With the roads quieter after the Christmas Festivities I took the car out to refuel and to have a drive to get rid of the cabin fever. I invariably end up near the Forth Bridges when I drive without a real destination in mind. This time in North Queensferry.
It was eerily quiet so I stopped to fire off a couple of shots from the camera. This one of the Forth Rail Bridge, after a severe amount of manipulation, I liked.
September, I just got to know you and now you are gone.
For those that poo-pooed my "it's autumn" post at the start of September, for sure it's autumn now, look at that leaf, you don't get that colour from an Indian summer. Or maybe you do, I don't know, I'm not a botanist, but the 7 degrees this morning tells me that winter is on it's way!
October looks busy for me, lots of training courses on (Python, QGIS, PGAdmin) and new projects; building an interactive map using Leaflet (a javascript library) for this website. I am going to update it with locations of where I have taken photographs. I am thinking that it would probably be easier to use a database of locations than program every location into the code, which would also allow me to have a date, meta data and a link to the photograph. Eugh, suddenly my brain is bursting with the thought of how much work that would be. Perhaps I'll use it for new photographs from the time I get the map running and use the GeoJSON that it supports out of the box. Maps...so much fun.
I spent Saturday night at the Forth Bridges (yes, again) took some photographs and had coffee at the Hawes Inn. The coffee was required because it was cold because it's Autumn. I got three shots that I like that I have included below. I like the photograph that shows the three bridges that I managed to capture using a wide angle lens. I like the way that there is still some light on the left side of the photo that eventually fades to black at the right side of the photo, there are also a few stars that can be seen (faintly). This is also the first time I have visited South Queensferry since the Queensferry Crossing has been opened.
Over the past couple of weeks I have been working on a former academic supervisor's pet project. It involves creating a new set of CSS code for his website to slowly drag it out of the dark ages (the late '90's when we still designed websites using tables). The first stage is to implement CSS rules and to discard the tables that currently hold the site together.
The task which at first seemed simple has turned out to be a giant monster that will seemingly never end. It took me roughly a week just get my head around how it worked. It's built around a database and perl code and is different from any other project I have worked on and it has been so: frustrating; fun; enlightening; educational; emotionally draining (depending on situation). Fortunately for me this is the kind of project I love working on :-)
Hand coding into a terminal window again reminds of how I built my first site on an Apple Mac I (yes, the 1984 one) at university in 1996. It was a amazing time with 56.6K modems and ytalk that allowed you to chat to other people on the network that was 'logged on'. I can't think of a word that is large enough to describe how much things have changed since then in technology. Anyway, back to this website that was built around that time... :-) I haven't put a link to the site because it would be nice to work on it until it has been totally overhauled and redesigned.
So, last night I finally got out with my camera, and took a trip up to North Queensferry to try and get a moody shot of the Forth Bridge. Little did I realise that almost every route to North Queensferry would provide challenges. The route going through Kincardine was closed, and it wasn't possible to go back across the Kincardine Bridge, which I did not realise and ended up going around Kincardine twice. Eventually drove across the Clackmannanshire bridge along to the Forth Road Bridge missing my turn off on the Fife side due to the sat nav not recognising all the new roads built for the Queensferry Crossing. Thought I would be able to via Inverkeithing but alas the road was also closed here, for some reason that a local chap explained to me in an accent that was more alien than Scottish, of which I understood a couple of words.
Thankfully when I got there it was still a bit misty and heavy rain. All for this photograph. Soaked through to my skin the Albert Hotel then charged me £2.50 for the worst (instant) coffee that I have ever had.
Totally worth the hassle for this photograph though.
Another (mainly) unplanned trip on Wednesday night saw myself and @alycoste meeting up in South Queensferry. We took a walk along the coast to try and get some sunset shots but arrived ridiculously early for sunset!
Alayne checking her Instagram likes :-)
After searching for shells with holes in them for the obligatory "I am at the beach" shot. We spent a good amount of time blinding ourselves by looking directly at the sun through several seashells. The sun eventually made its way down in the west and the golden hour was upon us.
I haven't been back to South Queensferry since January and it was nice to feel the sun instead of the biting cold on this trip.
Click on the thumbnails for the full image.
The Forth Bridge is a cantilever railway bridge across the Firth of Forth in the east of Scotland, about 9 miles west of Edinburgh. It is an iconic structure and is a UNESCO heritage site. During the Second World War it was the subject of the first bombing raid by the Luftwaffe over British skies. Thankfully the RAF and their spitfires defended the bridge, and it still stands today since its opening in 1890. There are some more interesting facts about the bridge at the Forth Bridges website.
We just don't build structures like this anymore. The Victorians really didn't build anything with half measures. Testament to this is that there is a second road bridge being built as the first one is basically falling apart.
Conditions weren't that great for taking pictures (22/01/2017), it was cold and misty. I got a couple of shots that I was happy with (click for larger versions).
