Much of today could be wet, although no heavy rain, and no thunderstorms are forecast. At just 13° C it is a rather cool start to the day, and the best we can hope for is 18° C at 5pm. Tonight the temperature will fall down to 14° C. Tomorrow may start at just 13° C (after the hottest May on record, it now looks like we may be getting the coldest June ever !). The maximum temperature tomorrow may be just 17° C. Rain is forecast for all daylight hours tomorrow, and the BBC forecast shows many thunderstorms - more than were forecast for yesterday.
 
  Yesterday was another rather dull day, and once again I had to invent stuff to do to keep me occupied for some of the time. None of it was very productive, and one thing could be called destructive. I thought I had managed to control my eating quite well for such a day, but this morning there seems to be proof I must have been quite reckless.

  When writing yesterday morning I wrote something to the effect that I might go for a walk in the rain. I have done such in the past, but not usually intentionally. Maybe it is the joy of getting home (or on some occasions, back to work) that gives a sort of rosy glow to the memory, but on the other hand, if the rain is not too heavy it can give an unusual light for any photos taken. In the end I could not raise the enthusiasm to go out yesterday - in the rain or when it was dry.

  One time waster was more camera battery charging and inspecting some of my old cameras. One in particular was a Toshiba, 2.3mp, digital camera I bought in a charity shop for something like £10. It looked grubby, but it did work, and it produced very good pictures. One pro about was it worked on ordinary AA cells, and so there were never any battery worries about it. One con was that it used an obsolete memory card. Fortunately it came with a card, and I had one or two here from the time I had a camera which used the same card. I also bought a couple from Ebay (possibly) and at least one of them worked. The sad thing is that when I turned it on it seemed dead. I changed the batteries, which had been in it for maybe several years, and it did briefly start up, but soon died again.

  I tried another set of brand new AA batteries, and it stayed dead. When i was at work I would have probably taken it to work to see if a repair was possible using the special tools I had available there, but it was not a job I would contemplate doing here. Maybe I would have tried if the camera had any great value to me. It was more of a novelty, and the best use it ever got was to test it soon after buying it. It is now in the dustbin, awaiting delivery to wherever dead cameras go to rest in eternal peace.

  I am trying to think what I had for lunch. I know I wanted to try and not eat much for lunch, but I feel sure I failed. I am unsure if what I ate was a single Gingsters Pasty, and a pack of "fish sticks". With hindsight I think that neither had any health benefits and more like the complete opposite.

  One thing I am sure I resisted was any ice cream. The only ice cream I have in the freezer is strawberries and cream flavour, and it seems to have loads of sugar in it. I was going to buy some plain vanilla ice cream in Tesco, but all their freezers had died when I last did some shopping there, and they had no ice cream for sale (as well as any other frozen products.

  My afternoon was almost completely lazy, or maybe I should say was very lacking in productivity. I did do a few minor things, and most of them were camera related. I have already told the sorry story of the Toshiba camera. Another camera was a Sony Cybershot camera. It needed its battery charged, and the spare batteries for it topped up, but it is in good working order. The trouble is that I am not keen on it. It uses a touch sensitive screen, and that feels awkward to use. On the other hand, for a pocket sized camera it does give pretty good results - although no good for the sort of photography I tend to do.

  Another camera I checked was a Samsung camera that one of my workmates gave to me. Originally I had to buy a new battery, and find a Sony style "memory stick" (of which there are many similar looking varieties - and they are not all compatible). For a camera that fits on the palm of one hand, it is rather good.
  This was the view out my back bedroom window, as seen by the Samsung camera. It was taken during a lull in the rain, but still with a very grey sky. It seems to be quite a sharp looking picture with good colours for such a dull day. That Samsung camera was my almost constant companion while commuting to and from work, and while most of the pictures taken in Waterloo mainline station were very boring, or meaningless, the pictures still looked good using the ambient lighting in the station.

  Having realised I had a bit over done lunch, I thought I should try and have a small dinner. In some ways it did feel like it. I had two deli rolls filled with corned beef and semi thinly sliced red onion. They were rather nice, but after finishing the second roll I realised that it had been quite a filling dinner. Later on I did have a handful of salted peanuts, but I don't think I had anything else. I think it was earlier in the afternoon that I finished the last two liquorice "logs" that came in the liquorice assortment box I had bought from Amazon. They were the same liquorice logs that I had overdosed on a week or two ago, and ended up with a very fast heartbeat.

  My evening was the usual eating dinner while watching the news (not very entertaining at all last night) and then other TV programmes for the rest of the evening. I ended up watching a new episode of QI on BBC2 (or was it BBC1 ?), and then following it with an old repeat of QI on Dave. I guess that when she has good guests, which is definitely not every episode, maybe half of them, Sandi Tokstig can be a fair presenter/chairman.

  It was 11pm when I went to bed, and even than I read for 10 or 20 minutes before putting the book down, turning out the light, and falling asleep very quickly - at least I think I did. I remember very little about my sleep. I know I got up to pee at least once, and I can remember having a dream, but I can't recall a single thing about the dream.

  After I decided I ought to get up - earlier than I would have liked in case the Parcelforce delivery van turned up early (as they have done in the past). I went for a pee, but didn't seem to need to poo at that point. I weighed myself, and I did not like what I saw. I seemed to have put on 500gm, but although I have been unable to weigh myself again, I think that if I could have weighed myself after a poo, two more fair sized pees, and all before I had my breakfast of a single small pack of instant noodles, I may have not actually gained anything, but I'll never know now.

  For reasons I still can't think of, I don't seem to have checked my blood glucose this morning, and after eating breakfast there is no point in doing it now. It is an odd thing because until today I have been almost religious about keeping an eye on my blood glucose. At least I have remembered to check my blood pressure this morning. There are quite a few gaps on my spreadsheet where I have not entered figures for some reason (it is possible I did enter them, but they were not saved). Anyway, my blood pressure is a bit high this morning, 144/82. It might be because I am a bit excited about what should be upcoming events, but are not now.



  Just now I saw a postman heading towards my front door. When I answered the doorbell I was handed a package - a package I had been informed would be delivered between 2.20pm and 7.30pm. It was very handy to get it this morning because it makes the afternoon less of a panic.

  The package contained one of the new (secondhand) Sigma 24 to 70mm lenses I ordered via Ebay. This one was to fit a Canon camera. It came with some worthless accessories, although maybe the UV filter could be useful.

  I have tested it on my Canon 600D camera, as that is the camera I will probably always use it on, although it could go on any of them. I have already taken a few test shots, and while I have not transferred the pictures to my PC for a careful scrutiny of the pictures, they look fine when zoomed in on the camera viewfinder. One minor problem, that might ease up with some use, is that the zoom ring seems a bit stiff at one end, but other wise I think I am going to be very happy with this lens.



  Getting the lens early is a bonus. Today I will be meeting Dik (the Polish guitar player who lives 10 minutes walk away up a killer of a hill) in The Jolly Farmers. He had asked me if I could transfer VHS tapes to PC. The simple answer is I could, but it is blood tedious, and so won't, but I am giving him a USB video to digital converter so he can do it himself. I bought several different types of converter to see which might work better on my Linux PC, and I have one that seems to do the trick. The one I am giving Dik is effectively surplus to requirements. It was not very expensive, but at least I'll get a pint or two out of it, and now I don't have to rush back for the postman, I might go for three pints !