Friday's photograph (no painting today)

Nice weather again.
Sparrows, and all the little brown birds, and all the different varieties of the tit family, bluetits, greattits, long tailedtits etc Yesterday I was doing stuff in the garden and the long tailedtits were flying all around me, not at all worried about me moving around. The young ones have lost their cute chubbiness, and are now long and sleek.

Today's photo in Snapseed is from a £1 jar of solar 'fireflies' in the pound store. I brought various other solar lights, some that look like eyes, and my plan was to put them where the badger/s enters my garden so they look like eyes in the dark. You can buy solar eyes on sticks from Amazon especially to frighten your badger away, but you have to part with about £30 to do so. I don't mind paying the odd £1 out for an experiment but not £30, when I am pretty certain it doesn't work anyway. I can easily bring these little £1 lights in to recharge by a lamp if it is a dull cloudy winter's day, should this idea work.

I don't think the badger is pleased by AH neighbour building this rigid wood and concrete Fort Knox fence all around his property, because badger would come out of the woods at the bottom of this AH neighbour's property, walk through and come out of his front gate, or would walk through my property. Badger's world has been turned upside down with this fence, and badger does not take no for an answer, and is making new tunnels. 


Last night badger came in along the wall (which AH  neighbour did not take down when he put Fort Knox up, but built that new fence just over a foot further into his property from the low dividing wall which is his) and got down by the potting shed into my garden, because AH neighbour (again unknown to me) cut into my property vegetation another couple of feet or so actually on my property. And this is enabling badger to now enter my garden this way, by coming along this low wall from the front road. 


I managed to block the badgers new entry from from a few days ago, from outside of my back garden at the top end, by using chicken wire, at  the end of my garden yesterday, where he was digging under the fence. But the badger, although he had entered my garden along the low wall, was not easily able to leave that way (I think), which resulted in some frantic digging (and soil everywhere) next to the tunnel I had blocked at the end of my garden. I think he eventually left by knocking over/destroying some plant pots, climbing over something, destroying a decorative fence, and opened my metal garden gate to get his freedom.


I don't want a trapped badger in my back garden. He is welcome to the front garden, but the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence...


I went out this morning early, to find some chicken wire, but I could find none. I ordered some on Amazon a week ago, but it is not coming until the end of next week. I need this for the low wall, and I have an idea how I can achieve this. 


I fell asleep when I got home. I was knackered. I woke up just now,  3 pm after being sound asleep for a good few hours.  Brain tells me there are some scraps of chicken wire in the garage, left over from other projects, but all I want to do is go back to sleep again...


I need another cuppa first or two, and then maybe I can cobble something together to keep the badger off that low wall, until I get the Amazon chicken wire to make it more permanent.

I do have to keep my garden secure for my elderly 29 year old cat, so the keep out badger project has to continue for the moment. Popeye has not been out in the big bad world of roads and cars for a year and a half now. His dementia tablets work well, but he is only safe in my back garden, and I now let him go in and out of the bungalow to the potting shed by himself, and he comes and goes as he feels, and sits in the sun when it is out. 


Since I have given him this illusion of his freedom (he has always been an outdoors cat and hunter of mice), he has come on in leaps and bounds, and is very alert now,  His eyes are bright. He has put on a bit of weight (which he needed to do after the heat strokes recently), and his fur is thick and luxurious.


I need to go and check that wall now and see if I can cobble something...

For the photo, I used the double exposure in Snapseed, and made the second pic more intense and smaller and turned it round.


A couple of blips ago, biddy said she had been playing with Snapseed and asked if it always reduces the size of the photos as a result. Yes it does appear to do so. We have to have a jpeg file for blip, and jpeg is lossy. So this pic was also an experiment to see how much a file size could get reduced.


I don't know the full ins and outs of this, never looked it up before. This file began at 1.3 mb. It was an in the dark photo on the iPad. I tried putting it through the Looks tools first and it reduced the file size to 1009.46 kb. I put it through the Looks tools several times, and it stayed at 1009.46kb. However, I then put it through other tool features in the main menu, and it still stayed at 1009.46 kb with the tools I put it through.


Then when I put it through the double exposure tool, it reduced further to 917.67 kb.


I think it is about 940 kb now by the time I did something else, and put my name on.


I googled at this point and came up with these...which may give some pointers.

https://www.alphr.com/resize-images-snapseed/

https://support.google.com/snapseed/?hl=en
(I did try to get the link for a specific informational page in this on sizing, but it just goes back to the general menu)

https://iphonephotographyschool.com/snapseed/



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I need to play catch up with your posts. I will try this weekend...