Photo Genius

The first permanent photograph, pictured above, taken by Nicephore Niepce in 1826 required an 8 hour exposure. Compare that will all the photos Gen Y take with snazzy little cameras to upload onto facebook! And they are all in colour! How far technology has advanced.

Further still, at this link you will find a photo of the entire crowd from the 2009 Inauguration ceremony of Barack Obama as the US president.

Be patient, it might take a while to open, but it is worth the wait!
The picture was taken with a robotic camera at 1,474 megapixel. (295 times the standard 5 megapixel camera). You can focus in on the face of every person in the crowd, and each face is clear enough to be recognisable.

On a lighter note, scanning the picture for famous US political figures is like a game of ‘Wheres Wally’, just with real people. And everyone looks frozen!!

Mouth-watering religion

Today is Ash Wednesday. In the Western Christian Calendar it the first day of Lent.

That’s all background.

Now to the important details.

Yesterday was Shrove Tuesday, which is frequently referred to as Pancake Day (endearingly, I’m sure). It’s a day when religious people (who may or may not fast during Lent) indulge in feasting and merry-making.

Why the compulsory intake of pancakes, you ask. Traditionally, eggs were among the forbidden foods of the Lent season, so one way to use them up was to cook pancakes. Long live tradition!

Let me enrich your life with a bit of a history lesson on the strange and wonderful customs associated with Shrove Tuesday.


In Britain, Shrove Tuesday was appropriately called 'goodies day' and the bell that called people to church was known as the pancake bell. There is an annual pancake race held in the town of Olney in England, which apparently started in 1445 when a housewife who was late cooking her pancakes heard the church bell and ran to church, and like a dedicated housewife, took her griddle and batter along with her.
She started a tradition, the Olney pancake race involves women who must run from the town square to the church, tossing a pancake in their pan at least three times along the route.

In Sweden the day is known as Fat Tuesday. The dish of the day is the Fat Tuesday bun which is filled with almond paste and whipped cream and served floating in a bowl of hot milk. It does not seem like the Swedish would have a low-fat version of this dish!

In Belgium, children sing Easter carols, for which they are rewarded with nuts, apples and strips of bacon (which should traditionally be cooked outdoors on long willow sticks).

I think any religious customs have an amazing ability to bring people together, and its usually because of food! I'm off, this blog posting is making my mouth water! *Looking forward to my Easter Hot Cross Buns*

Perfect people & me

I’m bright pink, sweaty, and huffing and puffing enough to blow down a house (maybe even a brick one).

I run in and out of the shower and feel a little calmer and a little more collected (but only a little). I’m always so disorientated after a workout. I vow that lunchtime gym sessions are a thing of the past. Too rushed. Never again.

I barely get time to moisture, although my mum has dutifully drilled into my head, over the years, that not moisturising after a shower was the worst possible sin I could commit against humanity.

And then I see them. Those perfect girls, the ones who blow-dry their hair at the gym (I used to wonder why the gym provided those blow dryers). In one hour, they have managed to workout, shower, and blow-dry hair. Super-women!

And then one girl pulls out her hair straightner (oops, sorry, I meant GHD). Her hair and make up are perfect, a level I would aspire to achieve if I had a date with the man of my dreams or a massive night out. But here she was, at the gym at lunchtime, going back to work, just like me, yet so perfectly presented.

As I caught my lip-gloss-less and flustered reflection in the mirror on the way back to work, only 40 minutes late, I felt like hitting my head against a brick wall.