Monday Mystery

Last week I showed this embossed photo:



which was correctly identified as:



a drone by Wilma and Adrian. Well done. My thanks to all who had a go.
The embossed photos do have little detail in them so this week I will try a different process. The app I used to add frames to the Sunflower photos has may different way of modifying the appearance of a photo. This week I will try the filter they call 'linocut'. So, can you work out what this is?



If you would like to make a guess please leave it in the comments. They will be revealed, with the answer, next Monday.

Nearly There

What a difference a few days make. The Sunflower taken this morning in a short lull between strong gusts of wind:



Taken with the Nikon Coolpix S9050, on camera flash used to help darken the background. Frame added using the Mac App FX Photo Studio Pro.

Late Sunflowers

While I was topping up the bird feeders I had a close look at the Sunflower plants growing from seeds dropped by the birds. Most are tightly shut but one was beginning to show yellow petals.



If the night temperature doesn't get too low and the strong cold winds stay away for a few days more maybe it will bloom.

The bud on the largest plant was tight shut ...



... but at least a Ladybird was finding it a useful place to shelter.

Monday Mystery

I was getting a bit annoyed. I used to have a couple of apps on the iPad which were somewhat unique in what they could achieve with very little effort. One was ideal for making a Halloween themed video. The other (Hyperdroste) made videos with changing spiral patterns created from still photos. It took a while for my remaining active grey cell to work out why they had vanished:



Chances are they were amongst many useful old apps which stopped working when I updated iOS a while ago. Unfortunately they are irreplaceable as they were never updated. Consequently they are no longer available on the app store. Yesterday I deleted at least a dozen more apps which will no longer work and have not been updated. At least Uface (used to make the avatar above) remains active.

As I was checking through the various photo manipulation apps I still have I came across XnView Photo which, among other things, can create embossed effects. That got me thinking I would try a few of those for the Monday Mystery photo so here is the first one:



What was this a photo of? If you would like to hazard a guess please leave it in the comments. They will be revealed, with the answer, next Monday.

A few Feathered Visitors

I was fortunate to spot a couple of Long Tailed Tits visit the bird feeders. It is quite a while since I last saw any visit my feeders. Unfortunately they didn't stay long as there were scared away by the noisy arrival of a Wood Pigeon. When I checked the automatic camera recordings I saw that Great and Blue Tits are also visiting. Not recorded by the camera was a brief visit by a Coal Tit.



You may have noticed some late Sunflower plants growing near the feeders. In the late Spring I tried twice to get some seeds started in pots for planting in the front garden. They all failed to germinate! These plants are the result of randomly scattered seeds dropped when the birds drop them whilst feeding.

A Cloudy Tiny Planet

I am still out of inspiration for suitable mystery objects at the moment. To fill the gap here is a tiny planet video I put together a short while ago.



I had been searching for the one and only timelapse I made of a Sunset but it has eluded all efforts to find where I stored it. This timelapse was of daytime clouds which looked a bit insipid until I added the 'blast' clip filter in iMovie.

As we are heading to longer and longer dark evenings and nights I have been adding to my stock of audio books. I do use Kobo for eBooks and audio books. They are limited to use on their apps and hardware. I also like to have audio books in mp3 format. I can have them on a USB stick so I can play them on anything, especially my audio system. To that end I found quite a few download sites with free to download and use recordings. Two I have used a lot are Digitalbook.io and audiobooksworld.org. Most books are decades old as they are now out of copyright. They tend to be Librivox recordings which are all in the public domain. You could, of course, go direct to librivox.org though I find their site a bit more daunting to sort through. As far as I can tell all the books can be listened to on line as well as being available for download.

Monday Mystery

After watching and soaking up the atmosphere from the live broadcast of the final journey of the late Queen Elizabeth II I must say I feel somewhat melancholy this evening. I think it brought home that this really is the end of an era for the UK.

I've not found anything suitable for a new mystery photo yet but here is the answer to last week's close view. I showed ....



which was in fact part of a multi sharpener for various items with cutting edges ....





A simple but very effective manual sharpening device. The end section which some thought was like a tiny pair of scissors for cutting wire in fact is designed for sharpening secateur blades. The white strip is for scissor blades and the darker strip for garden shears. At least that is what the instructions indicate. The round knob at the other end unscrews to reveal a small oil reservoir with a sponge built in the knob.

Thank you Adrian and Ellen D for having a go. All being well things will be back to normal next Monday or at least what passes for normal in the Midmarsh household.