Day 28, 020409

Updates!

I'm down to 98 (so that's three things done)! Seeing as, on average, the idea is to complete one task every ten days, I'm right on the money.

The completed task is #7, Appear on Telly, which I did last night on ITV's Taste the Nation (from time of writing you can still get it on their catchup viewer for the next 13 days).

Proof:

See?

Some people have read about this elsewhere; the filming (in London and Masham) was an experience and a half. What they showed in the final edit was, yes, reasonably close to what they filmed with all the "look, I'm vegetarian because I don't like meat very much, not for any moral reasons" edited out. Perhaps for brevity. The judge's comments on the show were much nicer than those said in the studio, thanks to careful edits - my food was described as looking like "a gorilla's paw" by one of them on the day, which (thankfully) failed to get into the programme. I had a great time doing it, and I'd do it again, and all things considered it was a really, really good thing to do. If passing through life is about grabbing it and doing stuff, then this ticks both those boxes.

I've now done two Exposure Leeds sessions (#85), and in this one I gave a talk on exposure, the balancing of shutter speed and aperture size. It was pretty well received by the 40-odd people who turned up, with one of the audience saying they'd wished I'd been their physics teacher, which I thought was a lovely thing to say. My slides, if you want to see them, are on Google Docs: here. I love getting up in front of people and talking about stuff I like, getting my enthusiasm for it out there, and getting people equally involved in it. Saying that, though, I've done quite a lot for Mr Eland in the past year :)

In addition to those things, I've also got a march on #17, "visit every library with an LS postcode" as I was able to gain access to The Leeds Library, a private subscriptions library that's been around since 1768, and some of its books havn't been taken out since then.

They have tea and coffee, comfy seats, a reading room, books you want to pick up and marvel at, a paper catalogue, and spiral staircases. What's not to love? They also have maps. I love maps. These are good maps.

So it's been a busy couple of days! I'm really pleased by progress so far, and I'm getting some fab experiences into the bargain.

Currently running habitual tasks: #3 (27/365), #13, #26, #66 (14/250), #85 (2/4), #87, #88
Currently running exploratory tasks: #38 (1/18), #17 (1/54+)
Currently running growing tasks: #41, #52
Completed: 3
Remaining: 98