From international finance to repairing a webcam dropped in tea

I visited Mrs Hales-Tooke, who's two books I had published, after my brush painting class. Her son, photographer, artist and author Mr H Hales-Tooke was visiting from the US and I heard of his narrow escape during the floods in Spring. Our discussion also turned to the merits of printed versus digital books and the different strategies for marketing them.

Wednesday was a day trip to London for a talk on The Future of the international Monetary System, part of the OMFIF Golden Talks series. It was held in the Armourers' Hall, Coleman Street. The talk  was illuminating – concentrating on the longer term – there is a blog article on it now, “The International Monetary System is to local crises like the climate is to weather”. It provided a marked contrast to the immediate dramatic fluctuations and contagion in the Eurozone area.

The Armourers' hall itself was worthy of note and I spent some time photographing there (see article “the Armourers' Hall of the Worshipful Company of Armourers and Brasiers”) before taking a walk through London from Coleman St to Holborn Station. The route was a slight meander, taking in the stained glass in Wrens rebuilt church of St Lawrence Jewry and the Occupy London tent city still outside St Pauls.

Thursday I visited Mr Woolnough, author of the Understanding and Using the Stereomicroscope. We had worked together closely on the book as I edited the design, layout, redrew some of the illustrations, added extra photographs and the quick start guide. The book is published by the Quekett Microscopical Society.

We were working together on the start of a new exciting project and made a lot of progress on the initial planning.

This morning began with a telephone call to Mr Ebert of Feinkaeserei Zimmermann, a friend from his previous visit to the UK looking for potential distributors of the Product of Designated Origin, the Altenburger Ziegenkaese. Today's call was a social catchup on mutual news.

The annoying and yet amusing immediate aftermath of the conversation involved my accidentally knocking off the web-cam from my PC right into a full cup of tea. Quickly retrieved, I could see the milky tea sloshing behind the lens. A search online gave instructions on how to open up my particular model and I set to flushing out the tea with water and then placing the opened web-cam to dry in a warm place.

Then it was an HBN day where Mrs Burbidge was notable for ensuring that every guest arriving was welcomed to the event.

Returning late afternoon, I set about ensuring that the visible and accessible parts of the webcam were clean before reassembling it.

With great anticipation, I reconnected the webcam and started a video. All seemed to be working well until I saw the picture on screen – the image was as blurry as viewed through cold tea. I had to admit defeat and order a replacement!