MidgePhoto

Something professional for a long time, now I take photographs.
A bit techie, somewhat political, rather English.
I started on another instance which ceased to be comfortable.

Photos: https://photo.defoam.net
Website: https://defoam.net

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Last Notes

2026-05-26 10:37:29 CEST

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{Squirrels: mutter mutter Acorns!}

2026-05-20 17:39:02 CEST

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They are essentially, and I think arose from, a deconstructed jetski.
The floats and pumps water bit was sorted, and the new bits are a couple of hoses, some extra distance in the controls, and a nut on the top end.

2026-05-20 11:51:52 CEST

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Father Xmas turned up on one in Gold Coast a few years ago. Amusing.

2026-05-16 11:31:43 CEST

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Oh they were.
Riding solo from Belgium to Hook of Holland to catch a ferry ... into a rather stiff head wind was not the most fun, but in those days was just a matter of staying flat and turning the pedals.
Handed the (flat out road race) bike to my wife to hold while I went in to change. She was very pregnant and even Dutch passers-by did a double take. I'm told.

2026-05-16 11:25:49 CEST

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Tall, that tower.
I was a racing cyclist, and went up and down it.
My thighs complained the next day of the different nature, not the amount.
We picked up some tiles much much later, specially, in Amsterdam, for our utility room.

2026-05-16 10:49:14 CEST

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One of the things I've not seen, and occurred to me is:
What bad effects - for the State - have arisen from Mandelson being appointed, and/or then disappointed, as ambassador to the USA?
OK, a bad person was sent to ambass to a bad person, by someone who is loved less than some, but what actual harm to the UK has come of that?
Yes, Mandelson is a bad person, with bad contacts who have bad contacts, and we are no doubt all upset by that. But has the State suffered?

2026-05-15 12:20:19 CEST

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I do not think that is entirely accurate.

2026-05-13 12:37:37 CEST

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spanners may be used to hit people on the head.
But if your wheel needs changing you'd regret the weapon being banned.
People commit assaults, other indiscretions, torts, crimes.
Machines, as yet, do not.
My daughter's use case - steady recording ahead from atop a horse - seems rather a good one.
Possibly the frames should be orange stripes or some such.
#photography

2026-05-12 22:30:53 CEST

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I'm wondering if the council were either.
I mean if there is no council tax coming in from the 44 houses in Smith St and perhaps multiple occupation I'd think they'd be tracking down who owned them, who was there, and asking them initially politely for money.
Houses are in general static, and when they stop being, council tax is probably no longer applicable.
With moorings, I'd expect the council to rate the moorings, ask the marina operator for money on each or assurances none due

2026-05-12 20:19:04 CEST

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presumably the marina charges, and provides services.
The council tax there might be for a range of services less than us landlubbers?

2026-05-12 11:17:41 CEST

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Leadership.
Not the same as rulership, although conflated, and perhaps exercised more as such by some semi-recent and some foreign administrations.
I found my limited abilities as a leader worked when I was leading a group where we wanted to go.
But sometimes it took a while to work out where they/we wanted to go.
To describe Labour as united in their desired direction would invite hilarity.
Also, recently, the world has been sliding around - ahead is a shifting angle.

2026-05-04 20:40:17 CEST

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up and down, on and in, often rather good.
Chiara Elisabetta at the bottom of an old Oak staircase at the #OldRectory My picture. Processing by #Toulouki
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/517/716/684/013/045/original/c3edab32c927b822.jpg

2026-05-03 09:39:35 CEST

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there are certainly implementation problems. I notice a solution was found for bombs.
Leaving aside that the Iranian security forces may best people to death because they can, rather than anything more specific, Starlink is perhaps more visible and attributable than some devices. But a definite route into a network.

2026-05-02 17:54:25 CEST

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I wonder if #FIDONET still runs.
Routing around the fault* at the entire border seems a way to proceed, and mesh connections across it one way to do that, I'd think.
I wonder if HF bounces off the ionosphere, and an occasional balloon repeater, drones etc might help.
Staying off the public wires doesn't seem that bad an idea, within the country, either.
* censorship, interpreted

2026-05-02 16:10:18 CEST

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#SciFi CStross and #Doctorow IIRC wrote a collaborative story called "#unwirers " years ago about the expansion of a #wireless #mesh #network into an unfriendly or captured by capitalists (if there's a difference) environment.
Potentially risky, but surely the people who are unwired will have Wifi and why would they take note of where a network was coming from.

2026-04-15 14:26:04 CEST

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We went to a Jazz evening a few years ago, IIRC, certainly an evening on th3 terrace with picnic and music.
Very nice.

2026-04-15 13:04:29 CEST

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Lovely house.

2026-04-13 21:54:13 CEST

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Also not nice if spilled and burning with an invisible flame, and crucially, makes CO2. These people are failing to grasp and deal with the problem.
On the hygroscopy though, a bit of water injection might not be so bad a thing?

2026-04-09 11:20:22 CEST

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many compartments for much plotting.

2026-04-08 01:10:12 CEST

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isn't that a bit early?

2026-04-06 20:44:18 CEST

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I think I'd fit a fairly straight line to that, rather than "suddenly plunges". I suspect some of the noise is new large factories and production of different chemistries tak8ng off, but it isn't very jittery.

2026-03-30 11:23:29 CEST

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https://www.flickr.com/photos/midgley/6023251565/in/photolist-9QJBPJ-abfJQV
Not my barrows. We replaced one with worn-out knees a couple of years ago. I suppose the tubing could instead have been welded ;)

2026-03-18 10:01:17 CET

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Up against a wall is common, I suppose the back is less ventilated, but the shelter may help. My 3 piles are in line against the back wall.

2026-03-17 10:53:43 CET

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so, the 80 involved are too old now to join ICE I assume, but what did their next #generations do?

2026-03-12 10:36:05 CET

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I enjoyed visiting the NPG. It is smaller and more modern than our NPG in London, as one could expect, and the latter is one of my recurrent visits.
#Canberra was interesting. I thought rather like Washington DC might be if it were embedded in a functioning society, but to scale.
#NPG #Oz

2026-03-05 00:22:17 CET

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Not letting the guards and attendants out for that long, either, /of course/
?

2026-03-03 11:34:42 CET

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interesting space though.

2026-03-02 19:55:17 CET

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It has never been a holiday destination for me, but there'll be a few.
They'll be there for a while, but do deserve their state's protection.
The workers, depends what the job is, I suppose.

2026-03-01 15:44:33 CET

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A nice spot to pause.

2026-02-28 11:24:37 CET

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it is annoying.
On the whole though, I don't mind those concerned taking personal risks.

2026-02-27 13:23:34 CET

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that's the directorate the last Tory gov sharply reduced as almost a first act, IIRC.

2026-02-26 18:06:09 CET

"The solar panels delivered by a single container ship will generate as much power over their lifetimes as more than 50 ships carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) or 100 carrying coal, according to recent IEA analysis."
#solar #coal #ships

2026-02-26 11:44:30 CET

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Rue of Law: interesting neologism, in a couple of ways, but you may have meant Rule?

2026-02-09 12:31:20 CET

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our little lemon tree is wintering in the glasshouse. It is rather fun to have actual fruit on the tree.

2026-01-29 15:45:16 CET

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The Lock-Picking Lawyer is an entertaining Youtube feed.
Tempting.

2026-01-27 21:51:46 CET

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Odd place, America.

2026-01-16 22:27:30 CET

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Made you annoyed and determined to improve life for your daughters?

2026-01-02 12:33:26 CET

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This is weird.
We are weird.
Look back at some recent PMs who were distinctly subprime +/- criminal.
#ukpol #charisma

2025-12-16 17:53:22 CET

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Very similar to Chat GPT.

2025-12-11 13:39:44 CET

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One might also ask why we want to save USA citizens paying their government more for what they buy from us.
I expect it is complicated, but if the answer would be that the USA would buy them elsewhere or make them at home, that seems a solution of more general application.
#MakeMedicineNotMuchMoney

2025-12-06 13:07:54 CET

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Impressively good. The little electric railway across #Byron Bay, the town, in New South Wales is described as working on quite small batteries. Basically car components repurposed. Short run, and level, of course.

2025-12-05 19:19:18 CET

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Competent signature + Web of Trust + Public Key Infrastructure + automation of checking whether the entity credited is either trusted by someone we know, and/or is who it claims to be, would go a little way toward helping.
#PGP #GPG #Trust #NetOfAMillionLies #PKI

2025-12-04 09:20:22 CET

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Interesting tower.

2025-11-29 15:19:32 CET

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In-work benefits are an odd idea.
A person's needs don't increase greatly by being in work over not being.
The obvious one, of actually getting there, might be better handled by paying for public transport.
That citizen's dividend or UBI or whatever looks more and more sensible.

2025-11-28 18:06:46 CET

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Your Administration hates and fears you and wants you poor, sick, desperate, and short-lived.

2025-11-28 12:08:34 CET

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The building in Rome which most impresses me.
Possibly the building wherever ...

2025-11-25 10:27:53 CET

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The Australian approach, of building walkways, some higher up, might be a good one there.

2025-11-23 00:47:16 CET

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Stalin....capitalists...rope...?

2025-11-20 17:24:25 CET

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(isn't the key insider trading thing that they buy shares etc shortly _before_ the contract is awarded, and typically sell at least most of them afterwards? He's a rogue, but was this options or some such?)

2025-11-19 15:12:33 CET

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Xmas shopping?

2025-11-15 21:00:15 CET

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It is the opposite of true.

2025-11-14 19:02:16 CET

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they do have a regulatory body. And on the face of it it deals with conduct likely to bring the profession 8nto disrepute.
It isn't, I think, proactive.
I suppose being reactionary shouldn't surprise us.

2025-11-03 11:10:06 CET

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Per hour?

2025-10-31 17:31:46 CET

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I think Rayner, who is valuable, will return.

2025-10-31 00:30:55 CET

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I do think that if you have just been appointed the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the incoming government you might be a little busy.
And if it is the leftover chaos of the previous gov, very busy.
So saying to agents "Let my house!" and leaving them to it should work. If it doesn't it probably isn't a deliberate decision to omit getting a licence and avoid paying a bit more than pocket change, but a business expense.

2025-10-28 09:00:00 CET

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Entertaining. But was this developed under the influence only of gravity?
Still, as it is in WP we know it must be adequately sourced.

2025-10-02 11:24:05 CEST

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The College thing perhaps provides the microcosm (within another sub world of Town) which helps with tropes? London U is colleges, but there's less living in?
I re-read a #SciFi #SFF book club choice set around a thinly disguised Sussex which was a deliberately different university then.
There's David Lodge, of course (well, there was).
(Breakthrough, Richard Cowper)

2025-09-28 11:44:50 CEST

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the job now of the Press...

2025-09-27 19:46:58 CEST

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Paid agent of a foreign power.
Could he have been a lone agent in the Party?
Will the remaining Party members and the owner wish to reduce suspicion that the whole lot are not so much an agency of a foreign power as rentable to anyone, by over-disclosing their funding streams?

2025-09-27 19:30:08 CEST

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Logan's Long Run.

2025-09-27 16:35:16 CEST

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I suppose if we had two component layers:-
A virtual browser, which presents the same story to servers regardless of what it runs on, where, or what is within its network;
A virtual Web, which presents the same behaviour of the Web to the browsers looking at it from within its network regardless of what the sites are doing;
There'd need to be some cleverness within each and limited cleverness between them, but then rather less in the servers and browsers.

2025-09-20 15:06:58 CEST

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Regulation, mostly yes, although some of it is a work-creation or sales scheme.
Regulations though, rather less true.

2025-09-12 21:58:41 CEST

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That US president who was shot and killed a few decades ago: has anyone decided how to describe the chap arrested for it?
And his brother, the sensible RFK, what class of individual shot him to death?
And Reagan....
Odd place, America.
#DeadKennedys #assassination #history

2025-09-12 17:39:29 CEST

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The ethicality of an open source project is probably visible.
One may deprecate it, replace it, if it is a corpus of data one examines and finds unethical one may fork on a different corpus.
Closed source products rather less so.
Obscurable and controllable.
#FLOSS #Ethics

2025-09-10 12:24:02 CEST

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Even the Sandbanks chain ferry is a bit of a thing. The disconnect, I suppose.

2025-09-10 12:22:48 CEST

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The greatest adventures tend to begin with a sea, or water, passage.

2025-09-07 16:49:34 CEST

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Coming new to this, well done.
And the human element is important.
As I suspect are the mechanical aids to those humans.

2025-09-06 01:39:48 CEST

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If it was selling something to someone outside, perhaps.
As it is you are probably getting capital gains (it may be unevenly distributed). services some visible, some less so, and some insurance.
For which you make a contribution to the expenses of the whole.
Perhaps the public are not as good at running what they own as they might be, nor at the oversight of the operation?

2025-09-01 11:25:14 CEST

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Were the drops to zero?
If not, there is some scope for further improvement, no?

2025-08-27 20:52:53 CEST

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A half-full reservoir is a useful buffer against sudden heavy rainfall, I think.

2025-08-27 02:41:53 CEST

We staged this a few years ago. I still like it.
#model #brolly #rainbow #street #flying
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/097/939/041/881/258/original/e6bcfe7628c4a241.jpg