1. Normal Saturday cleaning and shopping routine this morning, then went for a hike and drove around under the sea with a pirate, a stripper wearing an authentic green beret and a designer with back to front organs.

    Because, y’know,

  2. Just realised that I haven’t turned on the TV for a month. Instead been walking, making things, watching films, reading. Feels good.

  3. Had rather a long, interesting and slightly awkward conversation with some Icelandic chaps in a bar, covering the difference between belief and knowledge, origins of the Icelandic people and the nature of tools.

    Conclusions: Humans are the only animals to create recursive tools, and I am (apparently) an alchemist.

  4. Attempt to climb Esya thwarted by bad weather, closed bus station and confusingly numbered buses. Went for a 4 hour walk along the coast, which ended in a tasty kebab accident. Now reading Tufte at the office.

  5. Spent the evening at a colleague’s birthday party in a private bikers club in a Reykjavik suburb, drinking (water, of course), eating tasty food and playing poker, a strange game which seems to consist mainly of the following:

    • Give people some cards
    • Put some cards on a table
    • Move some bits of plastic around a few times — the bits of plastic are different colours, and make nice sounds if you click them together
    • Arrange your plastic into piles and click them together whilst sipping a cocktail (or water, depending on whether or not you are a bodybuilder/Buddhist/bodybuilding Buddhist).
    • Do poker with your face (to do: what is this?)
    • Intermittently tap the table
    • Nonchalantly toss some plastic into the middle of the table, or, if you’re hungry, toss your cards towards the dealer and go get some food — this is called folding but DO NOT FOLD THE CARDS it is confusing and not literal
    • Repeat 2-5 a few times, then show people your cards. Say some numbers out loud (optional: confused pause), and then one of you has won. Sometimes this is because a card has a bigger number than another, or because of the shape, or because of the picture.
    • The winner gets all the plastic, unless they ran out of plastic half way through, in which case they get that much less — use little piles for this purpose.
    • Repeat from beginning

    Thanks for a great evening everyone :)

  6. Has a go at making a chicken mushroomey cheesey sauce thing (inspired by an amazing Italian place here). Surprisingly it wasn’t unsuccessful — needs a bit more cheese next time though.

  7. Jovian Salak: @BarnabyWalters such nice weather! UK is predictably bad...

    Jovian Salak the weather here is predictably unpredictable :) It was gorgeous when I took that two days ago, since then it has been freezing, murky and (in the last few hours) snowing a lot. All good fun!