Salt on my face

My dissertation sort of borders on some of this stuff and I've realised that I find the whole digital ethnography field incredibly fascinating. Were I ever planning to study futher (not likely) this would probably be the direction.


(mainly the second part)


(Yes, I know it's nearly an hour long. If you have the time it's worth it)

Icon related. I just watched Pixar's Up and it made me bawl.

And then I watched this and it made me giggle.

I both got these last week after the weekend (which was annoying as I was bored on the weekend and busy during the week!).
I played Lego Star Wars when visiting the House of Geeks and Games and rather liked it. It's funny and level-based without being dramatic about failing/dying. It's a lot of fun on the wii as you can hack and slash using your remote. I've played parts with both housemates and that was fun too :-) (even if they did both started out accidentally killing me a few times...). I wish we could play this with 3 people (would have to buy a 3rd controller set though) though it would probably be quite hard to keep track of the characters visually.

Wii Fit Plus I bought because I'd gotten bored with the original games on Wii Fit and felt I needed a boost to start using it again. Plus has a whole bunch of new games (some of which are a ton of fun - snowball fight! ). It has a function to recommend you routines and to make your own. It has an easy multiplayer mode (which was very much lacking in the original). The emphasis on weight sadly hasn't gone. If you like wii fit then this is worth the 20 euro just for the new games. If you are ambivalent about wii fit, then this is probably not going to sway you.

( My horse in his jammies )

( Cinty with a 'Youhascookie? CanIhascookie?' face= )

( Mount Doom )

On sunday I will be going to a Working Equitation competition with Rowan. During the dressage test you are allowed to have music to accompany you. It will be purely background music (not choreographed like in musical kurs) but I do want it to be suitable music.

This is where you come in! I could use some ideas.

 I need something about 6:30 mins long (or longer). That has some rhythm to it, but not too heavy. and that is interesting, but not  overpowering.  I have some nice film score music, but a lot of that is very building toward a crecendo, which doesn't fit the dressage test. A big moment in the music looks silly if I'm just walking around the ring at that moment.

Something Welsh celtic would be cool, as apparently the jury like themes (& hoss is a Welsh Cob) but I'm by no means wedded to that idea.

Unfortunately it turns out to be a lot easier to find music that clashes with the riding than music that complements it!

I'm currently thinking about parts of the Band of Brothers soundtrack, Brian Eno, and Enya as fallback (a lot of Enya has the right sort of deep rhythm without overpowering. Unfortunately I've not seen a track of hers that's long enough, and stitching together could get ugly)

If anyone has ideas I would be very happy to hear them. If possible with youtube links for easy quick listening.

Since I seem to have become a henna postergirl I thought I'd collect the info/tips/experience I have with it. I might actually shoot a proper tutorial at some point.

1a) henna doesn't cover previous colour like chemical dye does - it's more like staining your hair all over. I only get my bright bright red because I am blonde to begin with. If you have brown hair, you'll get the same shade of darkness, but reddified. The strength of the reddification depends on how long you leave the henna in your hair. On really dark brown hair you might only red a red gloss to it - that will mostly show in sunlight. It'll still condition your hair though.

1b) Henna doesn't dry out your hair. (no idea where that notion comes from!). It'll condition it and leave it in a far better state than repeated chemical dyeing

2) If you're blonde (or grey!), don't use plain henna unless you're prepared for fairly extreme results. Leave it in for half an hour for strawberry blonde shades. Longer and you are likely to end up with bright copper or even orange. It will darken out over the week after using it (something about oxidation I believe) but the colour I currently have (see icon) didn't happen until I'd henna'd about six times. The shade builds up gradually. This is what I got when I used henna the first time over my blonde hair. The annoying thing is that if I do my roots, I have to leave it in a long time or I get copper roots, which looks weird.

3) On light hair you can use henna mixed with indigo powder to get a darker red colour. www.henna-boy.co.uk sells both. http://hennaforhair.com/ has recipes and before and after pictures to get an idea of what does what.
If you have an important event coming up or would otherwise be mortified by orange, do a strand test first (or stick with chemical dyes.)

3) Because henna is a natural product, there are no 100% guarantees about results. I can only tell you about what I've experienced. You'll hear people swear up and down that perm and henna don't combine, but I've had a perm over (4 week old, not too recent) henna (faded the colour slightly, but nothing dramatic) and I've henna'd over recently permed hair without problems. Lots of people seem to do fine henna'ing over hair that's chemically dyed as long as the last dyejob was more than 6 weeks old. More recent (especially bleaching, I'd allow more time for bleached hair) and it gets less predictable. And chemical dye over henna appears to be a bit of a crapshoot. It's your risk to consider.

4) As mentioned, the colour needs to settle. A lot of people with light hair get copper orange the first time they do it and run to the hairdressers in horror - but that copper will deepen out over the next few days. Every subsequent henna session will deepen and fill out the colour. I started out with something coppery and now have deep, intense red especially in the older hair that has been done a bunch of times. (see icon for current colour). It's hard to get a proper picture of it because the light makes a huge difference in the tone. In sunlight, it's like flames.

5) Lush sells henna mix in blocks  that is basically henna and some oils. IMO it's overpriced and no easier than mixing your own, but I do hear that people have good results with it, and it might make you feel more secure to use something 'tried and tested'. Personally I am very wary of 'brand' henna (apart from Lush) that promises all sorts of shades, as often it's not real henna or at least doesn't behave the same way. Stay away from anything that isn't powder (or Lush blocks) and anything that is more complicated than 'make mush, put in hair, rinse out'. Dye packs with mixing bottles and after treatment and so on have little to nothing to do with henna.

6) I add some scent oil to my henna. Usually clove oil and something fruity like satsuma or mango oil. This avoids getting the henna scent back every time your hair gets wet. I also hear ginger powder recommended for this, and intend to try that next time.

7) Some recommend that henna needs to stand overnight for the dye to release before you use it. It does seem to make the colour more intense in a shorter time.

8) you can freeze any leftover henna

9)  I find the easiest to apply method is to make it a smooth mix of about yoghurt thickness, put it in a squeezy bottle, make my hair damp and pull a coarse comb through it, and then squeeze lines of henna into the grooves the comb has made. I get much better coverage with this method and I apply the stuff in my bathroom and very rarely spill more than a drop or two. When I made it thicker, I had lumps of henna all over the place. With the mix thinner I also use a lot less henna and the result is just as good.

10) On yoghurt thickness henna I put some cotton pads on the hairline at my forehead and parting (if necessary with some extra henna on the pad) because that needs extra good coverage at the roots. Without that sometimes the hairline doesn't quite get coverage. Then I pile the rest of the henna'd hair on my head, cover the whole thing with a black turbie towel (with the turban backward so there's no open space at my forehead) and leave it for about 3 hours. If I use clingfilm, I get drippiness (which is horrible!). The towel absorbs the excess moisture while leaving the henna itself in place.

11) It can be a bit of a pain to get out, because it's a little bit gritty, especially lower quality henna. The best way to rinse that I've found is to take a bucket into the shower. Fill it, bend over and dip your head in, and just hold/swish for a moment to let it all get saturated. Use your hands to loosen the hair. Chuck the dirty water, repeat. When the water is mostly clear, slather on a lot of cheap conditioner and leave it in for a few minutes, then do the bucket rinse thing again. The conditioner will make your hair so slippy that the leftover grit comes out really easily.

12) My 'recipe' is 100 gr henna, about a tablespoon lemon juice, about 5 tablespoons olive oil, clove and mango scent oil, and enough water to mix it up to the right consistency.

This is a really good site about henna: http://hennaforhair.com/

If you're not already watching Castle, go and find ep 6 of S2. It's a great series in any case, but the start of that episode is... inspired.

 

I have a


And a snuggie Jedi robe

And I'm toasty warm! Take that, temperature

My dad called me up if I fancied a ride. I had been having a very down day up till then and the opportunity to go cuddle Rowan was very welcome. It was nice that dad was there with me, there's some stuff that's just hard to do on your own, especially if you have trouble mounting
( lalablahblah wibble about horseriding )

Thanks to housemate M. I was introduced to a lurgy that likes me.. my hed wants to asplode, my nose is all clogged up and my throat feels like I'm swallowing ground glass. Yay! Especially because it also makes me incredibly uncoordinated and I've walked into a doorframe three times already.
Anybody know any good remedies for sore throats? I've got the hot toddy one.

I've been doing lots of measuring and updated the mead blog

I haven't done any scent blogging for ages (about a year actually) mostly because I hit a limit of how many scents I was interested in. I have about 6 I'm really really fond of and quite a few more that I really like, and just wasn't terribly interested in trying more. Actually, I'm still not really, but when the weather turned into autumn (chill in the air) I re-found my favourite scents (it's been too hot to wear most of my scents, they're mostly cold weather sort of scents) I suddenly felt like having a proper autumn scent.

BPAL makes seasonal perfume oils and this one sounded like it could be good:

Samhain: Truly the scent of autumn itself -- damp woods, fir needle, and black patchouli with the gentlest touches of warm pumpkin, clove, nutmeg, allspice, sweet red apple and mullein.

It starts off a bit murky, definitely getting the fir and the woods in there. Then slowly the pumpkin and the spices come through, like walking toward a house in the forest on a cold day when the leaves are colouring. It mellows out to a really wonderful vanilla-ish baking type scent. I keep pressing my nose in the crook of my elbow and taking a deep sniff. Soooo good.

This is driving me nuts! For the past few weeks I've received 5-10 of the exact same spam a day.


I have created filter rule after filter rule, and now have 3 rules, using different parameters (underlined), which I've copied in case of hidden characters. They should NOT be able to let this pass, but still it ends up in my inbox. Frustration is me.

Anyone else getting this shit? Any ideas?

Played some more with Rowan today. I did part of the Working Equitation dressage tests. Struggling with the small 8 shapes as he is tilting his head sideways - I need to see if I can free up some money for lessons*, that needs fixing. Did do nicely on the small-slow large-fast canter circles. Got two nice simple lead changes before he got bored and started powering through my hands in the slalom. Git. I might need to switch back to the shank bit (using a snaffle now) to nip that initiative in the butt. Canter control. We needs it. 
His reverse needs work, he zig-zags all over the place.
We also did some more practise for the ring-jousting part of the speed trial - picking the pole out of the barrel works in trot and canter now, and I can canter around with it as long as the pole is on the inside, as the moment. When it's on the outside he's still a bit wary of it. Having a longer pole in the competition would probably fix that as there wouldn't be an ending he can see. Then I manage to drop it back into the barrel from a canter, with no shying or fuss, which was cool. If I do manage to go to a competition, I think we've got that down. Of course, no way to practise actually getting the ring target, so I may still end up sucking, but at least I won't be able to blame it on Ro :-)

If you're curious about what I'm wittering on about, here is a video of the most exciting part (speed trial - there's also this same track but done for style points) as done on the very highest level

*] this may involve the all-noodlesoup-all-the-time diet

On October 7 it's exactly 10 years since I first went to an AFP meet.

I literally can't imagine what my life would be like now, if I'd never done that.

I support this cause (of course) but I am also reposting it because it is such a brilliant, thought provoking campaign. Whoever designed this - wow. Great work.

This morning I made it to the physio-coached gym session. I took it easy, but I've still been really broken ever since. A nerve in my neck is screaming at me every time I turn my head, and my back feels all sorts of wrong. Urgh.
Discussed with physio the fact that I've never felt anything even remotely like what people describe as an endorphine high. I always just feel tired and achy afterward. Sometimes satisfied and tired and achy though. The best moment about exercise is when you're allowed to stop (I used to describe endurance competitions like that - it feels so great when you get off the horse afterward) but apparently that's not the same as an endorphin high.

This spring my studycoach gave me the seedling of a cherry tomato plant, and I think seeing that happen (I ate some yummy mini tomatoes)  might have triggered my interest in growing more veggies. I don't have a garden, but I have space for a bunch of pots on the ledge in front of the house, so that's going to be my 'container garden' type thing.
The stuff on the left is in sight most so that is what needs the most care, ie the food section. The right is reserved for more robust stuff as I'm likely to look at it less.

A - empty right now. Will have garlic and maybe radish for autumn/winter. Unless I think of something else.
B - (decorative). Physalis alkekengi - Lantern Plant. I just got this because I like the look of it. Will be moved out of the food section by spring, is just standing there because the pot fits nicely into the gap.
C - Salad trough. Have planted Little Gem but I think to deeply, so will redo over the next few days. Probably some veldsla (corn salad?) and some Little Gem.
D - cherry tomato plant. Might look for something with a higher yield for next year.
E 1 Thyme
2 Lavender
3 Lemon balm
4 Will be chives, as soon as I nick some from my mother
5 Don't know yet. Depends on space.
F - (decorative) - planted some nice bulbs here.
G - mini rock garden my mother made for me. It's not doing great and I intend to empty it in spring and reuse the pot, possibly for something largish like a courgette plant.

I'm planning to get a dwarf fruit tree for spring, just haven't decided yet what sort would actually give me edible and tasty fruit, even if not much. Plum perhaps? Cherry? Will see.