A Dynamic Christmas

My work, Our Dynamic Earth, is a wonderful building to photograph.   This is even more true at Christmas time when it's all lit up for Christmas party nights.   The usually white canvas glows pink and green and fairy lights cover the central white dome.   I took advantage of the decorations this year to get a few shots.   Here are some of my favorites:

Teriyaki beef thing

Here's a successful, though highly flavoured food experiment I thought I'd share with you.   It's a sort of teriyaki beef dish thing.   Ok, so i'm not too sure what to call it.   The point it, it's tasty!   Here's a shot of the ingredients (minus the fresh coriander and the dessicated coconut):

Step one is to marinate the beef in the teriyaki sauce.   I leave it for half a day at least.

        This particular brand of teriyaki sauce is pretty thick, so I added some water to it as well.


Next, chop and fry your onions.   Add the garlic and plenty of ground coriander and dessicated coconut.   And some black pepper.   Chop and add your marinated beef.   Now the trick with this dish is not to overcook it.   You want most of the ingredients to be pretty raw so that they retain their flavour, so wait a while before you add the next indredients, which are the red pepper and the spring onions (both sliced).  Grate a good amount of fresh ginger and juice the lemon and lime.   Add them to taste.   Add the sugar snap peas and soy sauce to taste.   Turn off the heat and add sesame oil to taste and lots of fresh coriander leaves.   Yum yum!   Serve with egg noodles.

                                                           Look at all the colours!

Slow it Down

I love Amy Macdonald, and this recent offering doesn't disappoint!   Been playing it on loop recently.  Enjoy!

Films and TV

Hello!  Here are some reviews of some of the films and TV shows I've watched lately. 

First up, Shaun of the Dead.   I have mixed feelings about this film.   I really enjoyed this up to a certain point, and then it went downhill for me.   It's a fairly typical zombie movie, with a hilarious Simon Pegg and Nick Frost take on it.   It's silly, quirky and typically British.   But I stopped enjoying after Simon Pegg's character had to shoot his mum.   I know that it wouldn't have been a zombie movie without that moment, but I really hated it.   Apart from the comedy my favorite aspect with this film was the cast, which included so many of my favorites.   As well as Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, Bill Nighy, Dylan Moran and Penelope Wilton were in it as well, all of whom I love.   And it made me stupidly happy to see Lucy Davis in it as well.   I loved her as Mariah Lucas in Pride in Prejudice many years ago, and hadn't seen her in anything else since.   But that's probably just me.   But yes, loved it until everyone started dying.

  




Next, the Mighty Boosh.   I watched all three seasons.  Basically I would describe it as "What the hell is this and why can't I stop watching it??".   Quirky doesn't even begin to describe the oddness of this TV show.   It revolves around the lives of Vince Noir and Howard Moon and all the bizarre adventures they have.   The costumes are wacky, the sets are cheap and very homemade looking, the stories are completely bizarre and I'm not even sure what makes it funny.   But somehow it is!   Perhaps it's the comedic genius of Noel Fielding.   Or maybe the songs.   I don't know.   I like it, but I have idea why!  

And finally, Rough Science.   Being a massive nerd, in my opinion this is just about the best TV series ever made!   They take a handful of scientists, drop them somewhere in the middle of nowhere with minimal equipment and get them to use their scientific knowledge to make things and do things.   The experiements don't always work, but I found it truly amazing what people could accomplish and bodge together and invent in just three days, using bits and bobs they found lying around.  Science rules!   The first series saw the team on a mediterranean island doing things like working out where they were, making a compass and building a radio.   The second series was set on a Carribean island doing things like mapping the island, making suncream and insect repellent.   The third took place in New Zealand, with the emphasis being on gold mining.   Using various methods the team eventually collected enough gold to make a gold pendant.   The fourth was space themed and was filmed in Death Valley, California.  The fifth was ocean themed, filmed in Zanzibar and the sixth was filmed in the San Juan mountains of Colarado.   I really enjoyed all six series.   They did some really impressive stuff.   Science at its best!   A really well done series!

     
  

North Berwick

Back in November I went to North Berwick for the first time.   It's a very pretty little seaside town very near to Edinburgh.   My colleagues and I had a lovely time frollicking on the beach, eating fish and chips and climbing the Law.   The weather was pretty horrible for most of the day, but the dramatic skies did allow me a few good shots.

 I experimented for the first time with my new ND grad filter.   It's a great little filter for landscapes.   One half of it is darker than the other, which means that if you position the divide between dark and light over the  horizon of your shot you can darken the sky.   This is great because often with landscape photos you have to choose between correctly exposing the sky or the land.   The most usual choice is the land, leaving the sky looking washed out and featureless.   But with a graduated filter you can keep the drama and colour in the sky.   Neat trick.   The mounting system is very clever.   Firstly there's a ring which screws into the end of the lens.   You can buy different sizes of rings, meaning than you can use the same filters for all your different size lenses.   Next there's a mount which slots onto the ring.   And finally the filter slots into the mount.   The mount has three slots so different filters can be used in combination.   Very adaptable and clever system. 

Anyway, here are a few of my favorite bad weather photos from North Berwick

                                                                         Rainbow

                                                   Bass Rock.   Gorgeously dramatic skies!

My Song of the Week

Loving this song at the moment!   Can't stop listening to it!   Love the video too!   It's so quirky and imaginative and unusual with its beautiful animation and other-worldly feel. 

Books

As I mentioned in a previous post, I like to re-read childhood favorites every now and then.   In fact I usually pick one up whenever I go home.   Lately I've been revisiting the Laura Ingalls wilder books about her childhood as a pioneer girl.   It's fascinating reading them as an adult because you pick up on so much stuff you missed as a child.   This one was probably my favorite of the series when I was little.   It's full of sunshine and summer and wild flowers and running around barefoot.   What struck me most about this one this time around was just how independent these people were.   They did everything for themselves, from making their own clothes to building their own houses.   And how precarious life was for them, and how brave they were to chose that life.   The family almost loses everything after losing their crops to locusts two years in a row.   Their whole lives were a real life adventure and I have to say I am a tiny bit jealous.   So all in all, a lovely read for children and an eye-opening read for adults.  

Next up, Burning Bright, by Tracy Chevalier.   I would count myself as a Tracy Chevalier fan; I very much enjoyed Girl With a Pearl Earring, and rather enjoyed The Virgin Blue and The Lady and the Unicorn as well.   I was very eager to read this one, as it's about William Blake, who I really like.   But I have to say I don't think this one was her best.   I was quite disappointed to find that William Blake's character had relatively little screen time, and that it concentrated far more on the lives of Jem and Maggie, two children growing up in London.   For me William Blake's character just didn't make much of an impact.   There just wasn't enough poetry and mystery and fire attached to him.   He was really just a plesant father figure for the two children.   What I usually enjoy about Tracy Chevalier's writing are her unique and very evocative descriptions, but with this book she changed her writing style entirely (perhaps because it was set in England?).   In a blind taste test I wouldn't even have been able to tell it was of hers.   All in all, an alright read, but not as good as I have come to expect from Ms. Chevalier.

And finally, We Are All Made of Glue, by Marina Lewycka.   This one was brilliant!   I raced through it!   I've read her previous two novels, A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian and Two Caravans and loved them both, so I was eager to get stuck into this one, and it didn't disappoint!   Marina Lewycka's strong points are her amazingly larger than life characters and her ability to capture people's idiosyncrasies and style of speaking perfectly.   Her writing of English dialogue spoken by foreigners is both very funny and astoundingly convincing.   In a bit of a departure from her previous two novels, this one does not follow the lives of Ukranians, but of Jews and Palestinians.   Through the lives of her characters she tells the story of the founding of Israel and the hardships the Palestinians have suffered.   It's an emotional rollercoaster.   Just like her first novel, WWII is a major theme.   And just like her first novel, one of the main characters is a very feisty elderly person who you can't help falling in love with.   There is also a similarity with her first novel of a bad situation escalating into a huge mess there just seems to be no way out of, and in the end, against all odds, all the characters just decide to get along and make things work.   The only criticism I would offer is her glue theme.   The main character writes for a builders' magazine about adhesives, and the author tries to include glue metaphors throughout.   I'm just not very convinced they work.   They seem a bit forced.   But overall, fantastic book, just like her other two.   And just like her previous two novels, this one is hilarious!   Highly recommended!