Newhaven this morning, shortly after I disembarked from the Dieppe ferry.
Safe harbour
December 22nd, 2018
What a difference a day makes…
December 20th, 2018
The sky over my campsite yesterday morning; I hadn’t seen any blue up there for quite some time!
And the sky over the same campsite as I returned to it in the evening:
My pitch was just under the darkest bit at the bottom right.
It soon settled down to the standard grey rainclouds again afterwards, though!
Ode to a blustery winter campsite in the Dordogne
December 18th, 2018
It’s good to know,
As the north winds blow,
That there’s plenty of eau,
And the eau is chaud.
Disdain
December 17th, 2018
Tree-couleurs
December 16th, 2018
I’m in the valley of the Vézère river, just north of the Dordogne. It’s been raining almost all day, but the moisture really adds vibrance to the splendid colours of the trees.
Fangorn
We met some local residents…
No, really! I’m very ferocious too!
Then we had a final brief pause in the rain, just in time for a dog-walk just before sunset.
Tout va bien ici. Pour moi, at least
December 15th, 2018
Tilly (my spaniel) and I are in a very nice restaurant not far from Perigueux. We’re the only ones here, having walked over from the campervan, which is parked in an almost-empty campsite. Over the last couple of days, we’ve visited many very pretty villages, where almost everything has been closed. Not a petit-déjeuner or a café-au-lait to be had anywhere.
Now, I presumed this was just because of the time of year and because temperatures have been below zero for several days, only creeping above it today in order to allow for a steady rain.
But the proprietor doesn’t blame the climate, he blames the ‘gilets jaunes’. Normally, he says, there are visitors, including English and Germans, throughout the year. But they’ve seen the news, and they’re staying away. “Bordeaux aujourd’hui…”, he says, “c’est une catastrophe”.
I’ve seen a few protestors. At Dieppe on Weds, they were stopping all the lorries at several roundabouts, but I was always waved through with a cheery smile. Near Limoges today, they seemed just to be acting as traffic policemen, directing the traffic to make their presence felt. The only things I’ve seen burning were needed to warm frozen fingers.
Away from the big cities, I’ve seen nothing except the most mild expressions of discontent, like this decoration of a hydrant in a small farming village:
Roughly translated, it says, “Father Christmas’s sleigh runs on diesel.. a too-expensive fuel. No presents this year.”
So, no, this probably wouldn’t have been the week to visit any big cities. But in the countryside, visitors are currently a scarce resource and so are particularly welcome. If there’s anybody still around to do the welcoming, that is..
A quarter-century of coffee pots…
December 1st, 2018
The Dutch RTL News programme did a short piece last week on the fact that the webcam was now about 25 years old.
They interviewed me for just a few minutes, after, ironically, having to spend about 45 mins getting their Skype working.
If, like me, you don’t speak any Dutch, you can hear me at about 0:16 and 1:24, and, in between the two, see some pictures of a much younger me!
Linced-In
November 25th, 2018
We went to Lincolnshire last weekend. When I told some friends of our plans beforehand, they said, “Lincolnshire? Really? For a whole weekend?”, or words to that effect. And I must confess to being somewhat apprehensive myself, though we had visited Lincoln itself before and knew that to be a lovely city.
But there’s lots of good stuff in Lincolnshire.
They have some very impressive churches, for one thing. In addition to Lincoln Cathedral (above), we visited Boston, from where some people once set sail to found a colony in Massachusetts.
Boston’s name comes from “Botolph’s Town”, and the church of St Botolph is almost a cathedral itself.
It’s been informally known as the ‘Boston Stump‘ for the last, oh, seven hundred years or so, a name which hardly conveys the fact that it’s really awfully tall. We can assert this, having climbed it, via a very narrow staircase. They let us in at the bottom and shut the door behind us; the only way was up…
Emerging at the top, you can walk around the rather narrow walkway with a lowish handrail, before descending via a second similar staircase.
A fun and very memorable experience, but definitely not recommended for those suffering from corpulence, claustrophobia, or vertigo!
Lincoln itself is built on quite a steep hill, but much of the county is very flat, so Lincolnshire’s drainage ditches are almost as impressive as its churches.
There are lots of marvellous windmills, used both for pumping and for corn-grinding.
And here’s another cool thing you don’t find in every county: a bubble-car museum!
We visited a lovely beach at Huttoft, as the sun was setting.
Tilly did feel, however, that they had rather too many seagulls, so did her best to rectify that problem.
We stayed at “Long Acres“, a delightful and well-run campsite which suffers only from not being very close to most of the major attractions. As a result it’s very peaceful, especially at this time of the year. And if you enjoy looking at bubble-cars as much as we do, they at least are not far away!
I haven’t talked about the quaint teashop we visited in the pretty village of Tealby, or The Usher Gallery in Lincoln, or the Sibsey Trader Windill… But all in all, we had a very enjoyable weekend in our trusty campervan.
A well-rounded view
November 23rd, 2018
Over lunch yesterday, my friend Richard was expanding my limited knowledge of spherical cameras: cameras which can take an all-round image – or even video – of the world; an immersive view which you can then explore in a VR headset, or by holding up your phone and moving it around, or (suboptimally) in a regular browser window by dragging around with your mouse, StreetView-style.
Richard’s done a nice blog post about this, from which I’m shamelessly cribbing! Thanks, Richard!
The normal way to get high-resolution all-round footage is to use a special rig like this one:
These are actually not that expensive… assuming that you already have ten GoPro cameras lying around ready to go in them. If not… it’s a different story.
But there are now more compact and affordable options if you don’t mind sacrificing some resolution – things like the Ricoh Theta V. For more information about how it works, Richard pointed me at this great video:
Now, we all know that you can get interesting feedback effects when, say, standing in a lift or changing room with mirrors on opposite walls, or by pointing live cameras at their own output.
What happens when you explore the same ideas in a spherical world? Cool things:
Oh, and if you’re like me, the next question is, “Can you do this kind of thing with live footage?” And the answer is yes. Here’s… ahem… a recording… to prove it…
A final thought.
In the old days, some comedy shows would emphasise that they were “recorded in front of a live audience”, so that you knew that the laugh track wasn’t canned. Soon, we’ll be able to recreate the effect of a live audience so realistically that it won’t be sufficient to persuade you that the recording was actually done in front of real people. Even if you have multiple spherical recordings.
So here’s a challenge to ponder over the weekend: How could you prove that a YouTube video of an event was originally a real event, shown to real people?
Today, I met our milkman!
November 14th, 2018
I say ‘today’, because it was actually past midnight last night. Before going upstairs to bed, I popped out with the empty bottles, and there he was! Why is this surprising?
Well, he normally delivers at about 2am; last night he was early. I’ve occasionally heard him, but I’ve never met him before. Yet we benefit every single day from his regular and reliable deliveries, and have done so for more than a decade, both here and at our previous house (which was only a couple of miles away). So this is someone whose name I’ve known for years, who visits our home several times a week, has done so for a very long time, kept doing so even when we moved, and yet I’ve only just met him. It’s almost like a ‘friend’ on a social network.
Anyway, he turned out to be a delightful chap, and it was great to have the opportunity to shake his hand and say…
Thanks, Phil!
Silicon ripples
November 13th, 2018
Isn’t sand wonderful stuff?
We went to Holkham Beach — a favourite spot — at the weekend.
All of these textures were within a few minutes’ walk of each other.
Oh, and Tilly likes it too.
It’s a miracle!
November 8th, 2018
There was a miraculous event at my brother Simon’s house in Winchester this week, as the new plaster in their sitting room started to dry…
I told him not to paint over it, and he could then retire in comfort, as long as he didn’t mind having a lot of visitors.
Actually, the miraculous event was that — being, he freely admits, somewhat unfamiliar with Photoshop or anything similar — he created this image in Powerpoint.
Anyway, I thought it was great.
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