Sunday, 10 June 2018

Catching Flies

Catching pesky annoying flies in the home can be done several ways.

Artificial man made catcher.
This is the one I use. No chemicals.
Just a nice attractive, to flies, yellow colour and a very sticky surface.
I have just replaced last year's one as it was well and truly covered with dead flies:

Fly Traps 2

In the past I have tried the yellow sticky sheet type catchers.
Two problems.
Trying to get the paper cover off them without sticking to the darn thing.
Worse, ending up with a sore throat from the chemical used to attract insects.
All you have to do with the Zero In is hold the plastic hook and slide it out of the box as the plastic shapes at each end prevent it from catching on the cardboard.

The natural way with plants which catch flies.
I have had a Venus Fly trap and Pitcher plant in past years but lost them to cold winters.
Now I have got round to replacing them with the addition, for the first time, of a Sundew:

Fly Traps 3

It will be interesting to see which of these works best in the conservatory.

Also tried in the past.
A UV zapper. The type you sometimes see in food shops.
The light attracts insects and a high voltage zaps them.
The almighty crack when one was zapped used to make me jump.
It didn't attract many flies.
It cost money having it plugged in to the electric supply all the time.

A hand held electric zapper. The tennis racket shaped thingy.
I'm too slow to swat the flies. Again the crack when one is zapped made me jump.
Having it handy, with a working battery was a clat.

Much better to have something you can hang up and forget about as it gets on with its designed task.
Just keep it well away from curtains which might blow on to it or heads which may brush against it.



Saturday, 9 June 2018

Walkies

As regulars cannot have missed I changed my iPhone recently. Mainly to get a bit larger screen but mostly because my old one is no longer supported by Apple and the operating system and many of my favourite apps cannot be updated. One of the apps included in the new one is Health. It can be used to keep a record of all sorts of information but I only use one section, its ability to automatically monitor how far I walk each day. As the phone resides in a trouser pocket most of the time it records how many paces I make and calculates how far I have travelled. The results are shown graphically:

health 080618

Easy to spot when the four legged boss took me out for walkies.

Apparently the number of steps is measured by its built in accelerometer and the distance using GPS.
Both are also used to work out the length of my stride.

Friday, 8 June 2018

A Shaggy Parasol?

No, not a wind blown sun umbrella but these little beauties spotted in the part of the garden which was cleared of overgrown bushes late last year:

Shaggy Parasol?

Having spent a while researching they look to me to be Shaggy Parasol mushrooms.
Chlorophyllum rhacodes  See a description HERE.

Another which had fallen over:
Shaggy Parasol?

From below:
Shaggy Parasol?

Another view of the trio:

Shaggy Parasol?

Wednesday, 6 June 2018

Monday, 4 June 2018

Monday Montage

A reminder of last week's WidsMob Montage modified picture:

Montage 17

Identified in various ways:

DSCN8428

by Adrian and The Weaver of Grass, with Wilma and Ragged Robin correctly saying it is a fossil fish.

How easy will this one be?

Montage 19

If you wish to have a go at identifying what I photographed please leave your guess in the comments. They will be revealed, along with the original photo, next Monday.

Saturday, 2 June 2018

Going Slow

Adrian asked me what the video is like on the iPhone 6s.

Standard video can be recorded at 720p or 1080p HD
Also built in is a slow motion mode:
1080p at 120 frames per second and 720p at 240 frames per second.
Some modes are auto stabilised.

This is my first attempt at moving in close with slow motion set at 240 fps:


Soundtrack music by Christian Bjoerklund from the Free Music Archive.

Wondering whether these are the bees which took over the nestbox.
Love the one which videobombed the action in the last clip.
I can see me having great fun with this mode in the Summer.
Haven't worked out yet as to why the motion speeds up at the end of each clip.

For standard video the lens is quite wide angle, as with most mobile phones.
I've just had a quick go with that.
Also built in are time lapse video and panorama stills modes.

Friday, 1 June 2018

Yellow in the Yellowbelly County

Yellowbelly - a term sometimes used to describe a person from Lincolnshire.
The derivation is lost in the mists of time. Some ideas here on Wikipedia.

Yellow flowers spotted yesterday.

 Firstly the Ice Plant shown a few days ago.
An excellent ground cover plant very tolerant to drought:
IMG_0105

Another excellent ground cover plant, drought tolerant:
A Sedum but I forget which:
IMG_0101


Dandelion. Loved by insects and the bane of many a gardener:
IMG_0098

Buttercup. Far too many in my lawn. As a child did you ever hold one under someone's chin to see whether the reflected yellow Sunlight showed they liked butter?
 IMG_0063

My tomato plants flowering nicely:
IMG_0103

Lincolnshire wouldn't be the same without its glowing fields of Oilseed Rape:
IMG_0094

All taken with the iPhone 6s in spite of what Flickr says
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