ABOUT ME

I live in a camper van with a West Highland Terrier for company.
My passion is creating images but it is a work in progress.
I am always willing to share what knowledge I have and can be contacted through the comments on this post or e-mail ADRIAN
ALL IMAGES WILL ENLARGE WITH A LEFT CLICK

Sunday 5 August 2012

SNAILS PACE (05/08/12)

Things have been very slow on the picture front. There is little to add to the goings on in London without repeating myself……Not that repetition seems to concern the media one iota. If they are not showing, writing about or discussing repeats they may just as well be……….Sorry, I know I’m just an ignorant commutator….compilater…comptometer…….Sod it!…..You know the word I’m looking for.




























I took a different route to the river this morning, I usually nip through the church yard but they were having an early matins, mass or possibly just breakfast. I didn’t want the dogs getting involved with folk all done up in their Sunday best.














Bindweed………….a real pest it is but I find it attractive. I find Indian Balsam and Giant Hogweed attractive so take no notice of me.
Friday I went shopping and dropped on a bargain…………………………..


































How do hens know to stop growing when they reach a dressed weight of precisely one kilogramme?
I decided to spatchcock it………………….






















It’s easy, don a pair of wellies place it on the floor and jump on it. I treated it to seasoning, olive oil, lemon juice and crushed garlic. The later can be prepared just as the chicken but remove your boots or it gets stuck in the cleats.


































Cover with streaky bacon…….this adds much needed cholesterol to the dish. Pop it in the oven at full o’clock and cook till it is done.




































Perfect……….A proper little Pink Floyd I am. If you have a dog or dogs it is as well to hide it at this stage, alternatively eat it and eat it fast.
For those of you that love computers then this is well worth a look and check the links Mark has provided…….
FRITZING. …….I know what Santa is getting me. Mark is going to be leaping with joy when he starts getting e-mails asking why the gibberish I’ve compiled doesn’t work as well as the gibberish he’s written.
This has been a nightmare to compose and publish Live Writer will not communicate with Blogger. This little Garden Snail was getting on faster than I have been.


































Trying to compose in Blogger does my head in.
Have a good week.
















Have a good week.



















































35 comments:

  1. I compose in word (or some similar remarkably inexpensive - like free! - program), then cut and paste and add in the photos. Has the advantage of spillchucking on the way. Works for me.

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    1. John, Writer is free fro Microsoft and they store your pictures...I think! Live writer is free but it does take a while to configure. it. What is configure? I'm an expert. I press buttons till it works. It checks my spelling for me as well as it can. I write in words taht even I have never heard of!

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  2. I hope you're going to share some of that chicken with the dogs?

    Are you using the new blogger interface?
    I'm still with the old, and find it nice and simple. I write the text in word, then paste into blogger. Insert pictures where I need them.
    Gawd knows what'll happen when I'm forced to use the new one. Saw it on a friends a few weeks ago, and didn't have a clue where to start.

    Could be the end of my blogging when that happens.

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    1. Keith, didn't have any choice.......went for a tiddle and they had sorted themselves.
      I have no idea new old. I use Windows Live Writer and just drag and drop pictures in from Photoshop I have to compress them first. Windows look after them...God knows where. Google will eventually make us have adverts..........Greedy little buggers.

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  3. I like the snails pace, it occurs to me that its going rather fast, slow down, I'm lagging behind you.

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    1. Bob, much faster than I was this morning. It was a racing snail.

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  4. Hello Adrian,

    Nice to have you back!
    I saw that you came back on July 11 but i was away and off Blogger for a few weeks as well + very busy.
    Glad you sorted out your issues or at least are on your way out of the tunnel, and i sincerely wish you a safe journey out of that tunnel!
    Take care of yourself and looking forward to reading your posts when ever you are publishing, DeeBee

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    1. DeeBee, My life is a roller coaster. I'll be about.

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  5. Yet another amusing and interesting post which disappeared when I was half way through reading it and then reappeared after half an hour or so.

    I've used the new Blogger interface since its inception and never had any problems. I do not, however, use Dynamic Views. Nor, except on Heather's Blog, do I see Dynamic Views in anyone else's. Heather tinkers with her HTML. Mark tinkered with mine.

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    1. This morning was a real sod.....I hate change but if Live Writer is acting up then I'll have to use Blogger. I don't like it as I can only have text and pictures in sizes they determine. I'll have a look around for another free compiler. Mark does mine as well.

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    2. If you switch to compose mode (see my other comment) then you can control the size of the images down to the pixel by editing the width and height attributes. To make sure the images scale properly delete the height and just set the width. It may not look so nice when you are actually writing a post but it's an awful lot more reliable than the alternative.

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  6. Hi Adrian...You do make life interesting ....even cooking a chicken lol!
    I do have to try that recipe, except for doing the funky chicken in my wellies upon it ; }...I'd have the neighbors dog following me about the next time I ware them in the garden!
    I have a thing for invasive plants to...well I guess they shouldn't be labeled invasive for it is man who has encroached on them!
    As for Blogger interface I use the new one, it was a pain at first, but it is a trial and era,click and see what happens..that's my extend or I will screw things up but good!!
    Thanks for the chicken recipe yum!!
    Grace

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    1. Grace...no don't stamp on it. Pop it the right way up and with a knife or kitchen shears remove the spine. Trim any excess fat or skin then cut carefully down each side of the breast cartlidge and gently remove it along with a bit of breast bone. Cut through the wish bone and flatten the bird. I just hit the garlic with the side of the knife.

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  7. Not sure what happened to this post but something went screwy. The pictures are too wide for the column so the right hand side gets cut off and there is big gaps between paragraphs. I blame Microsoft!

    Also what's interesting is that the photos still ended up on Google's servers not Microsoft's (you can tell as they end up with blogspot URLs). This is good because blogger doesn't generate the post thumbnails for photos hosted elsewhere, which would mean they woulnd't appear in blog lists on other peoples sites or in Postvorta result pages.

    As for the photos themselves I LOVE the shot of the snail!

    Oh and just in case you don't see the comment I left on my own post, how about making a lightning trigger for your camera.

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  8. Mark......I uploaded the images to blogspot. If I don't I just get a blank square with Olympus Digital Camera written in it. I Like Windows Live Writer. It's pretty much WYSIWYG. No messing with previews.
    I'm going to get the kit of bits for Christmas. Many thanks

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  9. Your cooking lesson had me laughing, but end result looked wonderful, too bad there isn't a "smell track" to blogger I bet it smelled pretty darn good. Snails pace, but you are moving, right.

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  10. Oh my. You are a very funny man. Your dinner looks great....but I think beyond the cholesterol you're missing the very important fact that it adds a bit of flavor and salt to the chicken as well:) And garlic cloves? Yum!

    Great snail pic. I love them. Wish we had them here.

    As for blogger. I don't have the new blogger. I can't and won't. I still use the old interface. The new one is too slow! I can't write on my posts without it freezing up. It's not a good interface. If their intent is to lose bloggers, then they're doing a great job. Now uploading pics is quicker....it's the writing part that is the unfortunate part. Take care!

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  11. Blogger is going from bad to worse........I'm about to start looking for another platform.

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    1. As an experiment try doing a post using the compose mode of blogger rather than the html mode. Yes it isn't WYSIWYG but it still supports adding images and links as well as bold and italic text (i.e. what most of us use for most posts). The advantage of compose mode is that it's just text so it's uber quick. When you want to see what it looks like click preview to see what it will really look like and not what the html mode thinks it will look like, which is nearly always wrong anyway.

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    2. I do use compose........I only seem to have small medium and large etc. as a size. Html I can switch to and resize but I don't see constrain proportions.......I wouldn't though would I.

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    3. I have small medium large and original size showing. I always resize my images to 800px max side and use original size. I'm not sure why you are having problems with Blogger's composition interface. As I said I use it all the time. When I muck around I sometimes go into HTML. When all goes wrong I use the TX button and start reformatting but that very rarely happens unless I cut and paste pre-formatted stuff,

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    4. I'll try and do a short post on easy resizing of images by tweaking the HTML blogger generates so you can see how easy it is to have images any size you want within your posts without having to resize them in advance.

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    5. Mark: Surely Adrian re-sizes beforehand anyway because his original images will be huge.

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    6. Mark, my head was spinning yesterday. I've had a play and if I compose in Compose then switch to HTML then delete height for the image and adjust width to my template body width it works. A right palava.
      Graham, Yes originals can be massive. The record is 30k pixels wide at 300/in. If I send them for print it is quicker to post a memory stick than attempt to send on the computer.

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    7. Graham I'll post again today......I'll have a look for the TX button. I have to pop into town now.

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    8. Ah yes I'm an idiot. I meant switch away from compose mode to HTML mode. I really should preview my comments before posting them, sorry.

      Anyway I've now posted about how to edit image sizes in HTML mode which should give you complete freedom from Blogger's arbitrary size choices

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  12. Great recipe! If you're ever this way you can have all the bindweed you want from my garden. One of my old neighbors said they only way to eradicate it is dig out all the roots, dry out the plant and burn it... and you'll still get new starts where the smoke drifted.

    Well, that's what he said.

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    1. It cooks quickly as well. I can understand gardeners having misgivings about bindweed. Just look upon it as decorative.

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  13. Super looking chicken. I'll have to try this.
    Pretty cruel what they do to livestock these days. Some are bred to have huge breasts because of our love of white meat.

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    1. Things are slowly getting better in the UK. This was a very small fowl.

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  14. I wish I hadn't read through all those comments....you guys do my head in with all your tech talk! I like to keep my blogging simple - like my food. The chicken looks great!

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  15. Lol!!! You should start a restaurant!!! I love the wayside flowers and the wild ones. They are very beautiful!

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  16. I really like that snail one for some reason.

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  17. Looks like you have struck Gold with this food or as the snail might say "it's the taking part that counts" !

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