Black and White

Over the years it has been hard not to notice the increase in the amount of magpies there are about. Yesterday ten were boisterously strutting about on the lawn. This time of the year they have the look of a raptor about them and it is not hard to imagine a somewhat similar creature from a few million years ago making the same aggressive movements in the time of the dinosaurs.

I can remember thinking (when hearing the old rhyme about magpies that predicted how good your fortune was going to be "five for silver, six for gold") well that's impossible because you never see more than one or two at a time. They now come into the garden in flocks. There always seem to be a minimum of three or four. They also are less shy than they used to be and venture onto the bird table. Their appetite seems to be increasing and they appear to have a taste for most food stuffs.

Powdery particles of paper

Over the years toilet paper appears to be getting more and more powdery. I have tried various brands and it almost seems that the more money that I pay for this product, the more powdery it is. You may have never noticed this unpleasant feature in the brand which you are using. As it is a product that we all use each day then perhaps it is time to take a moment to ponder and investigate the matter.

If you are fortunate enough to have sunlight streaming through your bathroom/toilet window then you will, no doubt, have seen the billows of powdery dust that fly about the room. Everything gets a generous powdery dusting of the stuff including yourself. You breath it in .... is it dangerous? You wipe your skin with it - no doubt depositing the powdery residue wherever you have applied it. You may have used it to blow your nose and yes you may well have left some of the tiny particles behind.

Our space - is it safe?

There are many thoughts about how safe are the surfaces around our homes and work places. So many items are either steeped in chemicals during their manufacture or produce noxious substances whilst we innocently go about our daily business. There are also the products which we choose to buy that may contain chemicals that could be having devastating effects on our planet. The clue that, in our busy lives, we fail to see - comes in the ever lengthening list of ingredients in the packets and bottles that land up in our shopping baskets. There are a series of programmes currently being screened on Channel 4 that has been examining these issues. It is being fronted by Sarah Beeny - http://www.channel4.com/health/microsites/T/toxic/ and if you are able to view is worth a look. It would have been good if the programme showed a list of companies that produce items that are free from the chemicals and also advised where they are available and a group of people that had tested out the various items. We could have then perhaps seen an honest view on whether the chemical free alternatives really were a sensible choice for people to switch to. It would be nice - that as we are apart of the EU they could reign in the use of some of the more dangerous chemicals, many of which have been banned in other parts of the world (according to the programme). Not to mention the fact that we may be importing goods that contain the banned substance DDT.

I thought only ducks went "quack"

There are a large population of grey squirrels in the area where I live. Up until recently these small furry creatures have been quietly scurrying - swiftly making their way from one patch of green to another and then running up any nearby tree. This week, however, there have been a number of these squirrels that have been up trees and letting out a very loud quacking like sound. Perhaps more like "quark."

As it is now Autumn - it cannot be a mating call. The last squirrel that was making this unusual call was on Tuesday and it sat up in a tree, looking at a ringed dove and appeared to be calling to the dove in this very loud quacking or quarking type voice.

Rose tinted glasses don't always see

Beautiful, feminine, rustling gowns that made the most clumsiest of women glide with the beauty of a swan on a calm lake. This was the image portrayed by films and books. Along with trim waists and high heaving bosoms. There were rich velvets trimmed with fur in the winter. Fine lawn cottons piped with lace in the summer. And we, onlookers from another age were all sucked in to this illusion. This life style was soon to be changed on having a conversation with my grandmother who as a young girl had worn these very gowns that kissed the floor with every step. "You have no idea how dreadful they were." she had advised me. Then continued on what life was like on a daily basis when there was no choice but to wear them. "We had to sew ribbon on the bottoms to make them last longer as they would become ripped and frayed as we walked." She had added. She also said that every time a woman or girl stepped out their skirts would drag over everything. Whatever was on the floor would end up attached to the bottom of the hem. The edges would become caked with mud, dog excrement, spit, vomit ... whatever was on the floor would sickeningly end up on the hem. As the ribbon tore and ripped it had to be unpicked and a fresh length sewn on to extend the life of the skirt or dress. Often, washing the dresses especially on a daily basis was out of the question. Once dry the hems were brushed to relieve them of the heavy burdens of caked on dirt - this my grandmother confessed was a foul job to do. When they were washed, can you imagine how dreadful it would be. Laboriously rubbing up and down on a washboard and scrubbing at ground in dirt (no washing machines, no rubber gloves). Once they were clean, rinsed, dried and pressed - the whole process would begin all over again! The one lesson that this conversation taught me in life is that things are not always as they first appear. It pays to keep this at the back of the mind as it can often be the case that things are rarely as they first may seem to be.

Allergies

The first time I encountered anyone with an allergy was at school. A young girl who was covered over every inch of her body with little tiny flesh coloured spots beneath the surface of her skin. Every day cream was applied but never did I here her complain about the inconvenience, discomfort or unfairness of her lot.

Indeed, at one time it was a rarity to have an allergy. Now it seems, not only are the variety of allergies growing so are the people who develop them. How do you know if you have an allergy? Well it seems that any symptom could mean that you have one. The obvious being a rash - the less obvious could be anything from an ache, bloating, pain, blister, general feeling of ill health to gut problems.

Doctors do not always recognize allergies immediately. In fact, it has been reported that people with coeliac disease may not be diagnosed for up to thirteen years. Coeliacs cannot digest foods containing gluten so have to exclude many grains from their diets and also many standard products can be off limits as well from various chocolate bars, cans of soups, the more obvious cakes, bread and biscuits. Some people find themselves suddenly becoming allergic to a food stuff that they have eaten every day of their lives and never had problems with before. It is probably sensible therefore to vary the diet as much as possible as it can be inconvenient and possibly upsetting if a person suddenly finds that they are unable to eat a particular item. It may also take a very long time before their particular food intolerance or allergy problem is diagnosed. There could be people who have minor food intolerance problems that are never diagnosed. For instance there are those who suffer from acid or indigestion which leaves them feeling that they have a food intolerance of almost every food item. Whereas the problem may be being caused through possible shortage of stomach acid that may merely be cured by a spoonful of honey in hot water first thing in the morning. According to health articles, a person can check to see if they are producing enough stomach acid by placing a level teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda into half a tumbler of water. It is said that with normal acid production of the stomach, a burp is released almost instantaneously - if a person has to wait quite a while for this reaction then they may not be producing sufficient stomach acid in which case they should seek medical advice. Such advice never seems to be widely given - imagine how many gallons of stomach medicines and how many pounds of indigestion tablets are sold on a daily basis which if a person were not making enough stomach acid could possibly worsen a condition even if bringing temporary relief.

Light energy saver

Finally, a sensible law has been passed. The phasing out of standard light bulbs and introduction of the low energy light bulb throughout all homes in the United Kingdom has to be the way forward for reducing carbon emissions. We changed all of our indoor lights a while back after managing to find some smaller versions that didn't poke out of the ends of the light shades. What proved an interesting observation was that the temperature in our rooms also decreased after changing to the new bulbs. In our lounge the temperature dropped by two whole degrees. The new light bulbs are long life and should last around seven years. They are also slowly coming down in price. Will the rest of the world follow suit and change to low energy bulbs, I wonder?

Finalising the Gif Animation

Open up your animation where it has been saved - then open up Gif maker.

Drag the saved picture onto the Gif maker. This has to be done until all of the pictures that have been chosen to make up the end Animated Gif have been dragged into position. Then decide how long each picture needs to stay on the screen - and what colour you would prefer the background to be or perhaps choose to leave it transparent and may be choose to restore the background. Decide how long it is to run - how many times. Then, finally test out what the end Gif will look like using the forward arrow. You can amend any part at this point from the background to the length of time you would like each picture to run until you are happy with the end result.

Finally, once you have decided to save the completed Gif you will need to find an image hosting company on the web that will host your Gif so that it can be viewed as an animation on a website or in an email, etc. My tree is hosted by Image Shack. The following web address is for signing up to the ImageShack site : http://imageshack.us/

Making Simple Animated Gif's

There appear to be few websites that help the novice animater free of charge. So for those who have never dabbled in creating an animation but would like to have a go at seeing their own achievements here is how to do a simple animation in the paint program. Firstly, it is best to come up with a simple idea something that you find reasonably easy to draw. Perhaps sketch out the idea on a scrap of paper. Choose the size which you want the end product to be and also the background colour and save the blank canvas as a 24-bit Bitmap (*.bmp; *dib). Find this in the save as type pull down arrow underneath the File name line.

Blank canvas - saved as 24-bit Bitmap

Once this has been done then open up the saved Bitmap once more and use the magnifying glass to enlarge the canvas. Decide on what features you would like to animate and draw your picture to that point before once more saving as a Bitmap. Sometimes if your drawing is made up of many lines then it could pay to save it as you are going along but place a simple note alongside it such as "nfu" not for use in your final animation.

draw the skeleton outline of the picture you intend to use - then save this picture before adding more information to your picture -

As this is called 'tree lights' the next step is to decide where the tree lights are to be placed.

After placing where the wire of the lights should go - the lights may then be added.

Finally, all of the bitmap pictures that you want to use need to be saved in Gif format and dragged onto a Gif maker. Three pictures have been used in the above simple picture of tree lights flashing.

Animated Gif's

Since having my first computer I have always been intrigued with animated Gifs. I suppose that it could be compared with the thrill of seeing the first cartoon as a child. I have always found it rather magical the way that animated gifs can be copied and pasted onto emails and they carry on working.

I have drawn a simple 'growing garden' Gif to see if I could produce one by using the paint program. I used the pencil tool within the paint program and drew straight onto the PC screen. When I had finished I used an Image Hosting website to get it to work on Blogger. I was pleased with the result and will definitely have a go at drawing more Gif's.

Hedgehogs "the night spooks"

Recently there have been two young hedgehogs shuffling about outside the back door. One is possibly about a year old and is of medium size. The other is very small, approximately half the size of the first one and may be too small to survive the winter months. Hedgehogs need to be of a certain weight to secure their chance of surviving hibernation. Many of the under weight ones can be seen trying to eat during the day time and these need to go to rescue centres if they are to stand a chance of survival.

Ants!!

This weekend, by chance I turned over quite a large stone and underneath it lay an ants nest. This is the first time that I have encountered three different stages of ants eggs visible at the same time. There were those very recently laid, ones that had been laid a few days earlier and finally ones that looked as though they were near to hatching. When an ants nest has been disturbed, ants always collect their eggs and take them to a place of safety. I don't know what I expected to see but was amazed that every available ant began to cart away the eggs that were near to hatching. Not one ant showed the slightest interest in the younger eggs. Eventually, however, all of the ant eggs were carefully removed from their exposed place on the surface of the mud and taken into one or other of the various tunnels that had been carved out of the earth. The one thing that I did notice about this particular ant colony was the fact that it moved much more slowly than previous ant colonies I have witnessed. Usually, ants appear to almost scurry at a fair speed if part of their nest is disturbed. These ants however were totally lethargic almost as though they had been sedated. There was not the usual sense of urgency about them. I found their slowness most unusual and completely out of character for this little insect.

Ant eggs recently laid

Ant eggs a few days old

Ant eggs almost ready for hatching

Believe it or not

I am not sure what the press is like throughout the rest of the world - as I live in England and buy British newspapers. Sometimes, I am disappointed with the British press as there are times when it willingly sells out the feeling of unbias news reports by paying people involved in certain breaking stories. The news then becomes a tale and the feeling is that perhaps it may be untrustworthy as a certain slant clouds over what may be truth. When this happens and we read "someone's story or their version of events" there may be the feeling that this could result in truth becoming smudged.

Bee gone!

I suppose it may be that Autumn is creeping in and although the days are currently pleasant, once evening arrives it brings on dampness. As a poem that everyone knows by John Keats to Autumn says "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!" These very mists appear to have driven away the bees from the little insect house. There are only one or two of the canes that may now be nurturing some bee young behind leaf chambers that appear to have been left deep within the wooden stems. The soft plums have now all been picked and eaten. The remaining fruits that are continuing to ripen on the boughs are the Bramley apples, Williams and Conference pears. These fruits are mostly fully grown and are all slowly ripening.

Black cat

There is a new black, fluffy, wide-eyed cat that comes to the back door. He waits just outside and peeps in through a crack in the door, looking at every movement and sniffing. Our cat has always loved fish. Not just any fish - it has to be tuna. Not just any type of tuna - it has to be chunky or tuna steaks soaked in brine water. Now as too much salt is bad for everything, including the cat, I have to wash the tuna in fresh water. I rinse it several times before mashing approximately one third of a can onto a saucer. She usually eats the entire can in three separate meals. The cat loves her tuna. She will not eat pilchards, sardines, sild, herring or even salmon and she recoils away from any form of fresh fish. She is an independent lady and she definitely knows what she likes. One of her daily treats (of which she eats at least three times a day) is jelly pouches. At the moment her favourite flavours are Felix - chicken and fish and Morrison's - chicken and fish. She also enjoys a variety of kibbles. I wonder what food is given to the black, fluffy cat - because every chance he has he eats my cat's food, especially her fish - followed by any jelly pouch remainders. Today, our cat hissed when she caught sight of this fluffy stranger and its response was a mournful miaow. post extra: day 38 and 39 after St Swithin's - it has been cool with a breeze. Sunday day 39 there was rain during the night and a slight shower in the morning. Monday day 40 after St Swithin's - it has been breezy with sunny periods. "Although it rained on St Swithin's day - it certainly has not rained for the forty days and nights since, but then it has been a very unusual year and the weather has been quite strange over the entire globe!"