©voyager, all rights reserved
Well, the sun did try to shine earlier this morning, but by the time Jack and I got ourselves outdoors it had clouded over. We went to the woods anyway and had a pleasant autumn walk in the autumn air. It wasn’t the bright colours that caught my eye today, though. It was a bit of fluffy white fungus that looked just like wet teddy bear fur. Hmmm…maybe it was wet teddy bear fur. Maybe today was the day the teddy bears had their picnic.
I think we’ve had these images before, but since naturalcynic expressed dismay at the lack of close ups of the condor, here’s the next smaller bird I have to offer: Norbert, a European griffin vulture. According to one of the falconers he takes a much more direct approach to food than “waiting until you drop dead”.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
I personally think his feather collar is just so posh.
Classical music has long been associated with heightened emotions, violent premieres, and composers escaping from disappointed audiences through windows and the like. But I thought those days were over, at least for classical music, until this headline caught my eye: Malmö performance of Mahler’s Fifth ends in brawl.
I leave you with the tension of the introductory paragraphs:
The conflict began shortly after the renowned Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons brought the bombastic introduction to the fourth movement to a shuddering halt, leading his Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra deftly into the movement’s slow, atmospheric adagietto, wrote the Sydsvenskan newspaper.At this point that the rustling on the second balcony became apparent, ruining the effect of the gently soaring strings and softly plucked harp for all sitting nearby.
I present a triune of lizards for your eyes. For some of you, a lizard may be no big deal, but I come from a land where lizards are rare, and the only ones we have are tiny and brown (but very cute!).
Lizard number 1 was hiding out in bright sunlight on some flat rocks, when I nearly stepped on it.
See if you can spot it:
I am invisible…
The dramatic reveal below the fold…
More fun than fungus, ©voyager, all rights reserved
Jack and I haven’t really wandered too far from home this week because fibromyalgia and damp weather don’t get along, but that just gives us a chance to check out the changes in our own neighbourhood. These mushrooms for example weren’t here earlier this week. Must be all the rain we’ve had. I’m not familiar with this variety of fungus, but they look to me like more fun than fungus.
I was the foreigner here, as this is a lovely, satisfied, well-fed Macedonian spider enjoying the autumn sunlight. And a small side of fresh flies. Below the fold.
Opus has sent us another colourful treat. This time it’s shoes and they are wonderful. It’s no secret that I love shoes, but I could never hope to have shoes quite this wonderful. They’re bright, bold and such interesting designs. Opus says,
More pictures, this time from Reykjavik. Shooting through glass is tough, but I think they worked out well. More of the sights that one sees when traveling with fabric artists. I might never have noticed if not for them.
Well, Opus, I think traveling with fabric artists is definitely a good thing, but your camera skills are what makes it all come alive in photos. Thanks so much for sharing.
©Opus, all rights reserved
Matt Easton speculates a bit about the final polish that early medieval swords might have.
How I feel about people* who have Opinions. And who feel the need to talk these Opinions at me at length and with gusto.
A wee birdie.
At Amnéville they built a “Medieval Arena” to show their birds of prey, which has the advantage of high ramparts that allow them to fly even larger birds.
There’s going to be more pics, but the first bord was my absolute favourite because how can you top a South American Condor?
©Giliell, all rights reserved
The day before yesterday (or yonderday as I’d like to call it because why, English, why), British supervillain extraordinaire Piers Morgan, armed with supreme stupidity, verbose bigotry and lots of poop to fling tweeted a pic of Daniel Craig doing one of those normal thing people do like taking the baby for a walk to play Pokémon Go. OK, I made up the Pokémon part, but apparently, an image of a dad doing dad things was really too much for poor Piers.
Oh 007.. not you as well?!!! #papoose #emasculatedBond pic.twitter.com/cqWiCRCFt3
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) October 15, 2018
Oh 007.. (sic) not you as well?!!! #papoose #emasculatedBond
The tweet got picked up by Chris Captain America Evans who rightfully called out Morgan for his attempt to literally shame a man into not caring for his child.
You really have to be so uncertain of your own masculinity to concern yourself with how another man carries his child. Any man who wastes time quantifying masculinity is terrified on the inside. https://t.co/9jsHZ3WKRn
— Chris Evans (@ChrisEvans) October 16, 2018
You really have to be so uncertain of your own masculinity to concern yourself with how another man carries his child. Any man who wastes time quantifying masculinity is terrified on the inside.
And for once, go read the replies which are full of dads posting pics of them carrying their kids.
©voyager, all rights reserved
Most of the cornfields around us have been cut down and readied for spring, but there are always a few farms that leave the stalks insitu over winter. I’m not a farmer and have no idea why, but today I was grateful to find something/anything that wasn’t a dirt bare, wet brown field.
This is about steel and blades OK? Just to be clear upfront.
In my article Knifesharpenophobia I have mused a bit about how being all anal retentive about the hardness of a blade is not all that necessary. Now I wish to revisit that heme a bit, after my hardening attempt of a blade did not go as well as I would wish to.
If you remember when I was trying to harden the rondel dagger I was also hardening a kitchen knife blade and I was pretty sure that this particular blade is properly hardened. So I took it to work and measured the hardness on the tang (the knife is not finished yet), where it is hardened, but probably not as well as the blade. And the gage showed HRC 54. From technical standpoint, difference between 50 HRC and 54 HRC is not trivial (HRC is not a linear scale) and that knife is thus indeed properly hardened. What was the difference in the work process? For that knife then I have used the gas forge only for heat-soak, the final heating to 1050°C before quench was made with charcoal, which allows for more even heating. HRC 54 is still not full potential of this steel, but if the tang has it, the blade has probably more.
But this whole thing got me thinking again – is that even relevant? Do I really need to be afraid to give that knife to a fried as a gift because the hardness of the blade is “just” HRC 50? Am I being unnecessarily obsessive about an inconsequential detail (again)?
So I tried to look at what is the actual hardness of historical blades. I did not spend too much time with it, but the article Sword Blade Hardness: A look at the current research is an eye opener and a good read. To be clear, it is about swords, not kitchen knives, but it still clearly shows one thing – the crappiest knife that I have ever made is vastly superior to most knives that were used throughout history before the invention of blast furnace. Not because of my superior skill, but because I have access to superior steel. Furthermore, HRC 50 is not actually bad at all and someone who takes a good care of the knife would probably not even notice any downside when cutting. And it has an upside too – a blade in this hardness range needs to be sharpened more often, but stropping and sharpening should be reasonably easy and quick and the knife will not break easily when you drop it on the floor by accident.
It is not the best that could be, but it is good enough.