Micheldever

Hello, OK trying to get myself back on the blogging express and have to cope with an enourmous backlog. Summer retrospective from Easter is due and appropriate links will be forwarded as and when.

Todays adventure was to have lunch with regular theatre friends Peter (from Southampton circle originally) and two of his previous work colleagues Anna and Sophie. Sophie is house sitting all week for a family friend in Micheldever. Lovely big house and four dogs! Proper country living. It was a beautiful day and we had wine on the terrace in the sun before a big roast pork dinner.

Peter collected eggs from the garden for a bit of fun. Actually didnt end up using them for lunch.

Handed over carefully to Dinah, Sophie's Mum who also joined us with her husband Russel for lunch.

Post lunch walk with the dogs was nice. Just once round the local field was enough for a 40 min spell. Plenty after such a big lunch.

Peter and Anna check in the botanical encyclopedia to try and find out details of the Chinese lantern plant with bright orange papery globes. Mini quiz... any offers to the genus and species name for this plant? They are all over the garden at the house and are quite brilliant also when cut and brought inside for decoration in a vase.

Saturday plans

Happy days. Got into town early to queue at the TKTS booth in Leicester Sq to get tickets for Design for Living at the Old Vic. Now sitting in Trafalgar Square with this view on a glorious sunny (but chilly) day. Got the paper and a cup of tea. All is well with the world! I hope that this mobile blogging event will uncork the reservoir of photoblogging opportunities that have built up over the summer.

Easter Errrivals

The Norway Branch have arrived for a whole 2 weeks of Easter fun!

Henny letting us know that even though Oslo is only 2 hours away that it's still possible to be jet lagged.

Maud gets stuck into Grandmas vast stash of toys. The shop was open for trading almost instantly with customers being pulled in to browse the shelves and pick up a bargain.

Jet lag over now and back to all smiles.

The dress up toy box also extends to adult sizes...

Back to work in London for me this week but I get all next week off to play!

Stop Snot Shop

Remember this post from I&I. My brother Matt got snap happy with his camera but not so handy with his handkerchief to wipe his daughter's nose before taking the shot... he blogged/uttered (bluttered?) the words "that is what photoshop is for I guess?"... well you know me... not one to let a challenge like that pass me by... so here is the result of my limited photoshop skills so far... a very interesting pass time and one that reaffirms to me that we should NEVER believe any of the images printed or published in magazines today. This is merely an exercise in the amazing versatility of the average home computer and not a reflection of my desire for perfection... I love my nieces snot and all! ... but if you ever want to print a photo without the snot then here's what I'd do...

L-R: Original; Snot removed; eye reflection reduced.

Snot is removed by using a "healing" brush that samples the area around the bit you want to remove and then refilling it in using similar tones and textures... you do that tiny piece by piece until you have the desired effect.

The reflection in Henny's eyes is quite big and distracting from her lovely dark iris. I tried removing the reflection completely but it makes for a strange look - so I opted for simply reducing the reflection to something smaller and more uniform. I think its believable?

"All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up."

There are also some funny blogs dedicated to less considered photoshop use here...

Manic Monday

On my final day in SF I was determined to make the most of it. I was up and out the door by 8:30am to head over to the Castro to take a yoga class. Since leaving Southampton I have not been to a class at all and I have been missing it. I hoped that this might spur me back into action on my return. I booked in for the beginners/int vinyasa flow with Les at YogaTree. It was allvery professional and booked online so all I had to do was turn up and get on the mat. 90 minutes later I was soaked through with sweat - the hardest class of my life - and I knew I was going to pay big time the next day - I could barely walk down the stairs of the studio - whoops!

It was a glorious day which was totally unexpected as it had been forecast for fog and rain! I know I must be lucky or something?!

I walked the long way round from the bridge back to the other side of town where I could catch the cable car which takes you up over the hill and down the other side into the centre of downtown. Luckily because it was Monday it was lovely and quiet - no huge queue like there was on the weekend.

Frankly these contraptions are overrated and it boggles my mind how more people are not maimed or killed each year. There is a gaping hole in the floor where the driver appears to dangle his foot in at regular intervals right next to whirring cogs and highly tensioned steel cables... Health and Safety? Not likely..

The vistas at the top are wonderful though - this is the top of Lombard street - the cable car stops literally in the middle of an intersection and if you want to get off you have to take your life in your hands and make a run for the pavement. I vowed to stay on until the end of the line! The $5 trip was worth risking my life for to save my yoga aching legs though :)

Random picture - no jiggery pokery here - my first ever ride on a curved escalator - I did have to go away and stare at it for a while and try and work out how on earth you make a curving escalator - I didnt come up with an answer...

Uh oh... G&T at the airport... that means the trip is already over! Can't believe it! An amazing 7 days in SF and will definitely look forward to going back again soon - hopefully for a Kat&Mark wedding!

San Francisco Baby!

Yep indeedy I was lucky enough to bag a trip to SF, CA for work (of sorts). I was attending CROI (Conference on Retrovirology and Opportunistic Infection) 2010 which alternates between east and west coast USA (and occasionally Canada). For those of you who either don't believe that I really go for these things, or perhaps want a look at the kind of stuff I'm up to in my new job then go to this link and search for "Conibear" in the author field (or Paper#: 988). First author John is a PhD student in our office and all this work is a bit too maths based for me - I am more of a lab monkey, but we all helped write it and these patients are the ones that we have contact with for our studies too. Seems from my exhaustive search on this link too that I am the first ever Conibear to be published at this conference (woop!) and probably in this field at all... there is however an Elizabeth Conibear who lives and works in Vancouver (!!!) who is a very well published protein biochemist? We should look her up next time I'm in town :)

OK yada yada - here are a few snaps of SF...

View from the top of the fancy hotel that the rest of the conference people stayed in whilst I was in my own guest suite at my friends house.

Portion control? Not likely - what part of a chicken has this come from anyway to be this big?

Work buddies - L-R: Senior researcher Clare, my big boss and virology consultant Anna Maria, virology registrar Tom, moi, and Clinical scientists (and GF/BF) Ana and Alvi.

Anna Maria took us out for a Chinese - yum!

SF is veeeery hilly! Amazing though

Nice urban scenes with cool artwork too.

Not so many tall buildings in SF but this one is THE skyscraper that you can see from everywhere in town - the TransAmerica Pyramid building... very cool

This was their old premises, so they must have been doing something right with all that money.

We did a walking tour around SF on the Saturday after my conf had finished. There are A LOT of steps in this city... A LOT!

Very pretty

Famous twisty Lombard Street. Before they installed the curvy switchbacks it was simply a straight road that buses used to go up and down regularly - the locals got sick of it being so busy and so they got the road layout changed and stupidly turned it into a tourist attraction instead! Smart move :)

Car care plan? This guy is surely a serial killer.

Barbery Lane - the basis for Armistead Maupin's "Tales of the City" : very cool

Quick pitstop in Rogues. Kat is into her microbrewery ales, and the whole month I was there was "strong ale week". However as ale is not on the menu for me I plumped for a home distilled gin bloody mary... truly a meal in a glass!

Sealions appeared at Pier 39 mysteriously following the earthquake of 1980something. Me thinks that some clever soul has made it their business to keep them coming back year on year as the number of people that show up just to see them is phenomenal! Of course the day I go, they are not bloody there - "gone fishin'" no doubt!

Yeah if (when) I live in the states I'm gonna get me a ridiculously over sized pickup truck just like this one! Yeee haw! ... but I will never be reverse parking it... ever!

Marina shot with Alcatraz in the background - that is one cold lonely rock!

Answers on a postcard....

My first proper view of the Golden Gate Bridge - why do I find amazing feats of engineering so fascinating?

I treated Kat and her bf Mark to dinner at one of their favourite restaurants... and it just so happens that I LOVE Japanese food too... and this place was REALLY good!

Yummy sushi rolls

G&T plow into Oslo again!

January 2010 - The Grandma and Tim show hit Oslo's shores yet again. Yep it was ages ago but better late than never with a few photos. You've already had the best of the pictures I'm afraid due to a) Matt being a better photographer than me, and b) having a better camera than me. This was made worse by the fact that my camera was out of action due to a faulty charger so I was forced to record events on Mum's digi camera that has a screen so small I got it confused with a viewfinder! ;)

Ready for anything Henny is wrapped and strapped.

It was the first real time that there had been proper snow for one of my trips and Maud was keen to show us how slide down a hill on a floppy bit of plastic. One handed too! Show off :p

The pink expedition leader off to finder steeper slopes to throw Uncle Tim down

Oh... well we stopped to have a picnic in the snow first which was brilliant!

What a warm and strangely comfortable seat. Some of us had to make do with sitting on the snow Henny.

Speed demon Henny raring to go down the slopes on the fast toboggan again again again!

Yeah yeah Maud, I know that Papa's old broken camera has a waaaay bigger screen that Grandmas... no need to rub it in haha

Henny bags some Grandma cuddle time.