Weekly Photo Challenge: Sun

Our blogmate Speccy has already pointed out that this is not the best week to have “Sun” as a topic here in Ireland (thanks to a strong wind it was actually raining inside our bus-shelter yesterday morning).

(By the way, in her post that I’ve linked to above she has a link to a post of mine, so it is possible that I’ve now created some sort of blog black-hole that will swallow the whole world, but to be honest the weather’s so shite that I don’t care).

I do have this picture

which I took for the topic “Through” last month, and then couldn’t think up anything to say about it. It’s the sun setting as seen through the plant which GoldenEyes and I bought the day we moved into our new office.

And I had reckoned that it would have to do (not that it’s bad, I’m very proud of it, it’s just that it wasn’t actually taken for this particular challenge) until this morning while I was having breakfast in the kitchen, and I saw this:

It’s the sun reflecting off the back window of our neighbour’s house.

So there you go, a picture of the sun without the sun actually in it.

Just like Speccy’s picture, in fact.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Through

This magnifying glass

belongs to Mrs Tin. I have no idea why she owns it, perhaps she’s a consulting detective in her spare time, it would certainly explain why she keeps telling me that the game is afoot, and why she knows the times of all the trains to Devon.

Anyway, yesterday I had a rant at our former leader, calling him, among other things, an odious little toad.

I don’t regret the post in any way, and in fact here, through Mrs  Tin’s magnifying glass (and it’s far harder to do than I thought it would be), is a photo of the post again, my ode to my contempt and loathing for this dreadful man:

It’s malice, through a looking-glass.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Unusual

For the last couple of weeks as I’ve been walking up the hill to my house on the way home from work I have noticed two bright lights in the sky. Thanks to a great astronomy website called StarDate (which I would love even if it was crap, simply because of its name) I know that they are Venus and Jupiter.

At their closest they are respectively 41 million and 628 million kms from Earth in two totally different directions, if Space actually has directions. Yet they are visible, one just a couple of inches above the other, from my front garden.

I think that’s pretty unusual (after all, they can only have been in conjunction with one another a few hundred million times since the universe was formed), though sadly what is not unusual is my photographic ability with my mobile phone.

This is my attempt at taking a picture of them:

The tiny dot in the centre of the screen is Venus. Before you get too impressed, though, Jupiter is not visible at all, and that second light at the bottom of the picture is my neighbours’ burglar alarm.

I had my camera on zoom. Perhaps there is a limit to the distance over which this makes any difference.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Distorted

There is a lot of glass in our house. This is the front door:

These are the doors into the sitting room from the hallway:

This is the window that separates the sitting room from the kitchen:

I am thinking of entering that one for the Turner prize.

You will notice a theme here. The original occupants of this house obviously had a thing (though one shudders to think what shape that thing might have been) for distorted glass.

Perhaps they were junkies who could no longer afford mind-bending drugs and decided to get their house to do it for them.

We have grown used to it over the years (though you do occasionally find yourself talking to someone in the next room and then finding that they are not in fact in there).

And we have actually added to it with this:

It’s called a glass brick, on the side of the kitchen that has no windows (because if there were we’d be able to see into next door’s back garden). It was Mrs Tin’s idea, the builder who put it in had never heard of it, and it shines light into a dark corner.

And this is distorted sunlight shining through it early this morning:

I think it’s beautiful.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Contrast

There are advantages to not drinking anything at all on a Saturday night. There are also advantages, although I admit these are fewer, to working such long hours that you find yourself with odd sleep patterns. Among these advantages (well, ok, the only one) is that you very occasionally find yourself getting up at 6.47 on a beautiful Sunday morning.

6.47 on a Sunday morning is a time that I had previously believed to be a myth, like the time of King Arthur, the time of one million years BC when dinosaurs shared the earth with Racquel Welch (I’m sure that SOFA will understand that I just have to show a picture of her, I wouldn’t be a bloke if I didn’t) or the time when men thought that long hair and platform shoes were cool (there is no photographic evidence that I am aware of that proves that I was ever such a person).

There is such a time, though, and on a morning as lovely as this it is a time when the sun begins to creep up over the top of our house, giving us a picture like this:

As it moves around to our front of our house we get a scene from our front door like this:

And as it begins to shine into our sitting room we get a picture like this:

So that’s my attempt at showing the contrast between sunshine and shade. I hope you enjoyed it.

Now, since I’ve been up for five hours and it’s only just noon, I might go for a snooze in front of the TV.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Down

Last summer WordPress had the topic “Up” as their photo challenge. I showed this picture, taken from the balcony of our office

justifying it by pointing out that I was the one who was “up”, looking down.

You can guess what’s coming, can’t you…

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Someday they’re going to pick “Sideways”, and I’m going to have to break into the building across the road.

Weekly Drawing Challenge: Hope

So the Weekly Drawing Challenge begins.

Last year WordPress went for photo topics like “Mountains”, “Flowers” and “Breakfast”.

This year so far they have chosen “Peaceful” and “Simple” and this week they have gone for “Hope”. Clearly they have decided to opt for abstract concepts, and while I can produce abstract drawings as well as Picasso could mine are not generally intended to be so.

Anyway, my first thought was the Hope Diamond, for which I drew this:

I have no idea why I thought it was orange, I just always have.

This whole exercise, though, will be daft(er) unless I make my very best attempt at drawing, so just drawing what I think something might look like won’t do.  Therefore I Googled “Hope Diamond” and it seems that actually it looks like this:

I was surprised to learn that it is blue, though not so surprised to learn that it is apparently cursed. I have been blue myself and know just how it feels.

Anyway, with the above picture modelling for me, here is the Hope Diamond, Take 2:

If you start Googling it one of the suggestions that you get is “Hope Diamond Titanic”. The Hope Diamond was not in fact on the Titanic, as it is now in the Smithsonian and could not have got there unless a cry of “women, children and very large rocks first” went up that night. Some people seem to believe that it is the stone that Rose carried from the ship in the pocket of the coat that she wasn’t given until she got onto the Californian (which would explain why she sat on the raft while Jack clung to the side of it, had they done it the other way round she’d have sunk like, well, a stone).

This, by the way, is the Titanic:

Though unfortunately so is this:

I think that’s enough for this week, I’ve to keep my creative energy for the type of things WordPress are likely to set as future topics, such as “integrity”, “serendipity” or “the human condition”.

Give us back topics like “Breakfast”. At least I can make a dog’s dinner out of that.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Self Portrait

This week WordPress really have set me a challenge, since I do not wish to flaunt my impossibly good looks across the internet, thus inflaming my already adoring female readership, plus Grandad.

Still, they have asked for it, so here I go:

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Unfortunately, the mantelpiece is quite high in our sitting-room.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Celebration

My first photo for this week’s challenge is this:

No, this is not a celebration of Alexander Graham Bell, the man whose invention led us indirectly but inexorably to automated numbered options, the novelty ringtone and people yelling “I’m on the bus” when they are on the bus.

The photo does not celebrate that fact that I was at work at 8.01 this morning, nor the fact that it is Tue, though at least that‘s better than it being Mon. It is the “13 Dec” that is the most important part of the picture, and this next photo (the taking of which has confirmed to the Tinkids that I am mad) may help clear up why:

Today is my birthday.

I am 54 today, and am celebrating the occasion by, well, doing nothing (it is Tue, after all).

So, what’s in store for me over the coming 12 months? To find out I have found a webpage called “Things Other People Accomplished When They Were Your Age” (I love the fact that there is such a page out there, and also the fact that I was so confident that there would be).

I have missed the chance to match the people who achieved stuff at 53, including Robert E. Peary, who reached the North Pole; Walter Hunt, who patented the safety pin; and Beethoven, who completed his Ninth Symphony.

Whereas I slagged off SpellCheck and dyed my hair bright blue, neither of which are quite as impressive.

Now I have to pit myself against this year’s crop, who achieved the following when they were 54:

• Annie Jump Cannon, who deserves everlasting fame for her name alone, was a dean of women astronomers who became the first person to systematically classify the stars according to spectral type. Since she seems to have this pretty well covered I think I will leave her to it, especially since I tend to classify stars according to films they have appeared in.
• Henry Jay Heimlich developed his emergency manoeuvre. I have at least learnt how to perform it while on my First-Aid course, and have also learnt something that my instructors do not know. We were taught that it is no longer referred to as the Heimlich Manoeuvre, it is now called the Abdominal Thrust, and that this was because the Heimlich family were demanding royalties every time the name was used, but it seems that this stems from a spoof article in The Onion in 2002.
• Napoleon abdicated his throne. I’ve streamlined this process by never being on a throne in the first place.
• And finally (yes, there are only four listed, it seems 54-year-olds are more inclined to have a bit of a sit-down and a nice cup of tea) there is John Locke, who, when he was 54, “began to publish the results of a lifetime of study and thought”.

In other words, he started a blog. I’m miles ahead of him already.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Breakfast, Family and Waiting

I’ve fallen behind with the Weekly Photo Challenge, so this time I’ve done three together. It’s been three weeks now since they set the topic “Breakfast”. I have no idea how many pictures of muesli, porridge or other gloop made it onto the Internet, but I decided to go for this:

This lets you all use your imagination, and also proves to you all that I go to work in the dark.

Two weeks ago we were given “Family”. I’ve gone for this:

It’s not very clear, but then it has to be at least 42 years old. As far as we know it is the only picture in existence of my grandfather, my grandmother and all eight of their children, including my own mum, the girl in red just behind my granny.

And finally, last week’s topic was “Waiting”. This is my post page on most evenings these days:

They do say (indeed we said it here) that a picture paints a thousand words. If it would write them that would be a lot more helpful.