memes, photography

1 to 12 Meme


1 to 12 Meme, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This week’s Flickr meme is to use the numbers 1-12 and see what we come up with! Here are mine:

1. One Minute Manager
2. Twins
3. Three Bridges
4. Four Feet
5. The Famous Five
6. The Prisoner; Number Six
7. Seven Dials
8. Eight-legged Arachnids
9. Nine Men’s Morris
10. Ten Little Nigger Boys
11. M-Theory, a variant of String Theory and one of the contenders for the cosmological “theory of everything” requires 11 dimensions of space-time.
12. Dozen Eggs

As always the photographs are not mine so please click on individual links below to see each artist/photostream. This mosaic is for a group called My Meme, where each week there is a different theme and normally 12 questions to send you out on a hunt to discover photos to fit your meme. It gives you a chance to see and admire other great photographers’ work out there on Flickr.

1. Winter Break – Think Spring!!, 2. The Twins, 3. Railroad Bridge – Three Rivers Point, 4. Four feet, bottom view, 5. Vintage Famous Five Books Card Game, 6. THE PRISONER Vintage Steampunk Necklace by 19 Moons, 7. Seven Dials – London, 8. Spider, 9. Nine Men’s Morris, 10. Ten Little Nigger Boys, 11. M Theory, 12. 101:365 One Dozen

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys

personal

Niffs Nasty; Niffs Nice

A few days ago Hails over at Coffee Helps posted on the smells she most hates and those she most loves, which has inspired me to do the same. I’ve always known I have an excellent sense of smell; I can often smell things other people can’t — especially useful for gas leaks etc. But don’t have a strong stomach to ho along with it. So here are my selections; they aren’t necessarily the definitive top tens, but they’re going to be pretty close.

Top 10 smells I most hate:

  • Sewers and drains (make me retch almost instantly)
  • Vomit (as above)
  • Anything stagnant (and again; I really do not have a strong stomach)
  • Gas (well yes; natural gas is actually odourless and has sulphurous compounds added to make it smell nasty and prevent you gassing yourself accidentally; old style coal gas had these smells in it naturally)
  • Sweaty unwashed people (yeuch!)
  • Tobacco (especially cigarette) smoke (despite once having been a smoker)
  • Stale urine (as in subways)
  • Rotten meat and fish
  • Pernod and absinthe (disgusting stuff; how can anyone drink these?)
  • Burning rubber (this is organic sulphur compounds again)

Top 10 smells I like:

  • Brewing coffee (even though I hardly ever drink it)
  • Baking bread (heavenly; no wonder supermarkets use it to encourage people to shop!)
  • Frying onions
  • Newly mown grass (always takes me back to my childhood, and my youth playing cricket)
  • Sea (wonderful fresh iodine smell which clears the head)
  • Wood smoke (which always reminds me of my youth and scout camp)
  • Roses (especially old roses which almost always have a wonderful perfume; why do modern rose have no perfume?)
  • Grapefruit oil (it’s just so uplifting)
  • Christmas spices (that combination of orange, cinnamon, clove, etc.)
  • Pine trees (that fresh resinous smell which, like the sea, clears the head)

Anyone feel like contributing their favourite hated/loved smells?

amusements, books, thoughts

Wierd Books We Have (Not) Known

1 Comment

Abebooks is currently promoting some of the weirder books and literary oddities which are available. These include such delights as:

  • Ductigami: The Art of the Tape by Joe Wilson

  • The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories by Ailsa Surkis & Monica Nolan

  • Monk Habits for Everyday People by Dennis Okholm

  • The Great Pantyhose Crafts Book by Edward & Stevie Baldwin

  • Do-It-Yourself Coffins by Dale Power

  • and what is billed as the world’s weirdest book: Luigi Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus

I think I’m glad I’ve managed to miss out on these, although I do have a copy of Bill Hartston’s The Drunken Goldfish. What are your favourites?

memes, personal, photography

What's in Your Bag Meme


What’s in Your Bag Meme, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This week’s Flickr meme is to share what we call carry with us day after day! What’s in your purse, bag, pocketbook, briefcase, backpack, etc.? Here’s my selection:

1. Moleskine notebook
2. Two mobile phones
3. Glasses cloth
4. Fuji F40fd camera
5. Keys
6. Coins
7. Sanford/Papermate PhD pen
8. Wallet (credit cards & cash)
9. Handkerchief
10. Extra strong mints
11. HP iPAQ
12. Pocket lint

As always the photographs are not mine so please click on individual links below to see each artist/photostream. This mosaic is for a group called My Meme, where each week there is a different theme and normally 12 questions to send you out on a hunt to discover photos to fit your meme. It gives you a chance to see and admire other great photographers’ work out there on Flickr.

1. 24 aug 09 “ostrich”, 2. Sister two, 3. Utata IP72 – Easter Weekend, 4. Fuji Finepix F40fd Gunmetal, 5. Skeleton Watches & Pocket Keys, 6. 10 ancient Indian gold coins, 7. Paper Mate® PhD™ Multi™ Multipurpose Writing Instrument, Pen/Pencil/PDA Stylus, Medium 1.0 mm Point Pen, Fine 0.5 mm Point Pencil, Blue, 8. Tea wallets, 9. Julian waves it up, 10. extra strong mint, 11. HP iPAQ 210 Enterprise Handheld, 12. WTJ pg35/36 07/03/09 Collect Pocket Lint

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys

science, thoughts

Collapsing Sign Syndrome

Could it be that some signs are quantumly determined, collapsing to a state of true or false when you observe them? Based on his observations, Neill Jones thinks that it could.

He gives the example of a sign outside his house saying “No dog fouling”. Every time he has looked at it, he says, it has been true. This is also the case with another “No dog fouling” sign on a building a couple of streets away.

On the other hand, on Salisbury Plain in the south of England, where there are regular military manoeuvres, there is a sign by the road saying “Tank crossing”. This, says Neill, has collapsed to false every time he has looked at it.

There are, however, further complexities to this phenomenon. Some signs avoid a quantum collapse altogether, Neill notes. Take the “Gap ahead closed” sign he saw recently while driving up a dual carriageway (divided highway). If there was a gap ahead, he reasons, then it wasn’t closed. If it was closed, then there wasn’t a gap ahead. So the sign failed to be either true or false and was merely self-cancelling.

“Maybe I should get out more,” Neill suggests. “But then I’ll only find more signs. So maybe I should stay in more.”

[New Scientist; 22 August 2009]

memes, natural history, photography

Garden Meme


Garden Meme, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This week’s Flickr meme is to find 12 things you would plant in your garden. As usual here’s my rather liberal interpretation of the theme:

1. Old Roses
2. Woodland Glade
3. Herb Garden
4. Big Koi Pond
5. Blackberries & other soft fruit
6. Chillies
7. Scented Geraniums
8. Bamboo
9. Fruit Trees
10. Flowering Currant (Ribes)
11. Walled Vegetable Garden
12. Pine Trees

Except for and #10 which are mine, as always the photographs are not mine so please click on individual links below to see each artist/photostream. This mosaic is for a group called My Meme, where each week there is a different theme and normally 12 questions to send you out on a hunt to discover photos to fit your meme. It gives you a chance to see and admire other great photographers’ work out there on Flickr.

1. Apothecary’s Rose, 2. Spring arrives in the woods, 3. Herb garden, 4. Koi Pond, 5. September Blackberries, 6. Chilli plants, 7. Scented Geranium, Walsall 13/09/2008, 8. Kyoto bamboo, 9. magic fruit tree, 10. Flowering_Currant, 11. The Vegetable Patch, 12. Buttermere

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys

amusements, arts, books, memes, music, personal, photography

Dinner Party Meme


Dinner Party Meme, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This week’s Flickr meme is to imagine your ideal dinner party. Which 12 famous people / people from history would you invite? Here is my rather curious set of bedfellows:

1. Anthony Powell; English novelist and man of letters has to be my first choice!
2. William Byrd; Tudor composer and recusant
3. Samuel Pepys; Restoration diarist
4. Richard Feynman; hugely influential physicist
5. Galileo Galilei; another hugely influential and brave scientist
6. Dalai Lama; always calm, always measured and always laughing!
7. Terry Jones; formerly of Monty Python but also a first rate medieval historian
8. Mick Aston; archaeologist and eccentric
9. Alice Roberts; incredibly bright, multi-talented medic, and very sexy
10. Susanna Reid; another incredibly bright and attractive young lady who’s a BBC TV newscaster
11. Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll); Victorian mathematician and writer of Alice in Wonderland
12. Leonardo da Vinci; another hugely influential artist and scientist

Why so few girlies? I don’t know. I’m sure there must be more in my brain!

As always the photographs are not mine so please click on individual links below to see each artist/photostream. This mosaic is for a group called My Meme, where each week there is a different theme and normally 12 questions to send you out on a hunt to discover photos to fit your meme. It gives you a chance to see and admire other great photographers’ work out there on Flickr.

1. ANTHONY POWELL, NOVELIST, AT HOME IN SOMERSET, 28 DECEMBER 1983., 2. William Byrd (c. 1540 – 1623), 3. Samuel Pepys memorial, St Olave’s Church, London, 4. Richard_Feynman, 5. Galileo, 6. His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, 7. terry jones, 8. Time Team in Salisbury, 9. alice roberts, 10. susanna 15, 11. lewis carroll was kind of cute, 12. vitruvian man leonardo da Vinci

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys

amusements, food+drink, memes, photography

Pizza Meme


My creation, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This week’s Flickr meme … we’re each finding 12 slices of glorious pizza! Here are my 12, in order: Green, Cat, Sweets, Knitted, Onna Stick, Mouse, Black, Catnip, Nude, Fruit, Bento, Purple. And for a wonder not a pretty girl in sight this week. 🙂

As always the photographs are not mine so please click on individual links below to see each artist/photostream. This mosaic is for a group called My Meme, where each week there is a different theme and normally 12 questions to send you out on a hunt to discover photos to fit your meme. It gives you a chance to see and admire other great photographers’ work out there on Flickr.

1. Green & White Pizza, 2. Bad Cat Got to the Pizza First, 3. Who ordered pizza?, 4. knit pizza, 5. Pepperoni Pizza on a Stick, 6. mouse pizzas in detail, 7. Black Bean Pizza, 8. mouse pizza, 9. Pizza Man!, 10. Fruit pizza, 11. Pizza Boy, 12. purple pizza

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys