[jules' pics] botan

Public holiday today and Kamakura was full... but the crowds of botan (peony) were more photogenic than the crowds of tourists...


[Kenchoji, Kita Kamakura]

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Posted By Blogger to jules' pics at 4/30/2012 08:34:00 PM

Going dark

May be off line for a while, as we are travelling up to the far reaches of northern England (including the fleshpots of Crewe), and even Scotland, for a while. Not sure if the intertubes have stretched that far yet.

Fortunately (or perhaps cleverly), we chose to avoid Heathrow. So we have at least some chance of getting there tomorrow.

 

[jules' pics] blue dots

Not often I take a real macro, but these blue dot flowers were ipsy wipsy. James has recently allowed me to restart unicycling, having previously made me stop while he got sufficiently better than me (this is one activity where helps to not be tall). It is now a race against time, as I must learn to ride faster than a mosquito before the mosquitos learn to fly. I suppose James is thinking that he only has to ride faster than me. I am, as ever, easily distracted by my camera and the blue dots were growing in the wall near where we practice.

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Posted By Blogger to jules' pics at 4/29/2012 08:16:00 PM

We're the best!

You know the old definition of a boat - an expensive teak-lined hole in the water, into which the owner throws money as fast as they can?

Well, JAMSTEC has gone one better. Not content with a mere hole in the water, they have used one of their boats to drill a hole right into the Earth's crust, deeper than anyone else has managed before. And at far greater cost, naturally. Chikyu (the drilling ship) was damaged during the tsunami - it was up in a port on the east coast somewhere - but seems to be back in operation. It's been an amazing money sink over the years and seems to spend a lot of its time getting repaired.

The article doesn't make clear, but I understand that they have gone through the fault and some way out the other side.

[jules' pics] choclit

...chocolate cookie something frappuccino with white chocolate pudding. We only cycled once last week due to our lingering colds and persistent rain (we cycle in the rain, but not when we are already ill, as it has been shown to make our colds much worse). Shortly we fly to foreign to get even fatter. So, I am not sure why James ordered one of these yesterday. I imagine the chemists at the St Arbucks laboratory doing the tests to make sure the white chocolate pudding in the bottom would go through the straw ... "hmmm...add a little more rubber and a less petroleum extract".

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Posted By Blogger to jules' pics at 4/28/2012 05:20:00 PM

Lovelock revisited

It seems the blogosphere is all excited by a new Lovelock interview, in which he rows back on some of his most outlandish past predictions. People like Keith Kloor are doing their best to make hay, as per normal.

Of course, several of us got there years ago - though actually Stoat doesn't seem quite as confident in that old post, as he now thinks he was :-)

Anyway, (some of) Lovelock's previous claims were well outside the range of what might be considered scientifically defensible, and although it might be tempting to point and jeer, I'm actually quite impressed that he has managed to revise his opinions. That's not something that many sceptics have managed over the years. And he's 92 after all.

[jules' pics] Blossom fest

Must try and finish off the boring blossom blogposts... Having previously only seen Tokyo cherry blossoms in industrial Ueno park, I was shocked by the amazingness of Shinjuku goen. The park is huge, and has lots of enormous cherry trees. There is also a splendid panorama from Shinjuku goen on the "cover" of my facebook page . Google Plus seemed to have caused Facebook to become slightly more elegant than it was so I had a play with it while I was ill last week (I think it helped that I was feeling a bit soft in the head). It seems that for most normal people, Facebook is synonymous with the internet, which is a bit strange, but it is nice to see what people are up to.

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Posted By Blogger to jules' pics at 4/27/2012 03:58:00 PM

[jules' pics] Pink and blue

 

[Sakuragicho, Yokohama - wot a lot of depth of field!]

 



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Posted By Blogger to jules' pics at 4/26/2012 10:00:00 AM

[jules' pics] It's a tough life

Yes, life's been pretty hard since the start of April when we gave up most of out work responsibilities, and decided to enjoy ourselves instead. What's a massive paycut and less paperwork compared to frolicking in the cherry blossoms?

 



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Posted By Blogger to jules' pics at 4/25/2012 04:37:00 PM

[jules' pics] If you know where to go...

It is possible to find pretty much anything in Tokyo...






if you know where to go...



But that's the tricky bit.

[another iPad blogging expt - which didn't really work]

Location:Somewhere in Tokyo

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Posted By Blogger to jules' pics at 4/24/2012 10:54:00 PM