Furgone Conclusion

I was listening to another Sleepy Time History podcast. It kept putting me to sleep, which was, of course, at least part of the intention. It was interesting as most of their podcasts are: How Humans Lost Their Fur. I wanted to know more, and  while I do intend to get back to the 2+ hour podcast, I wanted to know the essentials in summary form, so I hit the internet for just the very basics. This is my summary.

Scientists have deduced that we lost our fur between 1.2 and 2 million years ago. I know that is almost a million year difference between the two dates, but there was no observer available to take notes. From what I can gather, I think the consensus is that 1.2 is the likeliest time frame for the process to have been completed, but it may very well have begun earlier.

They ascertain this by trying to trace the MC1R gene, which is the gene that governs skin pigmentation. No, I don't know how they trace this.

When our ancestors had fur, which they did by the way, their skin underneath the fur would have been light. When they began to lose their fur, it was important that their skin would then become dark as a defense against the strong African sun, under which humanity began.

Under those conditions, dark skin was advantageous to human health and well-being, so natural selection over scads of time favoured darker skinned individuals to be healthier and more successful in life and, therefore, in reproducing.

It happened because of climate change. There was a time way way back when the climate became drier, so the vegetations also changed to more grassland and less tropical forest. When the forests shrank, the ancestors of those who became humans, would have found it advantageous to stand up and walk more. Walking upright is much superior to ambulating on all fours over distances. An upright position would also better allow them to scan for dangerous predators. It became an evolutionary advantage to walk upright, so that is what occurred over thousands of generations  

Our furriness became a hindrance because fur was an insulator in the African heat, humans began to shed their fur. However, with less insulation they also began to require another way to deal with heat. Glands developed to cause early humans to sweat, and the subsequent evaporation helped to dissipate the bodily heat. Concomitantly, humans also developed dark skin to help protect from the harsh rays.

That is how exploring the gene that controls skin colour helped scientists to determine when humans also lost their fur, for the loss of fur and the development of dark skin occurred in connection with each other.

That seems to be the bare bones of the prevailing theory as best as I can understand it.

Almost ironically, about a million years later, when a group of homo sapiens left Africa for Europe, dark skin became a disadvantage in the long winters of the ice age in Europe. People no longer required protection from the harsh African sun but rather needed to absorb all of the vitamin D  that they could from the weaker northern sun. Light skin then became an evolutionary advantage that natural selection favoured in more northerly regions.

Porches and Sky

We went looking for porches, and we found two good ones right on our main street. I find myself processing a little more liberally lately. When I accidentally warped this porch, I liked it, so I kept it. I also removed a lot of distraction such as drainpipes and satellite dishes. I've also been doing that more freely.

The other porch was along the opposite side of street over The Granary, which I pronounce with a long a although many use a short a. There is an apartment, perhaps two, up there. I wonder if people use the porch in the evenings.

That same evening, Sue called be over to the back window to see the clouds at sunset. They were great clouds in themselves, but have a look at the red spots toward the bottom of the clouds. Isn't that terrific?

There are building and fences in that scene, but I boldly cloned them away. It's how I am rolling right now. They were distractions that had nothing to do with the sky, which was the star of the show.

Going for the Gold

Sue had a golden hour prompt to fulfill for her photo group, so Saturday evening took us to the river opposite townhall, which can light up well at that time of day We got there shortly after 7 although, Alexa told us that golden hour would occur between 7:30 and 8:30. There was a longish wait, and I will spoil it somewhat by telling y'all that there wasn't a great version of golden hour that evening. The almost blank sky didn't help.

My first shot is a selfie as we waited on the bench.

People passed by on the bridge. I took a few photos from a distance, but I managed to catch this fellow in the gap right under the flags. I kept him and the flags in volour but turned the rest to b&w. I was just playing. I did a lot of playing with this set of photos.

It was a long zoom with a phone followed by severe cropping
because I couldn't get very close.

I took a short amble the other way from townhall and saw some pretty good light on the Hawthorn factory along the far bank. I liked this composition, but I wisded that the Hawthorne were larger.

I did zoom in more on the Hawthorn in another take (not shown), but I missed the nice foreground of the first photo. So, I put my dubious Photoshop skills to play some more by deciding to try to embiggen the Hawthorn section on the original photo. It's the vey same photo as above, but I just enlarged the building part. I've never done this before, and I think it worked reasonably well. This was primarily done manually. I think it’s a more effective photo with a definite subject beyond the leading line of the trampled grasses in the foreground. 

We continued to wait for the light, and about a half hour later I wandered over that way again and took another shot of the Hawthorn. My playtime with this photo involved adding clouds to make the sky and photo a little more interesting. Sky replacement is another editing trick that I have not used much.

A few minutes later I returned to our spot looking townhall and took a photo of its refection in the water. I then inverted it in edit. I also made a b&w version of this one as you are about to see. 

Sue and I both tried various photos of townhall during the course of the evening, but finally, the building caught some shadows along with the light, so I took this one near the end of our shoot. No, the colour and tonality weren't as good as they appear here, but an image is just a collection of pixels, and it is more than okay to polish them up a bit.

A Surprising Loss

I had been watching the Montreal Canadiens all spring as they had a pretty good run, winning two playoff rounds in 7 games each. Because hockey is a tough game at the best of times, it is very gruelling to play two consecutive, long series. In fact, to win the ultimate prize could take 4 series. This is why the Stanley Cup is generally considered to be the hardest championship to win. By hardest, I mean, physically.

While this post is not about that, it helps to set the stage for the rest of this post.

In each home game the Canadiens had a vaunted player from the past, bring out the torch before the initial puck drop. The selected player would walk into the arena with torch, and then he would lift it high. At that moment, all the video screens as well as the ice surface would also burst into flames.

Like this ↓ . (It only takes a minute.)

The man in the video was Claude Lemieux, and he had the honour of carrying the torch on Monday night. Then, on Thursday, around noon, a message popped up on my screen that he was dead. Three days after the honour of carrying the torch, he was gone. What a shock in this weird world for a championship athlete to expire so suddenly and at such a young age. Here I am, anything but a good athlete, hanging on at 78, aches and pains included.

Such is the randomness of life and why we must cherish the days as best we can even though there are some days that we are happy to see the back of. Bad days are a part of life, so we try to make the next day a little bit better, or the day after that. Sometimes, we might even raise our own little metaphorical torches because, somehow, we have made it through another day, which is usually highly preferrable to the alternative

Background

The Montreal Canadiens have long had the line from Flanders Fields emblazoned in their dressing word wall in big letters: "To you from failing hands we throw/The torch; be yours to hold it high." Often, on special occasions, the team will employ a torch in their ceremonies.

The pictures on the wall are former Montreal players who have been inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
There are quite a few there to keep the present players humble but inspired.

PS: It was later learned that Claude had taken his own life, which must even increase the sadness of the family. Even later than that, the family also posted this.

No Summer Flowers

Now that spring is fleeing, we returned one more time to the crocus lawn by the abandoned building. As we suspected, except for a feel rather bedraggled and droopy tulips, the spring bulbs are done. We wondered if summer flowers might emerge in due course, but it doesn't seem likely. Grass is already in the ascendancy in the flowerbed.

I don't think I have shown the  building this year, so here it is along with a lilac bush, which I think is the last blooming thing that we shall see there this year. Soon the lilacs will also fade away until next year, but if all goes well, we will visit the crocuses, squill, tulips and lilacs again next year,.

I included the lilacs in another photo, looking back to the former machine shop. You have see already this building this spring, but not from this direction.

We walked around back. This is what the little building looks like back there, assuming that you can spot it amidst the foliage.

At that point the river rages on the other side of me. I experimented with another GIF. I may be getting the hang of this GIF thing. I'll try not to overdo gifting you these GIFs but just include them occasionally.

Caturday 91: AI Reveals Kitty

Whatever one thinks of AI, it is here for better or worse. I have found it very helpful in some searches. It also assists me to so some things faster in photo editing — things that I could once do manually (or in theory I could) but I can do faster and better with AI. For example: if I want to brighten a person just a little, I can do it more efficiently with AI, which can select and mask the person, so that I can then do what I wish: ie brighten. While I, supposedly, could always do that before, selecting manually was both time-consuming but also not as accurate.

As is my wont, I got carried away with the background info in the first ↑ paragraph, so onto my little presentation for the day.

While I was lingering (not malingering) up in my den with my wonky back, Sue was attending to the planters — getting them ready for the bedding annuals that we shall soon purchase. She happened to look up into the tree where she spied a very pretty kittycat that had navigated itself to a spot where the young robins like to hang out.

Puss was partly hidden, and I wondered if AI might reveal him or her. I used the remove tool in Lightroom to get rid of the branch, and it filled in a good approximation of the rest of the cat.

I was happy with it but then thought that the new eye (left to us) could be better. I experimented with various fixes but eventually just cloned and flipped the right eye.

Trying to improve the little eye with my human brain and hands took much, much longer that it took AI to make the cat. I had to work through various processes until I eventually decided to simply clone and flip the right eye. 

The lesson, or one lesson, might be that humans and artificial intelligence work best together.

Happy Caturday! It's been awhile since Lacey left us, but we do remember.

Keyboarding in Seniordumb

In the past, I have noted and posted that I am seemingly unable to type the word, morning, correctly. It happens just about each and every time, but of course, I got it in the first try in this sentence. Of course I did. My attempted morning may, sometimes, be so off that I might flummox online spellcheck which cannot think of what in tarnation this poor fellow is trying to type.

There are other keyboarding issues. For one thing, I often get two consecutive letters in the wrong order. The word, from, is a good example. It usually comes out as form. Of course, I got also that correct this time, just when I am trying to make a point. Muts instead of must is another example. There are many more, but I am sure that you get the point.

Another common typo comes in consecutive words. Too often I put the space in the wrong place — lik ethis. It can be frustrating. 

In part, I blame my different keyboards. My current computer keyboard is not the standard PC layout: more like a hybrid Apple keyboard. Although I've been using it for almost two years, I still reach wrongly for those darn cursor keys. They are just off a little bit form (you see, I just did it again and not on purpose) the standard layout. I too often hit the down arrow when I want the left arrow and so on and so forth.

It doesn't help that my tablet keyboard is yet another creature entirely. So where does muscle and brain memory come into play?

I have thought of giving up this computer keyboard and purchasing a new standard Windows one, but that seems rather frivolous. This was supposed to be my ultimate keyboard because it even lights up. But then there is also that slightly off and provoking CAPLOCKS thing. Oops.

Although I like to blame the keyboard, there are brian (oops again, I mean brain) issues too. I just had to fix an already posted blog in which I called a plant, St Anne's Lace when it should have been Queen Anne's Lace. I had proofread that peice (piece) too. My only defence is that there is a reel called St Anne's. It's a fiddle classic.

I love the tune and could more or less (emphasis on less) play it at one time but probably definitely not at that speed.