Mend It Monday: (It’s been) A Card Made Right

Looks like that must’ve hurt!

Some years ago, the Snail bought a new digital camera that was waterproof/shockproof/80% proof. Well, maybe not the last one but I needed three things for the list. Later came the purchase of a 16GB SD memory card, which we considered to be way bigger than we would ever need. And we were right.

In the early days, the Snail didn’t have a cable to connect the camera (via USB) to a computer to download the pictures, so would remove the card to put in a reader on her laptop. Over the years, the contacts on the card have worn away, to the point where they were drummed out of the International Contact Society for failing to live up to their essential tenet, at least inside the camera. That’s when a toothpick came to the rescue. Wedged between the card and the battery, it seemed to do the trick.

Until the other day.

The camera refused to accept that there was a card in the camera and was not going to enter into any other discussions because, deep down, the camera is, in fact, a computer.

The card itself would work in a USB card reader I had, so clearly it wasn’t completely beyond rescue.

Some frankly horrific use of a soldering iron later, and I had managed to flow some solder over the four most worn contacts whilst only melting a small chunk of the card’s body. In fact, so horrible does it look, I think the picture may need a warning notice on it.

The horror, the horror! Just, ugh, horrible. But it works!

And, in a turn up for books everywhere, it seems to work! It never needs to be removed again as we have USB cables around the place that fit, so hopefully, the other contacts won’t wear to the point of failure.

I wonder how many perfectly functional SD cards have gone to landfill because the contacts have worn through?

 

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Top of the Pop(pies)

Here is a time lapse film of some poppies in the Chez Snail garden doing their thing, and blooming for a day. I was surprised at how early in the morning the flowers started to bloom, and also how high the temperature recorded by the camera reached (it was in full sunshine, but in free air).

For anyone even vaguely interested, I used a Crenova RD1000 Trail Camera, recording a 12 megapixel picture every minute for about 45 hours or so. I used Windows Movie Maker (the one that comes with Windows 10) to turn the 2700 stills into a movie – each picture is displayed for 0.03 seconds.

Enjoy!

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Then there was the rain…

It has been a while since I posted here. I’m pretty sure that time does not run at a constant rate and is sensitive to diverse things such as temperature, happiness and percentage of blood in your alcohol (or vice versa).

Here in the UK we have officially had a heatwave, being 5 consecutive days of temperatures in excess of 5°C of the average for that day. Certainly one day was very hot for us, causing our dogs to almost melt. Good job they’re not chocolate*!

For inspiration, I walked around my writing office at Denmark Farm the other day, shortly after cooling rain had made it seem more like a normal British summer. The rain drops on the leaves and petals were too magnificent to ignore. So here they are…

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• If they were, I probably would have eaten them by now anyway…

 

Hungry Birds – The Movie

The bird feeder at Denmark Farm attracts all sorts of avian visitors, hungry for peanuts and a natter with their mates. Here is a time lapse movie, shot over five and a half hours and compressed to just under four minutes so that you can see how fast those peanuts disappear! And watch for a few non-blue tit arrivals too!

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A Busy Sunday

Click to play “Yurt Down” time lapse film

Yesterday was Sunday which, when you are self-employed, has no special meaning to it. So, my Sunday started with gardening, in particular the only gardening I can be trusted to do on my own, that being moving soil. Our new raised bed (built with the Limery) is now ready for some squashes…

After that exertion, I needed to sit down with a cup of coffee and a bacon butty, which was exactly what happened. And locally-produced bacon, to boot.

THEN… I put together the time lapse film of myself and a few volunteers taking down the yurt at Denmark farm. This is something I have blogged about before, but I thought it might be fun to produce a time lapse film of the event. I intend to make another one when we put the thing up next spring. I discovered that my trusty camera has a setting to tell it to take a picture every so often so, in true pioneering spirit, I decided to give it a go. Click on the picture at the top to watch the result on Youtube.

A guitar with, frankly, too many strings to its fretboard…

Having pieced together the film, I decided to record a simple soundtrack to accompany it. I used this as an excuse to play the guitar in the picture above – I bought it about five years ago and haven’t really quite mastered yet. Listening to my efforts now, I think I have quite a way to go!

Surprisingly, I finished composing (if that’s what it can be called) and recording “Yurt Down Blues”, all one minute 6 seconds of it, in time for a cup of tea and a look at the crossword.

Sunday’s can be quite satisfying sometimes!

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