Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome!
Fremde, étranger, stranger.
Gluklich zu sehen, je suis enchanté,
Happy to see you, bleibe, reste, stay.
Fáilte, Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome!
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Global Golden Hour: Sunsets around the world
The Photos app that comes bundled with MacOs periodically produces slideshows. Normally, these are themed around places or dates. One caught my eye though – it was called ‘Golden Hour’ and included photos I’d taken from many places. Usually, photos taken around sunset are better because the quality of light is better.
Sunsets from
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to export it so it could be edited. I had to re-create it manually using iMovie. This is the result I call it Global Golden Hour: Sunsets around the world.
The soundtrack is “In Memory of a Free Festival Part 2” by David Bowie which I thought was appropriate. All rights remain with the original artist blah, blah blah, no profit is being made, blah blah, fair use, blah blah.
Click here to open in a new browser window
New Header Picture: Pingdingshan
平顶山, 锡林郭勒盟，内蒙古
Pingdingshan in Xilingol League in Inner Mongolia has a very distinctive landscape. There are many extinct volcanoes from a time when this was the sea floor. This photo was taken in early October and the lush green grasslands had already faded to their winter brown. Even so you can see a flock of sheep in the foreground.
The interactive map is a new feature which I’ll maybe use again now that I know how to do it.
For tourist info click here
New Header Picture – The Cliffs of Moher
The Cliffs of Moher in County Clare attrac up to 1.5 million tourists a year.
Rising to a height of 214 meters they stretch for 14 kilometres. They are made up of sandstone and shale formin distinctive layers as can be seen in the photo.
The award winning visitor centre is dug into the hillside so it doesn’t detract from the scenery.
Alternatively take a virtual tour:
This photograph was taken in July 2019.
New category: Updated 2021
Just to prove that I haven’t been idle, here are a random selection of some of the pages from 2004 and January 2005 that I’ve updated, fixed and added to.
Enjoy!
You can find them using the Updated 2021 category.
Progress being made updating this site
Very slowly updating the site.
Can we fix it?
Er, probably not but I’ll give it a go.
It’s going to take time, there are over 1,300 posts going back 17 years.
Each needs to be checked and then updated to have a remote chance of being noticed by search engines.
Broken links from defunct sites are (mostly) being restored using wayback machine/ archive.org links.
Update Progress:
Church of St Mary the Virgin, Adderbury
| Church Going by Philip Larkin (1922-1985) Once I am sure there’s nothing going on I step inside, letting the door thud shut. Another church: matting, seats, and stone, And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff Up at the holy end; the small neat organ; And a tense, musty, unignorable silence, Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off My cycle-clips in awkward reverence, Move forward, run my hand around the font. From where I stand, the roof looks almost new- Cleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don’t. Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce “Here endeth” much more loudly than I’d meant. The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence, Reflect the place was not worth stopping for. Yet stop I did: in fact I often do, And always end much at a loss like this, Wondering what to look for; wondering, too, When churches fall completely out of use What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep A few cathedrals chronically on show, Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases, And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep. Shall we avoid them as unlucky places? Or, after dark, will dubious women come To make their children touch a particular stone; Pick simples for a cancer; or on some Advised night see walking a dead one? Power of some sort or other will go on In games, in riddles, seemingly at random; But superstition, like belief, must die, And what remains when disbelief has gone? Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky, A shape less recognizable each week, A purpose more obscure. I wonder who Will be the last, the very last, to seek This place for what it was; one of the crew That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were? Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique, Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh? Or will he be my representative, Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt So long and equably what since is found Only in separation – marriage, and birth, And death, and thoughts of these – for whom was built This special shell? For, though I’ve no idea What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth, It pleases me to stand in silence here; A serious house on serious earth it is, In whose blent air all our compulsions meet, Are recognised, and robed as destinies. And that much never can be obsolete, Since someone will forever be surprising A hunger in himself to be more serious, And gravitating with it to this ground, Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in, If only that so many dead lie round. |
A very nice house in the country…
A very nice house in the country… it’s a long way away, but it’s mine.
Three Track Play list #1
Pendulum
About:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendulum_(Australian_band)
Official website:
山海关 – The Shanhai Pass
Nestled between the Yan mountain and the coast near Qinhuangdao, Hebei Province.
北京语言大学
Beijing Language and Culture University is one of the oldest Universities to offer instruction in English. Nowadays it caters to many foreign students wishing to learn Mandarin.
James Douglas Morrison (December 8, 1943 – July 3, 1971)
“I am Dionysus, the child of Zeus, and I have come to this land of the Thebans, where Cadmus’ daughter Semele once bore me, delivered by a lightning-blast. Having assumed a mortal form in place of my divine one,”
The Bacchae by Euripides
“Art and religion, carnivals and saturnalia, dancing and listening to oratory – all these have served, in H. G. Wells’s phrase, as Doors in the Wall.”
― Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception
平原县, 德州市, 山东省
Image
A bit different from but similar to Banbury Cross
Ride a cock horse
Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
To see a fine lady upon a white horse;
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
And she shall have music wherever she goes.
The origins of this rhyme are uncertain.
Banbury used to have several crosses: the High Cross, the Bread Cross and the White Cross until they offended puritan sensibilities and were destroyed around 1600.
The present cross dates from 1859 to commemorate the wedding of Victoria, the Princess Royal , to Frederick of Prussia whose coat of arms were blocked out during World War 1.
So removing and defacing statues by those gifted with moral certainty is nothing new.
人, 丛, 众
人 rén – person
丛 cóng – a collection or group
众 – zhòng – a multitude or crowd
Chinese covid poster 2020/21 Beijing
Iggy Pop – Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieve it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_not_go_gentle_into_that_good_night
洪家楼耶稣圣心主教座堂,济南市
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Heart_Cathedral_(Jinan)
Il faut cultiver notre jardin – Voltaire
A bird in the hand #2
Once in a lifetime
and you might ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here…?”
bicycle on a hillside desolate
North of the (Great) wall…
Great things happen when men and mountains meet
Chop it down with the edge of my hand
Well, I pick up all the pieces and make an island
Might even raise just a little sand
A bird in the hand…
Find Starlink
I’ve got a bike….*
The Madcap laughed…
Cow-a-bunga #2
Raising beef cattle is very common hereabouts
This town…. #2
Samuel Beckett Motivational Cat Posters
The place on the Venn diagram where “I can has Cheeseburger’ intersects the works of Samuel Beckett.
Cuculus canorus
‘Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring!”
Vladimir Yu. Arkhipov, Arkhivov / CC BY-SA
The Cuckoo comes in April
She sings her song in May
In the middle of June
She changes her tune
In July she flies away.
This town, is coming like a ghost town
‘All the shops have been closed down’
“Bands don’t play no more, too much virus on the dance floor.’
‘You’ll never plough a field by turning it over in your mind.’ #2
Planted:
Castanea sativa (Sweet chestnut)
Apple trees:
Soft Fruit:
Constructed:
- Windbreak netting
- Composting bin
Numbeo
Numbeo is a collaborative online database which enables users to share and compare information about the cost of living between countries and cities.
It also includes data on:
- property prices,
- crime,
- health care,
- pollution,
- traffic,
- travel,
- quality of life
Turf Cutting, Co. Roscommon
Cutting turf to heat homes has been a tradition for millennia, but the EU has ruled that it must stop.
“I still believe that in this world, we’ve got to find the time… for the life of Riley.”
‘The life of Riley’ is an easy and pleasant life.
Low Tech Magazine
What is Low-tech Magazine?
Founded in November 2007, Low-tech Magazine questions the blind belief in technological progress, and talks about the potential of past and often forgotten knowledge and technologies when it comes to designing a sustainable society. Interesting possibilities arise when you combine old technology with new knowledge and new materials, or when you apply old concepts and traditional knowledge to modern technology.
My personal favourite articles:
Research shows that it’s possible to grow warmth-loving crops all year round with solar energy alone, even if it’s freezing outside. The solar greenhouse is especially successful in China, where many thousands of these structures have been built during the last decades.
How to Downsize a Transport Network: The Chinese Wheelbarrow
For being such a seemingly ordinary vehicle, the wheelbarrow has a surprisingly exciting history.
Timperley early
Make a raised bed
Prepare the soil
Rhubarb prefers a sunny site and should not be harvested in the first year. Three crowns should be enough to feed a family. Once mature the crowns can be split to provide new healthy plants.
‘Timperley Early’ is one of the earliest varieties to mature, producing pink-red stems streaked with green. It’s ideal for forcing to provide tender pink stems as early as February. If left to grow naturally, ‘Temperley Early’ is ready to harvest from March.
Riparian ownership: Responsibilities of a riparian owner
What are my responsibilities as a riparian owner?
- To pass on water flow without obstruction, pollution or diversion that would affect the rights of others.
- To maintain the banks and bed of the watercourse (including any trees and shrubs growing on the banks) and any flood defences that exist on it.
- To maintain any approved structures on their stretch of the watercourse and keep them free of debris. These may include trash screens, culverts, weirs and mill gates.
- Riparian Owners must not build new structures (for example a culvert, bridge or board walk) that encroach upon the watercourse, or alter the flow of water or prevent the free passage of fish
How do I maintain the watercourse?
a) Keep growth of vegetation (trees, weeds, reeds, grass etc) under control
b) Keep watercourses free of debris (e.g. litter, grass cuttings, and fallen trees and branches)
c) Remove excess silt
Here are some good URLs:
http://www.theriverstrust.org/media/2017/04/Pinpoint-21.0-Soil-Management-Managing-ditches.pdf
Futility Closet – a collection of entertaining curiosities
About Futility Closet
Futility Closet is a collection of entertaining curiosities in history, literature, language, art, philosophy, and mathematics, designed to help you waste time as enjoyably as possible.
The database contains more than 10,000 items, and more are added each day.
You can read Futility Closet on the web, subscribe by RSS, or sign up to receive a daily email.
CATEGORIES:
Art
Crime
Death
Entertainment
History
Hoaxes
Humor
Language
Literature
Oddities
Podcast
Poems
Puzzles
Quotations
Religion
Science & Math
Society
Technology
Trivia