Floating Harbour
At least, I think that’s what this stretch of the River Avon is called. I went out for drinks after work last night, I wasn’t really in the mood for it (haven’t been capable of socialising all week really) but I’m glad I went. I got a bit more sociable as the evening went on – so thanks everyone who dragged me out, it was the distraction I didn’t know I needed.
The photo above is a bit blury, but it was shot hand held as a 0.5 second exposure (I’m not that happy with the contrasty look it’s got either – but it’s the best I can get out of the image in post).
I’ve never wandered around this bit of Bristol with a camera before. I think I’m going to go back some time over the next month to try to bag a sunset (although I’ll take a tripod next time)
Edit: I took this as well, and it sort of works.
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Scorchio!
That’s one flaming hot chili! Ahem. Sorry.
Anyway, it’s my entry to the Photo Challenge which this week has a theme of “fire”.
For those interested in the lighting (both of you!), there’s a Vivitar 283 with a full CTO gel on it at about 1/4 power, gridded with a a grid made from a cereal packet and some black straws, camera right just glancing off the front of the chili to light the fork and the front right edge.
The rest of the light is coming from a piece of rolled up kitchen paper soaked in lighter fuel and pinned to the back of the chilli.
My house now smells of lighter fuel and burnt paper.
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Omnomnomnomnom!
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‘ave a Bluenana!
I had a distinct lack of ideas for this weeks photo challenge. So I decided to take a photo of something yellow, and invert the colourspace to get blue. To get the blue bananas I copied the base layer, inverted it, then set the blend mode on the new layer to “colour” (which preserves the white highlight and black shadows)
Apart from a little sharpening after the resize, that’s pretty much all I did. I quite like the result. Even if it is a little more “gimmicky” than my usual fayre.
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Etelphone N1900 (was Tele 706 MK1)
Isn’t it a lovely colour! It could do with a bit of a clean, and the mic side of the voice bridge doesn’t seem to work properly (despite me swapping out the mic element) – and various bits of it aren’t original – but it’s interesting for other reasons.
Feel free to wander off if you’re not as into the phone thing as me ;-)
I bought this GPO 706 Phone off ebay, as I’ve been looking for a 706 MK1 for a while and I noticed that this 706 had a metal dial (which appears to be a “Dial No 12“) so stood a good chance of being a MK1, possibly an early one at that.
Taking the lid off shows that it is a MK1 (the MK2 had a PCB) but there’s something odd about it.
See that slot in the middle? It should have a circuit board mounted vertically in it. Not only is the rectifier board missing, so are the middle three contacts. A close look at the socket seems to suggest they were never present. The way the large resistors are mounted seems to reflect that. It doesn’t really match the N806 diagram, although I did notice one thing that’s interesting.
The N Diagram, Page 1, Note F says:
Early issues have dial brown connector connected to gravity switch spring 4 instead of T3
Which this phone does have. It matches Note F and has a Dial No 21 – so I think it probably is an early MK1.
Another clue that it’s probably an early model is that it’s got a paster diagram inside the case. Now, I’m only guessing here because I can’t find any references that would say yes/no on the paster diagram thing but none of the other 706s I’ve seen had them, but they were all MK2s.
The paster diagram is labeled N98293, but I can’t find any reference to an N diagram of that number online, but I assume the paster diagrams are numbered differently. The paster does match the wiring of the phone more closely than N806 does.
So, this is proving to be quite an interesting ebay purchase!
I’m not 100% convinced that the brown handset and the dial surround are original (I think the green 706s had dark green handsets) and it’s possible that this phone is early enough to have originally had a braided handset cord. I suppose that the paster diagram is probably the real key to working out how this phone was originally configured.
Update – 2010-02-12:
I found a number stamped on the baseplate, it says N1900E69 which means that the phone was built by Ericsson, and is an N1900, or “Etelphone” although some of the details still don’t match. So there’s a bit more digging to be done yet!
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Bluebell Railway
J and I went to the Bluebell Railway at the weekend, which is probably one of the most complete steam railway preservation projects I’ve ever visited.
The stations are very nicely kitted out with period fittings, but I think I probably got most excited by the whole big-engineering-grease-and-precision side of things. *
J likes his trains, so he’s signed up as one of their volunteers. I can see that I’ll be spending one or two more weekends visiting the railway. Apparently they’ve got a couple of electromechanical phone exchanges, so perhaps I’ll sign up as well. Just to keep me occupied while J plays with the steam trains you understand.
Full album is available here.
* OK, second most excited, after I was outraged by their selection of bakelite phones with curly PVC handset cords.
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Glass
This weeks photo-challenge was on the theme of Glass. I shot a few different images for it, but I think this one is the best of the bunch. It’s the handle of a cut glass jug that I keep on my sideboard. As well as the colours and curves, I like that you can just about make out the horizontal imperfections in the glass. In a form that appears smooth and uniform, I think the little imperfections add interest.
The rest of the photos can be found in this album here.
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