Playing with Tulips

 

I divided the large bunch of tulips that I bought yesterday into two vases, and put one in the kitchen window, and the other on my living room table. 

And today I took photos and played around with them in Picasa...

 

 

 

Wordless Wednesday

 

Original photo (phone camera)

Colours slightly enhanced with help of Picasa3

Beautiful pink sky to the north around sunset yesterday - hard to capture on camera, but I made an attempt... (Went out for a short walk around 4 pm, after collecting my last load of dried clothes from the laundry room.)

Linking to  Wordless Wednesday

Overlay Images

For Sandra the MadSnapper and others who enjoy playing around with images... ;)

Sandra's comment on my previous post: "wait till you figure out how to put the cut out in a photo. woo hoo"

So of course I had to take on the challenge, and find at least one simple way to do that...

Today I found this free online tool: https://overlay.imageonline.co/ and tried a few experiments with my recent photos + the cut-out feature that I accidentally happened to find included in the photo gallery on my Samsung Galaxy phone. (I did the overlay editing on my computer though, not on the phone. That might be possible too, I suppose - but I prefer a bigger screen for things like this.)

I thought the dry football (soccer) ground could do with a splash of colour, so I stole a flower pot from the apartment complex down by the river to liven up the place. (Not very convincing, but ok for my first experiment.)

 

I also brought the watering can from the cemetery to another dry spot nearby. (As I still don't know how to separate the tap from the can, that had to come, too.)

 

I moved a grave ornament from one spot to another, giving it a more interesting background. (This one I think actually looks quite convincing, if you have no special reason to question it...)

Feeling bold now, I even experimented with moving a skyscraper around to change the silhouette of the townscape...

Below is the original photo! That grey "tower" is really in a different place altogether - a few hundred meters to the right of the photo above.

(original photo)

 

Hello July

 

Third day in a row of cooler temperatures and rain (showers). I've been having a very "tired" weekend (sleeping and resting a lot), but I think that's mostly still a reaction to the long hot period that went before - and now enjoying the relative silence of mostly closed doors and windows again!

On my walk yesterday, I was trying to "spy with my little eye" things that my phone gallery app in turn might find worthy of "clipping"...

Please "bear with me" - it's probably just a phase I'm going through!!!  ;-)

 

 

 

     

 

Puddles and Playtime

 

Puddle with tree reflections, and leaves from a nearby hedge that had just been trimmed - to illustrate that the heat wave and drought seems to have ended for now. Rain showers and temperatures around 18°C (64°F) expected for the next week or so... (So far it just feels refreshing. Remains to be seen how long that feeling lasts...!) 

In an earlier post on The Importance of Water I mentioned how staff at the cemetery often leave water dripping here and there for the birds during the drought. Below is another photo to illustrate that. They also often leave a watering can below the tap to collect some of that water. Then the next person who needs a full can of water can take that one, and put an empty one under the tap instead.

This photo also proved a good one for experimenting with that automatic 'clipping' feature that I accidentally discovered yesterday on my phone:

 

Today I experimented a bit further and learned that with the Paint program on my laptop, I can make the background black (or some other colour) instead of transparent/white.

And below is yet another such photo experiment:

 

Making Progress...

Getting acquainted with my new phone is still taking up a lot of my time - and I keep oscillating between frustration and revelations... ;-)

Out on a short chilly walk on Sunday (just my usual turn around the cemetery for exercise) I had my first attempt at shooting some outdoor photos. Or so I thought. Turned out when I got home that what I had actually done was shoot some very short, shaky and blurry videos (of things not supposed to move!). 

Being used to actually pressing a physical button to take photos (even on my old phone), I guess I probably pressed the "screen button" on the new phone too hard...

Yesterday was sunny (even if still rather chilly), and a better day for outdoor photography. I managed a few shots in and near the park downtown; and then at home also experimented with creating collages. Some crocuses had shown their face again after the snow-shock that must have buried them the other day; and I spotted a couple of more unusual ducks among the usual mallards in the river.

I think they must be goosanders (Lat. Mergus merganser, Swedish: storskrake)

The white ones, bottom right, are snowdrops with snow dropped on top of them... (The crocuses were in a sunny spot, the snowdrops in a shady spot.)

- - -

Some of my other experiments have been related to sound rather than images. The new phone turned out to have no headphone jack; so the day after I bought the phone, I decided to also invest in a couple of new wireless (Bluetooth) earbuds. They don't even have a cord between them to keep the pair together... So far I haven't dared use them outside the flat! ;) They're surprisingly comfortable, though.

The photo on the left is a shot from my TV screen today (watching an episode of Foyle's War). Just as a reminder how far technology has come in the past 80 years or so...!

You turn them on/off and change volume etc by tapping on the earbuds themselves. I've still not quite mastered that art... Sometimes if I want to increase or decrease the volume, I manage to turn them off instead. Or suddenly an automatic voice cries "GAMING MODE" in my ear...  It seems I'm also supposed to be able to answer a phone call by a tap, if I happen to be wearing them when the phone rings. (That still remains to be tested.)

Getting the earbuds also inspired me to look into how to transfer music to the phone from my laptop (where I have pretty much all my old vinyls and CDs saved as mp3-files). Grasping how to do that turned out another headache. I'll just sum it up by saying I tried things more than one way without success... Finally, yesterday, I somehow managed to transfer two (2) albums, though - still hadn't got a clue why only those two (out of several more attempts) were successful!

Somewhere in between, it also occurred to me to explore Spotify (music streaming app). Wow... Somehow I've been under the impression that the free version of this app would also involve lots of unwanted ads and interruptions. (Perhaps in the beginning it did?) But I find now that it does not! And so easy to find old favourites... And once I started marking those, the app started making automatic playlists for me, and bringing up even more suggestions that I hadn't thought of... But you can also listen to full albums. (I bet some of you are laughing at me now. You probably knew all this since like forever.) Anyway, I got spellbound for hours yesterday afternoon, just exploring this whole world of old/new  music... Conclusion at the end of the day: No need to have tons of music files downloaded now - only perhaps a few, if I also want to be able to listen offline sometimes.

Still... Always unsatisfied with unsolved mysteries, today I returned to the problem of how to transfer music from the computer - and think I managed to figure it out. Somehow, after the two successful downloads yesterday, I must have broken off the procedure and failed to start over correctly. Like it seems essential that I turn on the phone first, before connecting it (by cord) to the computer... Never mind the rest of the steps, as it probably varies between devices anyway (which apps are involved etc). Suffice it to say that I have now also downloaded a limited number of my own albums for "offline" listening. 

However, in the process, I've probably also developed an addiction to continue exploring Spotify...

Christmas Day: Another Wintry Walk

Still snowy with blue skies and sunny today - and even colder than yesterday: Around -15°C (5°F) when I got up this morning (~9:30 am),  still around -9°C (15°F) at noon when I went out for my walk. I decided to go in the opposite direction today for a change (towards the southern outskirts of the town). Here there is a less frequented park, sloping down towards one bend of the river. The walkways in that park aren't plowed in the winter, so it involved the "adventure" of walking in some almost untouched snow. The snow just now is not really all that deep though - and I had good boots on, plus my walking poles for extra safety. 

Handling two walking poles, mittens + a camera is somewhat of an adventure it itself, though - involving a lot of stopping, shifting one of the poles to the other hand, taking off mitten, getting the camera out of the bag, taking photos (using one hand only, as the other is busy holding the two poles); then reversing the procedure: camera back in bag, mitten back on, grab both poles, walk a few more steps; one minute later (or less), stopping again, and repeat... etc, etc! -  On a day like this, worth the trouble, though! ;-)