Useful photographic software and trepanning

I woke briefly with the aura of an impending migraine, took some tablets and slept again until the medication took hold.

Yesterdays photographs at Ely Cathedral included a range of images either taken at different focal depths, e.g. of carved figures around a column, or of a scene such as a stained glass window taken at a range of exposures so that the series would capture all the detail in both the darkest areas and lightest ones.

These two different series would be used to create composite images using some extremely useful software. However, I needed to transfer and activate licensed software from my old PC for these programs on my new PC and that was a key task undertaken today.

The most important software is Helicon Focus, used to create a focus stack. A problem commonly experienced with photography, especially macro-photography and microscopy, is that when areas in the foreground are in focus, the background is not and vice versa. Whilst this can be used to great effect to achieve an emphasis of one subject, by making sure it is the only one in focus, in other instances you actually want a whole area to be in focus.

When it is critical to have more of an object in focus than can be achieved with a single photo, I ensure that the camera is fixed and then take a series of photos, changing the focus from front to back in incremental steps. With Helicon focus I can then combine all the images together and create an final image where only the elements that are in focus are used from each serial image.

The second software is Photomatix. It can combine images of different contrast range to create a High Dynamic Range (HDR) photo which reveals all the detail.

Our eyes and brain are brilliant at looking at a scene where there are very bright and very dark areas. Imagine yourself on a path in a wood in bright sunlight – you can see detail in the shady areas AND the bright areas. Cameras have a much lower contrast range, meaning that if you expose to reveal the detail in the brightest area, the shadows are black without detail – and vice versa.

With Photomatix, I photograph a scene from a fixed position (tripod) over a range of bracketed exposures and then combine these in Photomatix to create an HDR image.

In the evening, during the judging of Strictly Come Dancing, I started reading Northern Lights by Philip Pullman. One of the curious minor story threads is the use of trepanning or trepanation – the drilling of holes in the skull and allowing them to heal – for spiritual or health reasons.

 I'd seen a skull displayed in the International Museum of Nubia in Aswan showing a skull with an accompanying X-ray where there was lesion that I thought was a trepanation that had healed over.

Trepanning or trepanation had been part of human culture for at least 7000 years, starting with a neolithic skull found in Ensisheim, France, and in Chinese, Ancient Egyptian, Greek, Arabic and European skulls. Approximately 6% of Inca and pre-inca skulls had been trepanned, with a suggested survival rate of over 60%.

There is a small group of individuals who actually self trepan to the present date.

Reasons for trepanning include the obvious medical – to repair skull damage or antique beliefs that it helped with curing migraines or epilepsy. However, there may also have been trepanning for spiritual reasons.

The current rationale for trepanning in the absence of medical necessity is to increase brain activity with the explanations that it might help by allowing the brain to expand or increasing oxygenation of the brain. No medical evidence for these exists to date.

Whilst I am a migraine sufferer, I will not be taking up trepanation!
Two interesting links : Wikipedia and An illustrated history of trepanation.

Identifying Stentor on a snail's shell

Received first feedback on the draft press release for the NRW delegation – we sought approval from our various hosts. Some changes required, including a revision of the original title which had been emasculated by the suggested revision. Sighed, accepted my lot and made the changes, then sent on to Ms Luetje and Mr Juengst to keep them informed. Still have another permission/edit outstanding to be mailed to me.

The mood was enlivened by the arrival of Ms Fleming and Mr Snoswell with a pond sample containing small ramshorn snails with strange green goo at the central depression of their whorls. I had been intrigued by the photos on Ms Fleming's Facebook post, which tantalisingly lacked sufficient detail for clear identification. We soon had the stereo-microscope out and were chasing the snails in a petri dish as they threatened to zoom out of view at 6x to 20x magnification.

I attached my camcorder to the microscope and made some recordings which we then replayed on a larger television screen, with identification guides on hand. We soon established that the green matter comprised colonies of Stentor polymorphus, which absorb chlorella as symbionts. The vase shaped organisms, with their cilia rimmed apertures, were oblivious to the movement of both the snail and the petri dish.

I edited a short video with a range of clips. Mr Heker called in via Skype on another matter and was roped in to help with the audio editing via shared screen! The video was uploaded to YouTube and also embedded in a short blog article which was subsequently submitted to Micscape, an online microscopy magazine.

The rest of the afternoon was a return to continuing the manuscript review begun yesterday.
The evenings news is is full of the Libyan rebels storming Gaddaffi's compound, a key target in Tripoli. No sign of the colonel or his sons though.

Maidenhead and Prison Doors

The drive down to Maidenhead to visit Mr Dodsworth went without incident. We spent the day collating all the paperwork and planning the finalisation of the completed German project that we had been managing for the past year.

The return journey was enlivened by two small observations en route. The first was the witty graffiti across a bridge spanning the eastbound M25, stating “Give Peas a Chance”. The second was a silver van advertising doors. Not just any doors, secure doors and … Prison doors!

This evening, had much more success in assembling a panorama from the nine overlapping cylcloid fish scale stacks. I am hopeful that the ctenoid scale will be easier.

Portraits, fish scales and Neptune's anniversary

I received an email from another German company, specialising in building conservation techniques, who had taken part in a previous delegation from NRW to Wimpole Hall and London. Information is being accummulated for a potential press article/release after their planned next visit to the UK. I responded with the suggestion that we meet up informally when I next venture to Germany in the coming week.

This afternoon, I uploaded the portrait photos of some of the Cambridge Open Studio visitors who came last weekend and made a selection for more detailed editing. There were four final pictures in all, representing a gentleman wearing a fez, two different mothers with their daughters and a father with two student daughters.

The editing was limited to optimising lighting and contrast. Then the colour saturation was carefully adjusted by increasing it slightly, altering the saturation balance to maintain a natural set of tones. I do not go in for heavy skin or other editing as would be done for a fashion model. I do remove the occasional skin spot (three in total) and in one instance, reduced the pimples on the brow of of one subjects.

Having saved the colour image, I would then convert the image into a grey-scale version, again optimising lighting and contrast for this particular medium. There is a particular beauty with grey-scale portraits, whether it is the impact of the face without the distraction of colour or the beautiful texture of wavy hair with one of the mothers.

This evening, I was acutely aware that I had been hanging onto a box by Mr Richardson from the Postal Microscopical Society that should be passed on, initially delayed by illness and the distraction of Open Studio preparation. I returned to view the slides again (having to change a 30 year old bulb when the existing one blew – the next time will require a new lighting system!).

I had seen this box probably over a decade ago and illustrated two fish scales enclosed. This time, I decided to photograph them. The first was a cycloid scale from a rainbow trout. The scale is generally ovoid with concentric rings leading to an almost central focus like the contour lines on a mountain. The second was a ctenoid scale from Dover sole. These are more rectangular with a quartered pattern. The two long sides again have contour lines. The front part of the scale that is exposed on the fish skin, is covered in rows of short spikes that elongate towards the edge of the scale. The remaining side has a series radial ribs, giving the contours traversing them a way characteristic.

Even at a mere 40 times magnification, the scales were larger than the field of view through the microscope and camera viewfinder. The trout scale was photographed in a series of three columns and three rows of overlapping photos, each location at three focal depths (edge of scale, halfway up scale and centre of scale – giving 27 pictures in total. The Sole scale was photographed in the same manner but only required two columns of three rows at three focal planes – 18 photos in total.

Stacking the focal planes and then aligning the rows and columns is a labour for another day.
The interesting anniversary today is that around the 12th July it will be the first year's anniverary of the discovery of Neptune by Johann Gottfried Galle, in neptunian years of course. Herr Galle first identified Neptune 164.79 Earth years ago in 1781. Ever since the ignominious departure of Pluto from the pantheon of planets by its derogation to planetoid, Neptune has been the eighth and outermost planet of our solar system. The Hubble space telescope took some “Anniversary pictures” of Neptune late in June, which can be seen here http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2011/19/image/a/.

Open Studio, day 2

The (garage) door to my open studio opened slightly ahead of time and I was able to bask in the morning sun for a while before the first visitors arrived. Today was a busier day, though there was a quiet period from about 1pm to 3pm.

Again, there were one or two familiar faces, however many new visitors appeared too, a significant proportion coming specifically to my exhibition. However, many commented on the benefit of having two studios open at the same time, close to one another, and that this was also a major deciding factor. Several independent groups came from St Ives. The furthest origin was from New Zealand, a couple visiting and accompanying their mother who lives in the county.

I was delighted that one young man had seen the invitation to come wearing headgear and be photographed, outlined on my Cambridge Open Studios website entry. He had brought a Fez – I forgot to ask if this was in response to the Dr Who episode featuring one – and wore it unselfconsciously and confidently for the photograph.

A number of parents with mature progeny were also willing to be photographed, mainly mothers and daughters, but I was pleased to also have a father and his two daughters.

The latter had arrived just 10 minutes before the planned close of the studio and it transpired that I was the last visit of a busy day. The two daughters were still college students. Yet they still had such a lively interest and curiosity, that our conversations continued to well after 18:30. It was so refreshing and rewarding, as usually it is the parents that are more vocal, with the youths being more tongue tied.

All in all, there were 57 visitors over the weekend, 19 on Saturday and 38 today. There was lively interest and discussion of the subjects portrayed, however, as in previous years, purchases were on low value items such as postcards. People are also taking the student notes and polarisation info sheet, many of them not students.

The last days of an era are in progress. The last ever space shuttle mission blasted off for space on Friday and docked with the international space station today.

The first day of my Cambridge Open Studio for 2011

I had probably not got to sleep before 4 AM in the morning and was therefore less than enthusiastic about the inadvertent sounding of the alarm clock at 7 AM. I managed to sleep for another hour or two before reluctantly clambering out of bed and getting ready for the first of my two Cambridge Open Studio weekend days.

The very first task before the studios opened at 11 AM was to assist Mr Cooper in setting up flags at the end of all road and further along the road towards the main route through Milton, to ensure that visitors could easily find both my studio and that of Mrs Cooper who was exhibiting under her artistic name of Alison Hullyer. We met and chatted with some other villagers on the way, gaining some juicy nuggets of gossip on yet another conflict within a village organisation.

Then it was back to direct our gazebo, under which I intended to sit and paint whilst waiting for visitors to appear. My studio was not only clearly marked with the Cambridge Open Studios flag but also with the banner that Mr Burt of Jamy Ltd had prepared for me a couple of years ago for when I was on the plinth. Walking down to the end of our close, I ascertained that anyone walking past and looking in that direction could not fail to miss the fact that there were two studios open along Hall End.
Sounds drifting over from the playing fields at the other end of the village reminded us of the fact that we were competing against the Milton village fair. I had a scant four visitors before lunchtime. However things picked up during the afternoon and by the end of the day, 19 people had visited my studio, meeting the expected average based on prior experience.

Seated under the gazebo, I took the time to practice my Chinese brush painting. The lack of practice over the past few weeks showed and it took some time to get back into the flow. The gradually improving sketches that were done were added to the special board within the exhibition as examples of practice work.

Now that the first day was over, this Sunday and the following weekend would be less stressful as the familiarity of the open studio set in.

The evening was spent reformatting my now old Asus EeePC and installing the new Natty Narwhal version of Ubuntu. This resulted in a more compact use of storage space and gave me more space for my own files on the little netbook, should I so wish.

Good news by text from Mrs Ekblom – she had returned home and was recuperating after a successful operation.

Networking workshop, sand, parasites and a Pet Shop Boys ballet

Miss T suffered an incompetent interviewer today and, as a distraction, accompanied me to the Huntingdonshire Business Network, where I presented the workshop on effective networking. The preparation and effort put in was rewarded by the involvement of the audience, whose contributions enriched the event.

Mr Howell had returned from his holidays on the Greek Islands with a sample of sand, a delightful gift for a microscopist. The sample glittered with the presence of mica and I am sure that there are some foraminifera present too amongst the minerals.

The promise of further microscopical samples came unexpectedly during the later Tutorcloud meeting, when Ms Heeneman declared that she had some zoological slides from her biological days, including a variety of parasites. I look forward to sharing viewing of them with her.

Stayed up overlate tonight to watch the ballet “The Most Incredible Thing”, devised in collaboration with Pet Shop boys and Saddlers Wells. A delight of contemporary dance, interpreting a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale that had its origins in his disillusionment with the increasing militarisation of Germany during the Franco-Prussian War. The same tale was published in rebellion during WWII in Denmark.

Microscopic life in marine tank and the German outbreak of EHEC E. coli

I spent the evening at the microscope, studying both the PMS box ready for despatch and a sample of the debris at the bottom of the marine tank.

The tank sample was buzzing with activity with a range of organisms from different groups represented.

• Crustaceans – very small but several present in a drop of water
• Nematodes – at least one species
• ciliates – several species, the most abundant being an ovoid motile version that possibly contained photosynthetic material
• Amoebae – both monopod and multiple pseudopodia varieties seen
• Blue green algae – abundant
• Diatoms – both elongated rhomboids and chained versions
• Filamentous bacteria

I attempted to video the samples using a variety of lighting systems, darkfield being best for amoeba detail and phase contrast good for the abundant oval ciliates. The recordings need to be uploaded and checked.

News from Germany via family is, that people are very concerned about an E. coli outbreak, referred to as EHEC in German, from “enterohaemorrhagic E. coli”. It is a strain that has a high infectivity, with as few as 100 bacteria sufficing, and produces shiga like toxin which causes severe diarrhoea and can be fatal. It appears to be similar to the E.coli known as O157:H7, which has caused outbreaks in the UK, for example in 2009. The German strain is O104 according to the Hamburg Health Ministry.

The bacteria are spread via fecal contamination, usually of meat. However, the German outbreak has been attributed to contaminated organic cucumbers originating from Spain, Malaga and Almeira. Shiga and shigla like toxins are genes carried by prophages (viruses of bacteria that integrate into the host). They act like the toxin ricin by inhibiting protein synthesis.

As of 2am Tuesday 31st May, the most recent UK Food Standards Agency news item is from 27th May and states that there is currently no evidence that cucumbers have come into the UK from those companies that supplied infected cucumbers to German.

Relevant articles can be found here:

• http://www.hpa.org.uk/NewsCentre/NationalPressReleases/2011PressReleases/110527GermanEcoliupdate/
• http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Food+Safety+Authority+Spanish+cucumbers+infected+with+EHEC+have+not+been+imported+into+Finland/1135266532095
• http://www.bild.de/news/inland/ehec/identifiziert-18094752.bild.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiga_toxin

Pickled specimens and painted ceilings at the Natural History Museum

Miss T. had expressed an interest to visit London, to combine a foray into Oxford Street with a visit to a museum previously unknown to us, the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/petrie). So we, the three remaining family members in Cambridge, set off this morning for the capital, by train from Cambridge, on the last day of sanity before the total mayhem surrounding the Royal Wedding tomorrow.

At King's Cross we separated as I was headed for the Natural History Museum. Laden with different recording technologies – trialled the audio recorder on the tube to gain travel noise, as well as the sounds surrounding the walk from South Kensington Tube station, through the tunnel to the Natural History Museum.


Emerging into the cold wind, the massed queues at the main entrance were visible, so, I entered through the lesser known and therefore queue-less Geological Museum entrance. My destination was the Darwin Centre on the far wing of the Natural History Museum. Having divested myself of equipment, coat etc., I was lucky enough to gain a last place of eight on the 11:45 Spirit Collection Tour.

Today's guide was biological researcher and science communicator at the NHM, Ms Jessica, who gave us an informative and interesting commentary as we descended into the depths of the Darwin Building. Today, the flesh eating beetles, as seen remotely on screen, were snacking on a killer whale tooth, roped into service for science in this instance, rather than romping destructively through the museums exhibits.

The NHM holds over 70 million specimens, many of them original species type reference examples. This is an incredible resource that promises to provide further centuries worth of novel research. The interesting aspect for me was the use of simple industrial methylated spirits (IMS - ethanol – methanol mixtures ) for samples stored in spirit. As a microscopist, the usual immediate preservation mixtures contain fixatives such as formalin (e.g. as in formol acetic acid -FAA for plant samples). However, from a DNA extraction perspective, the IMS has permitted recovery of functional DNA (for sequencing and analysis) from samples over a century old, according to our guide.

We passed the chilled rooms with banks of sample cabinets, kept below the flashpoint of alcohol, to the large sample room. Here I and the group were reacquainted with Archie, the female giant squid, the length of a London bus. It was also a thrill to see the Coelocanth, one of the first to provide real evidence that these living fossils still existed.

Of course, as a biologist, there was a special frisson to see some of the original samples collected by Charles Darwin during his trip on the Beagle; I've read the book, now I've seen some of the actual specimens!

I think this personal interaction between a museum scientist was the highlight of the visit as it brought the exhibits much more vividly to life. Even as a biologist, there is a limit to the excitement engendered by the static collections of pickled animals and plants in jars.

This positive feeling through interaction was repeated when I entered the Cocoon exhibition. The interior spiral path was very reminiscent of the Philips Evoloun Museum that used to exist near Eindhoven in The Netherlands.
But the innovative feature was the giant window into a working lab where a researcher was studying New Forest Blowflies. As visitors, we could see the specimens via a TV feed from the microscope and the researcher was actively talking about what she was doing and open to questions. The fact that blowflies could be used in forensic cases gave an immediate relevance, even for non-scientists.

Memories of DNA sequencing returned when seeing a later exhibit of eppendorfs with autoradiographs of sequencing gels. The initial trials with Maxam and Gilbert chemical sequencing; the gradual transition to Sanger dideoxynucleotide PCR based methods; the shift from using radiolabelled phosphate to the dye based systems. How in the mid eighties I was proud to sequence a few hundred bases of viral sequence, to then routine clone and sequence genes by the end of the nineties. Now, silica based methods allow genome sequencing in a matter of weeks.

On exiting the Cocoon, I chatted with another researcher, Ms Amy, who was specialising in science communication for her PhD and gathering data by interviewing visitors. It looks as if the NHM is again at the forefront of new approaches to communicating science effectively and accessibly for a public otherwise shunning the subject.

Retrieving my recording equipment, I tried taking a short video of the main hall with the old friend , the Diplodocus under Charles Darwin's thoughtful gaze. Then I turned my gaze upwards to the ceiling.

This was actually the result of an aside by Ms Jessica about the construction of the building and the hand-painted ceiling of the main hall with botanic motifs. As previously with Ely Cathedral, I attempted to photograph the ceiling panels in sections along the length of the hall. As ever, the column decorations caught my eye as the Victorian exuberant decoration meant that each aisle had different column designs.

Before I departed, I also took some photos of the Reeves commisioned botanical illustrations by Chinese artists and one or two of the modern examples – both to show Botanical illustrator, painter and friend Mrs Heather Maunders and as references relevant to my current Chinese Brush Painting course with artist Jane Evans.

The afternoon was then spent in reunion with the rest of the family at the Petrie Museum, where, on this first ever visit, I mainly recorded the pottery relative the different epochs. Something I will write upon when having evaluated the images.

The early bird gets late to work. On focal depth.

A very short night, arising at 5am to take Mr T to Stansted Airport. Arriving at 6:15am, the airport seemed remarkably quiet, without the usual massed queues around the check-in desks of the bargain flight airlines. Even the queues through security were shorter. Having ensured that there were no last minute glitches to Mr T's departure, I wandered outside to the viewing area to the south. The intention was to record the noisy take-off of the passenger jets with my new audio recorder. The wind noise was too great and I lacked the microphone windshields, which were still in the post, so I desisted from further recording attempts.

I was therefore back in Milton by 8am and went back to bed for a couple of hours catch up sleep.

Ironically, this meant a late start to work, despite an early rise. Working on a design for a German client's flyer therefore extended into the evening, with the draft not entering the internet till past 8pm.

Yesterdays photos of patterns created by airbubbles in microscope slides were uploaded. Each scene was photographed as a series of images at different foci. Using an indispensable tool, the program Helicon Focus, These were assembled and a composite generated, featuring all elements that were in focus. The results were pleasing on the most part but the process was time consuming.

The process is necessitated because of the very narrow depth of field at high magnification, a consequence of the microscope objective lens being so close to the sample (the higher the magnification, the closer the lens is to the subject). The principle can be illustrated simply. The reader is invited to look out of the window and fix their gaze on a plant or object 30 or forty yards away. Without shifting the centre of attention, note that objects behind the centre of attention are in focus for a considerable distance beyond.

Now peruse a book or screen at a reading distance of about 18 inches and attempt to gauge the clarity of objects beyond without changing the focus on the nearby object. In this instance, objects such as a finger held closer to the nose or flowers at the other end of the room are out of focus. The focal depth, equivalent to the distance over which objects appear in focus, is decreased.

A low power microscope objective may be a couple of centimeters from the sample and the focal depth is reduced to no more than a millimeter above or below the focal point. At higher magnifications, the focal depth is within a tenth to a hundredth of a millimeter, so that in effect one is viewing optical slices through a transparent object.

With a microscope, the viewer gains a perception of the subject by moving the focus up and down. The phenomenon can be mimicked by a video or film recording of the same process. However, a still photograph will be a slice at one focal plane. Software such as Helicon Focus computes the areas in focus from a number of different images of the same object at different focal planes, creating a so called focus stack. It works particularly well with opaque objects and generally well with transparent ones.

Book proof editing and microscopic life in the marine tank

The cloudy day was less of a distraction on the return to work. It is said that it is the last five percent of any task that are the most time consuming and this is certainly the case with Mr McArthur's book, which required minor edits and re-generation of a cover design for renewed checking and approval.  Also had to go through the digital text to identify page numbers for text amendments required, to be passed on to the printer. Since this book has numerous colour photographs, there was also an ongoing discussion on colour reproduction and the quality of the printing. Todays task ended with a trip to the post office to post the 5 pounds weight of printed material back to the printers. By this time it was early afternoon and time for a late lunch.

The marine aquarium was still engendering interest in the evening.  Whilst the Idotea linearis and Gammarus had not been in evidence for several days now, the minute bivalves were visibly increased in size and the barnacles could be seen actively feeding. The latter having single arms that emerged with a net like "hand", grasping in rapid sweeps through the water. No matter how vigorously the water was stirred, once the coarse sediment settled out, the fine turbidity was rapidly cleared by the filter feeders, leaving the water glass transparent within  the hour.

Shining a torch beam through the tank at night showed a myriad of small motile spots spiralling towards the light in the tank. So tonight, I took some sediment and placed it under the microscope for a quick glance. It was brimming with life when viewed at 40x magnification, with a few larger crustaceans, nematodes and many smaller animalcules. An attempt to use higher magnification was initially unsuccessful, primarily because the creatures were all moving so fast. It will be interesting to see what emerges from this soup of organisms over the coming months.

The microscope out, I also looked at a collection of pollen samples from the Postal Microscopical Society box that was due to be passed on to the next member in the circuit. The pollen had been prepared in glycerine jelly on slides and the slides had not all been sealed. In the intervening twenty years, the slides were slowly drying out. Whilst his was frustrating from a biological point of view, because the pollen was now obscured by air bubbles, the fine filigree patterns of encroaching air in the glycerol and minor interference effects created stunning patterns when viewed using phase contrast illumination. The camera was put to good use!

Video editing and a potential Balsam Post article

Another gorgeous day. A quick glance into the aquarium revealed the the barnacles were actively feeding, so a quick stir (mimicking the returning tide) to make the water turbid for them and the small molluscs that were now almost 2mm in diameter.

Domestic chores were completed with the mowing of the lawns and then onto editing the videos taken on the beach yesterday. I had a range of short films, covering birds, starfish, hermit crabs and others. Their editing with Corel VideoStudio began.  It is amazing how what might seem reasonable when recorded would turn out to be too poor to use on a larger screen. So each recording required editing where only a fraction might end up being used. The other element is also to try and arrange a series of short scenes into a thread that might have little bearing on the chronological order of their being taken. A fit of nausea and headache in the afternoon put paid to completion today.

Feeling better in the evening again, there was another task to complete; an article for the Balsam Post, in response to Mir Ives', the editor, request for entries before the submission deadline for the next quarterly edition. I chose to write about the invitation by Miss Fleming and Mr Snoswell to investigate the small threads in their pond as these turned out to be the fascinating giant single celled organism, Spirostomum ambiguum. A suitable subject for the Balsam Post, the quarterly newsletter of the Postal Microscopical Society. Article written and posted to Mr Ives tonight.

Birthday trip to the seaside, a child lost and found and the great Belzoni in Egypt

Today was Miss T.'s birthday and she had requested a visit to the seaside in the company of her friend Miss Garner. The sun shone favourably upon us as we set forth by car shortly before eleven am up the A10 to Hunstanton. In contrast to the same journey a fortnight ago, we found ourselves joining an ever increasing queue of sun-seekers with the same destination in mind. This necessitated a detour via Dersingham to avoid the crawling traffic.

On arrival, we first descended, or rather ascended to the Lighthouse Cafe for a luncheon and beverage. During our meal, the proprietress returned with a young girl, about three to four years of age, who had been found wandering lost and alone outside on the cliff path. Staff comforted her and kept her company till the arrival of the police in the shape of two reassuring young men who put the child at ease and carried the girl down the hill, reuniting the child with the relieved parents.

The first task on the beach was building a dam, something the ladies took to with alacrity and determination until in time honoured fashion, the rising waters in the blocked channel broke through.

The tide was ebbing and we had a long walk to find the actual sea. The feet sensed the transition from different sands, through silt to the final mud that oozed between the toes. I ventured further as the mussel and tube worm banks were gradually being exposed leaving pools.

Having seen Idotea linearis for the first time on the last visit, I encountered several more this time. To my delight, hermit crabs in periwinkle shells scurried across pools. If two encountered each other there would be a shocked pause and a scurrying apart.

Other finds included a periwinkle with barnacles that could be seen to be feeding in the still waters. Whilst the mussels appeared resolutely closed, the occasional cockle on the surface could be seen feeding with the shell slightly agape.

This being a particularly low tide, Miss Garner and I found no less than four common starfish. I thought the first dead until I turned it over and the tuber feet emerged questing vigorously for purchase until I returned the echinoderm right way up. I had just commented to Miss Garner on the regenerative ability of starfish to regrow lost limbs when she found a four armed specimen with a small fifth arm beginning to grow back.

Despite the disruption of people wandering along the shore line, feeding avocets and possibly knot wandered across the shell mounds. The gulls were still nesting in the cliffs and this time I made sure that I recorded these successfully (my previous photographs failed to capture them) with the camcorder.

Back home, I tried separating the light shell fraction from sand collected from the beach by washing it off into a dish from a plate, in a reverse of panning for gold. This was quite successful on first investigation with the stereomicroscope and the enriched fraction is now drying for future study on the window sill.

My marine aquarium also had three new additions; some red algal fronds, a mussel shell with two small barnacles and a stone with strange encrustations for future study.

For her birthday, Miss T had received a video set on ancient Egypt and we watched an episode, recounting the story of Giovanni Battista Belzoni and his recovery of the head of Rameses the great for the British Museum in the early 1800s. The program frequently referred to Belzoni's diary and I was delighted to find that Google Books had both a facsimile and a text version of "Narrative of the operations and recent discoveries within the pyramids, temples, tombs and excavations in Egypt and Nubia: and of a journey to the coast of the Red Sea in search of the ancient Berenice, and another to the Oasis of Jupiter Ammon, Volume 1" by Giovanni Battista Belzoni. Something I will have to read later.

Book print proofs, translations and Icelandic horses

An early morning delivery brought a mighty package from the book printers, containing the digital proof of Mr McArthurs book. At a potential spine width of several inches, this was in marked contrast with the expected 18mm. The mystery was explained by the use of thicker photographic paper, printed on one side - a relief! Mr McArthur dropped by to collect the draft for review.

The days activities concentrated on translations of German texts into English for two companies. The first translation suffered a delay as I had tried using an Open Source program OmegaT for the first time over the weekend. Saving the translated file into the same directory as the origination file resulted in wiping the source file clean. Lesson learnt, I created a separate destination folder and finally obtained the literal translation.

Then begins the more difficult task, converting the literal translation, with the idiosyncrasies of grammar and sentence construction of the source language, into more native English. One task completed, the next translation beckoned.

This evening, a meeting with Mrs Guðbjörnsdóttir from Iceland, who was travelling through the UK on business for the company Ishestar, a bespoke Icelandic holiday specialist.  What came through was an abiding undercurrent of love for Icelandic horses.

The first ancestors of the Icelandic horse arrived with the Vikings in the 10th century and were subsequently bred into the current small horse. From 982 AD the Icelandic parliament banned the import of horses to Iceland, so that the breed has been pure bred for over 1000 years. Also, once an Icelandic horse leaves the island, it is not permitted to return.

As a microscopist, I noted the double coat for thermal insulation in the no doubt chill winters. An immediate endearing feature is their bred ability for an additional gait, the tölt, which is apparently ground covering yet comfortable at a variety of speeds for the rider.

The television news appears to be divided between the increasingly dire situation in the besieged Libyan city of Misrata and the impending Royal Wedding. The wedding dominates today with the momentous news that there are commoners in the bride to be's lineage on her mother's side.