Day 327, Oh look, it's that Farage again

I thought he'd disappeared up his own backside since he didn't make the huge gains he predicted prior to the general election.  But no, he's reappeared.

Amazingly it's in the area of child poverty and inequality that he's decided to break cover.

Oh, hang on, no that's bollocks.  It's on his old hobby horse, immigration, and his little englander bullshit bandwagon again.  Oh the tedium.

"No, no, no, let me speak", that's Farage's motto.  The never ending buzzing, whining, farting sound of him rambling on in his ever-so-nearly-not xenophobic style to anyone that will listen, which appears to be every media outlet in the land.  While claiming that his opinions are that of the silent majority, "drone, drone, drone, economic migrants, drone, drone, drone, taking the jobs of our stout oak hearted youth, drone, drone, drone."

What a bumptious little man.


Here's the raggedy underside of a butterfly, to flush that turd from your mind.

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Day 326, The Two Towers

There's something here that is no longer here.

Is it Bilbo?

No.

Is it Frodo?

No.

It's no ring wearing Hobbit, but it is loosely related.

Here they are, the two towers.

And here they aren't.

Iconic maybe.

Gone, definitely.

Cue an interminable Elven song bemoaning the loss.

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Day 325, Fix it and it will explode, perhaps

When a computer monitor gets to a particular age they sometimes decide it is time to retire.  In this case the monitor had succumbed to the 'capacitor plague' and so started to behave rather oddly.  It only became apparent that it had this type of plague after taking the thing apart.

If you are likely to do this yourself then bear in mind that the capacitors on the board around the power input can retain quite an amount of electrical charge.  Although in this instance you shouldn't be anywhere near those components - if you aren't sure then don't even contemplate any repair at all, what are you, an information-averse risk taker?

In the case of this model of ViewSonic monitor there had been so many failures that people were assembling bags of replacement capacitors at lower cost than sourcing them yourself.  I bet ViewSonic were really chuffed - I've had three of their monitors fail this way.

Here are the old capacitors lying forlornly on the desk, wounded, swollen, in a sorry state that they were unable to complete their tour of duty-cycle.

On reassembly the LCD monitor worked admirably for another year until something else failed in an altogether more dramatic fashion which produced a lot of smoke.  You don't get that very often.  The other repaired monitors are still running trouble free five years later.

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Day 324, Win Hill over Ladybower

Cycling up to the top of Win Hill, just above Bamford in Derbyshire, is a slight challenge if unfit.  But once at the top the view is a delight.

Looking toward the trig point on Win Hill in the direction of Castleton we can see Mam Tor and a number of other of the local peaks.  There's a hint of the alpine about this, apart from the fluffy cloud and the lack of a pin-sharp crystal clear biting air.

Turn yourself through 90 degrees to the right and we can see Ladybower reservoir and the road bridges over it.  Over the hills in the distance lies Bradfield.  Above Ladybower to the left, if we were to take the road off the Snake Pass at the end of the bridge we would head toward Derwent and Howden where there's a relatively straightforward 23 km loop ride which goes around all three of those reservoirs.

And this is only minutes away, what am I doing sitting here?

Time to get the mountain bike out and get some hills climbed.

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Day 323, Sheffield, Central Library, Sheffield Hallam, and the wedding cake

Trawling the old buckets of proper film reveals this scene of light traffic from the 1980s.

I'd obviously shinned up one of these enormously tall lamposts to get this picture, it would have been exactly the sort of thing I would have done.

No risk too great, that was my motto.  Climbing up stuff, over stuff, under stuff, wombling free, as long as there was a climbing harness and a safety net.

The Wedding cake in the middle left, the old (or new) registry office as it was.  My parents had been married there way back in the whenevers.

Just behind that is the Central Library, glowing like a great glowing, glowing thing.  Apologies, I'm still distracted by the registry office and how it looks really like a very narrow clutch basket for a motorcycle.

And on the right, in the middle, there is Sheffield Hallam University, which is still there, unlike some of the buildings on the right (for shame, for shame.)  There are some pretty rank buildings being assembled in this area now.

And the enormously tall lampposts have gone, meaning that my opportunity to recreate this image is not possible.  Unless someone has a crane?

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Day 322, Castles, in the air, nearly

This is a terrific castle.  Dunnottar Castle is perched on a rocky outcrop next to the cliffs just outside Stonehaven in Scotland.

It's a short walk from the town along the hazardous cliff top.  There is then a steep descent down what are now concrete steps.  The there's a steep climb up to the entrance of the castle.

This sort of ascent/descent is normal for people from Sheffield so we just barged the wheezing tourists (mostly American, here mainly for the golf) out of the way and marched up the near-vertical steps into the castle.

Once inside there are quite a few buildings to see.  Some of the buildings have been restored.  Many of the buildings have nesting Herring Gull on them with the most enormous chicks almost in touching distance.  There were Fulmar too.

I could see House martins flying into one of the buildings.  This was happening very regularly, apart from when there were visitors in a particular part of the building.  Taking a closer look I could see a nest inside, just above head height over a window, and there were tiny beaks poking our every now and then.  I left them to it.

Amazing how the wildlife was nesting in such close proximity to humans.  One small boy was oblivious to a Herring Gull, almost as big as him and squawking like mad, as he stood within about a metre of a nest while being filmed by his Iowan father and standing on a bit of rampart.

They may have been from Idaho.  Or Oregon, or Michigan.  I just made their home origin bit up.

Either way, it is a mighty impressive thing, there is quite a lot of it, and nature is on immediate hand.

And it is high up, and definitely in the air.

Maybe they were from Nevada or Texas, or what about Nebraska, Georgia, North Dakota.

Who knows huh.

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Day 321, Spare us the cutter

The overgrowth has gone.

The nesting had ended.

So in came the cutter.

Is it still soiled now the dirt is off.

Wise words there from Ian McCulloch.

Take heed, although the rest of the lyric not so much.

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