spring

Shhhh! Don't tell anyone but it was pretty spring-y this morning. Lovely sunrise.

No cycling again (that's tomorrow) because the mudguards I ordered for the bike only just turned up and it was forecast to (and duly did) rain in the afternoon. I'm not a fair weather cyclist, I just don't like getting completely covered in road crap. 

Work: tolerable. Gym, home and while +1/2 was spinning away on her bike setup on the turbo, I was finally putting my newly built desk to good use dismantling the Pentax 135mm f2.5 to remove a big patch of fungus from one of the lenses. A bit of fiddling and a sudden realization that the screw I was looking for was under the focus grip and the lens was apart. 

I'd previously ordered some lens tissues and isopropyl alcohol but I forgot the latex gloves - if you don't wear gloves the alcohol will immediately dissolve the oil from your skin and deposit it on the surface of the lens. Doh. 

The fungus is gone, the affected lenses are looking pretty good so I just need to give them a final clean, get rid of any dust specs and reassemble. 

It took me right back to my postgrad days: I worked a lot with optics and spent my life cleaning bits of custom glass and mirrors, trying not to destroy the rather delicate coatings (not like the coatings you find on production optics - these you could quite easily wipe off).

Music ranged from Jet to Rolo Tomassi (new album out soon, playing London at the end of the year).

I'm consistently amazed by Rolo Tomassi; it's as if the music were a friendly blob with tendrils that just happen to match the gaps in my brain perfectly. Or something. I suspect this may not be the case for >95% of people however... and if it doesn't make sense then you'll just hear a lot of screaming. Skip to 3:17 for a bit more melody.