Tag Archives: bubbles

Frame by frame

Thursday 1st October 2026, 4.10pm (day 5,516)

Animation tracks, 1/10/26

Broke off work early today to go to a movie with a 4pm start: this was The Incomer, which was OK I suppose, though the claim on the Picture House’s advertising blurb that it was set in Orkney (this being the main reason I went) was a falsehood. In fact it was filmed in Ireland and in the movie itself the exact location was never mentioned.

There were some animated sequences in the film and, as I sometimes do, I tried capturing shots without much hope of getting anything of much quality, but I like this one, firstly just because of the image but also the technicalities. For what you see here is evidence that the ‘motion’ element of ‘motion picture’ is an illusion. What we actually see on a cinema screen are a large number of still pictures, shown so quickly that our eyes are tricked into seeing movement — and even in the digital age this is still true of animation. But the camera is not fooled.

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Bubble magnet

Tuesday 20th May 2025, 5.50pm (day 5,017)

Bubbles on straw, 20/5/25

I do not know exactly what principle of physics this straw is demonstrating, but I will take a stab at it: whether because it is black or not, it has absorbed and retained a certain amount of heat. Enough, anyway, to keep the liquid around it just that little bit warmer and thus precipitate out the bubbles. Sounds plausible, right? But I am guessing.

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Curlew in the Lune estuary

Monday 24th December 2018, 11.30am (day 2,678)

Curlew, 24/12/18

A beautiful, sunny day today, a welcome change from the grey crud we have otherwise had for some weeks (it feels like that anyway). To distract from the prevalent Christmas theme, here’s a curlew walking on the sands at high tide. I like this shot not only for the bird itself but the strange bubbles all around it, probably caused by some kind of marine life only infrequently covered by water; most of the time this bit of the world will be sand.

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My in-flight cup of wine

Thursday 30th October 2014, 3.30pm (UK time) (day 1,162)

Wine, 30/10/14

Got completely bored on the flight back from Moscow and started taking photos of my in-flight refreshment. Not an easy shot to get — with a bouncy child on the seat in front and poor ambient light. It passed 40 minutes, at least, and this was the best attempt.

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