Odds And Ends And Anything You Fancy

[foggybottom]

**Bourbon warehouse fire at a Jim Beam distillery in Woodford County, Ky. July 3, 2019**
Friends, we're gathered here today for one final toast to mourn the loss of up to 45,000 barrels of Jim Beam bourbon. A standard bourbon barrel usually contains around 53 gallons of Kentucky's signature spirit. That goes on to fill up 150 to 200 750-milliliter bottles. If every single barrel in the fire contained bourbon – we don't know for sure if they did or not – that could turn into a loss of at least 6 million bottles. Six. Million. Bottles.
Lightning is suspected.

 

[phlebas]

**Bourbon warehouse fire at a Jim Beam distillery in Woodford County, Ky. July 3, 2019**
Friends, we're gathered here today for one final toast to mourn the loss of up to 45,000 barrels of Jim Beam bourbon. A standard bourbon barrel usually contains around 53 gallons of Kentucky's signature spirit. That goes on to fill up 150 to 200 750-milliliter bottles. If every single barrel in the fire contained bourbon – we don't know for sure if they did or not – that could turn into a loss of at least 6 million bottles. Six. Million. Bottles.
Lightning is suspected.

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I bet it was a pretty fierce fire as well.

ok, you've heard of power couples, these are shower couples

 

[phlebas]

I always fancied being assimilated by Seven of Nine.

It doesn't work on holograms

 

[foggybottom]

Since we are all into photographs, here is a little history of the art.

The world’s first photograph made in a camera was taken in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. The photograph was taken from the upstairs windows of Niépce’s estate in the Burgundy region of France. This image was captured via a process known as heliography, which used Bitumen of Judea coated onto a piece of glass or metal; the Bitumen than hardened in proportion to the amount of light that it was exposed to.


Louis Daguerre (18 November 1787 – 10 July 1851) was a French artist, and more importantly – photographer, renowned for his invention of the daguerreotype, the first publicly recognized photographic process. Considered to be the father of photography, Daguerre created an image of the Boulevard du Temple in Paris in 1838, and without realizing it, recorded the first person in a photograph ever. The image shows a figure in the streets, getting his shoes shined. According to experts’ opinions, this person was the only one in the streets to pause long enough for the long exposure to capture it. Other than the shoe shiner and the customer, the street seems eerily empty and lifeless, when in fact it was quite busy with the moving traffic and pedestrians, who never got to become a part of this historical moment.


Before ‘selfies’ were all the rage, Robert Cornelius set up a camera and took the world’s first self-portrait in the back of his family's business on Chestnut Street in Center City, Philadelphia. Cornelius sat in front of the lens for a little over a minute, before leaving the seat and covering the lens. The now iconic photograph was captured 170+ years ago in 1839.

 

[phlebas]

And in England Fox Talbot was inventing the negative, and claiming to have beaten Daguerre to the punch.

Talbot invented a process for creating reasonably light-fast and permanent photographs that was the first made available to the public; however, his was neither the first such process invented nor the first one publicly announced.[6]

Shortly after Louis Daguerre's invention of the daguerreotype was announced in early January 1839, without details, Talbot asserted priority of invention based on experiments he had begun in early 1834. At a meeting of the Royal Institution on 25 January 1839, Talbot exhibited several paper photographs he had made in 1835. Within a fortnight, he communicated the general nature of his process to the Royal Society, followed by more complete details a few weeks later. Daguerre did not publicly reveal any useful details until mid-August, although by the spring it had become clear that his process and Talbot's were very different.

Talbot's early "salted paper" or "photogenic drawing" process used writing paper bathed in a weak solution of ordinary table salt (sodium chloride), dried, then brushed on one side with a strong solution of silver nitrate, which created a tenacious coating of very light-sensitive silver chloride that darkened where it was exposed to light. Whether used to create shadow image photograms by placing objects on it and setting it out in the sunlight, or to capture the dim images formed by a lens in a camera, it was a "printing out" process, meaning that the exposure had to continue until the desired degree of darkening had been produced. In the case of camera images, that could require an exposure of an hour or two if something more than a silhouette of objects against a bright sky was wanted. Earlier experimenters such as Thomas Wedgwood and Nicéphore Niépce had captured shadows and camera images with silver salts years before, but they could find no way to prevent their photographs from fatally darkening all over when exposed to daylight. Talbot devised several ways of chemically stabilizing his results, making them sufficiently insensitive to further exposure that direct sunlight could be used to print the negative image produced in the camera onto another sheet of salted paper, creating a positive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Fox_Talbot

Image made from the oldest known photographic negative, apparently 1835


I've visited his home at Lacock Abbey, worth a visit if you're in the neighbourhood in Wiltshire
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/lacock-abbey-fox-talbot-museum-and-village

Including this pic because I like it
circa 1842

 

[Eulalia]

Thomas Wedgwood (1771 - 1805) deserves some credit even earlier - he was a son of Josiah Wedgwood, the potter, and was the first person known to have thought of creating permanent pictures by capturing camera images on material coated with a light-sensitive chemical. His practical experiments yielded only shadow images that were not light-fast, but they were precursors to the permanent images achieved by Fox-Talbot, Niépce and Daguerre. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Wedgwood_(photographer)

 

[Praefectus Praetorio]

Thomas Wedgwood (1771 - 1805) deserves some credit even earlier - he was a son of Josiah Wedgwood, the potter, and was the first person known to have thought of creating permanent pictures by capturing camera images on material coated with a light-sensitive chemical. His practical experiments yielded only shadow images that were not light-fast, but they were precursors to the permanent images achieved by Fox-Talbot, Niépce and Daguerre. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Wedgwood_(photographer)

What was needed was a chemical "fixer" to make the image permanent. The problem was that the unexposed silver halide would eventually expose and the image would disappear. What ultimately was used were chemicals like sodium thiosulfate which dissolved only non-exposed silver halide and left the exposed image. I spent many many happy hours in my twenties and thirties, bathing negatives or prints in fixer then carefully rinsing away (if left on, it will eventually attack the images.)

 

[Jackie1111]

On the table relaxing while I get a massage. Someone else is doing the work for a change...

 

[Eulalia]

I spent many many happy hours in my twenties and thirties, bathing negatives or prints in fixer then carefully rinsing away (

and imagining you were doing the same to the delightful subjects of your photos?

 

[Praefectus Praetorio]

and imagining you were doing the same to the delightful subjects of your photos?

Tempt me as you will, Fair Lady, but nothing could induce me to break the Seal of the Darkroom.

 

[Praefectus Praetorio]

A Celtic Quiz – for no particular reason.

Question #1 – What country has the largest percentage of Cornish descent outside of UK?
Question #2 – What British colony was sometimes called, “The Scottish Colony?”
Question #3 – What does Darien have to do with Scottish Independence?
Question #4 – Why did the Romans always hate the Celts? (Other than them being so snooty about how you pronounce their language)
Question #5 – How many of the 45 U.S. Presidents (Yes, Trump counts as one, you Blue-State yahoos!) did Not have Celtic Ancestors?
Bonus Question (to prevent too many grades of Zero) - What Celtic homeland was the Canadian Province of Nova Scotia named after?

 

[Eulalia]

I know the answer to #3 all too well, I'd have to make (not entirely wild, I hope) guesses at the other four.
I'll add one more - which country that was never a British possession
is home to a long-established Welsh-speaking community?

 

[Praefectus Praetorio]

Of course, you would know of the "Equivalent." Scotland was bought and paid for.

Answers later today.

And to yours, Y Wladfa?

 

[Eulalia]

yn dda iawn

 

[Eulalia]

Scotland was bought and paid for.

Fareweel to a' our Scottish fame,
Fareweel our ancient glory
Fareweel ev'n to the Scottish name,
Sae famed in martial story
Now Sark rins over Solway sands
An Tweed rins to the ocean
To mark where England's province stands -
Sic a parcel o rogues in a nation!

 

[Praefectus Praetorio]

#1 Australia, between 3 and 5% of the population are believed to have Cornish ancestors

 

[Eulalia]

I was thinking Australia pretty likely - but anywhere in the Empire that had mines,
Cornishmen were down them.

 

[Praefectus Praetorio]

#2 Burma - due to the heavy role played by Scotsmen in colonizing and running the country, one of the most notable beings Sir James Scott, and the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company.
With copious apologies to Rudyard:
"Come you back, you Scottish soldier; come you back to Mandalay!"
Come you back to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay:
Can't you 'ear their paddles chunkin' from Rangoon to Mandalay?
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin'-fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

 

[Eulalia]

#2 Burma - due to the heavy role played by Scotsmen in colonizing and running the country, one of the most notable beings Sir James Scott, and the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company.
With copious apologies to Rudyard:
"Come you back, you Scottish soldier; come you back to Mandalay!"
Come you back to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay:
Can't you 'ear their paddles chunkin' from Rangoon to Mandalay?
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin'-fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

I didna ken that! I can just see Supi-yaw-lat MacYupar in her petticoat of yellow and her little cap of green
a-smoking of a whacking white cheroot (but not being as crass as our former foreign secretary, I'll omit the next bit)

 

[Praefectus Praetorio]

#3 - a complex story and not Darien Connecticut, you yahoos!

The Company of Scotland, using about one-fifth of all the money circulating in Scotland in the late 1690's, attempted, with Royal backing and endorsement, to establish Scotland as a World trading power by planting a Scottish colony in the Isthmus of Panama, on the Gulf of Darién, called “Caledonia."
However, rampant disease, economic blockade by the English East India Company and military assault by Spanish forces caused its abandonment in 1700 with almost all colonists lost. The land where the colony lay is virtually uninhabited to the day.
The economic damage left Lowland Scotland effectively bankrupt. This led the once proud Scots to accept the Act of Union in 1707, and the independent country went out of existence. Included in the act was the “Equivalent,” a payment to Scotland of £398,085.10s sterling as well as guaranteeing the Scottish Shilling a value of one English pence. Thus, Scotland was bought and paid for.