Tag Archives: Daz 3D

Tuesday 3rd December 2019 – DESPITE THE FACT …

… that I wasn’t intending to do much or to go far today, I’ve actually performed 104% of my daily target today. I was going to brag and say that that’s what happens you are the dynamic self-motivated person to which I aspire, but actually today didn’t turn out like it was supposed to.

It all went wrong long before I went to bed, when I was so engrossed in something or other that it was about 01:30 when I went to bed. And that was certainly no part of anyone’s plan, least of all mine.

It didn’t stop me being out of bed by about 06:15 though – beating the third alarm by a comfortable 5 minutes or so. And we’ll do some more of that too.

I was rather all over the place last night. I started off with a pose set that I’d downloaded for my 3D characters ages ago and that I didn’t know that I had. I came across it by accident and was going through it, and the textures of the articles and some of the poses were really good. However they needed breaking down, going through into different folders for different activities. That got me going all the way through this 3D program for some reason and I was doing all kinds of things with it. I can’t remember all that much about it now unfortunately but that was what I was doing.

Anyway, enough of that for now. An early start means an early breakfast which means an early return to work. And despite several distractions, by the time that I had knocked off at midday, the number of outstanding files in the queue for dictaphone transcription is a mere 17. I’ve had a really good day at that today, especially as some extremely long ones have bitten the dust.

Of those that are left, there are only two that can be classed as “long”, and they aren’t as long as a couple that I have dealt with today.

At midday I knocked off – later than intended but I was in the middle of something – and headed of to town in search of my dejeunette.

An unpleasant surprise met me at the back of the fish-processing plant though. The tide hadn’t gone far enough out so the harbour gates were open. No footpath to cross so I had to come all the way back to the rue du Port.

Mind you as one door close, another opens and through the open harbour doors has slipped out old friend Thora, having come in from Jersey on the morning tide, I suppose, and tied up in her usual spec next to Marité.

But I don’t have time to stop to say hello. Although it’s true that I’m retired, I just don’t know why I don’t have enough time for anything these days.

I’m actually heading for the Post Office. I forgot that I had a parcel that arrived while I was out yesterday and needs picking up.

But I had to make a brief pause in the Place General de Gaulle to look at our new ski slope. I can see that we will be having hours of endless fun on that this year, won’t we,

And no luck at the Post Office. Closed for lunch. Of course, i’m running late. So I pick up my dejeunette from La Mie Caline and head for home.

And, what’s more, I don’t even recall stopping for breath going up the hill.

After lunch I make a start on my next project – number 005 – and by the time that it was walk-time I’d finished all of the music. And there’s some good stuff on this one too.

We’ve been talking … “well, one of us has” – ed … about the fishing boats out there in that little square of sea bounded by my promontory, the Ile de Chausey, Jersey and the coast up to the north from here.

And there’s another couple out there today having a go to see what they might catch.

When I have the time I’ll look back over the photos of the previous years and see what the shipping and the fishing was like out there back then. I’m certain that it wasn’t like this then.

Quite a few people out there today in the nice weather but I carry on with my walk without stopping to exchange any pleasantries.

No change in the situation at the chantier navale so I push on … “or push off” – ed … further along the cliff until I get a good overviww of the inner basin and Thora riding away at her moorning.

For a change I’m feeling pretty good so I carry on with my walk and end up back in town. This time the Post Office is open so I can pick up my parcel.

And I head back home with it clutched in my sweaty little mitts

It is in fact my long-awaited mixing panel so I have a play with it. My external mikes won’t plug in (I need an adapter cable) and an ad-hoc arrangement with a guitar input won’t work either.

After a good play around I finally get it to work off the internal condenser mike but there’s no volume to speak of and what I do hear, it sounds as if I have my head stuck in a bucket.

It seems that I have a steep learning curve to follow with this machine. I’ve found a handbook on the internet and I shall get on the case tomorrow.

Tea was a vegan burger on a bap and I don’t know what I did tonight but it tasted absolutely delicious – much better than it usually has. Whatever it was, I shall have to do it again.

After the burger there was the rice pudding and after the rice pudding we had the usual evening walk around the walls.

Not a soul about yet again so I was on my own, admiring the view of the coast with towns like Donville-les-Bains all lit up and their reflection shimmering away in the sea.

No tripod, not even a monopod, so a hand-held shot or two of the place . I’m hoping that now that the wind is finally starting to die down (for the moment) I can go out one nice evening with the tripod and have some fun.

So with a closer look at Donville-les-Bains from by the Plat Gousset I carry on around the bend … “quite” – ed.

No-one about again so I break into my run and tonight make it almost all the way up to the top of the ramp at the end.

Totally out of breath yet again, but I’m sure that it’s doing me good, even if I am in agony for five minutes when I stop

nevertheless, I’m feeling much better because of it so I shall keep on keeping on

Bedtime now, and if I remember to get out of bed early enough I’ll go and check out this vegetable market and see what they have to offer. I’m not expecting too much, but it’s another long walk in the morning and that can only be good news.

Saturday 27th April 2019 – A HURRICANE …

… is not the ideal weather in which to be playing football.

It’s even worse when you are standing on the touchline watching the game too. Howling, whining gusts of winds of incredible violence, sudden torrential downpours that drenched everyone through and disappeared before one had time to put on one’s rain gear.

What surprised me was that the match was quite entertaining given the circumstances.

I didn’t feel much like going, though. yet another bad night. Yet another early awakening.

And yet another interesting nocturnal voyage. Last night I was doing my pension calculations. I worked out that I would get about £19:00 per month from the Belgian Government, £19:00 per month from the French Government but then I suddenly realised that i was living in Canada and I was entitled to a small pension from them because I’d been here for a couple of years and been working. That meant that I would be entitled to about £57:00 per month. I thought that that was fine because if I were very careful I could live on that. Of course everyone ridiculed this and said that it can’t be done, but one girl sitting at this table in the café said that there were loads of other things that I could do to raise money – for example she picked the entire crop of tea in the whole of Canada, to which I thought “I bet that it doesn’t take you long, does it?” because there isn’t all that much there at all. We were sitting outside what used to be a café but had closed down and the sign had been practically painted over. Someone was giving me some food – two cheese and onion sandwiches cut into triangles and put in a plastic bag and they went to give me the plastic bag. They said “hang on a minute – where’s your tray?” so I went over to where I had been sitting. “Ohh it’s over there is it?” they said and gave me this pack of sandwiches.

I was wide awake when the alarm went off at 06:00 but it was more like 06:45 when I left the stinking pit. Medication, breakfast and then a shower, and I was ready for the shops.

Braving the tempest raging outside, I made it to Caliburn ready to head to LIDL.

And you can see just how violently the storm was raging. You can actually see a wave of storm moving across the image of the photograph here.

I was glad that I was only out there for a matter of 30 seconds while I ran across the car park, and not actually having to walk to the shops.

After LIDL I went next to Noz and then to LeClerc. And all in all, I bought next to nothing and spent about €25:00 in all.

On the shopping list today was an aubergine. I’ve run out of aubergine and kidney bean whatsit so it’s time to make some more. I’s probably going to be an idea for me to spend one evening a week cooking some mega-meal, like a curry or a giant pie or an apple tart or something, parcel it up into individual-sized portions and freeze the portions. But then, how about me getting organised? I must be getting older.

Back here, I put the frozen food away and then crashed out for 20 minutes on the chair. Feeling the strain early in the day, I am.

Once I’d recovered myself, I put the shopping away and that took me nicely up to lunch. Once again, indoors in view of the horrendous weather.

This afternoon I had plenty of things to do but ended up as usual being side-tracked. I was having a little 10-minute play around with my 3D program and ended up running off down a long alleyway with a little application that I had discovered.

As well as that, I had an eye on the live updates for two football matches being played this afternoon. Crewe Alexandra came back from being dead and buried at 3-1 to run out 4-3 winners against Forest Green Rovers, and Morton scored a late winner at Dunfermline to escape relegation. Morton have in fact won more points in their last two matches than they have won in the previous two months.

At 18:15 I headed off to the football. The weather had improved in that the rain had stopped. But I wasn’t taking any chances and took my waterproof gear with me in the small rucksack.

There was a little deviation on my route. I had run out of that caffeine-based energy drink and that is what I use sometimes to lift me up when I’m flat out. I’d forgotten to buy any today but as LIDL was open and I was early I popped in for a few cans.

At the football, USM Donville were playing US Percy. I noticed quite a difference in the stature of the players on the field. The Donville players looked as if they were 11 ordinary people whom you might find on any street anywhere, whereas the Percy players looked more like athletes.

Nevertheless, on the field they were quite evenly matched and despite the wind it was an entertaining game. Donville had a n°9 playing up front who had some skill but was pretty much a lightweight easily pushed off the ball.

After 30 minutes, the Donville player pulled off a midfielder, pulled the n°9 back into a rather attacking midfield position, and sent on a substitute to play up front. He didn’t have the skill, but was much more aggressive and the game picked up.

Percy, playing against the wind, took the lead but Donville soon pulled back to level.

After the break, the second half was a game of two quarters. At first Percy had the ascendency and scored a second goal. But later in the game Donville gained the upper hand.

The n°12 playing up front got himself into some good positions. Had he had someone playing up front with him, something may well have come of them. He was quite unlucky with two good chances that he had too.

Not only that, had the ref not been unsighted and had the incident happened on the side of the field where the linesman could have seen it, Donville might have been awarded a penalty for a handball in the penalty area.

So 2-1 to Percy, which was rather unfair on Donville but these things happen in football.

On the way back, I was caught in a torrential downpour and by the time I had struggled into shelter to put on my waterproof trousers I was soaked to the skin and the downpour had passed.

Back here and hungry, I fancied something different for tea rather than a tinned meat.

So I cooked some pasta and when it was done, drained it off, added a big handful of frozen spinach, some garlic, some ground pepper and olive oil and warmed it all right though. The secret of course is not to overcook the spinach. That’s how you kill off all of the vitamins and minerals.

Once it was thoroughly warmed through I added a big handful of grated vegan cheese and stirred it all around.

That was probably the most delicious instant meal that I have ever eaten.

So now I’m off to bed. Tomorrow is Sunday and a lie-in I hope. I need a decent sleep, a good relax, and the will and energy to get myself back on track. My life is running away with me and I can’t seem to catch it up.

Monday 22nd April 2019 – WITH IT BEING …

… a Bank Holiday I have imitated the example of the the mathematician who shares my name and I have done three fifths of five eighths of … errr … nothing.

We started off with a turbulent night where I couldn’t manage to go off to sleep for very long. Long enough to go on several nocturnal rambles though, and to leave my bed to go to look for some new batteries for the dictaphone too.

I started off with a group of students back at school outside the old “Room 10” having a huge discussion about something but I can’t remember now. Then a band in the assembly hall struck up some kind of high-tempo dance number. Most people disappeared to go off to this dance. One of the girls just standing around was a very studious type, long brown hair in a pony tail and glasses 3 or so years below me, very prim and proper and the correct uniform. I took hold of her and started to dance with her. She pulled such a face so I asked what was the matter. She just grunted something at me which was a bit of a shame.
A little later I was in Crewe, Davenport Avenue, painting the living room. I can’t remember who I was with. It might have been Marianne or Liz. There were huge plasitc sheets everywhere masking everything off. It was thick white emulsion. I had been masking everything off while she was painting and when I’d finished that I was daubing the paint on with a kitchen towel. I asked if there was a paint brush, and I was given a big old paste brush which wasn’t so good and I was smearing it on with that. For some unknown reason I had to go outside, with Nerina by now and we were at Gainsborough Road to the road down the side. We saw a large black plastic pipe so we walked down the road to look at it. It was sticking up out of the road then a 90° bend down the street with a drop so as to allow passage into the back entry and then back on and down the street. On the way back we went past the entrace to my drive and in there on the drive was my brown Cortina TNY. I thought “what is this doing here? It should be in its lock-up garage. How come it was suddenly appearing here? What was the tenat of the property doing with it on his drive? How had he known where it was? How had he obtained the keys to the garage?” I’d had a vague recollection that one of my Cortina estates had been seen on there but I had dismissed that as unlikely gossip. But now I wasn’t so sure. There were probably 20 vehicles on this driveway, all from the 60s and 70s and in all kinds of states of repair. I wondered what was happening. This was so realistic that I sat bolt upright at this point. It’s a recurring thread, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, about me having Ford Cortinas in various lock-ups and parked up all over the town and not knowing where they were or worrying about them.
Later still I was in a supermarket last night buying something and TOTGA was the manageress there. I can’t remember whether there had been some kind of issue between the two of us. I was in the queue waitig to pay when the cashier was called away. I saw TOTGA walk past but she didn’t see me but as I was in the queue I couldn’t leave it to go up to her to go and tap her on the shoulder and say hello. She stopped at a display rack where there was bottled water and rearranged something. She turned towards me and I waved hoping to catch her eye but then my view was blocked by a couple of people walking past. After they had gone I waved again but now it was a different girl so I felt rather silly. Another cashier came back now and took my item. I said something about TOTGA being there. She replied “ohh you’ve decided to come back to the shop then have you?” as if I have been boycotting it, which I didn’t understand.
And even later, I was here in my apartment with Terry. I was toasting hot cross buns for both of us and took the first lot out of the toaster and put them on his plate. He took some margarine and spread it over and ate them. He made some remark – is this margarine apple-flavoured? I looked and it was something and pineapple. He replied “God what a horrible thing!” so I asked if he wanted something different. I went to put mine in the toaster but his second round was still in there so I took them out and put them on his plate – this was when he made the remark about the margarine, but he put his knife into the same butter and spread it on the others too and I didn’t understand that when he didn’t like the stuff and there were other things that he could have asked for.

By the time that I arose from my stinking pit it was after 09:00 so I had my medication and caught up with a few things, and then just as I was about to go for breakfast Rosemary rang me.

We were chatting for a good hour or so, so I ended up with a very late breakfast.

Later, I attacked the dictaphone. I transcribed the notes from the night and then attacked a pile from the backlog of stuff. That was interrupted by someone coming on line and wanting a chat.

As a consequence I was very late for lunch and so seeing as it was Easter Monday I ate my vegan Easter Egg instead.

This afternoon I was intending to carry on with some work but I was interrupted by a special one-off sale of 3D items that involved spending an hour or so surfing through the web site to see what might be of interest.

That was interrupted my Ingrid ringing me and we had a really long chat for well over an hour.

That meant that my afternoon walk was rather late.

But when I finally did make it outside I was immediately struck by the strange lighting conditions that we were experiencing.

There was some kind of light grey light reflecting off the sea and the Ile de Chausey was standing out silhouetted on the horizon. I’m not quite sure why this should be.

And it goes without saying that I wasn’t the only person out there this afternoon enjoying the weird light.

There was a painter out there too doing his thing. He had drawn quite a crowd of spectators eagerly admiring his work. And it wasn’t bad either. I wouldn’t have minded it hanging up on my wall.

He isn’t the first painter that we have seen in action either. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we encountered one in Québec in 2011.

Yesterday I mentioned that the path around the Pointe du Roc had been reopened. This afternoon I went that way to see what it was like.

You need to be quite athletic to enjoy the trip because there is a considerable number of steps down to the bottom. And what goes down must come back up, as we all know.

But it’s worth it because there’s a view of the coastguard station that I have never seen before.

But something else caught my eye while I was down here.

regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve spoken quite considerably in the past about the construction of the Atlantic Wall during the latter stages of World War II to defend the coast against invasion;

Here on the floor I found a fine example of 1943 graffiti drawn into the concrete, presumably drawn by one of the workmen when they were pouring the concrete.

Another view that I haven’t seen was the Cap Lihou from the rear.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have seen the sentry’s cabin on the headland before on several occasions but we haven’t seen it from this angle.

And I’m also interested in what looks as if it might be a cave just down there to the left. One of these days when there’s a very low tide I shall have to walk around there for a good look.

As for the walk itself, it’s very picturesque, but it’s also very difficult and very narrow.

What didn’t help either was that there were hundreds of other people out there enjoying it too so there wasn’t much room to move about.

Because of all of this, it’s not something that you would want to do in the dark either. It’s definitely going to have to be a daylight job.

Back here someone else wanted to chat so by then end of that I was hours late for tea. So I didn’t bother. I went for a walk around the walls in the twilight instead.

Now I’m back here and I’m going for an early night. I have a lot to do over the next few days and I need to be on form.

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zodiac baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

cabanon vauban pointe de carolles granville manche normandy france

atlantic wall pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

flags pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

fishing boats baie de mont st michel ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

Wednesday 3rd April 2019 – CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER

There’s been a strange object anchored out to sea all day, about 12 miles or so offshore, just outside French territorial waters.

I had taken a photograph of it earlier today, and as it was still there tonight I took another one of it.

Back here this evening, I cropped the photographs, digitally enhanced them and, because I can do this without any regard to modern anti-terrorist legislation, I blew them up.

And now that I have done all of that, I can see what it is.

And much to my surprise, it turns out to be, as far as I can see, some kind of small naval vessel like a fisheries patrol boat.

It’s been in the Press over the past few days about how the fishermen from here are dissatisfied about the post-Brexit fishing arrangements. And when French fishermen are “dissatisfied, we all know what that will mean.

So I’m wondering if it’s a British naval vessel keeping an eye on things from outside the territorial waters.

But whatever it is, it’s not emitting a positioning signal on my AIS receiver, so it can’t be anything civilian.

last night, for once I had a really good sleep. I only awoke once during the night, and then only for a minute or two.

So there was plenty of time to go off on a little ramble or two. I was on the ship going to Iceland. We were told that we could listen to the radio. There was a programme about an island off the coast of Iceland that had been devastated by plague and everyone had been wiped out, broadcast in 10 minutes time. Meanwhile a new island had been located near Iceland so everyone dashed to the window to have a look. We were on a plane and it came past the island and Iceland and another load of islands in a geographical east-west line. At the end it did a U-turn to come into land. By this time it was the ship and scraped along the frozen river thing that led to the sea. There was a news broadcast about our ship and how we were getting to it, how at the moment it was full of loads of schoolkids from Stoke on Trent who had booked it for a week and gone on a voyage (familiar, anyone?).
later on I was with my father. We were repairing a car and had the cylinder head off it. We put the head back on and had the car started and we could move it but it wasn’t right. So we had to take off the cylinder head again. We could undo four of the bolts but the fifth was very problematical. It needed a very thin spanner and we couldn’t find it. We sent a girl to the garage to look for the spanner but she came back with a pile of assorted bits, but no spanner. In the end I went in and I couldn’t find the correct spanner either. I had a feeling that I was looking in completely the wrong place in the workshop – I couldn’t see any spanners. In the end I did come across the tool box but couldn’t see the spanner in there so I came back out. I thought “hang on a minute”. I could unscrew part of the nut by hand and it came off but it left the stud in there. It looked to me as if the head would lift out over the stud as there was just a securing collar that held it in place. By this time my father had gone off so I didn’t know where we were going to go with this. We were in Stoke on Trent and where this car had ground to a halt was outside some minicab depot and a West Indian guy clearly associated with this group of Pakistanis came out and asked me to move because it was making a mess outside his office. I said “yes, just give me two minutes”. But some time earlier I’d been away and I’d come back to Expo with the car I had as a chauffeur in those days. I’d taken my suit off and there were all kinds of things in it – money, papers, folders, wallets, all kinds. Someone asked me for my phone number. They’d given me a piece of paper telling me all about their organisation and would I publish it, then he came over to ask me for my phone number. I couldn’t remember any of my phone numbers at all – the Belgium mobile, the French mobile and landline so I had to go finding ways to recall them. I had my mobile phone and I thought my number will be in there but I couldn’t remember how to access it. I went into my bedroom and found my other suit and that had my wallet in it with all of my papers and money. I thought “have I been away for a few days without my wallet?”. The bedroom window was wide open but it was warm in there even though it was winter. In a flash I suddenly remembered my French mobile number, but now I couldn’t find the guy.

It was another day where I managed to be up and out of bed just after the alarms went off. And even more surprisingly I managed to go all day without crashing out, although I did flag a little later in the morning.

It’s not been such a productive day today though. I started off by finishing the blogs for August. They are up-to-date now.

I followed that up by attacking the photo database for July. I’ve done about 100 or so of those, and while I was at it I amended a couple of entries for that month, seeing as I needed to look at the coding for those days.

There was a little diversion later on in the morning. I forgot to say yesterday that I found a computer program that allows me to edit certain 3D items by adding morphs to them. I had a play around with that yesterday and I had another go at it today.

It’s really quite interesting because it means that I can do things like make clothing from one character fit another by adding morphs and then adjusting them.

Lunch was in here again because it’s still cold and windy outside. And then I carried on with the photos for a while.

Later on, I went for my afternoon walk. Around the walls today.

My trek took me past the house that they are renovating on the corner of the rue du Nord.

The other day I noticed that they had removed the windows from the first floor and knocked out some of the wall underneath. Today, they seem to have fitted new full-length windows that might possible open.

My thought that we might be having a terrace out here could well be true.

The tide must be on its way in right now and the harbour gates must be open.

There’s an endless stream of fishing boats coming out of the harbour now and heading off into the open sea.

On their way to attack the fishing grounds, I shouldn’t wonder, surveyed without a doubt by the naval vessel standing to just outside the 12-mile limit.

They weren’t the only things heading out to do a bit of fishing either.

Down there among the rocks as the tide is sliding out is one of our old men doing a bit of the pêche à pied.

It’s quite usually a popular pastime at this time of the year but as far as I could tell, he was the only person down there today.

Meanwhile, we were having a really good day as far as visibility goes.

We could see way out on the horizon, and it’s been a long time since we’ve seen Jersey looking as clear as this.

Unfortunately, I must have missed the area of Jersey where St Helier is, because that’s not come out at all.

While the view was so good, I went right up to the highest point of the walls because I had seen something else out to sea.

I wanted to take a photo of it, digitally enhance it and blow it up so that I could see what it is.

It’s actually a trawler out there in the foreground, and in the background we have our old friend the lighthouse out at the mouth of the River Sienne near Agon-Coutainville.

Back at the flat, I attacked the dictaphone notes. And while I may not have done all that many today, some of them were quite hefty. I reckon that as far as minutes goes, I’ve done more today than any other.

Some of the stuff involved doing some basic research while I was at it, and that took some time.

Tea was a curry that I found in the freezer – potato and lentil, I think, with rice and veg. Followed by the last of the apple crumble.

And then I hit the streets for the evening walk.

A beautiful evening even if it was cold and windy. But the view was very interesting.

And there were still more trawlers heading out to sea and the surveillance of the naval vessel that was out there. There are clearly some strange things going on right now.

But the view tonight was even better than this afternoon.

Despite the dozens of photos that I have taken in the past of Cancale across the bay in Brittany, I can say that I have never ever seen it as clearly as I have done today.

You wouldn’t think that that’s 18 miles away, would you?

Finally around to the chantier navale to see what’s going on down there.

We have the large boat undergoing a respray, and I’m wondering when it’s going to be finished. To its right is another passenger vessel of some kind that’s come in for work.

But the other boat down there is some kind of elderly fishing boat. That’s been outside the workshop of the chantier navale for so long that I thought that it might have been a stationary exhibit.

So I’m wondering what their plan is now for it.

Back here, I’m going off to bed. Not quite as early as the last couple of evenings, but early enough all the same. Shopping tomorrow so I need to be on form.

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fishing boats granville manche normandy france

donville les bains granville manche normandy france

mussels beds airfield donville les bains granville manche normandy france

Friday 1st February 2019 – WHAT A WAY …

… to start the day.

The alarms certainly went off this morning, but what did I care? I turned over and went back to sleep.

07:40 when I awoke and that in itself was nothing like what time I finally left my bed. All I can say is that I must have needed it;

And so that was the morning messed up. A late start, an even later breakfast and that was that.

It’s been a quiet day today though. I’ve been working on a 3D animation project for most of it. Three or so years ago I made a couple of animations but despite their being made on a 3D program they were really only two-dimensional and besides, I’ve forgotten most of what I did back then.

And so I set to work with a will.

The problem is though that you become so absorbed in a project that you don’t realise just how quickly the time goes. It ended up being a late lunch and an even later tea, and I don’t feel as if I have accomplished anything.

In the heat of the action I forgot to make any hummus today and so it was cheese again for lunch. There’s some old stuff that needs eating.

This afternoon there was a high wind and rain outside. The sea was pretty rough.

And I was lucky enough to catch Thora setting out from the harbour heading back to Jersey. No idea what she was carrying though. I couldn’t see clearly.

I hadn’t noticed her come in though. She must have sneaked in on the high tide during the night.

Having watched her sail … “diesel” – ed … off into the sunset, I went round to the other side of the headland too watching her disappear into the sea-mist.

The weather wasn’t really so good out there and the photography was not up to much. But it brought out an eerie view of the Ile de Chausey in the background, hidden in the mist

Tea was a burger in a bap with vegetables and potatoes, followed by the rest of yesterday’s rice pudding. Just as delicious as yesterday’s.

The rain had stopped when I went out for my walk. And there was no-one around at all. Minette was there but being stand-offish again. She wandered off when I tried to stroke her.

Today, with a late start, I just wandered off for a brief 10 minutes. I suppose that that’s an improvement.

But I’m looking forward to a decent sleep tonight and I might even have a good day tomorrow. After all it is a shopping day.

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fishing boat baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

thora marite port de granville harbour manche normandy france

thora port de granville harbour manche normandy france

thora baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

thora ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

Wednesday 30th January 2019 – IT’S SNOWING!!!!

Although you’ve seen this heading before this winter, you’ve seen it in relation to Canada, the Auvergne and Belgium. But this afternoon, it’s been snowing here!

And I’m not talking about a light dusting for five minutes either. Round about 13:00 the heavens opened up and we had a right pasting for a couple of hours and it looked quite impressive.

I thought that it was going to stick too but it stopped, the weather warmed up a couple of degrees and all of the snow disappeared.

That’s a shame too. because tonight, there’s a clear sky, millions of stars and you could see for miles.

This photo, albeit rather blurred because it was hand-held on a very slow exposure in a wind, is of St Helier in Jersey.

The lights are, would you believe, about 60 kms – that’s 35 miles – away. And you won’t have this kind of light and this kind of photo in many weather conditions.

This photo is a little closer to home.

That’s Montmartin-sur-Mer, Breville-sur-Mer and Bréhal-Plage. Montmartin, on the extreme left, is about 25 kms away.

So, in other words, it is probably going to be really cold tonight and had the snow hung around, it would have been a good base to really start the winter.

Despite my depressing posting of yesterday, I’ve had a better day today. A good sleep of at least 5 hours. There was a vague wave of tiredness round about 17:00 but I managed to fight it off.

And a little ramble or two too during the night. There were four of us, me, my father, the son of the woman whom he married in the 1970s and someone else. And the car was his red Mark III Cortina. We’d all been out for a drive somewhere and ended up in a small town somewhere. We were all hungry so decided to go for food. My father and his friend wanted to go somewhere special but I was just interested in something simple so Paul and I went to a chip shop for a portion of chips. The chip shop owner was a bad-tempered, miserable kind of guy, the chips were over-cooked and the portions were disgracefully small. We took them outside to eat them, and noticed that there were two young girls, one of them an Asian girl, chatting to my father and his friend in the car, and then they climbed in. So Paul and I made a few ribald comments about what was going to be going on. Shortly afterwards Paul and I were with a couple of people and the subject of these girls came up. I made some kind of suggestion about their professional activities, but the other people told my that my opinion was far from being the case and that they were really nice and friendly girls really and certainly not the kind of girls that I was suggesting.
Although I was awake at about 05:30, there was still enough time to go back to sleep before the alarm. And off on another voyage too. Ad I was with either Alison or Jackie – I can’t remember now just who it was. And she was clambering about up the side of a slope and on top of a hill and I was taking photographs. But when I looked at them, they hadn’t come out ptoperly but more like rather jerky poor-quality *.gif moving images. I was disappointed by that because it meant that either the camera was playing up or the computer was playing up. But either way, I was worried that I had lost all of the images.

After breakfast I had a very relaxing morning doing a mega-back-up of the new computer seeing as I hadn’t done one since I’d bought it. That took some time, what with one thing or another.

Another thing that I did was to sort out some more music for the bass guitar. And to print it out too. I need to organise myself so much better than I do.

Lunch was rather later than usual, and I spent the time watching the snowfall. Like I said, a shame that it all petered out.

This afternoon I did some more 3D stuff. I’ve had to go back and rework some objects that I created a while ago because I came across something the other day that made quite a useful add-on.

There were a few people out a-walking this afternoon. It was damp outside but not really cold and not really windy.

A good day for photography because there some strange effects on the sea as the storm was moving out across the bay.

St Helier and the rest of Jersey were fairly clear, even if they were swathed in storm.

There had been a ferry service out to the Ile de Chausey too. Or, at least, there was a ferry coming back from the island.

I would have been out there much more often on the ferry had the prices been more reasonable. But €27:50 for a round trip is a bit more than I’m willing to pay for a sail around the bay.

This photo was quite interesting too.

There’s a huge rock at the entrance to the bay at St Malo but there seemed to be something else out there too.

Cropping, enhancing and blowing up the photo (because I can do that despite modern anti-terrorist legislation) brought out something to the left of the rock that might possibly (although it’s difficult to tell) be a ship – possibly one of the Brittany Ferries fleet – sailing into St Malo.

Tea was a curry – a pepper, mushroom and coconut cream curry from November 2017. just as delicious as it was the day that I made it.

Later on, as I said, the storm has gone when I went around the walls, but it’s cold out there and I reckon that it’s going to become even colder tonight.

So I’ll be huddled up under the bedclothes gathering up my strength for my trip to the shops tomorrow. I’ll need to warm myself up.

ferry ile de chausey traversier granville manche normandy france

st helier jersey granville manche normandy france

Monday 28th January 2019 – THE ONE PROBLEM …

… with having a really good lie-in is that when you eventually go to bed, it takes a positive age to go off to sleep.

And so it was last night. It was well-gone midnight before I went to bed, and then I was tossing and turning around for quite some considerable time.

Mind you, once the alarm went off I was pretty much wide awake, although it did take some considerable time for me to leave my stinking pit.

After breakfast, I sat down and set to work.

First job was to go through a mountain of photos. The other laptop that I had been using was struggling to cope because the quality of the screen and the graphics card was not up to much and I couldn’t see properly what I was doing. And it’s a whole wide world of difference with the graphics card in this computer and the new IPS screen.

Second thing, that took all of the morning and quite a bit of the afternoon was to download a huge load of *.zip and *.rar files for the accessories for the 3D program that I use.

Luckily, I’d bookmarked most of them so I could track them down fairly quickly. Although downloading them and unpacking them took all of the time. And it’s amazing how much I had forgotten that I had.

Cheese and salad butties for lunch. I’ve finished off the hummus and there’s some cheese opened from when I was in Belgium last week. One of these days I’ll make some more, and have a mega-cook-in too because I have some puff pastry that needs using. I fancy an leek and potato pie, and I might even put some tofu in it too – except that I don’t have any.

There was a terrific wind blowing this afternoon. Not as much as yesterday morning though but impressive all the same.

We had a really impressive array of waves smashing onto the harbour wall.

The power of the sea is really astonishing and if only people would put more effort into harnessing it, the world’s energy problem would be solved without any difficulties.

It was a beautiful day for photography too.

The air was quite clear and you could see for miles down the coast. Montmartin-sur-Mer and the Sienne estuary stood out really clearly today so I took a few photos.

I cropped and enlarged a few selections and you can see them below.

Tea tonight was vegan sausages and vegetables, all covered in vegan cheese sauce. It was delicious. Especially when followed by pineapple and coconut-flavoured soya cream.

This evening’s walk around the walls was really nice.

The wind had dropped, it was warmer than it ought to be this time of the year and the sky on the horizon was quite clear. The lights of Jersey stood out quite clearly.

The way things are going, I’m going to have to buy a better camera with a more responsive ISO as well as a decent attachment for the tripod.

But even so, the Nikon D5000 can still bring out some really good photographs in the right lighting conditions.

Now that they have installed some illumination in the Place Maurice Marland it’s producing some really nice effects.

I shall have to do some more of this when I have the time.

The fibre-optic cable works are continuing.

We saw them the other day digging a hole on the corner of the rue Notre Dame and the rue de l’Auditoire. Now, they have put an inspection hatch in there, ready for the cabling.

While I was out there I nearly flattened another pedestrian, and I also met a new cat, a youngish short-haired black one that I had never seen before. And talking to the cat made me realise that I haven’t spoken to a single person today.

And in other news, there are reports coming in that British travellers arriving at Dusseldorf Airport from the UK were pushed into the “non-EU” lane.

Things are beginning to bite, and we aren’t even at B-Day yet.

agon coutainville granville manche normandy france

hauteville sur mer granville manche normandy france

st martin de brehal granville manche normandy france

storm port de granville harbour manche normandy france

trawlers fishing night granville manche normandy france

medieval city walls granville manche normandy france

trees night place maurice marland granville manche normandy france

Friday 7th December 2018 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… today, I have emulated my namesake the mathematician and done three-fifth of five-eights of … errr … nothing.

During the night I’d been on my travels, checking up on goalkeepers (and I’ve no idea why I have goalkeepers on my mind right now) , and I was fast asleep when the alarm went off.

There was no rush to leave the comfort and safety of my stinking pit either. 07:00 came and I was still trying to summon up the courage to raise myself from the dead. And so it was a late breakfast and a late start.

For much of the day I was working on the portable hard drive with some of the files off the desktop computer, tidying them up and moving them about. But I’m hardly scratching the surface right now. I did uncover some long-lost 3D files in several compressed *.rar files and so I transferred them over onto the laptop and opened them up. That led to something of a tidy-up of files there too.

While I was at it, I had a little play around with the 3D program. It’s been a while since I had a go at that. But this laptop isn’t powerful enough to run it correctly so it wasn’t as easy as it might have been. I really am going to have to sort out a new desktop computer, seeing as I’ll be staying here now for the duration.

Lunch was taken indoors again – I reckon that outdoor picnicking is finished now until the Spring.

The wind outside today was wicked and it was a struggle to take myself out of doors in the hurricane and drenching rain.

But the inclement weather wasn’t going to keep me indoors.

Around the Pointe du Roc this afternoon watching the storm raging in the Baie de Mont St Michel, but the tide was too far out for any spectacular wave-crashing scenes.

The inclement weather wasn’t going to keep the fishing boats indoors either.

They had all been out there fishing today, and it was quite interesting watching them struggling into the harbour from the Baie de Mont St Michel with their catches.

Chapeau to those in peril on the sea out there. I don’t mind doing it in that kind of weather once in a while but it would get on my wick on a regular basis

And much to my surprise, one of the students from the College Malraux decided to engage me in conversation. I’ve no idea why.

This evening though, the tide was in and the waves were crashing down on the Plat Gousset like nobody’s business.

It really was wild out there and I was windswept and soaked in the conditions that we were having but I had no intention of giving up and going in while I was enjoying the free entertainment down there.

By the time that I staggered in, I was like a drowned rat.

In between the walks I had tea. There were the rest of the potatoes, some carrots, peas and leeks, and while I had been rummaging through the freezer the other day I’d found frozen curries going back over a year, so tonight I had a lentil and pepper curry with them – a curry that was dated 17th October 2017.

And it was still just as delicious as it was when I made it too. And I’ll be going through the freezer on a regular basis from now on to empty out some of the oldest frozen meals.

Tomorrow is shopping day so I’ll be out looking for supplies. That calls for an early night but we shall see about that. I’ve not been doing as well with my early nights as I would like to.

storm port de granville harbour baie de mont st michel manche normandy france

fishing boats storm port de granville harbour baie de mont st michel manche normandy france

night storm plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Monday 12th November 2018 – I’M FREEZING!

I’ve just spent half an hour standing on top of the cliff overlooking the Plat Gousset waiting for a decent wave to go crashing over the sea wall.

After all, there’s quite a wind blowing outside and it’s not too far off High Tide so I was hoping that I might have landed a good one. But no such luck. There were one or two that looked quite good, but nothing anything like as good as I was hoping.

In the end, I came back here to warm up, and I’ll try again another day.

This morning, it was a rather late awakening. All of 04:38 in fact. But I managed to go back to sleep again until the alarms went off.

I’d been on my travels last night too. We were fitting power points into the street – every shop had to provide a 4-socket extension lead plugged into their own power supply, and we were going round pinning up the leads out of the way so that no-one would trip over them. But then half-way through the exercise they came up with a new system, which meant that we then had to go round to undo and dismantle everything that we had done to date.

After breakfast there were a few bits and pieces to do and then, for the first time since I don’t know when, I had a good play around with the 3D program that I use. And rather bizarrely, something that I abandoned a good couple of years ago because I couldn’t make it work as I would like is now working even better than what it was I was doing before instead. And I don’t understand that at all.

Lunchtime was in here again, because it’s now almost certainly winter outside. Not snowing or raining, but windy and cold. Much warmer in here, especially as the heating is on.

This afternoon I booked my rooms for my visits to Leuven. For the one on 26th November, I’m going on the Sunday and coming back on the Wednesday as usual. But for the one on Christmas Eve (what a silly time to have a hospital appointment) I’m going off on the Friday morning and coming back on the following Thursday morning.

And I’ll be trying to find some interesting things to do while I’m there. It’s ages since I’ve been to Cologne for example.

Once that was out of the way, I made a start on Day Three of my trip to the High Arctic. That will keep me out of mischief for the next ever so long.

In between all of that, I went for my walk around the Pointe du Roc. No-one else was there which is hardly any surprise in the wind.

Out in the Baie de Mont St Michel over towards the Brittany coast there was a major storm brewing. Judging by the direction of the wind it looked as if it would be heading our way some time soon.

Not the kind of weather to be out in.

But Yves and Lili were out there right enough. Loading up a van with their valuable possessions.

I offered them some help but they reckoned that they could manage. I gave them a bottle of my special Chateau de Chasselas wine to thank them for how nice they have been to me, and for them to celebrate their new home.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with spicy rice, and I made far too much stuffing. No idea why. So it looks as if it will be taco rolls with kidney beans and stuffing for the next couple of days until it’s all gone.

The evening walk was to freeze around the walls as I said.

The tide was in and the harbour gates were open, and I was just in time to see a trawler come sailing … “dieseling” – ed … into the inner harbour.

I had a good view from up here on the top of the city walls and the new 50mm f1.8 lens had brought the image out really well. I’m quite pleased with this lens

Back here and now that I’m warmed up I’ll go for an early night.

Who knows? I might even have a decent night’s sleep one of these nights.

Waves on the Plat Gousset

Trawler tying up at the quay in the inner harbour at Granville

Friday 13th July 2018 – I THINK THAT I WAS …

… right last night about the tides. When I went out for my butties, the tide was as far out as I have ever seen it.

There were quite a few people out there too, presumably having a root around in the sand for the shellfish.

Which, they would presumably share with their friends because, as I have said before … "on many occasions" – ed … you mustn’t be selfish with your shellfish.

Going to bed last night was at something of a much-more respectable hour, and I managed to sleep almost until the alarm went off, with a little hiccup at about 04:00 or something like that. I tried my best to ignore the alarm but I couldn’t go back off to sleep and it was about 07:00 when I left the bed.

We had the usual morning performance, but breakfast ended up being quite late. And I forgot my coffee too.

First task was to assemble the two small trolleys that I had bought from IKEA the other day. And now I have a vegetable trolley and a cooking utensil trolley and they are both very handy. And then I had a little tidy-up, much to my own surprise.

Lunch was quite late after all of that, and on the way back in I started to unload Caliburn. I’ve brought quite a bit of stuff up here now, but there’s still plenty to go. I reckon that tomorrow I’ll have to start to unpack things and do some washing.

Another thing that I did was to crack on with my 3D program that I have neglected of late. Especially as a few things that I wanted were in a “50% off” sale today only.

There was also a visit into town. The mixed dried fruit sold in the supermarkets that I frequent is pretty much rubbish but the Super U has some good stuff. I need it for my muesli so I went for a walk down there in the heat, and treated myself to a sorbet on the way back.

On the way back up the hill I observed all of the boats outside the harbour.

The tide was on its way in by now and the smaller craft could make their way to the quayside to unload their catch. The larger boats would have to wait for the tide to come further in before they could come in and unload.

But you can see the effect that dredging out that strip by the quay in the winter has had. Smaller ships can come in earlier to unload and this increases the available capacity at the fish processing plant.

No tea tonight either. My appetite seems to have disappeared. Not quite like it did over Christmas but nevertheless. But it’s not really a worry, because I have quite a bit of weight that I could do with losing, what with this water retention issue.

But it was a pleasant walk around the headland this evening anyway.

So back here and listening to Marillion again. I have a couple of tracks – The Web and Garden Party – going round on a continual loop for some reason. I can’t shift them out of my head.

Marillion is a magnificent band but they always send me into a deep depression and I’ve no idea why. Still, I’ve plenty of time to cheer myself up, haven’t I?

Tuesday 29th May 2018 – IT WAS A BIT …

… of a shame about last night.

What with all of my efforts of recent days I made a point of going to bed at a relatively early hour last night so as to have a head start for today. But instead, I had one of the worst nights’ sleeps that I have had for a long time. One every unhappy bunny here again.

But anyway I was up at a reasonable-ish early time nevertheless but I wasn’t in the mood for breakfast quite then. I ended up for a while talking to someone on the internet about nothing in particular.

But after breakfast there were things to do, like another batch of photos to edit and a blog to update seeing that I didn’t do it before going to bed last night.

Once all of that was out of the way I occupied myself with a knotty problem on the 3D program that I use. And while I’m none-the-wiser, I’m certainly better-informed. And it’s hard to believe that with having done nothing but that this morning, I ended up going for a late lunch.

After that, it all went wrong.

There’s lots to do here but firstly there was a crowd of neighbours hanging around outside the building so I went to join them. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m not the most sociable of people at the best of times, but when one is living ina close-knit community like this, one has to show willing.

And even that was interrupted by the arrival of Gribouille the ginger cat who allowed me to pick him up and stroke him for a while, much to the surprise of everyone else.

Once all that was out of the way there was only time for a coffee before it was time for me to go out for my afternoon walk. But at the moment where I was just about to put my sooty foot outside the door the heavens opened and we had another drenching. I dunno who it is up there, but just let him know that he missed me.

Eventually it eased off and so I could go for my walk. And at least it kept the grockles out of my way which is also nice. I started off in my raincoat but by the time that I was back here it was boiling hot, clammy and close, and I was sweating.

That reminded me that I had forgotten my shower this morning so I hopped underneath for a general clean-up. And I cut my hair as well seeing as it was getting all a bit long.

While all of this was going on, Liz came on line with a computer problem that needed resolving, and Sandra wanted to chat about my plans for summer. Trying to fit my guitar practice in was all rather complicated.

Tea was a frozen kidney bean and aubergine whatsit from out of the freezer and then I had a nice walk around the walls.

There wasn’t a great deal going on on the seaward side of the walls, but round on the harbour side, I noticed that Normandy Trader was back in port.

She’s been in and out of here quite a lot just recently and so she must be getting a lot of work. And that reminds me that I haven’t seen anything of Grima for a while. I shall have to make further enquiries

And despite the huge piles of gravel building up on the quayside, we haven’t seen a gravel ship for a while either.

One ship that is back in port though, ready for the summer season, is the Marité. But she was moored in a position where I couldn’t take a decent photo.

And why I was prowling around trying to find a good spec, it suddenly came into my mind that I had never taken a decent photograph of the turret house built into the walls by the Eglise de Notre Dame du Cap Lihou.

So this seemed like as good an opportunity as ever to deal with that little issue. After all, it’s a beautiful house and I could quite happily live in one of those turrets, especially with the superb view that it has over the harbour.

And now, I really AM going to have an early night.

I hope that it’s a good ‘un.

Friday 18th May 2018 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about me paying today for my exertions of yesterday. This afternoon, on coming back from lunch, I was gome completely for a good 45 minutes.

It wasn’t as if I’d had a late night either – well, not for me anyway. In bed not long after midnight and that was that until the alarm went off. And I wasn’t in a hurry to leave my bed.

This, morning with having a “me” day, I didn’t do too much. I was playing around with the 3D program that I used and, purely by accident, I discovered a trick I didn’t know before and which doesn’t seem to be published anywhere as far as I can tell. So now, having had a good morning’s work with this, I can make the hair, some props and some clothing interchange neatly between all of the characters regardless of the base character for which they were designed.

The only issue is exchanging clothes of more modern base characters to the earlier ones. The more modern ones have more separate body zones than the earlier ones, so when you try to fit some modern clothing over a zone that is missing on an earlier character, the settings that would cover the part of the clothing in the missing zone default to “zero” and so the shape of the whole outfit all goes haywire.

To explain what I mean, the torso on an earlier character is divided into two horizontal zones. On a more modern character it’s divided into three. And so a tee-shirt designed for a modern character will have these three zones. But putting it on a character with two zones means that the settings for the missing zone on the tee-shirt default to zero, so your tee-shirt then looks like an hour glass.

Lunch was outside on the wall again in the sunshine, where I was joined by a lizard that ate greedily the piece of pear that I dropped. First lizard that I had seen this year had been on Monday, but this was the first that had actually appeared in the open.

So then we crashed out and it really knocked me for six – quite a struggle to rouse myself to go for my afternoon walk and I felt dreadful. But I’m glad that I did because Gribouille the ginger cat was by the door. He let me pick him up again for a stroke ad that’s always good for the stress.

Lunch wasn’t all that much today so I could manage some tea. A baked potato with a vegan burger in a bap and some vegetables followed by more strawberries and spray-on vegan cream.

Delicious.

Shopping tomorrow and then the football. Last match of the season for Granville’s 1st XI. I need to be on form for all of that but this fatigue issue is killing me.

Monday 12th March 2018 – I WAS RIGHT …

.. last night when I said that I wouldn’t be doing all that much today. In fact, I’ve done another emulation of my namesake the mathematician.

And despite my early night last night and being completely stark out, I still had a struggle out of bed this morning.

And it’s not as if I had done much during the night either. TOTGA put in an appearance again though. Well, actually she didn’t, but one of her kittens did. A tabby and white one found its way into my car and was roaming around the floor getting in the way of the pedals. So I told the girl in the passenger seat that we would have to go round there to drop off the animal. That’s not anything that should wear anyone out now, is it?

We had medication and breakfast and then the usual morning ritual, and then as promised I attacked the photographs that I took yesterday. And if you missed them, they are now on line in yesterday’s entry.

But looking at them, I’ve come to the reluctant conclusion that I’ve wasted my money with this new camera. The photos are, quite frankly, total rubbish. The standard lens that’s included in the package is just not up to the job and can’t produce a properly focused, sharp image if it were to try all night.

Consequently, on my walk this afternoon in the howling gale that we were having, I wound up the Nikon and took a couple of lenses with me. The max extension on the standard lens is the same focal length on the min extension on the zoom lens, so I took several photos of the same views with the two lenses, matching the aperture, speed and ISO, and I want to see how they turn out.

It might be possible that it’s the standard lens, and not the camera that is at issue and if so, I’ll see what I can do about finding a cheap AF-S lens to fit it. The irony of it all is that I do have a spare standard lens, and I’ve left it back at the farm, haven’t I? That’s annoying.

Another thing that has occupied some of my time is this 3D program.

You remember a few weeks ago that I had a little project on the go about some items, and then this other 3D site appeared that resells content. So I searched the Internet this morning too and found a tutorial about making clothes.

It uses Hexagon, the deep-level 3D design program that I have, but it assumes a level of knowledge that I don’t have. Something that took the narrator of this video almost three minutes took me almost three hours and I still wasn’t satisfied with what I had done.

But then Rome wasn’t built in a day and I’m certainly learning a lot as I go round, and if that’s not a positive sign of progress then nothing is.

Tea was the rest of the pepper that I hadn’t used on the pizza, stuffed with the usual mixture, and with spicy rice. And I seem to be running out of salad dressing. But I have a recipe for vegan mayonnaise and now that I have a blender, I intend to take full advantage of it.

But I cracked this evening. I turned the heating off on Friday night as I went to bed and it’s not been on all weekend. But with the wind and the clouds it’s gone quite cool again. So this evening I switched it on low again. No point in freezing to death is there?

So an early night and tomorrow I need to go and fetch my rail tickets. My train leaves before the ticket office opens and I’ve seen what happens when the automatic ticket printer fails to work. I’ve no intention of arguing with an intransigent ticket inspector so I want my tickets in my sweaty little mitt before I set out on Wednesday at … errr … 07:45.

Wednesday 28th February 2018 – BRRRRR!!!!

It was cool in the bedroom when I awoke this morning, despite the heater being on during the night. But never mind cool, it was taters in the living room. But then, it WAS Minus 5°C outside – the coldest temperature that I have ever recorded here.

That is of course a far cry from the minus 16°C and minus 19°C that we had in thz Auvergne, but theres the fierce wind here to deal with. When I was out for my walk this afternoon the cold wind was blowing straight through my woolly hat and freezing the woolly ears on my woolly head. And that wasn’t anything to be passed over lightly.

It was a slightly more reasonable night last night but what with one thing and another (and once you get started you have no idea how many other things there are) going to bed was nothing like as early as I had hoped.

But when I went I was off on my travels again. Some kind of confusing voyage amongst a group of adolescents, one or two of whom had difficulty understanding the difference between “sleeping with” and “falling asleep with” and couldn’t understand the significance of why a series of doors might be marked as being locked. There was a plate of something like spaghetti involved i it too, although I’m not sure what that was doing in there or what was its significance.

So fist act in here was to switch on both of the heaters in here and put them full-on. Not something that I was ever planning on doing but minus °C here is rather exceptional so I can be excused.

Again, it doesn’t seem that I’ve done very much today but in fact I’ve been rather busy, although there isn’t much to show for it at the moment. Idly surfing the internet like you do, I found a 3D virtual world that acts as some kind of agent for 3D designers to sell their output to the members. I’m far from being at the stage where anything that I ever create is worth selling. However the terms and conditions are not as unreasonable as they otherwise might be, so it gives me some kind of impetus to get myself in order and work on something positive for a change.

Apart from that, not a lot has happened. It’s not been the weather to do to much and it’s not going to get any better tomorrow. I can see my walk out to LIDL being … errr … put on ice.

And I wonder how I’ll sleep tomnight. For some reason I was out like a light for an hour just now and that’s banjaxed all of my plans.

Monday 26th February 2018 – DON’T SOME PEOPLE LIKE TO RUB IT IN?

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I went to my Health Insurance people the other day to hand in a pile of documents so that the Doctor who oversees my case at the Insurance office could see them.

And today I had a leaflet from them. “What steps to take when a member of our scheme dies”.

Yes, nothing like rubbing it in, is there?

Mind you I felt like death this morning. Having had a really good sleep yesterday it upset my body rhythm completely and it was 02:00 and beyond before I went to bed.

Struggling out at 06:20 was clearly too much and after breakfast I crashed out well and truly for a good 90 minutes.

However during the night I’d been on my travels again. A few of us were on a train travelling from Chester to Crewe past the old Calveley station, but someone kept on inserting into the voyage old photos of the Chester – Mold – Ruthin railway line. And I’ve no idea why.

After my little wasted morning I decided that it was time to do some work. And so I’ve been hard at it since then. I’ve had another session with this 3D program that I use. I’ve been doing something that I promised quite a while ago, and that is to experiment with textures and templates.

It’s one of those things that the first step takes for ever, but once you have done one of them, it’s fairly straightforward. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve been using Paint Shop Pro as my graphice editor for over 20 years, but even now I’m having to find and use facilities and functions that I never knew existed.

Despite all of my efforts, it’s still not doing what I think it ought to do. And so I’ll have to put a great deal more effort into it. It’s certainly progress though, all the same.

Having spoken to Rosemary on the telephone, I went for a rather late walk this afternoon.

And I once more fell in with the workmen digging the trench. It seems that they are laying the conduit first, and the cables will follow. And then there will be the connection to the network later.

I did ask about the timescale, and he reckoned that it would be about a year to have it up and running. That’s disappointing from my point of view – I was hoping for it to be much more rapid than that.

But nevertheless, that’s progress too, and I can’t complain too much about that.

Back here, it was time for coffee, as it always is when I come back from my walk.

And I usually allow myself a little treat, and that’s why I like birthdays so much because, having visited Liz and Terry, I’m supplied with another vegan chocolate birthday cake.

Sticky, gooey and chocolatey, and absolutely delicious. This should last me a couple of weeks and then I’ll have to have another birthday.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with the leftover stuffing from the other day. And my walk this evening took me past quite a few people also out taking the air.

So having had a decent morning’s sleep this morning, I wonder how I’ll get on tonight.

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Tag Archives: Daz 3D

Tuesday 3rd December 2019 – DESPITE THE FACT …

Saturday 27th April 2019 – A HURRICANE …

Monday 22nd April 2019 – WITH IT BEING …

Wednesday 3rd April 2019 – CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER

Friday 1st February 2019 – WHAT A WAY …

Wednesday 30th January 2019 – IT’S SNOWING!!!!

Monday 28th January 2019 – THE ONE PROBLEM …

Friday 7th December 2018 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

Monday 12th November 2018 – I’M FREEZING!

Friday 13th July 2018 – I THINK THAT I WAS …

Tuesday 29th May 2018 – IT WAS A BIT …

Friday 18th May 2018 – I WAS RIGHT …

Monday 12th March 2018 – I WAS RIGHT …

Wednesday 28th February 2018 – BRRRRR!!!!

Monday 26th February 2018 – DON’T SOME PEOPLE LIKE TO RUB IT IN?

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