I’m putting this up for the hell of it and to see if it’s possible on a blog. I’ve been spending a lot of time lately making so-called ‘panorama’ images. All you do is click a bunch of pictures in a relatively straight line making sure there’s a bit of an overlap. Then you can hand them over to Photoshop on your computer. There’s a lot of whirring and shaking and sometimes a wisp of blue smoke and after about five minutes a finished ‘stitched’ together photograph like this one below is spat out. Actually there’d probably be less banging and it would take less time if I used smaller files; at full size my panoramas are about eleven metres long (and 300 dots to the inch). I haven’t tried printing one yet, because I suspect that an eleven-metre-long print is going to cost a packet, and so I want to get it right before I try. There are ways to get a continuous horizontal line along the top and bottom, but I didn’t feel like doing that in the example shown here. Why bother printing pictures so large, you ask. Partly to regain a little bit of the scale that’s missing from a tiny picture and partly because so much more of the recorded detail becomes visible. If you don’t believe it could be that big a deal pop into your local art gallery. I was recently at the National Portrait Gallery in London and really the difference between an eight-by-ten or a screen-sized image and their momentous likenesses, one-inch-diameter warts and all, is as night and day. This picture is of my old friend the Semsvannet, the lake by our house, while it’s frozen and the air is foggy.
Below, is the centre section at a larger scale. I think you’ll agree that the detail is pretty good. The tiny figures and the horses are more than a kilometre away from me and I’m seeing them through a fog. It looks a bit like one of those Dutch snow scenes that Siganus Sutor is always talking about.
A Bad Guide 
Photoshop thought it could do that ages ago. I remember a tutorial that claimed photos would just “snap to” each other in about 2002. But they never did. And we’ve (virtually) glued together enough too-big-to-scan pieces of calligraphy to know it hasn’t been easy.
I’d trim the tops and bottoms if I were you, just for tidiness. (I.e., the left and right sides).
You could have a go just on a piece of say A3 paper – photo paper – clicking “reduce to fit”. It’ll take a l o n g time before the printer kicks in, though, owing to the extemporaneous reduction…
Yes, it’ll cost a fair amount to have one printed out commercially, but it’d make a terrific frieze around the top of your diningroom walls, for example. LIke the Bayeux Tapestry when properly displayed: concavely instead of convexly. Why have they hung it wrong way round?
I shall look at that in the hot summer, as a form of air-conditioning.
Gorgeous!
Funny you should say that, I was thinking of printing some of them roughly 10″ high to go at the top of the kitchen walls and show the seasons – well, winter and summer. It would work quite well under glass, I like the reflections. I don’t have to trim them, with CS6 you can very simply add in missing bits – unfortunately I only have CS3, so I do it very laboriously in pieces – but I rather like the unevenness, myself. Sometimes I make the stepped lines into curves; that’s very good when it works. I didn’t know that about the Bayeux Tapestry, I’ve never seen it in real.
Beautiful panorama, but you should try standing upright the next time.
Haha! I knew there was something.
Yeah, I know it’s a boring joke.
Did you get to see the Kon-tiki film with scenes shot on your lake? It’s just about to be awarded a Nascar, I hear. (I didn’t. My wife and children went, but I couldn’t be bothered that day.)
Trond, no, I didn’t. I would like to, though. I thought Nascar was what Americans had instead of F1 racing cars.
Sorry for the lack of seal or wallaby stories this month. All I’ve got so far is this scandal.
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/News/Narrow-escape-for-ferret-found-in-bin-15022013.htm
Wallabies, ferrets – we’ll take anything from the Cambridge News.
rehoming
I’m glad to see your face, but I’ve no idea why you wrote rehoming, Ø. How about a clue?
Thanks for asking. It was an odd impulse that led me to leave such a cryptic comment. A less cryptic version of the same would read: “I don’t believe I had ever run into the word “rehoming” until I saw it in the ferret article.” I do have a theory about the coining of this word, but I don’t have time to explain it just now.
Yeah, yeah. And no doubt the margin is too small to contain it.
Nature Notes.
Catkins on hazels
And bright beds of crocus
Cars with their roofs down
By some hocus pocus
Anemone blanda
That bask in the sun
Springtime is coming
Oh isn’t it fun?
That’s wonderful. The hills are alive with the sound of Dearie.
Someday I’ll share my math-nerd verse of “My Favorite Things”.
Ahoy, Crown, I thought this might interest you.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/acd6342e-763d-11e2-8eb6-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2LHqseR4l
P.S. Our kitchen garden seems to have acquired a mole.
She explains to me that she does not want to look better than the other women at the forthcoming party so as to reduce tensions among the women that might be caused by the exaggerated unfairness of received natural beauty.
I’ve never heard that one before.
– Otherwise I feel completely the same, both about Norway and keeping one’s distance as a foreigner rather than joining in as an immigrant, trainee Norwegian. It’s nothing against Norway, I felt the same when I lived in Germany and in the United States.
I’ll have to get his book. Thanks, dearie.
Cambridge was notorious for its moles but I thought that was all over years ago.
Come to think of it, although they wanted me to learn the language the Germans never tried to make me assimilate, which was jolly rude of them. You can’t win either way, with me.
The natural order is restored:
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/News/Wallaby-Bruce-is-back-on-the-loose-in-new-break-out-20022013.htm
Nature Notes
Narcissus sitrep: blooming daffs observed this a.m., here:
http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/anglesey-abbey/
We don’t have any of these – yet.
http://www.calgaryherald.com/Lake+Louise+lynx+refuse+fenced/7993426/story.html#ixzz2LbUM1r9y
Bruce the red-necked wallaby hit the headlines in September after he was spotted hopping along the High Street in Soham.
This must be one of the other wallabies. It’s not the one that escaped from the 17-year-old’s garden while it was on its way to Germany. Does Oxfordshire have anything to match the Cambridgeshire wallabies? Giraffes on Port Meadow or something to do with crocodiles might do it, otherwise I hate to think of the consequences to undergraduate applications.
Waiting for the snow here. It won’t be like that other one, just a few inches and with possibly enough rain mixed in to make it more slush than fluff. But the town is calling residents again. There’s an immediate ban on on-street parking. (Officer Connors, that was her name.) Seems like a bit of an overreaction. I wish it would start. The snow, not the ban. It’s late already.
This from the forecast at weather.com:
Intermittent mixed wintry precipitation changing to rain and snow.
WTF?
WTF, indeed. What do they think wintry precipitation is? It’s a nice term, though. Give my regards to Officer Connors, if she calls again.
Lake Louise lynx refuse to be fenced in
I loved that, they are much stockier than I’d thought. Quite scary looking. Isn’t the plural ‘lynxes’?
“they are much stockier than I’d thought”: but even then they are tichy compared to the more macho European lynx.
But they were up to their armpits in snow. I don’t think ‘kitten’ is the right name for one of those.
I would if I could, but these are not two-way conversations. The oddest thing about this phone call was the way it started:
A male voice said that this was a message from the town and indicated that we should listen for instructions on how to hear the message. Then came the instructions: “To hear message, press 1.”
After pressing 1, I got Officer Connor’s recording telling me that the parking ban was effective immediately.
I wish the plural was “lynges”. And I like the German word for the lynx: Luchs. One of the select club of “-chs” animals, with Fuchs, Dachs, Ochs — I feel like I’m forgetting one — Lachs.
I liked this police use of “not possible” on dearie’s link:
A police spokesman said: “Two PCSOs attended Common Gate Drove and tried to help catch the wallaby but unfortunately it was not possible.
Luchs, Fuchs, Dachs, Ochs, Lachs. It’s interesting that where we use ‘x’ the Norwegians use ‘ks’, so Lachs or lox is laks in Norwegian. Box is ‘boks’ in Norwegian (actually it means a can rather than a box). It looks all wrong to me, as if it were phonetic spelling.
unfortunately it was not possible
Next time they should take a larger posse.
My wife came back from the Farmer’s Market today with a packet of Ostrich Sausages. ‘least it said they were Ostrich.
I think this summer I’m going on safari in Cambridgeshire.
I think ‘posse’ & ‘possible’ both come from Latin posse, to be able. ‘A posse’ is from medieval Latin for ‘power’, according to my online dictionary.
And of course the possum is another marsupial.
There is an ostrich farm in southeastern Massachusetts. They used to have ostrich hamburgers at our favorite little seaside restaurant.
This weekend’s little snowstorm let us down badly. The forecasters kept saying 2-4 inches. Tesi didn’t believe a word of it: it’ll be mostly rain, she said. She loves looking at maps at these weather websites and drawing her own conclusions. She was proved right when we looked out the window this morning.
On the other hand, in the middle of the day the rain suddenly turned to snow after all and we had a lovely scene of big falling swirling white blobs. Nice to look at, not nearly enough to sled or ski or make a snowman, on the other hand no shoveling required. Tomorrow the new stuff will all melt and the old crusty stuff will be revealed, dirt and all.
Did you get the feeling that intermittent mixed wintry precipitation changed to rain and snow?
She loves looking at maps at these weather websites and drawing her own conclusions.
I’m guessing there’s money to be made by accurately forecasting the weather. She ought to keep track of her success rate.
I don’t associate ostrich with seaside food.
For the toponymoetymologically inclined, I can mention that Lofoten (famous chain of islands in northern Norway) means “the Lynx foot”. According to Bjorvand & Lindeman ON Lófót f. was used for the major island. The next was called Vargfót. Fótr “foot” is masculine, so why those were feminines I don’t know.
The word lo is all but replaced by gaupe in Norwegian, but the Swedes still say lo(djur). Lo is from ON ló f./lór m., from Gmc. lúho:- f./lúha:- m. or some such.
I didn’t mind when they took ostrichburger off the menu; I always get either the fried clams or the fish and chips myself.
Yes, now that you mention it, on Saturday night what was coming down was of a mixed and intermittent nature, while Sunday brought simply rain in the morning and snow in the afternoon. That part of it was spot on; I shouldn’t complain just because I don’t understand things.
Trond, there is a Norwegian academic who recently found a piece of continent buried under Mauritius, would you believe it?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21551149
It’s been called “Mauritia”. I wonder if there has been lynxes there once upon a time before the dodos.
I know somebody who lives on Vega, south of (the?) Lofoten. I suppose it doesn’t have anything to do with the Grendizer/ Goldorak animation of the 70s.
Thanks. That’s interesting. It may say more about me, but what I found surprising wasn’t the crumbles of old continental crust in the volcanic sand of Mauritius, but the fact that the Seychelles are a tiny piece of ancient continent all by themselves.
A Martian with friends on Vega, by the way? Are you Sirius?
I’ve never been there, not even as a ferry passenger passing by, and I spent most of my boyhood summers up north.
Are you Sirius?
No, I’m Siganus.
He’s playing the organ for the church on Vega, after spending a number of years among the Martians. He seems to like faraway worlds.
But does the Norwegian Vega have anything to do with the star that, once upon a time, was used as a reference to measure the (relative) magnitude of celestial bodies? I would presume the answer to be no, but maybe not after all.
Yes, there are these huge granite boulders on some of the Seychelles’ islands (which, by the way, used to be a dependency of Mauritius up to be turn of the twentieth century). It makes a pretty photogenic scenery with the sea and the coconut trees. Even if I can’t prove it, I don’t think the Vikings ever sailed to the Seychelles, unlike the Arabs, but Tony Blair has been there on holiday.
One more question about names: I gather that Trond is a fully Germanic / Viking name. But would it be the case for Torvik as well? I understand there are a lot of names ending in -ik in Norway, including the one of the most well-known Norwegian mass murderer, but ultimately would they have some Russian or Ouralic (or other) origin by any chance?
Incidentally, beyond the Seychelles and other remnants of continental crust, I remember reading somewhere that there are large colonies of coral in Norway, as amazing as it seems. But I can’t remember where exactly.
(Still more incidentally, nearly all natural sand on Mauritius’ beaches is coral sand, which means that it is the calcareous remains of animals. I cannot but wonder where Pr Trond’s zircons fit in all that.)
Trond is etymologically a participle of a verb cognate with Eng. ‘thrive’, i.e. “thriving”. It may never have meant that when used as a name, though. It’s identical with the old demonym of the inhabitants of Trondheim. This name was used for the whole region before it became the name of the city, but it’s not clear if it was the region or the people living there who originally deserved the epithet.
Torvik is a straightforward Norwegian surname in that it’s transparently the name of a homestead. The first element seems to be Tor, the old theonym used as a personal name. The second is vik “bay”. You’re right that this is dirt common in Norwegian surnames, and the reason is that bays are often good locations for farms.
There are coral reefs in Norwegian waters, both in the fjords and on the continental shelf, but quite deep under the surface. They are under threat, especially from trawling.
I hadn’t forgot about Vega, i just had to look up the name. it appears that it’s from ON veig f. “fluid, moisture”. A strange name for an island of all things, but O. Rygh suggests that it’s either because the whole center of the island is marshy or transfered from the name of a local brook, still alive in the valley name Vegdalen. I’d have thought this must mean that it’s cognate with the English river Wey, but there’s no etymology in the Wikipedia article.
And here’s your friend’s initiation, I think.
Since the etymology of Vega is odd, it might be worth mentioning that there’s a substantial number of islands along the coast with obscure and possibly pre-Germanic, or even pre-IE, names.
My home printer is down because of some network issue, so I’m back in my office waiting for my son to finish his project and email it to me so that I can print it and go home. The evening might have been better spent at home trying to fix the damn’ network, but since I’m here I may as well look up Torvik in Rygh. It’s not from Þórvik, but probably Þarvik “seaweed bay”, with a > ö before v.
Haha, that’s him. Sacré Paul !
Vegg means wall and vei means road but instead this comes from veig meaning moisture. Huh. At Wikipedia it says the name was written Vegø prior to 1891. I love the idea of this very tall organist, taller than all adjacent Norwegians, moving from Mauritius to an island off Norway that I’d never heard of until now. I suppose he likes the sea.
Yes, he liked the sea, but I think he liked mountains even more, and mountaineering. But the Martian sea might reach Vega one day, who knows. I’ve just heard on the Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation this morning that Mauritius thought of increasing its exclusive economic zone because some Norwegian scientist discovered what is thought to be the mortal remains of a continent buried 10 km under the island. Or at least increase its claims on its EEZ.
Incidentally, on top of playing the piano like a virtuoso, he is learned in Sanskrit and has translated parts of the Mahabharat into English. I was amazed last year to see his name mentioned in a book by Indian author Gurcharan Das (The Difficulty of Being Good – On the Subtle Art of Dharma).
Trond, thanks for highlighting to me the fact that the suffix is actually -vik, not -ik. So this is not a corruption of Yugoslav names after all… :-)
It’s also a prefix (Viking).
I won’t call -vik a suffix in placenames. It’s the main compound element, modified by whatever comes before it.
I won’t call it a prefix in viking either. The element -ing is conceivably a suffix, but the etymology of the word is a lot less clear than mere surface investigation would suggest. One explanation I like is Eng. wic “marketplace” + -ing “inhabitant of …”. But it’s used for both a raiding expedition and its undertaker, and the analysis will depend on which sense is seen as original. If the expedition sense is original, it could be a deverbal noun from a denominal verb and mean “doing the marketplace(s)”.
Vei “road” is written veg in Nynorsk and by a substantial minority in Bokmål, myself included. If you pay attention, you’ll see that it’s how roadnames are written in many Eastern Norwegian towns. The form vei is a loan from Danish vej with regularly lenited final g.
Why did schoolterachers (in Britain, I mean) change the spelling of King Canute? It’s no use saying that they wanted to use the Danish spelling, otherwise they’d have had to respell the names of the French kings of England and German kings of Great Britain. And the Dutchman. And the dynastic names Tudor, Stuart and Hanover.
Dearie, you’ve certainly come to the right place with this one. I’m outraged at the inconsistency. From now on it’s Henri-Quatre only for me. Incidentally did you know they found his scull in another of these Leicester car parks? They’ve been able to reconstruct his moustache using Lego blocks, it was in the Daily Telegraph.
King Stephen was really King Etienne. Everyone knows that. By the time of Henry IV they were English-speaking, so Henry IV is fine by me. But Longshanks was Edouard I, so there.
An early contender for Cambridge News story of the year?
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/News/Cars-still-parking-on-Midsummer-Common-as-solar-powered-gate-fails-01032013.htm
Seasonal news.
We sowed some grass seed on Wednesday. The soil has dried out so much that my wife is now watering it.
We are rushing to finish the autumn apple crop before it becomes inedible. Happily, my wife has come across a couple of delicious apple cake recipes, and – last night – tried out an excellent Eve’s Pudding recipe. Aaaah!
Well you’re jolly lucky with the apples. Last year too there was an early drought in England, I remember.
The Cambridge News’s story of the year will include at least one wallaby. From the comments, it seems this gate didn’t work mainly because someone had switched it off (I suspect the bloke who hangs around at the Rose & Crown).
I just liked the fact that it had solar panels and a wind turbine and still didn’t work, apparently because people kept using it, the bastards. P.S. The Fort St George – a rather nice riverside pub. P.P.S. Midsummer Common ain’t “meadow”, it’s pasture.
The wallabies won’t care if it’s meadow or pasture. They won’t need an open gate, either.
Oh dear, the Council will presumably appoint a Wallaby-Catcher General. But if he’s sun- and wind-powered, he’ll never catch the bouncy blighters.
A couple of hundred inflatable, plastic wind-blown wallabies (“Are they the real ones?”) would quickly pay for themselves in extra tourism.
Just what you need for your wee loch, Crown.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/9905827/Birdwatcher-spots-a-very-rare-walrus-in-Orkney.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/9821231/Gary-the-Goat-cleared-of-vandalising-flower-bed.html
I’d love a couple of walruses. I wouldn’t mind some penguins, either, although I doubt we’ve got enough fish for more than one or two. They have penguins along the coast of South Africa, so it’s not too warm here.
That hat was completely unsuitable for a goat.
The Fairy Penguins we saw in South Australia might be the very thing for you. Being little chaps they presumably need a smaller fish stock to support them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Penguin
They’d be wonderful, but they’d have to be on an island. It seems they get eaten by foxes and cats in Australia. I like this gay German penguin video from the BBC.