A Visit To Duncan Today,

so there will be only one post,

as soon as I have posted it I will be off to the number 54 bus stop, back to Tuesday, Diana had left before me,

it was a grey day as I made my way to the station,

at Foxgrove Lodge, it was Christmas, Rudolph was here!

along with a few other Christmas baubles,

and ribbons,

not forgetting the tree,

and nice it looked too,

into the station and I bought my tickets for the next few weeks, thankfully the staff there checked to make sure I was not travelling on a strike day, as it happens I was, so for those few days I will be visiting Duncan on a Thursday instead of a Wednesday,

next over the road to the number 54 bus stop, in the distance a team of workers are getting the green ready for Christmas,

by the bus stop and looking over to the shops opposite,

the lamppost are decorated with lights and a ribbon,

lots of banging and crashing behind me, it is I guess the base for the skating rink,

with more pieces ready to be put in place,

another look at the lampposts,

the decorations all looking nice,

off of the bus at This 'N' That,

next to the florists,

the over the road to the shop to drop off the printing I had completed for Graham,

back into a grey park, hardly any leaves now left on the trees, feet up for a coffee and a documentary about the Yeti, which seemed appropriate for the time of year, I then normally watch a couple of quiz shows, but because of some sport thing all of the schedules were changed, so a few funnies on YouTube, after my evening meal again all of the normal programmes went mustang, so a Battlebots it was then, I prefer the UK version, but this was all that was on that I fancied watching, after which it was a Midsomer Murder, thankfully one I had not seen before, during which Diana arrived home, so bringing Diana up to speed about the plot it was feet up for a coffee, we looked at a brochure of Christmas food that was going to be available in the shops at the beginning of Christmas week, list made before watching a New Tricks, and we were off to bed.

I Had My Day All Planned Out,

it went like this,

Diana had already left for work, so my day started, after posting the blog and my daily exercises, dump the rubbish downstairs in the bin room, shower and breakfast with a mug of coffee, after which download some paperwork for the shop and print it, I also printed our tickets for a planned trip to Battersea Power Station, then a read of the newspapers and a few other web sites I visit, 

then the time of year that I wish I had neat handwriting, it was the time of year to start on the Christmas cards, it is a fact that many times I can not even read my own handwriting, it is a curse I have had for all of my life, and try as I might I just can not make a neat job of writing, I still remember to this day the English literary master at school commenting to me whilst handing back the classes homework, "Kemp, your writing looks like a spider has dropped in your ink well and crawled across the page", which as it happens is a pretty fair assessment of my handwriting, next a few telephone calls, for some reason one of the chaps at the shop had his Inland Revenue contributions this month increase by a factor of three, as indeed did the shops National Insurance bill, so I was asked to see what the problem was, so telephone calls to the bookkeeper and the accountant, it appears that a wrong IR code was sent to one of the staff which impacted the shops NI bill, apparently it will all be sorted out over the next few months, it is one of life's strange ironies, when you owe the IR the money it is taken toot sweet, when a refund is due it will be 'sorted out over the next few months', next a email to ask where 2 of the 3 CDs I had ordered and paid for on the 8th of this month were, the promised delivery date was the 14th, so I allowed another couple of weeks but still 2 of the CDs had not arrived, the reply was that a postal workers strike might have held them up, which really does not explain how one of the three arrived and the other two from the same company have not, another of life's little mysteries, Diana arrived home in the late afternoon, again some sport had disrupted our normal evenings television, but after our evening meal an Endeavour that we had not watched before was being shown, which was very enjoyable, we rounded off the evening with a New Tricks before we were off to bed.

Every Autumn Millions Of Birds,

fly from Alaska to New Zealand for the winter,

photograph Dhaval Vargiya/Unsplash, but one of these, a bar-tailed godwit, (Limosa lapponica), fitted with a mini tracker, flew 13,560 kilometres (8,425 miles) without stopping, and setting a new Guinness record in the process, all because of a detour which added an extra 500 kilometres to its travels, recorded data showed that the five-month-old bar-tailed godwit took off on October 13 from the wetlands of the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta in Alaska, followed the regular route across the Pacific Ocean down to New Caledonia and through the Tasman Sea, before making an unexpected 90-degree turn that saw it head towards Tasmania rather than New Zealand, Dr. Woehler estimates that the bird lost “half or more of its body weight,” during the 11-day continuous flight, but it made it to dry land safely, setting a new Guinness record for long-distance bird flight,

image credit and news: Pukorokoro Miranda Shorebird Centre, “Short-tailed shearwaters and mutton birds can land on the water and feed,” Eric Woehler of Birdlife Tasmania told ABC News. “If a godwit lands on water, it’s dead. It doesn’t have the webbing in its feet, it has no way of getting off the water. So if it falls into the water from exhaustion, if bad weather forces it onto the ocean surface, that’s it.” Scientists were able to track the godwit’s record flight with the help of a tiny tracker that only weighed 5 grams, technological advancements have allowed researchers to track such small species of birds without endangering them, as adding any kind of significant weight to a creature that weighs only between 300 and 400 grams could put its life in danger, “It’s one thing to put a satellite tag on an albatross that weights five or more kilos but it’s a completely different story in terms of technology and ethics to put a tracker on a bird that weighs only 300 or 400 grams,” Dr. Woehler said, scientists have yet to understand how birds like the bar-tailed godwit are able to navigate such large distances without stopping and without getting lost, 13,560 kilometres (8,425 miles) without stopping, and the birds find their way there at only 5 months old, how amazing is all of that?

What A Neat Idea If It Works,

and apparently it does!

an unnamed man recently took to the Taiwanese social media platform Dcard to share a functional barcode tattoo, which seems like a great idea, just hold your arm over the scanner, and no more cards to carry, 

but, if the tattoo artist makes one of the bars too thick or too thin, or if one of the gaps between them is a bit wider than those in the actual barcode, it will not work as intended, but for the moment it is working fine, but if as time progresses will the gentleman's skin sag or change the spacing in any way? and just a thought, could anyone use the above scan to buy goods and the charge would go on to his account? just thinking, 

but for now all seems to be going well, so that is the goods paid for, all I would also need is a Nectar bar code tattooed on my arm, oh and my rail card, and I almost forgot, my loyalty card bar codes for M & S, Sainsburys, Lidl, Boots, Aldi and Waitrose, and I just remembered my Two Travel for One joint railcard, wait a second, I will need a bigger arm!

Sunday Has Raced Around Again,

the weeks just fly by,

we started our Sunday with a roast lunch as usual, first a read and a sherry,

followed by mussels in a white wine sauce with garlic bread, 'Cheers!',

for our main course, roast pork, crackling and vegetables, with gravy for Diana,

sans gravy for myself,

eyes down and tuck in,

another 'Cheers!', as our dessert arrived,

a crème brulée, after which it was a afternoon of Columbo, in the evening we had a few snacks including SkyFlakes as we watched a couple of Midsomer Murders, before we were off to bed.

Released In 1927,

the film Metropolis paved the way for the division of humans, between Them and Us,

the German science-fiction film Metropolis presents a highly stylized futuristic city where a beautiful and cultured utopia exists above a bleak underworld populated by mistreated workers, when the privileged youth Freder (Gustav Fröhlich) discovers the grim scene under the city, he becomes intent on helping the workers, it is a silent black & white movie, I have made a post about it as it's art deco still film and posters appealed to me, below are just some of the poster I found at the Gods And Foolish Grander BlogSpot, 

for myself what amazing and I guess for the time futuristic posters, as the last one askes, "What's the world coming to?" it seems just as apt saying it then as it is saying it today.

Below Is The Playboy Photograph,

that change the way we view photographs on the Internet,

photograph Dwight Hooker, 1972, and gave us the worldwide JPEG standard, in 1972, Lena Sjööblom for the first and last time posed nude for a magazine, Playboy, meanwhile at the University of Southern California’s Signal and Image Processing Institute, electrical engineer Alexander Sawchuk and his team were working on image-processing algorithms for computers, the team’s work would eventually contribute to the development of the JPEG file format, one of the most common image formats we still use today, the researchers were bored with the old test images and wanted a photo with a human face, interesting textures, and a glossy finish to test the limits of the technology, and by shear happenstance a November 1972 issue of Playboy just happened to be lying around, the top 5.12 inches of the page used fitted into the Muirhead wirephoto scanner, making a 512 x 512 pixel image, the image suited their purposes so well, they gave the scans to other researchers working on similar image processing tasks, and it eventually travelled so widely that it was accepted as a standard across the industry, for years, Lena herself had no idea any of this was happening, She was living quietly in Sweden, unaware of the ruckus her photoshoot had stirred among computer geeks in the US. It was not until she was invited to the Fiftieth Annual Conference of the Society for Imaging Science and Technology in 1997 that she understood the scope at which her image was being used, let alone as the gold standard for more than twenty years, She had never even accessed the internet until then! I have no idea if Lena ever received any royalties for her photograph other than from Playboy, I guess not, as Playboy gave permission to use the photograph for educational and research purposes, for the full story of how this photograph impacted the graphics world, have a look here at gizmodo, fascinating.

I Left Early In The Morning,

John was driving up from the coast,

to Steve and Kai's home, Steve, John and myself were going to visit a few tropical fish shops in Essex,

it was a nice day,

as I walked to Steve's home, the trees now bare of leaves,

I passed Cator Park where football was the order of the day,

we were soon hurtling towards the Dartford Bridge,

but going north we used the Blackwall tunnel,

totally irrational, I always seem to worry about what would happed if the Thames should ever break through the tunnel walls, we had a grand time looking around 4 shops and garden centres, before making our way back to Steve's home,

Steve had made a small purchase and once safely housed we were off,

to Miso in Beckenham for our evening meal, Steve and Kai,

John and myself, 'Cheers!',

Steve very kindly dropped me off at the tennis courts, so a short walk home, I just beat Diana to a coffee at home where it was feet up for a Midsomer Murder, looking at the television schedule they had been showing episodes back to back on Saturday evening, and luckily this was one of many we had not watched before, after which we were off to bed.