29.03.2021 Talking to myself again.

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Monday 29th 44F, heavy overcast, wet and windy. 

It is amusing to read "The Stats" for visitors to my blog[s].  A small but steady stream of visitors must be all but accidental. Turning up as the result of some random search. Those who return, for a second look, are so few and far between as to be almost a rarity. At least, according to "The Stats."

In a way this is quite freeing. Since it allows to me to continue my scribbling of my [almost] private build diary. Without needing to maintain visitor numbers. Perhaps in a vain attempt to be "popular" or an "influencer" or to encourage advertising. [Which I detest!] If a visitor learns a better, different or cheaper way of doing something then that is certainly a bonus.

I have no illusions that my "literary efforts" and amateur photography are anything, but largely for my own amusement. They are simply a record of what I thought and did about a particular build or technical problem. Usually associated with building or housing my own instrumentation for amateur astronomy. 

My other blogs are similarly [very] "narrow interest." You just don't find many people doing what I do daily. Always with such enthusiasm and at considerable [often exhausting] physical effort and expense. 

Even my interests, within these unusual hobbies, are certainly not mainstream. Few others obsess over capturing close-ups of the sun in H-alpha like I do. Who else, but myself and a vanishingly small number of others, build foolishly large domes? Then place them on top of self-built "observatories" high enough to see over the garden hedges? Always while working entirely alone. Without any professional help, hired machines, or extra labour and usually on a foolishly small budget. 

The journey is the thing. When I look up at the last dome, high on its perch, it seems almost unbelievable that it exists through my own physical efforts. I was only 72 at the time and certainly no professional builder. That the plywood dome now leaks, like a sieve, drove me to build something "bigger and better." Out of a ready-made, hemispherical, animal shelter. In [hopefully] fully waterproof GRP. Well, they build boats out of the stuff, don't they?

I spent countless hours and literally hundreds of pounds/dollars equivalent. While risking my life at worrying heights, on lashed together ladders. Applying the "highest quality, marine sealants" and wasted every, single penny and every, single moment. 

I have no desire to coat the present, plywood dome in fibreglass. Hopefully my latest "inverted coracle" will remain afloat as well as aloft. Without the need for constant bailing. If this sort of thing interests you, then welcome to my personal madhouse. 

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