Not yet will those measureless fields be green again
Where only yesterday the wild sweet blood of wonderful youth was shed;
There is a grave whose earth must hold too long, too deep a stain,
Though for ever over it we may speak as proudly as we may tread.

from
The Cenotaph
Charlotte Mary Mew (15 November 1869 – 24 March 1928)

 From a transcript of the: Examination of Jhon Jhonsone (sic), 5 November 1605.

And confesseth that when the king hadd come to the parliament house this present day, and the upper house hadd bene sitting, he meant to have fored the match and have fledd for his owin safety before the Powder had taken fier, And confesseth that if he had not ben apprehended this last night, he hadd blowen upp the upper house, when the King, Lords, Bishops and others hadd ben there………

nationalarchives.gov.uk

The attempted removal of James I of England VI of Scotland and his whole parliament, by blowing them up on the eve of the state opening of the second session of James’s first English Parliament.

These two are great – always worth watching: Australian Voting to be Outsourced.

Now that’s a novel idea – ho wait a minute didn’t we already do that ? it’s called the EEC (sorry EU) or then again, maybe I should ask Vladimir Bukovsky what he thought it was called.

Senlac hill – the morning of the 14th October 1066.

The last uninvited army in England

“My son,” said the Norman Baron, “I am dying, and you will be heir
To all the broad acres in England that William gave me for share
When he conquered the Saxon at Hastings, and a nice little handful it is.
But before you go over to rule it I want you to understand this:–

“The Saxon is not like us Normans. His manners are not so polite.
But he never means anything serious till he talks about justice and right.
When he stands like an ox in the furrow – with his sullen set eyes on your own,
And grumbles, ‘This isn’t fair dealing,’ my son, leave the Saxon alone.

From: Norman & Saxon by Rudyard Kipling.

“Listen: this story’s one you ought to know,
You’ll reap the consequence of what you sow.
This fleeting world is not the world where we
Are destined to abide eternally:
And for the sake of an unworthy throne
You let the devil claim you for his own.
I’ve few days left here, I’ve no heart for war,
I cannot strive and struggle any more,
But hear an old man’s words: the heart that’s freed
From gnawing passion and ambitious greed
Looks on kings’ treasures and the dust as one……..”

Abolqasem Ferdowsi, Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings

The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don’t dwell on what
Has passed away
Or what is yet to be

Ah the wars they will
Be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
Bought and sold
And bought again
The dove is never free

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

Leonard Cohen.

Nought’s had, all’s spent,
Where our desire is got without content:
‘Tis safer to be that which we destroy
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.

The first few lines from a poem by Dorothea Mackellar.

The Colours Of Light

This is not easy to understand
For you that come from a distant land
Where all the colours are low in pitch –
Deep purples, emeralds deep and rich,
Where autumn’s flaming and summer’s green –
Here is a beauty you have not seen.

Credit: NASA/SDO

Nikolaus Kopernikus (Copernicus)  19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543)

De revolutionibus orbium coelestium – Copernicus:

In which he asserted that the universe comprised eight spheres. The furthest consisting of fixed stars, with the Sun motionless at the centre. The planets then known, revolved about the Sun with each in its own sphere: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter & Saturn. The Moon, revolving in its own sphere around the Earth. What appeared to be the daily revolution of the Sun was infact the Earth’s daily rotation on its own axis about the sun.

He may have been wrong with his ideas that the orbits of celestial bodies must be perfect circles, but his change from geocentric to a heliocentric cosmology helped move the views of science away from Aristotle’s theories and turned astronomy on its head so to speak.

People were not happy …….

Martin Luther was quoted as saying in 1539:

“People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon … This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy…….”

I always suspected there was more to the film Matrix than meets the eye………

Are you sure that the world you see in colour is the same one I see; your answer is probably yes. In reality one should probably so no!
The more science begins to understand the connection between what we see as our perception of reality, particularly that which is developed through language and culture. The less certain it is that we all see the world in the same way. For example, there is a tribe in Namibia called the Himba who have fewer words for various shades of colour than English-speaking people’s; they didn’t need them. There are certain colours they cannot see and it is not colour blindness. They just do not have a word in their language that describes that colour so the brain does not see it. Give them a colour wheel containing a uniform set of colour patches but include one colour they do not have a word for; they will not distinguish this different colour from the rest. Hard to believe but has been demonstrated through independent testing; colour and language are inextricably combined. Remember, a child does not fully see colour until it is several weeks old and then learns through language to differentiate colours.
One of the things most artists learn quite quickly is an understanding of the colour wheel and complimentary colours. The other is, where dark and light should be perceived within an image and how it is interpreted by the viewer. Unfortunately, this can have some unexpected consequences.
For photography this can be manifest in an undesirable magenta cast with certain ink and paper combinations under differing light. For traditional gelatine silver papers it showed as a green cast on fibre papers, which needed selenium toning or a change of developer to remove it. Both problems could be removed with careful consideration of the lighting used when viewing the image.
J M W Turner exploited the play of light and human perception of its qualities with great success in a lot of his painting. The Morning after the Deluge c. 1843 is a fine example. He utilised his understanding of colour to create drama and depth within this painting. Strip away that colour and all one is left with is a bland canvas, devoid of shadows and subtle shades of light.
Black & White photography removes the distraction and interpretation of colour and allows the brain to concentrate on detail. Which is why a lot of the best war photography is in B&W; it focuses the mind on the subject matter and avoids the distraction of colour perception. What do I mean by that; take the popularity of HDR imaging, it is not reality and can be quite disturbing for some. So my first decision has been, do I like the colour and if not, then the image gets ignored, no matter how good it may have been. The impact the photographer was trying to impart has instantly been lost, I don’t like the colour so I ignore the picture.
This is not to say that B&W does not have its problems, more so these days with the advent of digital and screen viewing. One of the things I hate is black shadows and glowing whites, E6 slide film wrongly exposed gave this with a vengeance. Bad printing could give what was known as the ‘soot & chalk’ look, hence the phrase – expose for the shadows and develop for the high lights. Unfortunately for people like me who are somewhat challenged when it comes to scanning; a negative that prints well, does not always scan well.
If you have been kind and patient enough to get here. Please make more time and watch the following YouTube video, which will demonstrate that what one sees is not always reality. It is but an interpretation, given by a particular set of circumstances.

I know it is yet another long one – sorry but the world does not revolve around sound bites…..

Am I being particularly inept because I cannot figure out how this new image editing facility (the one with that stupid fat pencil) works.

Gone is the percentage in-post resizing, it seems to be guess-work with multiple images, for instance one below the other.

So far dragging a corner to resize seems to work until I publish and then the image reverts back to full size.

I hate changes for no obvious reason: what was wrong with the old method (if it ain’t broke don’t fix it) or is it like windows 8 and designed for tablet users?

A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand. Is not the mountain far more awe-inspiring and more clearly visible to one passing through the valley than to those who inhabit the mountain?

Gibran Khalil Gibran.

It’s been a short year….. it does not seem like 12 months since I last posted that I am stepping off the world until the second week in February.

No computer, no newspapers, no news (if I can avoid it!) just a quiet few weeks. There is a troublesome flight in there somewhere (unavoidable) but all in all; peace  & quiet.

Thanks for all the comments and likes over the year – much appreciated; for those that celebrate Xmas, have a great holiday period.

In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.

George Orwell

A pessimist is an optimist with experience !

Oscar Wilde

I keep getting asked by my new computer if I would like to use ‘Cloud’ storage for my files.

Good idea ? in principle, but Very bad idea in practise, for many reasons and not just my paranoia  🙂

See this article as an example from the Spiceworks site –spiceworks the-great-dropbacle-personal-cloud-storage-in-the-work-environment

If you Google “Cloud storage who’s stupid idea was that” then you will find lots of examples of those who understand and also work in the IT sections of both large and small companies. They all warn against the security issues (both up & down loading) so the above article that I have linked is not alone.

See – my rant is turning into a big one 🙂

An update:

I now have both my Canon 9950F and Plustek 7600i scanners working, all be it only with Vuescan (not that I am complaining about this software – it’s a good scanning programme and sells at a very good price). But there in is the problem, Silverfast which is not cheap ! so far does not work……

It seems that if I buy Silverfast 8 all my troubles will be over; but I purchased two copies of an earlier Silverfast iteration which worked well on Windows 7, so am disinclined to spend another large chunk of money just for an upgrade: why is it so expensive to upgrade from a previous version?

My Nikon ViewNX2 works although the European site initially said they only had a Win 7 version, but found it on Nikon USA.

My Canon Pro 9000 printer just about loaded itself – which is how it should be.

Photoshop Lightroom & CS6 are loaded, all I now need to do is set the preferences the way I like them.

Colour calibration is as yet unknown, as I have not tried the Colourvision software, but I live in hope; although I must say the Samsung screen on the ATIV one 7 is brilliant and comparing the colour with my calibrated screen, it shows no difference.

Ho and for those that are contemplating a new computer pre-loaded with Windows 8, be aware that most computer manufactures do not give you a sticker with the Windows registration details any more.….They are locked in the BIOS so do a back-up asap! Otherwise you are screwed (yes there are ways of finding it) but exactly what the consequences of needing a new hard-drive are is anyone’s guess. Digitally, we no longer own things, they are on rent from the manufacturer. My feelings about this are not printable.

As an aside – Down loaded Foobar 2000 which is a great audio player, far better than media player, in that you can throw any file format at it and away it goes, my Stax headphones sound very good with FLAC files. As for audio equipment: I still play those black discs and use a Shure V15iv cartridge in an SME III arm and own 1980’s Quad amplifiers but do acknowledge that digital FLAC files seem the way to go for quality (MP3 even at 320 kbit/s it terrible) and with memory being so cheap now, should not be on anyone’s list of formats.

What passes as normal on this site, will resume shortly.

Beware:    a rant !..

I have at long last got a new computer (A nice shiny Samsung with lots of memory for my D800) but…………………….

It has windows 8 – ukkk…….. what the heck are all those tile things ! ho and it will not let me use my Plustek 7600i scanner (yet! ?) I  will give it a go for a while but can see me re-formatting and loading my windows 7, time will tell.

I hate new technology, I thought it made life easier ? but …… A camera takes pictures, a phone makes calls,  a computer allows one to control things; but no, it seems I can now talk to friends I didn’t know I had, join FaceBook (I don’t think so)  play games on line with all those new friends I didn’t know I had – and so it goes.

Ho well, back to getting Firefox working the way I like it and where did I put all those serial numbers for software.

I think I will continue looking for a good Nikon ‘F’ at a fair price because at least it is clockwork 🙂

p.s…. I have just been told all the things on Windows 8 help improve my life-style and help connect with people: what the hell is that .. my life is ok (much the same as most I think) and as far as connecting with people – I thought face to face conversation or the very least pen & paper did that!!!!!!