Whatever happened to Lola Granola?

I was awake for hours last night and I can't remember any of the many things I though about to record here. I think I eventually wandered off into some dream about Bloom County rather than finish the Poem that is floating round my head. I even tried to write some of it down yesterday but it's as if it won't come out until it is "cooked". Half-Baked more like.

I watched "Rough Science" yesterday. The website for this programme is unavailable so a brief resume of the idea is required. Five eminent ( and "elderly" by Arthur C Clarke's definition) scientists of various disciplines, are marooned (In the sense of being accompanied by a TV presenter, cameraman, sound-recordist, Producer, Runner and with access to a five-star hotel) on the tropical island of Carriacou in the Caribbean and asked to devise various items of technology using just locally available resources. These resources include an abandoned prison and lots and lots of plants. Yesterday's tasks were to create a Compass (Easy even for me), a flag using locally produced dyes ( not very interesting apart from the fact that they had to use their own Urine as a mordant to make the Dye take better) and a Camera with film. The Camera they produced easily using a lens made of the bottom of a broken bottle which produced a suprisingly clear image on the paper screen. What was really impressive was the creation of a working film using Iodine extracted from the Ash created by burning seaweed and the Silver in an old bracelet. The Potassium Iodide extracted from the seaweed was used as an electrolyte while the silver was used as one electrode with Graphite from a pencil as the other. The electricity was produced using a ten-cell battery, the details of which I missed. The resulting Silver Iodide solution was then soaked into paper. They made an acceptable image of a key by placing it on the paper under bright sunlight. The Silver Iodide darkened except where the key covered it up. The film did not work in the Camera but as far as I was concerned the fact that they got light-sensitive paper was enough criteria for success. Adam Hart-Davis did something with Light sensitive paper using a leaf to create the image. Yet another thing to add to the "would-like-to-do" pile.

The aforementioned "pile"

- Small scale windmill generating power for my daughter as she has taken the big generating windmills at the docks to heart - "My Windmills"
- Light-sensitive "photographs"
- Long poem
- Self-performing version of "In C"
- Tidy up the Fractal Zoom
- More electronic collage like the Constructivist Flag.