This is Cold Ash hill this morning – that’s a 1:10 hill, so there’s sod all chance of anyone getting up it unless they have a good 4WD car.

It’s still snowing.

Jim Harpur's ASU Certificate

There’s a high resolution version available here (opens a new window).

I believe the little crosses next to some of the names indicate that that person died in service, but I’m not 100% sure about that.  I hope it’s useful or interesting  to somebody

Little Tom having a sleep on Mark’s bed.  Hes a very placid cat – as seen here. I was clicking away pretty close to him and he couldn’t be bothered even opening his eyes through the commotion.  No fear.

]]> http://www.peteconnolly.co.uk/blog/wordpress/2009/02/22/toms-pink-nose/feed/ 0 http://www.peteconnolly.co.uk/blog/wordpress/2009/01/11/so-cold/ http://www.peteconnolly.co.uk/blog/wordpress/2009/01/11/so-cold/#comments Sun, 11 Jan 2009 11:51:31 +0000 pete http://www.peteconnolly.co.uk/blog/wordpress/?p=311

It’s been a chilly week in the UK, colder than it has been for a few years.  The low point was -12 just up the road from us in Benson, Oxfordshire.  This is Grimsbury Castle yesterday afternoon, with the hard frost still sticking to the branches of the trees.

These lovely flowers only live for about a day or so, but they really brighten up the front of our house.

twins, originally uploaded by Pete Connolly.

I went out for a sudden walk this evening. Just was on the phone to her mother, the boys were watching Scooby Doo and I was at a bit of a loose end. Foolishly, I slapped the Tamron 90mm Macro lens onto the camera, but then walked down Gladstone Lane and tried to take some wide angle landscape shots – this didn’t work out. I’ll have to get back down there with the ‘standard’ 18-200mm lens.

On the way home I found this pair in the hedgerow, so I played about with manual and auto focus for about 5 minutes until I got this. The DOF is a bit shallow which could be good or bad, it has it’s good points. I love the fact that the petals cling together in twos, as did the flowers themselves.

All in all, a nice change of pace from over the past few months. Work can only make you so happy.

fly on my tongue, originally uploaded by Pete Connolly.

Last Febuary, we took a trip back to Dublin to see my Ma. Naturally, we had to go to Dublin zoo to show the boys the animals, get some awareness of the size, colour and what not of the real thing – something we can’t do here unless we drag ourselves to Longleat or London. This chappie, the Sumatran Tiger, was phleming away in his compound like the best of them. Just like a domestic cat who smells something interesting, like fish. Or steak, prawns, chicken or any of the myriad other foods our cats shout at you about when you try to make dinner.

“Rusty old fence at the Conor Pass” in situ, originally uploaded by Pete Connolly.

I bought a printout of Donncha’s picture  - Rusty Old Fence at the Conor Pass  -  for various reasons – mainly family memories of travelling down there as a youngster with Ma and Da in a borrowed estate car walled Walter. Here it is in place in the shed (sorry ‘garden office’) calming me down when I get too wrapped up in work.

Walter was a weird beast – a huge car to me at the age of 7 or 8, but a bit basic in some respects. I nearly fell into the valley below the Conor pass that you see in the picture when the handbrake failed and the car started to roll towards the edge, with me asleep in the back. This fence is probably the only thing that would have come between me and my maker if Da hadn’t jumped in and hit the brakes in time.

Cheers Donncha, a lovely print of a lovely shot.

Solo, originally uploaded by Pete Connolly.

Wow, the first few weeks of working for myself, contracting to two large and 1 small company, is over. Talk about tired.

Chexbres Dawn, originally uploaded by Pete Connolly.

Back from Switzerland. This time, we stayed outside Lausanne, in a small town called Chexbres (che bres). The hotel (The Prealpina) was great – pretty high up the mountain so you could watch the clouds float past at eye level. Two cloudy wet mornings, but this lovely dawn came in between the two. Some slight tweaking in the Gimp after I finally got it working in Windows XP with ufraw.