Stand Tall Into The Longest Night

Click image to view a bigger version

I went on a rather pleasant misty walk at lunchtime.
We came across another walker who commented "miserable weather" as he passed - this gave us quite a laugh, because the aforementioned weather was the express reason we were out to begin with.
I'm quite pleased with this one, the fog has really helped to isolate the trees from the background, and I thought the punchy black and white treatment suited it.

Thanks to @countryside_joy for the behind-the-scenes photo of me shooting the same trees from a slightly different angle, a couple of minutes before I took this shot (after the jump)

Another View From The Mixer

Click image to view a bigger version

Not the finest of photos today, but a record of my day, nonetheless.
I was running the sound for In Disguise performing at The Dog & Parrot, Eastwood.
Aside from a very minor spot of confusion involving a mis-ordered setlist on my laptop, the gig went rather well, and the audience seemed to be having a great time.
The whole effort raised a nice chunk of cash for Crisis too, so a good cause was served into the bargain.

Whirring Miniature

Click image to view a bigger version

A macro shot of a little gearbox that (along with a bag of other bits) has been consuming rather a lot of my time this week.
We managed to reduce one of them to a small pile of dust on an endurance test last night, so I spent several hours this afternoon working on some improvements - Let's hope we can treat this one better!

Soggy Drinks

Click image to view a bigger version

A backup photo from my Arnhem trip.

In A Fug

Click image to view a bigger version

I found myself feeling rather down Tuesday night, and took myself out for a nocturnal walk to try and restore some balance to my addled brain.
The fog was quite pleasant, although an unseen horse sneezing without warning in a field behind me was a mildly shocking experience!

Gateway Drug

Click image to view a bigger version

A backup photo today, shot Saturday. A common theme lately!

The Correct Ratio

Click image to view a bigger version

(Of chocolate to biscuit, in case you were wondering)
Another snackro. The delight of doing these is that you get a tasty treat when you're done.
I find it interesting that you can see a bit of machining chatter, or perhaps more likely CNC stepover marks from the mould on the internal cone shape. I suppose they don't worry about achieving a nice finish in the chocolate mould machining world. How dissipated. Perhaps they are too busy "quality controlling" the final merchandise...
This one's a stack of 41 frames.

Mossy Post

Click image to view a bigger version

This one's a backup from yesterday.
I'd like to take the macro rig out here and get a photo of the wonderful little forest that's growing on top of this old fence post, as well as the way the water drops wrap round the individual strands.
The apple tree and the sunset filtering through the other trees in the background makes for a nice bokeh effect, too.

Early Catkins

Click image to view a bigger version

I actually went for a walk and took photos today. Remarkable.
I don't particularly love this lens from an image quality point of view, but it is certainly versatile.

Off To Bed

Click image to view a bigger version

The archive is taking a beating again, this one's a backup from about 3 weeks ago.
I spent most of my nominally free afternoon fiddling with work related things, albeit ones involving playing with my new 3D printer.
Geneva wheel mechanisms are really quite satisfying.

Going Dutch

Click image to view a bigger version

I quite like this one, grubby weather notwithstanding.
Another backup, I am a tired quasi-human

The Netherlands, you say?

Click image to view a bigger version

More like the Bikerlands!
Another backup shot from Arnhem, where the Dutch certainly live up to the cycling stereotype.

Storage For Persons In Transit

Click image to view a bigger version

This one's a backup from the 7th, but amusingly, I could have taken essentially the same photo today had I been inclined - I was on the same vessel going in the opposite direction.
A tolerably successful trip, all told.

You Parked Over Here

Click image to view a bigger version

Arnhem, and perhaps the Netherlands in general has some very interesting buildings that would be plain, boring, functional blocks at home.
This is one of the walkways in Arnhem Centraal station's car park. The building itself is a very funky freeform shape, and the stairwells are quite cool, with very few perpendicular lines, glass in unexpected places, and walls that are slightly angled in interesting ways.

The widget I was testing passed (yay), apart from the bits we ran out of time to do (boo), and the bits I failed to ask for a quote for (hiss).

Stupid Boy.

Welkom Op De Korenmarkt (unless you have more than two wheels)

Click image to view a bigger version

I've been to Arnhem a few times over the years, but never had much opportunity to explore it until today.
I quite like it, at least the bits I've seen.

Incidentally, the rain in the Netherlands is every bit as wet as the rain in the UK (who knew?...)

Adjust Course

Click image to view a bigger version

En Route to the Netherlands for a work trip, my first overseas work trip since late 2019, as I recall.
A surprisingly easy trip on the way out, although I do wish the very drunk and slightly randy people out in the corridor would have kept it down at 3:30AM!

Setting Fire To The Budget

Click image to view a bigger version

I bought myself a new 3D printer from Prusa.
I'm looking forward to doing some interesting things with the 5 heads on this machine.
It's very nice to finally have a real toolchanging machine which can swap materials in a matter of seconds with minimal purge waste, as opposed to my previous MMU system, which took ages for every material swap, and wasted a lot of material purging the old material remnants out.

Amy

Click image to view a bigger version

I went to see Amy Macdonald live in Nottingham with a friend tonight after taking a last-minute day off work.
I really don't like crowds and close proximity to people, but she was fantastic, definitely worth putting up with the crowd for. It probably also helped that I've had the tickets for ages, and I've really been looking forward to it.
Lots of (great) new songs, but she dug through her back catalogue and belted out most of my old favourites too.

The Fuji definitely wasn't the right camera to shoot this with, at least from where I was sat, but the last thing I wanted to do was get kicked out by taking a bigger camera, so it had to do.

Running Rings Around Me

Click image to view a bigger version

I think this is the biggest diameter moon halo I've ever seen. It was really quite spectacular.
I was out and didn't have a real camera on me, but my phone has done a decent job, especially after a bit of massaging in Lightroom.

Quality Street

Click image to view a bigger version

A present from my in-laws subjected to the snackro treatment.
This one's a focus stack of 52 shots.
Ideally, I'd have either found a nice shiny example of this chocolate, or somehow polished it up to remove the marks from the surfaces.

Bottoms Up

Click image to view a bigger version

A backup photo today, I got home from work and crashed out, falling asleep on the sofa for a couple of hours.