Three lightning pics from last nigh's thunderstorm | #Cambridge #Histon

lightning through my window due to the rain

a bolt from the pink

sheet lightning

[2015-07-17]

After the rain of last night this morning the garden smells utterly delicious.

It was hot outside this morning from the get-go. We are currently sleeping on my hand made bed in the second bedroom as Mr Sir has accidentally claimed our bedroom. One day we'll swap back, but I'm actually quite enjoying this as it's my first opportunity (other than with a migraine) to sleep in this bed. I designed it to be at the level of the windowsill meaning one can lie in bed and gaze out into the garden. This is rather lovely even if I do say so myself. It is also north facing, which should mean dark, but not in the summer up here at a latitude of 51 degrees as the sun rises over and smacks us full in the face, warming us awake if I've forgotten to put the blind down, which was the case this morning.

We ate breakfast inside as it was already hot and quite wet still in the garden. I stepped out to pick up the newspaper and the outside smelled of Scotland - that highlands fug you get in a secluded fern filled valley. It was a gorgeous scent. Now, a little later in the day I'm stilling out in the shade of the house gazing upon the garden (one of the few advantages of a north facing garden) and the smell has changed to develop a Mediterranean flavour. It could be the fennel, which is the tallest non-tree plant I've ever grown, or the mix of honeysuckles together with the moisture from earlier. But I'm transported to cliff top walks around the med or perhaps the south of France. Simply splendid and well worth savouring.
2015-07-04

The grass is always greener, especially when your neighbour has astroturfed their garden

astroturf in Histon

2015-06-26

Google Maps 3D Hack - get down to eye level

I had an enoyance while browsing the new 3D landscape feature on Google Maps regarding how close I can zoom in. Histon now has the 3D view thanks to it's proximity to Cambridge and it's rather lovely to be able to see my neighbourhood in stunning graphics (yes, I realise this will be outdated in a few years time and you dear future reader will chuckle at how impressive we though this was). The manual controls (ctrl+click) allows you to drag the view round freely and zoom in and out with the mouse wheel. But it seems that you can zoom in and tilt only so far, and less than I think you used to be able to. I did some brief googling to see if there was a way around this (or indeed anyone talking about my observations) but nothing came up. One lifehacker site mentioned that you used to be able to manually edit the URL of an old version of the website. This inspired me to check out and have a play with the new URL. Low and behold - success, if somewhat fiddly.
Take the URL: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.2509106,0.1046145,94a,20y,25.28h,60.55t/data=!3m1!1e3.

Look at all those interesting numbers in the URL: @52.2521678,0.1056801,5a,20y,135h,83.59t/data=!3m1!1e3, here's what I think they mean:

@52.2509106,0.1046145

this is the latitude and longitude in a North East postive system (-ve values are South or West).

94a

this a is for altitude, I assume it's in meters. Setting 3 gives a good eye level view, below that and the screen starts to clip the terrain. Large numbers take you off into space.

20y

this I can not yet work out. It's something like the zoom level, but the API converts it into a change in elevation.

25.28h

h is for heading taking a value from >0 to 360 (north, default).

60.55t

this is the view angle with 180 being straight up (mostly sky), 90 is horizontal and below is tilting down. Above 180 gets reset.

Red Lion pub in Histon from Google Maps

The Boot pub and Coop in Histon from Google Maps
2015-06-25

This will be sent to blogger

Hello there blogger

2015-06-24