Jonathan Littlewood

@frogplate.bsky.social

201 Followers 936 Following

Vegetarian, stoic, humanist, observer of frogs, lover of shiny things, patched back together and replumbed by the NHS… Technical architect working with Node, Python and C64 BASIC. Interests include astronomy, computers. sci-fi, photography, and Lego.

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.
Leaflet showing the delights of the Psion Organiser II CM and XP. It is a gate-folded sheet printed in colour. The third panel shows a Psion Organiser II displaying "Information on tap". The cover is slid down with the keyboard exposed. A well-manicured hand is holding it. The middle panel is another photo of an Organiser II displaying "The Facts and Figures". The body of the device is overlaid with the hardware specification and a list of the built-in software. Below it says "Psion Organiser II" and "The machine that thinks with you", Psion Limited's address, and their iconic logo. The first panel shows a paragraph about each of four of the built-in applications.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A Badgeware Tufty 2350 Python-powered conference badge is in the foreground with its ePaper and LED-array siblings in the background, on either side of it. The Tufty 2350 has a white panel across the top with a lanyard hole in the centre and small circular holes at each end. There is a pen drawing of a squirrel wearing goggles across the panel and a "TUFTY 2350" logo. Right at the top is the URL https://badgewa.re. The main body of the badge has a colour display showing a "BadgeOS v4.03.." heading, a battery level meter and six icons. The Clock icon is highlighted, and a label says "Clock" at the bottom of the display. Under the display, there are three buttons, labelled A, B, and C, and there are up and down buttons to the right.
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.
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.
A Badgeware Tufty 2350 programmable lanyard badge sits on a laptop keyboard. The Tufty has a banner across its top decorated with a drawing of a squirrel wearing a flying helmet, a "Tufty 2350" logo, and the URL https://badgewa.re. Most of the front is taken up by a colour screen displaying six icons in two rows of three. At the top of the screen, it announces "BadgeOS v4.03" and indicates the battery is at 100%. A yellow bar along the bottom names the selected app - "30 Minutes to Alpha Centauri". There are up and down buttons to the right of the screen. There are also three buttons labelled A to C just below the screen.
A Badgeware Tufty 2350 programmable lanyard badge sits on a rather dusty laptop keyboard. The Tufty has a banner across its top decorated with a drawing of a squirrel wearing a flying helmet, a "Tufty 2350" logo, and the URL https://badgewa.re. Most of the front is taken up by a (blank) screen which has up and down buttons to its right, and three buttons labelled A to C underneath it.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
The FUNGAL x FOREST level of BALL x PIT with only a couple of enemies left and the boss strength meter at zero.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
OpenStreetMap map of Southwold with nearly all the publicly accessible streets overlayed with purple walk tracking data collected by a Garmin watch.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
An adult herring gull is sitting on the roof of a yellow caterpillar-tracked bulldozer, abandoned on a pebble beach. The machine was originally bright orange, but years of weather exposure have stained and corroded it to reds and blacks. There is a pile of lobster traps reinforced with brightly coloured cord in the bottom right of the image, while a blue box full of rope is visible in the left corner. The sea is visible beyond the beach on the left of the photo.
The ends of three decaying wooden boats are sitting on a pebble beach. One, in the foreground, has blue gunwales, while the other two, in the background, have red gunwales. The boats' hulls were originally white, but are weathered and stained. There are various white, blue, and yellow plastic boxes used for storing fish are strewn around the boats. A juvenile herring gull with brown feathers is standing on the stern of the middle boat. An adult with white plumage is just visible behind a yellow box in the foreground.
A painting of George Orwell in front of a BBC microphone, looking towards the viewer on the white wall of Southwold Pier. Some famous lines from his works are quoted beside him. "Good writing is like a window pane" "Big Brother is watching you" "Nothing exists except through human consciousness" "It was a bright cold day in April, and clocks were striking thirteen."
Southwold pier projects into the sea from left, halfway across the centre of the image. There is a white pavilion on the pier, and people on the boardwalk watching the world go by. Nine or ten surfers are floating near the end of the pier, waiting for just the right wave. Above them, a rainbow lights up the sky with a seagull silhouetted against it. In the foreground a wave breaks a black wooden groyne and a sandy beach.
A view from Southwold pier towards the town. Southwold is in the top right of the picture with a black wooden groyne projecting horizontally into the sea in the centre of the image. More groynes are visible stretching into the distance. Most of the water is brown, but capped with white, which reflects the sun. An ominous black cloud looms over the town, but blue sky is peeking around its edges.
A row of black and grey rocks juts out into the sea. There is green seaweed growing on the rocks, and a few seagulls are standing on them, watching the world go back. A black pillar, probably part of a long washed-away groyne, sticks out of the sea, while further out a taller post, bottom half black, and top half white, supports a red warning symbol. The background is grey waves that break to white on the rocks and beach.
A Rana temporaria frog sitting on a green water lily leaf is seen from above. It is facing the bottom-left of the photo and has a yellow and brown mottled skin with highlights in black. Its body is very thin, and it looks as if it is starving. But its legs are well-muscled.
Two Rana temporaria frogs are sitting on some dark, soggy earth. The frog on the right has blended in with the almost black background, with only yellow lines and mottling breaking up its outline. The frog on the left is light yellow with very light brown mottling.
Screenshot of the Kobo eReader Instapaper app displaying an article. At the foot of the screen, it says "RAKUTEN KOBO INTEGRATION IS LIVE! - %n min to go".
Two Rana temporaria frogs peak out from a dense blanket of bright green duckweed. Just the tops of the frogs' heads are visible, with the near frog's mouth and a little of its grey and white mottled throat visible. There are some green plant stems framing the frogs to the right.
A Kobo Libra Colour ereader displaying the following text: Rakuten Kobo Integration is Live! blog.instapaper.com We're excited to share that Instapaper is now live on all Rakuten Kobo eReaders. Now you can log into Instapaper on your Kobo, download your list of articles, and read them on the go. To celebrate, in partnership with Kobo, we are giving away 15 Kobo Clara Colour eReaders to Instapaper users. You can enter a chance to win a Kobo eReader at instapaper.com/kobo. About Rakuten Kobo Rakuten Kobo Inc. is the world's digital bookseller created by and for booklovers, providing the best dedicated eReaders and apps for reading. Owned by Tokyo-based Rakuten Group, Inc. and headquartered in Toronto, Rakuten...
A Lego Red Panda hungrily eyes a stick of bamboo. The Red Panda has an orange body with a beige and orange-striped tail. It's legs are black with beige paws. The Panda's face is orange and white, with white ears and a black nose and eyes.
A Rana temporaria frog is submerged amongst iris roots. Only the top half of his head is above the surface of the water. Iris leaves frame him to the left and right, and iris roots hide his body and legs.
About twenty-five tadpoles are swimming just under the surface and over a bed of bright green blanket weed. The tadpoles are in various stages of development. Some are still rounded and only have small back legs. Others are sporting front legs and have the more angular shape of tiny frogs.
A small Rana temporaria frog, about 5cm long, is facing to the left. It is sitting on some grey concrete surrounded by stones and dried earth. Its back is brown and largely unmottled, its side is almost black with some bright green at the top of its rear leg.
A blue mouse mat on a black background featuring a white cartoon penguin. The penguin is made of basic geometric shapes, with a yellow triangular bill and with a black tuxedocomputers.com logo on its chest.
Two frogs' heads break the surface of the water. Reflections of the sky and surrounding plants mean that the frog's bodies are not visible. Watercress leaves surround them.
The Guardian's "How did your MP vote on the Welfare Reforms page, with Margaret Mullane highlighted as one of the Labour Rebels who voted against the bill.