Ransen's Blog

Sometimes, when studying for my A-levels years ago, in Bigglsewade, I'd go to the cemetery over the hedge. The hedge was at the end of our back garden. An unofficial path ran along that hedge, passed all the back gardens, to the small road which ran through the cemetery. The road was (is?) only opened for funerals. In the center of the cemetery is a building which looks like a small church, but I don't think ever was. It is a sort of storehouse for the grave diggers and gardeners. In my last year of school, I'd go into the cemetery and study Physics or Eng. Lit. sitting on one of the benches, near evergreen trees under a blue sky. It was a pleasant place to stay, though not really very good for serious study. Too relaxing and the curved surface of the bench would make setting the books down and writing awkward. In Yokohama, Japan, about eight years later, my teacher Hideko Imai Sensei took me to the British Commonwealth Cemetery.  If is ful

The third verse of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam goes like this: And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before The Tavern shouted--"Open then the Door! You know how little while we have to stay, And, once departed, may return no more." It is one of the poems I'm learning by heart. (Not the whole thing, it is far too long, but the first few verses.)  Awake my little ones and fill the cup... Anyway the second line has, to me, a sort of tension: "Open then the Door!" Because it would be more natural to say say " open the Door then " but that would not rhyme. So " then" is put in the "wrong" place... "Open then the Door!" ...and gives me pleasure. It happens in other rhyming poems. And I noticed that I get the same feeling of tension when playing backgammon. If you don't know anything about backgammon you can go to Wikipedia. Like poker it is a game of

I saw the flower of the melissa plant on my balcony and fell in love with the curves. The flowers die pretty quickly and the one I wanted to look at with my Veho was a poor shriveled up thing by the time I got round to it. Luckily others had blossomed in the meantime, but even then it took me a while to find one which matched my inital impression. Here are the first attempts, the width of each of these photos is about 1cm. Then I found her: A tiny thing but leaping up out of the green with a hairy tongue sticking out and a smaller spiral one almost hidden within the mouth. Ah, those curves, those curves... especially the upper one going up at more than 45° then sloping over towards the mouth. Is it just me?

Are you one of those mediocre minded sheep humans who thinks that people who wear sandals with socks are sexual perverts (at worst) or unimaginative techies (at best)? If so, switch off your brain (already in standbye it seems), stop reading this and get back to posting photos of your latest meal on FaceBook. I've decided that instead of staying in the summer office all day with steaming sweaty smelly feet it would be best to wear sandals, with or without socks. But since I live in a fashion dictatorship (where fat girls show off rolls of flesh above tight jeans and thin women clump loudly and clumsily around on shoes that make them look as if they have two wooden legs and men wear long floppy knitted hats because, because, well, because, why???)... Hmmm. Got distracted. Anyway. As I was saying since I live in a fashion dictactorship I have to wear sandals with socks, secretly . So I have to find black sandals and always were them with black socks. Well Owen, I can h

Nostalgia is not necessarily for a long time ago. I'm oddly nostalgic for last Christmas. Christmas 2014. The cat had an ischemia the day before Christmas Eve. I could not believe it, suddenly his back legs just went floppy. Within a few seconds. He started to drag himself around the room, back legs laying out behind him like two extra shorter tails. It was horrible and sad to watch. So Christmas Eve was spent at various vets, and the conclusion was, that he'd probably regain some control and power in his legs, but not be as he was before. I did not believe them. We were told to help him regain this power and control by lifting his back end up with a scarf under his belly and accompanying him on his walks around the garden. Only using two front legs fo 90% of the work. It was a terrible time. Ok, not terrible like being in a country invaded by ISIS, or having a nearest and dearest being diagnosed with incurable cancer. I know, I know, but I have got it all in

I've already blogged about how much I like my Veho (and how to get 200X magnification out of it ) so when I saw a tiny spider on my mint plant I decided it was time to get the USB microscope out again. I brought the mint plant into the house onto the computer table, but as usual getting things into focus and at a decent magnification is a bit of a struggle. I managed like this: You can see the tiny dot of the spider in real life and its image from the Veho on the screen. It is about 1mm large. I balanced the microscope stand on a book and a box and was careful not to break the web of the spider: It was disturbed by me poking around in its jungle and started to run around a bit. I managed to get a few more nice shots: The motion blur below was caused by the spider running around too much. Aren't nature, science and engineering wonderful?

  Nice photo eh? Who should get the credit? I think credit should be given to... The universe for being so strange and beautiful. The designers of the optics of the camera. The designers of the electronics of the camera. The programmers who wrote the software inside the camera. The production engineers who put it all together so reliably and cheaply. The photographer did 0.0001% of the work compared with those above.