, at opposite ends of the two main pools, with a shelving egress, for any critters that might fall in and need to get out. They should also double as ledges for a few aquatic plants.
It’ll be nice to finally have a pond! All that remains, apart from the water, the plants, and the wildlife, is for Teresa to undergo some Frog n’ Toad Therapy!
I’ve always wanted to have a pond. Sadly Teresa has a terror of frogs n’ toads. So she’s less keen. But I think she’ll learn to love it (and them), in time. I call it a pond complex on account of it being two ponds and a connecting channel.
We’re going to line it with recycled pond-liner, from Simon and Claire’s old (they got rid of it!) pond. They now have extensive decking instead.
So thanks Pops n’ Claire. Let’s hope the old and somewhat knackered lining will ‘live again’! Talking of old n’ knackered…
Neither pond will be very large – our garden, whilst long-ish, is pencil thin! – nor very deep. And the connecting channel will prob’ only be 8-10” deep, and about as wide.
It was so bright it was very hard to get a decent pic of the whole, on my iPhone, esp’ what with the cramped space, etc. So the above image, the main pond and the beginnings of the connecting channel (at top left), isn’t great.
But hopefully with phase two – weed suppression lining and then the pond liner proper – it’ll start looking clearer. And once there’s water in there – it’s supposed to rain tomorrow – even better!
In the pic’ above things are a tad clearer, I hope? Near to the camera is pond # one, the ‘master’ pond (slightly larger, a fair bit deeper), then there’s the connecting channel, ‘bridge’, and at the back, the secondary, or ‘slave’ pond.
I plan to have some kind of bridge across the wee channel. Poss’ two or three meaty timbers, such as this temporary one, above. I’d rather they were either flush with the soil, or at least sunken a few inches. Just plopped atop the lawn* is ok for now tho’!
* All our ‘lawn’ areas are more like brownfield meadows, right now!