My attempts to do justice to a splendid full moon.
After a serious first post of the day here is something in lighter vein. Last night in the twilight period a magnificent full moon was visible from my flat in King’s Lynn. The rest of this post details my attempts to do justice to it.
I have three separate pictures of this full moon:
I then tried to enlarge the last picture shown above, resulting in:
So which moon pic is best?
A post largely devoted to nature, featuring links to Anna’s “Paradise on Earth” series of posts, a couple of infographics, a petition and some my own nature pics.
This is the first of several posts I will be putting up today. I will start by bringing you up to date with Anna’s magnificent “Paradise on Earth” series which now runs to 12 posts, then I have a couple of twitter images to share with you, and at the end I will include some of my own photographs.
I covered the first three posts in this series in The Fight To Save Trosa Nature, reblogged part 4 in full here, and then put up another post featuring parts 4 and 5. Since then Anna has continued to showcase the Tureholm Peninsula’s wildlife as follows:
This is by way of a warning of what our species is doing to this planet, and since it concerns the Arctic it follows on naturally from the stuff about the Tureholm Peninsula:
This one shows an illogicality in our classification of species by showing side by side three species of cat that share 95.7 of their DNA, and are therefore quite correctly considered members of the felidae and two species that share over 98% of their DNA but are classed as members of different genera. The reason the second pair of species are classed as more widely split than the first trio has nothing to do with logic and everything to do with religion (and Carolus Linnaeus, also known as Carl Von Linne, the pioneer of our system of classification admitted as much in the 18th century btw):
UK Zoos are still treating their animals badly, and there is now a petition on thepetitionsite calling on DEFRA to crack down on misery in UK Zoos. As one who cannot remmeber when I last visited a UK zoo (the last zoos I visited anywhere were those in Melbourne and Adelaide, both of which treat their animals well and give them space to move, in 2009-10) I urge you to sign this petition and help increase the pressure being applied.
I finish this post with some of my own recently taken photographs:
Some links to posts about the fight to save Trosa nature and a few of my own pictures from today.
It will be no news to regular followers of this blog that I have been supporting Anna in her fight to protect nature in her part of Sweden for some time. In this blog post I share links to some of her recent posts on this issue, and urge you to follow them up. At the end there are some photos of mine from today featuring creatures I saw while out walking this morning.
The beautiful area of Sweden in which Trosa lies is threatened by a proposal to build a big new road which will bring large amounts of money to a few and destruction of priceless natural beauty as an inevitable consequence. This tale sets out the story of the road building plan through three characters, Victor, Yanno & Dunno. The feature graphic shows Yanno & Dunno as puppets being controlled by Victor:
Anna laid out the case for her side in a post published on July 17 with the title “Därför vill vi spara naturen i Trosa – Why we want to save Trosa nature“. Below is the feature infographic from that post:
Anna has produced three posts in quick succession showing some of the nature that is on show in her part of the world. We start with:
This time your sample picture is of a seal:
Finally, to bring you right up to date we have…
This third post about the wildlide of Trosa and the Tureholm Peninsula is devoted to birds. My bait to lure you in is a Heron…
I finish this piece with some pictures from earlier today, starting with…
The point where the River Nar joins the Great Ouse is about 10-15 minutes walk from the centre of King’s Lynn, and I regularly see interesting stuff there, but before today I had not seen a Little Egret there (as well as the two pictures I took of the bird I have a picture of the relevant page of my bird book):
My second set of pictures are…
A couple of classic autism infographics I spotted in the last 24 hours and some photographs of my own.
The photographs which will be appearing in two tranches at the end of this post are mine, all taken yesterday. The two autism related infographics are shared from elsewhere (credit given at appropriate points). I saw the first of these yesterday evening and the second this morning.
First, courtesy of Patricia, who tweets as @pgzwicker, comes this gem:
The second was originally posted on Our Autism Blog this morning, and I link to that post so that you can comment on it there should you wish:
The first of the two sets of my photographs that I am putting up here were taken while out walking yesterday morning:
The last few pictures for today were taken yesterday afternoon while sitting outside my parents house in East Rudham. These are probably the last shots I will have from there as my parents are moving to Plymouth.
A post focussing on me giving a radio interview. Some mention of a roller-skating session and of the current test-match. And of course some photographs.
The title part of this post refers to one of the things I did yesterday. I also have some pictures to share.
Of course, as branch secretary of the National Autistic Society’s West Norfolk branch and an #actuallyautistic person there is a way in which autism is always at the heart of what I do. After three days carrying out my concatenation of roles at a James and Sons auction (operator of the system that enables us to take online bids, database administrator, query fielder, in-house ‘Gordianus’, occasional customer service person – see here for a full account) I had a day on which my only preset commitment was to supervise a roller-skating session at Lynnsport between 11 and 12. In the absence of direct confirmation of a time that would be convenient to speak to Ashleigh at KLFM 96.7 (our local radio station) about our upcoming 10th anniversary I decided that I would set off early for Lynnsport and see if I could speak to her on the way or as a fall-back arrange to call in on my way back.
Ashleigh was able to fit me in straight away, and the interview went well (she will be sending me both a recording and an online article that will accompany the actual broadcast), and I left for Lynnsport with my spirits high – I had helped myself, advertised our upcoming 10th anniversary event and due its connection with the foregoing also made mention of our gardening grant and the allotment on Ferry Lane + plans for a sensory garden in part of the plot. It is because of this gardening stuff that we gained the use of the magnificent garden where our 10th anniversary celebration will be held.
The roller-skating passed without incident and I was able to listen to some of the action from the third test-match (even assuming I had both the ability and the willingness to pay the Biased Bull****ting Conservatives £150 per year I would choose to follow cricket by listening to radio commentaries rather than watching on TV). Yesterday was truncated by rain, but England have had a good day today – first reaching 353 largely thanks to a magnificent innings from Stokes and now bagging a South African wicket before tea – debutant Toby Roland-Jones breaking through.
An account of James and Sons’ July auction – 1,500 lots over three days.
On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week James and Sons had its July auction. 500 lots went under the hammer on each day.
This first day of the sale featured coins, banknotes, cheques, P&N covers and militaria. There were quiet moments in most categories, but also plenty of stuff sold, some of it doing very well. Here are some pictures from this first day:
Along the way, lot 377, one of the P&N covers, was knocked down to me:
With stamps, postal history, a few postcards and first-day covers going under the hammer this was always likely to be the quietest of the three days and it was, although there were a few good sales. Here are some pictures from day 2:
With postcards, cigarette & trade cards, ephemera, books, records and some interesting railwayana this was the day that we expected to go best, and it did. After a quietish start with the postcards, the cigarette and Liebig cards attracted in plenty of online bidders, some of the ephemera did very well, and both the large boxes of railway books found a buyer (someone who I had been in email contact with following a query about the contents of one of the boxes – I take the fact that she bought both boxes full as a definitive judgement as to the adequacy of my response!). I was also relieved because of its weight to see lot 1451 find a buyer. Lot 1379 went to me.
After a few minutes spent making the shop look more like a shop and less like an auction venue and a few more minutes spent consuming my sandwiches I finished up by adding details of those who had actually madce bids to the client database and printing out a complete list of those who had registered to bid online (196 of them on this occasion).
Here are some pictures relating to this third day:
Overall across the three days the total hammer price for sold items was just over £10,000, and while some of these were owned by external vendors, meaning that our gains are limited to the lotting fees, vendors commission and buyers premium, many were from our own stock. At the end of August we will be having auctions at our shop and also at Fakenham Racecourse.
An account of the PR work I have done for James and Sons upcoming auction.
In amongst polishing off the last of the imaging (I only actually got some lots needing imaging this morning!) for next week’s auction (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, all three days at our shop), resolving queries and such like I have also put out a number of ‘Auction Alert’ emails and a couple of press releases (I did a general one on Tuesday, and then my boss wanted something specifically about some Norfolk postcards today, hence two). I am going to produce screenshots of all the emails and press releases, accompanied by links to original documents, and all images therein.
On Tuesday I put out a general press release to local and regional media as follows:
THREE DAY FAKENHAM AUCTION FEATURES MANY EXCELLENT ITEMS
Then today I was required to come about with something about the Norfolk postcards:
NORFOLK POSTCARDS A FEATURE OF JAMES AND SONS UPCOMING THREE DAY AUCTION
Given the item that was on the front cover of the printed catalogue, my first email alert went out to buyers of banknotes:
CONFEDERATE BANKNOTES TO GO UNDER THE HAMMER AT FAKENHAM AUCTION
Then I sent one out to buyers of cigarette and trade cards:
CIGARETTE AND TRADE CARDS A FEATURE OF OUR UPCOMING AUCTION
I also sent out a specific email to postcard buyers, but do not have that document at my disposal, so next comes the one I sent to stamp buyers:
STAMPS A MAJOR FEATURE OF JAMES JULY AUCTION
Finally, today I sent out an email alert to buyers of railwayana:
RAILWAYANA A FEATURE OF JAMES UPCOMING AUCTION
I finish this post with the full gallery for lot 1452, which featured in the composite image in the first press release:
An account of two recent cricket matches involving England and South Africa, first the England men’s humiliation at Trent Bridge, and then the nailbiter of a Women’s World Cup semi-final at Bristol.
Both of the matches of my title were cricket matches between England and South Africa. The first was the test match between the men’s teams, and the second was the women’s world cup semi-final. A couple of notes about links in this piece:
England had won the first test match of the series handily, with Joe Root scoring 190 in his first innings as England captain and Moeen Ali being player of the match for his first inning 87 and match haul of 10-112. Among England’s male players only Ian Botham with 114 not out and 13-106 v India in 1979 has topped Ali’s all-round haul in a single game (Enid Bakewell was the first player of either sex to combine a match aggregate of 100 runs with a haul of 10 or more wickets, hence the earlier caveat).
Thus at Trent Bridge England should have been strong favourites. South Africa won the toss, batted first and made 335 in their first innings and England by bad batting handed South Africa a lead of 130, South Africa extended this to 473 with two days to play before sending England back in, messrs Elgar and Amla having demonstrated how to make runs on this pitch, each batting a long time. England’s second innings was quite simply shambolic, with batter after batter handing their wickets away. Four wickets down by lunch on the penultimate day it worse afterwards, with England being all out for 133 at approsimately 3PM. South Africa, having given themselves two days to dismiss England a second time had required less than two full sessions and were victors be 340 runs.
The first mistake England made was with the selection of the side. According to the powers that be Moeen Ali is happier as a second spinner than as either a sole spinner or as first spinner. However I find it hard to believe that even he could really consider himself no2 to Liam Dawson. Dawson is an ill thought out selection reminiscent of the dark days of the 1990s. For his county he averages in the low thirties with the bat and the high thirties with the ball, so even at that level he comes out as clearly not good enough in either department to warrant selection – the reverse of the true all-rounder. If a pitch warrants two spinners (and no Trent Bridge pitch in my lifetime ever has) the other spinner should be a genuine front-line option such as Dominic Bess (first class bowling average 19.83 per wicket – what are you waiting for selectors?). The other logical alternative would have been to bring in an extra batter (there are any number of possibilities) to strengthen this department. England’s batting in both innings smacked of panic. Other than Root whose 78 in the first innings was a gem and Cook who played well for a time in the second no England batter is entitled to be other than embarrassed by the way they played in this match. The scorecard, in all it’s gory detail, can be viewed here.
On what should have been the final day of the men’s test match but for England’s spinelessness the women’s teams convened at Bristol for a world-cup semi-final. The final will be played at Lord’s and is already sold out. South Africa batted first and were restricted to 218-6 from their overs, Mignon Du Preez top scoring with 76 not out, and Laura Wolvaardt making 66. South Africa bowled better than they had batted, and the outcome remained in doubt right to the end. Anya Shrubsole who had earlier finished with 1-33 from her 10 overs settled things by hitting her first ball, the third-last possible ball of the match through the covers for four. Sarah Taylor’s 54 and a brilliant wicket-keeping performance highlighted by the spectacular stumping of Trisha Chetty off the bowling of Natalie Sciver earned her the player of the match award. Sciver incidentally is the pioneer of a shot that in honour of her first name and the f**tballing term ‘nutmeg’ commentator Charles Dagnall has dubbed the ‘Natmeg’, one example of which she played in this match. Video highlights of this amazing match can be seen here (runs for just under five minutes), while the scorecard can be viewed here.
To set the scene for the rest of this section here are the extras (a cricket term for runs scored not off the bat) from both innings:
When South Africa batted:
| Extras | (w 4) | 4 |
When England batted
| Extras | (b 5, w 17, nb 3) | 25 |
A note on the designations within extras: Byes (b) stands for runs scored when there is no contact made with the ball but either the batters are able to take runs, or the ball goes to the boundary unimpeded, legbyes (lb), of which there were none in this match, are runs scored when the ball hits the pad but not the bat. Wides 
are deliveries that are too wide for the batter to be able to play, and no-balls are deliveries that are ruled illegal for some other infraction (bowler overstepping the crease, high full-toss etc). The 21 run difference between the two tallies shown above is of major significance given that England reached the target with just two balls to spare, and there is yet a further point.
England bowled four wides in the match, South Africa 17 and three no-balls. That is a 16-run difference, but the actual costs are likely be even more different because:
Therefore the discrepancy between the sides in terms of wides and no-balls is probably much greater than shown on the score-card, and this in a very close match. Sarah Taylor certainly deserved her player of the match award, but the much tighter discipline shown by England’s bowlers than their South African counterparts was also crucial to the result.
After over 1,100 words those of you are still with me deserve some pictures, so here we are:
An account of the three meetings at Marxism 2017 that focussed exclusively on climate change.
Welcome to this latest post in my series about Marxism 2017. This post deals with three meetings from the event and also features some external links as well. This post features green body text because of the subject matter – headings still in red. This post features pictures in ’tiled mosaic’ form – to view them at full size left-click/ single finger push an image to open the gallery, and if you right-click/ two finger push you get a drop down menu that enables you to open a single image.
The Jeffrey Hall is the second largest venue in the Institute of Education, with a seating capacity of 500. It was pleasingly full for Ian Angus’ talk about Facing the Anthropocene. This talk was accompanied by numerous slides. Here are the first few pictures:
From this start the speaker went on to define the anthropocene:
Before the Anthropocene the earth had seen five mass extinction events, and all evidence points to the fact that a sixth is upon us. Here are a few links to recent articles about this:
Now here are my remaining pictures from this meeting:
The website climateandcapitalism can be accessed here.
This was conducted in an informal style. Martin, chairing, asked Ian questions about his latest book (it is a good read btw) and Ian answered. After about half an hour questions were taken from the floor, and they were mainly excellent contributions. At the end of the meeting Ian signed copies of his book for those who were interested. Here are some photos:
This meeting was in the session immediately after the second Ian Angus meeting, and before the closing rally. This was a really excellent meeting, with many people speaking from the floor about campaigns they were involved in, and the mood generally confident. Here are some photos:
This post being about climate change and by extension nature I have decided to end with some links courtesy of Anna who has produced some excellent stuff about nature:
James and Sons July auction catalogue is now ready…
Yesterday the catalogue for James and Sons July auction (24th – 26th, all three days at our premises on Fakenham town centre) was uploaded to the-saleroom and despatched to the printer. Before moving on I ask readers to note that some of the images in this post have been presented in ’tiled mosaic’ form – a left click on your mouse/ single finger push on your control pad on one of the images will open a gallery showing you the images at full size.
Between locating images of stuff that had already been imaged and imaging other stuff I made significant progress, although the amount that had not been done was still greater than the amount that had been done. Among the new images I created were those of some Confederacy bank notes, including the item selected to be on the front cover of the catalogue:
Images of this and the other banknotes of ithe same type are created using the scanner (200dpi only for these). Here are some more of these banknotes:
Having shown the scanner at work, here are some photos to finish this section, the full gallery of lot 1479:
Most of the images on this day were transferred, but there were a few new ones, including lot 405 and some lots in the low 1,000s:
I started this day by imaging some lots for the cover:
Of the rest of the stuff I imaged yesterday the most interesting lots were some police helmets:
While there remains some imaging to do for this auction, and stuff for August will sloon be ready for imaging I will also have to put out various auction alerts and press releases next week. I will definitely be contacting buyers of banknotes, cigarette cards, railwayana, stamps and postcards. The railwayana email will feature lot 1451:
If I have scope (i.e. have not reached an email sending limit) I will also send out an email to militaria buyers. Our best item in this category this month is a camera used by the Luftwaffe:
aspiblog 