Day One

Weekly Travel Theme; Couples

Posted on October 21, 2012 by Barbara

Camping in our roof tent in Devon, with Wilson

When I was little I used to think that ‘a couple’ meant ‘a few’ and for some reason, probably because I’m dyslexic and some things take me much longer than others to understand (like right & left and analogue clocks)

Finally I get it, a couple means 2. Then along comes Wilson 🙂

There are more photos and images of interesting pairings at Where’s My Backpack Travel theme: Couples.

If you’d like to join in this week’s travel theme, here’s what to do:

Create your own post featuring couples and title it Travel Theme: Couples
Include a link to this page in your post so others can find it too
Get your post in by next Thursday, as the new travel theme comes out on Friday
Don’t forget to subscribe to keep up to date on the latest weekly travel themes

Posted in Animals, Camping, Devon, Pets, Photography, Travel, Wilson | Tagged Camping, Couples, landrover, Photography, Roof Tent, Travel Theme, Wilson | 5 Comments

Weekly Photo Challenge: Silhouette

Posted on October 19, 2012 by Barbara

Today we had to bring our boat from Emsworth Marina in Chichester Harbour to Langstone Sailing Club in Langstone Harbour for her lift out for the winter. We had hoped to be able to sail at least the part of the journey in the Solent, but the wind speed was 0 mph for most of the journey!!

Map of Chichester Harbour from http://www.conservancy.co.uk/page/navigation/325

We did get to thoroughly test our wet gear though, as it rained for the entirety of the three hour trip

I forgot my camera but I saw the silhouette of this lone tree on the beach and had to capture it, so I borrowed Peter’s pocket camera The result is not crystal clear as the visibility was really poor, but it also conveys the Novemberness of the day!

Lone tree at the entrance to Chichester Harbour

I have now uploaded 2 more posts relating to this challenge:

Weekly Photo Challenge; Silhouette (2) and

Weekly Photo Challenge; Silhouette (3)

New to The Daily Post? Whether you’re a beginner or a professional, you’re invited to get involved in our Weekly Photo Challenge to help you meet your blogging goals and give you another way to take part in Post a Day / Post a Week. Everyone is welcome to participate, even if your blog isn’t about photography.

Here’s how it works:

1. Each week, we’ll provide a theme for creative inspiration. You take photographs based on your interpretation of the theme, and post them on your blog (a new post!) anytime before the following Friday when the next photo theme will be announced.

2. To make it easy for others to check out your photos, title your blog post “Weekly Photo Challenge: (theme of the week)” and be sure to use the “postaday″ tag.

3. Subscribe to The Daily Post so that you don’t miss out on weekly challenge announcements. Sign up via the email subscription link in the sidebar or RSS.

Posted in Blogging, Boats, Photography, Water | Tagged Chichester Harbour, Colvic Countess 28, Emsworth Yacht Harbour, Langstone Sailing Club, Postaday, Silhouette, Solent | 22 Comments

Seven Tips for New Bloggers from the Laughing Housewife

Posted on October 18, 2012 by Barbara

Oh why oh why oh why didn’t I read this post at the start of my blogventures!

My titles are over 140 characters long, I have been consigned to the spam bin forever for too many tags, and despite being a maths teacher, I am also Dyslexic & can’t count! Maybe I should just ‘Rip it up and start again?‘

The Laughing Housewife

A lot of my subscribers are fairly new bloggers (which, I suspect, is why they subscribe here – they don’t know any better).

Thank you, new subscribers, for subscribing, however misguided you may be.

Formalities over and naming no names, I have noticed some common errors on my visits to your new blogs, and I thought I would give you some tips that I wish had been given to me early on in my own blogging career:

Use no more than ten tags, including the category. Any more than that and search engines think you are spam and put you to the bottom of the list. Good tags encourage more hits. Failing that, they garner amusing searches which you can shamelessly turn into their own posts. Or is that just me?
Break up paragraphs. It is difficult to read one huge block of text; people don’t have time to persevere or just can’t be…

View original post 368 more words

Posted in Blogging, Numbers | Tagged Beginnings, Blogging, dyslexia, Maths, Tips | 12 Comments

I don’t want to hibernate said the little tortoise

Posted on October 17, 2012 by Barbara

Well… she’s not exactly little!

My Tortoise (Myrtle) A Greek spur thighed tortoise does NOT want to hibernate!

She is about 5½ years old 23cm long and 2.386kg ! When I got her she weighed 112g and was just over 7cm long.

Myrtle aged 6 months 7.5cm long, 112g

We read that it is better not to hibernate tortoises in their first 5 years, but the last 2 years she has ‘self hibernated’ for about a month, where she has hidden in a colder part of the house & not come out for a good while. The second time she did this I put her in a cardboard box with a lid & shredded paper inside & left her there for a month.

Now she is 5 I thought it would be a good idea to hibernate her properly, so I watched a video about how to hibernate my tortoise safely (theirs is a LOT smaller than mine!) a few times & then started the process (My family have still not approved the salad drawer of the fridge as her hibernation destination, but I’m sorry, I am not buying Myrtle her own fridge!)

Myrtle aged 5 and a half, 23cm long, 2.4kg

Her weight on October 2nd was 2386g and I have withdrawn food (she wasn’t eating much anyway) and given her a bath every day since as recommended in the video.

She is now 2315g, and running round the house like a lunatic. I’ve turned off her heat & light in her vivarium, but she keeps coming out & sunbathing in the kitchen or back room.

She doesn’t look remotely ready to climb into a box & stay still for a month, so I’m not sure what to do now? Boxes and shredded paper are ready, family will be persuaded, but since this is the first time that I will be reducing her temperature to 5° I am worried about her.

Has anyone out there in the blogosphere got any experiences of Tortoises not wanting to hibernate? Should I get her a copy of I don’t want to go to bed! ?

I don’t want to go to Bed

Posted in Animals, Myrtle, Photography, Tortoise | Tagged Children's books, Greek Spur Thighed Tortoise, Hibernation, Myrtle, Tortoise | 10 Comments

My Top 25 Movies

Posted on October 16, 2012 by Barbara

While exploring people’s blogs & entering lots of different weekly photo challenge posts, I’ve discovered many people whose pages are really interesting & whose ‘about me‘s’ have caught my attention. When I read somebody’s blog and I see that they seem to have a similar philosophy of life to me, I often follow them.

One such blogger was Jo @ Chronicles of Illusions (I especially like people who use their own names). She added subsections to her ‘about me’ page telling us 100 things about herself. She then added 3 more pages with 20 more things each! I thought they were a brilliant idea, and a really good way to get a snapshot diary of Jo’s life. I could almost imagine the fading Polaroid photos of the different events in her life. Some of them were quite harrowing, others funny, but after the first 100 I was left wanting even more, so was relieved to have noticed that there were another 60 to come…

Once I finished her next 60, I thought I would read a bit more about Jo and chanced upon a post entitled ‘Another update about me‘ so happily I jumped in 🙂 The subtitle was ‘My 25 favourite movies of all time’ so far so good…. but then my heart dropped. Her number 1, all time favourite movie, was Dirty Dancing!!

Dirty Dancing is possibly my LEAST favourite movie of all time, and Patrick Swazye was probably one of my all time least favourite actors!

How can someone who has written such beautiful blogs & posts about herself have such terrible taste in films!! We only agree on two: The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Secondhand Lions, and neither of those would be on my list of my top 25, although I do watch the Rocky Horror on a regular basis with my children 🙂

So, of course, Jo has thrown down the gauntlet! ‘Well missy, what are your top 25 all time favourite films?’

Oh help. I’m never good at picking favourites!!

Luckily my youngest daughter is planning on taking ‘Film Studies’ in College & has spent this summer watching a collection of ‘everyone’s all time favourite movies’ or everyone’s ‘You MUST watch films…. and she has written them all down! Lots of the suggestions were from me….. so I should be able to come up with 25……

So here they are; in no particular order, and almost definitely subject to revision at some later date!

(oops)

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Now just click publish……. :s

Posted in Blogging, Films | Tagged La Vita è Bella, Magnolia, Nil by Mouth, Sea of Love, Seven years in Tibet, Silkwood, The Commitments, The Cook The Thief His Wife and Her Lover, The Usual Suspects, Underground | 9 Comments

Weekly Photo Challenge: Big (Sky)

Posted on October 14, 2012 by Barbara

I was inspired to take some photos of the sky by Danajoward’s post for the Weekly Photo Challenge; Big We go to the coast really often, and when you are by the sea there is a lot of sky!

The following photos are taken near Emsworth in Hampshire. We went for a walk and the weather kept changing every few minutes. One minute it was deliciously warm and sunny, and the next the rain was pouring down 🙂

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Posted in Photography, Water | Tagged Big, Clouds, Emsworth, Hampshire, October, Postaday, Sky, Thorney Island, Weather, Weekly Photo Challenge | 11 Comments

Travel Theme; On Display

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Barbara

Bags ‘On Display’ in Anjuna Market, Goa

When I saw this week’s Travel Theme I instantly thought of this photo that I took on my first visit to India. Look out for more photos from India in ‘My Travels‘ once I get some time to upload them

Look out for new Travel Themes at ‘Where’s My Backpack?‘

Posted in India, Photography, Travel | Tagged Anjuna, Goa, India, January, Market, Photography, Travel, Travel Theme, Winter | 11 Comments

Weekly Photo Challenge; Big

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Barbara

This isn’t my photo (‘really’ I hear you cry!!) but it makes me feel really really small, and that the universe is so unimaginably BIG

Original caption: “View of the Earth as seen by the Apollo 17 crew travelling toward the moon. This translunar coast photograph extends from the Mediterranean Sea area to the Antarctica south polar ice cap. This is the first time the Apollo trajectory made it possible to photograph the south polar ice cap. Note the heavy cloud cover in the Southern Hemisphere. Almost the entire coastline of Africa is clearly visible. The Arabian Peninsula can be seen at the north-eastern edge of Africa. The large island off the coast of Africa is Madagascar. The Asian mainland is on the horizon toward the north-east.”

“Suddenly, from behind the rim of the Moon, in long, slow-motion moments of immense majesty, there emerges a sparkling blue and white jewel, a light, delicate sky-blue sphere laced with slowly swirling veils of white, rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery. It takes more than a moment to fully realize this is Earth . . . home.”

Edgar Mitchell

Weekly Photo Challenge: Share a picture which means BIG to you!

Posted in Photography, Physics, Science, Space | Tagged Apollo 17, Big, Ed Mitchell, First, Photography, Postaday, Small, The Blue Planet, Weekly Photo Challenge | 23 Comments

10.11.12 13:14

Posted on October 11, 2012 by Barbara

October 11th 2012 @ 1.14pm

I love numbers & the fact that I have just worked out how to schedule a post 🙂

Posted in Maths, Numbers, Special Dates | Tagged 10 11 12 13 14, Maths, Numbers, Numeromology, Special Dates | 6 Comments

Weekly Travel Theme; Animals

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Barbara

I have spent the last 3 days trying to decide which of my photos to upload for the Weekly Travel Theme; Animals. The problem is that I love taking photos of Animals, and I have hundreds that I really like!

I found this little sparrow sitting on a wall when we were on a trip to Canterbury looking at universities with my daughter. He looked a bit shook, so we carefully picked him up and put him in a tree in a nearby garden so he wouldn’t be knocked off the wall. We have affectionately named him Canterbury (although of course he could be a girl!)