The garden is slowly closing down for the coming winter. Mellow fruits have been harvested and a few morning mists have been spied stalking the lower parts of the river.
Some morning soon we’ll start to get the first real frosts. Not the slight chills that have hung around with the damp in the morning but rather car windscreen icebergs. Autumn has just over a month to go before the embrace of winter.
According to my AI Overlord the above has only a 5.82 reading grade score…no sorry it has now risen to a magnificent 6.00. If you find it too complicated to comprehend then you clearly agree with the Overlord. Is it me or is this whole AI nonsense just nonsense? Many very brainy people seem (Overload: weasel word) to think not so they are probably (Overlord: another weasel word!) right and I am definitely an old git so what do I know?
Strange things happen in and around the Somerset Levels. In this case they built a magnificent Gothic Wells cathedral. Fast forward to this week and I found myself enjoying the spiritual as well as the culinary delights on offer.
Of course this was always the case. The medieval period saw a proliferation of pilgrimage sites that attracted the faithful and were only too happy to relieve the religious of their cash. Today, the religious fervor has been dampened down. However, we still travel long distances and pay handsomely for the privilege. This allows us to experience, in part, what those tired travelers did all those years ago.
What cathedral isn’t complete without a bit of royal majesty? In Wells’ case it has the added bonus of mystery of the early Anglo Saxon period. Unfortunately Ina wasn’t the great martial king like his predecessor but rather a man of laws. He eventually abdicated and lived out his life in Rome. Exactly how he came to be buried in Wells is not clear. What is certain is that if he had been buried in the early Medieval church that the cathedral replaced, his resting place would be around 100 metres to the south. Let’s not quibble about details.
So if you find yourself in the Somerset area then you enjoy visiting this wonderful place whether you are religious or not.
The last 10 years of my photographic journey is captured in this photograph. It was taken near a point where the district councils of Harborough, Melton and Charnwood meet. The last time I captured this view it was living upto its name. Today it was a warm autumnal afternoon. I know which I prefer.
COVID oh COVID. When will it end? Of course the answer is never. Today it was time for we oldies to get our flu and COVID jabs. So we dutifully went along to our local drop in centre and did our bit for King and the NHS. (And ourselves.) I suspect the King didn’t have to visit a drop in centre to get his jabs. That is whole other story.
I have to say I’m having a bit of crush on my new 40mm lens. It is superb. As with all crushes things will settle down but for now – so so good.
More lens tests in the drizzle and damp. My type of weather. I have to say I like the close focus (Am I allowed to say Macro capabilities) of the new Zeiss lens?). Hopefully the start of a long and productive relationship.
Anyone who knows me will say I’m not really a bargain hunter. I know I should be but I’m not. Life is getting way too short to worry about such things. I never have been and teaching this old new tricks is just not going to happen.
So why did I this morning take delivery of an almost new 40 mm Zeiss lens? Because I’m a human being and I can hold two separate views at the same time. The amount of money I saved over a brand new version was significant. So far, it looks like it was an unbelievable bargain. Perhaps this old dog might manage to learn new tricks.
So that is that. Britain no longer generates electricity by burning coal. No more getting up before dawn on frosty mornings to capture the dawn through the steam of the cooling towers. No more looking to the north and seeing the plume cloud climbing high, high into the stratosphere. The clouds slowly being blown eastwards towards mainland Europe. All gone. No More.
What awaits the beating heart of the East Midlands? I don’t know. What I do know it is unlikely to have anything like the symbolic pull on my soul as Ratcliffe.
For reasons too boring and first worldly to mention I took my veteran A6000 out for a spin yesterday.(BTW Sony are still selling this camera and actually as a starter camera its very capable!). It took a few snaps and I was back into the swing of things. The image quality is first rate – in fact there are certain circumstances where only 24 M Pixel has its advantages.
The only real drawbacks are:
The battery life is poor;
It’s a bit fiddly to operate and
The screen and EV are very ordinary compared to later models.
None of these really matter and if anything for an aspiring photographer they make the experience more rewarding. However, if you are coming from a smartphone world it is really like stepping back in time, not quite to the stone age but near enough. That is until you start working with the RAW images and you find there is so much more you can do with them. (Full disclosure my iPhone is set to RAW Max so they are the largest that Apple can provide – they’re great until you compare them with an image captured with a ‘real’ camera lens.)
Battles with the Master.
My frustration with our AI overlord continues. It seems not to understand why someone might use a comma. Also it must have been trained on American text because it really doesn’t like the use of language that could be described as ‘Unconfident’ or weasel words:
Screenshot
It also doesn’t like the word Unconfident which it claims is misspelt even though the AI uses it in its message box. (This sentence is loo long BTW)
So perhaps this is another arm of the American attempt to colonise the English language and yes it didn’t like the use of an s instead of a z. (That is ZED not ZEE.).
Good I’m starting to sound like disgruntled of Tunbridge Wells.
The next that the overload will want me to do is use its generated image:
According to the WordPress data this is the 3897 th post. Has this any significance? NO none at all but I thought I would mention it!
Our AI overlord is not happy with what I have written…
Screenshot
I particularly like the like the last suggestion. I have never had any idea what I’m going to write. Also if I removed unrelated anecdotal elements then I doubt I would have reached double figures.
Everything Internetish appears to be coming with added AI just at the moment. Everytime I post something to this very small blog I am assaulted by AI suggestion on how I could make this post better and therefore drive traffic to the site (it has had a field day with this opening paragraph. )
The words used lack confidence or the sentence is too long or whatever else. I do not care. Bill Gates was on TV last night making gnomic propositions about AI. He may well be right but one of the thing very few people can answer is: Just how anyone is going to make a penny out of AI given the unbelievable amounts of money that have been thrown at the technology?
According to a report I read circa $500 billion dollars so far has been spent which is an awful lot of capital outlay. And the returns? Nobody knows – there maybe some some day – but $500 billion and counting? Or could this be the thing that brings these unbelievably large tech companies to their knees? I have no idea. The one thing I do know is that I have turned the WordPress AI assistant off because it is mangling my mindless wittering.
I hope I don’t sound like a luddite but perhaps you weren’t able to understand me because I have only got a 7.39 Reading grade score. I have no idea what that means?
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