Finally... a use for German

If you live in Ireland or the UK, rather than just using eBay.com or eBay.ie/co.uk, put those German classes to use and use eBay.de
Sure, it'll take a little effort on your part, but I've found serious bargains there and much less bidding wars, particularly in photographic equipment.

Also, a handy little tool is JBidWatcher. It snipes for you when you're tucked up in bed/out having life. Find it at Sourceforge. Sure, there are other bidding tools out there, but this one is open source, something which is dear to my heart.

One pot cooking... outdoors!

Going camping this weekend with Edel! It should be a blast. I haven't lived in a tent in a good few years, and not out of choice in a few more.
If I can get the Electro up and running before then I'll take it with me, otherwise, it'll be the F801. Dunno if it's practical to go lugging a kilo of camera around with me, but I have to record the spectacle of us cooking dinner for two in one pot!

Some old camping recipes for a full belly on a budget...

Beans and sossies

Fry sausages in pot. Add beans. Wait til hot. Eat.
You could always boil a few baby spuds first, set aside while doing sausages and add with beans for variety.


Various rice/soup dishes.

Boil up some rice.
Drain.
Boil a good quality beef stew or meaty or veggie soup and add rice.

Bombay Aloo (seriously!!)

Put oil and some madras mix/masala mix in a pot and fry for a bit.
Add chopped onions.
Add pre boiled, roughly sliced baby spuds and fry til almost dry.


Chickpea Curry

Do as above, add can of chickpeas (drained)
Add half can of chopped tomatoes and simmer for a fair while.

Macro photos

I got a set of extension rings for my camera a while back. Basically, what they do, is extend the distance to film-plane so that one can focus on things a lot closer than normal. They cost ~€15 from eBay, which is a damn sight cheaper than a Nikkor Micro (~€250) and almost as good in terms of quality. Ok, the Nikkor would give me greater than life-size reproduction, but... well, I'm only an amateur.

Anyhow... here's a few examples of how the pictures look:

Cactus
Succulent
Another Succulent
Not sure :)

Gonna get them damn aphids

I have a serious aphid problem, but, on my way back from lunch today, what did I see on the ground but a ladybird... and a second... and another. I found four altogether and they're in a paper cup beside me right now. I can hear them making little clicking sounds as the climb up the sides of the cup and fall back down.
I've put some tissue paper soaked in water in there with them so their little insect throats won't be too dry.
Hopefully, they'll have a nice feed of green and black-fly when I get them home.