I own a camera - a pretty good one, as I feel - and I like to use it. Which is good, since my line of work is made easier by being able to take photographs of stuff (including small stuff in bad lighting behind glass, also known as museum exhibits).

This, however, always means "no flash". Self-evident, right? Which in turn means that although my camera has a flash, I am never using it, and I don't own a real large flash (yet). Plus I only have a very rough idea on what to do with a flash. This is no problem for my work photography - but can be awkward for the other kind of pictures I like to take: portraits.

And yesterday, I stumbled across a photographer's blog who does have an idea of how to use a flash for good, soft, nice lighting to shoot portraits. And just in case you are interested in that, here's the link to the Tangents blog pages about flash lighting.

All the leaves are turning red and yellow outside, we have greyish foggy weather, and the small birds are already checking out possible nesting places for next spring - it's clearly autumn.

Now is the time of beautiful golden light and roasted chestnuts and hot chocolate and tea with spices in it.

And the best time to make autumny photographs - this picture was taken in Bamberg during the long weekend.

I had the most fantabulous time in London, meeting old friends again - two of them even took me on a wonderful tour to Butser Ancient farm and Whitchurch silk mill and Oxford), making new ones, enjoying delicious food and lots of lovely tea (and one very bad espresso and one very good latte too).

The MeDaTS conference was quite small, at a beautiful venue and mostly populated by audience members from a living history and reenactment background. And that, frankly, is the only thing of that whole weekend where I think it might have run a tiny bit better - I had sort of counted on more persons in the audience without that background, and thus my presentation was tailored to give that group an overview of who and what can be found in the field of living history. Nevertheless, people seemed to like it (and I enjoyed talking to an audience who laughed at all the funny bits), so I am well content with how it turned out. Plus I got to try out a really beautiful spinning wheel at the conference, and now know what I might need for spinning high-twist, fine yarns on a wheel.

The rest of my time in London was spent sightseeing and doing a little bit of shopping - hanging out in bookshops, going to the Handweaver's Studio (to try out more spinning wheels), visiting the new Medieval & Renaissance galleries in the V&A, eating Nepalese food and British lamb roast and chocolates from Harrod's and sitting in the sun and laughing. I also rode the tube and several buses and walked so much that I feel I must have walked 20 cm off my legs. At least now my rather new shoes are properly broken in!

It's getting really autumn-like here now, with snny weather and bouts of rain inbetween. Leaves are turning to yellow and red, the air has that smell of autumn, our car has its winter tires on... and I am really tired.

Some people get tired in spring. I seem to manage getting tired in both spring and autumn. Which explains why this blog post is rather late (I slept much longer than usual), and why it's not very substantial.

So instead of me writing proper and interesting stuff, here's a video where you can see the craziest harp player I know doing things that should be technically not possible to do on his harp...




Hint: watch his left hand...

A few years ago, when I was sharing office space with physicists (a long and wonderful story), there was a website up on the Internet under something like "www.isitfriday.xxx"*.

When you went on that website, there was either a black window with a red "No" or a black window with a green "Yes" on it. That was it. Nothing more - and still we'd have a lot of fun checking if it was Friday yet.

Then, after a while, the site was no more. But after another while... there is a similar page now again.
Not as black as the first one... but just as delightfully simple, and nonsensical, and nice to look up for that Thank-God-It's-Friday moment. Provided it's Friday, of course.

So... is it Friday yet?

* I don't remember if it was org, or net, or whatever. And since that page is dead and gone, I do not care, and nor should you.

It's probably a good thing that I have been so eager to get some work done on the one big project that I almost totally forgot to blog - hence the very late blog entry.

In addition to being busy, and forgetful, and totally overdoing it with adding books to my to-read list (or at least to the to-check-for-interesting-parts list), I have nothing new to tell you. So instead I will leave you with this totally awesome flashmob video, because what can be more awesome than a flashmob with a harp?

When in doubt what to blog, blog things like links.

Is that a blogger's adage? If not, can we make it one? I will at least do what it says and blog some links for you.

First of all, for those of you who know about the Maaseik embroideries, here's a direct link to their pictures (among others) from the kikirpa database. In case you don't know about the Maaseik embroideries, they are a series of 8./9thc century gold and silk embroideries. In case you don't know about the picture database of kikirpa.be, go take a look - it's worth it.

And in less serious at lest as important news, highlyeccentric blogs about the fate of a penis tree mural.

Finally, totally unmedieval but fascinating: Art from somebody who merges photos with pencil drawings. Really worth a look too. Text is in German, but the pictures are not, of course.