Neigbour Nik and I much admire a long exposure photo of a sunset, looking out to sea over some rocks and with a pier conveniently posed in the distance, taken by a Thai photographer and posted on the wide wide world of web. Nik assured me the location was near the ferry to Koh Samet; so I took my wife for a little outing in that direction today.

To cut short the unbearable suspense, we didn’t find the view or the pier or anything like it, and the weather was blustery and cloudy and promised nothing in the way of a red sunset; so all in all we failed. Or at least I did, she who must be obeyed was just there for the trip and a scavenge in any market we might pass along the way.

Still, a fair way south of our original target and we did find some interesting rocks; so I slapped on the ten stop filter and used the Olympus Live Time to knock off a few shots.

I take my expanding stock of Yashica TLRs out for a bijou shootette this afternoon and bring the Olympus along as well in case there is something worth pointing a macro lens at. I use up three rolls of film, which means I am in for an evening of tension, sweating, swearing and frustration as I try and get the fuckers to load into a processing tank. I also find a small flower with some even smaller flies buzzing around.

I spend several minutes trying to move the focus point around the Olympus screen to line up with the ever-moving flies; without success. Then I remember a feature of the E-M5 whereby I can touch the screen and the camera will focus on that point and take a shot. So I do that and am rewarded with several in-focus images, of which this is my favourite:

A trip to Bangkok where she who must be obeyed has a meeting, leaving me to fend for myself for the day. I think maybe yet another wander around Chinatown with a camera; but it would also be good to check out some of the second-hand camera shops which are rumoured to be found there; although I have never found them.

So a quick visit is made to Mr. Google and I discover that there is actually such a shop in the heart of Sukhumvit, close to Ploenchit station. Even better, the name is SiamTLR, and with my current interest in Yashica TLRs, maybe there is a way I can spend my wife’s expenses for the day.

A couple of hours this afternoon in the company of my scanner and Vuescan software; and at the end of the session I had a much better idea of how it all worked. Sadly, my test negative would not sit flat in the holder, with the inevitable lack of crispness; but that will be resolved once I have the custom holder which is already on its way to me.

Even so, the end result looked not too bad.

I don’t wish this site to become anything like the blog of the many domestic goddesses out in the wide wide world of web who proffer household tips to the less talented from the cosy corner of their spotless kitchens (bitches). So my rather crap recipe for brown balls of a couple of days ago should be enough from me on this sort of subject for a while. But as I have maybe encouraged one or two of you to buy a Hurom juicer; you may like to know how to clean it.

There is a company in the UK, based in a chicken shed, that sells tripods. The company is called Three Legged Thing, or 3LT, and has a very British sense of humour; which is one of the reasons I bought one of their tripods. Every model is named after a rock guitarist and mine is called Brian. If you don’t know who Brian is, then we might be the champions but you certainly are not.

Anyway, Brian has provided good service for a year or so, and then a piece fell off his leg. I found the piece, but not the special bolt that held it in place. Then the plate that attaches to the camera, which uses"3LT" in rubber as a cushion, suddenly lost the “T”.

Time for repairs, so I removed another leg to identify the bolt and washers that I had lost, and sent a photo to 3LT and asked for spares.

You say cocoa, I say cacao; who gives a shit?

Much on-line bandwidth is wasted on debating the difference; or whether there is any difference at all apart from the spelling. Health food fanatics will tell you that what you need are raw cacao beans, before they have been heated and sweetened and turned into cocoa and chocolate. So I bought some.

If you want to know what cacao tastes like, you can buy 99% cacao chocolate bars; but I don’t recommend it because it’s an acquired taste. Instead, buy a 75% cacao bar, then an 85% cacao bar; before finally tentatively trying out a 99% version. Personally I am still extensively testing the 75% bars; but I still have that bag of beans sat in my fridge.

So today I did a bit of searching and discovered some recipes that use cacao beans as a basis. First job was to turn the beans into powder; not an easy job. I tried stuffing them into the coffee grinder but they were too big; so I used a blender to break them up a bit. The blender was none to happy with that task. Then I put them into the coffee grinder which promptly jammed up, because the beans contain sticky fat specifically evolved to congeal in a coffee bean grinder. Finally, after much digging around, I produced a sticky powder; just don’t ask me to grind any coffee beans in the near future.

The other ingredient in the recipe was dates which I was meant to mix with the cacao powder; so the whole lot went back into the blender which enjoyed the combination even less than the cacao beans on their own. Eventually I extracted a brown mess from the blender, which I was then meant to form into balls and sprinkle with cocoa powder; but the recipe did mention that I could add a little alcohol if I wanted. I wanted, so I threw in a couple of measures of Cointreau before forming the balls.

And here was the end result:

Prepared to transfer the film I took yesterday to the developing tank before heading off to bed last night. Chilled room, minimised sweat and other precautions taken; but the result was a disaster and after four attempts everything was a sweaty mess again; I have much to learn.

As a last resort, I tried a different type of reel that had just arrived in the post. It’s stainless steel and it has an entirely different loading mechanism with which I had practised twice. Film loaded with barely a hitch, so that was good.

This morning I developed it and hung it up to dry; noting a few crinkles and finger marks resulting from my failed attempts. Still, some of the shots looked OK; but the negatives had a curl on them when they were dry; so impossible to get a sharp scan. With all those provisos, plus the fact I am still struggling with the scanning software and that it was overcast and damp when I took this; here is one image from the film:

A return trip to the Ancient City, this time with Ian from Pattayadaze as a passenger. The day did not look very promising, with heavy rain all the way there; but it dried up as we arrived and we had the pleasure of cool weather and a watery sun all afternoon.

Ian found the place to his liking and was leaping from one attraction to the next, taking what he reckoned was a personal record in photos captured in one afternoon. I took a more gentlemanly, leisurely approach and managed to expend a whole roll of film in my Yashica (12 shots), plus half a roll with my Kiev.

It’s been nearly three months since I discovered juicing, which in turn led me to massive googling sessions on the issues of nutrition, which in turn made me realise that not only have I been eating very badly, but that my food intake was most likely responsible for my lack of energy and buggered immune system which allowed me to catch man flu whenever I became even a little damp or chilled.

Three months on, I feel fantastic. I wake up every morning with a real enthusiasm for the day ahead (slightly dampened if the day ahead involves housework). I feel fit, even though I don’t exercise more than I did (and I know this is something I must address next). Oh, and I have lost ten percent of my bodyweight.

Those who know me would not describe me as fat, but there had been a little bit more tummy than I would like for some time. I peaked at around 84 kilos when I was working, which was very uncomfortable around the waist. After retirement I settled at around 78-80kg and have been that way for years, only dreaming of the far off days when I used to be slimmer of waist and 75kg. After a couple of months of my new way of eating I thought I should check my weight: 71kg!

Cue amazement all round, and she who must be obeyed was off into the recesses of a cupboard where she extracted a pair of jeans she had bought for me a couple of years ago which looked great but were impossible to fit around my stomach due to being a 32 inch waist rather than my usual rather snug 34 inch. Tried them on again and they were a comfortable fit.

So in two months I lost 8KG (and my weight continues to hover around 71KG). And that is 8KG of fat, because my home improvements and other tasks have kept me as least as active as usual; amazing (and disgusting if you imagine what 8KG of fat must look like).

All this is not the result of a special diet; it’s the result of a better way of eating which is really simple to describe: Minimise crap food, maximise healthy food.

Crap food includes processed, sugary junk. Healthy food is fresh, preferably raw, vegetables and fruit. Vegetables and fruit used to be less than 10% of my intake; now they are more than 90%. It has been that easy to change my life.

The day starts with water. Your body has been dehydrating while you sleep. What it doesn’t need is a full English breakfast and a cup of coffee, what is needs is water. I drink a half litre glass of water into which I have squeezed a quarter of a lemon. The lemon helps put your body in an alkaline state, plus it makes for a really refreshing way to start the day. Once you start drinking water in the morning, you realise that that is what your body needs more than food to get it started. That’s a Spike hot tip, try it.

Now for breakfast. My breakfast was always reasonably healthy: muesli and yoghurt, sometimes with a passing banana. But commercial muesli can be laden with processed sugar, so I bought a bag of oats and added in some sliced walnuts and a few dried cranberries. Tastes great and less than half the cost of buying a packet of muesli. The cost declined further when I started using home-made yoghurt. I also add a few frozen blueberries. Blueberries are stuffed with things that are good for you, and even though I can’t afford to buy other than frozen, they are a healthy and tasty addition to breakfast.

Along with or after breakfast I have a fruit juice, or I eat a load of fruit. I know that it is recommended to eat fruit and juice veggies; but it is hard to describe just how good some juices can be. The drink in the photo below contained the juice of three oranges and four passion fruit, blended with two bananas to make a smoothie. Half a litre of heaven.