Stick In The Mud

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Rather pleasant weather today.

Rainy Recharge

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I seem to recall from a few years ago hearing some particularly idiotic politician blathering on about how it was impossible to drive or recharge an EV in wet weather.
(He was very wrong, in case you were wondering).

Data Behind A Yellow Fence

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About 17 hours into an 18.5 hour working day.
Babysitting a twitchy transformer, listening to a 50Hz buzz, while waiting for a spreadsheet full of boxes to turn (and stay) green.

At least the software I wrote a couple of years ago is working well here, slurping up numbers from a data acquisition unit and filing it in an orderly manner for analysis.
I need to do some fairly significant mods to make it fully windows 11 compatible soon though, running it on my old laptop isn't a good long-term solution!
Maybe when this project is put to bed, I'll be able to sit down and deal with it properly.

My Lightning Impulse Generator Needs Cleaning

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A spider appears to have been living on it.
Not a very exciting photo, but I was stuck in work for an obscene number of hours working on a very urgent, very long test run, and was losing my mind at this point in the proceedings, so this is all I shot apart from photos of the actual thing I was testing, which I can't share for now.

Greenery And Lights And Things

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But no coffee. Not until tomorrow, at least.

Peppercorns

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The week has gone to pot by Tuesday afternoon...
Not the best shot, but I'm knackered, and the other one I did was worse. I think I've got some minor vibration issues coming from the focus rail with the setup in this orientation.

Pop!

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Continuing my occasional theme of macro photos of snacks with this 1x macro of a piece of popcorn (or my brain, I can't be completely sure these days 🤯)
Snackro photography, you might say.
This one's a focus stack of 39 shots.

I Don't Do Sport

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This one's my 52Frames submission for the "Sports Photography" challenge.
Sport is very much not my thing, and I have no idea where I'd go to shoot any without looking like a more massive weirdo than usual.
The sole concession to sport that I have in the house is this baseball that I was sent when I joined Smarter Every Day's Patreon, so that's my subject for today.

Misty Flares

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The first decent misty evening I've seen this autumn.

Murmuration

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Not a backup, for a change.
I went to see an early-ish display of the murmuration at Attenborough Nature Reserve this afternoon.
I'm planning to return later in the season when the murmuration is bigger.

Tricolour

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Another backup photo, this one from the back end of last month.

Please Be Seated

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A backup photo today, again (see the 17th for why).

(Almost) Everything Shall Be Aligned

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A backup photo today.
I quite liked the regular lines and patterns in this new building seen from my hotel room window. Ideally, I'd have been a few rooms to the left so I could have made the composition symmetrical, but such is life.

Smear

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Almost a week late posting this; things went very sideways with my photo project this week due to work pressures, and I ended up not shooting anything other than work related photos on my phone almost every day.

This is the first time I've properly fallen off the wagon on this project, and it's a bit irritating to break so close to the end of the second year.
Proverbs of spilt milk and crying come to mind, so I shall try and resume normal (ish) operations, although I'm expecting this week to be relatively hellish again at work.

Bi-Metal

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Another possibility for 52Frames "Black And White Minimalism" today.
Can't decide between today's or yesterday's shot yet.

Waveform

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This one is probably going to be my submission for this week's 52Frames "Black And White Minimalism" challenge.

Stick The Moon On A Bracket.

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Another backup photo today, I got home from work and crashed out.
It's been a full-on week, and not entirely pleasant in places.

I'm calling it a win that I actually ended up with the energy to cook something recognisable as a meal for dinner, as opposed to eating comparative junk, which I've been doing rather too much recently.

2025-11-13

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A backup photo for today, posted late.
I spent almost all evening making some prototype parts, and ran out of time for photos.

It's The Little Things That Get You

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This caption gets a bit deep, so skip it if you're feeling delicate.

I've been listening to the latest Jack Reacher book over the last couple of days. It's a series that Lucy introduced me to, and one which we used to enjoy listening to together quite regularly, often in the car.

At the end of the book, there is a discussion between the series' original author Lee Child, and the long-time narrator Jeff Harding; several times while listening to it, I had the involuntary, automatic thoughts "Lucy would like this", or "Lucy would be interested by this", or even "I'll have to mention this bit to her", shortly followed by the jarring, unpleasant jolt of realisation that she is no longer here to have these chats with. It is a visceral, almost physical reaction, which is really quite unsettling, and gets you when you least expect it.

A bit heavy perhaps, but this has become almost as much a personal diary as a photoblog now.

Sometimes, People Sit Here

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A backup photo today, shot last week.

The Glitter Machine

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I've spent quite a lot of this evening prototyping a widget for work on my little CNC mill, flinging copious quantities of fine brass glitter all over the place.
To (approximately) quote Blondihacks, "When using a milling machine, the chips are usually confined to" (waving her hands broadly around the workshop) "this general area".
I then spent an instructive few minutes measuring, wherein I discovered that my shiny new 2mm cutter was in fact not 2mm at all, but more like 2-and-what's-a-tenth-or-two-of-a-millimetre-between-friends-mm, and my part is consequently the wrong size.
Trust but verify, they say...

At The Toybox

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This is my submission for this week's 52Frames' "Show us your toys" challenge.

I recently improved my equipment storage setup with a new cabinet, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to show it off.
It's nice to be able to grab the right lens without wrestling it out of the tiny cabinet I was using before, and my flash and grip gear now has a proper home rather than in boxes on the floor.
It's also been a while since I took a self-portrait, so you get to have my ugly mush foisted upon you today too.

Many lighting sins were atoned for with Lightroom...

Please Hold Handrail

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For safety, of course.

Between Two Points

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It seemed like an appropriate title for this photo (a backup shot from last night), and some of the lyrics felt a bit fitting after <rant redacted>.
I've been a bit obsessed with the song since I discovered it a few months ago - Between Two points by David Gilmour and Romany Gilmour.

Foggy Conversations

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It was unexpectedly foggy when I went out for a walk this evening.
I quite like this one.

Bonk!

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A backup photo from my rather damp walk last night.

11 Years

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I met Lucy for the first time 11 years ago tonight.
This place has rebranded from Copper to Gilt in the intervening period, but it looks virtually the same inside, although I didn't go in tonight.

Even at this early moment, we really clicked, and had a proper side-splitting laugh when I talked about a recent visit to a Toyota factory, where a new car was rolling off the production line every 70 seconds. Lucy took this very literally, and pulled a horrified face at the thought of thousands of cars falling off a conveyor belt into a smashed up heap at the bottom of the hill!

I wonder how many cars have rolled off the end of Toyota's production line since...

Copper Plated

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This one's a backup from last night's walk.
I love the colours here.

Lengthening Shadows

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Lovely light this evening, so I went out for a walk.

Meander

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Surprisingly nice weather at times this weekend.
2025-11-01 - late posting this one.