Strange times

I said when I started the blog again that I would be sporadic with posting, and indeed I have been.

September to February was a funny few months for various reasons that I won’t go into here. March and April have been a funny few months for reasons that the whole world knows about. (I doubt future me will have forgotten, but just in case: Coronavirus/COVID-19).

We have been working at home for six weeks now, and while it has certain advantages, it’s not something I particularly like. I definitely miss my colleagues at Consult Red (formerly known as Red Embedded – that’s something else that changed in the early part of this year) and while we are lucky to have day-to-day interaction on video calls, it’s not the same as being in the office. Still, compared to many people we are fortunate to have jobs we can do well remotely and to have work still coming in (in fact we are still recruiting).

Nevertheless, there are a few advantages of time at home. Since the Cub Scouts can’t meet in person, I started trying to put together activities they can do remotely, and this got me into making videos for YouTube. Developing a new skill is always good, and this is something I’d never given much thought to, but it’s more involved than you might think! This also led to me rekindling my old hobby of photography, and deciding to finally update my camera from my EOS 40D from 2007 (still a great camera) to a full-frame EOS RP from 2019 (I wanted a full frame 5D in 2007 but couldn’t afford it at the time!). I also learned a little about what it might be like to be a Blue Peter presenter, which is a completely different skill to master.

My attempts so far at activities for Cub Scouts can be seen on the Harden & Wilsden Scouts website, and on our YouTube channel.

As time goes on, who knows, maybe I’ll share my photography and videography on other subjects here too.