Clear skies meant this morning started off very chilly. At 6am it was barely 8° C, and despite almost non stop sunshine (a fact agreed on by both the Met Office and BBC) the temperature is only forecast to rise to 16° C. It may be quite cool outside, but I am sure I can feel the sunshine warming my bedroom as I sit here typing (although it could just be the spicy noodles, with added chilli sauce for breakfast that is warming me up). Tomorrow should be a degree warmer than today. The morning could be very sunny, and from mid afternoon some cloud will reduce it to sunny spells.
  Yesterday was another day where I didn't feel very busy, but I achieved a lot. The more concrete thing I did was to wash a couple of t-shirts, and 4 pairs of underpants. I hung them on the clothes horse to dry, and left the fan on them for the rest of the day, and also all night. I haven't checked yet, but I imagine they should be very dry.

  My other main way of passing rather a lot of time, although it didn't feel that way as it happened, was to do more camcorder video transfer, via an USB digitiser, to my PC. I'm sure I must have recently mentioned that my first 8mm camcorder was made by Canon, and I bought it cash (around £1000) using a bit of my redundancy money when I left BT in 1992. Being a Canon it had good lenses, but it's autofocus was not as reliable as a Sony. Also, it was a "Video 8" camera, and not a "Hi 8" camera.

  I must admit I had forgotten that it wasn't a Hi 8 camera. In some respects it didn't matter too much - the old camcorder I have been using to play the old tapes is a Hi 8, but it is backward compatible with Video 8 tapes. I haven't researched the idea, nor even carefully looked for differences between Video 8 and Hi 8 video cassettes, but I believe there is a difference. If the Hi 8 camcorder doesn't detect the difference it records as a Video 8 recording - I think.

  Hi 8 means high band recording which gives slightly better video resolution than low band video 8. It was only yesterday that I noticed the difference. The original low band video 8 is not a lot better than a good VHS recording. Hi 8 definitely has a bit of extra sharpness and clarity, although like all photography, it can depend a lot on the lighting. This was amply demonstrated on one recording I did back in 1996.

  It was footage of "Steam On The Met" in 1996 where a couple of steam hauled trains ran up and down the northern end of London Undergrounds Metropolitan line. You can's move the sun because it is too hot and heavy, and although not in the same league, you can't move a 300 ton steam locomotive for best lighting. I had to just shoot what I could see. Sometimes the sun would be in the perfect place, and the video looks almost broadcast crisp, and at other time the sun was in completely the wrong place, and the pictures were almost lousy.

  I think I now have footage from three "Steam On The Met" events transferred to my PC. Like other stuff I transferred yesterday, and in previous days, I have decided not to worry about getting creative, and try to edit together a short movie that is not just a load of random shots. Some of the stuff I have transferred is just far too random to make anything of it, and so it is just a bit of private nostalgia for me.

  From time to time I may show stuff here, but not the one thing where I broke my decision not to worry about trying to edit it now. There was one transfer I did yesterday that I did edit, but not to show here. It was shot in about 1993, and is of my friend and beer aficionado Jodie. Part of it was a demo recording when she wanted to try and get a job presenting on MTV. With a bit of editing it doesn't look that bad, although I doubt that if Jodie was selected she would be able to stand the pace of TV work.

  I can't decide if I ate a lot yesterday, or not. I certainly felt a bit bloated when I went to bed, but I think that was mostly wind - and that wasn't helped by guzzling three cans of Guinness last night. I feel sure my dinner, apart from being a bit greasy (a penalty of used cheap minced beef) was fairly safe. I know I had 5 rice cakes with either cheese or salami on them at some time it the afternoon. It all seems a bit hazy now, but I think my official lunch was another bowl of instant noodles (I had that for breakfast too). It doesn't feel like I ate anything outrageous.

  I was quite glad to get to bed last night. It was chilly in my bedroom, but nice and warm under the duvet. Sometimes it felt a little too warm ! I probably got another good night of sleep last night, but there were a few very brief periods of insomnia. At least one was when I felt too hot, and I think another was when I was thinking about a dream. I think I was thinking about what the dream meant, but on reflection it could have actually been a dream itself.

  It did seem I had a series of dreams that were all basically the same, although with some subtle, and now forgotten, differences. It was a SciFi dream. I was on a planet that seemed like it had a very high gravity because it was very flat, and any structures on it were squat and dumpy. The odd thing was that I didn't feel heavy as I would on a high gravity planet. The other thing is that I didn't seem to interact with anything, or anybody. It may have been that I was exploring by proxy using a robot or something.

  One other dream was notable for forgetting a big part of it - not when I woke up, but actually from within the dream. The dream concerned going to work somewhere in north London (I think). I would normally get one bus, but had realised I could get a different bus. In the dream I got the different bus. I remember waiting for the bus, and then the next thing I knew I was getting off the bus, and not knowing exactly where I was.

  I walked for a few minutes in what felt like the right direction, and then turned a corner. I spotted my workplace another minutes walk away. I went inside work, and found the other bus had shaved almost half an hour of my journey into work. This was a good thing, and I told a work mate about it, but I also said I couldn't remember the route the bus had taken because I had no recollection of the journey at all. I jump from getting on the bus to alighting again in the blink of an eye. That would be perfectly normal if thinking about it after waking up, but I distinctly remember telling my work mate about it in the dream !

  I got up this morning just after 6am, and it wasn't long before I had checked my blood glucose. You can probably tell what is coming next after all the blathering I did a few paragraphs up the page about what I ate yesterday. Yes, my blood glucose has shot up to 9.3mmol/l, and I am unsure how. I am very sure it had nothing to do with the three cans of Guinness, and I can't think of anything I ate that was that bad. I guess it is just one of those random things. (Or it might have been that I was slightly constipated yesterday, but not this morning !)

  Had it not been for a phone call last night I would be saying I have no idea what I am doing today. That phone call was from Jodie, and she was wondering if we could bring Sunday's beer tasting session forward to today. There is another rail strike today, and while some routes have a limited service, nothing is running locally. It make sense for Jodie to come over today by using the bus, rather than her being partly trapped at home. It leaves tomorrow free for her to go into London by train, and maybe for me to go on some sort of rail journey of exploration.