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Chris Smaje: A Small Farm Future
TL;DR: The most coherent treatment of the environmental and associated crises, and the fallout from them, that I have come across; a must read.
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Camping Stoves and Carbon Monoxide
Carbon monoxide emissions from camping stoves is not something that is much talked about (beyond the manufacturers’ leaflets saying ‘do not use inside a tent’, which is like a car manual saying ‘do not drive when raining’). But earlier today I got a poignant reminder, this is, in fact, a real issue.
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Uber Complex Chief Engineer Fail (in the flesh)
So, two days ago, the Uber Complex Chief Engineer, that mythical OpenReach beast I have started to doubt existed, turned up on my doorstep: ‘I gather, from the 5000 notes on this job, you are having a spot of bother?’
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Deer Shield (Pluteus cervinus)
The forest floor around here is very dry just now, in spite of the heavy rain we have had in the days before the brief heat wave. Nevertheless, I am beginning to see the occasional mushroom popping up again, like this deer shield growing from a crevice on a birch tree.
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Tidal Electricity
A tidal turbine in the Pentland Firth has been in operation for over six years – tidal is a part of the utopian technological solution package for the environmental crisis, so let’s cut through this piece of commerical PR for a bit of a reality check:
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Keeping the Plebs Out
Scotland’s Rewilder in Chief is offering some new holiday lets at Aldourie (Loch Ness), starting at £470 per night. To quote from the (paywalled) Times piece:
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Flamingo Land
Parks Watch Scotland has an update post on the ministerial recall of the Flamingo Land planning application; if you haven’t read it, you should.
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Uber Complex Chief Engineer Fail (ongoing)
Time for another update on our quest for FTTP – in 9 days it will be a five month anniversary of the start of this saga, and no light at the end of this tunnel. Here is what has happened since my last post in May.
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On Jungle Boots
To say I dislike Gore-Tex lined boots is an understatement; I loath those things. It is a product forced upon us as a solution to a problem that didn’t exist, resulting in boots with a significantly reduced service life, yet sold at a premium price. And I strongly suspect the manufacturing costs are actually lower compared to a good quality leather boot. All in all, what you might call an outdoor equipment brand’s wet dream.
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On the Speyside Way
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Why Not Rewilding
This is an excerpt from (the appendix of) a longer piece I have been working on for a while, but which I am unlikely to finish any time soon. But having touched on the rewilding subject briefly a couple of times in recent months, a more complete write up of my current perspective on the subject is, I think, desirable.
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The Pleasure of Printing
It’s good to be printing again, it’s been a while, not least because I haven’t produced anything worth printing for some months. But that changed in May, and I managed to carve out some time in the last two weeks to work on three 16x12 prints from our Lewis trip — just finished this morning with some spotting that one of the prints required. 🙂
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Model K
Produced by the Gorkovsky Avtomobilny Zavod, the K is a small car for the masses; the K designator (which stands for Kamchatka) marks its all around Siberian readiness (S was already taken).
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The Imitator in Chief
Starlings, who I have had a soft spot for ever since I got a closer look at their marital antics at the bird box by my office window, are superb imitators. I first became aware of this a couple of years ago on St Kilda, where the local population entertains itself by making fulmar calls, and been paying closer attention to that since.
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Uber Complex Chief Engineer Fail (cntd, no show)
We have reached a new low in this saga. Late on Monday, week after the last fail, OpenReach (in the form of some poor soul in a callcenter in a faraway land) phoned to make a new appointment to complete the work. And even though the work at the house has been completed, they insisted I have to be present for this … then never showed up.
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Of Telephoto Lenses
The term ‘telephoto lens’ is nowadays generally misapplied to longer focal length lenses, as opposed to wide angle lenses. In fact, ‘telephoto’ has nothing to do with focal length, but designates a particular lens design. But photographers generally don’t concern themselves with the intricacies of lens construction, yet in this case it makes a big practical difference when using a view camera.
