Life Observed

So, here's the story. One of our smartphones dies and we take it back to CarPhoneWarehouse (CPW) because it is still within the 2 year Samsung warranty.  After a week they return it. It can't be repaired. it isn't under warranty: The cause is "water ingress" and they give us a printed report with a picture of the problem in our actual phone. It looks awful. But wait. This phone has never been dropped in water. In fact the guy said it was the cleanest two year old phone he had seen. I smell a rat. It is out of warranty apparently, so I may as well dismantle it. What do I find? That picture is not from the inside of our phone. It is from some other much worse phone.  Here is all they managed to find in our phone. Some small blemish on the main board ground plane. I design this sort of stuff and I know what a PCB looks like if it got so wet it stopped working. I am not impressed CPW. We bought a replacement phone from another shop....

Hint: Never order a Tree Kit from IKEA:  It comes in hundreds of individual pieces and with no instructions.  I have no idea where to start.

This is a nice leaf taken with shallow depth of field and nice soft lighting. It looked so fresh and perfect I just had to commit it to, er, whatever it is that stores pictures inside the photographometer. Should you take pictures of leaves? I don't know. I will report back after Autumn is over... 

Don't take photographs of Swans . Or Kittens. If you want a picture of a cat or a swan just go to the interweb and download one.  Every possible picture of these have already been taken, so you can save yourself valuable time by using someone else's picture.

Sitting in one's summer house by one's private chalk trout stream reading a magazine and grumbling about the state of the world. When the tea gets cold one rings for one's butler. Scrollocks!

A return visit to Houghton Lodge . I do recommend this place near Stockbridge, it is small and perfectly formed. We were far from the madding crowds on bank holiday Monday. O, what bliss. The essential tea shop has been extended and I found this lovely artistic arrangement on the wall at one end. I decided to frame it tight, so both composition elements leak out of the edge of frame.  This is normally anathema but rules are made to be broken in my book* *This particular book has been torn up on more than one occasion.

Seen on Stockbridge high street on bank holiday monday. En-route to the Dorset steam fair I suspect.  What a fantastic piece of machinery. Not a steam roller, not a traction engine but a showman's engine with a great big generator up front. Chariot racing?  Really?

Ah! The New Inn, Salisbury.  What a great pub. It looks like it has settled slowly into the ground, and the floor inside is indeed lower than the street outside. That is always a good sign as far as I am concerned. The architecture is as mad as a box of frogs and don't you just love the idea that a 13th century pub can be called the New Inn .