Composition practice

A hot summer’s day and I decided composition practice (aka wandering around with a camera seeing what was on offer) was called for. This was a short walk in the reserve near my house.

• A view from inside a tree.

• Powerlines stretching away.

• The houses on the hill and across the estuary, some boats on the water, and nesting places in the bird sanctuary.

• A footpath stretching away – viewed from a foot above the ground.

• A different view through a tree.

• A newly trimmed hedge, viewed from the end and up a few inches.

• A footpath curving away with the Port Hills in the background and Toi-Toi bushes to the side.

Xmas lights

A stroll down the street found three brightly-lit houses within 100m of our house.

Braided wires from a power supply

• A bunch of braided wires, ready for use:

Bored on a hot Sunday afternoon, I decided to knock up some 4-wire cables to run to bipolar stepper motors. It didn’t take long and I was pleased with the results. Nothing clever but it turned a junk item into something useful.

• (1) The victim, an old pc power supply. From the connections, this one must be at least 10 years old. I keep a bunch of them around for raw materials.

• (2) A few minutes with a screwdriver and the guts are spread across the table.

• (3) Time for the wire cutters. I could have heated up the solder with a hot air gun and desoldered the wires – that would have a given me a few extra mm of wire and a pre-stripped and tinned end ready for use. However it was 30°C  in the living room, and hot air wasn’t what I wanted.

• (4) When I sorted out the wires I had one each of  grey, white, green, blue, and purple, plus 3 orange, 3 yellow, 5 red, and 11 black (all 18 guage), plus another 5 thinner wires.

• (5) I grouped them together in sets of four, then did a flat-4 braid of each set. Excellent instructions on this very simple braid here, courtesy of T J Potter, “Sling Maker”.

 

So, out of my dead power supply, I ended up with 5 handy high-power 4-wire cables, albeit rather short. I  swiped a spare yellow wire from my workbench to complete a sixth cable, and also braided a set of the thinner wires.

Red dragon

Just a quick animation in Blender. The oriental Red Dragon symbol, as used in Mah-Jong sets.

• Rotating view

• A close up shot

Two surprises

I was making up and typing random paragraphs (for writing practice). I found I’d typed this:

Opening the trunk of the car revealed two surprises. One was neatly racked survival supplies – water, food, ammunition, not one but two rifles, an entrenching tool, and a good variety of other tools and medical supplies. There were a plenty of boxes that might have held anything, but she couldn’t tell what was in them as they were covered by a dripping, red, layer of liquid. The liquid was blood and it was oozing from the horribly battered torso of a young woman. That was the second surprise.

Now I want to write the story that goes with it.