What I did in October 2020

[squirmelia]

I wandered around Richmond Park and found some nice fungi.

I went to a (virtual) Ingress First Saturday at the Magic Circle Headquarters, and enjoyed trying to find the portal locations to help solve the decoding challenges.

I played games with friends and learnt how to play Dominion. Some friends and I did a quiz and each person had to take it in turns to be quizmaster and read out their questions. Mine were too difficult!

I went to (online) Maraoke and sung along with songs about video games from home.

I visited Kent and went for walks in the woods and in fields and across a golf course. I saw a pheasant one day.

I saw some members of my family for the first time since March and it was lovely to see them! We went for a walk in the woods and I hid treasure for them to find.

I played Kentucky Route Zero with hovis.

I learnt about numbers stations and listened to UVB-76 on an online radio.

I carved a space invader into a pumpkin.

The sound piece I created went live! Earlier in the year, I remixed a field recording of the Sadovaya Subway in Saint Petersburg, as part of the Future Cities project: https://citiesandmemory.com/future-cities/ My remix is now live on the site and you can find it on the map or listen to it here: I jumped aboard the train and everything changed.

I started attending a Sonic Arts class at City Lit and learnt more about sound art. One of the things we did was make a collaborative sound piece, by us all following a simple score and playing items at the same time and recording them with Audacity and then the teacher combined them together. I played a coffee pot with a lobster, and jingled some bells.

I met up with hovis and we watched spooky movies.

I ran past squirrels and by the river, and geese flew over me, honking, and I saw a heron.

I went to a talk run by the IxDA (Interaction Design Association) on Art, IxD and Our Relationships with Computation and Media with Matt Nish-Lapidus, which was interesting.

I spent a few weeks in the countryside, wandering the woods and fields. The woods were full of fungi! Various different kinds, including magpie fungi, so I photographed some of those. There was at least one really nice sunset.

My mum and I walked to the next village on a long route through woods and fields that we had not walked for many years and then got the train back.

I was invited to take a Covid test by the Join Zoe app. I did this and it came up negative.

I ran laps of the football field and then ran by the river.

I reached level 15 in Ingress again!

I connected up a lolo-ball and pressure mat to an Arduino. If you bounce on the lolo ball onto the mat, it makes a "boing" sound.

I wandered along the Southbank in the sunshine one morning and it was lovely at that time, on the way to a dentist’s appointment. I actually went to my office for the first time since March, while waiting to see the hygienist. It felt strange to be back there.

Photos on Flickr: October 2020

Comments

[doseybat]

Amazing tree. Old oak?

[squirmelia]

It is! The Royal Oak, estimated to be 750 years old. You used to be able to go inside it and there is quite a lot of room inside! Now it is fenced off though, so you can't.

[solitarywalker]

What a great tree!

You mention space invaders a lot. I quite clearly remember the marching sounds of that game on the Atari 2600.

[squirmelia]

It is a wonderful tree!

Yesterday I went up to the park again and saw deer. I was mostly distracted by looking at fungi again, but it was nice to see them.