Day 119, 010709

Exposure Leeds #5 was last night (task 85). Again, a pretty enjoyable use of an evening, but... lacking, somewhat. There were a lot of newbies there, and a bunch of them left at 8:30 (possibly because they were expecting it to finish at 8:30, like wot I woz, and I'm categorically not a newbie) when we still had quite a bit to go through. Anyway.

I was on the door again (although Gav likes hitting the big green button, so I left him to it, mostly), getting people to sign in and nametag up, and hanging the prints people had brought for the Flash Printswap (bring a print, get a post-it, give the print to us. We hang all the prints, hidden away, and at the end of the evening we do a grand reveal and people can put their post-it on another print, and take that away with them once all the prints are claimed - and I say you can). The quality of the prints were excellent, in some cases considerably better than last time.



Talks: a decent one on macro photography, although a bit flat did have some interesting technical detail, some of which was slightly incorrect, but never mind, it makes no difference to the results. I'm minded to repost my talk from EL2 on "The Dark Art of Exposure". The second talk was about travel photography, and whilst it was very interesting (and I really like Ade and his work) it was about 15 photos too long. This was a thing, really - Jon let the talks go on for a bit too long, so we were a bit rushed at the end. And, I had to really struggle to hear the speakers. Now, I know I'm having problems with my hearing at the moment - struggling to differentiate background noise from useful sounds, particularly in my left ear - but I don't think I was the only one thinking they were a bit quiet.

Finishing at 9:30 is a bit late, though. Could be a minority opinion, but 3 hours is pushing it.

All that aside, though: I came out of there thinking about how I could get going with some macro photography, and an inspirational evening is always a good evening.

Currently running habitual tasks: #3 (94+/365, stalling, not sure where I am with this), #13, #26, #37 (4/<34), #60 (11/50), #68, #66 (66/250), #85 (5/4) #87, #88, #97 (1/8), #100 (3/>3)
Currently running exploratory tasks: #38 (1/18), #17 (1/54+), #57 (1/9+)
Currently running growing tasks: #41, #52
Completed: 9
Remaining: 92

Day 108, 200609

Task #97 is "go walking with Matt at least 8 times." Matt and I are old friends - he was the fourth or fifth person I met when I went to University - and we used to go walking a couple of times a year. That dropped off, as these things do, but we stay in touch and still go for the odd stroll every now and then, between bouts of socialising. After a walk last October (ie, outside the scope of this project), we decided to do the Yorkshire Three Peaks, and needed to do some training runs. Unfortunately, life got in the way, and whilst we'd said "midsummer's day" for one of the walks, hopefully the full run, it turned out to be the first of our training runs, just one of the three.

When we said we'd do it, some other friends decided they wanted to come as well, which was great. I'm always up for more company when walking, as it means there's a greater chance of one of us making it back to civilisation.

Saturday was an early start, with Cathy and Mavis being taken to Horton-in-Ribblesdale for a stroll up Pen-Y-Ghent. Arriving in Horton was awful; although we'd planned to do this on the 20th months back, because it was close to the solstice and thus we'd have maximum daylight, it hadn't really occurred to us that other people would have the same idea. It was packed. We parked up in a field, and decamped to the caff where we waited for Matt to turn up. When we were all assembled there was a quick scout about the benches to see if there were any Devenish-Phibbs plaques, a trip to the loo (where I was bitten a few times by midges) and we were off.

There were steady streams of people going up and down the mountain. Because we were only doing one, I thought "let's take the easy route up" and led us along Horton Scar and along the backbone of the mountain. Everybody else was going to go to Brackenbottom and up the really steep bit which does involve some rock climbing, so we kept on meeting people on their way down. Stood at the bottom of the mountain, we could see a wave of rain crossing the valley and got our raincoats on just in time; the final stretch up the hill was done in cloud, and if it weren't for the occasional call out from the many teams of DoE expeditioneers we could have been the only people in the world, emerging blinking from the cloud into a world changed by the Singularity, or something more scary.

Downhill was awful; remind me in future to never do the route in that direction again. It means going up will kill us through exhaustion, but there were moments on the way down I thought we'd die through falling off. It was greasy underfoot, muddy on rocks worn smooth by hundreds of thousands of passing hiking boots, and there were a few unpleasant steps. Thankfully I didn't slip badly enough to fall off until it was safe to do so (but slip and fall over I did), but in future I'll wear KSB trainers and go on a nice, sunny day that's been preceeded by several other nice sunny days. And go up. I still want to set a speed time on that hill, so I may take a day off in July or August and see just how quickly I can do the round trip. As it was, we were 3h33m (GPS data will be forthcoming), and finished off the day with rhubarb crumble in the caff. Lovely to see the guys, as ever, and it was an absolute pleasure doing the trip with them. Next time: Matt sorts out an 8-mile route somewhere in the North Yorkshire moors. Should be fun!

Day 106, 180609

About two months ago I started an archery course, as part of task #68. Signing up with South Leeds Archers for a six-week beginners course, the first of the year, I thought I'd consider the task completed when I'd finished the course, not just after the first lesson.

Eight weeks later, archery is over, done and dusted, and all that jazz. What have I learned from it?

1. How to string a recurve bow.

This is harder than it looks, partially because it's counterintuitive. Fitting the limbs to the body is also counterintuitive, because they go on the wrong way 'round. When New World continent-conquering heroes had run out of bullets, they picked up the bows of their fallen enemies, and promptly took their own eyes out because they didn't understand the technicalities of recurve bows, and I can see why. But, get your head around the whole "you're doing it backwards" thing, and it's fine.

2. Consistency is everything.

Seriously, for three weeks it was all about "get your arrows in a good grouping without thinking about the golds". Then we moved onto using sights, which changed the grip and position, and that really threw me for a week. But, they're right. Concentrate on getting the arrows in the same spot, every time, then we can work on moving where that spot is. Changing your position on the bow, even a tiny bit, can make a huge difference to where the arrow will strike. I spent a week not realising that I should be touching the bow string into my nose and under my chin, not just under my chin; having two reference points is a huge help.

3. This is a survival skill.

Someone put a picture of a squirrel up on a target one week. It freaked me out a little. Reminders that really, this is a method of killing something did make me take a step back, because I'm not mad on the whole taking life away thing (I get guilt killing greenfly on my roses, which probably makes me some sort of big girly wuss). There is a huge element of skill involved in this, and it's skill I like to have, but the fundamental reasons for having the skill in the first place is something I have to think about.

4. Archers are nice people.

Generally, yes, people who carry weapons are quite nice to other people who carry weapons. The South Leeds Archers are fun people to be around, although social skills aren't necessarily a high priority. Not unlike geeks, really.

5. Arrows hurt.

Dropping the arrow off the guide rail onto your hand makes you go "ow". Doing it twice in quick succession gives you something that looks like fang marks and bruises that'll last a week on the back of your hand just above the thumb. Forgetting to put a bracer on your arm and then not holding the bow quite right means you'll get a bruice on your forearm that stings a bit. Not wearing finger tabs means your fingerprints will be worn off by the end of the session and you'll spend the next week wondering why the skin on your fingers is flaking off. Thankfully, nobody shot me, so injury was restricted to those things.

6. What all those bristly bits on pro bows are.

Stablisers. They're there to add weight to the bow, to make it move less when you're holding it. Of course, you have a fine balancing act between the amount of weight you need to provide inertia, and the amount you can hold without giving way. I added a stabliser and my grouping became much tighter; they are useful things to have.

7. How these things are scored.

It can be nuts complicated. It can also be very simple. Decide early on which way you'd like it to be.

8. Yellow = gold.

No matter how many times you call it yellow, and no matter how much it looks like a primary colour, someone will always correct you and call the centre circles the gold.

9. I enjoy the sense of peace.

You have to concentrate when shooting. Really concentrate. I would have enjoyed it more, I think, if there weren't two kids on the course constantly talking (or arguing with their Dads about how much money they'd get for hitting the target). However, in the brief moments where they were keeping quiet I could feel my concentration narrowing to a fine focal point, just in front of the arrow tip or on the other side of the sight, and there was an almost zenlike quality to those moments which I enjoyed. Concentrating at that level for any amount of time was very therapeutic and I really appreciated those moments when they came. Invariably, those moments came on shots where I hit the gold. It felt right.

So, that's that. I enjoyed doing it, and it's a skill I appreciated learning, but I think I'm done with archery for the time being. I'll be glad to get my Friday evenings back, and not have to keep an eye on the weather (out of a six week course, two of those weeks were rained off and one cut short) quite so much. I may go back to it, and if I get the chance to shoot I'll certainly keep my eye in, but for the time being I'm done.

Unfortunately, I'm putting task 3 on hiatus. I'm not keeping up with my photo-a-day thing, and so I might have to change it to "take 365 photos that represent a year's worth of shots over the course of the experiment". We'll see; I might pick it up again where I left off, but the "consecutive days" element will probably fall by the wayside.

Currently running habitual tasks: #3 (94/365, stalling), #13, #26, #37 (2/<34), #60 (11/50), #68, #66 (61/250), #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: 9
Remaining: 92

Day 104, 160609

Strictly speaking trauma isn't really what happened over the bottom half of last week, except in one particular incident. But to use the modern sense of "trauma" to mean "nerve-wracking" then yes, we had that by the bucketload. First, some background: my parents-in-law are somewhat disorganised, have a flexible approach to time, attract drama like a theatre company and my Mother-in-law (let's call her M*) has a serious wheat allergy so we have to be very careful with her diet, whereas my Father-in-law (G*) has had a laryngectomy and can only talk in a whisper, and only when he has a valve in his stoma.

Chronologically, let's go back to Wednesday. S headed to Brum during the afternoon, checked into her hotel, and awaited the parental arrival. The reason S was back in Brum was the public workshop, where professionals take on the writings from those engaged in the MPhil in Playwriting and put them on stage. S is one of those who had a play on (the one about bees, if you read the press release). In fact, S was the last play to be put on over the two days, Thursday and Friday, which could be seen as a great honour; the headline act, if you will. It was referred to as "the headliner" repeatedly by her classmates. On the other hand, it just gave her more time to get twitchy. Her folks were attending the whole public workshop, to see S's play and to observe the rest of the competition. However, they were using a satnav to get from Norf Norf London to Brum, and were travelling after work. G* apparently spent most of the trip flicking V-signs at the satnav whilst M* was trying to keep him calm and drive after a busy day at work. They get lost in Brum's one-way system, but eventually park in the Pallisaides and try to find their way to the hotel.

They can't. They get lost.

Eventually they get hold of S, who gives them directions to a spot where she can meet them and get them to the hotel on foot. This is a good job, because the car park had locked up and M* couldn't get the car out of it. Then they get to the hotel, only to find that their room had been overbooked and the duty manager was being a c0ck; "I can't magically build a room out of nothing" was one of the phrases allegedly used, along with "there's nothing I can do" despite the room having been paid for in advance and checked no less than four times over the previous fortnight. Thanks to S knowing the trade, she was able to get past the muppet of a DM to speak to the GM (who was, astonishingly, still on site at 10pm), who went white at some of the commentary S was able to provide. Despite having to book them out to the Etap that night (the hotel was the 4* Burlington), they provided taxis, comped breakfast, upgraded their room for the following two nights and eventually bent over backwards to help them out. M* and G* decamped to the etap, and S phones me to get all this lot out of her system.

Thursday morning, M* & G* get back to the Burlington for breakfast. M* has a kipper. Unfortunately she missed a bone, and ended up with a fishbone in her throat. The best cure for a fishbone in the throat? A piece of dry bread. To which she's allergic. They needed to be on a particular train to Selly Oak, so after M* got herself sorted out after that, they went to the car to find G*'s jacket. Except they couldn't remember where they'd parked the car. S, at this point, throws up her arms in despair and runs to catch her train, after giving directions on where to go ("turn left at the firey demon, and you'll end up in Hell" was what she didn't say). They eventually make it to Selly Oak, an hour after S had been there watching some quite interesting pieces.

Eventually, after all of this I arrived, was told all the gory details about how the last 24 hours had taken 24 years off S's lifespan, and was given ten minutes to wash-and-brush-up before going out to dinner and afterwards we arranged to meet in reception at 10 the following morning.

Friday morning - yes, this isn't a week's worth of stuff, it's about 36 hours by this point - we got up in good time to get to reception, waited around for a bit for G* and M*, then said "fine, they're not here, let's go" and off S and myself went. We had a pleasant trip to Selly Oak (I'm still amazed by the train station more-or-less in the middle of the BU campus), then a walk up the road to the George Cadbury Hall, and I was shown off - sorry, introduced - to the classmates (I am no longer just "Mike", but "Mikeasseenontv", apparently) who were saying "oh, we're just the support act, S is headlining", and we saw the morning's worth of plays. Solely my opinion, but they were... ok. There was a post-Auschwitz play that was interesting, but the other two were competent, perfectly decent pieces of theatre (and I've seen worse put on by hardened professionals), but failed to grab me by the throat.

Lunchtime, and I wandered off to find a Private Eye and a sandwich, then met Mavis at the train station, as S was engaged in schmooze. On my way to the station I found M* & G*, who were walking somewhat slowly; it turned out that they weren't at reception on time because M* had fallen out of the shower. She'd hit her head (twice) on the tiled floor, and had an eight-inch bruise down her calf. She wasn't feeling too well, had practically given G* a heart attack, and he couldn't phone for help because his valve had come loose and he hadn't had time to fix it properly, so couldn't speak. Eventually they got some help from the day manager (who was a bit of a charmer), and M* decided - in spite of feeling sick and headachey - to struggle on and go to see S's play. So, they told me all of this, then said "but for goodness' sakes, don't tell S until it's all over."

Apparently, M* had gone to Boots to get some arnica tablets for the bruising and shock; she got them, then had trouble opening the box. After a couple of minutes of this she went back inside and asked the girl on the counter to help. After a couple of minutes, she couldn't get into it, so phoned head office to find out how this lid worked. M* was offered a refund - "I don't want a refund, I just want my tablets" - and it turned out that this batch of arnica tablets were sent out in faulty packaging, and M* was the first purchaser of this batch. The whole batch was taken off the shelves, as M* tried to find another Boots.

Mavis and myself headed up to the theatre, chatted for a bit waiting for S to finish schmoozing, and when she came out, all sparkly-eyed, M* and G* turned up having stopped in the pub for a bracer. Then we went into the auditorium, and sat through a play about a metaphysical detective (which was fun), and a (somewhat) kitchen sink drama by the writer of Another Paradise, before the headline act came on stage, The Bee Charmer by t'missus.

Not wanting to give anything away; it was excellent. I know I'm biased, but the writing was stunning, the performances were wonderful and expansive, and the director was over the moon to receive the script. They had a lot of fun putting it on, and I felt that S's writing had engaged the actors' imaginations. There was pindrop silences in the theatre, people rapt, their attention on the stage. It didn't feel like half an hour, but it zipped by. The writing reminded me a lot of Douglas Adams, where every word means something. The headline act was deservedly in the right place, in my opinion.

We decamped to the library next door for drinks and nibbles, where the writers were asked to attend a ten-minute individual panel interview with the invited guests. I thought there would be about half a dozen people on this panel. S was the last play, so she was the last one to attend. The previous day, the panel were a bit up themselves, giving the impression they weren't really expecting to find anything of note; one person said "send us your play when you submit; we'll probably read it and we might give you feedback. What will never, ever happen is that we'll put it on." So, S goes to the panel, opens the door and sees 19 people sat in a big circle. An involuntary "oh my god" escapes her lips, and a chuckle runs around the circle. The course director says "so, who wants to start?" and they were off. Everybody *loved* it. These are the great and the good in the theatre world, those people who can make or break careers, and they had a few criticisms, but all were making comments like "completely charming", "spellbinding", "captivating"... and before too long, ten minutes were up.

Steve wrapped things up - "thank you for coming, we can go & get drinks now" - and left, expecting everybody to leave with him. I saw him come down with a couple of people, and thought "oh, that's the panel", not expecting there to be 19 of them. S didn't appear. Hm, I thought. Maybe she's talking to the play director. Then another half-dozen came down. Another ten minutes went by, and then this mass of people, S at the rear, came back. She grabbed a drink, and:

"after Steve wrapped up, I was expecting everybody to go with him; that's what's been happening on previous sessions. Instead, almost everybody wanted to talk to me, and rushed my seat like a tidal wave; they were queueing up to talk to me. The woman from the National who said they will never put it on was saying that she could see it on a huge stage, a massive performance in a big theatre, and it was tremendously exciting work..."

There were people from radio being excited, our local theatre, the Rep, agents... No kidding; they loved it, and her. Clare, her director, said that she'd never seen or heard of anything like this happening before and was stunned.

So after that, Mavis left, M* & G* left, and S and me went for a pint by ourselves, then joined up with the remainders of the class for a (bloody good) curry. Back to the hotel, we picked up G* from their room and took him for a pint to get him out of M*'s increasingly painful hair. M* had at least a mild concussion in my opinion, but wouldn't go to A&E to get it checked out, she just wanted to sleep and there was no arguing to be had.

The following morning was reasonably calm; M* was feeling much better, so gingerly got into the shower, whereupon the shower head - an 8" whopper - dropped off the wall. Thankfully, not onto M*'s head, so she wrapped it in a towel and dropped it onto Reception. Then they came to find us, asked me for help shifting bags (which I did), and before too long we were all checked out and ready to depart. Some coffee and a muffin, a walk to the war memorial (which is lovely), and then I wandered into the museum while the others went shopping. I had a good poke around the museum, then went to wave off M* & G*. S and myself pottered around Brum, I took S up to the museum to see one particular artwork that fascinated me (Jacob Epstein's Lucifer), then it was time for our train home.

Seriously, this has been one of the oddest weeks I've had in a while (for many more reasons than I've mentioned here) and I've had some odd weeks recently. The next five days will be a cakewalk in comparison.

(Thanks to spending four hours on trains I'd been able to read Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, based off a film rec by my sister; yes, it's good. Not great literature, but not Dan Brown either. If you see a copy in a secondhand bookshop, you might enjoy it. I don't mention every book I read, or even one in twenty, but this is worth a thought or two. Beware, though: the subject matter may be triggering.)

This is a huge entry, and doesn't even contain photos. Tut. There are a couple of photos to come, though.

Anyway, this means task #82 has been completed! I have seen a play written by someone I know (and adore, quite honestly), and it was great.

Currently running habitual tasks: #3 (94/365), #13, #26, #37 (2/<34), #60 (11/50), #68, #66 (57/250), #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: 8
Remaining: 93

Day 90 wordle

From Screen Captures

Day 90, 040609

I have been remarkably remiss in updating the blog over the past month. Very poor indeed, in fact.

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

Day 63, 070509

Last night was Exposure Leeds #3 (task #85). I was doing the meeting people thing, signup sheets, please put 50p in the mug for hot drinks. Alex turned up, and we had a good chat about 101 things (and life in general, and Python *rolls eyes*) before we started the event rolling. We had a talk from a nice chap called Alan who is a pro photographer (on salary!) doing portraits for corporate magazines, which was very interesting and reiterated the whole "get the flash off the camera" thing. He talked about some shots and the thoughts that went into them, use of environment, scouting, showing what the people do in order to get into the magazine as part of the portrait, use of space and allowing for text and headlines and captioning... and also, how much luck is involved. "Adapt" was the message of the day, I think.


B&W slice of light
We also had a talk from Anne, which was a total break from the norm as it was only tangentally involved in photography. Except, it turns out that it's vitally important when taking portraits. It was about use of colour, on people. Or, in the early 90's style, "doing your colours". Anne had a pile of swatches that were everso slightly different from one another, and picked out volunteers with different skintones and hair colour and eye colour, and showed just how different one red was different from another. Portraiture is a lot to do with getting the subject comfortable and happy, and if you have the greatest shirt in the world, and it's slightly too blue for the subject's skintones then the subject will hate it, and not always know why, which is the reason getting the right colours for the right person can make or break a photo.

Not like that, just like that...
It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, like all the ELs have been so far. I always come away from them feeling inspired to do... stuff. A fantastic resource, and one I'm proud to be a part of.

Completely ignoring all the advice I'd just been given

Currently running habitual tasks: #3 (62/365), #13, #26, #37 (2/<34), #60 (11/50), #68, #66 (21/250), #85 (3/4), #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: 6
Remaining: 95

Day 61, 050509 (Misc)

So, in addition to the books and bows, what else has been going on?

• I've started on Task 100 (sponsor people doing things), by donating to a friend who ran the London Marathon, and sponsoring two people who are doing Race for Life. One of those people is my good friend Angela, who is recovering from abdominal surgery and is still planning on doing RFL; feel free to sponsor her too.
  
• Astonishingly, it looks like #7 isn't over. I'm not sure how much I want to say about this just yet, but I've auditioned for a different show (at their request) and things are looking interesting.
  
• visiting Roundhay Park (#22)has turned into a big event-type thing; the fine people of Tea and Cake are putting on a birthday party next week, which should be fun. Bring a flask of tea and a piece of cake! I will :)
  
• not really one of the things, but training for walking up Pen-y-Ghent is underway; Mavis and myself walked from Shipley to Ilkley a couple of weeks ago and had a jolly nice time doing it. In a couple of weeks I hope to get Matt out (#97) as well, for a 20 mile romp across from Masham to Hebden Bridge, assuming I can work out the KML data...
  

So, I think that's me pretty much up to date now. Fun!
Currently running habitual tasks: #3 (60/365), #13, #26, #37 (2/<34), #60 (11/50), #68, #66 (19/250), #85 (2/4), #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: 6
Remaining: 95

Day 61, 050509 (Books)

Over the weekend my delightful lady wife had a bit of a clearout of books, and after being reminded that it was also something I should do from time to time, I managed to make a slight start on task #60, give 50 books to charity shops. This is over and above stuff that I give to bookcrossing, so it's the sort of thing that requires careful thought.

In the end, after a quick glance at the bookshelves and then a second, harder glance where I needed to really think about the books I wanted shut of (I never want to get rid of books per se), I came up with eleven. Out of the many thousand books I have at first glance, I was able to find eleven to give to charity. This does not bode well for this task.

The books I packed in the box for giving away were:

• The World According to Clarkson (picked up for pennies, and utter rubbish - if I want to get cross about columnists Lucy Mangan does a far better job)
  
• Hotel Babylon (charity shop in Bracknell when I was bored to tears learning about SANs; ok book, just a rehash of the usual tales you hear about the hotel industry)
  
• T.E.D. Klein's The Ceremonies (dreadful stuff. I have no idea why I kept it for so long, to be honest.)
  
• Sparkle Hayter's Nice Girls Finish Last (I have no idea why I bought this. I remember reading it but not what it was about; did I have a trashy chick-lit phase in my fiction buying? I don't remember such a phase, but that means nothing.)
  
• Don Kingsbury's Geta (bought second hand in Blackpool during my 16th summer, whilst working as a waiter in a hotel. Book was "meh" at best, and nothing like the cover blurb promised.)
  
• The Subtle Knife (replacement from when I had a "I need to read this now" moment and couldn't find my original copy. The original had a nicer cover than this one, so that was that.)
  
• Stephen King's Night Shift (I don't get on with short stories, and these are pretty rubbish. Another Blackpool purchase. I think I spent about 40% of my wages in that bookshop.)
  
• Dean Koontz' Servants of Twilight (Koontz wrote four plots, and used them in many, many books. This was one I could cheerfully get rid of.)
  
• Robin Cook (no, not that one)'s Coma and Fever (I think you need to be of a certain age to appreciate these books, and that age is fourteen.)
  
• K.W. Jeter's Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human (Dear $deity, why did I pick this up?)

So, that's that. I cleared out 11 books, put them in the box and we headed off to Oxfam Books in Headingley. You now get a card and ID number when donating stuff to Oxfam, because they've worked out a scheme of collecting Gift Aid on the stuff you donate. No, I don't understand it either - they must have a very clever accountant thinking up this stuff. We then promptly replaced the donated books with more books. I ended up coming away with three Asterix books I didn't have, vol 1 of Phil Foglio's Girl Genius, a book about evolution, Amarillo Slim's autobiog (which I'm thoroughly enjoying) and a book about the hidden waterways of London. S came away with a lot more.

So, I gave away 11 books and came back with 7, which isn't bad.

Currently running habitual tasks: #3 (60/365), #13, #26, #37 (2/<34), #60 (11/50), #68, #66 (19/250), #85 (2/4), #87, #88
Currently running exploratory tasks: #38 (1/18), #17 (1/54+), #57 (1/9+)
Currently running growing tasks: #41, #52
Completed: 6
Remaining: 95

Day 61, 050509 (Archery)

First up, the day 60 Wordle (ie, task #37):



I love these; they give an odd sense of what's been happening. Fun stuff. Anyway.

Last time I updated I had a few things to write about, which I failed to do!

I've started archery (#68) lessons, for starters. Two weeks in and I'm still thoroughly enjoying it. Friday is archery day, which means I'm not going to the boozer on Fridays for a couple of weeks. Last week I had a quick play with different types of bow, all of which are terrifying. I kept on thinking "this thing is going to snap" when using the square bow, and I'm glad to be proved wrong. There's not that much to say about my adventures in toxophily so far, but:

• The range is nearly impossible to find if you've not been there before or don't have a natural curiosity as to where unmarked, barely more than a dirt track roads lead.
  
• Because these are beginners classes there are kids. Two of them. They talk constantly and don't listen to instructions (such as "don't point arrows anywhere other than down the range"). There's also a kid who has been shooting arrows for ever, as his dad is in the club; he's great but also likes to talk. His was the square bow - tiny bow, astonishing draw.
  
• There's also a couple of people in the class I'm sure I've met before. One of whom I'm almost convinced I went to school with. Now, that would be a trick, seeing as I went to school 90 miles away.
  
• Because 90% of this is about breathing and concentration, it's a very relaxing way of spending an evening after a rubbish day at werk. There's something very therapeutic about watching an arrow leave the bow, and go exactly where you wanted it. At 10 yards I was getting consistent 30s, and at 20y I'm getting consistent 20s. I think we'll be spending a week or two at 20y before going to 30, but when we get to 30 I'll probably need a bow with a bigger draw than the club bow I'm using.
  
• We're using bog standard recurve bows owned by the club, as simple as they come. Easy to hold, easy to string, easy to take apart, and battered to bits. If I take this up as a hobby I'll end up coughing for a new bow, I know I will. Already I can see the limitations in the club bows.
  
• In week one the rugby club - on whose ground we shoot - were having a linedancing night. A lot of cowgirls and redskins walked across the range at one point, along with more than one fellow wearing little more than a stetson and some chaps. Somewhat surreal, and a couple of choice remarks about bows and arrows (and Brokeback Mountain) were playfully tossed about.
  
• For fun and games someone stuck a picture of a squirrel on the targets last week. I'm still not sure how I feel about this. It reminded me that this is a survivalist skill, not an abstract activity.

For all this, I'm not going to tick this one off until I've completed the six-week course. If most of what I learn is muscle memory and how to assemble a bow then I'll be fine, but I'm already thinking about whether I want to have this as a proper hobby or not. Tending towards a yes, to be perfectly honest, which has surprised me. My original spreadsheet says this may have a commitment weighting, and without a doubt it does. The concentration and breathing alone is enough to lift weights from my branes, and I can see this being a thing that I do for quite a while.

Day 54, 280409

(I have a couple of things to write up, but it'll be in separate entries; this one is a biggie.)

This week has all been about the chocolate. And commuting to Whitefield, but aside from saying that I've never been so road-ragey in my life, least said the better.

Task 8 is "learn how to make chocolates". I didn't really know what I wanted out of this, as I've made chocolates in the past but really wanted to learn how to make them properly; the week-long course I've just finished did this in spades.

Slattery's is a fab place. It's a choccy and cake shop, where they decorate cakes in the back room, have a cafe on the first floor and a school in the attic. A former pub, this place is a brilliant building and it's still too small for them; the shop is enormous and still they're short of space. People are in and out all the time, between two sites they employ 60 people and 14 saturday staff, they're seemingly unaffected by the current economic climate and make some pretty stunning stuff. They also sell ingredients in small batches, which is bloody brilliant from my point of view.

So, day one was making stuff in moulds; bears, boxes, truffle shells. We also made a quick ganache - simple truffle mix - and learned that you can temper chocolate by careful use of a microwave. And a huge chocolate lolly. We learned about presentation being important, too, so it was put together on a baseboard with choccy scribbles, and cellophaned.



Day two was more about truffle mix; flavourings, expiry dates (quick ganache needs eating in 6-10 days, the one we did today was good for 6 weeks), practicing filling moulds, more tempering, making circular boxes out of cooking rings, lids, and decorative techniques; hand-rolling, dusting, transfer sheets, how to make dominoes, the importance of cocoa butter and colourings (shiny!), and more presentation.


Day three was shoes and handbags; these things sell for astonishing amounts of money. This was more coloured cocoa butter, decorative techniques, piping, care and attention to detail and contrasts, all arty stuff you pick up over the years by osmosis. This was probably my least useful day, and I'm not terribly happy with one of the pieces (the handbags are rubbish), but still fun. Unfinished the shoes looked like this:

Finished, they looked like this:

We ended the day with a talk on packing and legislation that was fascinating and very useful.

Day four was cake decoration. Nearly everybody started with the idea of making a cake suitable for a wedding, so we ran out of white chocolate (seriously, 15 Kg of the stuff). We learned how to make chocolate paste (alternative to marzipan), pouring ganache, chocolate fans and ruffles, marbles, more (neater!) dominoes, curls, twists, pillars, and how drawing shapes on sugar can make some lovely effects. My cake ended up looking like this:

See the cigarettes on the right-hand side? I'm very proud of them; two-tone, they're not something you normally see on cakes or in shops.

Day 5 was insane; we had individual oval cakes, truffles, truffles, more truffles, more dipping, decorating, rolling and tempering, caramels, Q&A, more truffles, shells, gathering everything together and buying ingredients. As I have no need of 10x10kg sacks of chocolate I was happy to pay a bit extra to just buy the 2.5Kg ones. Just some of the stuff I made on Friday looked like this:


I loved this week. It was outstanding, the food was good, the students lovely, the tutor knowledgeable (a former patissier) and an excellent teacher, the staff incredibly helpful and willing to chat to us no matter what was going on. I'm stunned at how happy everybody there was, and it's all down to the management, who is a couple of people who have known the business since it was four people selling hand-rolled truffles. No kidding, if you're at a loose end for a week and have the money to do it, this is an outstanding course to attend. If you don't have the money or the time, do the 2-day chocolate excellence course instead. Really.

So, I'm looking into getting the kitchen up to the sort of standards an environmental health officer wouldn't have a problem with. This might take a bit of thinking about.

Currently running habitual tasks: #3 (53/365), #13, #26, #66 (19/250), #85 (2/4), #87, #88
Currently running exploratory tasks: #38 (1/18), #17 (1/54+), #57 (1/9+)
Currently running growing tasks: #41, #52
Completed: 6
Remaining: 95

Day 36, 100409

I love bank holidays. Being off work is huge fun, especially when it's a weekday and you're (i) not ill and (ii) not using a day's leave.

So what can be better than updating my blog with what I've been up to? Let's see, now...

On day 34, April 8th, I popped into the Art Gallery on the Headrow in Leeds to get my "visit all the museums with a LS postcode" task (#57)started. After leaving werk I found myself in the not uncommon situation of going "oh, I've not taken a photo yet today. What shall I snap?" and found myself outside the art gallery. There's quite a well-known statue by Henry Moore outside the gallery, so I photographed that, and then popped in to see what they had on.

There was an exhibition called "Rank". All about social orders on a local and global scale, it contains works as diverse as the frontispiece of Hobbes' Leviathan, cartoons from publications in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, an edition of Polyopoly, some of the maps from those lovely people in Sheffield Uni's geography department blown up to enormous sizes, and print 18/20 of Chad McCail's Compulsory Education.

I've come across Chad McCail before; his work freaks me the hell out. A couple of years ago I saw Snake in the Baltic in Gatehead, which was complex social commentary reduced to a poster that wouldn't look out of place in a schoolroom, despite the context and imagery being utterly beyond kids. Compulsory Education is no exception to this; he's back to using robots again, very stylised based on those capable of taking orders, those who pass on orders, and those who make the orders in the first place. I like the juxtaposition (concept vs design), but at the same time it really does give me the wig. Not as much as Snake did, to be fair, but still. About a year after I first saw Snake I wrote:

"I'm not sure what I make of it, or even whether I like it or not. It's a disturbing piece of imagery and I need to ask myself... do I enjoy being disturbed?"

Five years later, I'm still not sure.

Anyway, if you get 10 minutes one lunchtime and you're in Leeds, go & see it. The exhibit finishes on April 26th, so there's not much time left.

Oh, and the picture?


I failed at looking at the Atkinson Grimshaws in the LCAG while I was there, but ran out of time. Another day.

Today I've been out for a run (although I'm not comfortable enough to say that I'm in training yet), and turned my handwriting into a font. Yes, I've finished another task, this time #71. I tried doing this last week and came up with something that approximated my handwriting, but was even less legible than usual, so I re-did the process and came up with something better.

The process: go to YourFonts.com, download a template, print off the template, fill out the template, scan the filled out template and upload the scanned, filled out template back into their website. Provided you've followed all the instructions on ink, scanning and how to stay inside the boxes, about 40 seconds later you'll end up with a TrueType Font (strictly speaking, it's an ODF with TTF wrappers) that looks like your handwriting, and Word is intelligent enough to bold and italicize it if you so wish. Seriously, this is everso cool and I can't thank Emmy enough for pointing me at it. Give it a try.

My handwriting looks like this, eventually:


Nifty!

Currently running habitual tasks: #3 (36/365), #13, #26, #66 (15/250), #85 (2/4), #87, #88
Currently running exploratory tasks: #38 (1/18), #17 (1/54+), #57 (1/9+)
Currently running growing tasks: #41, #52
Completed: 5
Remaining: 96

Day 32, 060409

Tropical World (item 23) is fab, let's get this straight. Forget the parking, the location, the traffic, the insane number of people and the fact they had no ice cream. It was a total delight. I'd never been before, and was looking forwards to it after C* suggested a trip earlier in the week. After eventually finding a parking space we headed in (free for Leeds Card holders), where it got progressively warmer and warmer and warmer. The first room wasn't too bad; plenty of butterflies, some turtles, interesting plants, koi and ants. There were some vivaria in the next bit, then it got warmer again and more, well, tropical, where there were fish and a waterfall and ducks and birds and all sorts of stuff. We had a dark room with fruitbats (yay!) and other nocturnals, some degus, lizards, and snakes. They had golden lion tamarins! And meercats! A huge blue iguana, and a brilliant gecko with stunning red and blue colouring. It was warm in there, although with such a name it's hardly surprising.

There's a pile of photos on Flickr, but one I particularly wanted to share was this one:


So, that's another thing completed! I know 23 was supposed to be part of 22 (visit Roundhay park), but the park is so big I'm going to have to take more time to have a poke around in there.

It's day 32, so I need to Wordle the blog (item 37). Yes, I said I was going to do it every 30 days, but there's no difference between day 30 & day 32 in terms of content, so I'm safe :)

From Wordles

Currently running habitual tasks: #3 (31/365), #13, #26, #66 (15/250), #85 (2/4), #87, #88
Currently running exploratory tasks: #38 (1/18), #17 (1/54+)
Currently running growing tasks: #41, #52
Completed: 4
Remaining: 97

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