Living with a Chronic Condition…

Posted on November 21, 2025 by Guthlac

Every now and then I start to realise that I am not as young as I was. This is usually associated with my chronic medical condition making an appearance.

Over the years I have been prodded and probed by any number of medical professionals. The result of this is that I have developed coping strategies when things do flair up. This mostly involves taking things easy for a few days until I start to recover. One positive affect is that I have time to remaster images I captured years ago. I have the latest versions of Photoshop and Lightroom along with x number of year’s experience of using said software. What can I produce?

New images of Whitby, Southall Minster and the Moira Blast Furnace is the answer. It is always an interesting experiment to remaster earlier images. It also passes the time of day.

A double bonus I guess?

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AI Slop…

Posted on November 18, 2025 by Guthlac

Am I an AI personality? A Bot? If I am then does that mean that this is AI slop? Well I hope that you few visitors to this small and obscure blog will have realised by now. I am a living breathing human being. Any similarity to AI slop is because any number of LLM have digested my almost 20 years ramblings and somehow have turned into one of the billions of ingredients that help create the latest plague flowing through the sclerotic arteries of what now passes as the World Wide web.

I am not an AI denier. I just feel that the almost immeasurable amounts of money being spent on creating pale imitations of human ingenuity is mostly going to be lost. It doesn’t really matter that we’ve been through these bubbles before: canals; railways; dot.com etc. This one is very different.

This bubble is being blown up when there is no real chance of a government bailout. Not because governments might want to. No it is because this would be the third great call on nation’s money in the past 20 years. The nations neither have the leadership nor the money to help out as in 2008 or 2021. I fear this will be the tech bros bequest to the rest of humanity. One great bust. I do hope I am wrong.

If you feel depressed after reading the last paragraph here is a hound dog drawing to comfort you. I fear we all fucked.

Posted in Art, autumn, Digital Painting, Graphic Art, Jubilee Park, Photography, Procreate | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Soggy Claudia

Posted on November 15, 2025 by Guthlac

Well Claudia has blown through. Plenty of wind and driving rain (I guess you can’t have one without the other). We’ve had the first flood of the season. Suddenly the drought conditions of the summer seems a very long time ago. So will it snow in the next few days. Probably not but given our crazy weather nowadays you just can’t be certain.

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Lights on During the Day…

Posted on November 14, 2025 by Guthlac

‘Fast flowing or deep floodwater is likely, causing danger to life‘

Thank you Storm Claudia. Seems that autumn has decided to impress the awesome majesty on we mortals up here in very damp England. Just for good measure there is just the chance of snow by the middle of next week. It is unlikely to reach down to we valley dwellers but maybe on top of the hills and mountains.

Good job we visited Nottingham yesterday.

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The moment the clock struck 12…

Posted on November 11, 2025 by Guthlac

Many years ago I remember going on a course where I was told with certainty that the Soviets would drop the bomb within the next two to three years. So much for certainty.

I hope no one who might come across this post will ever experience such a horror. But nearly 50 years on I imagine that this might be what it would look like.

Not at all sure what made me think about this.

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Way Too Big…

Posted on November 11, 2025 by Guthlac

How big is too big? The above photo asks this question. In its raw state it is almost 1 GB which is huge. That is what you get when make a panorama out of 7 x 61 MPixel images. Crazy. That is until you look at the detail such an image has.

For those of you who might not know this is the view from Mount St. Bernard’s Abbey of the Trent valley from Ratcliffe Power Station to East MIdlands Airport. It is a view I have captured before but yesterday I decided to really go for it. Perhaps the most memorable thing about the view is that very shortly it will no longer exist. Ratcliffe no longer produces any electricity and by 2030 it will be pulled down. Well at least that is the plan at the moment.

So you can see I was out about capturing images for my latest photo project. If I keep this pace up I might have things wrapped up by Christmas. Not sure I want to rush things that much.

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I am an Island…

Posted on November 9, 2025 by Guthlac

If you ever despair about the value of human creativity, take a trip to the latest exhibition at the Djanogly gallery, Nottingham. AI nonsense might produce a tidal wave of slop, but this exhibition restores faith in creativity.

(Full disclosure: That opening paragraph was rewritten by AI. For some reason it doesn’t like its redraft of my slop!)

Kate Mccgwire really has a thing about feathers. The deeper you examine the works the more intense things get.

I left the exhibition feeling just a little better about the world. I am not sure that is what the artist wished but that doesn’t matter. Human creativity is a wonderful thing.

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Looking the right way…

Posted on November 5, 2025 by Guthlac

The other day I was standing on the wrong bridge over the M1 pointing my camera in the wrong direction. This morning I corrected that. M1 in North West Leicestershire District council. It was a damp morning but great photography weather. Well I thought so.

Every now and then the low cloud would part and the sun would shine through. This being late autumn when it did it was very low and bathed things is a warm glow. On the subject of autumn, today is Bonfire night in England. When I was growing up, this night marked a cold and frosty time of year. Today at dawn it was around 14 degrees C. That is insane. Thank god global warming is a myth and we don’t have to decarbonise our world.

The last stop this morning was at the Noon Column at the Sence Valley Forest Park. The first time I visited this sculpture by David Nash was in 2008.

The trees have certainly grown over the years! Nice to see the picnic tables are still there. I still like a good sky.

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A few sketches…

Posted on November 1, 2025 by Guthlac

Some days for just have to pick up your iPad and have a good sketch and draw. I always feel better afterwards.

There is no real story behind any of these other than it scratches a creative itch. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

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Changing World….

Posted on October 24, 2025 by Guthlac

Autumn has finally arrived. No frosts yet but the trees are turning. One of the enjoyable aspects of the last twenty years or so is watching that the National Forest started to mature. With this maturity has come the joy of autumnal colour. Better than the old slag heaps and and pit yards they have replaced.

Talking of change a new town is springing to life in a way I never thought possible. It is a few months since I came this way. The once open fields with diggers in the distance are now show homes, a new school and an Aldi.

Before we start waxing lyrically about a lost pastured idle we should remember: This is the world where King Coal once ruled. The boundary of the new town is one of the earliest steam railways in the world. The reason for its construction was to transport coal to Leicester. The old site of South Leicester pit is just over a mile to west. All around the new town, sheds and distribution centres of the modern online world stand sentinel. They guard the brave new world we live in. Nonetheless it was a bit of a shock!

Footnote

Update on the Taylor Swift bump to my numbers. There was one very small and slight. So perhaps Ms Swift’s coattails don’t reach as far as this little blog. Are well. I’ve listened to the new album several times since I posted my post and I stand by my review: Perfectly good pop music. I’m sure Ms Swift won’t lose any sleep.

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