A very attractive starter or an accompaniment to a main dish. This french recipe is a colourful vegetarian treet. In my opinion it goes very nicely as a 'side' to accompany pasta.
Eric Hains
Eric Hains was a painter in oil, watercolour and acrylic. He exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, The Society of Architect Artists, London and Stuttgart and other Art Societies. His work has been purchased by the National Westminster Bank, Schroders Bank and Save and Prosper. Pictures may be seen in the permanent collection of Maidstone Art Gallery, Kent.
Hains was a Life Member of the Society of Architect Artists, London and Vice President of Maidstone Art Society.
What this little internet snap shot of Eric Hains doesn't say is that he was a kind and decent man, who when I was a school boy in Maidstone in the 1960s, went out of his way to encourage me, a complete stranger, to draw, paint, sculpt and become an architect because he recognised something in me worth developing and helping. He gave me holiday work as an architectural assistant helping me to fund my degree course at Manchester and even appreciated my humour. Most of us, if we are honest, owe some of our success in life to the kindness of others. This is my small public thank you to and celebration of Eric Hains a decent human being, architect and artist. RIP.
A scone, butter and jam: a perfect union between Britain, Denmark and France. At no point were my taste buds 'overrun' or my scone values compromised by foreigners.🤣
"It has been some time since my last aquarium post. Sadly I have had a number of deaths amongst the older fish in the tank.
When you add additional fish to an aquarium this stresses the existing fish stock. This is a fact however good the filtration system you employ or how well established is the tank.
Now, I guess all you tank enthusiasts have just got out your cylinder filters and are comparing sizes and performance?
A top tip from your old pal Syd Carp - ' when you carry out the weekly partial water change clean out the hose from the aquarium to the cylinder filter inlet using a bottle brush. You will be astonished at the amount of plant debris and general crud that builds up in this pipe. By cleaning this pipe, water flow, filtration and oxygenation of the water is significantly improved which in turn reduces stress for the fish."👍
 |
| The Nurse Diesel Memorial Fountain |
The pump in the garden fountain was in need of an adjustable pressure reducing valve to prevent the water splashing everywhere. Unable to find just what I required on-line, I decided to design and manufacture my own.
I used the parametric SolidCAD freeware for designing the valve and my recently acquired 'Bargain' 3d printer sourced from China for less than £130.
Two hours shed time from a standing start and all was done and printed.
Nowadays we have access to sophisticated technology at knock down prices. When I was a child, Alan Turing had just left Bletchley Park for Manchester. In those times, TV had just started and was in black and white, phones were attached to wires and transistors were still to be invented. Now we have AI self programming and directly challenging our intellectual supremacy on the planet. Whatever next?
The 'golden angle phi' may be found everywhere in the natural world and its mathematics provides the 'golden section' favoured by artists and architects over millenia.
Credit: Wikipedia.
The fern in the image above is arranged and unfurling following those precise mathematical rules.👍🪴
| As I was about to start a 'self portrait ', I decided to see what an 'artificially intelligent bot' could make of a preparatory 'chalk and charcoal ' sketch. Well, I was impressed with the likeness, composition and the line quality of the drawing prepared by Gemini Google.com |
Relatively speaking, the May full Moon sailed between the clouds as viewed from our garden in Oulton Broad, UK. Not ideal for astrophotography but the Seestar S30 smartscope made a tidy job of it in difficult conditions.
The faint blurry dot to the left of the brighter galaxy central bulge is the recent supernova in the edge on galaxy NGC 5907 in constellation Draco. The core collapse supernova represents one of the most extreme events in the Universe. If there were any living species within a few tens of light years of this collapsing star their future would have been exterminated. More will be posted on the Jodrell Plank Observatory blog in due course.
