Photos of Phones and Phonographs (occasionally)
I’ve been shooting more than I’ve been posting. Selected highlights include:
Avoncroft Museum of Buildings
Lunchtime Photowalk
Amberly Working Museum
And with that I’m fairly up to date. I think. Right, that’s the photography catchup post ticked off the list. What other short term projects can I cross off the list to cut down the far-too-large-a-number of things I’m trying to do at once these days?
This weeks photo-challenge is “5 minute photoshoot” I had a go at it earlier in the week, and I wasn’t impressed with the results so I had another crack at it today. Twice actually – once at Sunrise, and then again this afternoon at Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings (more about that to come later)
I think I prefer the photos I took at sunrise, but I definitely don’t think getting up at 6:30am, driving up the road to some woods, then running up the hill to try and find a location in the woods where you could see the sunrise is something I’ll be doing too often.
Another lunchtime photowalk, this time we found a dog sat waiting on the street while his owner was inside a shop.
In cat news, Penny is now home and seems to be eating twice as much as usual to make up for all that time she missed not eating. The FIV tests were negative (thankfully!) and we’re not really any closer to knowing why she’d stopped eating. I’m glad she’s started again though. It’s nice to have her around the house again.
I only managed an afternoon at the railway today because I spent all morning waiting for the Vet to phone me to say if Penny was ready to come home yet. I got the call at 1pm and between the two of us, the vet and I decided it was best if she stayed in for another 24 hours. It sounds like she’s picked up some sort of virus (they’re testing for FIV just in case. I *really* hope it’s not that, or she’ll be sick on and off for years.)
We had quite a productive day of it really. I tidied up a lot of the asterisk config in the morning, and we replaced a phone on one of the level crossings in the afternoon (That’s what Ian is doing in the picture above) That’s finally ticked a job off the list which we started back in November (I think) – we also made a successful end to end test of a signal post phone, so we’re confident that it’s OK to go into service.
Tonight, I’m supposed to be going to a B3ta bash. I’m not sure quite how long I’m going to stay for, but it’ll be better to be out of the house than wandering around it missing the cat.
There are bloody hundreds of these buggers in my garden, swarming all over everything.
I was a bit bored waiting for a train yesterday, so I took a photo of one of the raised beds on the station which are built out of old sleepers.
In other news, my cat seems to be ill. She’s stopped eating and just generally isn’t her self. So todays adventure is going to be a trip to her friend the vet!
Love
The
Blossom
Jonathan and I went for another lunchtime photowalk today. Glorious sunshine (although it wasn’t quite as warm as it looked when we left the office – I wish I’d taken a jumper) I’m really getting into this no-chimping idea. I’m aiming for “See the shot, frame the shot, take the shot. Move on, knowing you’ve got the shot.” and a lot of the time I’m getting close. I think it’s breeding a more thoughtful approach in me, but also a certain amount of confidence.
I shot just 15 frames at lunchtime today, and 4 of those made it through to post processing, with 3 being good enough to make it into this post. By my count, that’s a 20% hit rate, and in the past I’ve counted 8-10% as a good days shoot so I’m headed in the right direction. I’d be *stoked* to hit 50% given how picky I can get!
I’ve had a day of forgetting names and words for things. Within 10 minutes of being in the office, I’d forgotten the names of 3 people I’ve worked with on and off for over 5 years, and since then I’ve forgotten several other words. My current mental block is over the name of this tree. My parents have one in their front garden, and I *know* I know what it’s called really.
Please put me out of my misery in the comments!
It’s a Sunday, so I got up early went for a run, took in a car boot sale and a flea market then went to the zoo. I was done by lunchtime. Which sort of left a hole in my afternoon, which I filled by clearing a few faults on my phone exchange. I’ve now got two fully working final selectors, with tie lines to connect them to my asterisk box.
Talking of which, I’ve managed to get an old “BT Voyager 220V” adsl modem working as an ATA. I bought it last week at a car boot sale for a quid. As I’m just using it as an ATA and don’t need the ADSL functionality of it, I didn’t need to reflash it with a hacked firmware or anything. All the required configuration can be done with a combination of its web interface and an ssh or telnet connection.
It’s proving reasonably stable (much more so than the Zoom ATA I paid over £30 for!) and I’ll be writing up how to configure it in the near future. For now, it’s connected to the Asterisk box at the Dean Forrest Railway so I can make calls through their UAX13.
I fancied something new for dinner tonight, so made myself some pasta with purple sprouting broccoli, peppers and blue cheese. It was rather tasty. I might have to cook that one a bit more often.
3oz Butter
2oz Peanut butter
2oz Caster sugar
2oz Soft light brown sugar
4oz Plain flour
Pinch of salt
Blend the butter, peanut butter and sugar together until creamy. Stir in the flour/salt. Form into walnut sized balls, place on a baking tray and slightly flatten with a fork. Bake for 12-15 minutes at 180C/Gas Mark 4 until lightly browned.
Leave on the tray to cool for 5 minutes to set, then transfer to a wire cooling rack. Try very hard not to eat them all in one go!