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

Tuesday 9 June 2015

TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS. (09/06/15)

For the last couple of days the cold wind has gone so apart from a couple of very brief showers it is gorgeous. I have been; not grass cutting as yesterday the drive belt from the engine to the hydrostatic transmission came off and took an hour or more of struggle and nasty words before it went back on. I hadn’t been mowing for ten minutes when I ran out of fuel. It’s a thirty mile round trip for petrol so I left a note for Andrew to pick some up on his way back with the big dumper trailer. He hadn’t got a jerry can with him so phoned a friend to bring five gallons this morning. It arrived at the crack of coffee o’clock and I set to with the mower. I mowed unhappily for ten minutes then a bearing on the mower deck collapsed. Two and a half hours later after finding one new bearing here and begging another new one from the local engineer I was back mowing. The job was a real mauling business, like repairing a one ton domestic washing machine, no easy access, everything just too heavy for comfort and lots of sharp thin metal about. I managed to get the old bearings out and the new in with the aid of my high tech implements. A big hammer and an even larger drift.

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Here is the mower. It looks very snazzy, has loads of little switches for magnetic clutches, that offer high and low ratio, lift and drop the cutter deck, even headlights for folk who fancy mowing in the dark. It’s a domestic model and a real pain to drive. A push along flymo would be easier. The front wheels come off the ground when the grass collector is half full and there is nowhere to hang a counterbalance weight. I did think of filling the front tyres with water but decided it would make little difference. When Ken gets back I’ll offer to weld a little bracket on the front to hang proper tractor weights on. It’s a bit like Dithery Dave, a rich mans dream but of little practical use.

Last night I wandered down to Polly’s farm as she makes cider and I fancied a drink. She wasn’t in and so I wandered back and on the way noticed a beautiful little patch of Red Campion and Blue Bells. I decided to take the Bronica down but only had B&W film. I took the Canon.

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They don’t look good in monochrome so just as well I didn’t fire off a roll of 120 on them.

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They don’t look much better in colour.

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Neither does gorse and Hawthorne. I got fed up with monochrome.

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Decided to go half and half as a compromise. Compromise doesn’t come naturally to me so I took a couple of flowers.

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Welsh Poppy.

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And a normal one.

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Common Carder Bee, bum on as usual sitting on a blue flower with riggledy raggeldy petals. The first correct ID gets a mention on a sometime leading video. It’s a White Tailed Bumble Bee that I hope to stack and 3D. I could make the 3D interactive. Did I say sometime? Next week maybe, next year is more likely. I’ll shoot a couple of hundred images of it tonight as it is dead and fresh, I’ve already started to build the mesh. I’m making my bee five times real size and it is hard. I will have to think of a way to UV map the images credibly I’m working in metric and in Blender it is good. Blender units are just a metric unit but I’ve never used it as a CAD package apart from the silly bar of chocolate and even then I was more interested in using Bezier curves to generate the molten chocolate than using particles or a fluid system. For those that missed it here, I hope, is molten chocolate.

chocolate 

If you want to see this GIF work then you may have to refresh the page. 

It’s a good job the days are long as Polly has just brought me a litre milk carton of rocket fuel. Houses are few and far apart here but she knew I’d been down to see her last night. I’ll maybe save taking the bee pictures till tomorrow morning.

Have fun.

40 comments:

  1. Rocket fuel is obviously not for the ride-on mower Adrian.

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    1. No it's for me. It is gut rot cider and I know I will regret drinking fout pirts of it.

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  2. Adrian, I would have thought that a man of your obvious inventiveness would have come up with the easy answer to the counter balance problem.....why don't you sit backwards up on the bonnet?

    Yep!...the flowers look much better in colour! The half and half vista looks good though.
    And the mystery flower...check out Perennial Cornflower (Centaurea montana) also known as Mountain Cornflower, Mountain Bluet, Bachelor's Button or Montane Knapweed.

    What are you going to attempt first, the apple juice or the the mega photo shoot?...have fun!...[;o)

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    1. Trevor, I am used to posh John Deer or such mowers. When I select reverse I don't have to sit puzzling over lifting the collector box or re-selecting slow. Wondering if I can steer. The machine is a load of rubbish. It has one of those wonderful Briggs and Stratton engines the exhaust is in front of the headlight bit and like all engines they have built appears to run on smoke. Ken gave £100.00p for it and that was too much he should have paid scrap weight.
      Too late for photography....Polly is away to refill the carton.
      I'll send you the link on realistic 3D images. It is mind blowingly difficult to achieve unless you settle for a very low resolution and naff Mac App. Don't think a Mac could cope these days. I love Windows 7. Mark says go Umbuto but I can't write HTML very well, let alone Python and C++++++ + special. Which they must be on now. Blender is good as you can write script in python, get it checked and if it works it is part of Blender.

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  3. The shot with the bee is my fav, here, but also loved the half and half........

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  4. Some days are like that.

    I like the half and half as well as the ensuing flower shots.

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  5. One man went to mow
    Went to mow a meadow
    One man on a red "Countax"
    Went to mow a meadow

    Oh, one man went to mend
    Went mend a "Countax"
    One man with a very foul tongue
    Went to mend a "Countax"

    One man went to smash
    Went to smash a "Countax"
    One man with a five pound sledge hammer
    Went to smash a "Countax"

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    1. Neil, I wish i could do this. The fucking thing is just a hooray mower but I have the knowledge to mend it for £3.00p.

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    2. Next time try a scythe. They rarely go wrong unless you are wearing flip flops!

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    3. YP, they don't let me loose with pointed scissors.

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  6. Love the flower pics (in color, of course!) I'm sure you weren't too very disappointed that your mower broke down :)

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    1. Linda, I would have been delighted but for the fact I had to mend it.

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  7. I like the monochrome image and the image looking out onto the field.
    With the counter balance issue on the Nascar/mower have you not got any sandbags and rope or even a spare wheel you could strap to the bonnet?

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    1. Douglas, the bonnet is only flimsy plastic. It wants a tractor weight popping on properly.

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  8. I love your images, Adrian, but I'm not even going to try and start understanding the technical bit. I'll just sit back and enjoy your results! All this talk of stacking and blenders is mind boggling to me.

    I reckon the solution to the balance problem on that mower is just leave the bloody grass collector off! Just go and rake up the grass afterwards - it'd be less frustrating and probably quicker!

    Best wishes - - - - Richard

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    1. Richard, it would be a whole lot easier without the collector but there is a hell of a lot of grass to cut.

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  9. I think that mower may have been telling you something Adrian! And I thought our flymo gave us trouble. Look forward to seeing you Bee, it sounds both complex and time consuming.

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    1. Adam the bee will take weeks and it may be beyond me. I usually manage but it is a complex job.

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  10. When you cut grass you really have fun. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. You've got lots of flowers blooming right now.

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    1. Red, not everything. It could have fired a stone through someone's caravan.

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  11. Sorry to hear of your mower problems, but it makes a good story. Love your pictures, especially the one looking down on a hillside, looks like a watercolour to me.

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    1. Thanks Gillian, there is a filter that does this in Photoshop but I can never find it.

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  12. I like the half and half shot, it makes the countryside look quite dreamy. Hope your dreams are happy tonight.

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    1. Pauline three pints of cider and I couldn't remember anything.

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  13. If you're an itinerant van-owner, where exactly is the grass you need to mow? I'm intrigued.

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    1. Frances, I'm chief executive and operations manager on this site for a month. Work comes as something of a shock to my system.

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  14. What a pity that you had such lots of problem with your red Ferrari Formula 1 lawnmower.
    Flowers are beautiful!
    Miklos

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  15. Nice photos Adrian. I really like the landscape shot with the gates in the foreground, it has real depth to it. I find when I take landscape shots they lack depth and never seem to show what the eyes see. It is a bridge camera I use so perhaps thats the issue.

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    1. Ian, it could be but it helps if there is something handy to lead the eye in.

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  16. Brain Food seems to be doing the job what with all the mechanical repairs.
    Funny - the GIF is still when looking at the full post in Firefox, even refreshing changes nothing. But, if I open just the GIF in another tab then it repeats four times which I assume is what is was designed to do. Must be some kink in Firefox which allows it to work one way but not another.
    The animation is brilliant in both concept and execution.

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  17. John, bodging is my middle name. I got it going again which is all that matters.
    I use Chrome and must admit didn't check the GIF in any other browsers. It is. or should run five rimes then stop. I could have done with making the frame thingy longer to let the wee mesh that I inserted finish it's business. I like 3D now and again. The new project is a monstrous task.I think I sent you the link.

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  18. La naturaleza se ve mejor en color. Asi apreciamos mejor su belleza .Preciosas flores silvestres !!
    Un abrazo.

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  19. What with good humour, brain food and all the usual ingredients that's a real blast from the past of your best posts. I enjoy the macros and all that but this was good for the smile glands.

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    1. Graham, If I could do a post like this even once a week I'd be earning a fortune. Some days it happens but usually it doesn't.

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