Religion For Atheists

Last week I visited Edinburgh for 5 days (a video and photos will follow, hopefully soon!) and while I was there I read this book.
It was a good book to read on a solitary and introspective trip away and I connected with it quite deeply. It confirmed a lot of ideas which I have had in the back of my mind but wasn't quite able to describe. The main premise of the book is that you don't have to be religious in order to enjoy the ways in which religion benefits the lives of the religious.
It's hard to summarise but if you have a look here you can watch a TED talk in which he summarises a few of the ideas he discusses in the book.

Link

Big fan of Alain De Botton!

Orchids at Kew Gardens

Yesterday I took the day off to take my mum to the orchid exhibition ant Kew gardens. It was amazing to see so many different orchids all together.

As well as the flowers I enjoy Kew for the architecture and the landscaping. I've always liked the look of a mix of organic and man made.

Black Forest Gateau

Quite a few years ago I had an idea for a drawing project where I would draw people themed around food or flavours. I did a few drawings back then but wasn't particularly pleased with any of them. This week I decided to try again. This is the first picture: Black Forest Gateau.
Key words I came up with when planning this were: rich, traditional, heavy, winter.

Axolotl Slippers

Some might say I'm axolotl obsessed... and they wouldn't be totally wrong!
I got some white furry slippers for Christmas and today I made them into axolotls!

Axolotl Babies Update

The babies are growing, at one and a half weeks old they are now nearly 2cm long and clearly distinguishable between leucistic and wild types.

They are eating the daphnia more quickly than they can breed so I will start a separate daphnia breeding tank this weekend and transfer them in batches.

Munich

During the weekend before Christmas I visited Munich to see the Christmas markets.

There were some beautiful things at the market, particularly Tollwood which we visited in the evening and which had huge tents with stalls and live music inside.

We ate lost of sausages and waffles and drank lots of gluhwein.

We also got a train out into the countryside to see the castle Neuschwanstein. Its somewhere I've seen pictures of in the past and it was just as magical in person. The inside was very quirky and even had a man made cave! Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take photos inside.

Axolotl Hatchlings

The axolotls hatched at the weekend! Here they are at about 1cm long (5 days old).

At the moment they have no arms or legs and swim around in quick bursts using their tails. They are eating live daphnia which I have been breeding in the tank for a couple of weeks (they can only manage the baby daphnia though, as the adults are larger than their heads!)

You can see in the next picture that the one to the left will be a wild type (brownish green speckly) and the one in the centre will be leucistic (pink)

4 babies in the photo above in total. Did you spot the little fella hiding on the facing surface of the rock? I didn't see him until I uploaded the photo!

You can see the gills quite well in this picture.