19/07/2026

My birdwatching goals

As I have moved to making larger posts like this one rather than one line posts whenever I like I found that I didn't really have a need for the photos page anymore as I will be incorporating images into my posts where necessary. There's no relevant image to go with this but here's a picture of my cat to prove the point:

You'll notice that the old pictures page has now been replaced by my birdwatching list! You'll see a brief description of my aims with that page at the top of it so I won't repeat myself here but I did want to go into detail about technical choices I have taken regarding implementing it to my site as well as how the challenge itself works.

Firstly, the images aren't going to be on my site for now. I'm worried that having 100 images of birds on my site might very quickly fill up the 1GB allowance I get so I have chosen to host them on Flickr instead. I'm not too impressed by Flickr, it has a few too many annoying ads for my liking which I think intrude on the viewing experience a little bit too much so once I get a few more images and I am able to calculate how much space they will take I might move to putting them straight onto the page.

Secondly, let me elaborate a bit on how the challenge works and how I am going to go about completing it. First of all I have to be present for every image that is taken. This is so I can't have a friend send a picture of a crow they saw at the weekend and use that however if I am with someone and a crow lands in front of us and they have their phone out and I don't then they are allowed to take the picture for me. The next rule is that the pictures have to actually be good. I can't just take a picture of something flying above me and say "it's an eagle, trust me", they have to be recognisable. This is a reason why I haven't ticked off some very common birds yet, I'm just waiting to get a good picture. The final rule is that the birds have to be wild, I can't just go to a zoo and tick off 10 in a day although I might cheat and break this rule if I am really struggling towards the end of the challenge...

The site adverts

I realised after changing my site homepage that, for new people visiting my site, they might be very confused by why there are some very strange pictures at the bottom of the screen. I promise these images all made perfect sense under the old system and I've not just lost my mind lol. They were all sponsors that my site had under the old look and I liked them so chose to keep them in the new look. Eventually when I make enough posts they will be pushed further and further down the page so new people will rarely see them but for now they are very in your face which I apologies about! I did consider removing them but they give the page some character (as well as me some money) so I will be keeping them for now until I have a midlife crisis and try to make my page minimalist and sleek.

An insight into my mind

So I was talking with a friend yesterday and I asked him what the weirdest thing he does is. He said he didn't do anything weird (lies) so I gave him an example of something weird I did. It was a game I play when I am bored and looking at a wall but I struggled to explain it to him and I realised I have never actually explained it to anyone so I am going to give it a try here.

So first of all to play you need shapes on a wall. A wall with lots of pictures on it is perfect but any shape works. Here's an image I found of a good wall:

Now you pick a starting point and an end goal and you work out how to get there. The only way you can move is along the straight edge of what you're already on or bouncing to the other opposite wall. You can't move around corners unless they are a smooth transition. Here is a diagram of how movement works:

If you encounter a curved item or diagonal line these are great as they let you shift the direction of you bounce to allow you to reach new lines you weren't able to get to before which is a very important technique when playing at a high level! You can see a demonstration of how this works here:

There are a few times when you are playing across 2 walls and in those cases I do allow the 'thing' to pass along the crease in the curve in the all but I would recommend beginners just stick to the one wall.

I think that's about it for rules, there's not much to it. I'm not even sure I have defined what the thing you play as in my head. I like to think of as a cube that bounces around but I'm not sure it matters. And now that I think about it this would make a great easy to create game! (How has this post turned into another game idea.)

Anyway there's probably some deep phycological reason why I play this game and I've never really stopped to think of why I play. I guess I just like the problem solving aspect of it and working out how to overcome an issue. I do play it a LOT though so I should be an expert at solving problems by now if I've had this much practice! The chances are if I've been left in room on my own I've probably played it in there lol.