My usual pick-your-own Christmas tree farm is not opening this year due to "unforeseen circumstances and the Covid-19 epidemic" . Time to look for a new source of trees. But it won't be the same without the annual trip to say hello to their pair of reindeer.

Steve

'What Christmas Is As We Grow Older', from Household Words 1851 link. A bit Dickensian, but understandable seeing as it was written by Dickens. And we thought that Dickens' Christmas was all about snow, roast goose and big parties with the entire family...

Steve

A nice set .

I kind of like No. 1, too. The splashes add rather than detract. Of the rest, No. 3 stands out for me.

Steve

Xmas jumpers are soooo last year. It's Xmas onesies now link . Looking forward to seeing a picture of you and yours in your very Xmas designs.

Steve

Should be possible if you're up to fiddling with computers. A NAS is just one or more big disks attached to a little computer with the right software and the necessary connectivity. If you've got the time and ability, you can acquire the individual bits and join them up yourself - same as you can build a PC from components if you're so inclined. The cash outlay might be less than a pre-built box, but I bet you'd be working for less than minimum wage! Most people (me included) prefer to buy a box that someone else has built, you just plug it in, follow the instructions and away it goes.

If you do feel the urge to build a NAS yourself, note that some hard drives are claimed to be optimised for NAS (particularly reliability and read/write speed), others aren't. If you're just using a NAS for personal convenience, though, rather than in a multi-user system, that might not matter to you. You pay extra for drives optimised for NAS.

Steve

Posting pictures to the main gallery has never seriously crossed my mind. What's the point of the gallery when you can start a thread in Your Photos and get comments there? Am I missing something?

If anyone can give a reason for posting to the main gallery that rings a bell for me, I might just consider it.

Steve

Yep. One of the people I shared an office with while a D.Phil student had a leg in irons. He'd also lost an eye due to an accident. Didn't bother him, he just got on with life.

Steve

Looks like from next year the autumnal visit to the doc will be roll left sleeve up for flu jab, roll right sleeve up for Covid jab, and if you need a jab for anything else ...

Steve

A walk round the RSPB's Lodmoor reserve, Weymouth, last week coincided with a glorious sunset. Light was dropping quickly, but the sky had turned the water pink so worth seeing whether there was enough light for a shot or two of gulls and geese settling down for the evening. And then a heron came into view. Lens wide open gave 1/100 sec, not ideal for 300mm + 1.4TC on a K3 but hey, it's digital, not like wasting expensive film . So camera on monopod, keep as steady as possible, trust in SR, hope the bird doesn't move very fast ...

Here's the big bird itself in all its magnificance .

Thoughts, comments welcome as usual.

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Steve

No. 3 is the one I'd have on the wall. There's a pleasing diagonal flow to it - dark to light, footpath, ground to sky, green to gold all draw the (or at least my) eye from bottom left towards top right.

Most of the leaves will surely now be off the trees and in the mud, given the current weather...

Steve