Wulf's Webden

The Webden on WordPress

17 May 2026
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CCB at East Leake (16 May 2026)

Last night’s Charnwood Concert Band gig at St Mary’s in East Leake went very well. I have to admit that I made a couple of small mistakes early on as I was getting used to watching the conductor from a different position and there was a point later on when the Music from Sweeney Todd sounded even more mysterious and anarchic that it should have done (I managed to hold the line on that one but I’m pretty sure that quite a few people were feeling lost until we reached a catch up point in the middle of the piece!). However, we did most of the pieces well and some of them were probably our best performances of them to date.

I particularly enjoyed my little solo moment in the Sparkling Drums song (now informally called Sparkling Drums and Bass!) and I particularly enjoyed the Coldplay medley we did as an encore. It was the only song in the set that I played with a plectrum and I enjoyed it so much that I ended up doing most of the songs at church this morning also with a plectrum apart from the more hymn like one I was leading to start with.

15 May 2026
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Dishwasher Salt Dispenser

Dishwasher Salt Dispenser

This is the dishwasher salt dispenser I was experimenting with screw caps for a few days ago. I can reach into the large, wide-necked jar where we store our dishwasher salt and scoop out a suitable measure. The funnel cap is then screwed on and it can be neatly dispensed into the salt container inside the dishwasher.

I’m pleased with the overall design (model and source file available on MakerWorld), which includes fins to reinforce the transition between the two angles on the funnel. I also experimented with creating my own texture for the outside of the cup. This one is based on a Japanese sangokuzushi design and adds a gentle grip to what could otherwise have been quite a slick surface.

14 May 2026
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Back to an Old Gate

Every month or two I have a catch up with my friend, Ian. Often we just use an online video chat since it is about a three hour round journey by car between us but it is sometimes good to meet face to face and we decided on Tamworth as a location, since it gave us each about an equal journey. Ian had drawn up a shortlist of possible places to meet and eat. When I checked the first one online, I realised that we’d been to The Gate before after a trip to the Tamworth Snowdrome with various other friends (one of whom had picked the venue for food), so that was the one we went to.

It isn’t the most amazing pub I’ve ever been to for food but it remains the best one I know in Tamworth and I wouldn’t say no to eating their beef lasagne again!

13 May 2026
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William Billings

Tonight’s Loughborough University Choir concert went very well. We did a whole range of pieces from the music-hall sing-along of “Daisy” (Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do) to the epic “Hiawatha’s Wedding” supported by about 20 members of the university orchestra.

If I had to pick one personal favourite though it would be “I Am Come Into My Garden” by William Billings. The words are based on the Song of Solomon from the Bible and it was composed in the late 18th century. Billings was an idiosyncratic figure who died in poverty in his mid fifties but I love the sound of this piece (from the late work The Continental Harmony) and it makes me want to track down more music by him.

12 May 2026
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Bottle Caps

I’m working on a 3D design that involves a screw-based connection between two parts and I was struggling to dial it in with BOSL2’s threading library. After some further reading of the documentation, it turns out that what I needed was the bottle caps set of methods and functions. My first test has created a pair of parts that mesh together well so I can proceed with designing the components I have in mind and joining them with a reliable “bottle cap” connection.

11 May 2026
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Roxy Unrivalled

‘Roxy’ (red) and ‘Unrivalled’ (green) are the two varieties of lettuce in the picture below, taken in the vegetable garden at RHS Rosemoor on my visit last Saturday:

Lettuces 'Unrivalled' and 'Roxy'

Click the photo for the (small) album of other pictures I took on the day, all using my Vivitar 90mm lens set at f/4.

9 May 2026
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7 September

With some further digging, I found out that I first visited the Eden Project on 7 September 2001. The photos weren’t stored in the location that I’ve been using for most of the last quarter century but in a local website.

Possibly the reason I didn’t remember the date was that I was back at work four days later when some events of global significance took place on 11 September that year!

8 May 2026
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Return to Eden

Today was mainly spent exploring the Eden Project in Cornwall:

Bourgainvillea (close-up)

It opened in 2001 and we last visited sometime after that – possibly in the first year and certainly within the first 2-3 years it was operating. It was before I started blogging and even before I had established my system for filing away digital photos so I can’t pin a definite date on it. A year or two back, we looked at revisiting but the prices were too high – £40 per adult is too much for a one day visit and we’re too far away to take advantage of the offer to re-use that ticket throughout the following year. However, this year the Eden Project became an RHS partner garden for certain months of the year and so we were able to use our membership of that to get in for free.

In that intervening quarter of a century, the plants have become much better established and there are some additional facilities, including a permanent education centre called The Core. I think £40 is too steep as a one-off ticket (joint annual membership of the RHS is about the price of two tickets and would get you into multiple other gardens plus all the other benefits) although I think it could be worthwhile if you lived close enough to drastically reduce the price per visit.

It does have some gorgeous plants. I particularly enjoyed the “Mediterranean Biome” and highlights included the bourgainvillea (pictured above) and the bed showing off the wonderful foliage of a wide range of cabbages, kales and chards.

7 May 2026
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Boiling Eggs

I wanted an egg sandwich for lunch… and realised it was so long since I last boiled an egg that I had to look up the instructions! It’s not that I don’t use eggs but, when they are the focus rather than just another ingredient, I tend to poach, fry or scramble them.

What I ended up with was lowering room-warm medium-sized eggs into boiling water for ten minutes and then plunged into a bath of water and ice to stop the cooking and make peeling easier. It worked well with the yolks set but not overcooked… and now I can look up instructions on my blog next time I want hard-boiled egg for a sandwich.