Seaside Man

I wanted to accompany this picture with Steve Hillage's "Me oh my there's a light in the sky", but all the versions I looked at on youtube were rather poor quality live versions.

It looks better bigger (click on it so see it bigger), and I swear I haven't fiddled with the colours, but I did crop it fairly heavily. I went for a very wide crop this time which I don't normally like but it seemed suitable on this occasion.

Off to work now!

Cheers, Tom.

I have a job to go to tomorrow for just the day. I'm taking photographs for a local college for their sustainability initiative. So, photographs of tin cans being recycled, electrical equipment being turned off, paper being printed on both sides, that sort of thing. Not particularly exciting, but that's the way with most paying photographic work. Most of the time will be spent rounding up lecturers and students to model for me, and getting all the things in the pictures that they want.

Today, I'll need to charge my main battery and my spare, clean my lenses and check my equipment.

That's Johnny in the picture. He's quite an old man now, but still quite sprightly.

Cheers, Tom.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8277399.stm

Justice Secretary Jack Straw has agreed to take part in a debate alongside the British National Party on the BBC's Question Time programme.

Mr Straw told the BBC he would join a panel which will include BNP leader Nick Griffin, the Tories and Lib Dems, in London on 22 October.

He said the BNP were defeated when Labour "fought them hard".

Labour has previously refused to debate with the BNP, and some activists have branded the policy change "a disgrace".

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats had already said they would take part in the programme.

...

A Labour spokesman said the party had reviewed its policy of refusing to share a platform with the BNP: "Following the BBC's decision to allow Nick Griffin to appear on Question Time, the Labour Party has agreed we should take on the disgusting politics of the BNP by participating in the programme."

------------------

Interesting. So, what do you think will happen?

Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.
I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.
But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.
I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?
Next to nothing for weight,
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.
Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who's to say where
The harvest shall stop?

-- Robert Frost

-------------------

It felt very autumnal yesterday, cold and foggy. Today is the same. All the leaves are turning brown and some have started falling. Spring is on the way!

Cheers, Tom.

Helen and I watched The Last Waltz last night. It was the last performance by the Canadian band The Band and was beautifully filmed by Martin Scorsese in 1976, the same year that his iconic film Taxi Driver was released. It's one of the great concert films, right up there with Stop Making Sense. The Band aren't particularly popular in the UK, but many people will be familiar with them from their time as Bob Dylan's backing band, although they were also very successful in America in their own right.

This is The Weight from the film, which includes guests The Staple Singers:

Cheers, Tom.

I know you shouldn't mock the afflicted, but:

(Note: this isn't my picture, I found it on google while looking for something else. There was no attribution or ownership with it)

OH, YOUR RED SCARF MATCHES YOUR EYES,
YOU CLOSED YOUR COVER BEFORE STRIKING,
FATHER HAD THE SHIPFITTER BLUES,
LOVING YOU HAS MADE ME BANANAS,

OH, YOU BURNT YOUR FINGER THAT EVENING,
WHILE MY BACK WAS TURNED,
I ASKED THE WAITER FOR IODINE,
BUT I DINED ALL ALONE,

Genius. Guy Marks from 1968, reissued in 1978.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/8273782.stm

A family has been banned from living in their house, but holidaymakers can stay there:

"Jonathan and Emma Jones said they spent £100,000 converting and extending an old barn in Neath Port Talbot.

But planners ruled the work counted as a new build and turned down the Jones' re-application for planning permission.

Neath Port Talbot council said the dwelling proposal was "contrary to policy" but making it a holiday home supported its strategy for tourism"

This seems stupid to me. The barn wouldn't have been converted unless the family did it, and now it has to be holidaymakers only, which means that the house will only be lived in for some of the year rather than for all of it. The Jobsworth's at the council who made this silly decision should be ashamed of themselves.

Tom.

So are they open or not:

Isn't it typical how as soon as I start eating vegetable soups and so on to lose weight that I immediately fancy chips?

Cheers, Tom.

I mentioned yesterday that my new waterproof camera seemed good in bright, even sunshine with vivid colours. I think the above demonstrates this rather well. I've been reading the manual and it has 2 interesting features I've never had before: Macro zoom, and high-speed burst.

Macro zoom is like a traditional macro, allowing focus on small things, but in this case zoomed in. This means that very small details can be magnified in reasonable quality. Below, we have a few barnacles and a small clump of seaweed. In both cases, the region photographed was less than 1cm across:

I'll play with the fast burst another time. Today is a college day, so I need to get shifting!

Cheers, Tom.

I had a session with my new underwater camera yesterday (although not underwater), and learned some of it's strengths and limitations. Here are a few sample pictures:

 

It's pretty good:

Close up
With vivid colours
In strong but not harsh light
Evenly lit

It's pretty poor:

With subtle colours
At a distance
Where a long depth of field is needed
With high contrast lighting
In low light

It will be useful in today's heavy rain as I won't need to worry about the water at all. There is no way I'd take my good camera out in heavy rain.

----------------------

And talking of Strengths and Weaknesses, my new photographic project is going to deliberately stretch some of my weaknesses. I'm going to take portraits of lots of people in the village about their business, with the idea of putting on an exhibition of them later. This means I'll have to approach people, some of whom I'll know and some of whom I won't, explain what I'm doing and why, get their permission to take their picture and then take a high quality and interesting photograph of them. I find this quite a scary prospect, but it will do me good.

Cheers, Tom.

I thought we wouldn't see the sun tonight, but it broke through just before it disappeared:

(click the picture to enlarge it)

Tom.

Helen starts her new job this morning. She's organising the new students at the university. It's only for 2 months, but it gives us some much needed income. Almost overnight, we've both jumped from being pretty relaxed to being really rather busy. I have a photography business to run and my photography course to get going now as well as doing the housework, walking the dog, etc.

So I'd better get busy!

Cheers, Tom.

I boldly took my new camera into the water. This one was actually taken under the water:

Pretty green!

These next 3 were all taken looking back towards the shore. In the last one, the land and houses are completely obscured by the wave:

The picture quality from the camera is just OK rather than good, but I am now used to SLR quality so in a sense I'm bound to say that. Here is a shot I took this morning to illustrate:

Cheers, Tom

So I got myself a waterproof camera, eventually. This is it:

A Panasonic Lumix FT1, 12MP, 4.6X optical zoom, waterproof, dustproof, drop-proof. Just what I need. I'll take it on the beach later and be deliberately careless with it. No more need to worry about sand, seawater or rain! I'm rather excited about it.

My title comes from this:

It's an American comedy series created by Larry David, who was one of the people behind Seinfeld. It's about Larry David himself, and it's hilarious. It's probably the funniest American comedy series I've ever seen. We've been working our way through the dvds of the first 3 series.

Cheers, Tom.

What do you think?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8242410.stm

"More than half of the world's fisheries are fully exploited, putting 27 million jobs and $100bn of income at risk, UN data shows. One sixth of the world's population relies on fish as their main or sole source of animal protein ... unsustainable fishing continues apace on a global scale"

Isn't that just typical? Earth's natural resources on which we all ultimately depend continue to be abused and "many of us refuse to make much-needed changes to our behaviour"

The ecosystems that provide these resources and services are "rapidly decaying to the point of collapse. Human-induced climate change, infrastructure development, the loss of forests and agricultural production are primary drivers of these losses"

What is needed is "global solutions that transcend national boundaries"

So do I think this is going to happen? See my title.

Tom.

I've mentioned "The Naked Lunch" before on this blog: It's a book by William Burroughs that was filmed by David Cronenberg. The Naked Lunch is that moment of ultra-sharp focus when the world seems to stop and you are utterly concentrated on what is on your fork, what you are about to eat: a piece of flesh hacked from a slaughtered cow seasoned and cooked. Your lunch is stripped naked, exposed for what it really is.

Some people float through their lives not noticing things and impervious to the beauty of their surroundings. They never get Naked Lunch moments. The commuter who has driven the same road 2500 times probably doesn't notice the beautiful old tree behind the Armco barrier in the lay-by. One morning his mobile rings and he pulls into the lay-by to answer it. He absently stares out of the window during the call and notices the texture of the bark, how beautiful it is. He finishes the call and gets out for a closer look as a single leaf falls.

He catches the leaf and inspects it and has a Naked Lunch moment. The leaf is beautiful, green and delicate. He looks up at the twigs covered with more leaves and they are all beautiful as well. The curving branches leading back to the trunk are elegantly shaped and the trunk is thick, solid and wonderfully textured. He looks beyond and sees similar trees, hundreds of them arching off into the distance towards the green hills which echo the shape of the branches. Then he thinks of the 3 hours he spends every day in his box on wheels, the 9 hours in his office cube tapping and talking away and of how when he finally gets home he will have a TV dinner and fall asleep with The News on.

He thinks: There's more to life than this.

Tom.

It has always been my contention that the film "The Godfather" Glamorizes violence and to some extent even glorifies the Mafioso style "morality" of putting The Family first regardless of how much slaughter is required to do so. A film called Gomorrah was premiered at Cannes last year which shows them in a harsher light as slave smugglers, terrorists and dealers in toxic waste. The film shows no job as being too dirty or disgusting for them as long as there is a healthy profit in it. Whether this portrayal is correct or not is not something I have direct knowledge of, but I do know that the writer of both the film and the original book, Roberto Saviano, has received death threats and is under permanent police protection.

Yesterday, this was in the news:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8257912.stm

"A shipwreck apparently containing toxic waste is being investigated by authorities in Italy amid claims that it was deliberately sunk by the mafia ... The informant said it contained nuclear material"

This is the trailer for the film:

This is Dead Flowers by The Rolling Stones. It's not connected to the film, I just thought it seemed fitting:

Cheers, Tom.

(If you can't read the text, please Click on the cartoon to get the larger version)

Any comments?

It's my first proper day of College this morning: 3 hours of Photography with a handful of like-minded people. Woohoo!

Cheers, Tom.

The following 2 pictures were taken from the same spot at the same time. The upper one was a 1/40 sec exposure, the lower one 1/100 sec. Everything else was the same. Click on the pictures to enlarge them:

Which one of the two do you prefer, and why?

I like both of them in different ways. I like the pale green tones and airy feel of the first one, and I like the deeper, more gloomy feel of the second one.

Cheers, Tom.

Over the last 2 nights, I watched the full 5-hour version of Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece of film-making “Fanny and Alexander". It is Bergman’s favourite of his own films, and he says of it “Fanny and Alexander is the sum total of my life as a film-maker”. It contains many of the themes his previous films have explored: life and death, religion, family life, relationship breakdown and the dark side of humanity.

It is a rich and beautiful film, full of wonderful colours and marvellously composed images. It shows two sides to life, and shows it through the eyes of the children the film is named after. It starts with a happy Christmas in a rich, aristocratic family in a small Swedish town. The detail and atmosphere are so well drawn that I felt like I was actually a member of the family present at the party rather than a viewer. We start to see darker undercurrents.

But it soon goes wrong. The father dies and the mother marries the local bishop on the rebound, a truly awful, hard and inflexible man. A battle of wills develops between Alexander and the bishop. The former opulence and happiness have been replaced with austerity and cruel brutality, and the happy family and loving servants have been replaced with the bishops grim family and unsympathetic retainers. There are many moments of genuine high tension.

A dream-like atmosphere pervades the film, and Alexander sees lots of things that might or might not be present - dreams or ghosts? Images of the dead father occur frequently, echoing the ghost of Hamlet’s father which we see in a play. The acting is excellent and we are drawn into this world that Bergman has created to an extent that most film-makers can only imagine being able to achieve.

I can honestly say I have never seen a better film. The 5 hours fly past and there are absolutely no dull moments. Here are two trailers for it, the original Swedish one, and then the American one.

If you lived round the corner, I'd lend you the dvd!

Cheers, Tom.

(click on the pictures to enlarge them)

It must be mating season or something. Whatever the explanation, there were hundreds of them around yesterday. I could see them in almost every direction, whizzing all over the place at lightning speed about their "business":

As usual, they were difficult to catch resting and the problem was compounded by Dan my dog's new-found love for chasing them. Give it up mate, you've got NO chance! Lots of Red Darters again, but also a few other types, including this one:

I'm back to College today, woohoo!

Cheers, Tom.

Ever since I've got a decent camera, I've been worried about damaging it. Dropping it, spilling coffee on it, whacking it on something, etc. But by far the most likely thing to damage it is taking it onto the beach every day. If water doesn't get it, the sand will: my 1st Panasonic compact digital stopped working after less than a year and I'm sure it was because of sand ingress.

I have a solution: a waterproof camera. So, I'm eyeing these up. The good ones are expensive, so I'm looking at small ones. I get a double benefit from this: I can take it anywhere and not worry about damage and it will be pocket sized. All-round win! Watch this space!

Cheers, Tom.

(The pictures all get larger if you click on them)

Then when it finally disappeared, the red just kept getting deeper and deeper. I haven't enhanced these images in any way, but I have cropped them slightly. They get grainier as they go on as it was getting darker:

Cheers, Tom.

All of the images get larger if you click on them and this Red Darter really does look more impressive if you do so!

It was nice of him to stay still for his pictures!

Cheers, Tom.

I bet they wish they'd picked a better time for this:

I watched them for about 10 minutes and there was never a wave larger than about 20cm. Luckily for them though, they did have rather a nice view. Shortly after I took the above picture, I took these two:

Home made bread for breakfast now!

Cheers, Tom.

I much prefer wholemeal bread to white, but in the past my attempts to make it haven't been too successful. Typically, it's ended up either too dense through having not risen, or too yeasty from trying to combat the density problem. This time I got it right, and below is exactly what I did.

900g strong wholemeal bread flour
24g dried yeast (NOT quick yeast)
550cl warm water (1/3 boiling, 2/3 cold)
2 tsp salt
2 tsp brown sugar
3 tbs olive oil
Optional nuts and seeds

1.Add sugar to water in a bowl, stir well then add yeast. Whisk well then put in airing cupboard. It needs 20 minutes in there, so time the rest accordingly. When ready, there should be at least 2cm froth on top.

2.Place flour, salt and oil in a large mixing bowl and rub together. (At this point I also added some sunflower seeds and some chopped brazil nuts, but this is entirely optional)

3.Make a well in the flour and pour yeast/water/sugar mix in. Knead it to a dough - minimum 10 minutes kneading. It should be wet but not sticky, add more if necessary (flour or water).

4.Leave to rise until double in size in a warm place. This should take about 20 minutes. I warmed up the oven a little and then switched it off for this and kept the door shut. About 35-40C is perfect.

5.Knead again for 2 minutes to remove all the air and then place in a well greased 2lb bread tin to rise for a further 15 minutes in the slightly warmed oven.

6. Take the tin out of the oven and put it in the airing cupboard.

7. Warm the oven up to 185C (or gas mark 5), and put a small dish of water in the bottom of the oven to increase the humidity

8. Bake for 30 minutes.

9. Turn out onto a wire tray. I’d wait 30 minutes before trying it. It’ll still be warm and it should be sturdy enough to withstand cutting.

And it’s delicious!

Cheers, Tom.

(most of the pictures get larger if you click on them)

Since I was housebound for a couple of weeks recently, I particularly enjoy getting out and about at the moment. Pretty much the first thing I saw when I got on the beach was this bird:

I have no idea what it is. Do any of you know?

I'm pretty sure that this is a surfer, probably a female:

Surfing seems to work even with tiny waves!

Sometimes these patterns in the sand from the receding waves are clearer than others. I increased the contrast to make them stand out better:

My trusty companion wonders when I'm going to stop playing with that silly black box and throw the ball:

The morning sun was making this yellow shell unusually vivid:

This is the view away from the sea, taken from on top of the sea wall:

And finally, one more bird that I don't know. Sorry about the poor quality of the picture, the littrle bleeder wouldn't let me get at all close. Any idea what it is?

Cheers, Tom.

P.S. I'm going to try making some bread now. Wish me luck - it's been a while!

That's the date today, and such digital repetition doesn't happen very often. Numerologists are wetting themselves, as 9 represents the highest level of change in some systems. 9 also represents the planet Mars, and the star-sign Sagittarius in astrology. 9 is also the atomic number of the gaseous element Fluorine, and symbolizes completeness to the Bahia. 9 represents a Chinese Dragon. Kowloon literally means 9 dragons. Star Trek had a Deep Space 9. 9 is revered in both Hinduism and Buddhism.

For any Christians reading this, the bible explicitly forbids all forms of divination, including, numerological, and a few other things too:

Deuteronomy 18:10-11: "Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritualist or who consults the dead"

The Quran forbids it too:

"O ye who believe! Intoxicants and gambling, (dedication of) stones, and (divination by) arrows, are an abomination; of Satan's handwork: eschew such (abomination), that ye may prosper."

Regular readers of this blog will be aware that I am not too keen on The Beatles. However, I make an exception for this track "Revolution 9" from The White Album which is probably my favourite piece by them. It's quite remarkably peculiar by any standards. If you don't know it (or even if you do), please have a listen:

Cheers, Tom.

P.S. I posted this at exactly 9 seconds past 09:09 BST. GMT would have been better but I wasn't up in time!

P.P.S. 11/11/11 will be even more interesting!

Not this train, but the one before it:

Helen has gone to Rome to visit her father. I joked that she was going to roam...all round the coast of West Wales, but that wasn't really very funny. She caught the 5:20 AM train and of course I couldn't sleep after that, so I took Dan for a walk. This is what the beach looked like at about 6AM:

I rather like it like this, all empty. And empty is what the house is going to be for the next week, but it's fine as I have lots to do.

Cheers, Tom.

There are two moral dilemmas below. They are both clearly artificial scenarios, but it's an interesting test of your moral compass.

1. A runaway train is hurtling down the track toward five people who will be killed if it stays on course. The only way to save them is to hit a switch that will turn the train onto a different track where it will kill one person instead of five. Should you turn the train in order to save five people at the expense of one?

2. As before, a train threatens to kill five people. You are standing next to a large stranger on a footbridge that spans the tracks in between the oncoming train and the five people. In this scenario, the only way to save the five people is to push this stranger off the bridge, onto the tracks below. He will die if you do this, but his body will stop the train from reaching the others. Ought you to save the five others by pushing this stranger to his death?

What is your reasoning in each case?

-----

(P.S. I tried to post this on the hopechild group blog a couple of days ago, but for some reason it didn't work)

Sometimes, events seem to be linked into a long chain. You stub your toe and stand in agony for a minute which makes you miss the bus and hence your train, which means you arrive late for your interview all flustered and don't get the job, so you spend the next year all depressed doing a job you hate. OR: you stub your toe, a lovely person asks if you're OK, you get a date, get married, have children and live happily ever after.

Some people take the Determinist position that every event, including all human thoughts and actions, are causally determined by previous events. That doesn't make any sense to me. How can that toe-stubbing be previously determined and the outcomes set in stone? Plus, this tends to go against our freedom to make choices.

But one thing that is true is that a lot of changes can spread outwards from one little change, like the ripples from a stone thrown into a pond: the so-called "butterfly effect" of Catastrophe Theory whereby "one flap of a butterfly's wings could change the course of weather forever".

So, small things can have a big impact, but most importantly:

allow plenty of time for your journey!

Cheers, Tom.

I got some advertizing postcards made up. This is the picture I put on it:

Do you think it was a good choice?

Cheers, Tom.

The most important question that can be asked. What do you think it is?

Tom.

When Helen turned 50 last month, one little present she got was a book of jokes about getting old. The book advised that if you don't want to seem like you're getting on in years when you sit down, it's best to avoid a big sigh and saying:

"Ah, That's Better"

This was particularly funny as we'd both done it not long before reading the book.  Some years ago, I heard my Nana say "There's nothing like a good sit down". There is life in this old dog yetand hopefully I have a few more decades before I start saying that. This is what Dylan Thomas had to say on the subject (and incidentally this whole poem is graffiti'd on the wall of the gents in our local pub):

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Cheers, Tom.

I've had my last pill and I'm now free to go out and about again, so how come I'm still coughing? It's not fair, grumble, moan.

Tom.

My recent bout of illness has made me think yet again about healthy eating. Advice on this often boils down to a few basic points:

Eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables
Drink lots of water
Minimise fat intake
Avoid processed foods

I'm already pretty good at those with one exception: I don't eat enough fruit. I don't know why it is, but I just find fruit difficult to eat: I find it a chore to get down. I have a solution though: a juicer. We even have a juicer - it's been unused for a few years but should still work. So, juice breakfasts are imminent: oranges, apples, carrots, bananas, plums here we come!

What's the betting whether I manage it or not?

Cheers, Tom.

70 years ago today, at 11AM, Neville Chamberlain declared that Britain was at war with Germany. According to a prior promise, this should have happened 2 days earlier when Germany invaded Poland, but it didn't. The world was plunged into a 6 year war which will never be forgotten. But did we learn any lasting lessons from it? I'm sure we each have views on that.

Tom.

Some of you may remember an interesting ebay issue I had, described here:

http://seasideman.blog.co.uk/2009/08/27/what-would-you-do-6831984/

The seller really had messed up the postage, and the item worked perfectly, so I have just paid half of the postage. In the circumstances that seems fair to me.

Cheers, Tom.

The waves of fortune, the vicissitudes of life, can wash us forwards and wash us backwards, they can push us higher up the shore and drag us back into the depths. Sometimes, when we need solidity and stability, we might try and cling to a rock. We may succeed, or the waves might rip our fingers free. Yet eventually, for most of us, there will come a time when the tide recedes and then we may find ourselves in a quiet rock-pool that perfectly suits us.

The pool is warm and familiar, it contains everything we want and need: we're in our Comfort Zone and there is no need to look beyond the pool. After a while we may cease to even notice that there is a world outside our pool. We can live, harmoniously, and choose how to spend our time.

One thing you can rely on: the tide will come in again. If you spent your time in the pool wisely, you will have fashioned a life-jacket. If you didn't...

Cheers, Tom.

It's cold, and the night's are drawing in, autumn is on the way. The above picture isn't Autumn as I haven't been out for about a week now. This is one I took last year at about this time with my old camera:

To be honest, I'm not very pleased with it because the composition is a bit dull. I'll do better when I finally get out and about.

Winter is round the corner and I'm looking forward with glee to storms, floods, snow and the pleasure of a completely empty beach.

I quite like winter, but the high electricity bills aren't welcome. Here is Nat King Cole singing Autumn Leaves:

Cheers, Tom.

I finally got round to copying the pictures off my camera that I took before I came down with the lurgy. The above was the last one.

Helen and I have until Thursday to go to our local cinema to see the documentary film "Sleep Furiously". It's a:

"mesmerising and poetic documentary about the small hill-farming community of Trefeurig. It shows a landscape that is changing rapidly as small-scale agriculture is disappearing and how what was once a community cut off from the world has learned to adapt to modern times"

Trefeurig is just a few miles away from here, so it will be particularly interesting for us. I've heard very good things about it, so we really must get to see it. I do love a trip to the cinema, and I think I'll risk it even though I'm not supposed to be out and about yet. The soundtrack is by Aphex Twin too, which is a nice bonus!

Cheers, Tom.