Daily update – Page 109 – dangermouse.net

Chili miso Brussels sprouts

I didn’t do much today besides making some comic strips in the morning, and take Scully to the dog park in the afternoon. Still relaxing after yesterday’s work at the market.

I did cook dinner, however, and one of my favourite easy vegetable side dishes: chili miso Brussels sprouts. We had them with a chick pea burger patty.

It’s pretty easy to make. Wash and halve some sprouts, then par-cook either in the microwave or a steamer. Fry in a little olive oil with chopped garlic and chili, turning to ensure both sides brown. When done, pour over a half/half mix of miso paste and mirin, combined to form a runny paste, and stir to coat the sprouts, then serve. You don’t need much of the miso/mirin mix, as it’s a strong flavour.

Today I added some slivered almonds too for extra crunch.

New content today:

Sunday Market day

I had my market day today. Got up at 6, went to pick up the car I’d hired to take all my gear and stock to the market, drove over there, unpacked, set up the stall. The forecast was for rain today, but it turned out sunny and warm. Unfortunately, this probably encouraged people to go to the beach rather than to the market, as attendance was very low today. I chatted with other stallholders and they agreed business was very slow. But they reckon that things will pick up in the next few months as autumn brings cooler weather, and maybe people will continue to get more adventurous after COVID.

It’s interesting the observations you make of people while you’re tending a market stall. I’m selling photographic prints. The images are beautiful, if I do say so myself. But it’s amazing how many people wander past the stalls, taking some time to look closely at the stall next to mine, but then approach mine, take a single glance that must genuinely be less than a second long, and their eyes immediately move on to the next stall and they walk right past mine without a second look.

Obviously some people are not particularly interested in buying photographic prints, but I’m amazed at just how quickly they can apparently dismiss the idea of even taking a slightly longer look. I’m a very visual person and I love looking at artwork and photography. Even if I have zero intention of buying anything, I always pause and look closely at any market stall that has visual art. It’s interesting and intriguing to me that there are so many people who apparently have no interest whatsoever in stopping to look at some beautiful pictures.

This is mostly adults I’m talking about. Children usually seem a lot more interested. I watch families walk past, and the parents do the split-second glance and their eyes move on to continue around the array of stalls, but the children tend to gaze a lot longer at my photos. It makes me ponder if children are naturally drawn to visual art and imagery, but somewhere along the path to adulthood this natural fascination with images somehow gets beaten out of people.

My best customers are often lone parents escorting one or more children. The children get excited by the photos, and the parent agrees to buy some greeting cards, or in some cases a matted print. But when both parents are present with kids, I seldom make the sale.

The exceptions are the handful of adults who are genuinely interested in photography. They come over and look through every single image in the boxes of matted prints, and praise me on the photography, and ask questions about specific photos. These people are a delight to talk to, and I’m very gratified that there are indeed other people out there who love visual art as much as I do.

By the end of the day, I was fearing I’d make a loss after the stall and car hire. But one final customer came by about 15 minutes before closing time, and bought a matted print, which pushed me over the line into profit for the day. Not a lot of profit, but definitely better than being in the red. So thank you to that woman.

New content today:

Sewing supplies

Tomorrow is my next market stall – back to the smaller suburban market in Lindfield this week. Last week at Kirribilli, although I was in the road tunnel and sheltered from any rain (if there’d been any), I realised I was vulnerable to wind blowing through the tunnel. It got a bit breezy, and at one point it blew some of my greeting cards over, off the stand, and onto the ground.

I realised I need a way to make my display stands more robust to wind. So today I went with my wife (and Scully) on a trek to a large sewing and handicrafts store. She actually wanted to go to buy a sewing machine and some material, for a project she wants to work on. But I needed to go to get some elastic cord, which I plan to string across the front of the display stand to form a bit of a barrier to hold the cards in place. I’ve also been wanting to get some sturdy cloth ribbon to use to replace a drawstring on some old shorts that I just wear around the house, but whose drawstring has frayed and broken.

So it was a good confluence of needs that saw us spend an hour or so picking up various sewing supplies. That store is actually really amazing for arts and crafts stuff. Besides strictly sewing supplies, they also have large sections of materials for other crafts.

Apart from that expedition I didn’t do much today. I was up late last night playing games with friends online, and I want to rest a bit before the market tomorrow.

New content today:

Super busy day

Took Scully for a super early morning walk, because my wife was busy with an appointment this morning, so she couldn’t do their usual morning walk.
Took Scully in to my wife’s work to drop her off there for the day.
Mixed together ingredients to make sourdough challah and kneaded it into dough, which then had to rise for four hours.
Did the weekly grocery shopping.
Went out to drive my mother-in-law home from an errand she had to run.
Rolled out the challah dough and shaped the loaves by braiding, then left to rise another five hours.
Worked on some comics, once I had a few spare minutes.
Made minestrone for dinner
Baked the challah.
Played online board games with friends.

Here’s some photos of the challah being made.

1. Ingredients: water, flour+salt, egg+oil+honey, sourdough levain.

2. Mixing the levain and water.

3. Mixing wet ingredients.

4. Ragged dough.

5. Kneaded dough.

6. Rolling the dough.

7. Plaiting the dough.

8. Plaited loaves ready to rise.

9. Risen loaves ready to bake.

10. Finished loaves! Yum!

New content today:

2 seconds faster

I was determined to do a second 5k run this week, and this morning was the time. It was a warmer morning, and sunny, but I managed to finish in 28:57, just 2 seconds faster than on Monday. Let’s see if I can keep up this enthusiasm for doing two runs a week…

Tomorrow I’m planning to try a new sourdough recipe: sourdough challah. My friend pointed me at a recipe which he says works well, so I’m going to give it a go, sticking as close to the recipe as I can. Today I had to feed the sourdough starter this morning, then tonight I make a levain (a new word I just learnt as I’m trying new things with sourdough), which sits overnight, before being used to make dough tomorrow morning, which then rises all day, before finally being baked tomorrow night. It’s a lot of lead-up time, so I hope it turns out!

New content today:

Alchemy and kookaburras

I’ve been working into the late evening on some Darths & Droids strips… the time got away from me! So I don’t want to write too much before I head to bed. What else did I do today?

I cobbled together a quick random alchemical ingredient generator. At the moment it’s generating only herb names, but I plan to expand it.

I baked sourdough, this time with 20% semolina/80% flour. It turned out fine. I think next time I’m going to go wild and try 50% semolina and see what happens.

Oh, and I created a Twitter account for Square Root of Minus Garfield. Since all the cool Garfield remix comics are doing it.

At the dog park with Scully this afternoon, there was a kookaburra hanging around, hunting worms and stuff in the bark chips near where all the dog owners sit on the park benches. It landed right on the bench I was sitting on! I managed to get this photo… with my phone!

New content today:

More vision, and a class listing!

I’ve listed my first class on Outschool! Human Vision and Colour Perception. The first date I’ll be offering this class is Monday 1 March (Sydney time – it corresponds to Sunday 28 Feb afternoon in the US).

I’ve aimed this class at students from 12-14 years old. If you have (or know) kids this age who might be interested in learning about how we see and how colour perception works, please feel free to sign up for the class! It’s available to anyone in the world.

I spent this afternoon drawing some more diagrams for the course. I’m very proud of this eyeball:

And here’s the human visual pathway, showing left and right visual fields:

After making these diagrams, I had enough material to finally put together my class promotion image, which is necessary before you can publicly list the class. This was the last step I needed to complete, and so that’s why I got the class up and running today.

This morning I had to go see my doctor again about my tonsils. The course of antibiotics I’ve just completed hasn’t made the swelling go down. He wants to give some stronger antibiotics a chance, so I’m on those for a couple more weeks, then will have to go back for another appointment if the tonsil is still swollen.

After the appointment I took a roundabout long walk home, stopping off to get a snack on the way, and sit by the water while I ate. It’s nice to spend some time out in the fresh air.

New content today:

Drawing vision diagrams

Today I relaxed a bit after yesterday’s manic work at the market. By “relaxed”, I mean I went for a 5k run first thing in the morning. I tried running the loop at the halfway mark in the opposite direction today, which meant uphill sections on either side of a downhill, rather than vice versa. I don’t know if it made much difference overall, but my time today was 20 seconds slower than last week.

After the run, I got stuck into drawing some diagrams for my planned class on human vision and colour perception for Outschool. I need to draw my own diagrams to avoid using copyrighted images. Here’s my take on the layers of the human retina:

I got most of the diagrams I need done, but still have a couple of tackle tomorrow. But now I can at least make a title image for my class to upload to Outschool, and start signing up students!

New content today:

Kirribilli Markets!

Today was the big market day! I had my first stall at the big Kirribilli Markets, selling my photography. It was a long, tiring day!

I got up at 5:45, took Scully out for toilet, had a quick breakfast, and then jumped in the car with my wife and Scully. We dropped off one load of equipment and stock at the market, then she watched it while I drove home and picked up the second load. I unpacked everything, and then she drove home with Scully. I wanted to be really early, because there’s limited parking for cars and vans to unload, and they said the earlier the better.

I was basically set up and ready to go by about 7:30, with the market officially opening at 8:30. I was hoping for large numbers of shoppers, but the numbers were really down on what I’ve seen at this market before. I’ve been here as a shopper before and it’s always very crowded, to the point of being difficult to walk sometimes, but today there was maybe… a quarter of the people, I estimate, if that. It’s a combination of the complete lack of tourists in Sydney at the moment, plus maybe a bit of COVID-shyness still.

I managed to make enough sales to cover my costs, and make a modest profit. So it was worthwhile, but I expected and certainly would have liked to make a bit more profit. The market closed at 3pm, so it officially lasts 6.5 hours, but with the setup and then packing up and getting back home afterwards, it was a 10-hour working day for me.

I’m exhausted, but at least feeling good that I’ve made some money, even if the hourly rate is pretty poor. I have Kirribilli booked again for next month, and hopefully there’ll be more customers, or even returning ones who decide that this time they’ll buy something rather than just looking.

Phew!

New content today:

Virtual Sydney meeting day 5

This morning was the last day of the ISO standards meeting. It was all just administrative stuff to finish off, going over summary reports of all the technical discussions, listing action items, and so on. One important thing was to decide the timing for the next meeting, which is on 7-11 June. I’ve been fortunate to have this meeting and the previous on at a favourable time in the morning, but the European delegates have been up in the middle of the night. The June meeting is going to allow the Europeans to have a comfortable afternoon, while I will be stuck beginning the meeting at 11pm here in Sydney.

At this stage the plan is for a physical meeting at Apple in Cupertino in October, but realistically I expect that will probably be virtual as well. Even if it isn’t, there’s no way I’ll be going.

Meeting done, I spent the rest of the day preparing for tomorrow’s market. I have a stall at Kirribilli Markets, which will hopefully be busy and full of people wanting to buy my stuff. I had to collate a pile of greeting cards and envelopes and stuff them into cellophane baggies, ready for people to buy, and then print out some more price signs and stuff. Then I collected all my stuff and did a test pack of the car, to make sure I can transport it all to the market in two trips. I’m not hiring a large car this time, as the market is not far away, and I worked out that I can get everything there in two trips (with the first taking my wife so she can mind the gear while I return for the second load). It was a bit like working out how to cross a river with a lettuce, a goose, and a fox.

With that, it’s an early night, because we have to get up before 6am to start moving stuff to the market nice and early.

New content today: