2012 ticket fiasco...

Seems a lot of folk are getting blown out/off trying to buy tickets for the 2012 London Olympics...

...yes it does look a bit like a Simpsons character...

Ice balls II...

...and the quest for that perfect lump of ice to go into the gin & tonic goes on.

•••

The Muji ice ball mould (posted a few days ago) has had varying levels of success, with different mixes of water (plain tap, filtered tap, distilled, twice boiled distilled) and methods of freezing (straight in freezer, wrapped in freezer, in cooler bag in freezer).

The speed of freezing is producing cracked ice balls but by placing the Mujis in a cooler bag, the freezing process is slowed enough to result in a solid ball which, while clear towards the outside, is still featuring the spear-like 'air bubble tracks'.

It looks like an Xmas bauble but is in one piece and definitely melts at a far slower rate than your regular ice cube.

Twice boiled distilled water

Why all the fuss? Blame it on a G&T I had in Vegas in January this year at José Andrés' "e" restaurant...

It had a crystal clear ice sphere in it, more than likely produced using one of these... Ice Ball Maker

Another new gin, chin chin...

From the makers of the world champ vodka, comes a Gin...

The Most Complicated Gin in the World...

It is a relatively unknown fact that gin is made from vodka. So, unlike other gins, our gin is truly single estate from field to bottle.

We press our organically grown cider apples, ferment them into cider, then distil into vodka then re-distil this into gin by infusing eleven carefully selected wild botanicals and our naturally pure water taken from our aquifer that runs underneath our orchards.

The result is our full bodied, sharp, yet fruity gin with tears and true provenance.

Our botanicals: Juniper, Coriander, Angelica, Liquorice, Orrice, Orange, Lemon, Hops, Elderflower and Bramley apple.

...to make the perfect gin martini and the ultimate British Gin & Tonic

For more info: Chase Distillery / Williams Gin

High Dynamic Range photos

Have been experimenting with a bit of 'pseudo' HDR tweakery on my photographs using a bit of software called HDRtist Pro (£19.99).
The results can be quite good and as well as using multiple image exposures it can also edit single images to produce the effect of an HDR image.

I'm not going to go into the details of HDR, as there is plenty of info on the web, but the image above (with a vertical slice of HDR through the centre) demonstrates how dark areas in images can be 'brought out' to varying degrees.

A free version of HDRtist is available but it doesn't allow the same scale of manipulation as the Pro version.

Ice balls...

Silicone Ice Ball mould