Amsterdam Russ

Oh, my goodness! Camocamerachameleon!

A trip to the pancake house in the Amsterdam woods on a sunny day is always a favourite thing to do. Always great to see a peacock in full display. The one here was quite happy to show off for a good three or four minutes. These pics were taken with my iPhone.

It's not exactly as if the grebes are hanging around waiting for you to get your camera set up and ready before they begin their dance. Sometimes you've just got to be thankful you were there with a camera at all. Well, you know what I'm saying.

Great photos of what is always a spectacular courtship display. Really nice to see. Well done.

Probably the first Joe Bataan song I ever hear. Smooth vocals and rhythms, and a nice latin kick halfway through...

£471.98

As it happens there's one here from last September…

A popular subject for discussion! There's a looong thread on funeral songs via the link below and which is a good read: There's also a shorter thread from 2010, and I'm pretty sure a couple of others from before then.

Excellent news. Not seen any here from the comfort of home yet, although they could already be swooping and skimming across the lake behind us, but which is just out of sight. Will keep an eye open.

A few more pics from yesterday's two-wheeled jaunt through the woods of Amsterdam...

Took a cycle ride through the Amsterdamse Bos (Amsterdam woods) yesterday on what was a gloriously sunny afternoon. Lots of sights to see including the resident Highland cattle, early cherry blossom and deer (tame) at the pancake house where we enjoyed a bit of food and a nice bottle of fizzy bubbles to celebrate my birthday. First time out on the bike for ages. Reckon we did around 35km and, all told, it was a most enjoyable way to spend the afternoon and early evening.

It's a truly wonderful place - a time capsule of Old Greece. It offers bugger all to do in the way of contrived entertainments, which is great. Want to get away from it all and relax, in a traditional setting, with the most splendid food and the warmest, most genuine people it's ever been my pleasure to meet, then Lesvos - and the fabulously picturesque village of Molyvos in particular – are where it's at. We'll be there again mid-June through to early July - staying in a local and very basic apartment (no fancy hotels here, but it is marble floored for coolness) owned by a wife and husband in their very late-70s. I say wife and husband in that order because the man is a right lazy sod, and she, in her old age, still wields a hoe like a demon every day in their well-tended, twice-a-day-watered vegetable plots, which we overlook from the basic, but serene comfort of our balcony. Oh, and neither of them speaks anything other than Greek! Peter, if/when you go, I can hook you up/recommend so many things – and it would be my absolute pleasure to do so.

Very evocative, Peter. Looking forward to summer even more now after that.

Wonder if you'll get an earlier sighting than that this year. I have a feeling you might as it's been such a mild winter and spring has well and truly sprung already. Mind you, if I were a swallow, I'd stop in Lesvos for the year where it's nice and sunny. Being mere humans, all we get are three weeks there a year!

As there's always interest in these threads on the arrivals of swifts, swallows and martins, I thought folk here might like to know that a friend on Facebook posted up pics this evening of the first swallows of the year on the Greek island of Lesvos. It might be a bit premature yet, but summer's coming!

Yup, very easy to find on Google, and used in loads of places online, including Wikipedia. No idea why you should have had such difficulty in obtaining it at all - unless the print belonged to a family member of Hutton or the photographer and they felt the need to protect or be reassured about how you might use it (which you said).

As said, I've used PVA to clean records many times and will continue to do so where thought appropriate. While the process of lifting the solidified glue layer is peeling, it does require some amount of pulling. Even this, to my mind, could all too easily lift the fragile layer of lacquer from the metal base. Herewith a pic of some 45s that I'd given the glue treatment... I ask if you or anyone else has images/sound files of acetates being cleaned with wood glue so that we might all benefit from seeing/hearing the results as I'm not alone in believing it would be a destructive process. Have you got an acetate you could slather in glue for the sake of an experiment, perhaps? Anyone else prepared to give it a go? I'm not, but I'm happy to be convinced...

I've used PVA many times to clean records and know how much effort the layer of dried glue needs to be pulled away from the surface. I also have a number of acetates in varying condition (including some that are flaking) and it's immediately obvious that using the same glue treatment on them would be damaging in the extreme. Emidiscs do appear to be quite resilient when compared to many brands of acetates from the US, but there's no way I'd slap a load of glue on one. As for copydex, I don't know that product so didn't comment. At the end of the day though, if it's like PVA I'd be equally as wary. Have you - or anyone else - got any before and after pics and/or sound files of acetates onto which PVA has been poured?

I have to agree wholeheartedly with all the comments stating that PVA should absolutely not be used on an acetate. Destruction awaits!!

Well done. If it took that much hassle, it must have been worth it for you. But... why all the copyright fuss over the sale of an old print?

Give them a wipe with a damp, lint-free cloth or the non-abrasive side of a washing-up sponge using tepid water. Distilled water's often been suggested, but I think having the water slightly warm helps dissolve the grime.

You're welcome. It used to be the case that you could get rid of EXIF data simply by using Photoshop's "save for web" feature, which reduces the resolution (and quality) so that becomes a smaller file and thus is quicker to load online. I've no idea if that still works. If people are serious about protecting their images then both watermarking them and adding EXIF info about copyright is absolutely the best option. Sadly, too many uninformed people believe that any/every image they find online is "public domain" and thus free for them to use, which of course is not true.

Thanks, Not heard of 500px before - will take a look. Lots of people on image sites do add either watermarks or "signatures" to their photos. Adding your name somewhere on the perimeter of an image means it can easily be cropped out. Getting rid of watermarks (Digimarc) is a much harder thing to do. Photoshop can't get rid of them with a click as the watermarks are part of the actual image itself, meaning you'd have to use Photoshop's editing tools to remove and alter the image bit by bit, which is very time consuming - especially if you make your watermarks quite obvious. People also embed their copyright and contact details into the metadata of images. All photos taken with a digital device contains EXIF data, which includes stuff like camera setting, even geographical location if you're inclined. And most photo viewing/editing software allows users to add info such as your name/contact details to that.