TOO HOT.

Yesterday I was going to go to the seaside. Alf's ear was giving him real gyp so I went to the vet instead. He is a real wuss and after three visits to the vet I can't get near his ear to clean it. A vet, me and a vet nurse couldn't either. Very entertaining it was, how no one got a bite I don't know. He's back on Monday to be sedated, whilst she sorts it. I told her it was a warrantee job but apparently they don't work like normal trades people; more like Gypo tarmac gangs but I didn't say so. Another hundred pounds to pay Monday.
Today I went to the seaside but called at a small nature reserve near Crail as I'd been told it was thick with Dragonflies. It may have been but it was also thick with a school party, they were doing what they usually do. Throwing crisp bags and pop bottles everywhere, begging for cigarettes, totally out of order whilst their carers sat sunbathing. Not a good Miss in sight to mitigate their hooliganism.
I got them to pick up some of the crap they'd dropped and departed.
I decided to stop in Anstruther. I fancied fish and chips but never found the chippy. I did call at the wooden boat builder but he had a blog on, his mood was not improved by Moll pinching the remains of his piece. I'll have to go back and get some photographs. He's a grand bloke and last time I saw him he made a fuss of the Terrors. They like the children take advantage of any sign of weakness and whilst sit, stay, come here are commands that are of no importance. A bloke that was nice six months ago is imprinted in their brain.
I had lost all interest in snapping but here are a couple.

 This is flipped horizontally. Much easier than shifting children to give a lead to the harbour light.

Colour popped. A few Prawners and Potters, about all that is left of our fishing industry.
A disappointing day not helped by the heat.
My Dake engine model is coming on a treat. The drawings I found could have benefited from the dreaded orange pencil man but the beauty of CAD is that many problems can be seen in a 3D model and either ignored or corrected. The next FreeCAD video will be Dake the movie. I still can't get my nuts to revolve but have some Python script to solve it. Where to pop the code I have yet to find out.
A good friend died yesterday so I'll have to get a shirt, tie and a haircut. The latter the gorgeous Bev can do, I have to trim my own beard as the bristles get down her shirt. Wish I could, fit as a butchers dog she is. Every cloud etc.
Have fun.

A NEW ONE.

I took advantage of the weather yesterday. It has been very windy but the weekend was calm and hot. The insects are reasonably cooperative and after years of trying I have found and snapped a new one.

 Large Red Damselfly.

 It may not look very impressive, it isn't particularly rare. It has made my summer. It's a Chimney Sweeper Moth. There were about six of these flitting around Hogweed. They didn't seem to be eating it. Possibly they just liked the contrast.

 Azure Damselflies. There were hundreds of them.

 Several Four Spot Chasers. These are the only Dragonflies I'm seeing but I have a new venue to look at.

A rarity, An Azure Damselfly on it's own. 
Enjoy your week and have fun.

FREECAD EXPLODING.

I had an interesting day yesterday. I was busy drawing up bits for the Dake steam engine when I realised that some stud holes had bust through into the steam passage. Oh bless me and bother.
I decided to have ten minutes perusing GitHub which is a repository where developers pop additional workbenches and macros. I found Exploded Assembly, thought it looked interesting and so it proved to be. It says they are simple to load but not having a simple I found the job a right pain. I know how to do it now though.The old way works, open up the FreeCad programme files and look through till you find one with workbenches in, create a sub folder, unzip the stuff and drop it in. Restart the computer and after a couple of goes or six Bob was my uncle. I ignored Windows telling me every couple of minutes that I need to be an administrator; I had enough problems without being one of them.
There is a minute of tedious or more tedious stuff at the start of the video then we get into coloured in and exploding. The funny sound on the video is my voice and rain pounding on the roof.

I am getting much faster at modelling and am reasonably confident with the boring stuff. I am enjoying learning this just as I enjoy playing in Blender. The latter is much more stable but I don't complain too much as both are free.
Have fun.

SUPER TROOPER.

I'm just back from a grand afternoon chatting to horsey mummies and taking a few snaps. I am out of practise I took ninety shots and forty are acceptable. As folk that have been out clicking with me will verify I can't accept that digital is free and still tend to shoot as I did with film with the exception that I no longer have to bracket exposure. The light was terrible and variable inside the shed as the heavy clouds rolling over made life difficult to impossible. I settled on ISO 1600 and lens pretty wide at F7.1. I let speed look after itself.
This vaulting malarkey is impressive. The little children do it at a walk and get a leg up. The bigger ones do it at a canter and have to run and jump aboard. Sometimes they do it on their own and sometimes in pairs. They all do it to music and seem to act out the words of the song whilst completing set manoeuvres. Way beyond me so hats off to the competitors.
On to the pictures.

This is Rambo. He is my favourite horse. He can be a tinker but today was on his best behaviour.  He is a big lad at seventeen hands and a bit tall.

These are grown ups. They go fast.

This little chap does his routine at a walk but was really confident and entertaining.

This tiny lass was performing at a canter. Her routine was set to Abba's Super Trooper  here she is "On the phone to Glasgow." I'll not show her interpretation of their line "Feeling like a number one." As it lowers the tone of the post and she is far too young to know the significance of her gesture; I'm thankful that Abba didn't feel like a number two. She is a star and so is Talisker the horse.
Have fun.

TROUT CASTLE.

It's been a busy morning. The recent gale fetched a large branch from a Beech tree. We got that shifted as it was blocking the track through the wood. Then it was away we went to collect some railway sleepers a chap wanted shifting. Whilst on the latter job he mentioned that he had a pair of iron gates. They are beautiful, blacksmith made though I suspect not of wrought iron. They will have to be fetched with the Tele-Loader. I'll get some snaps when that job is completed. 
Tomorrow I am taking pictures of folk vaulting on horses. I have got my anti-perv certificate so should have no problems clicking away at the mummies. Somewhere I have a real police pervy certificate but I can't find it so I have to get a few mums to confirm that I don't dribble and tremble too much in their presence. Never having been a priest or a teacher helps in this regard. Heaven forbid If I had worked for Save the Children or Oxfam.
It was coolish so off I trundled looking for sleepy Dragonflies. A waste of time it was too cold and windy. I carried on with the other camera.

I have passed this flowering water weed a few times and it looked impressive. Not as stunning as those flowers in a pond painted by the Frenchman. I think he may have cut his ear off or perhaps that was a different French chap. It's not bad for Muchty or Monet.
It was getting worse, dull, cool and spitting rain. I was out so stayed out.

I called at Newburgh's new CO-OP and noticed the Tay was half full. Newburgh is on the left and Perth is miles away but in this general direction.

Balinbreich Castle. It was built in the 14th century by the Leslie Clan. It's showing it's age. I don't know what Balin means but I think breich is Gaelic for trout. 
Enjoy your weekend.

FreeCAD, SPROCKET and SPLINE.

I have had a good couple of days messing about in FreeCad but just to lighten things up I'll share a joke with you.

Sarah was in the fertilized egg business.  She had several young pullets and ten roosters to fertilize the eggs. She kept records and any rooster not performing went into the soup pot and was replaced. This took a lot of time, so she bought some tiny bells and attached them to her roosters. Each bell had a different tone, so she could tell from a distance which rooster was performing. Now, she could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report just by listening to the bells.

Sarah’s favorite rooster, old Butch, was a fine specimen but, this morning, she noticed old Butch’s bell hadn’t rung at all! When she went to investigate, she saw the other roosters were busy chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing, but the pullets hearing the roosters coming, would run for cover.

To Sarah’s amazement, old Butch had his bell in his beak, so it couldn’t ring.  He’d sneak up on a pullet, do his job, and walk on to the next one. Sarah was so proud of old Butch, she entered him in a show and he became an overnight sensation among the judges.

The result was the judges not only awarded old Butch the “No Bell Piece Prize”, they also awarded him the “Pulletsurprise” as well. Clearly old Butch was a politician in the making.. Who else but a politician could figure out how to win two of the most coveted awards on the planet by being the best at sneaking up on the unsuspecting populace and screwing them when they weren’t paying attention?

Vote carefully in the next election: You can’t always hear the bells.

Now onto the confusion and it came in bucketfuls.

 See, more like tanker loads.

The first two minutes have pretty colours, it goes downhill from there. The narration is a bit iffy but I did it at four thirty this morning on half a cup of coffee. I ought to have waited a while.
Have fun.
Panic over. I can't mirror a sketch but can mirror the pocket it produces so problem solved.

A COMMON SWAMP.

I had a run up to the wetlands this morning. It is an insect paradise, lots of spiders and Craneflies. I'll go again with a strobe ring and waterproofs to investigate further. I got what I went for but never found anything rare.

When the water table is high it stretches from the fence in the foreground to the far trees. It's teeming with stuff. It's also a little deceptive. Even the dogs make the ground bounce and I was expecting to beak through at any moment. I did think of wellies but thought if I sunk in I'd have more chance with trainers on.
The  insects.

This is another Small Pearl Bordered Fritillary. I think it looks better from the underside than from the top. I don't know what it's feeding on but it will be something common. Common Blue Orchid?

A pair of Large Red Damselflies. It is amazing how well camouflaged they are.

I was beginning to despair of getting one of these in focus as they are very fast and difficult to spot at rest. Moving I can feel the draught from their wings. I was kneeling to get a picture of the exuvia (arrowed) or whatever it's called when this one settled right in front of me. It's a Four Spot Chaser. Not beautiful but impressive.

 An Azure Damsel Fly. They are common.

To finish off a couple more Four Spot Chasers.
It was a good morning and it's very peaceful as it's miles from anywhere.
The pictures are cropped but there is room for enlargement aplenty should you so desire.
Have fun, I'm horseing tomorrow. I hope they are good.

INSECTING.

It's another day of sunshine, it's brilliant.
I started learning about watertube boilers and realised I'd have to calculate the volume of steam required. I have worked out the capacity of the double square piston Dake engine and timesed that by the revs per minute required to give me twenty miles per hour with a twenty inch back wheel. I then started with the steam drum on the boiler. Which is only half full of wet steam which requires superheating. How big a propane burner do I need, how big a drum? A boiler man would know but I don't know a boiler man or know where to find one.
 I gave up and went looking for some day flying moths I'd seen. Big yellowy tan things they were and dozens of them. There were even more of them today but the breeze was too powerful to have a chance of a snap.

The place I went is just under this array. I should have worn my tinfoil hat. I decided to go Dragonfly hunting. The dogs love the swamp.

It is a much reduced bog due to the unseasonable weather but the dogs still found plenty of muck to paddle in whilst they assisted in the quest for insects. Some of the black on Alf is shadow but most is shit.
I settled down to do a little energetic Dragonflying. It involves sitting in the sun and waiting for the little darlings to come within range. There were four giant ones but I suspect they were three males and one female, big as a small helicopter they were but they never came close enough to click.
Eventually my patience was rewarded.

A Fritilary, I'll leave it to the experts to decide which one. I took the 100mm macro and have never liked it much. I'll try and go early tomorrow if it's fine and go with the MP-E. The insects have to be half asleep so it will have to be at dawn or shortly after. I'll pack the 400mm and an extension tube just to be on the safe side.
I never did capture a Dragonfly but saw plenty, blue ones, brown ones and red ones. All I got was this obliging Damselfly.

It's a Large Red. I was very grateful to it for posing, it's tiring sitting in the sun.
That's all, have fun.

SPRING THE FREECAD WAY.

I have had a good couple of days. FreeCAD gets a little more intuitive, I still get bamboozled regularly but now not all the time.
After two years of deafness I am now cured.  have tried many varieties of ear drops and was beginning to think sulphuric acid would kill or cure. I purchased some bicarbonate of soda drops which fizz away but didn't help my hearing much and then I got a posh ear irrigation thingy from Amazon. It washed all the crud out and now my hearing is perfect......Pardon?
Here is today's video.

I am enjoying learning this stuff. The sound is also more in sync. The solution was to trim the beginning, the bit where I'm clearing my throat. Then set it on frame one go to the last frame and just stretch the sound to fit the video. Obvious really, it just takes me a while to understand solutions.
Have fun.
ADDENDUM.

Cracked it and had another walk up East Lomond.

A bit clearer today. Lot's of Skylarks singing.........Wonderful.

A CHANGE.

This afternoon we had a run up East Lomond to see the promised thunder storms. They happened somewhere else but I have a murky picture of the coalfields of Fife and the Firth of Forth on the horizon.

I said it was murky the little bump is called something Law. The Forth is just visible to the right of it. If we get a clear morning I will try and pop up for the dawn. I'll take my breakfast with me.....It's called one's piece here.
Back to FreeCAD. The Dake engine looks a good idea but it is taking some research to work out how to construct.
Have fun.