We went up into Lincoln, to the cathedral, to pay our respects and see the flowers and notes left by people for our late Queen.
a life well lived and appreciated
My Queen
For many of us, in the UK, Canada and Australia, and the other Commonwealth realms she headed. She was the only head of state we have every known.
She was not known as a photographer, but often carried her little Leica with her on state visits. Documenting the many people and places she visited.
Whether you are a republican or monarchist we can say she dedicated her life to service.
Where I live she visited in 1978 where we got a glimpse of the queen. Years later I had the privilege of photographing her son the then Prince of Wales. There was a bunch of us photographers trying to get the image we wanted, and he knew exactly what to do so we got the photographs we wanted. Those slides are currently in the archive of our local paper.
The Queen will be missed, she served her people well and now that responsibility falls on her son.
Rest our Queen, and long live the King
Shooting Events
Two years into COVID-19 and events are starting to open up.
Last month we had the local duck race at one of the local Lincolnshire villages.
I could not resist making one of the pictures I took there, photo of the month.
We still need to be careful, in doors I am often still masking up, but its nice to see local events like this happening again.
Winter Walks
For the later part of this winter, between the recent snows we now are seeing the odd warm sunny day.
Being able to walk in the sunshine and take a few pictures has been extremely pleasant.
So far as we are still in lockdown, so the walks have been just myself and Ted the Greyhound. Hopefully when lock down ends the Lincolnshire Greyhound Walks group will be able to restart and we can have some nice walks through the countryside of Lincolnshire.
a Bikers – Night before Christmas
On the Biking Blog “Ride it like you stole it!” which is sadly no more by Dave Dragon, there was a poem “The Biker’s Night Before Christmas”.
I have posted this before but as it is Christmas Eve I thought I was worth posting again.
Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the pad,
There was nada happenin’, now that’s pretty bad.
The woodstove was hung up in that stocking routine,
In hopes that the Fat Boy would soon make the scene.
With our stomachs packed with tacos and beer,
My girl and I crashed on the couch for some cheer.
When out in the yard there arose such a racket,
I ran for the door and pulled on my jacket.
I saw a large bro’ on a ’56 Pan
Wearin’ black leathers, a cap, and boots (cool biker, man).
He hauled up the bars on that bikeful of sacks,
And that Pan hit the roof like it was running on tracks.
I couldn’t help gawking, the old guy had class.
But I had to go in — I was freezing my ass.
Down through the stovepipe he fell with a crash,
And out of the stove he came dragging his stash.
With a smile and some glee he passed out the loot,
A new jacket for her and some parts for my scoot.
He patted her fanny and shook my right hand,
Spun on his heel and up the stovepipe he ran.
From up on the roof came a great deal of thunder,
As that massive V-twin ripped the silence asunder.
With beard in the wind, he roared off in the night,
Shouting, “Have a cool Yule, and to all a good ride!”
Mum Brown is back with us from Hospital
Mum brown was released out of hospital today, after three weeks in hospital. She is now resting with us and taking a day at a time.
Mum and Hospital
Mum was admitted to hospital last night. She fainted while staying at ours and has been hospitalised for tests.
Cataract number one – Mum News
Quick bit of family news. Mum Brown was in hospital today to have one of her cataracts removed.
Once the other one is done and she gets her new glasses she should be able to see much better.
Ageing Tech – when to upgrade
Its likely that Apple will announce their new iPhone this week, so it made me think; when should we upgrade our ageing tech.
I am now typing this on one of Apple’s latest 16 inch laptops, close to top of the range, I only upgraded once Adobe no longer supported the spec. So far in my computer upgrades, its always been newer software that’s driven me to upgrade. My last laptop lasted twelve years so I saw a major improvement in performance and usability.
I tend to upgrade my phones every three to four years. Currently in our family, my iPhone 6 Plus is still getting heavy use by my wife and it is six years old and working fine. My current phone is the iPhone X.
I am thinking of getting a new phone this year but its likely to be one for Caroline, she likes the larger screen so mine will have to last that little bit longer.
Upgrading cameras I tend to skip about to generations. I switched to digital with the Nikon D200. That was replaced by the D300 and then the D300s. I upgraded when the D800 appeared. So jumped from 10 megapixel cropped format to 36 megapixel full frame. We have now had the D810 and then the big jump to the D850, a camera that really tempted me, it was a significant improvement over the D800. I really hope the D850 replacement is another big jump. Either way I am really going to notice the improvement.
Web Services – a Rant
This is less about web services and more about functionality that does not need web services but uses it anyway.
I have a large amount of video media, photographic tutorials, the family favourite movies and TV shows etc.
They are sat on an external hard drive and a copy in Dropbox. We use the Plex app to service these to the TV, and the AppleTV app to our computers and tablet devices; much easier then finding physical media.
It used to be simple, the app on the TV talked to my main computer that had the Plex server app on it and access to the media. Simple and it worked.
But like many companies they have now web offerings and offer other functionality. So now the TV app has to authenticate to their servers out there on the web before it will connect to my server and play my media.
This means now that if Plex have a service outage or my internet is not working I cannot play my media on my TV, very frustrating. Over the last few days we have seen major outages with AWS, Azure etc, causing many online services to fail. Not sure where Plex host there servers but they were out too. So no watching Plex for me last night.
Yes I get it that many people like the extra functionality but the basic stuff, streaming media from a drive in my home to my TV in my home all on the same network should still work!
At least I have coffee.