Just about keeping up to date with the photo-a-day malarky (task #3), although I've not uploaded all of this week yet. Exercise has fallen by the wayside a little after an attempt at a very long walk, swimming pools and libraries have stalled somewhat, although I hope to pick them up again in a couple of days, and I'm being a bit rubbish about the plants; they're surviving, but I've not planted them out in growbags yet, and if this is all the summer we're going to get, they won't really do much.
On the other hand, I've got one more archery session to do, I've done four Exposure Leeds events, chocolate making continues apace and I'm doing some filming next week too. I'm keeping on top of the eat more fruit, remember breakfast and make lunch things, and plans are well underway for "get gently squiffy with as many friends as possible" later in the summer. My volunteering task has a serious number of contenders all clamouring for attention and going walking with Matt might happen before the end of the month.
Details, then.
Archery has gone well; the beginners sessions end tomorrow, and then we have to decide whether to join the club or not. As much as I have enjoyed the sessions I think this will be the last one I go to, at least for the forseeable future - I have too many other things going on, and the equipment is sufficiently expensive to require a "do I really need this?" conversation with my bank account (and would turn it into a "buy stuff" task, which I want to avoid). The element of calm archery provokes is therapeutic, but to do it justice I need to think hard about my reasons and have suitable kit, and I just don't feel it quite enough.
Exposure Leeds number 4 (task #85 was last night, and my last one for the purposes of 101Things. Unlike the archery, though, this one will be carried on way past the paramters set out here; I have thoroughly enjoyed every single one of the sessions that we've had. Last night we had a talk from Nick Efford about high dynamic range (HDR) postprocessing using Photomatix Pro, or whatever other tools there might be out there. I had a little tinker with Photomatix using Nick's suggestions, generating pseudo-HDR from single RAW files - really you should have a sequence of them with different EVs, but you can fake it as long as it is a RAW - and came up with one I'm really quite happy with.
Pardon the watermarks, but it's because I've not coughed up for the software yet! Speaking as someone who has gone "No! No! No!" in the style of Ian Paisley whenever HDR is mentioned in sensible conversation, last night opened my eyes considerably. It's not all about garish effects and nightmare saturations, but more about bringing closer the massive variance in contrast viewing between what we see and what technology is capable of displaying. Shame much of the stuff on Flickr is all about the former, really.
We were doing a print swap, too; bring a print, swap it for someone elses. It worked, too - someone took away my print from Spurn Head, I picked up someone's print of mountains.
After the HDR session was me speaking (again!) on "What Next for Social Documentary in Leeds", a somewhat cumbersome title but one that carries significance. We have a great local history scene here with plenty of resources available, but one or two could be improved upon... and this is where one of my volunteering projects comes in (#20). I don't want to talk about this too much at the moment because it's still a bit fragile, but I'm writing a scoping document as to how we could go forwards with this in the community (with local group backing, too), and soliciting opinions from the communities I would like to become users of whatever I come up with. Yes, it'll be Web-based, and it'll involve the Google Maps API, but before I start tinkering with code I want to get a decent project spec done and approved by the other parties involved at this stage.
Chocolates continue apace; I was asked to come up with a chocolate "involving blackcurrant and chilli". So I did;
They're a layer of chili jam (boil 3 chopped red chillies in 200ml cider vinegar for 15 minutes, strain, add 3g of sugar per ml of liquid, bring to a rolling boil for 2 mins and add 50ml of liquid pectin, take off the heat, leave for a minute, then pour onto a sheet of bake-o-glide with something to stop it pouring off the edges) and a layer of blackcurrant ganache (130g double cream, 25g glucose syrup, 70g blackcurrant pureé, 500g white chocolate, boil the cream and glucose, pour onto the chocolate, leave for at least a minute before you start sirring, then stir into an emulsion and add the blackcurrants), dipped in chocolate and with drizzled coloured chocolate on top. Things I need: caramel rulers and a guitar cutter. The rulers are reasonably ok to get, but the guitar is a huge thing that I don't have space to store.
In recent weeks I've also done many things not on the list: attended BarCamp (brilliant, frankly), walked from Marsden to Cragg Vale (was supposed to be Hebden Bridge, but we had water and feet issues and needed a minor rescue), am getting involved in podcasting with a very nice chap called Daag (details will be forthcoming), and had T&C's birthday party. Enormous fun! I made a cake, which all went:
and we're hoping to have a repeat event later in the year.
I finish another thing tomorrow, next week I get to see my delightful lady wife's play on the stage (#82), and things continue apace!
Currently running habitual tasks: #3 (90/365), #13, #26, #37 (2/<34), #60 (11/50), #68, #66 (40/250), #87, #88, #100 (3/>3)
Currently running exploratory tasks: #38 (1/18), #17 (1/54+), #57 (1/9+)
Currently running growing tasks: #41, #52
Completed: 7
Remaining: 94
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