A rainy day at the cricket - Sleepypete's Pillow

Hello everyone,

Time seems to be going whoosh at the moment ! Maybe that’s a sign that I need to step away and slow down for a bit. Maybe 😀 I do have a plan forming for that … Hopefully you’ll see some of that later in the year. The current plan involves a large island, a ferry and maybe even … beach.

First up – a review ? Devastating news for the gaming communities this week with the Insomnia gaming festival. I’m glad I got to one of these in March because it could well be the last one as the company running it collapsed. Hopefully all the people affected find places that will take full advantage of what they have to offer. Especially the ever lovely Tashnarr and her colleagues who would come in to her streams, join in the fun and be part of that community which, with Tashnarr being the focus, is one of the most chill, relaxing and great vibes communities on Twitch.

Work has been as busy as usual, not much to be said about that apart from it being one of those things. Would you prefer work to be busy and you’re getting things done, or would you rather it be too quiet ? Can’t talk about the work stuff much though, it’s not something for the internet.

In books, I enjoyed reading through Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It’s a future space scifi where a near invincible enemy is menacing humanity. There’s an excellent variation of characters in there and the interplay between them is a highlight. I’m looking forwards to seeing how this trilogy unfolds. Latest book is A Fire Born Of Exile by Aliette De Bodard, which is the latest in her fantastic Xuya Universe. Well written, intriguing and huge intensity of emotions in the characters. Much recommend for both of these books.

But wait, where’s that traditional opening thumbnail pic ?

Picture. We're at ground level looking out over a green playing field, with white grey rain covers in a band in the centre. In the background, the orange brick and white balconies of the Lords pavilion. Gray skies are above.

Thursday saw me heading off to Lords for the 2024 Interservices T20 day. I’d thoroughly recommend this event if you’re a cricket fan. The historic Lords stadium is always a great place to visit (although a bit lacking on concessions hospitality this time), you get a great view and they steadily improve the facilities. There’s been a number of changes since I started coming. Plus the cricket is usually ultra competitive with all the skills on show and the games are balanced. It’s always best watching a game or sport where you have no idea as to who is going to win, right up to the end.

But …

Picture. We're at mouse level looking at the concrete outsides of the stadium. There are a couple of manhole covers to the right. The outer wall is to the left with a black iron gate close and black bins in the background. The stadium hangs over on the right and a van is parked in the far centre. There is a puddle in front of us.

We did lose the morning game and half of the afternoon game to rain. Bit damp but it cleared later. Today was a day of playing with the new camera too, to see what it could do and how it would work. The angle above is courtesy of Geraldine, official photographer from the cruise, who challenged us to try and get interesting and unusual angles to take pictures from. How’d that one do ? I’m maybe 6 inches off the floor there. Maybe a bit more looking at the Shutter Priority mode it has to catch more of the rain.

Pictures. A block of 4, all in a watercolour effect filter. We're looking out over the ground, with the top two showing the far stands. Bottom left is the white and glass lozenge of the Media Centre. Bottom right is the ground with the Pavilion to the right and occasional people close in our stand. — It all went a bit watercolour

Spot me checking out more of the options that the camera has for taking the pictures. This is the watercolour effect, which adds a post processing effect. There is also a monochrome, fisheye, vivid, toy camera and a miniatures filter which I need to figure out how to use. Fun while waiting for …

Picture. We're looking over the lush green grass of the Lords playing surface, with the light brown of the cut surface in the middle. We have a scattering of players in red and light blue tops plus dark trousers. The red shirted bowler is at the end of his action and the light blue shirted batter to the right has just hit the ball.

Play on !

We lost the ladies’ game due to the rain, this was RAF in the light blue batting and Army in the red fielding. I started out playing with a Continuous Low Speed shooting option, where it was taking a picture maybe every half a second after pressing the shutter button. Here’s a great one :

Picture. We're looking at 2 pictures up and lower. At the top, a red shirted fielder is part crouched over dark blue stumps. The blue shirted batter is stretching out with his bat. An umpire in a hat is standing to the right. Lower, it's a frame on and the red shirted fielder is jubiliant as the stretching batsman failed to beat the ball to the stumps.

Happy with that :-D. One thing about the new camera is that with it having more megapixels in its sensor and the different way the lens works, it’s much easier to get shots like that going. So that’s … with the 55-210mm lens and the original was taken at the 135mm setting, so about the middle of the range. I’m not zooming all the way in that I can, so I have the option of cutting the outsides down if appropriate. And then I’ll take the resulting picture down from a potential 6000×4000 before cropping and scale it to 2000 pixels wide for the blog. Hopefully that works for viewers without losing detail.

(This is going to sound like a Canon ad ! Disclosure note – I bought all the bits in use here, nothing free by Canon) You change the zoom on the 18-45 and 55-210 lenses by twisting the outside of the whole lens, whereas the zoom on the Ixus is by a tiny addition to the shutter wheel. The R50 is bulkier but it’s far easier to handle. The response time on the shutter feels massively better, with a lot of the unused shots (can only show so many 😀 ) having the ball in shot still. And the image stabilisation is proper excellent.

I did have the usual buyers remorse after spending all the money but I think it’s worth it. The R50 is proving to be an incredibly massive upgrade over the Ixus and the various features included make Every picture good and usable, whereas I had to be very careful with the Ixus to get something usable.

Looking forward to trying it out at Comic Con next week. Actually really looking forward to Comic Con next week because Comic Con Friend will be there too this time and these things are much better in company. Still got the good memories from last time too with the smuggle for Tashnarr, it’s good seeing the FFXIV flower appearing occasionally.

More cricket ?

Picture. We're looking at two players. The red shirted batsman has bat in the air and is leaning forwards through his shot. The blue player is behind the stumps waiting for the ball with the big keeping gloves. 2 stumps are vertical, the third is bent backwards with the white ball in front. Two orange bails are in the air above the stumps.

I always loved seeing things like that as a bowler. Ball, stumps and bails in the air. The first game finished with a tight win by the Army, with it going to the final over.

Picture. We're looking at a bowler in a dark blue shirt, he's running through and his right arm is stretched out at the end of sending the ball to the other end. We see the umpire to the left, a fielder half crouched in the background and a light blue shirted batter.

Over to Navy vs RAF. This was a full 20 over game. It was getting dark towards the end but the umpires managed to keep the players on all the way. A good game too, the Navy batters were led by one of the guys getting the first 50 of the day with unorthodox …

Picture. We're looking at our dark blue shirted batter again as he has turned his bat around the wrong way to hit the ball to an unexpected part of the ground. The ball is above the stumps on the left. A light blue shirted fielder is in the background.

And orthodox hitting …

Picture. We're looking at the dark blue shirted batter stretched in mid shot. The ball is in the centre lower part of his bat, about to come my way in the stands. A light blue shirted fielder looks on behind.

When the RAF came in to bat, they started making the Navy score look small with some excellent hitting. I nearly touched a cricket match ball again for the first time in over 10 years as one of the ball in the stands moments ended up pretty close to my little corner of the ground. (I got beaten to it by a more nimble guy speeding across 😀 ).

But cricket has a habit of making games closer than they really should be and a spirited performance by several of the Navy bowlers led to a succession of wickets that nearly turned the result around. Fun game to watch.

The RAF won the last game narrowly but because all three teams won 1 game each of the tournament and Navy had the better overall run rate, the tournament went to the Navy this time. With a finish past 7pm, I didn’t go anywhere else in London for the day but well satisfied with a good day out at the cricket again.

Last thing … I may have resubscribed to an older game again … there’s a new Iceangel on World of Warcraft. We’ll see how that goes :-D. I did look at Star Trek Online again but while that game has the Star Trek setting, WoW is just a more charming accessible game.

Later everyone !

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