A bicycle baked for two.

Biscuits using two of my christmas presents; a recipe book and a bicycle cookie cutter. Om nom nom :)

The End of the World/Start of the Year

Since it's a new year, the newspapers and internet are full of predictions, including for the end of the world. Not that I'm convinced the Mayans were right in their prediction for 2012 (and surely they were only bothered about their bit of the world - America - anyway). But while I was running a couple of days ago I was thinking about why I've decided to start running. Randomly, into my head popped the thought, "Well, when the zombies/apocalypse/collapse of civilisation comes at least I'll be able to run away". Seems as good a reason as any really.

I don't really do "New Year's Resolutions" but have decided that this year I want to do fun stuff. Now that maybe seems like an easy thing to commit to but since I'm doing a full time masters course and working at the same time, I'm finding life a little busy. I'm not planning on making unreasonable fitness goals but would like to enjoy running. Having had a dodgy ankle for about 7 years, I've not been able to run - or at least not if I didn't want to spend 48 hours hobbling... I've done a few short runs over the holidays and it didn't hurt! I'm hoping if I can enjoy running then I will get fitter by accident.

Is it weird to attempt to subliminally trick myself into healthiness? Oh well, at least running will counteract (some of) the cakes I plan to bake this year.

Calanas Course

Calanas is the Gaelic term for spinning or working with wool. I've been knitting for a few years now, using a variety of yarn from cheap acrylic to breathtakingly expensive merino. I had never considered making yarn myself until a colleague passed me a flyer for a Calanas course.

Gratuitous Herdwicks being photogenic in the Lake District

The course takes place at Whitmuir; a local organic farm. We start with soup at the farm restaurant then get stuck into the task of the week. The first week we met the flock (one of whom escaped...) and got our hands dirty with a stack of fleeces. With tangled and dirty parts removed (and a surprising amount of thorns) we washed and dried the fleeces. The following week we started carding the wool.

Giant sheep or tiny man?

Last night was our first attempt at spinning. I found it quite surprising the number of people who happened to have spinning wheels already - at least half of the group! Now for an admission; I signed up for this course thinking it would be fun and relaxing to learn a new skill. Spinning is not relaxing. Spinning is frustrating, complicated and addictive. I had thought I had reasonable hand-foot coordination, it turns out I can make my hands and feet work together but can't breathe at the same time. Hopefully next time I'll manage to get into a rhythm without getting so over excited that I let go and it all goes wrong. I've also attempted spinning on a spindle - slightly less stressful as it's much slower. Not necessarily easier though.

In the end I was very pleased to realise that somewhere in all the confusion I had managed to spin a significant amount of fleece into something approximating wool:

Wool spun on a wheel and a spindle

I can't wait for next time!

Photography

Photography has interested me since I was about 14 or 15. My parents have always been interested in photography and I always loved the theatre of getting a big white screen out and looking at their slides in the dark. I got my first *real* camera, an SLR, at university and enjoyed taking photos and waiting to get the prints back. It was always exciting to see if shots had worked, and to notice things I hadn't seen at the time.

Next I got a digital SLR and loved the instant feedback - knowing straight away if a shot had turned out how I had planned. My Nikon D40 has definitely helped me become a better photographer - trying different lenses and settings and seeing what happens.

When my parents said they were thinking of getting rid of their old cameras I felt sad to think of them just sitting in a cupboard, not being used. So now as well as my Nikon I have an old-school Canon AE-1 Program. I love the feel of it, it feels light and comfortable in my hands.

After a couple of weeks of hail, lightning and torrential downpours (cars shouldn't float in Edinburgh!), we've had two glorious evenings of golden sunshine. Perfect for photography. We went for a walk in the Pentlands by Threipmuir reservoir and up Blackford Hill. Unfortunately our plans for glass-still water and dramatic hills didn't quite work out - the triathletes had decided it was a great day for a swim. I've taken 36 shots though and finished my film. I'll take it to the camera shop tomorrow and am already looking forward to getting the prints back next weekend!

I don't have to wait for all my gratification though - technology these days is amazing and my camera phone is perfectly capable of taking a nice snap. Hopefully the film camera will still be suitable for taking shots like these:

Chocolate and cherry

This has been a productive weekend; chocolate cake, bread and knitting. The bread was too tasty to remain un-scoffed long enough for photos but I can't eat a *whole* cake in one sitting:

This is a wonderful cake for weekends - quick, easy and tasty!

175g soft butter or margarine

175g caster sugar

3 eggs (medium or large)

150g self raising flour

25g cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

Beat together the sugar and butter (I use a wooden spoon, you can use electric beaters if you have them)

Mix in the eggs

Mix in the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder until smooth

If it's hard to mix, add a splash of milk (couple of tablespoons) until it's nice and smooth

Put into two 7inch cake tins (lined with grease proof paper)

Bake at 170C for about 30 minutes - poke it with a sharp knife after this time - if the knife comes out clean it's done

Leave in the tins for 10minutes or so then cool the cakes on a wire rack.

I like to fill it with chocolate spread (easy!) but this weekend I went for cherry compote and creme fraiche. Then all you have to do is try to resist eating it before friends pop round to help ;)

Eurovision and other music

First of all I'd like to point out that I'm generally indifferent to Eurovision. However when a friend bought tickets and invited me along I couldn't resist. I was intrigued and also I really like Germany! Look, Cologne has random art in empty shops:

So that's how I came to be in Dusseldorf at the Jury Final of Eurovision 2011 (50% of the total score is based on a jury from each country, the other 50% is based on the public telephone votes). I actually found it a lot more fun than I'd expected - perhaps helped by the fact that there were several non-traditional Eurovision songs (i.e. they were musical rather than an ode to sparkle).

First for Finland was Paradise Oskar (real name Axel Ehnström) singing a song about saving the planet. Later on there were Sjonni's Friends from Iceland with "Coming Home". The song was written by Sigurjón Brink who died before it could be picked as the Icelandic entry. His musician friends put together a band and sang it in tribute to him.

Of course my two favourites didn't win - they were more singer-songwritery, boy with guitar type songs so not really in the spirit of Eurovision. It was interesting watching the jury final and wondering how different the total scores would be (in the jury final Italy and Britain were joint first). With jury and public votes combined; Italy came second and Britain in 10th, the winners were Azerbaijan.

On the Saturday night we watched the Eurovision final in a gay bar - they had score cards, pencils with flags on *and* transvestites (I may have been a little jealous of their dresses and hats...) Gay bars are the way forward - everyone is just lovely and friendly. Earlier in the day there had been a football match on with chanting fans everywhere, the difference was rather pronounced.

Whilst in Germany we did manage a little culture as well, we had a wander round Cologne cathedral:

Walked along the Hohenzollern bridge and looked at all the padlocks (each the symbol of a couple's love):

We even managed to spot an incongruous flying car:

All in all a bizarre but fun trip! I can't wait to visit Germany again later on in Summer - might stick to my sort of gigs in future though.

Left-Handed

If you know me in the real world (which admittedly is probably everyone who reads this blog) then you'll probably know I'm left-handed. Most of the time I don't feel disadvantaged by this, I have my computers at work and home set up how I like them, I knit right-handed (much easier to find instructions for difficult stitches), I play guitar right-handed. Generally if I want to do something left-handed it is possible, though sometimes it is easier just to fit in with normality.

Recently I found something that isn't available to left-handers - cake forks. Now most of you probably don't think this is a big issue - how often do people use cake forks anyway? Well actually I like cake a lot, and therefore eat cake quite a lot. In public I generally have to make do with a right-handed cake fork and don't often end up covered in chocolate and cream. However I do feel the whole event would be more relaxed and pleasant if I had the correct implement for the job.

Sadly, it seems I am too much in the minority to make this viable for cutlery manufacturers. If anyone does find a source of left-handed cake forks, please let me know!

Someone who probably thinks cake forks are silly is this little Adder, seen up Mount Keen on 29th April:

Florida

Warning: Epic post

As anyone reading this is likely to know, Iain won another Nokia competition recently. This time he got to take me too! His winning entry:

Lapsed...

Friday: Got up ridiculously early (4.30am) to catch a flight from Edinburgh airport to Gatwick. Have some leisurely coffee and croissants in Gatwick then fly to Orlando, Florida. Second flight in particular had epic leg-room, about 6feet for Iain! Exit seats are good :)

Arrived into Orlando about 6pm and Iain recognised Frank in the queue and met Mike. Wandered round Orlando airport until we found our driver! The car was massive. It was like being enveloped by a huge leather sofa! An hour later we got to the hotel, met some of the Nokia/WOMworld people in reception and checked in. Our room/suite was also massive (this seems to be a recurring theme in America). Big bedroom, with kingsize bed, big living room/kitchenette thing, bathroom, balcony overlooking the atlantic ocean. It was dark when we arrived but we could just about make out the crashing waves below. The thing that baffled me about the hotel was that the *double* room had *three* sinks... (and two tvs, and two games consoles).

After an hour or so to settle in, we met most of the other Nokia people in reception and had a walk to a barbecue restaurant. I think it must have been obvious we were foreigners, in the mile long walk to the restaurant, we saw *noone* else walking. Restaurant place was what we expected; pick an animal and sides (most of which seemed to be deep-fried). Then utterly fail to eat even half of what was on the plate. It was very nice but given we'd been awake for 24hours by this point we were starting to flag! I went for beef with Hush puppies (ordered out of curiosity, they were deep-fried corn bread rather than shoes), deep-fried okra and sweet potato chips. Even the drinks were massive - I had a bucket of coke that I needed two hands to lift.

All the other people there (N8 producers winners, Nokia/WOMworld people and the film crew) were lovely and from all over the world (Britain, Croatia, Slovenia, Spain, France, USA, Canada, Brazil, Philippines, South Africa - via Finland).

Following the meal we went back to the hotel, and slept. At least for about 4 hours until we woke up at 3am thinking it was time to get up. Few more hours of attempting to sleep we gave up and watched the sunrise from our balcony:


Once the sun was up we went for a swim in the outdoor swimming pool, went for a paddle in the ocean (pelicans kept flying past and fishing - they're huge!) and then went for breakfast. Buffet full of tastiness! Wonderful eggs, bacon, French toast and a waffle machine!



Saturday was the day we had all been waiting for - Zero gravity flight! We all loaded onto the bus to the venue. There we got our own flight bags with flightsuit, special socks, t-shirt and wristband. Watched a video of what we would experience, and got told hardly anyone gets ill. Then we had a second breakfast and got taken to the flight strip!

We were in 3 groups of about 8 people each led by a trained member of the zero gravity company. The plane was like any normal plane except the engines were on the tail rather than the wings. Also there were only about 50 seats at the back of the plane, the rest was stripped out and padded. Once the plane got to normal cruising altitude we were taken forward of the seats to lie down in our groups. The pilot then took the plane into parabolic dives and rises so that we could experience weightlessness. The first gave us the experience of Martian gravity (1/3 of Earth gravity), the second and third were Lunar gravity (1/6 of Earth gravity), we then had two dives of zero gravity.

Zero gravity is hard to explain, it's like no other experience. We were lying on the floor of the plane, then suddenly we would lift up off the floor and float around. There was no "lurch" or feeling of dropping. We just went from normal weight to weighing nothing. The closest thing is floating in water, except that there is no resistance. Any push against the floor or wall (or ceiling) would cause you to career off in the opposite direction. This led to bodies flying everywhere and colliding off each other and the walls - great fun! The guy in charge would then say "Feet down, coming out" and everyone would attempt to get their feet beneath them for when gravity suddenly came back. We would then all lie down still for while the plane regained altitude - experiencing about 1.8G. We had been told that the heavy gravity was the bit that could make people feel queasy so tried to stay motionless to reduce any effects.

We had 12 goes of total weightlessness and the team leaders set up various things for us to do - handfuls of sweets and globules of water to chase after. Several people began to feel ill and were taken to the back of the plane with sickbags. Most people had a great time though. It was all over very soon and were taken back to have a buffet, get our certificates of weightlessness and generally recover from the experience.



After a couple of hours in the hotel we all met up and went to the bar next door - Lou's Blues (confusingly not a Blues bar...) We all seemed to be the youngest by quite a way but it was fun to relax with a couple of beers and some more deep-fried food.

Sunday morning was more swimming in the pool and the ocean, more buffet breakfast then Universal Studios. It was fun out of season but I can't imagine what it must be like in the height of Summer (a steady 28C was plenty for me!) with lots of people. It was great being able to just walk on to rides rather than queue for hours. Especially for the Harry Potter ride - it took us a good 10 minutes to walk through without stopping, bypassing the majority of the queuing pens!



Sunday evening, those of us who were still awake went back to Lou's Blues bar. I tried my first ever oyster - surprisingly nice, like a slightly oceany custard but much more refreshing and tasty than that sounds! There was then much competitiveness over the foosball table, then an hour or two singing round the piano - much to the delight of one of the bargirls. Apparently noone ever plays the piano, especially not with vast quantities of interesting, young singing foreigners!

Monday was a day to relax, buy chocolates from the massive Walmart across the road (it took me about 10 minutes to find the food section, it was so big), and try surfing. For me this mostly involved wading out with the surfboard, struggling onto it, cruising along on my stomach for a bit then losing me balance, getting splatted by the board and crashing my knees on the rocks. It was fun though! Shortly after we stopped attempting to surf we saw a dead shark on the beach. Am glad we saw it *after* getting out! It was about 4 or 5 feet long and could have given me a good nibbling!

We then proceeded to eat the majority of the buffet in preparation for travelling, then sat chatting to the WOMworld guys in reception. It was a bit of a mac-fest. They all had macbook pros or airs. Iain had his ipad and I felt slightly outclassed with my ipod touch... Iain got some very exciting news from Heriot-Watt and then we got a taxi back to the airport.

All in all a wonderful experience with some great people, vast quantities of food and many pretty Mustangs and Corvettes to lust after :)

Now I just need to work out how to get my hands on a Nokia N8!

Nokia have uploaded the first unofficial videos from the trip at:

http://www.womworld.com/nokia/19611/some-zero-g-videos-from-n8productions/

January Review

So, January. My kind of New Year's plans (not really resolutions) were to play guitar more and do more photography. Hmm, I seem to mostly have spent January baking instead! In no particular order, the things I baked in January:

Macaroons
Macaroons
Macaroons (The posh almond ones, they're just so easy! And yes I am addicted)
Lemon drizzle cake
Seedy wholemeal loaf
Sweet cardamom bread rolls
Brezels (they were ok but just like bread rolls, not really brezelly at all)
Stromboli (bread with mozzarella, smoked cheddar, basil and garlic in)
Black forest rolls (bread with posh ham, cheese and mustard baked in (very tasty)
Chocolate chip buns
Blueberry Muffins
Scones (I may have made scones twice, I forget)
Pancakes
Rice pudding (though I'm not sure this counts as it's so easy)

Unfortunately due to the lack of sunlight in these northern climes (or perhaps because everything was too yummy to resist), not many photos were taken...

Therefore I'm going to distract you with a couple of sunset photos instead:



Both taken on the train ride north from Yorkshire to Edinburgh on 3rd January.

Music of 2010

Hmm, oddly I can't write a blogpost in the normal way, I have to be in HTML mode. My iPod would let me type in the title but didn't recognise the blog field as a text field. Apologies if the formatting goes freaky but hopefully it'll be readable. Once I'm reunited with my computer I should be able to improve it.

Also it won't let me see all of what I've typed or even choose which bit to edit. Not ideal! I'll do another post tomorrow with my ideal playlist :)

2010 was a funny year for me. With my other half working so hard I was generally trying to make as little noise as possible. Also I've lost one of my musical gurus to fatherhood. However with the other. Half's working patterns it means he's wanted new music rather than listening to the same things repeatedly. This has led to vast quantities of spotify surfing.

I would occasionally something that caught my attention and would ask who it was. Almost always, the answer was Frank Turner. I have since listened pretty much entirely to Frank Turner and went to see him live in early December. (Awesome).

My music choices seem to have changed quite alot this year, starting out with older classics like
Muse and REM. Nowadays I seem to have a preference for solo singer songwriters. The fowooing are a selection of my favourite artists/songs from 2010 (not all are new in 2010 I just happen to have enjoyed them in 2010).

Favourite album:
Dark Was the Night (Songs from a variety of artists)

Favourite soundtrack:
Juno

Favourite artists (order is fairly fluid depending on mood):
1. Frank Turner
2. Joshua Radin
3. Mumford & Sons
4. Ben Harper
5. Ben Folds Five
6. Eels
7. Death Cab for Cutie
8. Malcolm Middleton
9. Chris Velan
10. Philip Glass

Special mentions also go to Tommy Reilly and mewithoutyou as artists I plan to search out more of in future.

Comedic songwriters:
Jonathan Coulton - Skullcrusher Mountain and Code Monkey are just adorable love songs!
Tim Minchin - his songs are just so witty and true. Plus if the salvation army finds him annoying I can't help but like him ;)

Tis the Season to be Jolly

I love Christmas! Plus living in Scotland, New Year is really exciting too. My boyfriend has taken back his Nokia N8 which I'll miss. It would be handy having a smartphone, especially since we'll be visiting both our families (Yorkshire and Scotland) and friends over the holidays.

With an N8 I could easily blog/tweet the 12 days of Christmas, uploading straight from the phone rather than having to remember all the right cables to connect my camera. Ovi maps would also be handy for finding friends out and about on Hogmanay!

Mince pies I made earlier - liable to get eaten before I have chance to get my DSLR out, no excuse with a smartphone:

Headphones

It's funny how music is so omnipresent these days. I have music on cassette tapes (remember those?), CD, my computer. I have two ipods (Mini for exercise, Touch for general purpose use) and since I'm currently borrowing my boyfriend's smartphone, I also have music on that. Then there's Spotify so I can get music on my work computer. That's all without considering the musical bombardment from TV, internet, shops, the general world.

But how to listen to all this music? At home that's fine; stereo systems (of varying quality) in most rooms of the flat. Out and about is a different matter. I dislike the Apple in-the-ear headphones that came with my ipods. I think they're simply too big (even the small size) and they become uncomfortable after about 5 songs. I have my big headphones that I use for playing electric guitar (I do live in a flat after all, rocking out late at night might not be appreciated by the neighbours!) but with a 4 metre cable they're not ideal for going on the bus...

My current headphones of choice are "JVC HA-FX34-BE" in-ear (snappy name eh?). They're fine for general use around town etc. More comfortable than the Apple ones but they do get uncomfortable after a while (trying to block out office noise at work all day). Plus in this winter weather I keep getting them tangle in my coat/scalf/hat (and occasionally my mittens).

My boyfriend let me borrow a pair WOMworld lent him. They're the Nokia BH-905i bluetooth headphones and rather nice. Over the ear, noise-blocking and beautiful sound quality. Similarly to Nokia phones though, just a little too big for me. (How's Genetic-modification/gene-therapy going, can they make me Swedish and tall yet?)

I found them brilliant around town but ended up wearing them in the flat quite a lot (the flat is cold and they kept my ears warm and full of music). The only problem with this was that I noticed the power light is on the front, perfectly positioned so that it reflected of my glasses. The blue light blinking in my peripheral vision was suprisingly distracting! This was remedied with some blue-tack but I'm not sure it added to my style-quotient :p

Think I'll stick with my cheap and cheerful in-ear headphones for now. (At least until I have a million pounds spare to spend on luscious bluetooth ones and some more blue-tack).

A Life in Phones

First things first I'd like to point out that I am not a phone geek. I'm writing this because I'm currently looking for a new phone and want to work out what would suit me. Also this is a *really* long post (you have been warned).

Phone 1: Nokia 3210

I loved this phone. I got it for Christmas when I was 15 and had it for over 5 years without ever being tempted to replace it. This is the phone by which all other phones are judged. I was sad to part with it but my boyfriend (tech-savvy) was embarrassed by the ancient brick I was carrying and bought me a new one.

Phone 2: Nokia 3120 (I think)

This was fine. Bit smaller than my 3210 and had a colour screen but similar in other respects. It did phones and texts. It did not survive being run over by a car...

Phone 3: Nokia 6300

After phone 2 died I decided I would get a phone with a camera! This was an exciting moment. In all other respects it wasn't really much different from what I'd had before though. I used it for texting, phone calls and occasional snaps of stuff I wanted to remember. This phone was great for me, small enough to be easy to slip into a pocket but robust and sturdy enough that I wasn't paranoid about breaking it. Sadly after a couple of loyal years, phone 3 has run away.

Luckily for me, my boyfriend seems to be a smartphone wrangler, they're just magically attracted to him and have a tendency to turn up on the doorstep. This means I've had the chance to try out a few different phones on a temporary basis.

Temporary phone 1: Nokia E5

I'd heard that this was a phone-geeks phone and was told I'd probably struggle. Not sure what they were on about, it was easy to use. Easy to

navigate around and find the options I wanted. No difficulty setting up my facebook account on it, camera was straight forward too. First phone that I've wanted to look something up and gone "Ahah! I can google it!! From my phone!!!"

There were however a couple of things I wasn't keen on. I'm not really a fan of blackberry style phones and found it a bit too big and chunky. It was good for typing emails on but was too big to fit easily into pockets. My old phones I tended to chuck in my bag and forget about. I was quite content that they could rattle around and still work on the other side. Not so the E5 - I'm sure it is fairly sturdy really but I was scared of hurting it.

Another thing I found baffling (but would get used to I'm sure) was the number layout. A phone style keypad overlaid on the QWERTY keyboard but with zero off to one side. Every time I wanted to type in numbers I got confused, expecting them to be laid out QWERTY style.

One thing I really liked was the torch! Just press a button and you have a light. I'd never really considered this as being an awesome phone feature before but found it really useful on a couple of occasions.

Temporary phone 2: Sony Ericsson Xperia X10

Serious geek-phone. I think I lot of my issues were simply that I'm not the target audience for this phone. I want a phone that I can use straight away. I liked the idea that I could customise everything, and in practise I guess that once you have it set up right it's a brilliant phone... but I kept being baffled that I had to set up every little thing. You want a keyboard to type texts? Oh you'll have to choose from myriad options. You want to use facebook, you'll have to decide which app you want to download. I never did manage to find one I liked. I ended up mostly using my ipod touch for internet.

The camera was ok but not as good as I'd expected somehow. Ditto with video, sound quality wasn't great (ok I was at a gig but still).

My major bugbear again was it's size and seeming fragility. I just don't feel comfortable sticking something that is pretty much all screen in a bag with keys. Perhaps smartphones tend to be marketed at men but still, if I can't actually reach to type in landscape mode, I'm not going to use it. I really struggled when texting. My style is to use two thumbs. With my old phones I could quite happily walk along the street texting without looking. With the X10 I had to stop and really concentrate. Then go back and change all the auto-corrections (e.g. it changed "Marzipan" to "Martian". Why would I want to ask my boyfriend if he likes martians in cake-form?) Also it seems I type too quick so it wasn't noticing half my keystrokes.

Another issue I had was how fast it ran through it's battery. Admittedly my previous phones hadn't had very heavy usage but phone 3 usually needed charging every 3 to 4 days. The X10 needed charging twice a day. It's not exactly mobile if I have to leave it charging while I live my life. It turned out this was because I hadn't installed the app to stop it burning through it's battery, or the app that lets you exit other apps (why can't they just have exit buttons?)

Oh and another thing I almost forgot - every time I tried to call someone from it I ended up hanging up on them with my ear. Having a touch-screen "end call" button just didn't work for me. Most calls I made I ended up giving up and using the landline (despite the mobile calls being free).

Also the Sony Ericsson website offends me. Do not play cheesy music and a video at me when I'm just trying to look up the model spec to write a review!

*Going to try it again with a 2.1 update - apparently this addresses a lot of the niggles I have* Or possibly my boyfriend just wants his N8 again ;)

Temporary phone 3: Nokia N8

I'm in love. Almost. I think it was a relief to be using a Nokia again. They just work! I don't know if it's due to always owning Nokia phones but they just make sense to me.

Camera is easy to use and awesome. I'm not sure I'll be able to enjoy another smartphone now. Anything with an inferior camera (i.e. every other phone currently in existence) will feel just that; inferior. The music player is also good and easy to use, as is the internet and everything else.

However, like the X10 it's just too big. In portrait mode it's ok so long as I concentrate (though not happy that the space bar isn't at the bottom of the screen - means I keep hitting the menu button). In landscape mode I like the layout (QWERTY) but again the numbers are down the middle rather than QWERTY style. The phone is just too big though. In landscape I struggle to reach all the buttons even typing with two thumbs. Being touch screen this means I really have to concentrate; if I relax I start missing.

My main bugbear though is that the phone is bafflingly right-handed. I don't really see the need in this day and age. Being left-handed I tend to put the strap round my left wrist. When wanting landscape I tilt the phone 90degrees to the right. Then pause, shake it a bit, then realise "Oh yes, it won't go that way". Take the wrist-strap off and tilt it to the left instead. The Sony Ericsson was the same - most of my photos had to be rotated through 180degrees on the computer afterwards as I apparently took them all upside down...

Future phone: a mystery

Now I just need to work out from my history what my future phone should be. Having used smartphones I do like them. However they're soo big! I don't want something that is uncomfortable to hold and use simply because my hands are too small. I preferably don't want something right-handed either.

Currently contemplating an N97 mini - touchscreen, keyboard and small! Or perhaps C6-01 - like an N8 but smaller.

The only thing I'm confident about is that I want a Nokia. So Nokia, if you want a small, left-handed person's point of view on phones, feel free to send me some to test ;)

Lake District

I think this is my favourite of the photos I took in the Lake District at the weekend. I only realised upon looking at my photos, and everyone else's photos afterwards that I hardly ever take photos of people. Mostly just of mountains, waterfalls, trees. Hopefully now I know this I can practise and improve.

Music

I like most sorts of music, particularly indie and rock-pop type stuff. At the moment I seem to be listening to a lot of classical music. I enjoy a bit of Vivaldi, Mozart and Beethoven now and then but I realised my favourite composers are modern.

Ludovico Einaudi (born in 1955) is a pianist and composer. I particularly like his album Le Onde - brilliant if you need a bit of relaxation! I keep listening to it on the bus to work and I makes me smile.

Philip Glass (born in 1937) composes music for symphonies, operas and film scores. I first became aware of his work through Battlestar Galactica (the modern one with Katee Sackhoff as Starbuck - I want to be her!) Philip Glass' Metamorphosis for Piano (1988) was imagined/remembered/played by Starbuck. One of the few times I've heard something and bought the piano music!

Another soundtrack I like is for Pride & Prejudice (the 2005 film featuring Keira Knightley). Music by Dario Marianelli, piano played by Jean-Yves Thibaudet - another two musicians I want to know more about. The soundtrack is quite varied (unsurprisingly) but again I like the solo piano pieces.

My computer at home is now fixed (thank you computer-fixer!) so hopefully I'll get to play more piano soon.

tea and cake :-)

photography

Had to rotate this, cameraphones all seem to be left-handed and make everything upside down :(

Blurgh

I seem to have been sick forever (my cold is now 2 and a half weeks old - surely they aren't supposed to last this long!?) Also my computer is sick. It keeps waking up in the night and getting distressed. Hopefully a trip to Glasgow's Apple store will make it all better. In the meantime no photos :(

If I'm going to Glasgow, it would be rude not to pop into Mandors and pick up some haberdashery goodness:

http://www.mandors.co.uk/

Photos

It may not look like it (hangs head) but I have been taking photos! I've just been kind of too busy to do anything with them. So this is going to be a catch up post.

Knitting:

Crane:

I'm sure used bullets don't actually work very well:

Blackford Pond, 5 minutes walk from the flat:

First ever home made jam (plum):

Cookie cutters (but no circle cutters):

Gin & Tonic:

Dramatic Sky

All day the weather has been very changeable. Alternating heavy rain with sunshine. Was out in the car in the evening but got back in time to run to the top of the block of flats and catch the last of the sunset.

Hot off the camera, no post production at all: