Hullo from Sutherland

Lets get to know each other better. Here's a forum to post images and short autobiographies of ourselves as well as any other info you would like to post about yourself.

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SutherlandDesmids
Posts: 22
Joined: Sun Nov 25, 2018 6:07 am
Location: Sutherland, Scotland

Hullo from Sutherland

Post by SutherlandDesmids »

Here's my ugly mug!

Image

A young serious and extraordinarily dull amateur phycologist.

I am sadly very ignorant about photomicrography but eager to learn. I've always made very bad sketches with my student microscope and am particularly fascinated with image-stacking software, which seems to me to remove the principal disadvantage of photomicrographs in that they only capture one optical plane and in the past it was perhaps better to draw slowly across all the planes using the fine focus.

What shall I say about myself? I was fortunate enough to study botany and zoology under the late Alan E. Joyce, a noted amateur desmidologist, and the desmids are my great love.

Apart from scientific interests, I am very fond of country walks, of dogs in general (my grandfather showed Old English Sheepdogs) devoted to my family and to my ''home county'' (I was born in Glasgow, but have been in Sutherland since I was one). I
Last edited by SutherlandDesmids on Sun Dec 23, 2018 9:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
Patrick J.K.C. Gray

Harald
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Joined: Fri May 13, 2011 10:33 am
Location: Steinberg, Norway
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Post by Harald »

Hi there Patrick,
Welcome to the forum. There are a lot of great people in this forum.
Hope to see some images from you in the near future... :D
Kind Regards
Harald

Lier Fotoklubb / NSFF
AFIAP / CPS
BGF / GMV
http://www.500px.com/blender11

rjlittlefield
Site Admin
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Location: Richland, Washington State, USA
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Post by rjlittlefield »

Patrick, welcome aboard!

I will let other people answer your questions about microscopy.

But I personally will assure you that your prose style and sense of humor, as shown here, will fit in just fine at photomacrography.net. :D

--Rik

Alan Wood
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Joined: Wed Dec 29, 2010 3:09 pm
Location: Near London, U.K.
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Post by Alan Wood »

Hello Patrick

Welcome from another microscopist who suffers/benefits from Asperger's Syndrome.

You live a long way from most meetings organised by the Quekett Microscopical Club, but perhaps you could get to Windermere? In 2017, we had a joint weekend with the British Phycological Society:
http://www.quekett.org/about/reports/20 ... ere-public

We are repeating the event in 2019:
http://www.quekett.org/about/programme#sep20

Alan Wood

Ulrik Tønnesen
Posts: 16
Joined: Thu Nov 22, 2018 7:35 am
Location: Denmark

Post by Ulrik Tønnesen »

I'm an Aspie myself ;)

SutherlandDesmids
Posts: 22
Joined: Sun Nov 25, 2018 6:07 am
Location: Sutherland, Scotland

Post by SutherlandDesmids »

There seem to be quite a few of us :D !

@ Alan Wood -- I shall join the Quekett in the New Year once the Christmas festivities are over (not my favourite time of year -- an unrepentant Grinch who just wants peace, quiet and no bloody lights :twisted:!) and shall certainly get down.

A slightly clearer, but no less hideous, photograph:

Image

I don't know if any of you were put through the meat-grinder of high-school Latin (I loved it -- reams of systematic information, a situation found in no other 'artistic' subject [I was appalling at literature, with the curious exception of 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' by Thomas Hardy, my essay getting my only ever A in that subject] and still prefer read textbooks in bed], but catnip for the Asperger's mind!), but if you were, I'll include the title I put on the back of this photograph -- ''monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens''!
Patrick J.K.C. Gray

ChrisR
Site Admin
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Location: Near London, UK

Post by ChrisR »

put through the meat-grinder of high-school Latin
Indeed, and I was told it would be useful.
They lied!
Chris R

SutherlandDesmids
Posts: 22
Joined: Sun Nov 25, 2018 6:07 am
Location: Sutherland, Scotland

Post by SutherlandDesmids »

Oh, I don't know -- Greek and Latin have their uses: my first reward for slaving was to immediately understand the meaning of 'epilimnion', 'hypolimnion', 'thermocline', oligo- and eutrophic when I first picked up T.T. Macan's volume on freshwater biology in the Collins New Naturalist series.

Also Linnaean names and scientific vocabulary in general -- off the top of my head cephalothorax (Greek, head-chest), latissimus dorsi (a muscle, broadest of the back) and for sheer charm 'Fratercula arctica' (the Atlantic puffin, little friar of the Arctic).

But as for use in day-to-day life, I'm afraid as you found it's claptrap!
Patrick J.K.C. Gray

SutherlandDesmids
Posts: 22
Joined: Sun Nov 25, 2018 6:07 am
Location: Sutherland, Scotland

Post by SutherlandDesmids »

Not a good winter at all. Most of it is a blur of antipsychotic drugs and I here publicly apologise for any people I have mistreated by crashing out.

Nevertheless, the most erratic of microscopists is back on his sorry nag!
Patrick J.K.C. Gray

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