I took the above shot on Monday. The skies over Caithness are mostly unobstructed by hills or buildings, so you get a pretty good 360 degree view of the night sky when it's clear, with not too much light pollution - I live right on the edge of town and so can take a 5 minute walk to get away from the street lights. I could always jump the in the car and head somewhere really dark, but that wasn't necessary to catch the planets. Jupiter is the dimmer planet diagonally up to the left of brighter Venus. Though I wasn't out early enought to see it, Mercury was also apparently visible. Swinging way over to the left, past the moon, I could also see Mars, with a quite clear red-orange tinge to it, and Saturn was apparently just below the horizon (I didn't stay out long enough to see it rise).

One of things I love about scientific papers and reports is the way authors describe mundane things to make them sound more technical.

I've just been reading a report about a project that involved tagging Atlantic salmon while at sea, in order to figure out their country (and river) of origin. After tagging the fish and giving them some time to recover, they needed to get them back into the sea. Obviously just chucking them overboard isn't good enough if you want to avoid additional stress to the fish. So the researchers conceived of a highly techincal-sounding piece of equipment.

"a special trough that could contain 4-5 fish recovering from anaesthesia and that could be hoisted over the ship’s side by a crane was used for releasing the fish"

Thoughtfully, they have provided a photograph of this 'special trough':

 

I just received a copy of a newsletter from a 'learned' society that shall remain nameless. Beneath one of the figures (a photograph of a fish market) is the following caption:

"6:30 a.m. Billingsgate Market. Most of these people selling fish have been here from around one in the morning preparing for the day. Viewing of stalls starts at 4 a.m. and trade starts at 5. It is all over by 1400"

Argh! Do you see it?

"6:30 a.m."
"one in the morning"
"4 a.m."
"5"
"1400"

Gah!

OK, This must be deliberate - surely noone would pepper such a short caption with so many different time formats unless they were trying to be funny.

Yes, I am a pedant. So?

A couple of weeks back, I bought two books on jazz improvisation after I hit a real block in my practice. I've been looking through them and doing some of the theory exercises, but it's been tricky to find time, what with work, trying to actually practice the trumpet (my range, stamina and technical skills need a lot of work) and playing in bands, along with inconveniences like eating, sleeping, etc.

One of the exercises recommended by one of the books is to get hold of some recordings of jazz solos, and try to write out the improvised sections on paper. I've been listening to a bit of Chet Baker recently, so decided to have a crack at writing out his solo in A Foggy Day.

Sheesh.

It took me 90 minutes to transcribe the first 30 seconds of a one minute solo before giving up to go to bed.

Hopefully I will get better at this.

"Risk is likely to be low for all species (see Table 5), and very low for cormorants since they spend the night on land (Daunt et al. 2006a). However, no empirical data are available."

One of the advantages of living in Scrabster is being able to decide, at the last minute, to head off to Orkney for the weekend. So that is what I am doing. I was already planning to take a day off, and decided that I might like to get away for the weekend. The weather was a bit rough, so some ferry crossings were canceled, but they put in a noon sailing. It could still be a little 'interesting', but I hope no vomiting will be required. Booked a B&B this morning, and now I'm away. No idea what I will do there; probably just go for some walks, take in the scenery, think and relax.

I may take some pictures to post later, but maybe I won't!

I'll probably switch the phone off.

One of the things I will miss when I'm fully established up at the new building is being a minute's walk from the beach, which is a really gorgeous place to spend my lunch break on days like today. I recorded a couple of video clips this afternoon.

This weekend just gone was rather packed with domestic activity. I did a lot of washing and cleaning around the house, though I made time to watch the first hour-long part of the Indian Hill Railways DVD that I bought recently (it's a really beautiful documentary; watching it is a very calming experience and I heartily recommend that you check it out at some point).

Anyway, I also spent what seemed like most of the weekend cooking, in order to try out a few new recipes and expand my culinary repertoire. I must have spent 2 hours or more on saturday making vegetable gyoza with dipping sauce, which were amazing, though I made loads more than I needed (this did mean that there were some for sunday, plus I froze about 16 more to consume later). I also tested a vegetable stir fry with peanut sauce, which was simple yet delicious.

On sunday, after the gyoza, I made a red thai-style vegetable curry, which took a bit longer to cook and was a little more complicated. Actually it turned out a little disappointing; the sauce was watery and bland. However, the pay off came today - there was plenty left to serve as tonight's dinner, and not only had the sauce thickened considerably, but also it seemed much more flavoursome. Plus it only took ten minutes to warm it up and cook some rice to go with it; a nice reward for spending so long on it yesterday.

Went straight onto some more cooking after eating tonight as well, though that was just to knock up a simple spicy tomato and lentil soup, which I often make, as it's delicious but very quick and simple to prepare. It'll do for dinner tomorrow, as well as two later meals (I froze two portions).

So my culinary experiments were pretty successful. I've learnt that certain dishes taste much nicer if left to cool down before heating them up to eat later, that meals can be made fast by preparing bits earlier when you have time and that meals based only on vegetables can be awesome. I've also added three new recipes to my arsenal.

I have no idea why I decided to share this. I think I just wanted to write something before going to sleep.

Just thought I would post this short video of my view on the way into work this morning.

Gorgeous, isn't it?

With all the snow at the moment, my morning walk into work is looking particularly beautiful.Yesterday morning was better; I left a little earlier, the snow was fresh and mostly untrodden, the sky was an amazing shade of blue and the moon and (what I assume was) Venus were still shining in the clear sky, while dark clouds gathered behind me and on the distant horizon. Truly breathtaking.

But yesterday I didn't have my camera.

So here's a shot of the back garden taken as I left for work today, and a few shots of the fields next to the house as I moved further from Scrabster.

More snow had fallen overnight. It wasn't as fluffy as the day before, and the stuff that had fallen the day before hard hardened up a bit. Normally I walk along the road, but for the last couple of days I haven't been able to resist crunching through the snow over the field.

Heading down the road towards the main route between Scrabster and Thurso, I thought the trees along the side of the road looked fantastic. Last night the road had gone all grey and slushy, but overnight the snowfall restored the wintery scene. It's back to horrible and slushy now.

Now down to the junction with the road into Thurso, I was treated to a lovely view of a snow-covered Scrabster Harbour (1st picture, looking to the left along the bay), and Thurso (2nd picture, camera looking to the right).

Finally, a couple of shots taken in Thurso, from my place of work.

On the walk back home tonight, obviously the views weren't so great (it's dark!) but the night was fairly clear and bitingly cold - which is quite invigorating (at least it's invigorating when you know that your nice warm home is not far away!). The snow on the pavements was still quite crunchy, and hadn't compacted down to ice or melted into slush.

Reaching the end of my road, at the top of the slopes above Scrabster harbour, the view over the harbour was amazing. In the lights from the harbour, you could a see a thick fog rolling in - but since there was no wind, it was barely moving. Just slowly creeping forward to envelop the small port. Looking back towards Thurso, I could see a blanket of fog slowly sliding over the top of the town. An hour later it still hadn't reached us.

Beautiful.