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?