markmccaughrean

markmccaughrean, 6 days ago (edited 5 days ago) to photography

That’s more like it 🙂

A 51km ride out through Heidelberg & onto the flat Upper Rhine Valley, across the wide agricultural landscape, including a stretch on the Roman road to the lovely old town of Ladenburg🏺

Could almost have been a Dutch ride 🤪🇳🇱

But still there’s that 100 metre Big Down & Big Up to contend with at either end of the ride 😬✌️

#ReturnToGermany Day 13
#CyclingLife 🚴‍♂️
#Photography 📷

markmccaughrean, 7 days ago to Astro

Even though night mode on the iPhone is capable of seeing pretty faint stars, some times it’s nice to have a bit of cloud to block them out & make the constellations more visible 🤷‍♂️

Here’s the Ursa Major (the plough or big dipper) over the Peterstal, with its famous “arc to Arcturus” along the handle to the left 🧸

Night night 😴

#Astrodon #Photography #Space

markmccaughrean, 8 days ago to photography

Finally 🙇‍♂️

First ride since moving back to Germany 👍

A relatively easy 44km along the Neckar to Hirschhorn & back, but still 200m elevation gain.

First part down to the river was terrifying – if the brakes fail, you’re toast 😬

And cycling back up it at end – let’s say I need to lose 10kg 😱

In between, a mix of very rustic riverside paths & smooth roads with cars going past at >100kmh.

We’re not in Kansas any more, Toto ✌️

#ReturnToGermany Day 11
#CyclingLife 🚴‍♂️
#Photography 📷

A view of the walled village of Dilsberg atop a hill on the southern bank of the Neckar valley, seen from the other side with the river between. The foreground is in shadow while the hill is in sunshine, with blue skies above.
Crepuscular rays spreading in a fan across the sky, created by clouds near sunset, with a hill to the lower left blocking the sun.
A screenshot of the ride in Strava, with a topographic map showing the route and ride statistics below. My average was slow, but that was due to the many detours searching for a route by the river. In the end, I cycled most of it on the main road.

markmccaughrean, 8 days ago to random

Have successfully brought our 2015 iMac back to life, after an attempt at upgrading from Mojave to Monterey resulted in the Fusion Drive disappearing 😬

Did an internet restore, rebuilt the drive, restored the system & data from a Time Machine backup overnight, before realising that the machine was still booting from an external drive. Reset that to the internal drive & all appears well 🤞

Now all I have to deal with is the emotional trauma of seeing my wife’s inbox 🙀

markmccaughrean, 9 days ago to photography

#ReturnToGermany Day 10 🇩🇪

Finally fitted the new 11-32 cassette & long cage rear derailleur to my bike, hopefully giving me a fighting chance of making it up some of the fiendishly steep hills around our new home 😬✌️

New chain follows tomorrow after degreasing & waxing 🥸

In other news, the FusionDrive of our 2015 family iMac croaked today when upgrading the OS. Have plenty of backups & am trying recovery now, but a whole new machine may be needed 😕

#CyclingLife 🚴‍♂️
#Photography 📷

markmccaughrean, 9 days ago to random

Strange.

German national news leading this evening with the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

The piece included parts of the speeches by Macron & Biden, & an interview with Scholz. Some focus also on Zelensky being there, but not Russia.

And they mentioned that hundreds of veterans who had come “across the Atlantic” to mark the day.

But nothing at all about the country just across the Channel or Canada, who together landed just as many soldiers on the Normandy beaches on 6 June 1944 as the US 🤨

markmccaughrean, 9 days ago to random

Niche question for my German friends:

In NL, I use the excellent Buienradar.nl website to plan cycling, with a focus on rain & wind predictions.

Is there a similar good, clean weather website or iOS app for DE that’s centred on Doppler radar & rain? Temperature & cloud are of secondary interest, as is wind here, most likely.

And not sites like Accuweather which use the execrable TCF cookie setting, where it’s impossible to opt out without endless clicking.

Ugh: just give me “reject all” 🤢

markmccaughrean, 10 days ago to random

"Invite a tiger in for tea & the tiger might be fun. But it’s also still a tiger. And in the end it’s going to eat you too."

An excellent piece by Barney Ronay on sportwashing & the increasingly ugly nation state takeover of football (& other sports) fuelled by greed, realpolitik, & tribal loyalties.

Hardly a surprise, of course, not least to anyone who's seen the original 1975 "Rollerball".

https://www.theguardian.com/football/article/2024/jun/05/manchester-citys-trumpian-tactics-spotlight-autocratic-creep-in-football

markmccaughrean, 10 days ago to random

Offered with no comment apart from a wry smile 🤷‍♂️🙃

Screenshot courtesy of @DrChrisCombs over on the X-rated place.

markmccaughrean, 10 days ago to photography

#ReturnToGermany Day 9

“A little fall of rain
Can hardly hurt me now” ☔️

Actually, that was overnight – it’s dry & partly sunny now 🤷‍♂️🙂

#Photography #BackGardenBotany

markmccaughrean, 13 days ago (edited 6 days ago) to photography

#ReturnToGermany Day 6 🇩🇪

Another day of opening boxes & moving stuff around the house, plus finally getting around to signing up to waipu.tv so my missus can watch the tennis – am impressed by the quality of the streaming on our telly 👍

The rain has finally stopped, but the garden has made the most of it 🌧️🪴

#Photography 📷

markmccaughrean, 14 days ago to photography

#ReturnToGermany Day 5 🇩🇪

It has been chucking it down on & off for the past few days 🌧️

The Neckar river through Heidelberg looked pretty swollen this afternoon & is predicted to rise to 2.5-3 metres above normal, leading to some flooding 😬✌️

Thankfully, we’re 100 metres above the river here, 1.5 kilometres up the Peterstal valley 🤷‍♂️🙂

#Photography #EverSoSlightlyDamp

markmccaughrean, 15 days ago to photography

#ReturnToGermany Day 4

Slugs “R” us 😬✌️

(It has been quite rainy & damp today, perfect weather for our slimy garden friends 🤷‍♂️)

#Photography
#BackGardenLimacology

markmccaughrean, 16 days ago to random

@Lafiel I could, but it's just as easy to connect the Ethernet cable directly to the Thunderbolt dock & thence the laptop. There's no-one else on this bottom (fourth) level, so it doesn't help to broadcast wifi here really – my problem is further up in the house, on the first & second levels, above the third level where the fibre enters the house & where the router is.

markmccaughrean, 16 days ago to random

#ReturnToGermany Day 3

Despite everyone warning me how bad internet speeds are here, I'll take this as a win 🙂👍

This is with a long piece of Cat 5e cable connecting the router from the floor above to my Thunderbolt dock.

WiFi varies wildly across the four floors, from >900Mbps next to the router to 50Mbps in some rooms thanks to the concrete & steel floors & walls.

I had no luck with a 500Mbps Ethernet over Power set, delivered only ~30Mbps (3-phase power?).

Thoughts? Worth trying mesh?

markmccaughrean, 18 days ago to random

#ReturnToGermany Day 1.

Cash.

WTAF? 😱

markmccaughrean, 18 days ago to random

#ReturnToGermany Day 1.

Yes, I think that is what you think it is 😬

markmccaughrean, 18 days ago to random

#ReturnToGermany Day 1.

Diversification seems to be the name of the game, even for some of the oldest firms 😉

markmccaughrean, 19 days ago to photography

I don’t know who’s more stressed out this morning, me or #Tigger 😱🙀

People coming & going, endlessly rushing around, packing & moving the final boxes, with a million other activities building to a crescendo.

And amid all that, this little fellow somehow made its way into the kitchen, as if to show us that there’s perhaps a far easier way to move house 🐌🙂

#TimeToMove 🚛
#Photography 📷

markmccaughrean, 19 days ago (edited 19 days ago) to Netherlands

A snippet from yesterday’s final ride in The Netherlands before heading east – cycling in the golden hour near sunset often brings beautiful views across the expansive landscape 🌞🙂

#CyclingLife 🚴‍♂️
#Netherlands 🇳🇱

markmccaughrean, 20 days ago to Netherlands

And that was that 😭

Thankful that this afternoon’s storm was short & sharp, leaving a crisp clear evening for this evening’s final 37km ride ⛈️🌞👍

Thankful also to the good people of The Netherlands, their fantastic cycling infrastructure, & the often beautiful landscape it crosses 🥰

I’ve ridden >97,000km here in the past 12 years, >3,500 hours in the saddle, & it has been vital to my physical & mental health – dank jullie wel 💪🧠🙇‍♂️

#CyclingLife 🚴‍♂️
#Netherlands 🇳🇱
#Photography 📷

markmccaughrean, 20 days ago to random

Thank you, Matt – that means a lot. My cycling here has almost exclusively been solo & an important way of me getting away from things. I mean, I enjoy cycling with other people, but it’s a very different thing.

It has been good though to be able to share some impressions of my rides & I guess hope that other countries will take a lead from what NL has done. Yes, it’s flat here, but that misses the point entirely of why & how it happened 👍

markmccaughrean, 20 days ago to random

Another populist, nationalist, & yes, sure, fascist blowhard shifts the Overton window far rightwards, dragging in supposedly centrist politicians, thanks to undeliverable or unsustainable reactionary promises & racist dog whistling.

Yet more evidence that any lessons learned from the disaster that enveloped the world in the 1930s & 1940s have definitely reached their expiry date.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/26/the-guardian-view-on-the-netherlands-a-radical-right-reset-will-challenge-european-unity

markmccaughrean, 21 days ago to zerowaste

Even at perhaps the toughest moment of his life, Henry manages to keep on smiling 😭

#Wassenaar #Recycling #TimeToMove #Anthropomorphism

markmccaughrean, 21 days ago (edited 21 days ago) to Netherlands

The end is nigh & I’m not sure whether to be happy or annoyed that my final few rides here in NL are proving quite lovely 🤨

62km around the Vlietland at sunset & a picture of #TheTreeAtGelderswoude – what could be more traditional? 🤷‍♂️🙂

#CyclingLife 🚴‍♂️
#Netherlands 🇳🇱
#Photography 📷