I’m really pleased with today’s photo. Tamsin comes along to the meditation group on Fridays and for breakfast after. The room has two story South facing windows. At this time of year we finish up soon after dawn so the light can be really variable but is often incredible. I…
Category: Misc
The ‘other’ always needed in any classification.
At Auchmithie
At Auchmithie, a photo by National Galleries of Scotland Commons on Flickr. I find this shot from the National Galleries collection strangely moving. It was taken in 1881 up the coast from Dundee. The older girl (a working women really) is wearing the apron of someone who processes fish (probably…
Edinburgh
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First attempt at rephotographing St Giles
This is a lovely postcard combined with a quick snap. I’ll have to go back when the Christmas lights are down and it maybe isn’t so crowded. I also need to find historic images in which people figure more prominently. It is people who are interesting after all!
Goal setting is good – even when you ‘fail’
[column-group] [column][/column] [column][/column] [/column-group] These are two photographs from my series of 100 Portraits in 2013. Sheila, my mother-in-law, is 86 years old and Mary, her granddaughter, is 18. These were among 48 portraits I made in 2013. I failed to make it even half way to 100 portraits but…
House of Binns
A National Trust for Scotland Property Good For Views over the Firth of Forth. Not been in house yet. Not So Good For Visiting out of short season. Wandering on your own – guided tours only.
Blackness Castle
Historic Scotland Property. Good For Views of Forth bridges and lots of fresh air. Castle is really curious. Walking in woods along the coat to the East. Not So Good For If there is a cold wind then it is really exposed so would not be very pleasant. Check opening…
Cycling: Same as it ever was!
This graph, taken from an article on the BBC News site, says it all for me. People go on about cycling being popular and cycle sales going up. They paint lots of lines on the road. They have campaigns. But for a real cyclist it just feels like it…
Some Bar Steward Stole My Bike
My attempts at only blogging the positive are never going to take off! Somebody stole my bike from the stairwell of our flat last night. Yes it was well locked to the wall. Best bike I ever had. Not terribly expensive or anything just functional. Specialized Crosstrail Sport Disc. Numbers…
Same Conversations 80 Years Later!
I took a picture of this cartoon stuck in the window of Hatchard & Daughters, a book shop in Howarth, Yorkshire (Where the Brontës used to live and write). It made me laugh because it is exactly the same conversations that are going on today but, as you can see…
Why The Four ONS Happiness Questions Suck
Sometimes I just can’t let go of a subject even though it is outside my power to do anything about it. In these situations my blog serves as a way for me to draw a line under it and move on. On 25th November 2010 David Cameron gave a speech…
More badly reported science on obesity
The BBC report a study on fitness in obese people: People can be fat yet fit, research suggests in which they say: People can be obese yet physically healthy and fit and at no greater risk of heart disease or cancer than normal weight people, say researchers. A quick look…
Wealth and Well-being
I recently had a couple of exchanges on the ONS StatsUser Discussion Forum on measuring Well-Being particularly on the relationship between wealth and well-being. This is really stuff of blog posting not forum contribution. I should write a blog and link to it from the forum not the other way…
I just don’t get Economic Growth
I have been trying to understand Economic Growth for quite a while and I think I have reached the point where I give up. There are a lot of people on the radio who talk about how important it is and they can’t all be wrong so maybe it is…
Why I don’t buy Scottish Newspapers
Yesterday we all got on our bikes to Pedal on Parliament and protest at the disproportionate cuts to the active travel budgets. Basically everyone admits that Scotland would be a better place if we built our roads so that it was safer to cycle but it is very difficult to…
Remember This Post
I recently read a moving post on memory by Dawn Foster that set me thinking. Dawn has epilepsy which means that 20-40 times each day she misses a few seconds of what is going on – yet nobody notices. She finds it disturbing especially when compared to the experiences she…
Remembrance not Remembering
We took the camper van to France in the summer and, as we were passing, decided to visit the grave of my uncle Eric. I say my uncle but I feel uneasy calling him an uncle. He died a good twenty years before I was born and would have had…
Full Moon
Full moon. Low in the sky on 10th November 2011. Taken with 110mm modified cassegrain and Nikon D80.
First Moon Photo
This is the first photo of the moon with my 6″ newtonian reflector. Taken 6th November 2011.
HTML5 Geolocation Data Sucks
I have long been excited about HTML5 having access to a geolocation data. It should make it possible to build a whole range of applications for phones and other devices that are cross platform but make use of the users location. Unfortunately reality bites when you try and actually build…
Bangor MSc
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Bangor Mindfulness 2nd Research Assignment
Find attached my fourth and final assignment for the Bangor Mindfulness course. This one is for the Research module. It is supposed to be a description of a research project that you intend to do later in the course in a form close to what would be suitable for submission…
An areligious (not “A religious”) justification for meditation
If I start to talk about how the world is and therefore how we should best live there is a danger you will dismiss what I say as either playing with ideas that have no relation to real life (philosophy) or trying to impose some mumbo jumbo from a possible…
Carbon Guilt and Frantic Justification
Generally we are pretty ‘right on’ as a family. We live in town in a two bed flat with all A-rated appliances – a condensing boiler etc. The building is old but we don’t have much external wall space and we have argon filled double glazing and draft proofing in…
Contemplative Photography
A friend just introduced me to BuddhistGeek which looks like a wonderful source. I enjoyed listening to this podcast on The Practice of Contemplative Photography – which I would highly recommend. It certainly chimes with how I have felt about my own photography.
Moral Maze: Happiness is 40 Minutes with a Straw Man
BBC Radio 4 have a programme called the Moral Maze in which a small team of people question expert witnesses and discuss the moral aspects of a particular topical issue. I don’t usually listen because it typically produces ‘more heat than light’ with people shouting things like ‘It is me…