iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Bought a "parts only" Psion Organiser II off eBay because I needed three of its components. It's very unusual to find a non-working Organiser without physical damage. Turns out to work perfectly - the seller had the screen contrast set to zero!

In the centre of the image, a Psion Organiser II CM displays its main menu. It has a two-line LCD non-backlit display. To the left is the Psion Catalogue that lists available accessories; to the right, the Organiser's user manual.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Ordered an SD card for overnight delivery from Amazon (bad mistake). Nothing arrived. Spent 5 days arguing with Amazon's AI assistant, which insisted it might still magically turn up. Working in the back garden today, I found the parcel - it had been thrown over our back wall and eaten by snails.

An Amazon envelope lying on some soil with small plants and empty snail shells around it. Snails have severely chewed the envelope, which has several holes in it.

There is a house brick supporting a plant pot to the envelope's left, the rim of another plant pot to the lower left, and the edge of a plastic planter to the right.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Noticing my original Psion Organiser II LZ64 was pretty grubby, I spent an exciting hour cleaning it, but it still looks like it belonged to a heavy smoker. I'm intrigued by the colour of the numerical keys' surround. It always was yellow, but the CM and my other LZ64 are light cyan.

Three Psion Organiser II PDAs sitting on a green craft board. The device on the left is a recently purchased LZ64 with its keyboard cover slid open to expose the keyboard. The area surrounding the numerical keys is light cyan.

The device in the middle is another LZ64, but missing the keyboard cover. The keyboard is still rather grubby, and the area around the numerical keys is light yellow.

The device on the right is an Organiser II CM. It has the keyboard cover slid open. The area around the numerical keys is a similar light cyan as the Organiser on the right, though it looks darker in the photo.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Obligatory eclipse colander shot. This was at 19:15, just about totality here in London, UK.

Photo of the crescents created by the eclipse light shining through a colander about a metre from a white sheet of paper. The black shadow of the colander is is decorated by a pattern of overlapping white crescents in the layout of the holes in the colander.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Nice eclipse crescents in the kitchen created by the buddleia just outside the window.

A kitchen counter with knife blocks and various glass containers. Above is the brown wood door of a cupboard which is lit up with crescent images of the eclipse created by the light streaming through the buddleia outside.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Quite pleased with the Heath Robinson solution to getting eclipse pictures with the phone and cut up eclipse glasses. Unfortunately I left it too late to get a ND x16 filter for the Sony Alpha. This was at 19:06.

Just a small crescent segment of the sun visible behind the moon at 19:06, shortly before totality.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Quick camera test before the eclipse starts. Half a pair of eclipse glasses gaffer taped to the back of my phone.

The sun is seen at the top of the photo - a bright orange disk with a reddish halo around it. The vague outline of the roofs of two houses can be made out at the bottom of the photo.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

A few weeks ago, my wife had some ginger root left over from making ginger tea and stuck it in a spare plant pot on the windowsill. Within days, two pseudostems started growing. The taller has started unrolling into leaves, and the process, like complicated origami, has kept us spellbound.

The tip of a ginger pseudostem (actually made up of rolled leaves) bent through 180 degrees as it extricates itself from one of the leaves that has recently unrolled. A second leaf can be seen in the background with its tip just above the main stem. The leaf surfaces are green, and the light shining through them reveals parallel white striations. The pseudostem is green, but looks black as the window behind it backlights the plant.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

The Psion Organiser II LZ64 has arrived along with a couple of 64K RAM Datapaks. Time to resurrect my OPL programming skills. The Organiser II CM with its two-line display and 8 KB of RAM revolutionised my life back in 1986, and I've never been without some kind of PDA within reach since.

A Psion Organiser with a massive 128 K of RAM.

The top half of a Psion Organiser II LZ64. It has a four-line by 20-character LCD with a grey metal surround. The second row of the display says "Hello World."

It says "PSION ORGANISER II" above the display and "MODEL LZ64" below, with a yellow line underneath dividing the screen from the keyboard.

Only the first four lines of the six-key-wide keyboard can be seen. The keys are small, grey, and have legends in yellow or white. None show any wear.

The top row has [ON] and [MODE] buttons highlighted in yellow, followed by four cursor keys. The following rows of letter keys are in alphabetical order, with various punctuation and mathematical symbols on the case above them.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

What a psionic few days it has been! By complete coincidence, on the day that I heard that David Potter had passed, the wife found this leaflet amongst her papers. That prompted me to check eBay for a part for my Organiser CM. I ended up buying a Psion Organiser II LZ64 and not the spare part...

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Coming back from a medical appointment on the top deck of a bus, I saw an amazing sight between the rooftops - an airship making its way into London. This is the first airship I've seen around here since the Lightship Europe airship crash in 2011, which banned flights from our local airport.

A screenshot of Flight Radar 24 showing a Zeppelin LZ N07-101, registration D-LZFN, flying westwards parallel to the Thames. There are the details of the airship in a panel on the left and a photo showing its Goodyear branding. The rest of the picture shows its route this morning on a map.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

The @thestorygraph.com integration with @kobobooks.bsky.social is having a few teething troubles. It decided the ebook I started reading was an audiobook, and now I have changed the edition, it thinks I've finished it.

Screenshot of The StoryGraph entry for "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI" ebook by Corry Doctorow synced from Kobo. StoryGraph has set the edition to "audio".

Book status in StoryGraph after changing the edition to an ebook. Progress is set to 100%, and it is displaying a "Synced via Kobo" label.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Went to the Nintendo UK store to see if they had finally published "Quartet" and stumbled upon "Rune Dice", a dice-based roguelike. Played one round of the demo and bought the full game. It really seems to have that "just one more go" quality about it. #runeDice #switch

A screenshot of "Rune Dice" in mid-battle. Most of the screen is taken up by a wooden board with a central indentation where 23 dice have been thrown. Dice either have the same number on all visible sides, or have the same number and icon on each side. They are colour-coded by value. One die at the bottom of the screen has a light path from it, showing the direction the player will fire it.

Across the top of the screen is a linear battlefield, with the hero on the left with a health bar underneath and four enemies moving from the right, each with health bars and icons showing buffs and debuffs.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

We've started feeding the tadpoles crushed Tetramin once a day, which triggers their "lump of meat thrown into pirhana-filled river" impression. They often flip on their backs to eat the flakes from the surface, revealing bellies mottled with grey patterns that look like Kanji. #frogFriday

Seven Rana temporaria tadpoles are excitedly searching the water surface for pieces of crushed Tetramin. Each tadpole is dark grey with lighter mottling. Their tails consist of a long, dark central core with transparent fins along the top and bottom. The background is beige to green. With a pink tinge along the top of the picture due to a brick under the surface. A plant can be seen murkily on the left of the picture.

A Rana temporaria tadpole turns upside down to try to eat Tetramin flakes on the surface of the water. The tadpole's body is black with a mottling made of light grey patches that look like Kanji characters.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

Today, it was time to move the tadpoles from the spawn on the trainer into a container more suitable for froglets, though there is no sign of embryonic legs yet. I moved them one by one and was thrilled to find that we have 27 healthy and lively tadpoles. #frogs

The blurry silhouettes of four Rana temporaria tadpoles can be seen through translucent plastic and slightly murky water. Three of the tadpoles are side on to the observer, and only the head of the fourth can be seen at the right-hand edge of the photo. All are investigating the bottom of the container for anything edible.

The container is sitting on concrete tiles. The top of the tiles can be seen along the bottom of the photo.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

I started building the Lumibricks Alpine Observatory by emptying all the envelopes of bricks into the box. I like delving around in the pile of bricks as an exercise in mindfulness. I think it goes back to 60+ years ago, when an old freezer drawer full of bricks kept me happy for hours at a time.

A box full of apparently random toy building bricks, which have the ambition to be a model of an astronomical observatory on a mountain peak. A high proportion of the pieces are white, but there are blues, reds, and many other colours.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

A recent post reminded me to take another look at getting hold of the Lumibricks Alpine Observatory, which had been out of stock when I last looked a year ago. My only previous experience with off-brand #Lego has been the CaDa Orrery which was pretty good quality. This box arrived this morning...

Opened box of the Lumibricks L9091 Alpine Observatory. At the top is the first of two manuals (which make up about half the weight of the box). To the right is a bright orange box - not sure what goodies are in there. The rest of the box is filled with plastic envelopes of Lego-compatible bricks.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

My wife's latest creation - a batik tree frog appliqué cushion. #frogFriday

A colourful frog made from batik-dyed material and appliquéd to a white square of material, which in turn is attached to a cushion covered in colourful abstract material.

The frog is seen from above and is facing upwards with its legs spread out as if ready to jump. The material has a green background on the left, slowly changing to blue on the right. Pink flowers are randomly distributed across the material.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Three weeks ago, I found frogspawn on the ground near the pond. I scraped it up and dropped it into our tadpole cage. Some was on a trainer that had been left near the pond. I dropped the trainer into a bowl of water, as it proved impossible to remove the spawn. Today I saw movement in the bowl. 1/2

A Rana temporaria tadpole is facing away from the camera, eating algae off the grey surface of the bowl about 4 cm underwater. The tadpole is black with a semi-transparent tail curved into an "S" shape. An external gill is visible protruding from the right side of the tadpole's head.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

Harry Beck's iconic London Underground map only showed the topology of the system - just like a circuit diagram. So here's a transistor radio PCB based on the London Tube map for your delight and delectation. See alt text for extra puns. (Why, yes, I did visit the London Transport Museum today.)

A green printed circuit board for a transistor radio laid out to match the London Underground map.

The ends of resistors and diodes mark the stations, whose names are etched in white. There are a few adjustable pots, capacitors, a tuner knob, and a volume pot distributed across the circuit. Transistors are positioned where three different lines meet.

There are some puns - Regent Spark, Seven Transistor, the tuner is at White City, and the volume pot at Speaker's Corner.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Great to see that new Badgeware firmware has been released that fixes the FAT filesystem corruption that I hit a few weeks ago. It also adds a new 'badge' module with some interesting new features. Thankfully, the documentation is also getting regular updates. badgewa.re/docs

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

As an experiment, I scraped up a very sticky lump and dropped it into a bucket of water. Within half an hour, it was expanding and showing transparent albumen and central black nuclei. Frog's eggs... Somebody couldn't wait! 2/2

A roughly oval mass of black shiny black spheres lay on damp ground amongst some decaying leaves. There is a green leaf at the top right. There is a metric ruler along the bottom showing that the whole mass is about 6 cm across, with each egg about 2mm in diameter.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

I thought I'd found a small, but perfectly formed, lump of black pearl slime mould just outside our back door. Each "sporangium" was about 2mm across and looked perfectly black. Subsequently, I found two other lumps in a direct line to the pond... 1/2

A roughly oval mass of black shiny black spheres lay on damp ground amongst some decaying leaves. There is a green living leaf at the top right, and bare earth at the bottom of the photo.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

Phew! Reflashing the firmware using the latest image from github.com/pimoroni/tuf... got the Tufty back working again. I still don't know what caused the issue, but at least I can put my MicroPython coding trousers back on and get coding again.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

Spent a few evenings enjoying getting back up to speed with MicroPython when my new Badgeware Tufty 2350 decided to lose its firmware and apps. Found the GitHub repo and will try reflashing the firmware tomorrow when I'm in a better mood.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

Over the weekend, I finally finished building the Lego Tuxedo Cat I received for Christmas. I always start by emptying all the packets of bricks into a single box to maximise the rummaging fun - and this gave me 10 hours of mindful relaxation. Mind you, I never realised cats looked like that inside!

A Tuxedo Cat made of Lego sits on a table in front of a vase of daffodils and a Lego Christmas candle. The cat has a black head and ears, and a white face and bib. Its eyes are yellow and its nose pink. The rest of its body is black, while its feet and the tip of its tail are white. Its body is angled to the right of the picture, but it is looking off to the left. Lego set 21349.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

We went to the fascinating "Secrets of the Thames" exhibition at the London Museum Docklands today. My favourite exhibit was some examples of Doves Type recovered from the river and subsequently used to recreate the font. The photo is poor, but the story is much better. 1/3

A metal wire tree holds eleven typeface punches that had been recovered from the bed of the Thames near Hammersmith Bridge. Around thirty more punches are piled around the bottom of the tree on a wooden base. Each punch is made of light grey metal with a raised letter or punctuation mark at one end. A reproduction of part of the Thames shore can be seen in the background.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

I've been playing with app.thestorygraph.com in the last few days and found it a great encouragement to read with a little more attention and thoughtfulness. A vibrant community and useful tracking tools without being GoodReads, what is not to like?

A screenshot of "The StoryGraph" website showing a series of menus across the top. Underneath is a "To-Read Pile" section showing the covers of six books. Underneath that is a "Recommendations" section showing another six books. On the right is a "Current Reads" panel showing the front covers of the books I'm currently reading with progress bars, the title, and authors.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 17/01/2026

Glad to see that TFL are rolling out the latest buses to the 252 route in Hornchurch. #routemaster #bus #london

A bright red Routemaster bus is driving towards the left of the camera. It has a yellow strip between the lower and upper floors. It is bus number RT 2150 with registration number KGK 959. Its route information is displayed in white letters on black backgrounds. The route number is 252, the destination is Collier Row, and the route summary reads "Hornchurch Station, Airfield Way, Elm Pk, Roneo Cnr, Romford, Mawney Road".

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 28/12/2025

Really enjoying starting work on building the Christmas present from my wife. Can you guess what it is yet? 😀 #lego

A pile of parts from a new Lego set emptied into a box. There are parts in white, red, black, beige, and yellow. Most of the parts are conventional Lego bricks with only a few Technic pins.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 16/11/2025

Just BALL x PIT freezing at the moment I was finishing off the boss in the FUNGAL x FOREST for the first time. #notHappyBunny

The FUNGAL x FOREST level of BALL x PIT with only a couple of enemies left and the boss strength meter at zero.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

Relaxing on our pond wall on a warm July evening. The frogs clamber up through an iris to get from the water onto the wall. After decades of frog-watching, we have still not found how they climb back up the wall from the garden when returning to the pond. #frogFriday

A Rana temporaria is sitting on a weathered brass sundial mounted on the top of a pond wall. The frog has wet yellow-brown skin with black mottling. It is sitting side-on to the camera. There is part of a petal stuck under the frog's white chin.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

One of the members of our local archery club volunteers for a hedgehog rescue charity, and some years ago, she was hand-rearing a hoglet which needed feeding every few hours. She couldn't leave it at home, so she brought it to our archery meeting, where I was lucky enough to get these photos.

A tiny baby hedgehog is comfortably sitting in the palm of a hand. Its front paws are splayed, and each tiny claw can be seen clearly.

A tiny baby hedgehog is held in the palm of a hand. It is drinking from a small bottle of milk with an orange teat. A tiny set of white lower teeth can be seen gripping the teat. One clawed front paw is resting against the person's thumb.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

I had a look around the garden in the early hours to see if there were any of our amphibious friends to photograph for #frogFriday. Instead, I was thrilled to bump into this fine fellow. Since our neighbours cleared the bushes from their garden, we've seen precious few hedgehogs in the area.

An adult European Hedgehog, Erinaceus europaeus, poses for the camera. It is exploring a very dodgy piece of lawn. There had been a lot of rain during the day, and so a variety of worms and slugs to be hunted.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

A rather haughty expression from this handsome frog who had probably just seen something interesting and fluttery while sitting on the wall of our pond. #FrogFriday

A Rana temporaria frog is sitting on a concrete tile and looking up towards the sky. The frog has a dark brown body with lighter brown limbs. His throat and chin are white. There is a large green leaf across the foreground, hiding the frog's back legs. Two large green ceramic frogs make up the background.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

I just had a quick look around the pond before searching for a #frogFriday photo in the archives, and this frog popped out of the undergrowth and conveniently posed for me.

A juvenile Rana temporaria is sitting on a concrete tile at the edge of a pond, side on to the camera. It has a dark brown back, with a lighter brown side, both mottled with black patches. The frog's lower body is tinged with green, and its lower jaw and throat are white. There is a dead brown leaf in the bottom right corner of the picture, and blue pots provide the background to the top corners. There is an out-of-focus green stalk along the left edge of the photo.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

I'm halfway through the wonderful "Gogmagog" by Jeff Noon and Steve Beard.

The front cover of a book shows a line drawing of a ramshackled wharf on the left of the picture. There is a dried mud flat in the foreground, with a wooden jetty behind. A small steamboat has been propped up on top of the wharf. To the left, four storeys of buildings in poor repair are piled up on each other. One of the buildings has a lookout tower on top with a klaxon on its roof. Everything described has been coloured in teal.

In the distance, there is a city with a few towers sticking up from the skyline. A building with a partially destroyed dome dwarfs the other towers. The city is coloured in yellow.

The pale sky above has the partial shadow of a Chinese-style dragon swooping above it.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

Why, yes, I did take one or two walks around Southwold... (Map courtesy of citystrides.com)

OpenStreetMap map of Southwold with nearly all the publicly accessible streets overlayed with purple walk tracking data collected by a Garmin watch.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

Last walk along the beach at Southwold.

Waves breaking on a sandy beach seen from above. The waves are coming from the left and running out of energy towards the centre of the image. The waves are thickly flecked with spume on the left side of the picture. On the right side of the picture, water is running back from a yellow brown sandy beach. The spume is stretched into linear patches as the water withdraws.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

One of the Southwold beach huts I regularly pass is invariably occupied by three or four people, each engrossed in a book or e-reader and often cradling an alcoholic beverage. Every time I pass them, my mind turns to retirement and my tsundoku pile that is now longer than my life expectancy.

The backs of seven beach huts are lined horizontally across the image. Three are striped in white and various shades of blue. The others are white, grey, teal, and bright yellow. Each has a central window, covered in a shutter in most cases. There is a low brown concrete wall in front of the huts. The top three-quarters of the image is just blue sky with a few white clouds. A single juvenile herring gull is flying to the left of the image and is directly above the bright yellow hut in the centre of the picture.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

Some of the levers in the lever frame in the East Anglia Transport Museum's signal box on their narrow gauge track.

Three red levers, a blue one, a black one, and two more red levers are visible in the image. Each has a white label with the number of the lever and a summary of its use, as follows:

3. Woodside Up Starter
4. Up Home to Platform
5. Up Home to Loop 7
6. FP Lock for 7
7. Loop Points
8. Loop Down Starter 7
9. Siding Ground Signal 10

A couple of cloths are hanging from the levers; these are used to protect the metal levers from being corroded by sweaty hands.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

The East Anglia Transport Museum (eatm.co.uk) at Lowestoft is a fantastic experience - rides on trams, trolleybuses, and a narrow gauge railway, and loads of exhibitions, reconstructions, and engine sheds to explore. Run by enthusiasts who were very happy to chat, it was a great day out.

Two trams and a trolleybus at the East Anglia Transport Museum. On the left is a black tram painted with a silver grey skull on the front, and the words "Terror Tram" in large red letters down the side. Its destination indicator says "Coastal Tour" and it has the number 634.

In the centre is a double-decker tram painted in bright red with cream window frames. Its route indicator shows 38, and its destination is shown as "Abbey Wood via Old Kent Road". It has the number 1858.

On the right is a brown double-decker trolleybus with cream window frames. Its destination is "Barming Fountain Inn" and it has registration "LCD 52".

Suspended above the vehicles is an intricate net of cables from which they pick up electric power.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

Detail of the breakwater at the mouth of the River Blyth at Southwold.

A black and grey beam making up the top of the breakwater runs horizontally across the image just above the centre of the frame. There are three Herring Gulls on the left, two sitting on the top of the breakwater, and one standing while adjusting its feathers. A fourth Herring Gull is sitting on the right-hand side of the picture.

In the centre of the image, heavily corroded metal sheeting hangs from the beam into the water. The tops of the sheets are mottled brown and black, and less than 50% of the original metalwork is still present. Nearer the water, they are more intact and covered in green and black weed.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

The Alfred Corry Lifeboat museum at Southwold (alfredcorry.co.uk) is a fantastic little museum which is well worth a visit. Although small (it's the old Cromer lifeboat shed), the museum is packed with information about the 1893 Southwold lifeboat that saved 47 lives.

A view from the stern of the 1893 Southwold Lifeboat "Alfred Corry". The hull is wooden planking painted white with a red buffer just above the waterline. The gunwhales are painted white and have "Southwold" and "Life Boat" painted in gold. A natural wood tiller is attached to the white painted rudder and has some ropes attached to it. Parallel to the tiller is one of the two masts laid flat along the length of the boat; the top is nearest the camera and has a wooden pulley block attached.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

Here's a small selection of frogs from our garden pond, circa 2011. #frogFriday

Three frogs are floating at the edge of the pond, hanging onto the blanket weed along the edge. Their heads are above the water, but their bodies and front legs are visible under the surface. On the right is an adult Rana temporaria with reddish skin and yellow spots. In the centre is a juvenile with darker brown mottled skin. At the top left is another juvenile with darker skin on its head. A wooden beam, some dried leaves, and a green rope cross the bottom left corner of the image.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

And here's one of the Eurasian Jackdaws (Corvus monedula), who came to take a closer look.

A black bird with a black beak and a white rimmed eye with a beady black centre. Behind the eye, the feathers are a lighter grey. It is sitting on a piece of red brick protruding from a castle wall. Its perch is covered in black, white, and green algae and moss.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

The current Framlingham Castle, dating back to around 1213, is the second or third on the site. In the Tudor period, decorative chimneys, most of which were dummies, were added. This is one of the few functional chimneys, and is a good demonstration of the architecture's development.

A section of a tower at Framlingham Castle. At the bottom of the image, the structure consists of stone rubble cemented together. Along the right edge, the external stonework is visible. At the bottom centre, a Tudor red brick fireplace leads up to an ornate cylindrical chimney made of red and black bricks. Sitting on top of the chimney stack, two Jackdaws keep an eye on the visitors.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

With my wife still unwell, I couldn't go far today, but it was an excellent opportunity to enjoy a rather blustery Southwold beach. The wind sent large mounds of spume racing across the sand to collect against the breakwaters, while the seabirds thought better of flying and kept to the beach.

A wooden groyne runs from the bottom left corner of the image towards the top right. Six bollards stick up from the breakwater, with the last one sporting a red warning sign. Across the top of the image, a wave of brown water is breaking into whitewash. Spume has collected in the lee of the groyne, piled up almost as high as the wooden boards.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

A quick trip down the Suffolk coast today to visit Sutton Hoo. I last visited this fantastic site a couple of decades ago, and since then, the museum has been redesigned, and part of Edith Pretty's house has been opened to the public. The early Hiberno-Saxon art is simply stunning.

Replica of the Hiberno-Saxon helmet found in the boat excavation at Sutton Hoo. The original is in the British Museum. The crested helmet has a vaulted iron shell, a full face mask, deep cheek-guards, and a solid neck guard. The helmet was covered in ornately decorated tinned bronze panels created by a master craftsman. Mainly silver coloured, the helmet is decorated with bronze coloured highlights on the nose, eyebrows, and moustache. Garnets highlight the lower edges of the eyebrows.

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Jonathan Littlewood @frogplate.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

At Aldeburgh, we visited the small but perfectly formed Moot Hall Museum, a 16th-century timber-framed hall which is still the meeting place of the Town Council. I also stumbled across a signed copy of Tim Berners-Lee's "This is for Everyone" in a local bookshop. I'm a real sucker for signed copies.

An embroidered town emblem from the ceremonial robes of an Aldeburgh alderman. The badge shows a three-masted Tudor ship with white sails, red crows-nests, and an English flag topping each mast. The vessel has a stylised brown hull with a creature's head for the figurehead. There is a scroll above the ship reading "Aldeburgh", a blue sea with waves below, and a gold coloured ring surrounds the whole badge.

Flower beds and grass are in front of a 16th-century hall with two tall ornate chimneys. The bottom storey of this end of the hall has a stone wall, because it includes gaol cells, and the upper floor walls are brick.

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