Ink Caps November 11, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : wildlife , comments closed
I spotted these two specimens a couple of days ago, on a grassy patch in South London. Shaggy ink caps, or Lawyers wigs. They are edible, but not usually worth it because they decompose rapidly giving off smelly staining black liquid.
Autumn Colours November 11, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Art , 2comments
Other names for a Mullet November 10, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : wildlife , 2comments
Some alternative names for the Thick lipped Grey Mullet:
An lannach glas
Btarde
Bosega
Boseghetta
Boseghin
Bosiga
Bory Sayloun
Caneluenghe
Cannalonga
Cefalo
Cefalo bosega
Cefalo labbrone
Cefaluni
Cefolo di pietra
Cefolo pietra
Cefulu fimmineddu
Cerina
Chefal
Ciautta
Ciefl
Curvo
Curvu
Debelousti cipelj
Dicklippige Grolippige Meersche
Dicklippige Meersche
Dicklippige Nordische Meersche
Diklippige harder
Fataa
Grrndungur
Grey mullet
Kaplat
Lazunak
Labre
Lenket
Lesser grey mullet
Lioneddu
Lioni
Lisa
Lissa
Llissa vera
Man’ifeke
Mavri baligi
Meersche
Meil
Muble
Muge
Muge grosses lvres
Muge lippu
Muge noir grosses lvres
Muge noir blanc
Muge noir chaluc
Muge noir labru
Mugella
Mugem
Muggine
Muggine labbrone
Mugon labru
Muja
Mulet grosses lvres
Mulet labeon chaluc
Mulet labeon lippu
Mulet lippu
Mulett
Mulett kaplat
Muzao negro
Negro
il noir
Paksuhuulikeltti
Qefulli i dimrit
Sciorina
Tainha
Tainha-lia
Tainha-negra
Testone
Thichlip mullet
Thick lipped mullet
Thicklip grey mullet
Thick-lipped grey mullet
Thick-lipped mullet
Tjocklppad multe
Tolstogubaya kefal’
Tykkleppet multe
Tyklbet multe
Ueil ngre
Velanitsa
Vocche mozze
Volpino
Above the clouds November 9, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : hi res photos , 4comments
How to join Photos to make a Panorama November 7, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : hi res photos, learning, Art , 6commentsComposite Panoramic Photographs
In this article I am going to share what I have learned about putting digital photographs together to make a wide angle panoramic picture. All you need is a digital camera and some picture editing software. I used PaintShopPro but you could use Adobe Photoshop, The Gimp, Macromedia Fireworks or lots of others. Suggestions for Mac users are welcome.
When you are enjoying the great outdoors, it can easily happen that you see a wonderful view which makes you stop and look at it. You gaze around to take it all in, and then reach for a camera only to discover that the landscape vista is simply to wide to fit in the viewfinder. If you have video functionality you might consider slowly panning around, trying to keep the horizon level, but you would need a really good tripod to do this smoothly, and it may not be so good to watch anyway. In the days of film cameras, people might take several shots from different angles and then after they’ve got the snaps back from the labs, mount them together onto a backing page, overlapping as best they can. It didn’t look that good though. And it isn’t quite as easy as I first imagined to do it digitally either.
My first attempt involved standing underneath the bow of the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, to try and capture the whole shape of the ship and hull without getting railings, steps and people in the way.
I was careful to keep the bow line centred and made sure I had plenty of overlap from one shot to the next. When home, I uploaded the digital photos onto my computer thinking it would be fun to slap them together and make a whole ship.
I discovered two serious problems.
1) The lighting levels were different for each shot, so the colours don’t blend together at the edges.
2) I couldn’t make the shapes match up from one picture to the next.
What was going on?
1) Mostly due to the automatic exposure setting adjusting itself between shots. You might get better results using a fixed manual setting but I suspect there would still be differences, and you might get one or more photos over or under exposed so that they are unusable, spoiling the set.
My answer is to adjust the brightness and contrast digitally, to make as close a match as possible by eye. This may involve making several slight adjustments over varying patches selected with a lassoo or marquee select tool.
2) I think this is something to do with the crafting of the lens causing a curved perspective from the centre to the edge of each photograph. It’s a bit weird, the horizon may look horizontal but it isn’t.
Anyway, my answer is NOT to try and map the edge of one photo onto the corresponding place in the overlap section of the adjacent one, but to trim an equal amount of overlap from both sides before making the join. This may be easier to explain with a diagram.
Work with the highest resolution uncompressed digital photos, even if it slows your computer down at times, using the zoom out tool to see the overall picture. Create a new canvas big enough to take the composite picture. Then copy and paste as a new selection each of the cropped and light-adjusted photos, using the cursor keys not the mouse, to make fine positioning adjustments.
Then zoom in close and use the clone tool, ink dropper and pen to touch up any obvious problems with the overlaps. If necessary, do it pixel by pixel in some places.
So here is a panoramic photograph made in this way, it’s a photo taken from a headland looking back at Leketio, another fishing port in Basque country, Spain. The only trouble is you’ll need a really wide computer screen to see it properly!
No Smoke without Fire November 7, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Memetics , comments closedI’ve added a new category, “Memetics” because this is a subject which has interested me ever since reading Richard Dawkins‘ books and I want to investigate it further.
I’ve identified the well known popular saying “There’s no smoke without fire” as a kind of Meta-meme. This is like the Aids virus of the meme world, it goes for the immune system and that then makes it easier for countless other memes to get a hold.
What makes it so sticky?
Sticky ideas are ones which some people believe, embrace and pass on, not because they are are intrinsically true or useful, but because they posess a quality which has been dubbed “stickiness”. I would love to be able to identify and define stickiness, but it’s not at all easy for a beginner, so for now I shall leave it as a meaningful tautology. Stickiness is the quality belonging to that which sticks!
‘No smoke without fire’ is attractive because it seems to give you permission to justify spreading a rumour without any proof. The fact that an idea is spreading is supposed to imply that there must be some truth in it. This provides excellent camouflage for ‘wrong ideas which spread’ - bad memes.
The Selfish Gene Dawkins 1989, only £7.19 at amazon.co.uk
Wikipedia entry for Richard Dawkins : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins
Read chapter 11 of The Selfish Gene online here:-
Memes, the new replicators
( the text that began the new science of MEMETICS, and where Dawkins coined the term `meme’).
Identify these fish November 6, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : hi res photos, wildlife , 7comments
They seemed to have got stuck in a corner between the harbour and the seawall, or else were attracted by something. I’ve never seen so many fish all together, and right next to the shore. They thrashed about amongst each other, not acting as a shoal, some jumped out of the water a little but they showed no signs of moving on back out to the open sea. From the top of harbour wall looking down, they looked about half a metre long, with just a few bigger ones about 0.8m, coloured dark grey or with lighter undersides. The camera reveals a little more than the naked eye, showing a body shape which makes me think of shark.
The mouth and head on the other hand are more like catfish.
from Album II November 6, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Music , add a commentSuicide Song
D I know I'm unhappy A I know things aren't right G D For instance last week I got drunk every nightI know that I'm angry I know I'm afraid I rarely make love I mostly get laidI know I'm unhealthy No doctor would doubt G D A My dreams are all bad & my hairs falling outG Em When you get the blues & you want shoot yourself in the head Em It's alright, it's alright G Go aheadDo the monkey do the pony Do the slop do the boogaloo twist Cut your throat, Cut your throat Cut your wristMiddle 8 D G When you tire of wordly toil D G Shuffle off this mortal coil D G Turn your body back to soil C D It's OK, It's OKWhen you get hung up Hang yourself up by the neck What the hell, what the hell, what the heck
Copyright Loudon Wainwright III 1971
They don’t write em like that anymore. What do morose teenagers listen to these days?
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao November 5, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : hi res photos, movie clips, Art, London , 2commentsThe Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao is simply stunning. Few exhibits can compete with the architecture and last week one whole floor was closed for a changover anyway.
Outside, Louise Bourgouise’s giant spider ( “Maman” ) looks great against the background of the pedestrian area alonside the river. Last time I saw it here I thought it must have been on its travels from the Tate Modern but then it reappeared in London ( as witnessed by the jellyART Club outing last summer ) and it’s still in Bilbao so I conclude there may have been more than one sculpture cast from the same moulds, although I can’t be sure of this.
Beautiful Lift Movie:
Elantxobe November 4, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : hi res photos, transport, movie clips , 4commentsElantxobe is an unspoilt small fishing village on the Basque coast not far from Bilbo, which Igor recommended to me via international ginatxt. It was incredibly quiet at the time, really like a ghost town, perhaps because of the time of day and time of year, but it is certainly photogenic in a postcard sort of way.
Sitting in the only restaurant open, I’d been staring at a roundabout with BUS written on it, but it only dawned on me that it was in fact a BUS TURNTABLE when I saw it in action. Luckily I was just fast enough to capture the last bit of movement on camera, so this entry can add nicely to my collection of sad bus spotter blogs 
click the turntable to rotate the bus
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
