These strawberries came from Spain and were reasonably tasty.
Thursday, 25 April 2013
What a Whopper
As usual I added a pack of strawberries to my delivery from Asda. First lucky thing was the usual £1 pack I ordered was out of stock so a £2 pack was sent but only charged at £1. They were quite a mix of sizes but by far the monster of the batch was this one photographed next to a 10p coin which measures 22mm across (just under an inch).

These strawberries came from Spain and were reasonably tasty.
These strawberries came from Spain and were reasonably tasty.
Wednesday, 24 April 2013
Home From Home
Tuesday, 23 April 2013
Minibeasts
When I was teaching in Primary School my favourite nature lesson was one where the children worked in small groups of 3 or 4, each group having their own square metre of ground to explore for minibeasts. All those small creatures which hide in holes and under things. This morning when I was tidying up the part of the garden next to the summerhouse I moved a small pile of old bricks. As there were several minibeasts using them as a home I grabbed the laptop and the endoscope to see what I could record:
millipede, woodlice and small slug
Minibeasts 01 from Midmarsh on Vimeo.
I need the practice in keeping the little camera still and far enough away for things to stay in focus - 60mm or more. With small creatures it is tempting to get too close, also the laptop screen was very hard to see in the brilliant sunshine. I will have to think of some form of sunshade for it - possibly a cardboard box on its side might do the job.
millipede, woodlice and small slug
Minibeasts 01 from Midmarsh on Vimeo.
I need the practice in keeping the little camera still and far enough away for things to stay in focus - 60mm or more. With small creatures it is tempting to get too close, also the laptop screen was very hard to see in the brilliant sunshine. I will have to think of some form of sunshade for it - possibly a cardboard box on its side might do the job.
Monday, 22 April 2013
Macro on Monday - Guess What
A different way of presenting this week's puzzle object. Today I found an interesting free iPhone app - SymbolGram - which will work on the iPad though the results are low quality. The app can use all sorts of shapes to mask photos. There are over one hundred to choose from. Photos can be rotated and resized, text can be added as can a few choices of background colour. I hope that an iPad HD version will be made as I found it real fun to use. The app is supported by advertising at the bottom of the screen and doesn't seem too distracting.
Anyway - here are a few different views of the same creature as produced in the app.
Guess What sort of creature I have hidden:
No prizes for a correct guess, just for fun.
Sunday, 21 April 2013
Newly Hatched Tadpoles
The first full post completed on the laptop. How nice to be able to compute and take in some fresh air at the same time. Lovely to sit here and listen to all the bird song.
Things keep catching me by surprise this Spring so I shouldn't have been surprised to see tadpoles swimming around this morning. These are from a batch of frog spawn I transferred from the pond to the 'nursery pool' a few days ago.:
Tadpoles 1 from Midmarsh on Vimeo.
The video was taken with an endoscope camera hand held just above the water surface. Low quality as it only has 300K pixels but it is small, waterproof, has 4 LED lights built in, focuses from 6cm to infinity, plugs in a USB port and has a 7m cable. Another reason I wanted a laptop - hopefully to be able to get some underwater video in the pond.

Things keep catching me by surprise this Spring so I shouldn't have been surprised to see tadpoles swimming around this morning. These are from a batch of frog spawn I transferred from the pond to the 'nursery pool' a few days ago.:
Tadpoles 1 from Midmarsh on Vimeo.
The video was taken with an endoscope camera hand held just above the water surface. Low quality as it only has 300K pixels but it is small, waterproof, has 4 LED lights built in, focuses from 6cm to infinity, plugs in a USB port and has a 7m cable. Another reason I wanted a laptop - hopefully to be able to get some underwater video in the pond.
Saturday, 20 April 2013
Spring is on the Move
Frosty start to the day but once the Sun got its act together things began to look up. Afternoon temperature reached near 16C which was a nice change. I spotted several butterflies, a large yellow one when we out walk-about at lunch time. Probably a Brimstone. Quite a few Peacocks fluttering round the garden. A little video clip I managed to get with the Nikon. The same short bit shown three times:
Peacock Butterfly from Midmarsh on Vimeo.
Also lots of bees strutting their stuff:
Bee from Midmarsh on Vimeo.
As you will have noticed I am using Vimeo at the moment. I find that uploads to YouTube are extremely slow and can take two hours for a small file only to be told there was an error and nothing got uploaded. Vimeo is fast to upload but a free account then has a 45min delay before it is processed, but at least I know it has arrived safely.
Oh - and these are the first files I have processed and uploaded using the laptop and Windozy 7. It is not such a big leap from XP as I thought it would be. In some ways friendlier but too nagging in others. I probably haven't found the right settings yet.
Now I'm tearing what is left of my hair out with Vodafone as their site update seems to have screwed up my account. Had to have the account scrubbed and re-register but now waiting for it to fully update. Will know in an hour or two.
Peacock Butterfly from Midmarsh on Vimeo.
Also lots of bees strutting their stuff:
Bee from Midmarsh on Vimeo.
As you will have noticed I am using Vimeo at the moment. I find that uploads to YouTube are extremely slow and can take two hours for a small file only to be told there was an error and nothing got uploaded. Vimeo is fast to upload but a free account then has a 45min delay before it is processed, but at least I know it has arrived safely.
Oh - and these are the first files I have processed and uploaded using the laptop and Windozy 7. It is not such a big leap from XP as I thought it would be. In some ways friendlier but too nagging in others. I probably haven't found the right settings yet.
Now I'm tearing what is left of my hair out with Vodafone as their site update seems to have screwed up my account. Had to have the account scrubbed and re-register but now waiting for it to fully update. Will know in an hour or two.
Friday, 19 April 2013
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