Badges I have found on trains or at train stations:

On the way to a meeting in Nottingham, I took a few photos..

I tried Dérive App today, choosing the Urban deck to play with.

The first instruction I was given was:

1. Find a one-way and walk in the opposite direction.

I was not sure where I'd find a one-way street, but found one, at Castle Street. I walked up it, passing a strange flower. I then finished Dérive 1715 by mistake and started again.

( Read more about Dérive 1715 and Dérive 1716Collapse )

Inspired by ultraruby mentioning MapMyWalk and Mat sharing GPS tracks of a rude picture, I decided to try GPS drawing an animal. The tracks captured were not quite as accurate as I had hoped, and there were buildings and traffic in the way of where I wanted to walk sometimes, but anyway, it's a first attempt. It did lead me to places I had never been before.

I like to wander during my lunch break, exploring the streets, looking at signs, trying to find unusual sights. I often use the MapMyWalk app on my phone to track where I walk and how many miles.

It was a Friday and I wanted to find somewhere new to go.

I decided to let Serendipitor take over. I selected "Current Location" as my starting point and "Random Location" as my ending point.

( More about where I went while using SerendipitorCollapse )

The Friday after that I decided to try a different, yet similar app: Drift.

( More about where I went while using DriftCollapse )

I still have Dérive app to try, as well as a pack of Drifft cards. (I also tried the Drift Deck a few years ago: Drifting and Red shoes.)

I twirled around a lamp-post, copying the little girl I had seen just around the corner, who was spinning around the lamp-post repeatedly, but I did it just once, on the way to the station.

The next little girl who passed me explained to the adult with her, "If this was the right, there has to be a wrong. A wrong way."

Food I consumed for the first time this weekend:

1. Black Frugo.

"Mystery hidden in the bottle. The velvety black colour of the grape night lit up by the glow of a red cherry."

"The disturbing aroma of a black currant struggling in darkness with the exotic tone of pitahaya."

The taste of this black drink made from chokeberries and dragonfruit reminded me of how the villain in Strawberry Shortcake used to smell. The Peculiar Purple Pieman of Porcupine Peak. Perhaps after drinking it, I had become the villain.

2. Cookies & Cream Kit Kat.

3. Seitan, which I had made myself.

I have eaten seitan before, but had not managed to get hold of vital wheat gluten previously to make it myself, but now I have, and it was quite easy to make.

I completed the SF0 task "Fun with Food" on Monday. The instructions were to "play with your food".

This was originally posted at SF0:

Did you just pop out a raspberry, or was it on the custard? Stop reading the currant bun and go up the apples. Let's all get in the jam and not bother with a sherbet.

I gathered food to play with:
A currant bun
Some apples and pears
A jar of strawberry jam
A sherbet dip-dab
Some custard
A Cadbury's flake
I then cooked a raspberry tart, and also made a jelly.

Food:


On Sunday, I was shown how to use a MaKey MaKey with Scratch by deathboy. The MaKey MaKey is great for playing with food. For example, you can use bananas as piano keys, send messages on Facebook using alphabet soup, or play Tetris with tomatoes. Scratch is a simple way to create animations or programs just by dragging and dropping elements, so you don't have to worry about syntax.

I decided to create a Cockney rhyming slang Scratch program. I live in London, but speak Estuary English as opposed to Cockney, so looked at a list on Wiktionary: Cockney rhyming slang. I drew pictures of a television and some stairs, and recorded a fart sound. I then imported some images and moved statements around in Scratch, so that the pictures would move around.

I hooked up the MaKey MaKey and attached it to the food with crocodile clips. Messy! I abandoned the sherbet dip-dab at this point as it was not conductive.

My Scratch program:


The food hooked up to the MaKey MaKey:


If you touch the raspberry tart, it makes a farting sound.
If you touch the jelly and custard, a television appears, and the words "Hello SF0!" appear on the screen.
If you touch the jar of strawberry jam, a car moves across the screen.
If you touch the currant bun, a sun appears and moves about.
If you touch an apple, stairs appear and then become a bit swirly.
If you touch the flake, a ghost appears and says "You made a mistake".

An improvement would be to make the pictures do something a bit more interesting than just move around, but I was just learning how to use Scratch.

Cockney rhyming slang used:
Raspberry tart - fart
Custard and jelly - telly
Jam-jar - car
Currant bun - The Sun
Apples and pears - stairs
Cadbury's Flake - mistake

If you have a MaKey MaKey and a raspberry tart, jelly and custard, jar of jam, currant bun, apples and pears, and a Cadbury's flake, you can also try this out. I have uploaded it to the Scratch website: Cockney rhyming slang. If you don't have a MaKey MaKey, you can try it by imagining you are touching the food, feeling the bounce of the jelly beneath your fingers, the gooeyness of the tart, the stickiness of the currant bun, and on your keyboard you can try pressing Up, Down, Left, Right, Space, and click your mouse.

I walked Section 15 (Beckton District Park to Woolwich Foot Tunnel) of the Capital Ring yesterday. I walked to Cyprus, and to Atlantis. I walked through the University of East London and stared up at the colourful riverside buildings. I walked along the river, and through patches of London that just seemed desolate and abandoned.

"I'm basically just making things up, actually," he said, into his phone.

I was going to catch a train, but when I stepped outside, it was snowing still, tiny flakes, and it seemed magical, so instead I walked to Marble Hill Park. There, I made a snowman and other creatures.

"When he sees a snowman, he wants to pee on it," a woman told me, shooing her dog away from my creations.

I then wandered along the river until I came to the nymphs, which were surrounded by icicles.

I turned back and went inside the Stables Gallery and looked at photos of local people, and then at the Orleans House Gallery I looked at architectural drawings of local places, some which were built and some which were not.

I followed people dragging sledges up Richmond Hill and stood at the top, looking out over the river, watching people play in the snow, wishing I was sledging too, and then I counted the snowmen (4).

I continued up the road and passed someone carrying skis. Inside the park there were signs in certain areas forbidding skiing and tobogganing.

Richmond Park seemed magical, with snow-covered trees and ferns, and I wandered across the snow and hid inside two hollow trees, one of which is in the picture.

"Red Bull! Red Bull!" a man loudly shouted, breaking the spell. "Red Bull!"

I traipsed through the snow, circling the wood, and started heading back towards the gate. It was then that a person snowkited past, which seemed even more exciting than seeing a person carrying skis.

Then, back down the hill again, I purchased a jar of caramelised biscuit spread, which after reading miss_newham's descriptions of speculoos, I thought I would have to go to Belgium to try, but was pleased to find from hoshuteki that it is now available in London.

I wander past the swirls of Bengali words, stumble by the Space Invader, and then I'm browsing CDs, flicking through post-industrial, Japanese, out rock and free noise.

There's a nearby Instagramers exhibition, photos of Iconic London, but it's the photos of Shit London I see later that appeal to me more. I try to stifle my laughter in the gallery, while I look at the elf storage units, graffiti I pass regularly but was unable to understand before, and the shops with funny names.

I see a few Santas buying snacks and I presume they have taken a detour away from SantaCon for now at least. There's no escaping Santa, as a bug wearing a Santa hat smiles down at me from the roof by Village Underground. There's a blue plaque nearby that says "Crunchy. The Credit Crunch Monster. 2008 - 2010. Official mascot of the global recession."

I stare at the textures in the White Cube gallery, pools of black and gold, pleasingly swirled. The Next Life's On Me.

Then I jump aboard a bus and sit at the front at the top, and stare out at the skyscrapers that we pass. Soon, I'm at St Katharine's Dock and on a boat, trying to decipher French text that mentions pirates, and staring at piles of onions.

Visiting the London Transport Museum was included in the price of entry to Aldwych, so on Sunday 9th December, I climbed aboard old vehicles, read about the design of the roundel, and admired old posters. A few more photos on Flickr: London Transport Museum set, such as "Live in Kent and be content" and "Vaseline - Everybody's Friend".

The Friday after that, I visited the Tate Britain and wandered between words in the Ian Hamilton Finlay exhibition.

Last Sunday, I visited Aldwych station, a tube station in London that closed in 1994. Films such as V for Vendetta, 28 Weeks Later, and Creep have been filmed there, as well as the video for Firestarter by The Prodigy.

I walked the Capital Ring section from Hendon Central to Highgate today, and along the way, I played on swings, gazed at a waterfall, followed the river and looked at the reflections, listened to the crunching sounds of the frozen grass beneath my feet, walked quickly through dark woods, scared, and stumbled across signs of an alien culture..

From Kerrang! magazine, probably in the late 1990s.

I milked a fake cow at a farm in Vauxhall on Saturday. Later that day, in Kingston-upon-Thames, a robotic arachnid beast scuttered towards me, under my control.

I watched a film that night, about a world where people could not lie.

Sunday, I went to Boring 2012, and listened to talks on self-service check-outs, the shipping forecast, shop fronts, ASMR (Auto Sensory Meridian Response) videos, IBM tills, and a variety of other "boring" things, which perhaps are not really very boring. I might photograph the inside of my fridge (with the door closed), and now I imagine double yellow lines made of instruments and turning green. (Diamond Geezer's Notes from Boring 2012 give a more comprehensive list of talks.)

Fairytales illustrated with words, lovely intricate creations cut from books. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The Princess and the Pea. Rapunzel. Entire scenes, castles and princesses and such delicate trees, all made from words.

Today I saw Stories from the Enchanted Forest by Su Blackwell at the Long and Ryle Gallery.