Fresh air & photos

[Martin Wynne]

How old?

Martin.

 

[Martin Wynne]

Gone west.

Martin.

 

[test_user]

Bridge 147.

TU

 

[Rob Manchester]

Bridge 147.

View attachment 7

TU

Hi Martin,
Montgomery Canal near Abermule close to the scene of the 1921 accident blamed on the incorrect use of single line token working.

Rob

 

[Rob Manchester]

Gone west.

View attachment 6

Martin.

....and East - from both platforms. Worcester Foregate Street station.

Rob

 

[Rob Manchester]

How old?

View attachment 2

Martin.

Old enough to have fought in the Great War ? It was a shelter for old servicemen and was demolished to make way for road improvements - according to an old planning enquiry I found that was attempting to re-instate the park bandstand. Bewdley seems a happy place to live - the local magazine "The Bridge" gives it a sense of community spirit sadly lacking in many places.

Rob

 

[Martin Wynne]

Old enough to have fought in the Great War ? It was a shelter for old servicemen and was demolished to make way for road improvements - according to an old planning enquiry I found that was attempting to re-instate the park bandstand. Bewdley seems a happy place to live - the local magazine "The Bridge" gives it a sense of community spirit sadly lacking in many places.

Rob

Hi Rob,

You have a good knowledge of this part of the world? I'm a bit mystified by what road improvements though -- that part of Bewdley hasn't changed in my lifetime. Do you have a link for the planning enquiry?

edit: the planning enquiry was for the Kidderminster ring road. Different town, different shelter, same district council.

Time for (the number of smilies on here is crazy!).

Martin.

 

[Charles Orr]

Seems to be working OK Martin,

 

[Rob Manchester]

Hi Rob,

You have a good knowledge of this part of the world? I'm a bit mystified by what road improvements though -- that part of Bewdley hasn't changed in my lifetime. Do you have a link for the planning enquiry?

edit: the planning enquiry was for the Kidderminster ring road. Different town, different shelter, same district council.

Time for (the number of smilies on here is crazy!).

Martin.

Hi Martin,
There is no catching you out is there. Yes, looking back at the planning enquiry report it is of course for Kidderminster. I was puzzled too as looking at the map of Bewdley from 100 years ago and comparing to todays didn't seem to show much change. I blame the fact it was late at night.....

When I saw the picture with the 'How old?' caption at first I thought you were asking us to date the building !!

Rob

 

[Graham Idle]

Slate roof detail, Romsey, Hampshire.

 

[Phil O]

The bonding in the brickwork appears to be a bit of a mishmash!

 

[S-Club-7]

The bonding in the brickwork appears to be a bit of a mishmash!

Monk bond with adjustments to cater for the spacings between corners/windows/door?

 

[Phil O]

Hi Dave,

That's a new one on me, but as some say, every day is a school day.

 

[Bill Lobb]

That answers something that has been puzzling me for a while. I have been trying to identify the attached brick bond. It is a surviving building on the site of the Londesborough excursion station at Scarborough, but also used on the extension to Bridlington station which I think was built at about the same time.

 

[AndyB]

It snoweth!

About nine inches now and no sign of it letting up. The red thing is my pickup.

I cleared the steps up to my shop (lower left in the pic) and by the time I got the camera to take the pic they were covered in snow again.

 

[Andrew Duncan]

Hello Andy
What a lovely scene. I love the silence that snow brings with it and when the trees and bushes are still covered in snow before the melt or wind dispenses with it. Must make getting around a bit of a challenge. I can see why the Spyder wouldn't be your first choice for that!

Kind regards
Andrew

 

[AndyB]

This is the kind of thing Spidy much prefers - the "Million Dollar Highway" in Colorado. I hope to do it again in the not too distant future. I'm not sure top-down motoring was exactly what Martin had in mind with "fresh air" but it doesn't get much fresher than this, or thinner.

 

[AndyB]

Now that was interesting. It's gone quite mild again here so I thought I'd take the spider for a spin. Hopped in, pressed "Start". Nothing. Zip. Nada. Just a strange dashboard light flashing. It's a security system warning. The manual says "contact the dealer". The battery was a bit low and I think that must have triggered it. Oh well.......

Update: Charged the battery. Still didn't start this morning. Tried again later and it did! I think it was an "operator headspace" problem. I don't think I was pressing the brake pedal hard enough. Usually there is some residual vacuum in the servo and I only need to apply light pressure on the pedal but the vacuum had dissipated while the car was sitting for a few weeks.

 

[Andrew Duncan]

Hello Andy
Funny you should say that. I've just had a similar problem with my Alpina and decided yesterday that I really needed to have an easy way to charge the battery in situ(its buried deep in the boot (trunk). So I added a red and black heavy duty wire that I used for Yeovils BUS, put proper connections on one end which I bolted to the battery posts, and a decent automotive plug on the other. Now I can easily whip out the charger via one of the front windows of the house, and be charging the recalcitrant thing in a trice!

 

[AndyB]

Updated update.
It was not I. It was the stinking batteries in BOTH of the keyless fobs. Having actually read the manual I now know how to get around that particular problem

 

[Martin Wynne]

Quite a few out on local lockdown walkabout again today. But only yours truly saw any reason to take this.

Trying a higher-res upload in the new media gallery, for a better fit on 4K screens.

Martin.

 

[Rob Manchester]

Hi Martin,
I would have taken it too . Which way did you walk from here - I am assuming straight ahead is part of the property rather than a right of way ?

Rob

 

[Martin Wynne]

Hi Martin,
I would have taken it too . Which way did you walk from here - I am assuming straight ahead is part of the property rather than a right of way ?

Rob

Hi Rob,

No right of way through the farmyard, but there is across the field round to the right of it. But hardly an image worth uploading:

I have thousands like this. Worth a second look after another 40 years or so...

Martin.

 

[Martin Wynne]

After a lot of fiddling about I have changed the styling for this thread only, to take better advantage of widescreen monitors, and use a grey background for the photos. It means pushing the text hard over to the left, so I'm not yet convinced it's better. No doubt I shall fiddle about with it some more.

Here's a reminder of summer evenings in the Teme valley before we knew anything about lockdowns.

Martin.

 

[Charles Orr]

Hi Martin,

The photographs look stunning on my 32" UHD 4K monitor. The two before this one completely fit the width of the screen.

 

[Martin Wynne]

Hi Martin,

The photographs look stunning on my 32" UHD 4K monitor. The two before this one completely fit the width of the screen.

Thanks Charles.

I've now replaced the last one with a larger version.

I have to bear in mind that some folks are still on slow connections, but from now on I will try to post them at full 4K size because I know they look better that way. While the lockdown is on maybe I will go back and re-post some earlier ones at 4K.

cheers,

Martin.

 

[Rob Manchester]

Hi Martin,

Yes, I am with Charles - they do look very good even though my old monitor only says "Super Full HD" on the badge. I wonder how many folks are still using the older aspect ratio monitors ?

Rob

 

[AndyB]

Wow! They are good.

Beautiful day here for more than a couple of reasons

 

[Rob Manchester]

Trump has been trumped

Rob

 

[Martin Wynne]

Wow! They are good.

Beautiful day here for more than a couple of reasons

Thanks Andy.

I watched it all. We could hear the sigh of relief from here. It seemed fitting that you had a sunny day for it.

Rain here today. But we do have a few sunny days in winter. Here's one. If viewing on a wide screen spot the wildlife under the tree:

Martin.

 

[AndyB]

My wife is binge-watching "Escape To The Country"

 

[AndyB]

Can't beat top down motoring for fresh air.

https://youtu.be/4iFumgK-DcI

(My brother exhumed this recently. Location Paisley Braes. Actors, me and wife, brother's Spit. Date unknown but the length of my hair might be a clue )

 

[Martin Wynne]

The works site under water again, 12 months on:

Martin.

 

[Martin Wynne]

I think I've posted this scene before -- the light is always changing.

Martin.

 

[Rob Manchester]

Hi Martin,
The fish won't need a pass if the water levels stay up the way they have been recently

Do you generally tend to shoot in 16:9 with the Fuji ?

Rob

 

[Martin Wynne]

Do you generally tend to shoot in 16:9 with the Fuji ?

Hi Rob,

No, I use the full 6000x4000 pixels of the X100F sensor. It makes no sense to waste any of them when shooting.

But I rarely use all of them in the finished pic, I normally crop down to whatever creates the most pleasing image and aspect ratio.

There is no physical zoom on the camera, so cropping or walking is the only way to get closer.

And then for the web I resize down to a suitable screen width, the height taking care of itself from whatever aspect ratio I have set.

Until recently a "suitable screen width" meant what would fit dot-for-dot on my own monitor (2560x1440). For the last few posts I have increased that to take better advantage of 4K monitors for those who have them. That means I have mostly set the width to 3800 in the last few pics.

To avoid any need to scroll a typical browser window I have used an aspect ratio of 2:1 where I can, but it doesn't fit all of them, so it will vary. It's not often 16:9, unless that just happens to fit.

For both the old Templot Club and this new one, I have written some scripting to ensure that no image ever appears larger than dot-for-dot, regardless of any browser zooming or screen DPI setting. That's especially important for the Templot screenshots because looking at fuzzy line graphics for just a few seconds causes me a severe headache. Whether the scripting works on all devices, especially Apple Retina screens, I have no means of knowing. But it's working here for this screen so I'm happy. It's the reason you may see images resize after a second or two.

One issue I'm currently looking at is the very slow loading of large images when they have been posted as attachments, compared with similar-sized images hot-linked directly from the server. That's a bit of a puzzle.

cheers,

Martin.

 

[Rob Manchester]

Hi Martin,
It always puzzles me why they have aspect ratio switches placed so handily on many digital cameras. Storage is cheap and, as you say, just get everything onto the memory card that the sensor can see. It gives you a choice of composition later when back in the 'darkroom'. In the days of medium format cameras you could often get interchangeable back in sizes smaller than the cameras native size (6x4.5 on nominally 6x6 cameras for example ) - usually these would get an extra couple of frames on a roll which may have been important considering film and processing costs.

I seem to remember in the early days of digital some company trying to promote a square format sensor to give maximum cropping options later but I don't think the idea got very far.

Rob

 

[AndyB]

The light is improving a bit now.

I did get a bit of fresh air yesterday. I was skiing on the Idaho/Montana border but this one is a bit of a cheat. I just took it. It's the view from our kitchen

 

[Martin Wynne]

A miserable day today, so raiding the archives for some sunshine. This from August 2016, before any thought of pandemics to cloud the horizon.

Also pre-X100F, so it won't fill 4K.

Martin.

 

[Andrew Duncan]

Lovely photo Martin, nicely composed and when I stretched it on my Macbook screen looked fantastic.
Andrew