iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Wow! Barn Owl checking me out as I take the dog for an evening stroll around the village.

Barn Owl flying overhead and looking at me.

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Mrs Tawny Owl calling in the dark was #firstbirdofmyday today. Indignant, I would say, was her tone … perhaps a little passive aggressive asking if my torch was quite bright enough to light my way along the path. Then later we had a good mix of little tweeters as illustrated by this Merlin record:

Merlin Ap screen listing birds it could hear including Cetti’s Warbler and Siskin.

090

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

“Much have I travelled in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen…” John Keats. This is where my “Realms of Gold” handle comes from.

151

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Good afternoon from Nantwich. I’m in the car, waiting for the rain to stop.

070

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Good morning from Marbury. It’s starting to look less like summer.

A view along a country lane in dark, wet weather.

171

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Good morning from Marbury. My sky today. Small sails, the saying goes. Mares’ tails.

150

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Good morning from Marbury. My early-morning sky either the Moon and Jupiter close together.

A night sky with some cloud, but the Moon and Jupiter showing through

070

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

This used to be one of my favourite teaching exercises. At the start of one week I would ask whether it mattered if Antarctica was real or imaginary, and the students voted. I then gave the class, and asked the same question the following week. They voted again, often very differently! see alt text

Whiteboard tally showing results of two weeks' votes. Before the class about 25% of students thought it didn't matter whether Antarctica (or anything else) was real or imaginary. After the class the number changed to about 50%.

130

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

A Sunday afternoon Haiku from the vault.

Beyond this, your heart.
Would that there were maps for that.
I hold your small hand.

020

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

At this time of year our early-morning walks stretch the definition of “morning”. Starry sky over a dark horizon. Looking south-ish from 53 degrees N about 5.30am. The constellation Orion and the star Sirius (I think!).

Starry sky over a dark horizon. The constellation Orion and the star Sirius (I think!) looking south-ish from 53 degrees N about 5.30am.

141

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Shieldbug Saturday. Rescued a lot of these this afternoon!

071

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Good morning from Marbury. I really should try to post a bit more consistently but keep finding myself preoccupied with stuff!

Blue sky with clouds over fields and the canal.

081

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Yes, I used to teach hydrology through the medium of dance.

A photo I took looking past my lecturer bench out into the class as they considered "exercise 1"

161

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Actually it wasn't as good as I remembered.

100

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

A change from sunsets and countryside. A trip into Whitchurch to get the car’s tyres sorted.

A pile of discarded tyres and an outbuilding at the garage.

120

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Good morning from Marbury. In my early-morning #sky today: the #moon

The moon, photographed from my back garden this morning.

041

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Good morning from Marbury. For a change today we have a photo of the setting moon rather than the rising sun.

The setting full moon just before dawn reflected in the water of the Llangollen Canal, near to the Cheshire Shropshire border.

071

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Good evening, for a change, from Marbury, with a nice sunset.

0160

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

This morning’s sky could almost have been courtesy of Mark Rothko.

050

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Good morning (somewhat belatedly in case anyone is paying attention) from Marbury. My early-morning #sky today.

070

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Ha ha here's an example of why I don't trust the tech to do automatic updates on my behalf!

A ludicrous "suggested update" to an online listing of one of my publications, where the updated version is a completely different paper, by somebody else!

111

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

The “art and wellbeing” session in the village hall today included learning to do cartoony illustrations of dogs. Debbie did a brilliant cat but didn’t get a photo of it so here are some of my dogs!

140

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The same ice cap (Chimborazo) from a few different distances and angles.

120

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

1986 was a busy year, with trips to USA, Belgium, Ecuador, and twice to Greenland. The photo is Greenland. In April. I'm standing on a frozen lake. I used flags on sticks to mark survey points on the glacier, using the theodolite to plot in positions to record movement. Temperature here about -30C.

Silhouetted figure (me!) standing on a frozen lake surface in front of low sun, with a sun-dog showing in the sky on the right of the photo. My diary notes with interest that despite temperatures of -30C neither the paraffin fuel nor the jam had frozen yet.

030

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

40 years ago. Summer 1986. Ecuador.

me posing in some of my tourist souvenir clothes!

Chimborazo volcano. The top of this mountain is the farthest point from the centre of the Earth

380

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Good morning from… well, it’s actually not Marbury. A rare excursion off patch and over the border into Wales.

120

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Just now? Me? Making an apple crumble, as a kind neighbour gave us (lots of) apples. #foodsky #cooking

An apple crumble waiting to go into the oven… and a couple of apples just to look pretty. #foodsky #cooking

050

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Life today. Good morning from Marbury. And good luck.

A blurry view across a foggy rural landscape consisting of a huge ploughed field with a distant copse of trees and a foreground strip of green. If it wasn’t for the trees and if I’d held the camera straight I could have said it looked like a dull Rothko. But it doesn’t. It looks like the washing machine when you forget to take the cream eclaires snd trifle out of your pockets before you wash your trousers.

031

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Cooper the cat having a thoughtful little moment. He looks as though he’s remembering something. #catsky #cats We named him after Gary Cooper. The actor.

Black and white cat sitting in the middle of the room, thinking about something.

151

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

A Monday afternoon #shelfie. These are some of the books on the shelves closest to where I usually sit when I’m “doing nothing”. I think it’s important to spend enough time doing nothing.

130

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

A Sunday afternoon #shelfie from one of my living room book cases. #books #library #booksky

2223

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Me? Right now? I’m mowing the Great West Lawn.

050

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

40 years ago today I was setting up camp in Greenland for what turned out to be a very challenging expedition: lost luggage, stolen equipment, early bad weather... diary makes grim reading but it turned out OK. I don't think this photo is that day, but I think it's that trip, based on borrowed hat!

Me sitting on a box, next to a theodolite on a tripod, writing in a notebook. I'm sitting next to a river in front of a glacier. I'm wearing a borrowed hat as a lot of my own kit was lost en route to the site. I was lucky that I was in the habit of wearing (or keeping as hand luggage) the most essential kit eg boots and big coat! It's a Kern DKM-1 theodolite... I used that model a lot in Greenland and in Iceland.

020

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Here you go. Some non-English terms from Benn and Evans (“Glaciers and Glaciology”). Sichelbruche?

230

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Also from the archive here’s what one of my undergraduate tutors, Pete Bull, wrote in the 1st edition of the Dictionary of Physical Geography. He seems to have an older source from 1988 but I haven’t chased that up.

130

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

…and just for completeness to complement the Sugden picture here’s him mentioning the term in the 1976 Sugden & John book.

Text mentioning “chattermarks” from “Glacirrs and Landscape”

121

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Yes, very familiar... a well known feature in glacial geomorphology. Here's my own example from Greenland (striations in the foreground, chattermarks in the background top left. Dave Sugden for scale). Not sure about terminology in other languages.

Bedrock exposed by retreating glacier ice, showing evidence of subglacial erosion. Striations in the foreground, chattermarks in the background top left.

120

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Yesterday afternoon I took a moment to watch the clouds.

090

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I couldn’t decide between two of today’s sunrise pictures, so I’m posting them both! Personally I prefer the lighter sunrise skies with more grey and blue… the big orange skies are a bit showy for me! Good morning from Marbury, anyway. Choose the morning you prefer!

0181

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Another session of the Art & Wellbeing group at Marbury Village Hall this afternoon… Today’s theme was colour, and here’s the picture I made. #art

A scruffy picture of, er… perhaps a wet beach with a line of buildings on a distant horizon under a moody sky?

080

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Good morning from Marbury. Now I’m walking across a ploughed field towards the dazzling sunrise.

Dazzling sunrise at the end of a trodden path across a ploughed field

090

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

My 7am mission this morning was to go and collect a blonde wig from a barbed wire fence in a remote field. Let no one say I have a normal life.

Blonde wig hanging on a fence with a field in the background.

1130

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I've been spending some time with this poem, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, by W.B.Yeats. It was one of my sister's favourites, and my nephew has suggested we use the opening line on her headstone. I think it's a good choice.

Full text of the poem, from:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43281/the-lake-isle-of-innisfree

060

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

We often have a week’s holiday in the Isles of Scilly at this time of year. This year we didn’t make it, but here’s a picture I painted years ago of where we stay. #Scilly #landscape #painting #art

Painting of the view across Porthcressa, Scilly, UK, by Peter Knight.

0150

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

When I was young there was a lighthouse at the end of our garden. Its impossibility never occurred to me.

When I was young there was a lighthouse at the end of our garden.
I lived in the city, a hundred miles from the sea, but there she was: perched on jagged rocks just offshore from the cliff, pounded by the foaming sea and circled by crying gulls between our house and the neighbours who backed onto us from Woodvale Road. Its impossibility never occurred to me. I was nine or ten years old before I realised that nobody else saw the lighthouse. Its piercing beam did not penetrate anyone else’s skin to illuminate their bones like a cartoon electrocution. The crying gulls, day and night, did not feed the chaos in other people’s heads as they did in mine.

020

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Somebody ploughed up my footpath. Raindrops are falling on my head. And I forgot to wear my waterproofs and wellies. Good morning from Marbury.

161

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

There was an “Art and Wellbeing” Workshop in the Village Hall. I drew a thing. #art

050

Realms of Gold @petergknight.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I’m not very good at #FirstBirdOfMyDay because when I get back from my early walk I struggle to remember who was actually the first, but amongst today’s early starters were these two herons silhouetted against the sunrise.

Poor quality photo of two distant herons poking up above a black horizon silhouetted against a big orange sunrise sky.

1221