Taking a Rabbit to the Formula E Finals

/

this is about the best I could do on the day. Turns out that racing cars are hard to photograph

Formula E is a bit like Formula 1, except that the cars are powered by electricity and sound a bit like turbocharged hair driers. We went to the final event of the season in London today. We watched the practice, the qualifier and finally the race. In between these we wandered around looking at stands in the exhibition attached to the race, watched a mini-concert from Craig David and generally had an all-out wonderful time. I took a camera and the Rabbit R1.

I took a bunch of pictures with a proper camera, and lots with the Rabbit R1. I was lucky because for some reason we had good mobile phone connections and the Rabbit was able to take the shots and do “Magic Camera” type things with them. I really like the results. They are not photographs in the proper sense of the word, but they provide a lovely record of the event and I’m very pleased to have them. And if you bear in mind that a Rabbit R1 is a fraction of the price of a new camera lens I reckon it is a good investment if you want a quirky record of what you’ve been up to.

This is what the rabbit thought of the race

Some of the racing got quite intimate

A “Rabbit’s Eye View” of one of the cars on display

The Racers

Yes, there was a Costa

Tyre smoke at the start

From now on I’m going to be taking the Rabbit R1 with me to get its unique perspective.

Life Tip

/

Not sure if this is a life tip, but it is a good tip nonetheless. We spent a big chunk of today arranging a funeral (helped by the wonderful Kelly from the Co-op). This was made much easier because my father-in-law had taken the very sensible step of making clear exactly what he wanted to happen and sorting it all out in advance. Doing this really helps those that are carrying on.

Farewell Rodney

/

This is a blog mostly about frothy fun stuff and tech with bits of hardware and jokes alongside the occasionally useful aside. But every now and then real life intrudes. My father-in-law Rodney passed away on the 10th of July at the great age of 94, with his family by his side. He was a splendid fellow and will be sorely missed. I’m going to take a break from blogging for a little while as we deal with this, but I will be back..

Antique Dealer

/

I’m surprised it is not more dusty. After all, it is an antique.

What do you do if you want to own a genuine antique? You buy and Apple product and wait six years. Apple have just announced that the original Apple Homepod (released in 2018) now has “antique” status as far as they are concerned. This not not much of an honour for the poor thing though. It means that it is no longer deemed repairable and probably won’t get software updates. I’m used to devices going out of date, but this seems a bit much. I’ve got batteries older than that which are still working.

...and so to Staithes

/

Never been to Staithes before. Which is as good a reason as any to go. So we did. It’s lovely.

A view of the village

Adventures in wide angles

Incoming tide

The Cod and Lobster is a great place to eat

Lots of lovely details

Pity about the yellow lines…

If you get the chance, you should go. There’s a lovely little museum that gives you a great background to the area and lots of places for good food and drink.

Back to blogging

/

I’ve no idea if it works or not. But with these looks it doesn’t nave to…..

They say that the perfect is the enemy of the good. This causes me no end of problems. As an example, consider this blog. A perfect blog would have an entry every day with interweaving narratives which are sprinkled with humorous bon-mots and apposite pictures. But over the last few weeks I’ve not had the time to make a perfect blog. And every time I’ve considered writing a post I’ve thought about the effort needed to make my blog perfect, groaned inwardly (and sometimes outwardly) and gone off and done something else instead.

So I’m going to settle for good enough. When I get a bit of spare time I’ll go back and fill in the gaps and make everything my idea of perfect, but I’ll also stop stressing about having everything present and correct before adding the next post. Over the next week or so I’ll be filling in gaps and making things as perfect as I think I need. And I’ll be blogging when I get time.

As for today: I spent a bit of the morning helping to get rid of some iron railings and to celebrate the success I bought a movie camera for less than the price of a video game….

Humber Marathon in sunshine shock

/

We went along to the Humber Marathon today. The middle of Hull was awesome busy and the weather was properly splendid. I think it was perfect running weather, bright and crisp. But then again, I’m not a runner so what do I know.

Anyhoo, we watched them all start off, had a coffee and a wander round and then watched everyone finished. I did take a bunch of pictures, but I wasn’t using my own camera, so I don’t have any to post I’m afraid.

Big Car Rob

/

I took my little car into the dealers for its MOT test yesterday. This is an annual British ritual where you find out just how dangerous that thing is you’ve been driving around in all year. My car passed (which is nice) although it did need two new tyres. They gave me a loaner car to play with which was huge (and according to the form I signed worth about 60,000 pounds). This was deeply scary but also great fun. I’m almost looking forward to the test next year…