11 November 2006: 10 November 2006: About time for an update. I've been practicing regularly. I have loads of books and tutor CDs and of course huge amounts of just music to play along to. I can, rather haltingly, sing along as I play "The Lollipop Tree". And last Monday I went to a real session, at the George Inn in Borough High Street (first Monday of the month, or 2nd Monday when the first is a Bank Holiday, from about 8:30). Some descriptions of this session say it's a bit French; it was described to me as 'not an Irish session'. On Monday the room was full; about 60% players, 40% drinkers. I knew very few of the tunes and could name even fewer; but thanks to David Oliver's folk equivalent of the Shield of Umor, I joined in with gusto and had a jolly good time. The George itself deserves a brief mention; the last remaining London galleried coaching inn, it's got an extraordinary interior that is not remotely well-suited to operating as a modern pub. I wonder if it ever was? The room that the session is in does not have a bar; it does have a hatch but they weren't serving from it on Monday. Unsurprisingly, the George is on the CAMRA register of pubs with historic interiors; unlike many, it's not at risk, as it's now owned by the National Trust.

And next week I take delivery of my Streb.

29 August 2006: I guess I was having fun with the melodeon before I started. I resolved the 'join in sessions' bit of this over the weekend at the Towersey Village Festival, largely thanks to the excellent session workshops run by David Oliver of Folkworks. He convinced me that the thing I needed to enjoy sessions was a change in attitude; that it was perfectly ok to join in with just a few notes, and that there was no such thing as a wrong note. He also taught us some popular tunes, which is great for building enthusiasm in the actual session.

So then I did about four different sessions, and had a great time. Now I need to pick up my playing enough that I can start a tune from time to time, and I need to learn about accompanying singing.

Feb 26, 2007: Well, I've done several floor spots at the folk club so far, and only one of them has been a disaster ("The Morse Code Song"). Songs I've sung reasonably successfully include "No Such Thing", the Omsk Bomsk song, "Early One Evening" and "Learning to Love". So this one is definitely started.

1 March 2007: Well, I'm being a bit more careful; let's see how it goes for a week.

26 February 2007: Ha! I weigh six pounds more than I did when I wrote that. I need to gird my loins. If I can find a big enough girdle.

25 February 2007: My friend Mike said "The thing about your 101 things list is that one of them is much bigger than all the rest." He also said, helpfully, "What you need to do is buy a new house, and then move everything from the old house that you know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. Then burn the old house down and claim on the insurance."

We're not doing that. Lilian, who ought to be easier to impress than my mother, is staying. "Have you noticed how much tidier it is, and how much decluttering we're doing?" I asked.

"No," she replied.

Anyway, as of Feb 2007, this one is definitely started.

18 September 2006 I gave blood and registered as far as I know. I suspect they write to me now. But I'm assuming this one is done.

23 August 2006 I'm booked to give blood on 18 September and can register on the bone marrow list then.

1 August 2006 This one is interesting. I thought I'd have to change it from the start, because the Anthony Nolan trust, which is the UK's main register of potential bone marrow donors, takes donors only up to the age of 40. And I am 41. But the National Blood Service will register you until you're 44, provided you register at the point where you give blood. So I have the information, and now I have to go give blood. So this is started.

Put the pan on a scale! Go for a nice, electronic, re-zeroing scale like the one I got with ebay postage in mind. Mmm. Then add the wet ingredients first: 45g boiling water, 205g cold water, 20g (or a bit less) olive oil (don't use extra virgin!). Then the cooking aids: a little salt (I use half a teaspoon) and about a teaspoon or so of Smash (that's the genius Nigella touch! Honestly. People have been baking bread with their potato water for centuries; this is just a cheat's approach). Then 430g flour: I use about 150g spelt (which is wholemeal) and 280g strong white flour. Then yeast -- I've been using Freebake's yeast.

Then the magic bit. You put the pan in the bread machine, say Abra-bread-abra, wait 3 hours or overnight, tap the machine with your oven gloves, and take out a lovely loaf of bread. You're supposed to wait till it cools. Right.

February 26, 2007: Eventually Mike and Flick got fed up and brought it round. It's a Panasonic SD200; obsolete now but still entirely functional. It sat in a corner for a few weeks while we failed to make space for it. But now it has a nice, decluttered space to live in, and we're making lovely homemade bread, largely with breadmaking concentrates from Freebake. The kids are pretty disgusted; they argue that homemade bread is less good for toast than fluffy white sliced stuff. So I am still working on making the perfect toasting loaf. Advice welcome. This is now completed.

August 1, 2006:Mike said, cheerfully -- 'you could have mine; I don't use it now that I live near excellent bakers and sandwich shops, and it just takes up space. Not until you have somewhere to put it though.' So this is started.

I haven't written much about stereo photography. To take and view stereo photos, you need two things. First, a camera that takes two separate pictures (about 63mm apart, but you can generate special effects by having different distances) of a scene at exactly the same time. I have had various makeshift versions of that for several years, but I now have a lovely camera that should be capable of taking first-rate photos. The second thing is a viewing method. Of course you can freeview without a viewer -- and I've displayed this as a cross-eyed picture because that is the easiest way to get started. But it's much better with a viewer. When you get the pictures out of the camera, you process them (using Photoshop, or dedicated programs such as Stereo Photo Maker) in different ways depending on what viewer you're using; all the viewers find their own ways to channel the picture from the left-hand camera/lens to your left eye and the picture from the right-hand camera/lens to your right eye. Systems you may be familiar with include hand-held 'Holmes' stereoscopes, much beloved by the Victorians, or Viewmaster -- and you will certainly have seen red-cyan or red-green anaglyph photos which use cardboard viewers with different coloured lenses. The best system uses polarised glasses, and projects images onto a silver screen -- and that is the system used by modern 3d cinemas such as IMAX. But for home use with digital, the cost is prohibitive, though steadily reducing.

23 September: They're both clear. They've been clear for a couple of weeks. All the actions are sorted, GTD-style, in contextual boxes. I'm pretty pleased with this one: if it were a habit, I'd be doing it.

8 August: My work inbox is clear. My home email inbox has 47 messages in it, which is much better than it often is and which includes all the outstanding starred messages I think.

My home paper inbox is completely out of control at the moment. Thursday.

So this is started

1 August 2006. Down to 36. To be fair, most of those are now 'quite' or 'very' hard to deal with. Turns out there's a few more in starred email. But if I had my inbox clear then the starred email would work properly. Hmm.

For me, spending 30 minutes each day building my future does require me to get up 30 minutes earlier, but it also gives me some hop-out-of-bed inspiration. Luckily, I typically spend at least 30 minutes idling in bed in the morning between when I wake up and when I get up in earnest, so there's scope. I did the hack 3 days in a row, but didn't this morning. Life seemed too hard really. Of course, I had stayed up past midnight the night before, and very much later (I blame Lilian) the night before that.

So, a good night's sleep and then 30 minutes future-building. That's doable.

Of course, I then backslid. But I'm starting again. This takes about 30 seconds to do per day. The moisturiser cost about a tenner and I guess there's getting on for a year's worth in the tub; you don't use very much (or at least, I don't use very much).

The condition is to do at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise 3 times a week, and sustain it (at least 90%) for six months. In an 'ordinary' week we should in theory swim once, and I should do yoga once. So that only leaves one.

31 August 2006: of course, on holiday I did 30 minutes of moderately vigorous exercise every single day apart from our rest day in the middle of the holiday. Swimming, cycling, dancing, walking.

And I came home to discover that my PT Bouncer had been delivered (this is my attempt to find a compact trampoline-type-item that the whole family can use, unlike Jonathan's trampoline which is too weak for the heavy people). Rebounding doesn't really fit the 30 minutes paradigm as I'm currently at the sort of stage where 30 seconds seems pretty challenging. But they say that it's fine to do 30 seconds, or a minute, of very gentle bouncing, three times a day. We will see.