July 2021

[iguana]

Bit of a quiet month, but AMPDG got me doing a nice project, and I finally got my second covid vaccine!

Vaccination 2

It was the hottest day of the year so far, and a 30 minute cycle ride away, so I ended up wearing a very old vest, of all things. The test centre was much quieter compared to the first vaccination; no queue outside and straight to the nurse inside.

I took my obligatory vaccination selfie right outside the centre; not the best photo I've taken of myself but here you go.

I felt more-or-less okay for the rest of the day but the day after, a Monday, I woke up just aching all over, to the point I wasn't comfortable just lying on the sofa. Fortunately the side effects disappeared as swiftly as they'd appeared, and I woke up on Tuesday feeling basically fine.

AMPDG: Tau Girl

For AMPDG I picked "Behold! The Masked Wonder!: Create a superhero identity for yourself and use it to do something."

With Tau Day the previous month in my head, and partly inspired by Emily's "Pi Avenger" from before I met her, I created Tau Girl, whose logo is a Tau symbol in a circle. For a skirt I ordered some material and made an elasticated circle skirt out of it.

I also ordered a t-shirt to sew the logo onto and some coloured bracelets.

I decided to create a secret identity of sorts too, by wearing a denim jacket I'd bought but wasn't sure really suited me, so hadn't worn again since, and go to the woods to do a photoshoot.

I didn't think the photoshoot worked out as well as I'd hoped, so when I got back I took a little series of photos and turned them into a comic strip using a GIMP guide to create a drawn effect:

All in all this was a nice combination of tasks, including more machine sewing practice (the skirt turned out quite well, though the fabric is a bit too see-through); hand-sewing (the tau symbol is a mess, but I wasn't particularly trying to do more than a quick job on that, expecting to unpick it later); and pushing myself a little to be somewhat conspicuous in public (I wore the jacket over the top walking to the woods, but the pink skirt was very much on display).

Garden update

Display all vegetables but my broad beans being a total flop this year, the strawberries and golden raspberries did particularly well this year. I'd taken the strawberries back last year, so there wasn't as many of those, but I got several punnets of raspberries across the summer.
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My sunflowers, planted for May's AMPDG, flowered near the start of the month and I think my choice of the "Solar Eclipse" variety was a very good one.

Dragonfruit update

At the start of the month I realised the Dragon fruit vine was growing fast enough that I'd need to complete the trellis that I'd only given a cursory thought to until now. I decided to go with the system I'd seen a youtube video do a while ago, which was to top the growing pole with a garden sieve for the vine to drape over.

The (semi-)professional growers use 10cm-or-so thick beams of wood for the pole and construct a square top for their stuff, but I'd already committed to the coconut fibre pole, so I ordered the sieve, a 30cm aluminium beam to go through the centre of it, and some heavy duty picture frame wire to stop it toppling.

You can see my efforts here:

I would have preferred a ceramic pot for the plant, but at least the plastic one allowed me to drill some holes through to look the picture wire through. It also turned out the coconut fibre pole is hollow, so I wasn't able to just shove the rod into it and have it stay there (it would have fallen to the bottom), so I used some plasticine to hold it in place. I used cutters to create a hole for the vine to grow through:

I have no idea if this will hold the weight of several vine branches draping over it, but it feels like a reasonable bodge!

I got it done just in time; just a week later the vine was already through the top:

Twitch streams

I got the equipment together to be able to stream me playing on my old Megadrive onto Twitch, and I've been doing that sporadically on Saturday mornings when I've been up to it. If you fancy joining me, I'm at kapellosaur there, and twitch will send an e-mail when I go live.