Oo-er, that was chilly and slippery

Had to pop down to Hastings and took the BMW because it needed a run to
keep the battery happy.

wish I'd taken the car....

Unbelievably slippy roads, and ice everywhere. Just north of Hastings, a
van had gone into a ditch. On the A21 Sevenoaks by-pass, a car had
spun off the dual carriageway.

I felt the bike twitching at either end several times and just kept it
aimed at any narrow ribbon of reasonably dry grippy tarmac I could see.
Once on the M25, it was easier, as the traffic was keeping the road
surface relatively clean and clear.

But the temperature is dropping very fast, and I reckon the roads south
of London are going to be lethal tomorrow morning. What's it like with
the rest of you guys?

Any road, a nice 125 mile run in (mostly) the sun. I really needed that.

 

It's been a mix of snow and sleet all afternoon here, and whilst I've
not been out much, a brief walk across a supermarket car park was
almost enough to see me fall flat on my arse.

 

It's fucking it down with snow now. Getting more than a bit fucked off
sat in the house.

Supposed to be back at work Monday, but can't really see it happening
just yet.

I really do NOT need any more morning glory.

 

I bottled it yesterday when I chose to walk 3 miles to my sisters place for
a new years day roast dinner - bike cover caked in ice and hard frozen
puddles everywhere. I'm glad I did 'cos when I got a lift back at one in the
morning it was bitterly cold. Today is even worse. I dread to think how bad
it will be if there's light rain. The outlook is so bad I'm seriously
considering buying a small car :-(

 

We had a white-out as we got almost onto Kinder Scout. Turned around
in the end and near didn't get out of the valley as the car had
trouble making it up the hill.

It was made more entertaining by a twat in a Discovery thinking he was
a hero by overtaking us at that point and ploughing into a fence.
Golf GTI on low-profile tyres wins the day.

 

Harlow > Enfield was amusing this morning in a car....

--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21 COSOC#3
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
116 Giulietta 3.0l Sprint 1.7 GTV TS GT 3.2 V6
Triumph Sprint ST 1050: It's blue, see.
www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

The scoot was decidedly skittish on the way to the supermarket this
morning, I managed to stay on and park in the bikes bay then narrowly
avoided landing on my arse when I got off.
By 10.30 most of the slippy stuff had melted.

 

Down to 0 and dropping, just got back in the car from the eldest's
place in horsham. Roads are slightly slippy a couple of twitches on
the back roads through hascombe. Burst water main in town which should
be interesting in the morning.

 

Cold but dry. And the bike's in the garage where it belongs.

 

South Coast
white over with ice no gritters in sight and cops everywhere
I'm about to venture out for about 4 hours night shooting (star trails
hopefully)
best wrap up warm me thinks

 

Bet you were twitching at either end too.

Slippy white frost on roads and pavements. I got the car moving about on a
couple of occasions.

 

Moon can be used as a light source to light surrounding area of interest
single test shots of 30 seconds will confirm if too bright or if your not
getting the stars
Usually its a series of 30 second shots around f/9 to f/11, ISO 100, turn
off your Noise reduction
shoot in jpeg not RAW to aid the stitching together

A mate of mine has posted a walkthrough here.
http://adcuz.co.uk/2009/06/25/how-to-star-trails-stacking-with-startrailsexe/

North star. Well its been done to death, so we look for other interesting
ways of using the trails if possible

this one is great, on the equator, you can actually see the trails bending
both ways.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/23155319@N08/4192820556/

have fun

 

We were supposed to have light snow last night, but it must have
averaged only about 0.1 mm -- I could see signs of it in sheltered places
as I walked into work today. (I've wasted two days trying to get one of
our GRID clusters rebooted for our mangler, who's in Amsterdam with his
family for the holidays. Turns out that Security doesn't have a key for
the electrically-operated metal shutter that's been rolled down over the
back entrance to the area -- the _front_ shutter operates only from a
switch inside... Heads will roll on Monday!)

--
Ivan Reid, School of Engineering & Design, _____________ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. Ivan.Reid@[brunel.ac.uk|cern.ch] Room 40-1-B12, CERN
GSX600F, RG250WD "You Porsche. Me pass!" DoD #484 JKLO#003, 005
WP7# 3000 LC Unit #2368 (tinlc) UKMC#00009 BOTAFOT#16 UKRMMA#7 (Hon)
KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".

 

I had a lot of trouble not falling down on the 30th -- some
contractors are polishing the floors in our buildings and they'd laid down
some polish on the ground floor and then left it to dry before buffing.
I nearly didn't make it to the lift!

--
Ivan Reid, School of Engineering & Design, _____________ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. Ivan.Reid@[brunel.ac.uk|cern.ch] Room 40-1-B12, CERN
GSX600F, RG250WD "You Porsche. Me pass!" DoD #484 JKLO#003, 005
WP7# 3000 LC Unit #2368 (tinlc) UKMC#00009 BOTAFOT#16 UKRMMA#7 (Hon)
KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".

 

Guardian was reporting some interesting satellite flyovers tonight
and tomorrow; did you get any of them?

BTW, I'm looking for some software that can feed me an MP4 file
frame-by-(decoded)-frame. Anyone know of any? I've got some that currently
can feed me the un-encoded buffer, it's the "make that a real frame" stuff
that's eluding me ATM (it might be buried already in what I've got, but the
docs are rudimentary).

--
Ivan Reid, School of Engineering & Design, _____________ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. Ivan.Reid@[brunel.ac.uk|cern.ch] Room 40-1-B12, CERN
GSX600F, RG250WD "You Porsche. Me pass!" DoD #484 JKLO#003, 005
WP7# 3000 LC Unit #2368 (tinlc) UKMC#00009 BOTAFOT#16 UKRMMA#7 (Hon)
KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".

 

Be careful in there.

 

Ponce, I've been out most of this afternoon and evening on mine.

Topbox is weave-free up to an indicated 115mph, even when loaded with
recently dried laundry

 

Doh!, what was I thinking, Open up the aperture and ISO 200

 

here's the result tonight
I had the wrong settings dialed in so spent a good 2 hours in the cold for
pretty much nothing
http://bighugelabs.com/onblack.php?id=4238083527&size=large

 

Using the patented Mavis Beacon "Hunt&Peck" Technique, The Older

I just had to pop out to the garage, and noted that it felt considerably
warmer than a few hours ago. Sho'nuff Luton Airport is currently
reporting 34F.

Odd to have a temperature above freezing at this time of night.