In a Field of Daisies

I frequently bemoan that I am no longer doing much photography, but I have another phone pic today, along with some editing in Photoshop. (I had a few posts in the queue and this was supposed to have been posted before yesterdays blog, which also contained photos.) 

About twice a year, we take heavier loads to the laundromat so as not to overburden our own washing machine. This time it was to wash floor mats.

While Sue waited inside, I went out to sit in the car. I looked up and saw a vintage car in a driveway just across the road.

I ambled over with my phone.

The hood was up, and I saw that the hobbyist was installing
quite a modern-looking engine.

Back home on the computer, I wondered if I could use AI to change the surroundings. After selecting the car I asked for a field of daisies to be placed around it. While I had pictured something different, this works for me.

Never look to closely when I do stuff like this because I don't get  into the painstaking details, so the shadows are wrong and perhaps other things too. I am just experimenting and am happy to have accomplished what I have.

As I often do, I also made a mono conversion. I think that was the best result on this occasion.

At least I am keeping my hand in the hobby to some degree.

Fixing the Light

While Sue dragged me about for shopping errands, I noticed interesting trucks on a construction site near WallyWorld. There is a truck meme/group on Flickr called HTT, Happy Truck  Thursday. The fellow who created the group is a Flickr friend, so I pay attention to the group to some degree although I seldom submit a photo.

But this was my chance, so I remembered to return with my camera. It was early evening, around 7:30, and I was surprised to see the sun already so low and the light so dim. The trucks were in shadow, and the sky was hazy (more info at the end), but of course, I squeezed the shutter regardless. 

Back at the computer, I did my best to breathe some life into the images, including adding a fake sky over the blank one in the original photo. I was trying to fix the light, as it were, and just for fun, I chose a sunset sky. As was the case yesterday, I don't mind playing around with photos when they were taken in poor conditions.

Once again, it is all for casual fun to share in passing. There is nothing exemplary about this stuff.

Of course, as is my wont*, I did mono versions as well. I can't seem to help myself.

At the very least, it was the first time in a long while that I made an effort to go out a photoshoot just for me. Lately, I mostly seem to tag along with Sue when she wanders about with her phone.

The next morning when I looked out, I saw that the atmosphere was still hazy. It reminded me a little of the smoke from last year's forest fires. I wondered if I was just imagining things, for I hadn't heard anything about it. Then, on social media I saw a map that showed that, yes, we are located within a vast area that is being affected by smoke from forest fires.

* Wont: one's customary behavior in a particular situation.

Then and Now

Telephone Operators in 1966: I came across this photo and messaged it to my grandkids to show them phone technology when I was their age and even older than they are.

from Montreal Golden Oldies Facebook group

Although most of us were never really in the presence of a telephone switchboard, the photo depicts  how it was back then. Just a year later than the above photo, in 1967, I personally became somewhat familiar and reliant on a smaller, one-operator switchboard.  I was at university and away from Sue. We would write regularly, but long distance calling was expensive back then. However, I found a work-around. 

My residence was in an old building. My room was on the fourth and top floor of the building shown below, but the ground floor had offices and housed the telephone switchboard for the whole university. I also remember that there was a barbershop in the basement, but I don't remember much else.

Johnson Hall, then called Admin (Administration Building), was my first residence at University.
I was up on the fourth floor. (photo by Bill Badzo*)

Once I learned that the university had a direct telephone line to Toronto and that it was just downstairs in my residence, I would periodically head down in the evening to see if the line was available to make a phone call to Sue. I'd make my request and wait around for the line to become available. Then, milady and I would have a brief conversation with me in the presence of the operator.

It only 50 years ago, but I think it must seem like almost prehistoric times to my grandkids.

Now I am thinking of other realities of that time, for although long distance was expensive, some things weren't.

I would take the bus home from university on most weekends. The fare from Guelph to Mississauga was only three dollars. Even as a poor student, I could afford that.

I am also thinking of the frequent letters that I wrote to Sue. I could afford the few cents postage cost and would write almost daily. Now that I am as a senior, a letter stamp costs more than a dollar here in Canada, so I avoid sending mail as much as possible. 

Meanwhile, Sue and I still don't have a proper long distance plan for our cell phones, but with email and messaging, we very seldom need it. If we do need to contact a business by phone, there is almost always an 800 number. Frankly m'dear, no one in our family likes being on the phone. We message each other in almost all cases. On most mornings, for example, Sue and her sister text back and forth at some length.

* I found the photo of my residence via a Google search. Oddly enough, it is by one of Flickr contacts although I don't remember seeing it in his photostream. It's a small world after all.

 

They Are Much More Than Weird

October 2016: Sue and I are driving back from an autumnal vacation at the cottage. CBC is on the radio, and they are interviewing Frank Schaffer. I've mentioned him here recently and already linked to one of his videos.

Back 2016, Trump was running for election. I didn't know much about him except that he was not a good candidate. In this CBC interview, Shaeffer exposed Trump and how awful and dangerous the man was.

Schaefer was right then, and he's right now when he exposes present-day Republicans.

Recently, the Left has been calling Trump and his minions weird, but Frank goes beyond that in this video, and he does so powerfully. He reacts strongly to the GOP for making fun of a man, Tim Walz, who made sanitary products available to school girls. 

He goes beyond calling them weird by adding the noun perverts. Listen for less than 12 minutes, and see if you don't agree.

This is not a political blog, so I promise not to go on and on, but I am impressed by this strong statement. We can lean left or lean right, and that is okay, but the right, especially, has done more than lean lately, and is not exactly covering itself in honour and glory.

Caturday 67: Sabine Recognizes the iPad

Ready to Pounce

After posting Sabine playing with the iPad last week, I wanted to catch her recognizing the tablet before I opened it up for her. She did and was quite anxious for me to set it up so that she could spring into action.

Pursuant to my post last Monday, you can see that I once again doubled the height (266 to 532) and width (320 to 640). I then fiddled (below) with the height to try to eliminate the black bars. By guess and by golly and by trial and error, I think I succeeded by changing the height to 360. This wasn't necessary; I just wanted to see if I could do it.

I know that some of you cannot upload videos to Blogger for some reason, and I can't understand why. Could it be that you are capturing a very high res video or that the format isn't to Blogger's liking? Blogger can be very strange. I am guessing that you could upload to YouTube and then insert into Blogger from there. I used to do it that way in the past, but I no longer use the YouTube route.

Britishisms

British English seems so much richer and funner [sic] than North America English.

I much prefer whilst to while or whinge to whine, for example.

Sue and I laugh every time the sex act is referred to as getting your leg over, but isn't it just about perfect?

Then there is How's Your Father, which "derives from an old English music hall sketch or skit by the comedian Harry Tate. He'd be having a conversation, get tangled in a series of accidental double-entendres and innuendos and try to escape the tangle by asking, “How's your father?” as an innocuous social question."

Of course, in my life, I have only heard to refer to the sex act as in the second definition, below. I love it.

Speaking of the sex act, I have been reading some Victorian novels and love how they referred to it as congress. Isn't that so much better than "have sex?" 

I thought that I was done, but now I am remembering Inspector Morse, who poked fun at his young sergeant, Detective Lewis who would modestly refer to it as rumpy pumpy.

I'm sure that there are many more, but those are the ones that come to mind this morning.

Little Walks and Photos

This week, I've taken a few photos while out and about but still not with the big camera.

After the heat wave finally ended, Sue and I went for a little walk along the bridge trail. After reaching the span over the river, we turned back. It was then that I took this photo from the trail, looking down into Hackberry park. It's just a phone photo, but it turned out pretty well. 

The next day, Wednesday, found us on the section of the Riverwalk Trail near the arena. I had my compact camera with me this time. This trail parallels the river, but there are a couple of short paths that lead down to the water. The river is running very low right now despite the fact that it has been a fairly rainy summer, at least up until the last week or two.

What you see in the photo is actually a distributary with the main channel on the other side of the island in the picture. Nevertheless, there is quite a torrent during the spring melt.

We did not get right down to the water because the path is sloping, rocky and twiggy beyond where I took the photo. By twiggy, I mean, just look at the next photo.

Back on the main trail again, I took a photo looking at the bank on the opposite side of the river.

It was a nice enough stroll on a moderate day without many nasty insects to spoil the outing.