I’ve recently started geocaching. This is certainly not a new thing, the site is celebrating its 25th year! I do remember looking at it years ago but I think at the time I would’ve needed to buy a GPS device. Although that doesn’t seem quite right as my phone would’ve had GPS. Anyway, I didn’t sign up and I’ve only been doing it a week or so. It’s fun and I’ve found some places locally I never knew of.
Last night I finished the final book in the series…at about 2am! It’s a fantasy series set in a medieval style world with magic and dragons written by Robin Hobb (a pen name of Margaret Ogden). It consists of 16 books in five trilogies (one is a trilogy in four parts (tetralogy ?)), and has in the region of 4 million words. It’s like Game of Thrones, except it’s not brutal and miserable!
Introduction Scotland’s government has decided that from next year (from a tax perspective) they’ll be adding another tax band to Scotland. A 45 per cent income tax band for earnings between Ā£75,000 and Ā£125,140. Plus fiddling with the ranges and percentages of the other bands. So from the 6th April 2024 these will be the rates: Bands Band name Rate Ā£12,571 - Ā£14,876 Starter 19% Ā£14,877 - Ā£26,561 Basic 20% Ā£26,562 - Ā£43,662 Intermediate 21% Ā£43,663 - Ā£74,999 Higher 42% Ā£75,000 - Ā£125,140 Advanced 45% Above Ā£125,140 Top 48% The current ones are:
Here we are, the evening of the last day of the year (at least when I started writing this, took me a few more days to finish!) and I wonder what did happen? I also wonder what will come next year? This time last year I did make a list in dynalist of what I wanted to do in 2023, and I thought I should probably look back on it before I (blindly) make 2024’s list.
There’s a website, onetypedpage.com, which is just that. Each day people submit a photo of their typed page and it gets hosted on this blog. I’ve known about it for a long time but only recently started going back to it. There appears to be some comments about moderation and conflict, but as far as I ever saw it was a quiet enjoyable site to read through with a cup of tea.
Seen a few posts recently with people listing their subs. Thought I’d join in. I really don’t like subscriptions, and would much rather pay once and be done with it. Once you join and commit, they have you, it can be hard to leave. The upside is that if you don’t like it, it’s minimal expense to stop. Photoshop used to be hundreds of pounds but now it’s just ten. Of course in those days, 30 day demos or similar were common.
I have to admit my previous one has become overwhelmed with things that there is no longer anywhere to write. It is now home to radio books and magazines, a few other books I keep meaning to read, a Hobonichi I’ve yet to write in, and more. I keep meaning to tidy it up. We recently inherited a nice bureau from my wife’s grandparents, and her mum kindly brought it up to our house.
I’ve decided to setup a dedicated blog for amateur radio. You can find it at gm5alx.uk. Hoping to actually write more on it…š
Several years ago, when we were living in California, I started thinking about getting my amateur radio licence. I don’t remember why I started on this, but it seemed like something I’d enjoy and be interested in. I didn’t end up doing anything, as you had to sit exams at test centres and it wasn’t convenient. I soon forgot about it and did nothing more. Last summer, the same thoughts occurred to me again, not sure why, but I started looking into radio.
Book cases, book shelves, whatever you call them, I am drawn towards them. It is always interesting to see what people put on theirs. Both the books and also the trinkets or sundries. It’s such a big collection of stories, both contained within the book but of the person that owns them. What is the journey that this book has come along to get to this shelf? What did the reader think when they got the book, when (if) they read it?
I’ve been meaning to write this up for the last 14 months! I also took a lot more photos for this post but I don’t seem to be able to find any…š¤· A while back, in 2021, I was making a wiki note on large format cameras, specifically 4x5 cameras. Jack noticed this and asked me if I would be interested in his B&J Press camera. Very generous of him! Postage to the UK wasn’t the cheapest, but it was still far cheaper than trying to find anything here.
Annual recaps seem to be the trend in social media and apps. It’s quite interesting actually. Reddit did one, which told me the scary number of hours I’ve spent on the app. Including spending 25 hours on /r/leica š¤« Steam now do one and shows me how much time I spend on games. I knew I didn’t play that much but I was surprised by how little I did actually play!
This post sat as a draft for a long time when I was using blot. Whilst migrating my site to this new Hugo one I saw the pictures I took and thought I might as well write it up quickly. Background I ended up with both the 50mm f/2 and the 60mm f/2.4. The first as I wanted a longer lens for when out and about, but still light and quick focusing, and the latter as I started scanning my film with my camera.
Print out your photos. Please remind me to do this. It’s so fun to hold them in your hand and look at them. You really study them when they’re there and it’s not a queue of 200 images to get through. Doesn’t need to be a fancy printer, or perfectly colour matched. Just print them out on whatever you have. Don’t have a printer? Get one of these for immediate fun!
A few weeks ago I managed my first successful attempt at film development. Whilst I was very excited that it worked, the next thing was actually seeing the images. I did take a tiny picture of several frames using my phone and the filmdev app. That was fun just to see that there was something. The next thing is making larger images. My two choices were scanning onto the computer or dark room printing.
My dad likes photography, but he doesn’t really have a camera. He used to own one, think it was a Praktica SLR. He’s told me the story of dropping it in the sand at a beach and also of setting up a darkroom space in his bathroom, but then never getting a chance to use it before moving. Having said he likes photography, I’m not really sure how many photos he’s taken.
This, the 35mm f/1.4, just arrived today from eBay. I fitted it to my X-E4 and took a selfie in front of the mirror. It’s night time so it’s dark and I decided just to focus on the camera not my tired eyes. I can’t believe how light this lens is, even with the hood on. It’s lighter than my 50mm f/2. It’s quite long, particularly with the hood but because of its lightness it balances nicely on the X-E4.
I’m referring to used prebuilt computers, and not laptops…all of those are prebuilt. Things like HP or Dell or Lenovo desktop or server machines. I do quite like them. They offer good performance at a good price, and generally there are loads of them available. They’re typically ex-business machines and have enjoyed a comfy life in an office. They usually have good CPUs and if you’re lucky you can get decent ram and SSDs in them already.
After the previous attempt, where I concluded the developer had expired, I was determined to continue. First I had to purchase some new developer. I decided to go for Kodak HC-110. This appears to be a classic developer from the beginning of time and it’s high dilution ratio and long shelf life attracted me to it. Initially, I thought it was more expensive than the Ilford ilfosol 3, but that’s because I didn’t notice I was buying 1 litre of HC-110 vs.
This isn’t my first attempt at film development, that was at the beginning of this year with trying out the 4x5 camera. I’ve been meaning to write about that for 9 months, maybe I’ll get to it soon… This was my first attempt at 35mm film though (black and white, obviously). Up to now I’ve just sent them away to filmdev.co.uk as they do a good job and are competitively priced.