OLD AND NEW (21/03/12).

It’s been a dry but dull couple of days. Not as dull as the image above but not really conducive to photography.

I am leaving Ravenglass tomorrow so there follows a quick round up of bits of the place.

    One span of the railway viaduct.

   The seafront.

This is The Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway. Known colloquially as L’all Ratty. Originally built to three foot gauge for mineral hauling. The track was re-laid to fifteen inches and is now used for passenger carrying. This locomotive is the River Irt and was built in 1894.

Northern Rock built here in Ravenglass in1976. She has two sisters which were built and sold to a theme park in Japan.

These images are HDR with the steam reintroduced as a single exposure as are the people.

Today is the first day of spring so lets hope for some warm sunny weather in the north and continuous gentle rain in the south. It will do little good as the idiots in charge of planning keep building and concreting over the countryside.  Were there any ponds left there would be more intelligent life lying under stones at the bottom of them. The rain just runs off into drains thence to rivers and out to the sea, fat lot of good it does there.

The good news today is that the Badger cull in Wales has been rejected in favour of a vaccination programme.

All the best and have fun.

ALL THINKS BRIGHT AND…… (19/03/12)

I’ve been away and now I’m back. I’ve not had too many laughs of late but was amused by something I read last week. Our leader Dithery Dave went to America. The Americans treated him superbly. Not well enough for me as he has come home and dreamed up another barmy scheme……this week it’s privatisation of the roads……next week who knows? I’m hoping it will be a scheme to get water to the south of the country, failing that a trip to the Falkland Islands.

Back to his trip to the States, Obama gave him an aeroplane flight, bought him a hotdog and before that provided a ‘meeter and greeter’ with the wonderful monica of Randy Baumgardner…..Unfortunately the first ‘A’ in his surname is not a typographical error.

Last week I was in Coniston.

Coniston Water. This is as good as the weather got.

I’ve moved to Ravenglass.

Ravenglass.

  The railway viaduct

The River Esk.

Shogun.

All bright as you can see.

Enjoy your week.

TIME OUT. (07/03/12)

Posting is a problem here. I’m still at the Church House Inn, more precisely I’m parked at the rear of it. I am enjoying this place but it will take at least three goes to post this blog and possibly six, c’est la vie.

I was out before dawn yesterday and had a wonderful frosty walk. There was an inversion over Coniston Water unfortunately all images of it are contre jour. I pointed the camera at this and that and had a grand time.

Three images taken as the sun climbed and cast it’s light over Torver.

The cairn on The Banks. Morcambe Bay is on the horizon. This is as high as I got.

I include this as I noticed that the clouds reflected the form of the small Hawthorn. How it survives is beyond me. The prevailing westerly winds deform most trees here.

I’ll do my best to get on the internet and catch up but commenting is a real pain.

Have fun.

WELL I’LL BE BLOWED. (03/03/12)

Just a quick post today. A grim morning but it is a sunny cool afternoon. No photographs and I’m doing a ‘SEEING TO PICTURES’ on HDR. This may be a few days before it gets posted. They take ages to do, it should keep me out of mischief.

Back to Möbius Bands and another unexpected result.

      If you cut a Möbius Band starting a third of the way from one edge. this is what you will get. Two linked bands, the smaller is a Möbius Band and the longer a band has a 360° twist. I suspect that I am just easily amused. Pay no heed. I’ll start taking the tablets again soon.

Why did the chicken cross the Möbius Band?……..to get to the other…….Umm!

Many thanks once again to Professor Ian Stewart.

That is it for strange and unusual mathematical tricks……..for a month or so. I’ll get back to screen grabbing and the Seeing To Pictures. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

MÖBIUS (02/03/12)

I had an interesting day yesterday. Out at the crack of dawn for a wander. I left the van with the stars twinkling but before I'd gone a mile the cloud came in and the mist came down, perhaps I should have said the clouds came down.

I moved a few miles up the road to the Church House Inn, unsurprisingly the weather didn’t improve, it changed , it got cooler. Not to worry, I got a book for my birthday, Professor Stuart’s Hoard of Mathematical Treasures. Now I had a choice to make, go to the pub and have a wet birthday or read Ian Stewart. I took the dogs for a wet walk whilst I pondered and debated the alternatives.

We returned wet and I settled for a day of fascinating little mathematical posers. I had to skim the book as some of the problems are far from small. As regular readers will know on wet days I tend towards colouring in as a means of passing time. You’ll be pleased to note that I’ve grown up by a year and have graduated to cutting out. Here is what I made. On first acquaintance it doesn't look very special, it looks better than it would have in white card! but it is only a bit of blue paper.

It provided me with several hours fun. It is a cylindrical band with a 180° twist and was invented by a clever chap called Augustus Möbius. This is where you are probably best clicking out. The Möbius Band has a surprising property. It only has one side. It has neither inside or outside unlike a cylindrical band. It does have three sides if one considers edges as sides which strictly speaking they are……I’m not being strictly here.

On with the cutting out. When one cuts it down the middle it obviously becomes twice as long but also becomes two sided with a 360° twist.

A mathematician confided

That a Möbius strip is onesided.

You’ll get quite a laugh

When you cut it in half,

For it stays in one piece when divided.

  Back to the scissors and bisecting it again we now get two interlocking rings with a 360° twist. Amazing what one can achieve with a strip of paper.

This is a simple introduction to Topography. It kept me amused on a damp birthday and also kept me away from the falling down water.

I will now get back to the book. Have a great weekend.

BIRTHDAY EVE. (29/02/12)

Tomorrow I will be sixty two years old. Of course by the time you read this I sincerely hope I will be enjoying my sixty third year. I always date the titles of my posts. This has two purposes, the first enables both me and you  to keep track when I’m away from the internet. The second, a bonus really, is that every title is unique.

I moved from the east to the west yesterday, a horrible foggy day accompanied me from the Pennine watershed. Today is dull and grey but I had a wander around Blawith Fell. No good views but a few big  scenes…… on to the photographs.

    Blawith Fell. This will enlarge with a click and is the view from the van. It is a large stitched panorama 18k pixels wide on it’s long side. Don’t panic I compressed it.

There are lots of these little meres or ponds. They are wet, full of weed and a few yards across. There is little more to say about them.

The bottom of Coniston Water and the beginning of the wonderfully named River Crake. this is a hop skip and a jump from the van.

I crossed the road and climbed the hill onto the fell.

Coniston Water. If you look carefully you will see the camper just above my signature. The Old Man of Coniston is in the cloud on the far left. The green bit is Torver Back Common.

Coniston Water. The tiny mere in the first image is just above the road to the right of the image.

Bethecar Moor with Brock Barrow on the right and Coniston Water.

I had a good walk to celebrate the last day of my sixty second year. A bit murky was the weather but it did allow me free rein to play with the images.

I’ll get this posted as soon as possible, in the meantime enjoy yourselves.