Ahhh, this one was fun. It led me to have the kind of day that epitomizes what I love about playing SF0...

When I was a kid, I played down at the lake every day. I made my own fun. Climbing trees, bird nesting, making huts and swings , all the things you do when you live on a farm and have several hours to kill every day. At the time I looked forward to the time when I would be an adult, and have money. THEN I could buy fun things like rope, shovels, inflatable rafts, all the things that at the time seemed so important to having fun.

Then of course I actually became an adult. Work in a shop. Spend your money at the pub, or on a new car, or on improving your house. Rope? Why would I want to buy rope? And as for free time... WHAT free time. The time available for just playing around seemed to be nil - and if I DID have free time, well surely it's more fun to watch TV, or play around on the internet. Pfff - ROPE (sneer).

And then I found Sf0. As I was telling someone yesterday, it's not so much that it makes me ACT differently, it's that it makes me THINK differently. It makes me think the way I did when I was a child. The landscape is there to play in. Free time is for having fun. There is nothing that throwing sticks off the wharf, climbing a tree, or building forts can't fix. The world is a puzzle, to be manipulated and played with. It doesn't impose itself on me, I impose myself on it...

Anyway. Today I took my camera and spent the entire day just palying around the lake. Part of the time I spent doing this task. Part of the time I spent climbing trees and making rope swings for this task. Part of the time I spent scouting for other tasks. I had a ball.

The photos I took for this task were all SUPER fun to create. The first set was me running to the far end of the wharf. It was remarkably difficult getting right down to the end and turning by the time the camera went off. Finally I remembered the function that takes 3 shots one after the other. This gave me sufficient time to get all the way down there and turn.

The second set of photos is taken FROM the wharf. It consists of me running off and hiding in or around a big tree. It's easy to see me in some of the photos, more difficult in others. I've put some enlargements in for the 2 more difficult ones, but try to find me unaided first...

After that are a couple of singletons. One is of me standing near the love letter to the wharf that I created for this task. It's still there after a week. The weather has been quite rough, but the simple protective bag idea seems to have worked very well indeed.

The second singleton is actually a fail. I tried several times to get into shot with the nice shiny hanging sculptures, but they were 4 meters up, and I couldn't jump high enough. I had originally thought to scramble up the large branch running diagonally behind them, but it turns out that my shoes are even worse for climbing trees than I thought - I must really buy decent climbing shoes. Maybe golf shoes, those studs look fierce for tree-climbing. Still, I put the photo in because even fail shows the process...

The final set is of my rope swing. The first set turned out very well, after a few test swings and tests of timing. What was to have been the second set turned out... Well, there is only one of them. The blue blob to the left of the photo is my back. You see the rope I was swinging from suffered a catastrophic failure and dumped me onto the ground. I already had some aches and pains from another task I'm currently doing, but they have company now. I'm going to hurt tomorrow. The final shot shows the power of the rope failure. The loose end flicked up and actually embedded itself in the branch above. I had to break the branch off to get the rope untied... Ouch Unfortunately none of my wounds are visible enough for the time heals all wounds task...

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this praxis - God knows I enjoyed making it.