Category: Personal Blog

Personal Blog: Entry 2025-04-05 (Witnessing 2025-03-29 Partial Solar Eclipse)

Otto

Personal Blog: Entry 2025-04-05

Witnessing the Partial Solar Eclipse: England, Saturday 29th March 2025 at ~11:04AM

Where to being. Well, my workplace has become severely understaffed as of late, consequently I have been working six day weeks this season because of it. Too many people have either been leaving of their own accord, and/or suspended for coming in drunk and/or high. You know the story. Anyway. Halfway through an overtimed week: on Tuesday 25th, during a break, I noticed a random news item in my Google Chrome feed. It was an article by the “Manchester Evening News” (IIRC) publication on the upcoming partial solar eclipse.

Just as a side note, look at the three mobile screenshots provided. They fitted four adverts on a small 6″ screen. Including: two inline ads, a banner ad, and even an embedded video advert (with sound) that scroll with you. What an actual crock of crap. Its no wonder why sites like this are dying. I mean despite wanting the information on it’s page: I equally wanted to leave as soon as possible.

It is genuinely hard to read the actual text itself, since it is surrounded on all fronts by distractions. Its sandwiched between some random political “news” video playing, with a pre-roll ad; a typical British inoffensive fake-friendly advert of a very American Chase Bank, or a random no-name money transfer service stacked on top of a Foxy Bingo ad offered to us by an ugly transexual clutching the phone in his talons. Oh man. The adverts take precedence over the actual content that caused the click in the first place. Its wild. It screams of desperation and failure. Honestly, it doesn’t really matter anyway, I just found it annoying and wanted to share.

Moving on. Having been informed by chance that there will be a partial solar eclipse on Saturday. I decided that I would like to actually participate in it. The driving notion here is to make memories when one can. Because life moves on quickly, and it is so very easily to allow it to pass one by in the moment, if one lives life with a passive: “they’ll be more opportunities in future” mentality. That’s right FOMO. I mean Carpe diem. FOMO’s more sophisticated and significantly older relative. Anyway, I got lucky. It was on the one day that I have off this week, and the weather report looked reasonably good for it too. Sunny, partially cloudy. For England, that’s about as good as it gets.

Now with no real equipment to speak of to actually watch the eclipse, and not enough time to procure some: I decided to utilise a basic pair of sunglasses in conjunction with squinting really good. And my Chinese smartphone to try to take some pictures. It actually worked reasonably well. Although I don’t recommend it. I still got a good dose of eye strain out of it. Still though, I managed to fully witness the partial eclipse. However the phone couldn’t take any good (detailed) pictures due to over exposure as I understand it. Too much direct light to see the details within it.

Witnessing the eclipse itself was very interesting. It was actually somewhat a more emotional experience than I expected. You could even call it spiritual if you wished and it would’ve been apt. I recall sitting alone at 11 AM in on one of those cheap stackable plastic patio chairs in the garden of a rented home. The Sun could be seen clearly. Albeit clipped close to the wall of a building, and through a thin sheet of pale cloud. The cloud actually diffusing the intensity of the light somewhat made the Sun easier to look upon.

It was a weird thing to experience alone. Celestial miracles amongst (yet above in many ways) the day-to-day mundane. I think this is the first real act of nature that I just sat there and observed in while. Like standing by and watching a storm fell a great tree. A true act of nature that I have no control over what so ever. It won’t wait for me to be ready, or pause whilst I take a break, or stop to save my life.

It was completely oblivious to the self absorbed ant that is me. It was genuinely humbling seeing these grand objects move. On a scale that a single being can not really internalise, in order to really grasp and understand. The celestial objects in question are simply too big to relate to, as is the space between them, myself, and each other. And yet here I am genuinely witnessing their intersection. It was actually really cool. genuinely awe inspiring.

Watching something like that really is surreal. From my vantage point: the Moon went from being invisible in the sky, to a small black bite in the top centre-right corner of the Sun. Then slowly and smoothly the Moon slid in and down towards the centre of Sun. It then paused once it covered a solid corner of the Sun. Before then pulling out and away, smoothly gliding down and out towards the Sun’s right.

It gave the illusion that the Moon moved in-front of the Sun from it’s right side, before then reversing out the same direction. Since it appeared to me as it both entered and exited from the right side of the Sun. Probably due to the frequent look away breaks, and fiddling with my smartphone. Trying to take a good picture. I did not watch it continuously, and my mind seems to have filled in the gaps of the Moon’s movement, giving it an (I think) impossible trajectory. An ‘L’ pattern of movement, rather than the straightish line expected.

I recall that as the Moon moved over the top right corner of the Sun, everything got colder. The day got dimmer. It might’ve been psychosomatic, but I genuinely felt noticeably cold sitting in that garden at that moment. The volume of light also noticeably diminished. Enough so that I could comfortably observe the phenomena. It was a dire reminder of how much we owe the Sun. All the energy it is freely and continuously showering us with every single day.

I remember looking around the garden as that thought rose up within me. I noticed the vibrancy of colour contained within the rough patchy grass that we call a lawn. Numberless blades of deep emerald green. Made darker and bluer by my strained vision. They spoke of vitamins and nutrition, in that moment the greeness of those plants linked me to the Sun itself. It warmed me, fed me, and lit my way. Without it, there would be nothing. Just a dead ice-ball of a world. Common sense right? Cognitively yes, emotionally… well, we as a species are so detached from nature that it is hard to say.

Thoughts like that are strange; because they bubble up from the deep unknowable darkness of the mind, to the light of the surface where they could be seen briefly before evaporating. They can even make enough ripples in the process to be actively recognised by the conscious. Yet, they are still indistinct, and somewhat formless. They operate more like wordless foggy images and gaseous feelings. An emotional vapour attached to transient moving indistinct imagery. Like a wet watercolour painting with it’s pallet freely mixing and bleeding across lines and dripping onto me as I figuratively handle it.

It is quite unlike the concrete thoughts that I am accustomed to creating and administering. I felt all the above thoughts but it wasn’t with words like I am communicating to you now. It was a feeling of significance and eureka as my mind drew links between the God’s toys above, and me below. In that moment I felt part of it. A small insignificant part, no more important than the ladybird climbing a blade of grass, or the watchful magpie in the tree nearby. But still a part. It was very humbling, and felt significant. Enough to be remembered at least. It really is no wonder why our Sol and Moon have so much religious significance. They really are magnificent.

This was a fun and meaningful way to spend a Saturday morning. Worth recording here too. Perhaps for no other reason than just to practice my writing.

Anyway, Thank you for reading.

Crappy pictures taken using Blackview A100 smartphone

  • shot demoing sunglass use
  • sunglasses ON
  • sunglasses OFF
  • garden in spring 2025
    green green grass
  • bonus crappy pic of half-moon on Sat 2025-04-05

Acronyms used

FOMO – “Fear Of Missing Out”
IIRC – “If I Remember Correctly”

Links, References, and Further reading

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/urgent-warning-issued-brits-ahead-31279092
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crmjdy10rmmo
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0q1qx4d174o
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg5wd8y1xpo

Personal Blog: Entry 2025-02-22

Otto

Personal Blog: Entry 2025-02-22

It has been a while since I have posted anything on here. I have left this website dormant for quite a bit. Specifically it has been around 22 months since I last uploaded a post here. Yes, 22 months. That’s two months shy of TWO years! That last post is namely “#0038 – Demonstration of chess game data featured in Cowboy Bebop anime” published on 2023-04-16. Fuck me. And even before that I only posted one more in 2023, number #37 in 2023-02-26. Then another year long break until I was posting at reasonable rate. So early 2022, and backwards.

A number of things have come up in life to cause this. Primarily working full time 50 hour weeks, in addition to dealing with the miscellaneous duties and responsibilities of life. One’s that put a significant claim on our resources as individuals. However I would be remiss in blaming busyness for this failure. I have had the time. I could have put in a single hour a week easily, and that would’ve netted me around 88 total working hours for the 22 month absence. More than enough to get a few quality posts out.

Now, I am mindful of the triumvirate of endlessly employable excuses. In format they are: Time, Money, and Energy. When one fails, the other two could be employed to enable procrastination and laziness. Even in cases where two fail, one will always be there ready and willing to excuse one’s bad behaviour. Consider if someone pins you to the wall on an excuse, and it becomes apparent that you both have the money, and time to do something good for you. The excuse of not having energy is ready and willing to take up the mantle.

Realistically the past couple of years have been busy for me. However having said that, it should be noted that I am aware that busyness is actually a form of laziness. People (such as myself) use being busy as a way to excuse not doing important things. And posting here is important to me. Not that much admittedly, but it is. Rank 5-ish. I should have done more. The funny thing is, its not like I have been abdicating entirely from participating in this hobby.

Over the last couple of years I have done a lot of stuff on the more practical side. I just have neglected to document them here. Off the top of my head: I have Assembled 2 different Outsunny brand metal garden sheds, replaced a shower bar, built a functioning gaming PC from scrap, repaired and analysed a light switch, repaired a washing machine twice (2 different faults), repaired 2 desk fans, etcetera, etcetera. “Blah blah blah, yackity schmakity.” – Hugh Tazmanian Devil.

I think the main reason why I haven’t posted as much is because it often takes more effort to document and write about any given project in a meaningful manner, than it is to actually just get it done. So very often in the moment I intend to do the write up later. (Yes indeed, that fabled “later” that never comes.) But after another work week, once the weekend winds around again often my mind has moved onto the next project. Now two years later, due to my lack of diligence in managing passwords, it has resulted in data loss. Meaning that I have lost pictures of projects that I need for articles. Oh well. Ce la vie. Move on.

A lot of my failings in the past (in relation to this hobby): has not just come from simple laziness, it has also come from the dark side of perfectionism. As I write this I have currently on my computer 33 half-to-almost finished projects. Some folders just contain pictures and videos from the practical, whereas most contain write ups. Being a drafted article, with supporting notes and reference documents.

So I have been working. It’s just for some reason or another I have been consistently dropping out at around the 80% mark. The writing and refining stage of these projects. I think it is because I enjoy the practicals, so there is little discipline needed to do them. However when it comes to technical writing it is easy to get stressed and overwhelmed trying to create something of value to someone. It is too easy to fall into the granularity trap with regards to documenting details. Then get stressed and take a ‘small’ break. Then not come back to it because time ran out and I have work in the morning. It’s a problem I am going to have to judiciously navigate because I do not have an easy answer for it.

Here is one answer I have for my perfectionism. Finish what you start. Sounds obvious eh? No I mean in a single sitting. When you start drafting a section of an article, take the time (in that sitting) to finish it. I am going to do that here. I am writing this blog post in a single sitting. Rereading it for clarity, then publishing it. I am not going to take breaks and work on it over multiple sitting over multiple days. Which would be likely weekend days because I seldom work on this stuff during the work week. A known issue. Start, stop, start, stop. No momentum.

Moving forward, I intend to have published at least 10 articles this year. Yes, considering it is at February’s end now. I need to publish one article every month at a minimum to meet this requirement. It’s not too much considering that I have a large backlog of half finished projects I could cap off and publish. Additionally this dovetails nicely with another new year’s resolution, something else that I am falling behind on. Namely, it is to read 10 (serious) books. This means 10 non-fiction books. After reading each book I will provide a summary of it’s content here. Not a review by any means, more of a brief on the book and it’s teachings as I understand them. I am not going to count these “book review” (yes yes I know) entries towards the 10 post goal. However their addition will make me more actively engaged with managing this website and it’s content.

Well that’s that. Gone awhile, and now I am back. Back again. Tell a friend. Time to put my nose to the grindstone, and hit the books. T-minus 10 months.

One last note before I go. Perfectionism is kicking in right now: as I look to copy this text into the browser. I have made my point here, and communicated my thoughts effectively. However it could be better, much better. Could I just post this? Or would I be better off reading and re-reading it. Then editing it down to get it just right. To make it read better, and to to catch all those pesky grammatical errors: sitting in this text like a hidden object game. Well. Two years of unpublished articles on my desktop say otherwise. Perfect is the enemy of done. And I am done. Print.

Thank you for reading.

Links, references, further reading

  • Image “Hugh_210x240” sourced from https://looneytunes.fandom.com/wiki/Hugh