So What Will You Do ?

[BTM_Pix]

So, radio stations all across Europe had a show of support and solidarity by all simultaneously playing "You'll Never Walk Alone" at 08:45 this morning.

What a lovely gesture and sentiment and as a native of Liverpool and Liverpool FC fan this song has a very special meaning to me personally for multiple reasons.

After the events of yesterday, I can't say the irony isn't lost on me though !

"You'll Be Arrested If You Don't Walk Alone And Quite Possibly Even If You Are Walking Alone (without a dog)" would have been more apt this morning  

https://www.nme.com/news/music/coronavirus-radio-stations-play-youll-never-walk-alone-at-same-time-in-show-of-solidarity-2632363

[heart0less]

Hilarious!

[Emanuel]

https://***URL not allowed***/coronavirus-filmmakers-jobs/

[noone]

Maybe good news!      Australian scientists seem to have had some success killing the virus using a combination of existing drugs (HIV and Malaria drugs) in a limited clinical trial.     They are now going to fast track roll it out to a full trial at a lot of hospitals around Australia! (almost seems like the full "trial" will be a lot more than that).

 

 

[IronFilm]

On 3/20/2020 at 1:25 AM, Geoff CB said:

- Inventory all my gear and sell what I don't need.

Do this sooner rather than later!
Before the great recession hits again and the market is flooded with used gear. 

 

On 3/20/2020 at 1:25 AM, Geoff CB said:

- Doing a deep-dive Review/Instruction video for the Sony F3

Ohhhh... I'd be very much looking forward to that!
(and I've got plenty of spare time now to watch it....)

 

On 3/20/2020 at 1:25 AM, Geoff CB said:

- Doing more camera tests with my wife, who agrees to it only to prevent me going stir crazy. 

Very gracious of her! 

  

On 3/20/2020 at 10:18 AM, BTM_Pix said:

Of all the insults he brought forth on me, I think the worst one was him taking pictures of me with such a shitty zoom kit lens on that Nikon.

He should help "stimulate this economy" by buying himself a Nikon 200-500mm lens instead

[BTM_Pix]

5 hours ago, IronFilm said:

He should help "stimulate this economy" by buying himself a Nikon 200-500mm lens instead

Again though, its f5.6 so I'm going to feel personally slighted with anything above an f4 particularly on a crop body like the one he was attempting to conceal.

[IronFilm]

At least with a crop body you can get pretty good reach with even the standard 70-200mm f2.8!

 

[leslie]

On 3/20/2020 at 9:14 AM, Grimor said:

LOL!! 

I will pay your bail to get you out of jail.
or better yet, tell them you know me!
You have been lucky that he is the self-styled warrior of isolation and not a real policeman self-styled warrior (which of these there are also, although luckily less)

be aware you would then owe grimor a favor 😲

[leslie]

On 3/20/2020 at 9:46 AM, BTM_Pix said:

In all seriousness I fully support the restrictions and I'm annoyed at myself for not knowing about today's addition to it.

Particularly as this lunatic has now reset my own danger of exposure clock again when it was only a few days from running out by screaming in my face.

The rage and hatred he had for me was incredible though as usually people only reach that point with me when we've been formally introduced at least

Oh well, he'll have plenty of justification when true boredom sets in on day 13 and I fly my drone off the roof to pick up stray dog turds off the golf course and drop them all over his garden.

your drone has robotic arms why am i not supprised 🙄

[BTM_Pix]

Day 13

Had very stormy weather here for the past few days.

Its weird the mood lowering effect that miserable weather has on you when you can't actually go out anyway as you'd imagine it would be the other way round and it being sunny would piss you off as you couldn't go out and enjoy it!

The mood wasn't exactly enhanced late last night by us having repeated power cuts in the apartment and trying to trace what was causing it to trip.

Even under normal circumstances, this situation would have you fearing for the contents of your fridge and freezer until you could get an electrician in but these are far from normal circumstances and of course those contents are now absolutely critical.

Particularly because there is literally zero chance of getting an electrician until the now extended lockdown is over. 

Squeaky bum time as the phrase has it.

After a couple of hours of isolating every circuit and power drawing source we finally traced it and re-configured the whole house with a mass of extensions and distribution blocks to be able to stably run the house at a minimal level from the one stable circuit that has (2) plug outlets. 

The big fear though was not knowing if it has tripped again during the night when we are asleep and waking up to a large chunk of our food supply being lost so some improvisation was required !

What I came up with was to use the wifi router as the canary in a coal mine and write some code for a board that enables it to connect to it and then set off a flashing screen and alarm if it loses the connection which, obviously, would mean that the router had lost power and hence the power must have tripped.

And this racket would then, theoretically, wake us up although as I had slept through the storm the previous evening that had likely played a part in this then who knows !

Of course sod's law would dictate that the power sockets in the bedroom were not part of the golden sockets so it had to be run on a USB power bank that thankfully we had fully charged the day before.

So, it all felt a bit desert island castaway improvisation but it worked and provided a bit of a diversion from the increasingly sapping effect of the confinement.

 

[IronFilm]

3 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

The mood wasn't exactly enhanced late last night by us having repeated power cuts in the apartment and trying to trace what was causing it to trip.

Even under normal circumstances, this situation would have you fearing for the contents of your fridge and freezer until you could get an electrician in but these are far from normal circumstances and of course those contents are now absolutely critical.

Particularly because there is literally zero chance of getting an electrician until the now extended lockdown is over. 

On my last day of freedom yesterday before martial law fell down upon us, I went out and purchased a total of 50 meters (that is 164ft for you Americans) of extension cables! Just in case I need to run power into my office/home from somewhere else in an emergency, should just for our part the electricity happen to fail :-/ 

Also going to be useful for if I want to set up lights for youtube videos nearby (but of course still within our self isolation office building!! Not outside, just like say the lobby downstairs). And of course after the lock down, long stingers are always handy to have on film sets! So buying 50m worth won't be totally money wasted. 

[BTM_Pix]

10 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

On my last day of freedom yesterday before martial law fell down upon us, I went out and purchased a total of 50 meters (that is 164ft for you Americans) of extension cables! Just in case I need to run power into my office/home from somewhere else in an emergency, should just for our part the electricity happen to fail 😕

Also going to be useful for if I want to set up lights for youtube videos nearby (but of course still within our self isolation office building!! Not outside, just like say the lobby downstairs). And of course after the lock down, long stingers are always handy to have on film sets!

Its all gone a bit Lord Of The Flies here so the last thing we were able to do was ask a neighbour if we could tap into their power for a while unfortunately !

I have one of these souped up rechargeable power packs that has an inverter in that we have because we have had the odd earthquake tremor that has taken out power before but I'm buggered if I can find it now when I actually need it. 

A couple of months ago I came across it when looking for something else and did that mental note of "what the fuck are you doing in there?" when something is in entirely the wrong place but I can't remember where.

Not that it would have been charged though !

I've got a horrible feeling that these lockdowns will be re-introduced periodically here over the next few months at least so as soon as this (now extended) one is up I'm going to look at some proper power backup solutions.

Solar is the most obvious solution for us here in Spain as we probably could just about eek out enough with a 400w motorhome sized system to get by without turning the upstairs terrace of the apartment into a full on solar farm.

I'm thinking of a small petrol generator as well as a last resort but even in the hostile environment we find ourselves in now I'm still too polite to have the noise of it annoy the neighbours. Though the promise to shut the racket off could be a good bargaining tool to get the neighbours to throw us an extension cord !

Having said all that, I probably have enough capacity in the embarrassingly large number of camera batteries that I've got to power the whole street for a few days  

[IronFilm]

Went for a sneaky walk at night just now, so that I don't end up catching cabin fever instead while trying to avoid catching the coronavirus. 

But ten minutes into my walk, when I was about to take a photo of a night scene which had caught my fancy, I realized I'd left home having forgotten to put an SD card inside my Fuji!
 

19 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

I've got a horrible feeling that these lockdowns will be re-introduced periodically here over the next few months at least so as soon as this (now extended) one is up I'm going to look at some proper power backup solutions.

Replace the word "months" with "years" I fear, now that the powers that be realize how easy it is to introduce these measures!

[BTM_Pix]

5 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

Went for a sneaky walk at night just now, so that I don't end up catching cabin fever instead while trying to avoid catching the coronavirus. 

But ten minutes into my walk, when I was about to take a photo of a night scene which had caught my fancy, I realized I'd left home having forgotten to put an SD card inside my Fuji!
 

Wait till you've been in lockdown long enough to get a paramilitary wing of the neighbourhood watch there.

Forget an SD card in your Fuji, you'll be panicking if you forgot to put a clip in your Uzi if they catch you out for a walk  

5 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

Replace the word "months" with "years" I fear, now that the powers that be realize how easy it is to introduce these measures!

When I first used to come to Spain as a kid in the 70s, the country was still a military dictatorship so the change to democracy, for obvious reasons, brought with it a new constitution and laws that clarified and time limited the circumstances under which the government could essentially use direct control again.

There are three exceptional states the country can be declared to be in (Alarm, Emergency and Siege) with different powers in the case of each. 

We are currently in 'Alarm' which enabled the government to impose specified powers for a limit 15 days and only extend it through a confirmatory vote by the rest of parliament, which it did in the early hours of this morning so we now have another 15 days.

So, yeah, these powers can (and will) be imposed swiftly when necessary and I do foresee similar 15 day periods imposed in the future to counter new outbreaks.

I actually think its a positive that they have such clarity in these powers enshrined in the constitution though, particularly when I compare it with the UK where the lockdown such as it is has been so ill defined, not as comprehensive and dripped in. The UK had to waste many days drafting and getting an emergency bill through parliament to support some of the measures and the time limit with which they can enforce it is two years which, thankfully, was voted down to have a six month review as some of the powers it offered are a bit onerous if they remained active in a period where there was no threat.

[IronFilm]

9 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

Wait till you've been in lockdown long enough to get a paramilitary wing of the neighbourhood watch there.

At this point in time nothing would surprise me. 

If you'd said to me a few months ago we'll have soon a martial law lockdown with everyone in the entire country stuck at home I'd look at you like a loony conspiracy theorist.  

Kinda think we've lost a little of the ability to judge conspiracy theorists as crazy foaming mad loonies. Who knows now. 

Oh well. 
 

9 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

Wait till you've been in lockdown long enough to get a paramilitary wing of the neighbourhood watch there.

A few days ago (pre lock down) when mum dropped by for a final goodbye ("safely", at a distance. #socialdistancing) my girlfriend seriously floated the idea of buying rifle. That surprised me, never would have expected that seriously from her. But then again she's from an actually communist state, and has a lived experience which is quite different to my own as to just how far government overreach can go. Hope not. 
 

9 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

We are currently in 'Alarm' which enabled the government to impose specified powers for a limit 15 days and only extend it through a confirmatory vote by the rest of parliament, which it did in the early hours of this morning so we now have another 15 days.

Don't be surprised if it gets extended for a third and fourth block of 15 days!

 

9 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

The UK had to waste many days drafting and getting an emergency bill through parliament to support some of the measures and the time limit with which they can enforce it is two years which, thankfully, was voted down to have a six month review as some of the powers it offered are a bit onerous if they remained active in a period where there was no threat.

I honestly think ALL LAWS should have a time limit to them (be it a couple of years or even a decade, not too picky about the number), if it is a good law today then it should be a good law tomorrow as well. 

And if it is such a good law, then it should be easily passed again with a quick yes/no vote to extend it when it comes up for renewal again. (and if it is a contentious law that it can't pass again, well perhaps it wasn't a law we needed in the first place? Or perhaps it just needs this pause for a rethink and a rewrite to improve it?)

Also I really do not mind at all if politicians are kept busy renewing old expiring laws, rather than running around trying to think up new laws for how to run our lives. 
 

[BTM_Pix]

14 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

A few days ago (pre lock down) when mum dropped by for a final goodbye ("safely", at a distance. #socialdistancing) my girlfriend seriously floated the idea of buying rifle.

Fucking hell, sounds like they don't get on then

 

[leslie]

11 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Went for a sneaky walk at night just now, so that I don't end up catching cabin fever instead while trying to avoid catching the coronavirus. 

But ten minutes into my walk, when I was about to take a photo of a night scene which had caught my fancy, I realized I'd left home having forgotten to put an SD card inside my Fuji!
 

your not alone .... i have forgot to insert a card into the pk4 precisely once so far 🙄

[IronFilm]

1 hour ago, BTM_Pix said:

Fucking hell, sounds like they don't get on then

Haha, nooooo.... she's known my mum for the better part of a decade! They get along just fine. Don't think she'll be murdering her (or me?) when the purge sounds. 

 

 

[TurboRat]

Recently lost a full time contract because of covid. Can't sell my gear because it's pretty strict here. Currently looking for ways / ideas to earn during these times.  Might be time to create content during lockdown

[BTM_Pix]

Well the total lockdown has now been extended here in Spain again so I've officially got until April 26th to finish all those projects in my initial post that I haven't even started.

Phew.