Day: December 27, 2020

Who Won the Week (27 December 2020)

I always liked Fandango’s Who Won the Week post, and like to join in with some quirky stories from my own newsfeeds. All from our unique vantage points, the idea is to pick something (a person, organisation, anything) which “won” the week.

Third Time Lucky?

My winner this week is Paul Begley, whose week was unexpectedly good.

You see, Mr Begley, a pastor from Indiana who is something of a YouTube evangelist, thought that the world was going to end on 21 December. His reasons were a combination of Saturn being aligned with Jupiter, and the Mayan calendar.

Mayan culture, dating from 5000 BCE, holds that the earth lives in cycles, and between each cycle, it is destroyed, then re-created.

Mr Begley has history in this area. He originally predicted the end of the world on 21 December 2012, but when that didn’t happen, he realised his mistake. That date had been calculated using the current, Gregorian calendar rather than the original Julian calendar.

When the date was corrected, it came out to December 21, 2020.

So Mr Begley gets to live and breathe at least one more week – yippee! I wonder if he bought anybody any Christmas presents this year?

Life through the Lens (27 December 2020)

As my previous series came to an end, I had the idea to post some of my own photographs.

When my eyes were better, I used to enjoy photography. I had some decent kit and was around just as digital photography was taking off. Although it was strictly a hobby for me, two of my photos were published. One rural shot of hay bales ended up in a brochure made by the UK’s NFU (farming), another ended up in a coffee-table book about lighthouses. I wasn’t David Bailey but a couple of times, I was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time.

I thought I’d share some. All these photographs were taken by me, I own the copyright so if you’d like to use any, go for it. Just so long as you don’t use them to make any money.

My aim is to publish weekly again but this time, on Sunday afternoons. I’m just going to repeat this spiel each week, too, for the benefit of new readers, so you can safely skip to the camera graphic to save reading the blurb each time.

If you look at the category above (high on left, by the date), I’ll put every photo in that same category so you can find previously-published photos. If I feel a photo needs some explanation, I’ll maybe write a line or two to go with it. Like the last time, I’ll keep going until I run out of steam. Oh, and feel free to join in, if the fancy takes you.

I’ve linked to a higher-res umage under each photo.

I hope you enjoy some fireworks at New Year’s. This was a holiday we took at Disneyland Paris.

Update

I just wanted to pass on a quick update on my eyes. They improved during yesterday, and I put most of my magnifications back to how they were before. It felt “harder” to read than it did before, but I know that’s not a very quantitative assessment. At least the Mag is back to before.

No noticeable improvement on that this morning.

So far today, I have caught up with the blog, and my wife and I sorted the home insurance out, which you’ll have read about earlier. I’ve done a litle development – just 5 minutes – mainly to make sure I can still use the environment okay. I can. It has also prompted me to look for how to increase some font sizes, which I found tiny anyway. So that task was always “to do”, I just brought it forward.

I plan on posting my normal Sunday today, my scheduled post was already written and will go live in an hour. This morning, I wrote (and published) my FOWC and wrote (but held back) a “who won the week” post to put live later.

I wanted to finish up by reposting a chap’s post. Larry Hoke has come onto my radar quite recently but we have had several good comment-conversations, and he seems to be a pretty stand-up guy. Funnily enough, I know quite a few Texans in the blogosphere and here is another.

Word of the Day – “Reflect”

Arson Around

inspired by Fandango’s One Word Challenge (FOWC) of 27 December 2020, gall.

The household insurance was due,
It was coming up time to renew,
To stay with these mothers,
Cost double the others,
So I told them just what they could do.

A very personal one today. The home insurance was up on 30th December. The current guys wanted £450 to renew. We just spent an hour shopping online and renewed – same cover – for £225.