Denomination

I haven't posted for a while, and haven't done too much work on the
promised articles, so here is something to keep you all amused for a
little while.

Every so often I check which Christian denomination I belong to. A
few months ago, my top five results were:

1: Church of Christ/Campbellite (100%)
2: Methodist/Wesleyan/Nazarene (90%)
3: Anabaptist (Mennonite/Quaker etc.) (86%)
4: Baptist (Reformed/Particular/Calvinistic) (81%)
5: Baptist (non-Calvinistic)/Plymouth Brethren/Fundamentalist (76%)

From http://selectsmart.com/plus/select.php?url=denomtradition

Or:

1. Mainline - Liberal Christian Protestants (100%)
2. Liberal Quakers (99%)
3. Unitarian Universalism (89%)
4. Orthodox Quaker (75%)
5. Seventh Day Adventist (50%)

From a website that I cannot find again.

Today I was:

1: Pentecostal/Charismatic/Assemblies of God (100%)
2: Methodist/Wesleyan/Nazarene (98%)
3: Anabaptist (Mennonite/Quaker etc.) (91%)
4: Church of Christ/Campbellite (86%)
5: Seventh-Day Adventist (72%)

From the same place as the first one.

Or:

1: Seventh-Day Adventist
2: Episcopal/Anglican Church
3: Evangelical Lutheran Church
4: Liberal Quakerism
5: Mennonite Brethren

From
http://www.selectsmart.com/FREE/select.php?client=christiandenom

It means very little of course, what is in my heart is what counts,
but it amuses me and is vaguely interesting to see how I am changing.

Selective admissions

With the publishing of the new education white paper, school
admissions policies, and in particular selection, are once again high
on the agenda. In response to this general debate and in particular
in response to a number of comments made after this entry in Boris
Johnson's blog, I have decided to set out why I am opposed to
selection in school admissions. As this is a response piece, it will
be largely negative, i.e. I will respond to attacks on non-selective
entry. I will put together a piece that looks at it from the other
angle as well.

Firstly, the great sweeping claim of pro-selection: 'comprehensive
schooling fails children as it treats them as all the same.' The
corollaries of this being that comprehensive schools force every
pupil to learn the same things at the same pace and that
comprehensive schools are incapable of providing specialist support
to those that need it.

Well, comprehensive education does treat every child the same in that
it allows each and every one of them the same opportunities.
Comprehensive education does not achieve this by forcing everybody to
do the same things.

The word comprehensive means "complete and including all that is
necessary". In other words, comprehensive education is not designed
to give everybody exactly the same education, that would be
'identical education', but it is designed to ensure that all pupils
are given the necessary education that they need and then the
opportunities on top of that to take things further if they wish and
in the directions that they wish.

By the same definition it is implicit that if some pupils need
specialist support, they must receive it in order to reach that
complete and necessary education to the best of their ability.

So, that is a defence of comprehensive education from one of the
classic attacks.

Time for an attack on one of the suggested advantages of selection.

So, the claim: "selective education provides focussed environments
for academically minded pupils to peruse academic subjects,
vocational courses for the technically skilled and so on."

Well, so does a comprehensive system, but avoiding three pitfalls:

1. It doesn't neglect one type of education at the expense of
another and thus avoids creating narrow people who may lack certain
skills from other skill sets.
2. It keeps everybody's options open for as long as possible, should
they find they are doing the wrong thing or they want to change their
course.
3. It doesn't create a great social divide between book people and
skill people which is turned into a chasm by the fact that they never
mixed socially at school.

In fact, it has been suggested that selective and fee paying
education is a good thing precisely because it does separate people
from one background from another. I cannot think of a better way to
destroy social mobility, create ghettoes of the haves and have nots
and increase class hatred.

So, to sum up, this is why I am opposed to selection:

It creates and increases social divides between different groups of
society.
It fails children by reducing their opportunity to meets different
types of people who are not from their own background and thus
reinforces social gaps, reduces understanding of differences in the
world and reduces educational opportunity.

These are the reasons I support comprehensive education:

It provides a standard from which everyone can head off in their
desired direction.
It provides equality of opportunity for all.

This is by no means complete, either in supporting my concluding
claims, defending comprehensive education or attacking selection. In
fact, I can see a couple of problems with my own arguments. I shall
return to the subject at a later date and hopefully put together a
more comprehensive case. All comments and suggestions welcome.

While this was a general piece, it was based on two comments in
particular from the article I link to above. One statement in
particular caused me some confusion. Unfortunately, the comment has
not provided contact details for me to clarify this point.

To quote:

"Its not that surprising that parents are with schools and although
left wing parents hold certain views, they are essentially views that
make them feel good about themselves. They don't actually live by
their values. It wouldn't be human."

I would like to check whether this means that it is inhuman to live
by your values or whether it is inhuman to have those particular
values in the first place. I suspect the latter, but the wording is
ambiguous. I would contend either answer, but I shall save that as well.

Updated article

I have rewritten the post I made earlier concerning the funding of
nursing and teaching students. Hopefully it is now a bit more lucid
and a bit more accurate. You can find if here:

http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~rb502/comment/nurses_teachers.shtml

Please feel free to add comments to this post in response to the
article.

Addendum: I seem to very frequently type more as moe. How odd and irritating.

Teachers and Nurses

Teachers and nurses. Both, would you not say, a vital part of the
smooth running of this country? I certainly would. And the
government and ministries certainly think so, if you pay any
attention to the recruitment strategies aimed at both sectors. But
not, maybe, in practise.

Let us go through some of the inequities of the funding systems.

PGCE students will get a training salary of either £6,000 or £9,000.
Nursing students will get a maximum of £5,500 bursary (single, no
children) with some getting as low as £1,000.

PGCE students, as postgraduates, are entitled to a further student
loan.
Students on postgraduate nursing courses are not entitled to students
loans. Only some students on undergraduate nursing courses are
entitled to student loans (unlike all other types of undergraduates).

PGCE students get their existing student loans paid off.
Postgraduate nurses with existing student loans do not get them paid
off.

PGCE students in shortage subjects have a healthy, relaxed hardship
fund system to support them.
Nursing students (and some PGCE students) have only a restrictive
fund that in the case of postgraduates takes no account of reality.

Of course we then come to the body that funds the nurses, the NHS
Student Grants Unit. Good, honest people who are completely under
resourced and completely incapable of assessing students for support
before their courses start, or even within three months of their
courses starting in many cases, and incapable of assessing
applications fully or correctly.

Why are nursing students so badly treated compared to their
compatriots in teaching? The PGCE system seems reasonable, so why
can't the nurses be treated in a similar fashion?

Apology and test

Hello, this is a quick note to say that I have noticed that the
permissions aren't being set correctly on the archived posts and a
test to see if they work now.

Charitable giving

First of all, if you read my blog, please leave a comment or e-mail
me to let me know. Pretty please. With sugar on top.

Just to get you started, here is a rather extreme posting.

Secondly, a response to this feedback column from the Guardian:

http://money.guardian.co.uk/personal/story/0,13970,1655451,00.html

Is giving charitable gifts at Christmas selfish?

Well, oddly enough, I say no.

It seems to me that the desire to call charity selfish and the
suggestion that someone may be offending by receiving a charitable
gift is nothing more than an indication of how deep into the
self-obsessed consumerist mire we have sunk.

If someone is ungrateful and selfish enough (i.e. feeling put out
that they haven't received something for themselves) to be resentful
at not being given a tub of cookies then you have to ask yourself,
why am I buying something for them at all? Are they really going to
be happy at getting bath soaps? Isn't rather hypocritical of me to
buy them a thoughtless, predictable gift? Isn't it just a waste when
they don't care and I don't really care either?

Gifts should be an indication of how much we care about somebody and
should reflect our desire to see those people happy. Grabbing three
tins of chocolates in Sainsbury's doesn't seem a particularly good
way of showing this.

Here would be my ordered preferences for gift buying:

A personal, seriously considered gift (which may include a charitable
gift).
A charitable gift for someone that would appreciate the significance
(if you really can't think of something else).
Nothing at all.
A charitable gift for someone who couldn't care less.
The usual, ill though out, reaction present because you feel you
should do.

Amongst the comments in the article was the suggestion that giving
charitable gifts was merely a way to assuage guilt at not doing
enough for charity. This begs the question of whether normal
charitable giving is also guilt reduction. I would probably say yes
to that (which we can come to another day), but my point is really
that it all seems a handy excuse for people to refuse to give to
Charity, or in other words further exhibit their own selfish Mammon
worshipping tendencies.

A large proportion of gift buying charitable or otherwise, be it
Christmas or birthday seems to be nothing more than a way to reduce
guilt at not being a good enough friend anyway combined with the
marketed pressure that it is Christmas, I have to buy everybody lots
of things otherwise I will look poor.

So, to sum up. Think about what you are doing and be honest about it.

Jealousy Test

A bit weird this one, bear with me and don't claim that I never told
you about how odd some of my thought processes are.

So, have you ever wondered if you really do love that person? Do you
think it may just be a passing fancy? Carry out this thought
experiment to see just how much you enthralled.

Imagine that the object of your desire has just walked into the room
hanging off of the arm of another. Or for the ultimate test, imagine
that you have just been invited to their wedding. Really think about
it and try and convince yourself that it actually happened. How are
you feeling right now on a scale of one to ten?

1. Wahoo, a wedding to go to and a chance to snog the
bridesmaids/best man.
2. Hm, how vexing, maybe I won't bother to buy new shoes for the big
day.
3. Grr, turn up looking scruffy and scowling at the back, biting
peoples' heads off.
4. Weep uncontrollably and plot far fetched plans of revenge.
5. Congratulate your usurper and warn them to look after your loved
one.
6. Trip your victorious opponent up as they walk down the aisle.
7. Send the lads around the night before the wedding to apply some
makeup.
8. Accidentally cut the brake cables of the wedding car before it
drives off into the sunset.
9. Turn up at the wedding with chainsaw in one hand and flaming
brand in the other.
10. Dust off the nuclear missile you keep in the loft.

Getting better

I have conceived (another) plan in my eternal quest to pull my socks
up. I shall concentrate on doing small things regularly and
hopefully this will improve my chances of being able to tackle big
things further down the line. So, each will I shall attempt to:

i. Do some work on my website.
ii. Upload at least six photos onto Flickr.
iii. Write at least one letter or piece of comment or article.

So far this week I have done i (reactivated comments on my blog and
started adding stat collection) and ii (from the NASMA conference).
Ideas for iii welcome.

School stabbings

For those of you in Britain (which, if I count the number of readers
of this blog amounts to all three of you), you may have recently
heard in the news of a spate of stabbings and attacks in schools.

This article about one of the recent ones caught my eye:
http://education.guardian.co.uk/pupilbehaviour/story/0,16806,1642728,00.html

From the article: "[the victim's] mother... is worried that her
daughter will have to face her attacker. "I don't want Danielle to
miss lessons but the girl should be off for longer," she said.
"Otherwise it is telling the child if you beat someone up you can
have a week off school. She's back there now like she's done nothing
at all."

It struck me how obvious that statement was. In a lot of cases of
severe disciplinary problems you have children who are disaffected
with school. So you punish them by telling them to stay at home for
a week.

Now I am not saying that suspensions and exclusions encourage bad
behaviour from children who don't want to be there, but it hardly
seems a particularly disincentive to misbehave does it?

Further to that, I don't think that it is entirely productive to deal
with misbehaving pupils by isolating them from the school
environment. I think the aim should be less punitive and more
reforming and it seems better to me to be doing that in a school or
school-like environment. Another article in the Guardian highlighted
the work of some special units for disruptive children which had
great benefits for all. But surprise surprise they are drastically
underfunded and anyway, who can be bothered to go to that effort when
it is so much easier to sign a piece of paper and kick the kid off
school property for week.

First Count

I have now typed up my first writings (still no network at work) and
they come to a grand 1,159. I shall stick the mon t'internet when
the network is back.

It has begun

NaNo has begun. I think I wrote around a thousand words yesterday,
which is a start. I don't know for sure as I have typed none of them
up. So nothing for you all to read yet. Not that you are missing
much.

Most of the computer systems at work are dead at the moment, so not
much is going on. I may resort to writing in paid time soon.

Speeding

My route to Sainsbury's takes me past a big Halfords type place. On
the wall next to the pavement are adverts. Recently, they have been
advertising these devices that detect and tell you about speed
cameras. Now, each time I walk past this tends to rile me a little
as I think such devices are dangerous, stupid and encourage people to
drive irresponsibly (s if most people need any encouraging).

As I randomly browsed the LSN forums (I just can't keep away), I
noticed a discussion about speeding and Vasco made a very interesting
point:

"So these detectors are actually accident black-spot detectors and
maybe they should be mandatory?"

Which sort of makes sense. I replied with:

"Only if they flash up stats showing accident, injury and fatality
counts. Then maybe, just maybe, people may get it into their heads
that speed limits are there for a reason."

Yet again it is another example in favour of my continuing campaign
to get people to take responsibility for things. You speed, you have
an accident it is your fault, you killed somebody. Don't speed, less
likely to happen.

NaNo Forums

It worries me that the first helpful post that I have made on the
NaNo Forums this year had this answer:

"I have always been a fan of rut and tup. They are both old words and
as they technically refer to livestock (pigs tup I believe), they
would probably be used as coarse slang. Ploughing is another one that
I have come across in fiction."

The question being:

"I've been looking everywhere, but haven't been able to find anything
on the sorts of words used for genitals/sex in the 13th-14th
centuries, in Britain."

Two weeks

Two weeks to go. I have a detailed plan, things are in my head and I
am ready and waiting for November. I can and will do it this time.

Expect a few odd posts as I test my backup script.

The Ashes

I appreciate that this is slightly late to be posted, but I did write
it quite soon after the end of the last test.

Also, apologies for the problems with recent posts being published.

***

The Ashes are over and a summer of excitement and sporting excellence
is drawing to a close. I know I said that I would cease from
commenting on cricket, but this I feel is a special occasion. I
shall indulge myself with a little comment on my favourite players.

Shane. What a man. At no point was Shane Warne not completely
dedicated to his cricket. He gave everything he had, physically,
bowling for vast stretches of time and mentally, plotting, planning
and never giving up. Only late on the last day of the last Test did
he finally seem to admit that it was all over. His struggles were
heroic and he very nearly single handedly won the series for the
Australians. And most importantly of all, he enjoyed every second of
it, even in the losing. Warne is my all time sporting hero and
always shall be.

Brett Lee was at times similarly committed. From the tear away,
uncontrolled bowler that he has been in the past he became
controlled, dangerous but no less aggressive and shined with the bat.
He too gave everything he had and was utterly distraught when
England won the second Test and the series. But he was a gracious
loser and a gracious winner in the third Test. Another true
sportsman.

Glenn McGrath is still the epitome of a pace bowler. With control
still better in modern times than any bar maybe Courtney Walsh, even
his sliding pace makes little difference. Here is a man to learn how
to bowl from. Once the English batsman had found their confidence
(i.e. after McGrath didn't play in the second test), his mental hold
slipped a little but he was still great. Things would have been much
different if he had been fit for the whole series.

Kev. Much lauded and dismissed before playing, Kevin Pietersen has
been wonderful. Form dipped mid series, but he was the only player
at Lords to deal with the collapse and his last day century was
perfectly timed and magnificently executed. I considered placing a
smaller bet on him making a century and really should have done. He
has a personality and skill and has great fun. Shame he can't catch
really.

Freddie Flintoff has been made a hero amongst a team of heroes and he
deserves it. He gave everything his body could give, running in with
the ball time and again, fielding superbly and making runs. He is a
gentlemen. He commiserated with Brett Lee at the end of the second
Test and congratulated him at the end of the third. Freddie is a
role model for those who want to know what sport is about. He is
modest, enjoys his trade, loves playing with his friends and just
wants to play cricket.

All of the players are to be applauded, they gave their best and did
it in a decent fashion, barring one or two slight incidents. I don't
care about the result, I care about the skill, commitment and
sportsmanship that I saw. Long live cricket.

Respect

I keep hearing the opinion voiced (by great luminaries including my
Mother and John Humphrys) that respect and trust need to be earned.

I fundamentally disagree.

I think that all humans should be automatically respected, firstly
purely on the basis of being human beings (in a
responsibilities/rights sort of way) and as individuals in
themselves. Similarly, everybody should be inherently trusted.

Only when someone does something to suggest that they shouldn't be
trusted or respected should you reduce the amount of trust or respect
that you have for them.

Of course you cannot respect someone for a specific action that they
have done until you know about it, but at the same time you cannot
reduce your respect for someone until you know about some fault that
they have perpetrated. I do not think that the same comparisons are
applicable to trust, you can either trust someone absolutely or less
than absolutely and the default position should always be absolute
trust in my mind. I would also suggest that the respect due for some
person's actions should be considered of less worth than the respect
for their humanity and individuality.

Sayings

In hell it is Christmas everyday.

If everybody met their responsibilities, there would be no need for rights.

Boanthropy

Moooo!

Exercise One

As a part of my preparation for NaNo, I am undertaking some writing
exercises. This was a five minute piece to develop my descriptive
skills. The idea came from andrea on the EveryTomorrow forum.

***

The water of the lake was dark and grey, mirroring the sky above it.
As the clouds churned and boiled, the surface of the lake was whipped
into little white caps by the strong wind. A Coot, her black
feathers and white flash blending into the choppy water rushed for
the shore, with her frightened chick trailing behind.

Trees bent over in the wind peered into the deep depths of water,
seeking a solace from the atmosphere that would end only in their
dissolution in the water's embrace. The lake held life for the
plants and animals the surrounded it, but it held the ultimate power
over them as well. Life bringer as life taker.

New toy

Somebody reads my blog! Yay!

That same somebody, in a vile and rude alliance with Julian and Nick
Gollop (of X-COM and Lasersquad fame) forced me into buying a
Nintendo DS and Mr Driller. It is very small. But very fun.

Knightly - how apt

A Knight Captain You scored 11 Honor, 8 Justice, 2 Adventure, and 2 Individuality!

Some knights follow the orders given them. Some know when to improvise. The second sort are the ones that grow to power, to become leadeers and Knight Captains. Your sense of duty, honor and justice speaks that your name should be amongst their ranks. Get your squire, your banner, your armor and your sword. You're gonna do just fine.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 91% on Ninjinuity You scored higher than 91% on Knightlyness You scored higher than 0% on Cowboiosity You scored higher than 3% on Piratical Bent

Link: The Cowboy-Ninja-Pirate-Knight Test written by fluffy71 on Ok Cupid

Cecil

There was no plant that Cecil wouldn't' eat. Daffodils; crunch.
Lettuces; munch. Violets; lunch. From time to time, Cecil even went
into the nettle patch behind the shed for a tangy snack. He roamed
over his garden, feasting at will. The other snails, vociferous
eaters themselves, held Cecil in awe. Some of the youngsters would
eve go looking for the toughest, stringiest, most disgusting plant
matter they could find and challenge Cecil to eat it. Cecil always
triumphed.

One day, Cecil was feasting on some fresh cabbage. Without warning,
the sun disappeared into shadow. As swiftly as he knew how, Cecil
withdrew into his shell. But even Cecil's mighty
suction-stomach-foot was not enough to anchor him to the brassica as
the blackbird flapped up in to the air. Cecil quivered in fear,
waiting for the bird beak to rend his flesh away from the loving home
of his shell. But the bird was distracted and Cecil clattered and
bounced into a patch of plants.

The snail waited in his shell for a little while, just to be sure
that the bird had gone. All seemed to be fine. Cecil stuck his head
out and bumped into a plant. Mmm, lunch. The first bite didn't go
down too well; in fact it came back up again. Maybe the impromptu
flight had upset his stomach. Oh well, more food would sort that
out. But no, the second bite wouldn't stay down either. Could it
be? A plant that Cecil couldn't eat? What would he do?

The Story

I was so excited about being at work all day yesterday that I forgot
to write this entry.

The story is going to be set in the north of Medieval England. I
haven't quite decided on an exact time yet, but it will be during the
peak of the Crusades.

The lead character, Owain (the only one with a name so far) is a
Lord. His parents are dead, his Father naturally, passing the title
on to Owain, and his Mother in childbirth when Owain was a youngster.
Owain has a younger brother who was a baby when their Mother died.

Owain is very devout, as was his Mother, and is training and
preparing to take the cross and go on to Crusade. His is a large,
strong man, a champion among knights. His brother will take control
of the land in Owain's absence. Owain is guided and driven by the
family priest, who has served for many years and was close to Owain's
Mother.

The story will start with Owain and the priest dealing with a young
local woman accused of witchcraft and the rise of a dark force in the
land (how very melodramatic).

I do have most of the plot worked out in my mind, but I shall save it
up. Next, I will introduce a few of the characters in more depth.

There will also be a dog.

NaNo 2005 Plans

A long time ago, possibly even before I first discovered NaNo, I had
an idea to use as the basis of a story. I would take the titles of
every track by an artist, arrange chronologically by album and track
order and use them as chapter headings.

So, looking for ideas for NaNo, I considered this again and duly
typed up a list of all 147 Yes studio tracks (including the ABWH
album, fact fans). I then sat and looked at them and worked on a
story.

As my plans developed, it didn't seem quite right. My idea wasn't
quite fitting into the feel of Yes. Quite by chance, I listened to
Black Sabbath by, umm, Black Sabbath and it struck me that the Sab
were the answer. So I made a list of Black Sabbath tracks and have
started to frantically track down copies of all of the studio albums
that I don't own (just one to find, Cross Purposes).

It does seem a silly idea, but I can see some advantages to it.
First, if I get stuck at a particular point, it is easy for me to go
and write something a bit later on in the tale and not get lost.
Second, to some extent, my route is already planned which should keep
me on track. Third, I have ready made inspiration if I run out of
ideas. Fourth, and perhaps most importantly of all, I have fifty
thousand words split up into chunks of three or four hundred.
Writing four hundred words is easy.

Tomorrow, as I have the post planned already and this will keep me
posting, I will start to outline my actual ideas for the story
itself.

After saying that cricket would stay out of the blog, Somerset won
the Twenty20, yay!

Planning For November

I have decided to streamline my bloging a bit more. I shall write
really only about things that directly relate to me and one or two
more carefully considered and serious articles (I have a couple
brewing). I can't imagine that anyone really wants to know my
opinion on cricket when there are many more considerably better
informed sources of information out there.

So, what, every year, takes up vast amounts of my time and energy?
Yep, NaNoWriMo. Nation Novel Writing Month. Write a fifty thousand
word novel in November. A bunch of nutters. But rather a lot of
them.

This year will be my third attempt, so a brief recap of my previous
tries.

2003, the story of Paul. I wrote around 26,000 words in November but
ground to a halt. In the last couple of months I have come back to
the story and have final found out what happens, how it finishes and
what it is about. I have even written some more of it, although my
enthusiasm for that has waned a little again.

2004, the animals. 10,000 words in November. I knew roughly what
was happening in advance this time, but it didn't really get
anywhere. I have plans to heavily cut it down, but it will
ultimately form the basis of a story.

This year, things will be different. For some while, possibly even
years, I have had a plan to launch a story. I have taken it up and
started to develop my ideas for November. A couple of nights ago I
thought my way through virtually the entire plot. Characters are
developing. Settings are forming in my mind. I now have three
months to research (I have taken a book out from the library
already), consider and make notes. This time I can do it, I am sure.
I will also lose my enthusiasm in a few weeks, but redevelop it in
time for November with suitable added caution, which is far better
than starting on a massive high and then crashing two weeks in.

I will post my ideas in a later entry as this one is already longer
than I planned.

Lack of posts

As I am sure you have all noticed, I haven't posted much recently.
This is largely due to being away for a fortnight or so and then not
getting back into the habit. I shall try.

Recent updates from me:

I go full time on Monday.
I went to the gym tonight for the first time in ages. Ow.
I have a new phone.
And new shoes.
I can't think of much else to write at the moment.

Ooo, the Rock 'N' Roll Suicides took the King of the Clans belt from
Rouge Elephant. We rock!

/me hugs everyone

Post Drought

As you will have noticed, I haven't posted much recently. It isn't
that I haven't had anything to say or that nothing has happened to
me, just that I seem to have just no done it.

A brief recap of recent events:

Moved house, spent too much money, eaten too much, not done enough
exercise, not done enough work, written more of novel, had an amazing
Ben Lairig trip in the Cheviots, set off Sports Centre fire alarm.

Forthcoming events:

NASMA conference, holiday, working full time, work on website, loads
of photos.

I shall write some entries while at the conference and try and slip
back into a routine.

There are some new pictures on my flickr site though.

Tigers and Cats

Tigers first:

[Bangladesh's] lack of form was enough for one gambler to stake ?7,500 on Australia duly consigning Bangladesh to yet another loss on Saturday.

The victory for Bangladesh was well deserved. The played well and it wasn't a fluke. Australia will be back though. Although Ponting just got out lbw first ball by Harmison. Corking.

I have been visited by a young tortoiseshell kitten. I have seen he/she along the road a couple of days but it has decided to jump in through my window and say hello. That was quite a while ago. Maybe it likes the cricket.

There was supposed to be a Ben Lairig trip to the North York Moors and the beach today but someone has broken the minibus we were going to take. It is a shame really, it is an absolutely gorgeous day. We are having the barbecue anyway.

Three wickets in four balls for Harmy.

Oh, I have forgotten to mention, I am the new Ben Lairig Safety and Training Officer. Sometimes I wonder about myself.

Twenty20

I am listening to the England-Australia Twenty20 match at the Rose
Bowl. It is so much fun. Tense, exciting and energetic. It is such
a long way from traditional four and five day matches but who cares?
Funfunfunfunfun. England have posted a corking total, unfortunately
I won't be able to listen to the Australian reply, I have to go
trampolining and sort out the knackered trampoline.

Hilda appears to have died and the 'dolphs still aren't poking their
heads out. I appear not to have green fingers.

I haven't updated on the Debian install recently, all is going well,
printing seems to installed, I am finding fun things, I have KMyMoney
set up.

For fans of Descent running Linux, check out D2x
(http://www.icculus.org/d2x/), a Linux conversion based on the
released source. It works wonderfully. I have no joystick and
really cannot believe that I used to play key board only. I was
probably better with a normal keyboard that this laptop one, but it
still very hard. Maybe my fingers are just getting old.

Boxes

An addendum to the previous post. I just opened a box which I
thought was empty and discovered that it is already mostly full of
books. Drat.

Packing

My packing is progressing well. I am currently in the state of flux
where one moment it looks as though everything should fit and then
there seems to be hideous piles of things everywhere. I have thrown
plenty out, which I am impressed with. I must press on with that, my
bed is covered in detritus at the moment.

I have been lent With Teeth, the new Nine Inch Nails album (a
temporary exchange for Mezmerize). I like it. The album is rockier
than previous NIN work, more song like, but still with the great
atmosphere. Definitely an album with a place, for those times when
you want the dark rhythms and feel but don't want to concentrate
quite so hard.

I have been playing a lot of patience recently. I had forgotten how
relaxing it can be. Stimulating as well. It is also great for
listening to new music as I can sit in the middle of my floor, in the
stereo centre, and do something at the same time as listening but be
so absorbed as I can get in a book and forget the music.

Old Friends

An old friend got in touch by the wonders of the internet. He used
to run the kids trampolining club attached to the University Club and
now is over in Japan teaching and enjoying life in a band. Have a
look at the Fish Tank TV website.

I saw Star Wars Episode Three last night. As a film, it was rather
poor, but I enjoyed it as the final piece in the story. Things could
have been handled better but some bits were superb and very
emotional. Yoda is my hero. If you are a science fiction fan with
no particular interest in Star Wars, don't bother. If you can
immerse yourself in the universe, it is worth it and worth seeing in
the cinema. That was the one thing that struck me afterwards, only
once or twice during the entire film did it strike me that most of it
was computer generated. I was so completely absorbed by the story
and the setting that I just never noticed.

I am loving Mezmerize (the new System of a Down album) more and more.

Rocks Rock

I was very impressed with Amazon. I ordered three CDs on Saturday,
one of which was released on Monday, using the three to five day free
delivery option. The Post Office attempted to deliver at 12:15 on
Tuesday and Amazon sent me the 'your order has been dispatched'
e-mail Tuesday evening.

The CDs then, The new Dream Theater album, Octavarium, the new System
of the Down album, Mezmerize and the remastered edition of The
Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails.

I don't have the original version of The Downward Spiral so I can
make no comments as to how the remastered tracks sound. Also, as I
am not really familiar with the album itself, I have yet to listen to
the remixes and alternative versions on the second CD. On first
listen, I like the album a lot. The mood is superb and the tracks
very well written. I suspect in the long run I may grow to like it
more than The Fragile.

The new System album is very good. It seems to have found a little
of the energy and humour of their first album that I think was lost a
little in Toxicity. There are also a lot of new sounds for System in
the album and plenty of new ideas. I don't think any of the tracks
are as individually outstanding as some on System or Toxicity but the
album as a whole is great fun to listen to. It won't replace my love
for the first album but sits very nicely alongside Toxicity. (I do
have Steal This Album, but for some reason have only listened to it a
couple of times and so won't compare it).

Octavarium seems very solid Dream Theater. It doesn't push too many
boundaries for them, the sound is very familiar, particularly Rudess
and LaBrie. Petrucci seems to have gone for a slightly more classic
heavy rock solo style at times, which works quite nicely. All of the
instrumental virtuosity that you would expect is there and the song
writing is in a similar vein to the first CD of Six Degrees Of Inner
Turbulence, although no tracks are quite as good as Glass Prison for
me. The one downer is track two. Horrifically cheesy string
arrangements that make you want to laugh and cry in equal measure and
more proof that LaBrie, while an excellent vocalist, isn't really cut
out for ballads.

Lucky

I had a very lucky day yesterday. I thought that I had lost my USB
Key but on a completely random hunch decided to look in the rubbish
bin in my room and there it was. Not only that, I also got two
Double Deckers from a chocolate machine. Even better I was lucky
enough to be able to sit outside on a gloriously sunny day, read a
good book and enjoy God's creation to the full. And I saw some tiny
little cute fluffy bunnies.

Hilda has been dead headed but seems a little droopy. Maybe she
doesn't like Laurence? The 'dolphs are still fast asleep, even with
the duck to try and tempt them out.

Another lovely day to look forward to.

Very Cool Half Life 2 Pictures

I have never even seen the game running and have little desire to,
but Bobbajob pointed me in the direction of these HL2 pictures
(warning, web page with several large images). They are all very
good, although some are almost completely convincing. Other
participants in the thread don't seem to get the point. I suspect
that they have been either playing too many games, are very silly or
have no appreciation of any of life's wonders.

The new Linux installation is going well. Fluxbox is configured
properly, now that I have remembered to point it at the correct
config files. Imwheel and my mouse wheel are going. One worry I had
was that the personal finance applications wouldn't be able to import
downloaded statements from Nationwide. Now, despite the fact that
Nationwide only does csv and the applications only import qif, I have
found plenty of Python resources for outputting as qif so I should be
able to bodge something together easily enough.

Redeem has joined the Rock 'N' Roll Suicides, yay! We are looking
good to have a full line-up for Division One next season. Go us.

Hampshire had a stunning come back against Notts to win their County Championship game. We are back at the top of the table. Go Warney. He is such a great captain.

England finished off Bangladesh as well. Confidence is high for the Ashes.

New Installation

I have finally installed my new hard drive and put an operating
system on it. I decided to take the plunge and completely do away
with Windows. So there is nothing but Debian testing (soon to be
stable) installed. I have decided to go through the assorted
problems and issues that I am dealing with as I get the new system up
and running.

Selecting the correct hard drive setting: cable select didn't work.
I got to the partitioning stage of the installation procedure and it
tells me there are no partionable devices. Grr.

X: I decided not to use the Debian desktop system task, but to do it
bit by bit. I also managed to incorrectly set up my mouse port
during the X server configuration. Lessons learned: dpkg-reconfigure
is very useful, but you need to know which packages you are
configuring (I systmatically went through the X packages that I had
installed to find the correct on). It is easier to use Debian tasks
(which I had to resort to in the end), although they take a long time
to download and use a lot of space.

Restarting: whatever is claimed, lots of things only work in Linux
after a system reboot.

CDs

Asa thank you for helping him at the weekend, my Father bought me a
new CD, The Sky Moves Sideways by Porcupine Tree. It is very good,
being quite experimental, ambient rock. There are all sorts of
sounds going on but the two that struck me most of all were the
occasional resemblance to Boards of Canada and the very Dave Gilmour
sound of the lead guitarist, neither of which are bad things in my
opinion. While I don't think the gift was necessary, I shan't be
complaining giving the quality of it.

I shall be ordering two new CDs myself, to use up the Amazon voucher
that I received for being on the University Web Focus Group. I have
pretty much settled on the new Dream Theater album and the remastered
edition of The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails. How very rocky I
must sound.

My weight has increased by about half a stone since my last monthly
weigh in. I am less than happy, although I can see no visible signs
of weight gain in bad places. Maybe it is my sudden gym attendance
but I doubt it would have that much of an effect in such a short
time. Ho hum, I shall just have to carry on paying attention to my
food intake. Moving out and feeling able to cook properly and not
having to live off of convenience food will help.

Edinburgh Overrun

Edinburgh officials are slightly concerned about Bob Geldof's plans
to have one million people march through the city to support the Make
Poverty History campaign during the G8 conference.

Quite apart from the fact that, as Midge Ure suggested, the one
million figure is pretty much just a rallying cry from Geldof and
unlikely to be achieved, you do have to question the reasoning of the
authorities.

After all, just how many people congregate on Edinburgh for the
Festival? The situations are clearly different, the Festival being
considerably more spread out both geographically and over time, but
the other main difference? Festival goers stay in expensive hotels
spending lots of money in restaurants and arts venues. They aren't
whingeing lefty drop out student types.

Beyond that, central government I am sure don't want a popular
protest from the people embarrassing both them as hosts and making
their guests, especially the nice Mr Bush feel in any way guilty or
responsible.

I was all excited about going myself, my first popular protest and
all, but it is the last day of my NASMA conference. I suppose this
may lead to a slight questioning of my commitment to the cause. Ho
hum.

While I do throw as much support behind the cause as possible, I do
disagree completely with Bob Geldof attempting to persuade children
to skip school to go. Naughty Bob.

I do think that he may get a few more people to go if he promised
that he would come in a new suit.

Names

I have noticed that one of my rulers at work is called Emma.

It is raining. It is a nice steady rain, good for the ground and
lovely to be out in.

Three plums are not as filling as two bananas. I shall take more
plums to work tomorrow.

A small meme courtesy of Nikkiana.
Not my usual cup of tea, although I feel that changing, but it is
about music and I just can't resist that.

Total volume of music files on my computer:
None at all. I don't download illegal music, have no need of
electronic copies of my CDs and consider electronic format music to
be of too poor a quality to be worth buying compared to CD.

The last CD I bought was:
One Live Badger by Badger.

Song playing right now:
The Good Don't Last from The Kindness of Strangers by Spock's Beard.

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:
I am very much an album person rather than just songs, which probably
also has an effect on my lack of computerised music. So, five
albums:

1. Led Zeppelin IV (Runes)
2. Graceland by Paul Simon
3. Close To The Edge by Yes
4. Snow by Spock's Beard
5. Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence by Dream Theater

Five people to whom I’m passing the baton:
I don't really pass such things on by e-mail, so I shall have to
trust my readers here. However, the chances that there are five
people who read my blog are slim, so I suspect that this will be a
dead end for this little meme.

What to wear?

Ezboard have been having some very nasty problems with their service,
posts going missing, pages crashing, data loss and so on. They claim
they have suffered a major attack. That implies someone cares enough
to attack them. Ah, possibly a disgruntled customer.

Anyway, it will soon be the Athletics Union Dinner and I need to
decide what to wear. I cannot of course wear the same as I have in
previous years, which rules out black shirt with gold tie or black
tie. I can't remember what I wore two years ago and can't find any
photos, but I suspect that it may have been black on black (two years
in a row, I needed shooting).

Shoe choice is fairly easy, I should really wear lace shoes and not
slip on and I can't afford a new pair for the Dinner.

So, shirt, tie and cuff links. White shirt? Black shirt? If I wear
black shirt, my tie choice is limited. I could wear the bow tie that
I wore at my Father's wedding. I could buy a new tie or bow tie. I
may try and find some duck cuff links. Everything is open to me with
a white shirt. Do have the figure for a cummerbund though?
Waistcoat?

Decisions, decisions.

Plants

I now have Hilda the African Violet in my office. She is very pretty
and has light purple flowers. There are still no signs of life from
Rudolph, Randolph and Adolph.

I am going to my house on Friday to sort out contracts and things. I
shall make sure I have a good look at the yard so I can continue to
plan planting.

Labours Over

The weekend at my Father's was productive. We managed to move the
shed, refelt the shed roof, move the rockery rocks from the front
garden to the back, consider the design of his garden, lop large
amounts of the tree down and some other minor tasks. Hard work and
occasionally scary up the tree but worthwhile.

We also tried the Ubuntu (Warty Warthog) Live CD on his laptop. It
is the first time that I have used a live CD, but it was worked very
well, much faster to load than I expected. It looks like I will have
a Linux install do the next time I visit. AS well as , I am sure,
more garden labour.

I need to finally sort out the installation of my new hard drive as
well, especially if I am going to be moving to an internetless house soon.

Hot Air Balloon

I saw a hot air balloon last night. I like hot air balloons, they
are ever so pretty against the summer sky. And I can relate to them
as well, being nothing but a big bag of hot air myself.

I am going away for the weekend, so no posting for a few days. Just
as I was starting to build up some momentum again. Typical.

The Rock 'N' Roll Suicides have been recruiting hard and it looks
like we are putting together a strong line-up for next season. We
shall be in Division One, so we will need to play well to beat the
sprightly young clans and the obstinate old hands.

I have put some more photos up on my flickr page
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/lsnduck) as well as pictures from the
Ben Lairig Patterdale trip of a couple of weeks ago.

Cod Liver Oil is still disgusting and still makes me burp.

Summer

Today really felt like summer. It was stuffy and windy in the
office. The first summer test has started, and we are duly stuffing
Bangladesh, poor lads. The sun is out. My window is open. I may
wear sandals to trampolining tonight. I might go to the gym instead
though.

My Mother has suggested that I start taking Cod Liver Oil in order to
help my dodgy knee. The stuff had better do me some good because it
is disgusting. It tastes like all of the nasty, greasy bits of fish
and chips rolled up together.

The gas bill for March, April and May came today. It is not far off
being double that for December, January and February. This will in
part be due to the fact that the last bill was an estimate but may be
related to incidents like me coming home today, a day which the BBC
weather site should be around 18 degrees with full sunlight, and
finding the thermostat set at 25. I am not sure if whichever
housemate is responsible for that is terminally chilly or merely
stupid. They appear to be made of money, either way.

Rene, I Have A Massage

Yesterday, I received a disturbing message into my inbox on one of the forums I frequent:

Hi, How are you! Im male and single and really into Ducks!

It turns out that this was from a long-lost Trampolining alumni friend, which is great. Although the duck is now quite disappointed that he hasn't an admirer after all.

I participated in a focus group for the redesign of the University web site yesterday. Interesting bits: Web Office use FireFox and not the University standard IE, I was paid a ten pound Amazon voucher for going. Not interesting bits: listening to two or three people talking and saying exactly the same thing several times.

Two funny things from a trip into town on Tuesday. At the back of M and S there is a bus stop from the number nine line. As is First's way, each line has a colour. Nine is the silver line. There was a distinctly silver line waiting at the bus stop. In fact, York was particularly busy with the older and wiser members of our community that day.

Also, there are now strange speakers in Parliament Square that tell you where you are. Every so often this voice floats down from above telling you what is to your left, right and fore. Unfortunately, because they are mounted well above head height, it is very difficult to get an accurate fix on where they are and what direction you are supposed to be looking in for the information to be correct. There is also more than one which really gets confusing.

I had lunch in a nice little cafe bar thing opposite the men's door to BHS. It was most pleasant, I may go again.

Wahing Machine

On Sunday I put a load in the washing machine (bedding, just for the
record) and washed it. The door of the washing machine failed to
open. I tried all of the standard door opening tricks, running
another spin cycle, a rinse and spin, checking the drain pipe and
seeing if there was any liquid to drain off manually (there was only
a dribble) but to no avail.

I phoned the number of the hire company that our landlord gave us for
the electrical goods and arranged for an engineer to come tomorrow.
When I got home this afternoon, the door magically opened, only two
days late, and the company recommended running a test load which was
also fine. So it seems to be working fine now.

A fairly typical minor domestic crisis you might think. All sorted,
no harm done and no real potential of harm anyway. Hah.

Reaction of housemate R at two thirty this morning: screaming,
hitting and bashing everything in the kitchen. I was genuinely
scared and in physical fear for my safety. I locked myself in my
room and spent a very long time after she went upstairs settling
myself to sleep.

My already strong desire to get out of the house as quickly as
possible has dramatically increased and I plan on spending as little
time here as possible in the mean time, to the extent that I started
being convenience food today. Expensive yes, unhealthy yes, but at
least it gets me a solid meal (which I have been failing to have for
the best part of a fortnight now except when I eat out) with the
minimum of time out of my room.

Geeky Evening

I have had a very geeky evening. I have played Starscape solidly for
about two hours, if not more, whilst eating take-away pizza. I know
feel satisfied at nearly having cleared the third Starscape zone, fat
and slightly sick after too much rich, naughty food and glad that I
didn't spend the evening moping. Now I have to amuse myself for an
hour or so before bed and be fit and ready for work and the new
manager tomorrow.

I must remember to put contacts in tomorrow morning as I am playing
snooker after work.

News Reading

With my upcoming move away form home internet, I need to decide what to do about blog reading. I have recently been using Thunderbird to check when there are new posts in blogs and then using Firefox to open individual posts.

I would rather not use Thunderbird at all, so I have been checking the FireFox extensions that may help. The one that I am trying at the moment is Sage. This, as I suspect all such extensions do, gives a nice little sidebar that helps manage blogs, checks and highlights new posts and also produces a single page that shows all of the recent posts. I shall continue to test it and maybe one or two of the others for comparison's sake as well.

Still loving Starscape. I am now about halfway through the third of the five sectors and am not getting bored yet.

Writing

After rereading my NaNaNoWriMo 2003 work on Friday (in the University
Library of all places, not somewhere I have been in a while) I sat
down and wrote around eight hundred words more tonight. Writing felt
good, especially the part that I finished off. The words are quite
poor at the moment, but the emotion is powerful and reasonably
effective, even if I say so myself.

I shall also have to hang on to the fact that it isn't wrong to jump
around in stories as you write. If you are thinking of one bit,
write it and fill in the gaps later, it is so much more sensible than
banging your head against a brick wall trying to think of something
to write and then becoming frustrated and giving up.

I noticed at work yesterday that the shorthand numerical date was
20052005. How exciting my morning must have been.

I need to relax my jaw more and stop clenching my teeth, it can't be
good for them.

Aspects Of Moving

If I end up in either the Dean's flat or in Milton
Street, and hopefully one of those will occur, one big
change will occur. No more always on, instantly
available internet connection.

Milton Street isn't connected to the phone system at
all at the moment, and I see no reason to not become a
purely mobile user myself. The flat may be able to
connect to the University SNS system, but I think I
would choose not to.

The more I think about it, the more the lack of
constant internet appeals. Everything that is really
important, keeping in touch with people by e-mail and
on message boards, my website responsibilities,
photos, blogging, can all be done quite nicely in
lunch hours at work.

All I would really lose is the time sapping things.
Sitting hitting F5 in message boards. Games.
Mindless browsing. One or two other things best not
mentioned in polite company.

LSN will be a loss, but I have been fading out for a
while anyway and I will still keep in touch with the
community. Software updates and downloads will become
a bit more convoluted, but still more than accessible.

Best of all, I will free up time to do other things,
writing, working on my coaching, more sport, reading
and so on. In fact, that isn't the best of all bit.
The real best of all will be losing the great
distractions and excuses to prevaricate.

Catch up

A few odd items to catch up on now that the e-mail
blog system seems to be working correctly.

A man has recently been found in Kent who hasn't
spoken a word but has given several virtuoso piano
performances. This seems such a sad and yet beautiful
story. There really is a power and beauty in the
music that God has given us that really does sometimes
transcend all other things. Here is the BBC report.

This has fuelled my recent desire to revisit my first
NaNoWriMo attempt and possibly finish it off.

One of the campus Mallards has managed to bring eleven
ducklings to close to maturity. This is very
impressive and she should be congratulated. They were
all scuttling along in a long behind her and looked
quite frightening.

My new hard drive arrived earlier in the week. I am
still quite impressed with E-buyer. I also like their
choice of courier in Initial City Link as they always
come first thing in the morning before I go to work
and save having to arrange re-deliveries. The
delivery man who has this round is quite friendly as well.

Still Alive

Despite my best efforts to the contrary.

I did a horrendous tuck back at training tonight. I am not sure exactly
what went wrong beyond the fact that I wasn't really paying attention.
Whatever it was I ended up rolling and twisting and ended up on my
shoulder on the end deck. No harm done and plenty of entertainment
provided. Fortunately it was on a half-inch so everything was nice and
controlled.

Hopefully, this should post straight from e-mail. The first time I
didn't have the 'publish' box ticked in the post from e-mail settings
and the second time I realised that Blogger didn't know my ftp password
and so couldn't post by itself. Fingers crossed.

Houses

I have been looking for somewhere to live when my current tenancy
expires (at the end of June).

On Tuesday I had a look at a very nice house. It is owned by one of the
academic staff in biology. His son lives there, with a cat. The house
is a small terrace, two up, two down but is very nice, having been
recently completely redecorated. The room being rented is quite small
but nice. Altogether a good thing. I e-mailed my good feelings
together with a couple of questions just as I finished work.

I then got home and checked my work e-mail. What should appear but an
e-mail thanking me for my interest in the Deans position that I applied
for at the start of April. College Deans are voluntary members of the
college welfare system, but get a free, small flat in University
accommodation blocks.

Apparently, I may be invited to interview next week. I have no idea if
I will be interviewed or if I am, little confidence that I will get the
position. If I did, I would take the flat.

Unfortunately, the timing is quite bad with respect to the other house.
I have e-mailed the owner outlining the situation and he has been
quite understanding and relaxed about it, but I still free a little bad
about it and will feel even worse in that respect if I get the Deanary.

I am still very excited by the prospect of being a Dean however, and do
want the position.

E-mail Post

Hopefully this should be the first post made
successfully by e-mail. This should be much more
conducive to regular posts as it is less hassle, has a
better spell check and makes smaller posts made more
often easier.

I have planted Randolph, Rudolph and Adolph this
morning. Now I am impatient for them to grow. Come
on my pretties.

And I am not at work at the moment. Really.

Getting Old

Last night was my last Hes. Club session. It has been fun and interesting and I love working with the kids, but also dull and stressful. It is definitely time to go and hand on to someone with a bit more enthusiasm for the job.

Training was quite productive last night as well, I did bss(t), straddle, straight bounce, set, bss(t) and so on and managed four somersaults twice. A definite improvement in confidence. I can't imagine how people do ten somersault routines though, I was incredibly dizzy.

George Galloway is a tit.

A shiny new CD arrived for me today, One Live Badger. I purchased on the strength on Tony Kaye and Wind Of Change but it proved to be quite a surprise. The sound is very Deep Purple and Tony Kaye plays with much more accomplishment than he ever seemed to do for Yes. An album worth listening to.

I am off to the Lake District with Ben Lairig this weekend, typically just after I have a good training session. We are going to Patterdale which will be nice. Hopefully the weather will hold. I have enough confidence to be wearing shorts and taking sandals.

See you Monday.

Working Time

The EU Parliment has decided to withdrawal the opt-out for the UK over the working time directive. This will mean that workers can only work a maximum of 48 hours over a week. As far as I am concerned this can only be a good thing. Exploitation can and will be reduced. There are far more important things in life than an arbitrary monetary system and working. Full story on the BBC.

In another BBC story, we find that beach donkeys and horses in Blackpool are only being allowed to work for seven hours a day. Again, a grand idea. I hope it is policed as effectively as the council promise.

Shane Warne has hit his first competitive century. This saved Hampshire from a low total and gave Kent something to think about. Still not too much from Kev though.

Don't forget kids, practice safe ironing-board sex, keep the cover on.

Lawyers

This morning on Today, John Humphrys was interviewing Lord Falconer, Lord Chancellor, about legal reform. One question went:

To be fair to lawyers, one has to ask all kinds of questions on this program, ...

I love Mr Humphrys. Most of the Radio Four news and current affairs presenters are brilliant, clever, funny, but very serious and capable of conducting very good interviews. Radio Four is great.

Birthday cakes and photographs at work today. Yay.

My Cambridge competition photographs have just finished copying to my laptop, so I shall go now. Have I mentioned how much I absolutely adore my digital camera?

Arboreal equivocations

In a trailer for the Ascension Day service on Radio Four, David Fanshawe's African Sanctus was described as 'highly original'. That is not quite how I would have put it, although it is true enough. It still rates as the second most awful piece of music that I have ever had to sing.

Some Thomas Hardy for you:

...and giving musical recitations in aid of funds for bewildering happy savages, and other such enthusiasms of this enlightened country

I feel we have some idea of Hardy's thoughts on the spreading of the word of Empire although also on his own Empire bound concepts of the world. (Quote from For Conscience' Sake published in Life's Little Ironies).

Why am I reading Hardy again though? He writes such good little stories and is such a good observer of life but is so depressing. So very depressing. Mostly because he does write so true to life.

I had this bizarre dream last night about an animated version of The Archers. I think it was in clay. Very odd.

The Cambridge competition was very fun indeed. We ate lots, were most jolly, went punting and some of us stayed up far too late talking about some very interesting, deep and personal things. A conversation which may as ever come back to bite participants.

We did OK in the competition itself, with a first and third in novice and solid performances in intermediate. There is work to be done though.

Starscape is still very cool.

I have almost finished my very last competitive LSN game. My last Alliance month gave a crushing defeat, a good victory and what will probably be a close loss. It is good to feel some pressure lifting off of my shoulders though. A definite step in rationalising my life.

Election Over

Fortunately we have escaped the Tories again. A big reduction in Labour majority, but at least we still have a government with some understanding of the world and how to run a country. A round of things that I have picked up on in Today:

Good things:
The Torys lost.
The Lib Dems made a reasonable number of gains.
The Green vote dramatically increased.
Killroy-Silk was humiliated.
UKIP were pants.

Bad things:
George Galloway won.
BNP votes rose.
Turn out was still a poor 60%.

One story that caught my eye was the capture of Blaenau Gwent by an independent, or rather by a rejected Labour candidate who turned on his party. Apparently, the Labour party forced an all women short list on the constituency and pushed Peter Law out. He stood as an independent and won convincingly, slashing the official Labour vote from 72% to 32%. I hope this is an indication to some that all discrimination is wrong, even so called positive discrimination is still discrimination and is not justifiable, even if it is done with the best of intentions. Hopefully, this is one reason why the Tories and UKIP didn't do so well either.

Teesdale

I went on a Ben Lairig trip to Teesdale on Sunday. It was a marvelous day and it felt good to be away from things. I have added a new section to the website, which starts with a small report on the Teesdale trip. You can also find Teesdale photographs in my Ben Lairig stream on Flickr.

For some reason I felt this odd desire to listen to Saints and Sinners by Whitesnake but I couldn't quite work out why. And then 'Here I go again' starts and I remember. Hurrah.

Some fun things that I have found recently:

The Gentoo cow (apparently called Larry; Gentoo being a Linux distribution).
The husband of the LSN Queen (made by Jaques Cartier from the LSN Forums)

I was amazed by rain the other day. Water that falls out of the sky. Doesn't that strike you as being so wonderful?

The Guardian website had an article about art work protesting about the commercialization of Christmas. The outcome merely goes to show the validity of the point, the advertising company being too scared to stand up to the business that would find it's disgusting morals questioned.

One last little thought, software package management is great. Can you imagine how much nicer Windows would be if it had software installation that was even a half as sensible as Debian's?

Te audire no possum.

Musa sapientum fixa est in aure.

For a translation, please see this page on the BBC H2G2 website. My thanks to Alex on YLUG for pointing me in that direction. Why that quote? Well, maybe because I managed to get up at a roughly normal time, a bit past seven of the clock, today unlike Thursday. Why not Thursday? Well, I slept through my alarm and didn't get up until eight twenty eight. Why? I had earplugs in. Why? Because my idiot housemates decided three o'clock in the morning is the ideal time to play loud music. I still just about managed to get to work before nine though.

It struck me, during a conversation on the YLUG irc channel, that blogs are an ideal tool to use for helping to learn a language. Perhaps I could learn Latin again or possibly something more useful such as French.

A few geeky things know, as if learning Latin isn't geeky enough.

Last night I purchased a fun little game. Starscape, made by Moonpod, is a fun top down shooter with research and development in the style of the unbeatable X-COM. It is great fun, classic gaming and is from a small independent developer, which suits my current mood. Give the demo a try. (I haven't tested it under cedega yet, but I shall do and let you know).

Being able to try other games under cedega of course requires more hard drive space. I thought of a cunning plan to deal with problems, buy a new hard drive. So, after some scary moments thinking that Toshiba use strange drive sizes, which turned out to be what is now industry standard slimline drives, I have ordered a shiny 40GB Seagate beasty. I await with much anticipation. Because when it turns up I get to do another Win98 install and another Debian net install. Yay.

That is the end, barring one small note - can I manage to correctly select the text entered here (ctrl-A) rather than publishing it (ctrl-S) this time? Multiple failures in the past suggest not.

Non sum pisces.

Politics

I am afraid I am going to sink in to the dull world of British politics. Sorry.

Last night, the three major party leaders appeared on Question Time. During this it appears (I didn't watch it) that Mr Blair discovered that some GPs surgeries won't make appointments for more than two days in advance for the first time. I can't believe that, everybody that I know who has had call to go to the doctor, my Grandmother, Father, Mother have all said this, in one case appointments couldn't be made more than a single day ahead. I was rather under the impression that it was government policy, although I appear to have been wrong about that. It is a stupid system for so many reasons and needs changing.

Yesterday the Attorney General's legal advice on the recent invasion of Iraq was published. The Government line up to that point was that all advice from a lawyer, like that from a doctor if you get to see one, should be completely confidential and that applies to governments as well as individuals.

I agree with that stance and think that publishing the advice was wrong for exactly that reason. It was done to keep the media happy and shows a distinct lack of moral courage.

Let me be quite clear, while I defend the Government's right to keep the legal advice secret, I in no way agree with the war. I can't comment on the legal issues, not having read the advice nor being an international lawyer, but I do not think the invasion was morally justified at that point in time.

Do I further subscribe to the view that Blair lied? Yes, I do, but I don't hold that against him for two reasons. First, he did what he thought was the right thing to do. I may disagree with his opinion but I have no doubt that he made his decisions with the best of intentions and with all his intelligence and humanity. Secondly, I am not so naive that I think that any politician or leader of any sort can rule effectively while be completely honest.

While I wish that everyone could tell the truth all of the time, and I am labouring to do so myself, I think that while the world is such that if anything less than an overwhelming majority of people are always honest, those that are will be swamped and oppressed. This is particularly true in government and for a stable and effective leadership.

Don't think that I am giving our politicians to lie as and when suits them, such actions need to be very carefully considered and restricted as much as possible, but in some limited circumstances I can understand it and accept it.

Meanwhile, at our children's trampolining club, I was cornered yet again into personal questions by a couple of the older girls. I told the truth, didn't avoid the discussion and it felt good and clean. Or at least not bad

Be honest people, the truth is the way to go.

Mish Mash

It is time that I caught up with the long list of random notes in my notebook, so expect a rollercoaster ride through a random collection of thoughts.

I have started watching season five of Babylon Five. I am fairly impressed so far. The new theme is pretty good, being suitably triumphant and cheesy. Long live Christopher Franke. Sheridan's new beard is quite good, although it does now give him a certain resemblance to Jon Anderson. If you ask me this fits in quite well with the feel of B5, I could see some big airy Yes pieces fitting in quite well with the atmosphere. Of the four episodes I have seen, two have been great and two OK.

I was doing some ironing the other day and decided to not hang up a shirt on a particular coat hanger because the colours clashed. This worried me.

Sadly, the great Redeem is finally leaving LSN, albeit with no great fanfare this time. He will be sadly missed. There is maybe not so long left or me as well though.

To perk us all up a bit, there was good news from Somerset where Marcus Trescothick and his wife had a little baby daughter called Ellie. All say awwww together.

I was doing a little juggling and did my trick of shifting my focus away from the balls and into the middle distance. Jugglers, this can be quite hard to start with but if you have a confident and regular pattern it becomes quite easy and is much better for conversations. Anyway, I suddenly realised, given the mental and to some extent physical effort that it took me, how absolutely magical cameras with auto-focus are, especially those that can change focus on the fly. Wow, I thought. Somebody somewhere is very clever.

Bruce Dickinson played some Atomic Rooster on his Rock Show on BBC Radio Six. which was cool. Rooster rock by the way, great tracks with some hard and fast organ work.

I remembered the other day an incident in which I suggested to some rocky friends that I thought that the opening of After Forever by Black Sabbath (on Master of Reality) sounds a little like the Friends theme tune. They wouldn't have it, but I listened to the album earlier in the week and remain convinced. It was probably that they didn't want it to rather than they couldn't hear it.

Hm, what a random selection of randomness.

Caught Up

Despite having many things jotted down to write about, I shall not bother tonight and just put up the last entry from my weekend away.

***

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife.

Which is very true of course, but is of no help to those of us who aren't:

1. In possession of Mr Darcy's £10,000 a year,
2. Colin Firth;

and hence are of no interest to the fair Miss Bennet's of this world.

Darcy, as well as Elizabeth, really loved them; and they were both ever sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the persons who, by bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them.

It amused me to realise that Mr Darcy's seat was in Derbyshire, to be the home a century of so later or Oliver Mellors. Had Mr Darcy made comments about Miss Elizabeth Bennet having 'the nicest, nicest woman's arse as is' then Jane Austin would have been very different indeed. But fortunately, Lawrence is Lawrence and Austen is Austen and both are wonderful in their own way and I wouldn't be without either.

While we are on the subject, I noticed a pack of Sainsbury's West Country Cheddar described it's contents as 'mature, well rounded'. Which would seem to be a description that would serve many bottoms as well. For the moment mine is rather scrawny and nothing of any note, but I am sure that such things will change in time.

Past and Present

Another of my posts from my weekend away below, but first a few of the things that I have been writing in my notebook.

The weather has been lovely these past few days, sunny and bright. Friday was quite warm as well, the nip in the wind seemed to have gone. It was warm enough that I opened the window in my office. I sat there and decided that the only way that I miss New Milton ( MultiMap map with New Milton ) since having come to York via Southampton is the summers, in particular the New Forest and the beach. As much as the Forest is gorgeous, Yorkshire has its charms as well, so that just leaves the English Channel.

I have now started drinking tea in the office. Which I suppose is quite uninteresting, but marks some changes. I have also recently acquired some Darjeeling, I had forgotten how lovely it is. The description of the champagne of tea is really justified. Barring the minor detail that I don't like champagne that much.

Whoops, I almost forgot. When I had my window open at work, a male house sparrow landed on the windowsill, hopped along and peeped through the open window. Unfortunately, he didn't want to come and do my work for me.

As we are on the subject of birds, old post time.

***

I visited my Grandmother on Saturday with my Mother and we walked from Brockenhurst to New Milton through the New Forest.

The Forest is lovely even in its flatness and lack of Yorkshire bleakness. There were no foals, but lots of bunnies and many birds. Birds spotted and heard included:

Peewits, Swallows, Martins, Thrushes, Blackbirds, Great and Blue Tits, Chaffinches, Stone Chats, Magpies, Crows, a Lark, suspected to be a Wood Lark rather than a sky Lark, Gulls, Robins, an unidentified wader, unidentified finches, Sparrows, Buzzards, Wood Pigeons and Doves.

On Sunday morning we walked down to Weston Shore through the woods and saw several more birds, several pretty flowers and Mr Fishy. Birds included a Plover, Oystercathchers, a Spotted Woodpecker and Chiff-Chaffs as well as others already mentioned. All of they in the middle of a big city with a major port. The modern city isn't just a wasteland of roads and buildings and noise and smells. Nature hangs on and keeps bits beautiful, you just have to know where to look amongst the ugliness of most of man's work.

***

Gallivanting again

I disappeared to my Mother's at the weekend, but fear not, I was writing blog entries in my little black notebook while away.

Before I forget, I should say how much fun I had this morning rearranging my bookshelf.

The first entry from the past then, written on the train to Southampton on Friday afternoon:

***

There was a woman with a tiny little baby (so sweet) and a lad, probably about three years old. The lad took a fancy to one of the baby's toys, which in part consisted of a cute little giraffe. The woman then told the boy that he shouldn't play with it, he is far too old for such things.

What sort of conditioning is that? Telling a child not to play with something because it doesn't fit a preconceived vision of the sort of things three year old boys should enjoy seems wrong.

I suspect if the little one is a girl, she will be expected to play with her little toy oven while changing her dolly's nappy. I shall have to see if the nipper is wearing pink or blue.

***

Note: the little baby was a boy and he was wearing blue.

For your next middle-class Mr Angry ramblings, tune in again later.

Petersen isn't, is he?

Everybody is *dead*, Dave. Not Chen? Gordon Bennett! Yes! Chen, everybody. Everybody's dead, Dave.

Fortunately, Kev Pietersen isn't dead, but according to this BBC cricket report he has picked up a small stress fracture just before the start of the season.

Silly boy. Training on holiday. Fancy wanting to push your body that hard all of the time. It would be like going to gym before a trampolining session. Stupid.

With luck, he will be back for Hampshire for the start of the county season. As it says in the report, Kev, Shane and Simon Katich need to fire for us before they toddle off to play for their countries. Oh well, we shall see.

Unfortunately, I found a dead chaffinch this morning which is most upsetting. They are lovely little birds and a beautiful colour. Another little soul to mourn.

Norfolk County Council have an interesting proposal to consider. Described in this BBC news report, there are proposals to make changes to acceptable language in religious Studies teaching. I shall leave the silly bits of political correctness for your own perusal.

The proposal that caught my eye was this:

The guidelines also suggest teachers avoid terms such as the "body of Christ" and the "blood of Jesus" because Christians are not actually eating flesh and blood.

Now, I seem to remember that one of the main dividing points during the split of Protestantism from the Catholic church was the question of transubstantiation.

This is of course the miracle that occurs during the Catholic mass in which the wine and wafer become the body and blood of Christ.

The spokeswoman on Today this morning said that the wine and wafer are merely a representation of Christ. This is entirely correct from the Protestant point of view.

So does this mean that those making the recommendations are saying that either teaching incorrect facts to children is acceptable, that the Catholic church doesn't actually believe in transubstantiation or that Catholics aren't Christians?

Not so sure why that irritated me so such.

Summer Knocking At The Door

But fortunately not the irritating brat from Neighbour's. Which I am glad to say that I haven't watched for many weeks.

It is a lovely bright sunny day and the weather forecast has suggested that temperatures will soon be on the rise again. Fortunately, this almost managed to coincide perfectly with the start of the domestic cricket season. The usual university warm-up matches have started with no apparent surprises. Ian Blackwell gave Somerset a good start clubbing 191 from 138 against Durham UCCE.

There is no match for Hampshire though. Hopefully, this season should be quite good for Hampshire with a strong squad, international matches coming to the Rose Bowl and a place in First Division of the County Championship. Honours may be wishful thinking, but I think we will do well. I was surprised to see that we have six players from Zimbabwe and South Africa though, presumably under Kolpak or, like Kev Pietersen, naturalised. We have Kev and Shane, wahoo.

Dublin was a great weekend and much fun. The squad did really well in the competition and I was proud of all of them with one exception. That exception clearly being me. My set routine was not as good as it could have been by a long way, although I was happy to have competed my first proper tuck back. My vol went horribly wrong. I was too stiff out of the back drop and flew backwards into the tuck. Well, onto the end deck rather than into the tuck. Oh well, it has driven me to bigger and better things.

I am determined to compete Advanced in Cambridge, and my first session doing straight backs hasn't dimmed either my enthusiasm or confidence in my ability to do so. Straight backs are so much fun. They are physically much more demanding than anything I have done before and I appreciate some of the difficulties felt by people learning them. So much fun though.

Talking of fun, I bought new boots in Dublin, Purple Dr. Martens. They are great. Clearly I had to buy new trousers and a shirt to go with them as nothing I had matched, but you can't complain. Until the credit card bill arrives.

I am off to enjoy the day (and Broadcasting House).

The Adventure Is Over

Dublin was, as ever, great fun and very worthwhile. I shall expound at greater length in a later post.

I have also diagnosed that the problems with the broadband were down to a faulty router, so a new one has been ordered and shall be here tomorrow. In the meantime, I am borrowing my housemate's ADSL modem. Mmm, internet again.

A and I went to the theatre last night to see Hobson's Choice, twas most amusing, and light hearted.

The main point of my post then. After discovering the happy news about baby Kakapos, the BBC told of a report describing the sorry state of primates, with near a quarter of the six hundred or so species nearing extinction. You should read the full BBC report but the part that caught my eye was this:

If you took all the remaining individuals from the 25 primate species on this list and gave them a seat in a football stadium, they'd all fit.

Of course, when you have got over the deep desire never to be stewarding that match, the enormity of it hits you. Twenty five species of our closest relatives cannot muster more than a few thousand individuals between them. Some of the most wonderful animals on the planet, Orang-utans, Gorillas and many more, might just disappear. Humans are worse than rats. At least rats can live side by side with other animals.

(Private joke: at least we have J to keep the Orangs going).

I wonder what football team the different primates support? Ideas on a postcard please.

A-Dublin I shall go

Silence shall reign here for a few days as the annual ISTO (Irish Student Trampolining Open) trip is upon me. Some of us are flying out tonight for the competition on Saturday. Much fun shall it be. I shall keep a small journal while there to put up here.

I have put a big batch of pictures up on my Flickr page, including a couple of me. You can see them at http://www.flickr.com/photos/lsnduck/

I watched The Incredibles last night. I should have been going to the theatre, but the performance was cancelled so the friend I was going with and I rented the aforementioned DVD instead. It was brilliant, good jokes, great story and cool ideas. There seemed to be lots of influences from the serious side of comics which added a nice balance to the light hearted kiddies romp aspect. Well recommended and another success for Pixar.

I promised some reasoning for my stepping down as LSN Alliance admin. There are a number of factors. Partly, after many long years, my interest in LSN in general is finally dropping away although I have no intention of leaving for good yet. Also, I wasn't really enjoying the admin side of things so much. Putting results in was becoming a chore and decisions about games was having less meaning for me. I had taken an unofficial break for a while and after coming back and doing some work again, there was no sparkle and if my committment isn't there, it isn't fair on the players for me to carry on. Also, in gobbo and Brootal, Alliance has a fine pair to run it now, so there was no issue on that score. Finally, things in other parts of my life are starting to take more inmportance for me, so I wanted to spend some more time there as well.

It was wonderful to have done it, I did enjoy helping both the great DocWorm and Quick Ben, and helping everyone enjoy the competition was brilliant. But it has sadly come to an end. Alliance is still the best though.

Time for me to go and back my bags and buy some Euros.

Quack!