I’m out of town this weekend, and while I do have a cheap laptop so I can work, most of my time is dedicated to doing stuff with my parents. I’ll probably share some pictures from our trip at a later date, but as you’re about to see, my phone’s camera is… sub-standard right now.

When I posted about our trip to Bull Island, PZ expressed his dismay at the lack of spider pictures. This is cause, in large part, but the fact that after an update a few months ago, my phone’s camera lost the ability to focus on anything. I can do selfies, and I can do a fisheye panorama, from a distance, but everything else is consistently out of focus.

This means, unfortunately, that until I’m able to get a new camera, fix my phone, or get a new phone, I’m dependent on other people’s equipment for photography. On my way home the other day, I took this picture of a local fox, and it’s about as good-quality as I can expect, for trying to take a picture of something that was actually pretty close:

The image shows a red fox, framed by two wavy tree trunks, one of which is covered with ivy. Its fur is the typical orangey-brown, and it’s sitting with its left side to the camera. Its head is turned to glance at the rude human who’s pointing things at it, and there’s a bush in the background that contains another fox, which you cannot see. The two were apparently having some sort of interaction that was interrupted by my presence. The whole picture is a bit out of focus.

For those from my home continent, Ireland has no skunks, possums, or raccoons, so the foxes seem to fill all of those niches in and around Dublin. They’re everywhere, and while they keep their distance, they’re entirely used to humans.

Today, we went to the Kells Priory, which was neat, and then to a B&B with a lovely view, which gives me an opportunity to demonstrate my phone’s capabilities when it comes to landscape photography:

This photo shows the garden in which I’m writing (the clump of bushes by the right edge of the photo seems to have a nest of baby birds in it, who make a racket every few minutes), and a big ol’ hill across the river valley. The hill is mostly pasture land, dotted with a few cows and sheep, but there are trees between the pastures, and what looks like a forest of very evenly-sized pine trees along the ridge, which makes me wonder if they’re intended to be lumber. To the left, near the edge of the ridge, you can see a lone wind turbine. The clouds overhead are a little patchy, letting through glimpses of the evening sky and its colors.

You can tell that livestock is a big thing in this area, because you can smell cows and sheep everywhere. I thought I heard a lone donkey, echoing across the landscape, but upon further listening, I think it’s just a cow with opinions about something.

So, when it comes to spiders, I’m kinda limited to the ones my camera can pick up at a distance, so if Ungoliant crests the ridge while I’m here, you’ll all get a picture of that, presumably just before I die horribly.