Taken at the foot of the Southern Upland Way climbing out of Portpatrick Harbour, looking down on a passing jackdaw to rocks below.
Monthly Archives: May 2013
Tidying up
Last weekend’s bonfire resulted in more than a wheelbarrow full of ash, some of which went in the compost; burning the wooden rubbish the previous occupants left over the bank garden fence resulted in several nails and screws lurking in the ash. Still, no physics geek would be complete without a magnet – make that a big magnet – it made a great job of lifting hidden metal detritus.
Above the Harbour
Just above Portpatrick, heading up the first few hundred yards of the Southern Upland Way looking back to the harbour.
3-shot HDR using HDR Camera+ for Android, processed in Aviary.
Blue, pink and green
Dappled sunlight on bluebells and geraniums
More dappled sunlight on a mixture of bluebells and pink geraniums.
More bluebells
I just couldn’t resist these, a gorgeous shade of blue with dappled sunlight on them.
Bluebell
I guess they’ll be coming to an end soon – but it’s been a good year for enjoying bluebells by the carpet-load in the local woods.
Catharsis
Can’t beat a good bonfire. And another. Very gratifying.
Win Small
The first fruits, or rather vegetables, of our planting efforts – this diminutive garlic stem poked through today. Much rejoicing!
Lenticular Clouds
This particular shape of cloud normally requires mountains or hills in order to form, so I was mildly surprised to see a couple of examples of lenticular clouds near Portpatrick yesterday evening – Galloway not being noted for having any hills to speak of, least of all to the north west of here where the wind was coming from.
Water, water, everywhere
Saturday was wet. Very wet.
This was the view just outside Portpatrick, at the corner of the Dunskey B-road turnoff, water flooding off the hill onto the road.
On arriving home, I discovered a drain outside the gate was unable to cope with the sudden rain, and a gutter-load of water was flowing in a channel down the driveway, pushing gravel through the gate.
It took half an hour’s shovelling gravel to persuade some of the water to flow into a flowerbed the other side of the fence; in the meantime, the garage was flooded about 3in deep.
A couple of days later and the scale of damage caused is clear; while the driveway is now arguably better than it was before, roadside embankments have obviously suffered
as has the road surface – the erosion from gravel and dirt flowing over tarmac is quite severe:
Strange Attractors and TCP/IP Sequence Number Analysis
This page is an oldie but still amazingly useful. Executive summary: using phase-space plots to reveal non-random patterns in various operating systems’ TCP/IP sequence numbers which leave them vulnerable to attack through predictability.
Strange Attractors and TCP/IP Sequence Number Analysis.
Sunset
Glowing bright yellow and orange clouds – a vibrant sunset a few days ago.
Paddling
Dog looking elegant and keeping his paws cool in the water feature(tm).
Dwarf Hyacinth
Beautiful blue in beautiful light.
Undulating Landscape
Enoch Hill Radio Station (canmore id 215965 according to the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland), taken from beside the A77 road.
I thought the evening light looked particularly appealing on the landscape with its gentle rolling hills.
Map: