Bread And Butter
Just occasionally one gets lucky with the light. There is nothing special about this photo, no planning and no manipulation. A simple truth of always carry your camera with you. Enjoy.
Bread And Butter
Arcticterntalk.org
The blog of a travelling psychiatrist and football lover. Who happens to be a halfway decent photographer. Takes a cynical view of the world
Archive for the tag “i phone”
A Day in Wimbledon
Just a day out really but things that catch your attention.
- Empty trains at midday. Why cannot train companies like Southwest Trains look at operating far more a supply and demand service? It is crazy to have completely empty carriages.
- The weather in UK can vary from blazing sunshine to rain in only a few minutes. I Phone weather forecasts sadly are the worst source of information. Just open your eyes and look.
- How nice to take time and relax and sit peacefully and drink a coffee watching the world go by. No computer and no work
- Very little evidence of adult adhd
Variable UK weather
Empty South west Trains service
Wimbledon Train Station
Muffins
Rain in wimbledon
Are Smart Meters really as bad as Sunday Times makes out?
Last sunday The Sunday Times ran an article in their money section that purported to inform us that smart meters were not only unreliable but potentially overcharged many customers and created havoc with energy bills. The biased and opinionated headline ” Scandal of the £11bn smart meter rollout plan” gave clear identity to the content of what then followed. Having had a smart meter installed a few weeks ago I was somewhat curious to know these hidden pitfalls that neither British Gas nor anyone else had told me.
The evidence to support this ” scandal” derived from a few cases where clearly errors had happened, mistakes made and where old meters ( from 2010) had been installed in error. The opening paragraph designed to get us running for either deep caves or our lawyers told a case that clearly cannot be the norm of an installation where monthly electricity bills had increased 1906%. We were then informed that these meters sometimes go wrong ( well yes, anyone care to put forward any electrical item that is faultless), and then a single suppliers meter may not be compatible with any new supplier should we change. To the latter point I actually agree that there should be uniform meters but as the meter took around 1 hour to install then any new suppliers can fit a new one without to the customer any great fuss free of charge. This then brings us to the next issue that these meters are free to consumers, and that they are designed to help reduce fuel bills or at a minimum make us aware what we are spending. The poor guy with clearly an errant meter whose bills had rocketed overnight would not need to be a degree level mathematician to be aware that spending £4.50 each time to boil a single kettle would be less than fiscally optimum.
This plan to have smart meters in all our homes was announced over a decade ago and every home would have one by 2020. Many homes have them. According to the Department of Energy and Climate change 764,800 have already been installed and although Sunday Times makes the mathematical point that the number of complaints has trebled last year ( without telling us that no doubt the numbers of meters have also trebled) the numbers are minimal increasing from 16 complaints in 2013 to 50 in 2014.
Some customers will not like the fact they can visually see how expensive the fuel is and no doubt some will ” want their meters checked”, this will be done free if faults are found, but cannot be free if this purely on the whim of a customer. This ” pay if nothing is wrong” concept is also not new and providers of Cable and Digital providers have been doing this for years on items such as Tevo boxes.
Clearly these meters do and will go wrong and over time will be improved and modified, anyone who is not comfortable with this approach, should just wait then, as many companies including Apple also find new items come with faults and these get modified early one. EDF as an example find fault with only 0.5% of their meters. This is not a wonderful ratio but certainly an understandable one and one that will decrease over time.
So what are the stated benefits? Easy. The government reckons that the £11bn cost to install these smart meters will be offset of savings of £17.1 bn by 2030 according to the Sunday Times. This may or may not happen, however my own experience so far is very positive. I have found by judicious use of the various numbers I can easily access on the meter, that I have reduced daily energy consumption from around £5/day to around £3/day. Actually seeing the cost for example of how much it costs to heat the house in the morning led to a simple change, turning heating off maybe 20 minutes before leaving the house.
These smart meters are not perfect but they will do a good job to educate and help reduce fuel bills, they are free, and yes, sometimes they will go wrong. Lets live with that awful scandal. The meters themselves look just like any other but have wifi potential and the actual smart meter reading tool is quite smart too, tells us the time, the costs and a whole host of other useful information.
Photographs of Food
Pan Fried Cod and Broccoli
Orange and Arctic char with an “air”
Chicken and Asparagus, with courgettes and roast potatoes
Sea Bass
Two Slags
Cottage Pie. Smallest and worst cottage pie in the world. served Dalmahoy Marriott
Custard Cream. Copyright Chris Bushe
Courgettes
Tale of the Dead Lizard
Lizards are commonplace in Spain. All over the wlls, ceilings and plants. This one seemed rather brave allowing me close with my I Phone 4 camera. In fact so brave he stayed there all day and the next day. sadly not an immortal lizard.
Hilton Helsinki Kalastajatorppa
A truly amazing hotel situated on the outskirts of Helsinki essentially by the edge of the sea and in a forest. The hotel has three buildings that are connected by tunnels. The rooms are warm, the people friendly, the hotel quite different. Well worth a visit. These photos were taken outside the hotel and in the foyer. The photos are all taken with the I Phone so not a great standard of course.
Photographs with an I Phone
Am seriously underwhelmed with the camera capacity of the I Phone. I see others do better but wonder how much post-production there must be, months maybe. There are not many times I want to take photos with the I Phone as for me it is not a real camera. But sometimes the subject matter just works and here are two examples where the photos are not too shabby. On a more positive note just look at the alcohol available in this BA lounge!
Iceland. Reflections on a short visit. Pingvellir
Iceland is not a country that I have been to before but some knowledge was there regarding the banking crisis, the ash cloud and more positive reports of good nightlife and interesting places to visit. Reyjkavik is a place that cruise ships now venture to. The first challenge was spelling Reykjavik. I failed when trying to input the city into my I Phone weather app. Thankfully the more intelligent and literary members of my family also failed similarly. In summary this is an interesting island that maybe would be good for 3-4 days maximum. There are plenty of things to see . The first impression as the plane comes into land is that firstly the plane flies low for quite a while whilst out at sea and the first image of Iceland is uncannily like the introduction scene to Father Ted where one views Craggy Island. In fact did they use Iceland? The people are friendly and rather Scandinavian like and most speak excellent English.
I had only 4 hours to see the isalnd and visited 3 places that seemed fairly special. Firstly the tectonic plates that divide west from east and literally these stones represent a dividing line in the Earth’s crust. Secondly some Geysers and lastly a massive waterfall that makes Niagara Falls look quite small in many ways.
The place to see the tectonic plates is called Pingvalla or Pingvellir. Neither is spelled correctly as the Icelandic alphabet has 32 letters which thus include letters that do not feature in our alphabet but also do not include the letters, C, W, Q and Z. The Icelandic parliament was founded here in 930 AD before even my time. And even functioned as a court of Law till 1798. Curiously Iceland has only been independent of Danish and Norwegian monarchy since 1918. In 2013, it was ranked as the 13th most-developed country in the world by the United Nations’ Human Development Index.Gender equality is highly valued in Iceland. In the Global Gender Gap Report 2012, Iceland holds the top spot for the least gap, closely followed by Finland, Norway and Sweden. Furthermore among NATO members, Iceland has the smallest population and is the only one with no standing army. The population of Iceland is less than 350,000.
Here are a few images of Pingvalla.
Pingvallir. copyright Chris Bushe
Pingvallir. copyright Chris Bushe
Pingvallir. copyright Chris Bushe
A Great Place
The rants and warblings of an active and some would say disturbed mind. A Brentford Fc supporter and a psychiatrist and photographer. Welcome to my musings and rants.
chris1957
Arcticterntalk.org 