Stormlizard's favorite articles

The second of the most intense pair of heat waves ever to roll across the European continent is now departing Scandinavia and headed for Iceland and Greenland where it will finally dissipate altogether. On account of these unprecedented bursts of heat, the weather record book has been rewritten across much of Europe. All-time national heat records were set in Belgium (41.8°C/107°F), France (46.0°C/115°F), Germany (42.6°C/109°F), Luxembourg (39.0°C/102°F), and the Netherlands (40.7°C/105°F). A pr…

Thursday: I popped out to the supermarket before 8am to get some much-needed groceries. It was already 19C. It was forecast to be the hottest day so far this year, so an early shop was in order. I bought most of what I needed in one store, though needed a few things still, so popped along to the local store only to find there were no salad items at all, and none of the chilled items I wanted either. Apparently, they had issues with the weather, and a number of their fridges had stopped working.…

This afternoon Fred decided to have a little fly around, I thought I'd seen him earlier on. Well I was surprised nonetheless when I saw him flapping his wings and landing on the garden bench. He carried on flapping for a while, unfortunately it was the time it took me to get my camera ready, then he settled down just as I got my camera into focus!!!! Typical eh? Well he stood there for some time, and started calling out to his parents.... There was no response so he called out again....…

There is a song that has the title Mad dogs and Englishmen. Apparently satirising our unwillingness to take a siesta during the heat of the day. Well, Monday I tried to take a siesta. It was d*mn hot here, and very airless so after lunch I escaped to my bedroom where I listened to the dog pacing downstairs, blaring music, drilling, and some a-hole revving his engine in the street. The final straw was the dog barking at the person who delivered yet more junk mail to our house. After 35 minutes of…

[EN] Dear members and friends of ipernity, This morning at 10:09 am the automatic monitoring systems of our website reported a fundamental dysfunction. Many of you have also quickly informed us about this outage. We thank you for that. The problem was that one of the main servers we hosted at the Amazon Web Service unexpectedly stopped. Thanks to the help of Christophe Ruelle, the former director of the ipernity website, normal operation was resumed at 13:05 (CEST). Fortunately, th…

Well the roof of my back porch is disgusting with all the poop that Fred, the seagull chick, has done and then walked across!!!! So hopefully we'll get some rain which will help it dissolve and then eventually we can wash it off!!! I can always hope!!! This afternoon, after hearing the parents of Fred, cawing at him, and then bringing down food for him, I heard him do his high pitched scream. It sounded very loud, and so I went out to the kitchen, I'd left the back door open for some through…

[EN] Dear members and friends of ipernity! 1) Lately there has been a proliferation of copyrighted third party content presented as own creation. Please be reminded, the Terms of Service prohibit the use of content that violates copyright protections. To protect the best interests of our website and photographers, IMA reserves the right to delete content found to be in violation of copyright laws with or without prior notice. To avoid this inconvenience or embarrassment we strongly rec…

I know it's a yearly thing in that area, as it is in many areas where the temperatures are high and rainfall is scarce at this time of year, but there are fires breaking out over there. Mandi sent me a couple of photos from the beach showing where one of the fires are and it was where we'd said how nice it would be to have a house there, with the views of the sea and islands.... There was a helicopter getting water from the sea and then dropping it onto the flames, this is what the area…

[EN] Dear members and friends of ipernity! To address questions being raised about Irene Steeves and her groups, I regret to say, we received several complaints about content Irene displayed in her photostream. IMA conducted a thorough investigation, from which the results required account suspension/deletion based on the Terms of Service and Guide of Good Conduct. This action was also taken to protect the best interests of all parties involved and stakeholders. As stewards entrusted to…

I’m an optimist, or optimistic; I’m positive, confident about the future, about things changing for the better, both on a global and a personal scale. Sometimes, I confess, I see the world through rose-tinted glasses, and often, I have my head in the clouds. I know bad things happen, and I do read the news however mainly only the bad things are reported, and I still maintain there are a lot of good people in this world. Whilst I don’t really put much score in astrology, I am a typical Libran. I…

Ein lang gehegter Wunsch ist in Erfüllung gegangen: die alten Fotos meiner Familie zu digitalisieren.

I think I told you all about how my neighbours had paid for someone to come and put up spikes to deter the seagulls from nesting on my roof inbetween my chimneys. Well, I hope they ask for their money back because the seagulls have interwoven their nest inbetween the spikes and have had chicks!!!!!! For some unaccountable reason, seagulls are a protected species and so we can't move them physically, so we have to persuade them to leave. Considering how many seagulls there are in the UK, I cer…

I like food, and if it’s not too spicy, or screaming in garlic, then it likes me too. Obviously, we need food to survive and without it, we would soon die so it’s essential to our wellbeing and health, however if it can be enjoyed too, then all for the better. When I was at university, we had a very long lunchbreak one day a week, it was just the way the timetable worked out but sitting around waiting for our final lesson of the day was a drag so I determined that on that day, I’d invite my…

Hiya folks, I have been so lucky today with my helper, Emily. Firstly she turned up with her middle daughter, Poppy, as she was on "work experience" week, and as her mum has her own business, she'd been roped in to helping her with her work because she couldn't think of anything else!!!! So Emily turned up with Poppy and their work was done in an incredibly short time. Then Emily suggested they weeded the driveway - or at least as much as they could. I was delighted because the driveway is so…

Despite sleeping a lot better recently, this week the Klutz Gene has been working overtime. I’ve twice walked into the bookcase in the living room. One time just a graze from the corner, the other time I must have walked heavily into it and actually cut my shoulder on the corner. Just a small cut, but man did it bleed. Taking an oven tray out of the oven, I managed to touch my other arm with the tray, no idea how, and was ‘treated’ to a thin burn more than 2 inches long. To add insult to injury,…

Here are some useful sources to understand what all can be protected by copyright laws, and what copyright is about: Copyright rules by subject matter explained at Wikimedia Commons. And the same in French . Intellectual property wiki People often take the copyright lightly, ignores it, or simply don't know it very well. We easily refer to fair use , which more or less covers only cases in United States, but should not be stretched to cover publications globally shared on Inte…

Forget Dora, I’m Fran the Explorer lol. A few times, after dropping off my son at Uni, I’ve cut through the housing area rather than go around on the main road. My sense of direction in the UK is particularly poor, however it didn’t let me down, and I found the shop I wanted, and cut out numerous traffic signals and traffic. I say in the UK, because many years ago my then-husband and I visited friends in Canada. He was always ‘lost’ however I always knew where we were, and I said at the time, an…

Are you ready for this? I suggest you have a cup of coffee and be in a comfy chair while you read this - if you don't think you can wade through a lot of drivel - then you are excused!!!!! Where was I? - Oh yes - I'd had an ice-cream then we went back to Mandi's house to finalise the packing and to go to the airport. As I walked up the driveway, I was welcomed by the garden cats - I miss them very much - they were so sweet and loving. Well after a quick change of clothes and finishing pack…

Well the holiday is over and I'm back home!! I so enjoyed my stay with Mandi and Dogan and if anything, this trip has made me even more determined to move to Turkey to be with them. I'd go today if I could, but the heatwave is still there, so I'm quite happy to stay here in 20C heat - but there's blue skies with the odd fluffy white cloud but it's cool enough not to be sweating and being uncomfortable. I did manage to fit in a few swimming sessions though, in fact a couple of hours before I l…

Friday was an auspicious day; it was/would have been my dad’s Birthday, it was the longest day or Summer Solstice, and I had an interview for an admin job. I’ve been somewhat distracted of late mostly by the latter, but also by the first a little, and I’ll phone my kid sister this weekend to check on her; she was closer to Dad. So, an interview. The post was in a local hospital, an admin role that also involved answering phone calls to the department. I’d done my research, had a little noteb…