There was no sun and no moon visible today, just a cold, grey day overlain with a thick blanket of cloud.

A thick blanket of cloud

According to the Met Office, we were enjoying a sultry 5°C but it didn’t feel like that. There was a mistiness to the air and perhaps because of this it felt frosty cold.

Still bare – the Curvaceous Tree

We saluted the Curvaceous Tree in passing, noting that as yet there is no sign of renewed life. Like most of the trees, it is still deep in winter slumber.

I tried to tell myself that it really wasn’t that cold but I don’t think I was listening. My hands were stinging (I need to find camera-friendly gloves) and I didn’t object to making it a relatively short walk though I tried to mitigate this by walking slowly and stopping often!

Man on the balcony

In Myddelton Square, a movement at first-floor level caught my eye. While these Georgian style houses do have balconies, these are not very wide and are intended, I think, for decoration rather than for standing or sitting on. (Given their age, I would feel somewhat nervous about venturing onto one.) But there was definitely someone on this balcony, busy with something though I couldn’t make out what.

Signs of spring
Photo by Tigger

Tigger spotted that these plants had produced buds, seemingly a sign of impending spring. Perhaps their sheltered position down in the “area” of the house had encouraged them to wake up.

Chadwell Street under cloud

We were walking along a well beaten path that we have travelled so many times before since the outbreak of the pandemic.

“It’s like beating the bounds,” said Tigger.

I agreed. It is familiar territory that we have come to know more intimately than ever before but which I never tire of visiting.

Parakeet in the tree

As we went along, the air was alive with the calls of parakeets. These birds are now everywhere in the UK, having found the place to their taste and settled in. They are surely the most vociferous of local birds, continually calling to one another, whether perched, as here, or flying about in small or large numbers. I know they are invaders and that if they continue to multiply, they will become a problem, but I am rather fond if them and I like to hear and see them, recognisable as they are by their long tail feathers.

Elastic bands

On the railings beside one of the front doors we spotted the unusually placed collection of elastic bands. Post(wo)men in the UK use elastic bands to group letters in convenient bundles and it’s not unusual to find dropped ones in the street or even on your very doorstep. This set is unusual, though. Who left them here and why?

Flat tyre

It’s a peculiarity of Myddelton Square that it has a large number of motorcycles and scooters parked in the corners. I am used to seeing them but in this case there is something slightly awry: the scooter in the middle has a flat tyre. I wonder whether the owner knows about it, otherwise s/he is in for an unpleasant surprise later.

Tree of pigeons

I noticed this tree of pigeons and it struck me as unusual. Feral pigeons seem to prefer flat surfaces like the ground or the heads of statues. Seeing so many gathered together in a tree was odd, especially in a park where there is plenty of open space. I speculate that someone had come by with a dog and this had caused the pigeons to take refuge momentarily in the tree. I don’t know that that is the case, of course, but from previous experience, it seems plausible.

Myddelton’s – our coffee oasis

We came at last to Myddelton’s, where we were of course heading all the time, and claimed our coffees. Once these were in hand, there was nothing for it but to hurry home!

Pennies – retro and “vintage”
Photo by Tigger

This shop, called Pennies, always fascinates me, though I have never been inside. It sells “vintage” items which, I imagine, means things that are of a past era but not quite antiques. Even though the shop is not currently open, because of lockdown, the window display has been rearranged and as I was carrying the coffee, Tigger took the photo for me.

We reached home without more ado and I, for one, was glad to be back in the warm. When I washed my hands, even mildly warm water felt boiling hot!

Sorry, moon, we missed you today. Perhaps we will catch up with you one day soon!

If you have followed my blog for any length of time, you will have noticed that lately I have started adding a few animated pictures. These appear like very short videos, running for about 3 seconds. What are they and how are they produced?

I will start by reminding you that I now do all my blogging on my mobile phone, currently an iPhone 8. This includes writing the text and taking and editing the photos. Having taken a photo, I use the iPhone’s editor to edit it (for example, making it lighter or darker and perhaps cropping it) and then I resize it, using an app called Image Size. I will say more about the reason for resizing later.

In the past, I have mainly used photos in Jpeg format. These, of course, are static photos. The iPhone, however, does provide some other alternatives to Jpegs, including “live photos“.

Let’s first see what live photos are. In the iPhone’s camera app, at the top of the screen are some icons which can be pressed for various functions – see the first image on this page. If you press the icon consisting of a set of concentric rings, it turns yellow, indicating the the live photo function is operating.

When you take a photo with live photo enabled, the phone records what is in front of the lens for a period of 3 seconds, starting 1½ second before you press the shutter release to 1½ second after you have pressed it . It’s important to remember the bit about 1½ before you press the shutter release, otherwise that part of the photo is likely to consist of you raising the camera to take the photo!

Having taken your live photo, you can use the iPhone’s photo editor on it. You can alter the lighting, add contrast, straighten it if it is crooked, and even crop it to bring out details. Despite all this, the “live” function remains intact. The one thing you cannot do is to resize it, using the abovementioned app. If you resize it, it turns into a simple static Jpeg. I will explain later why this may be a problem.

So now you have what amounts to a short – very short – video. What are you going to do with it? If you want to keep it for yourself or send copies (yes, it can be copied in the Photos foldet) to other people to view on their iPhones, then you need do nothing more to it. But what it you want to post it on your WordPress blog?

If you insert a live photo into a blog post, you will discover that this kills it: it becomes a static picture, like any old Jpeg. If you want to preserve the animation, you have to convert it to another format.

One possibility is to convert it into a video. There are several ways of doing this but I am not going to describe them. I don’t like to use videos because they have too many disadvantages which I don’t want to go into here.

Another possibility is to convert your live photo into an animated GIF. I have found this to be the method of choice. Once you have made the GIF, it will display as a looping video – there is no need even to press a launch button.

The iPhone does not have a function to convert photos to GIFs. For that, you need an app. I believe there are several available but the one I use is Lively. You can use it free of charge but in that case it will display its name in large letters at bootom right on your GIF. To remove this, you need to pay a fee of £4.99.

It is very simple to use. Open the app and it will display any live photos currently residing in the Photos file. Select the photo you wish to convert, and this screen will appear:

Press “Export GIF”, to see the following screen:

Press the down-arrow symbol and a notice briefly appears saying that the GIF has been saved. You will find it in the Photos folder.

You can upload the GIF to your blog where it will display nicely as a 3-second animation.

Are there any disadvantages to using live photos in this way? There are two that I have found, one concerning people viewing the blog and one concerning the blogger.

The first is that when you first open a WordPress page containing a live photo/GIF, the latter takes a while to load. While it’s loading, the animation displays slowly and jerkily. An impatient viewer might give up on it before seeing it display properly. However, the delay is fairly short and I think that only a very impatient viewer would give up on it.

The second disadvantage concerns the size of the GIF. If you have a free WordPress blog, as I have, the space available to you for media items is limited. If your blog contains a lot of images, you are very conscious of how quickly that space is eaten up. For that reason, I resize all my photos to the size that they will appear in the post – there’s no advantage to making them any bigger. A normal Jpeg as posted here will weigh in at about 1 megabyte (plus or minus). As noted above, you cannot resize live photos or they will lose their animation. A live photo converted to GIF comes in at about 5 megabytes – equal to 5 ordinary Jpegs – using up your space 5 times as fast, a fact worth bearing in mind.

As long as you don’t consider the extra space usage a problem, then by all means use live photos converted to GIFs for the interest and amusement of your visitors.