Change of direction

I have been finding it more difficult to keep up with this blog, so am having a rest from it for a while, but I am continuing with Micromeanderings through the microscope

More learning

I'm back at uni note taking. Today it was physics and computing. I came across a new word - PETABYTE. Investigating this further via Google I learn that a petabyte is 1 000 000 000 000 000 bytes which apparently collates to one quadrillion (short scale) bytes or 1 billiard (long scale) bytes. What is more, petabytes aren't the largest units, there are a great many more. A whole new vocabulary of mind boggling dimensions.

Enough to drive me to need some rather strong coffee in order to try and get a handle on some of this.

Family history

I am not long back from a trip to North Yorkshire with my mum. Inevitably there were lots of reminiscences as we drove through the places where she spent her childhood. While we were driving across the moors I saw a sign to Fryup, the place my father's grandfather retired to and we decided to take a detour.

Quite a while before my father died (nearly thirteen years ago) he started writing down some of his memories. It has long been my intention to collate all the material, I think maybe this trip has been the impetus to make a start on putting together some of my parents' memories.  So, when I got back to Lancaster I went up into the loft to retrieve all his writings and mish mash of photos. I realise the project is going to be a long one!

My father's grandfather, Thomas, retired to Fryup when he was 65. This is what my father remembered of Thomas' funeral, (he would have been 12 when Thomas died).

Grandfather’s funeral in the thirties John Featherstone

There was always something a bit awesome about the parlour; nobody went into it except on Sundays, and not very often then. I knew the prickly feel of the horsehair upholstered chairs, and marvelled at the black tablecloth which had my grandparents’ names embroidered in a circle at the centre, and there was a work basket which contained, among other things, a birthday book bound in blue and gold, with gilt edges. But on that day the coffin dominated the room, on a large, brass-knobbed bed. My cousins and I had been brought in to view the lying-in-state of our grandfather. The damask serviette was lifted from his face, and there underneath was a second cover made of the same sort of net, I thought, as those covers like umbrellas which protected meat from flies in those pre-fridge days. He looked as if he were asleep, not quite real, and very still. He looked clean and his beard was neatly trimmed “his last-long sleep” my aunt intoned. And we all cried.

Next day was the funeral. All the blinds and curtains in the house had been drawn since the moment of death, and talk had been quiet and serious. The parlour curtains were now drawn back on their heavy brass rings and the sash window removed to allow the coffin to be lifted through because the doors opened onto each other awkwardly. As the undertaker’s men were seeing to this, the mourners, gathered in the garden, joined in the singing of John Newman’s hymn “Lead kindly light”, and they carried him shoulder high along the path, past his gooseberry bushes, and out to the waiting farm dray. This had been specially scrubbed and the carthorse, its brasses shining in the thin November sun stamped its feet, white fetlocks specially scrubbed for the occasion too. The hymn finished, the mourners were ushered into the funeral cars. In those days and in those parts, and in all families such as ours, there was a strict “pecking order” at funerals and blood relatives only sat in the first car: the widow and her two sons and two daughters. Then children-in-law came next with the grandchildren.

The mourners were mostly completely dressed in black from head to foot, but my mother, as a daughter-in-law, had under protest, managed to get away with a coat of large black and white dog-tooth checks, for she knew it would have to serve for several more winters to come. The men all wore hard hats, or bowlers. In those days if you didn't have one, you borrowed one for a funeral. Grandma’s hat had a full heavy veil, not unlike those worn by royal ladies at funerals, but Grandma always wore a veil to her hats and they were always gathered under her chin, as if she might have been going sit side-saddle on a horse.

The black edged “intimation” to the funeral announced that the cortège would leave the residence in Fryup Street at 12.30 for the service at Glaisdale Methodist Chapel at 2.30, and we started our long cold journey, fulfilling the words of the hymn we had just sung “o’er moor and crag …”. The mist and cold wind from the sea seemed to come right into the cars, for there was, of course, no heating. But eventually the horse was brought quietly to a standstill outside the chapelyard. I remember there were two more hymns inside the chapel: “Rock of ages” and “Abide with me”, sung this time to the accompaniment of a harmonium, which was played by a lady who also led the singing, which came in short spasms in time with her foot pedalling. Then the internment in the chapelyard with its drystone wall holding back the moor and its sheep. After the service, a somewhat quicker journey back to Fryup Street, but not very quickly on the moorland roads (funeral cars never did go more than a leisurely speed in those days, and motorists deferred to them). The band of helpers had taken the bed back to its accustomed room upstairs, they had flung open the curtains, though by now the November dusk was asking for them to be drawn again, and the black cloth had been replaced by a white one to accommodate the funeral repast.

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My mother had recounted the story of the horse drawn coffin across the moors while we drove through Fryup Dale. She also told me a part of the story that my father didn't mention in his account - the fact that he and his mother got the giggles while the harmonium playing lady sang in spurts with her pedalling. I gather they rather disgraced themselves.

The following pictures show Thomas's wife, Betsy, outside Rowland House, together with a more recent picture of the house which was taken by my father probably about 20+ years ago.

Chapel and chapelyard  at Glaisdale where Thomas' funeral took place (photograph taken by my father at same time as the one of Rowland house)

Thomas Featherstone

Betsy Featherstone

My father, John Featherstone with his mother, Edith, and grandfather, Thomas, collecting kindling on Glaisdale

Animated time

I have been playing about with some ideas and learning new skills (very slowly) in the process.

I photographed some of the watch bits under the stereoscopic microscope.

The watch hand looks like half a pair of scissors, so with a bit of Photoshopping ...

With more Photoshopping using layers and transformations a series of pictures was built up which I then used to create a video.

By inserting a background image in the video software I then tried playing around with the Chroma key facility on the video software.

An alternative method was to insert a background into each of the original images, and then create the video.

Working on another idea using magnets, watch bits and video camera and this is the result:

Bigger sky

It is now over a month since the building was demolished.  Though there is no building, the demolition work continues with interminable noise and vibration.

Now we have a gaping hole which we are slowly getting used to.

It seems though that we have more sky; we are seeing uninterrupted sunsets rather than blazing red through broken windows. Also the skyline makes a clearer canvas for flitting bats to be seen.

Out on trusty steed

I decided to make the most of the blue skies and headed off in the direction of Claughton, stopping off at Woodies at the Crook o' Lune for a mug of tea and a spicy bean burger.

Total distance 13.53 miles
Average speed 7.6 mph
Top speed 13.1 mph

Rainy day activities

Click on the picture for more images

Once more into the blogosphere

It's not that I haven't been doing stuff, honest! I have just been remiss in writing posts about my activities.

Recently it has been time lapse stuff. Two books I have recently read (What a plant knows by Daniel Chamovitz and Sting in the tale by Dave Goulson) have inspired ideas.

Growth of plant tendrils round a stick is called thigmotropism, this can be seen in the time lapse sequence I took of one of the cucumber plants in the conservatory. Pictures were taken every two minutes for 8.5 hours from 8am. The curling and movement of the tendrils can be seen.

What can also be seen is the movement of the leaves, apparently this occurs in many species, Darwin made a study of it. So, there are plenty of opportunities to look at what happens with other plants.

I captured another type of leaf movement with the Oxalis plant on the kitchen window sill. A sleepless night and a 4 o'clock foray for a cup of tea and I noticed the plants leaves were all folded up. The camera was set up and left until I had a late and leisurely breakfast. A picture was taken every 5 minutes for 3 hours.

In the garden we have various plants attracting bees. In an attempt to see whether it was possible to identify what types of bumble bee were coming to the garden I set up the camera next to the thistle plant. 

The result has inspired lots of questions:

• how many visits per hour?
• what types of bumblebee?
• does type and number of bee vary with different times of the day?
• are all the flowers on the plant visited equally?
• what about other species of flowers?

Time for more

Yet again there has been a long gap since my last posting.

I have been playing around trying to learn some more Photoshopping techniques, and the following are the results of some of my playing around with time.

Time flies

Time has been flying by yet again, so I suppose the subject of this post is quite apposite.

 I have been considering putting together some images with a time theme, here are some I have been playing around with.

Time flies

With variations on this image:

"I don’t see the feathers in the wings, I just count the wings" Charley Harper

I like Charley Harper's philosophy, I got one of his calendars today for the princely sum of £1 - money well spent for some great pictures. A perspective I find rather easier to comprehend than the third year particle physics I had to gird my cerebral loins for earlier on in the week. Much of the lecture was beyond my ability to understand, but  what I have found out is that quarks can be up, down or strange, and can also be red, green or blue. I suspect the colours are not literal, but if they are, then could the Hadron Collider  become a Hadron Colliderkaleidoscope? Maybe it is fun being a quark (or even an antiquark), especially perhaps in the strange state.

Today, it has been electronics and the amazing world of silicon chips. I have learned that a single silicon chip can contain up to 3 BILLION transistors; mind boggling stuff. Well, I was amazed, but looking round at the students in the lecture theatre, I seemed to be in a minority of one. It was 9 in the morning I suppose; also, the words "this topic is not examinable" prefaced the lecture, so I imagine that was enough signal for most of the brains to shut down and think of more important stuff, like the weekend.  I think the use of biological molecules in today's technology sounds fascinating, and were I a student today, it would be the area I would be interested in studying.

Elusive bitterns

When we were in Australia, one of the pictures I took was this one. Just leaves under a multi stemmed (rooted?) tree you might think.

Having arrived back in the UK the pictures were perused  in more detail and we were amazed to find that a snake had been lurking in the leaves that I had been nonchalantly thrashing around in!

It was while we were wandering in Leighton Moss at the weekend that Q remembered this wild life spotting technique and wondered if we could apply it to our (so far) totally ineffectual efforts to actually see one of the reserve's famous inhabitants, the bittern. That we have failed to see a lot more of the reserve's inhabitants seems insignificant in comparison to our lack of tick against the bittern box.

So ... the idea was that we take LOTS of pictures of the bittern's natural habitat (reeds, reeds and more reeds) and then come home and scrutinise the results for that give-away profile.

Hmmm. it doesn't seem to have worked, or else we are not looking closely enough.  That said, we did as always have a great time.

The joys (or otherwise) of note taking

Yesterday I made the mistake of assuming that Frankland Coll and Frankland Lecture Theatre were one and the same place. I dutifully went to what I thought was the right venue and made assiduous notes on assembly language and computing. Bits, bytes and nibbles (!) flowed from my pen as I attempted to get to grips with Forever Loops and Jump Format, hex, dec and binary forms.

As I came out of the lecture I checked my phone ..... there had been a text about 5 minutes into the lecture from the student I was taking the notes for, to tell me that I was In The Wrong Room. Mortification! Not only that, I had suffered sitting through a not altogether (for me at least) enlightening lecture, taking notes that were of no use to anyone, unless I have happened on a new pastime - random note taking. I wonder if it could take off?

This and that

Hmmm, it's just as well I hadn't New Year's resolutioned that I would be more proactive with this blog. However, I have set up a blog Micromeandering which will highlight some of the microscopy I am hoping to do.

Time already seems to be flying in. Term started last week with a rude awakening; a new student, and four consecutive hours of three lectures of physics and one of engineering, and a 9am start to boot. Each of the four days I am in starts at 9, which means getting the bus at 8, and me not the most early morning oriented.

We have decided that after the Christmas over-indulgences we must Try And Reduce Intake. Yesterday was the end of  the best stage in this regimen i.e. the EATING of all the scrummy things that we still had that were not conducive to weight loss. Our logic is that once these have disappeared, there will be no temptation. I was discussing this method with younger daughter and she wasn't overly impressed with our system.

Not much snow here but much of the country seems to be grinding to a halt with the cold weather and snowfall. News has been rife with the notions of "sub zero temperatures" and "centimetres of snow", how is it that other countries can cope without all this hype? I suppose I am just in grumpy old woman mode.... Luckily we have had little more than a smattering of the white stuff, though I did have a rather unpleasant snowy journey back from my mother's last weekend.

Yesterday was cold but having layered up into Nanook of the North lookalikes we braved the elements to go to Leighton Moss. The birds had had more sense, and few were about. It did mean however that we were able to identify ALL the birds we saw (the grand total of three - robin, oyster catcher and crow).

The water at Leighton Moss was frozen and the only birds in view from the hide we went into were a couple of crows. The didn't seem to mind wading around in icy water and their behaviour seemed quite strange, almost as if they were trying to have a bath.

We then went into nearby Silverdale for a welcome hot coffee and soup and then a wander along the shore. On our way there I saw my first snowdrops of the year. When I lived in Scotland we always looked for the first snowdrops about now, they always seemed to come out round about my ex mother in law's birthday on the 21st.

Then back home to the warmth and a bird themed  jigsaw, not difficult but very satisfying.

Can spring be in the air?

Wonderful! a pair of bullfinches are near the garden. The weather is so dire and grey that it was well nigh impossible to get an even half decent picture.  The female was further along the fence acting coy in the overhanging brambles.

Photography foray

For a mere £1.50 we escaped the dire and dreich weather and visited our  local antiques centre. The huge space is shared between dealers who set out their arrays of multifarious items; a whole confusion of stock, some antique, some purporting to be antique, and then there is the completely baffling.