Happy Snaps

I had to get some more photos of me taken today. It is for my free trip to India in August, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much. Anyhoo, I sat scrunched down in the seat so that my face fitted the oval and was imortalised on film wearing an appropriately grim look.

As I was waiting for the pictures to come out of the slot I got chatting to a little old lady who was sat by the machine, and had watched me go into the booth. "You know", she said, "You can get them done a pound cheaper just over the road". Thanks for that.

Heated Discussion

I've come to the conclusion I don't like the summer. I know that we all wait anxiously for it, and moan when it doesn't turn up (like this year) but when it comes I don't like it.

As David was saying as we wandered out to get an ice cream, if it is cold you can always add another layer. But if it is too hot there is nothing you can do about it once you have taken off all your clothes. The mental image that this conjured up almost put me off my lolly.

Buggy Bug

I excitedly told Peter about my bug purchase at coffee today. "Whatever you do" he said "Don't put the latest version of the software on it". Guess what I had spent last night doing. I suppose I can always remove it, although it seems to work OK at the moment.

I mentioned that sometimes the signal drops and Peter said "Oh, just tie a bit of wire on the end of the aerial". Now if anybody else had said that I would have told them not to be silly and gone into a long discussion about wavelengths and radio waves and stuff and how this could never work, all based on the Physics that I did before I found out about computers.

But Peter is properly qualified and knows about wires and things and so, this lunchtime, I found a bit of spare cable and tied it on the end. And it works. Who says that qualifications are useless?

Cracking Up

If I have my time again I know what I want to be. I want to make car windscreens.  I want a job where the consequences of failure are minimal and customers pay for your mistakes. Today I went out to my shiny new car (not quite as shiny as it used to be - really must wash it) and found an enormous crack in the glass. This has appeared from nowhere, without me doing anything. I'm completely at a loss to explain it. The only thing of which I am absolutely certain is that I did not cause the crack, i.e. it is not my fault. I rang the garage and asked if such things were covered by warranty, since it was obviously faulty.

The chap on the other end snorted and said something along the lines of "Well, it is a windscreen. What do you expect?".  When I mentioned that I did not expect it to break of its own accord he then asked if there had been any rioting or other activity outside my house which might result in such damage. I said that I was pretty confident that nothing of that nature had happened,  I'm sure I would have noticed rampaging street gangs. As far as he was concerned it was not a matter for the manufacturer (i.e. the person who made the car and windows) but the owner (i.e. the person who bought a new car specifically to avoid having to pay for things that drop off it).

So you can make windscreens as duff as you like and if they break it is not your fault. Never. In fact it gets better, since when the screen breaks the poor sucker with the car has  to buy a new one. So you can generate new business simply by turning out screens which self destruct like mine has. 

The only good news is that it is covered by insurance, but it still means I have to mess around getting it fixed and stump up an excess. No fair.

Got me a bug

I have always envied Peter his bug. He got it a while back and he reckons it is very nice.  Yesterday in Tesco (is there a day when I don't go shopping?) they had one at a very nice price. So I now have my own bug.

It is a digital radio which can also record to memory card. I want to use it in the kitchen.  At the moment the kitchen radio only works properly if the dishwasher is open - no, I've no idea why this is - and I was looking to improve matters.  I was expecting to have to add a special aerial and stuff like that because we are in a kind of "Bermuda Triangle" where things like radios are concerned. However, it just works.  Very impressed. It pulls in a good signal and now I can listen to all the childrens programs on BBC Radio 7.  Great stuff.

Dinner with friends

 
They had nice flowers

Went out for dinner tonight. Of course I was my usual witty and urbane self. I just hope that they'll invite us back anyway.

Durham Discussions

Jolly boating weather

Drove up to Durham to see number one son today.  After we had got together and sat down for a coffee we had a discussion about who said what last time we met up.....

With the way that portable memory is getting cheaper and cheaper I can forsee a time when we all wear a thing which records everything we say and do (I think HP and Microsoft have played with these in the past). Then there will be none of the "But I distinctly remember that you said...." moments. Instead we will all just rewind to the precise point in time when the words were uttered and then argue about what they meant at the time.... Not sure if this is progress or not though....

An Apology

Sorry about this folks. No idea what made me think of it:

"We might have room for you on our hyperventilation course Mr. Miles. But I wouldn't hold your breath..."

Russian Reactor Dreams

I blame Sky One. I had a dream last night that I had been made in charge of a Russian nuclear reactor. They had given me a bright yellow survival suit outfit (like they wear in the movies). I was sitting at home in this thing (trying it out for comfort) and reading through some reports which were all written in Russian on bright yellow paper. They seemed to have the Russian for "Urgent" and "Danger of explosion" written all over them, although I'm not completely sure as I can't read the language.

I was just inspecting a datestamp on one of the more impressive looking warnings, and trying to find out if it was in the future or the past (not sure how Russians order their dates) when number one wife looked over my shoulder at the page.

"You ought to get one of those" she said, pointing at a picture of a complicated thing that looked like a reactor seal or something. "It only costs 25". I looked at the number and was about to explain that 25 could mean feet high, million Roubles (or kopecks or whatever) or years old when I heard an alarm in the distance....

Fortunately, at this point I woke up.

Decisions, Decisions...

In the TV guide in the paper today describing the Sky One program "10.5 Apocalypse":

Sam has a terrible decision to make when the fault line heads towards the United States' biggest nuclear reactors...

Yeah. Right. Like "Which are my best shoes for running away at great speed?".

And since when have fault lines wandered around the planet?

Uncontrolled Laughter

Not sure how to interpret this message.

Did a talk today for our ACE event, where we invite local students from local schools to take a look  at our university. It went very well, and the audience were great.  The Middleton Hall, where I gave the talk, has this really posh presenter control thing which I got to play with. And I used my new laser pointer. To point at things! Wow! (perhaps I am too easily impressed - even at my age). Anyhoo, we had a good time, and I'm doing it all over again next week.  Just hope that the dog behaves better next time.

Before the talk, the shadow of "the man".

The audience being wowed by Digby, again. Digby has his own group on my Flickr site if you want to see more pictues of him in inaction.

Spoiler Spoiler

Sans Spoiler...

Do you want a spoiler for your Bongo Friendee? Dave next door  does, but then there are other people out on the internet who do as well. With one minute left the item was priced at 51 quid. I was under instructions to go as far as 70 so, in the last minute of bidding with only seconds to go, I fired off my one and only bid.

And somebody else got the spoiler for 93.50.   Wah.

World Cup?

 

A football cup. Probably more than England will see this year.

Anyone who knows me will be aware of the level of regard in which I hold the game of football. Which makes my acquisition of the above mug actually a deeply ironic statement. (but it does hold a lot of tea and it was free).

York Ducks

I've no idea what make of birds they are. But I'm pretty sure that the big one is mummy.

Took number one daughter back to York today. She mentioned that the ducks all over campus were looking quite photogenic. So I took the big camera and proper lens and grabbed a few pictures. There are more on my Flickr site.

Green Hull

Went up town today (no surprises there). But the weather was great and the place had been grassed over. Which is a bit more surprising. It was a BBC thing to do with the start of spring. Which is only a few months late I suppose.

Old Joke

Just found this joke in my old blog. So good that I want to share it with you all again:

Q: What does a magician say when he makes a corpse appear out of nowhere?

A: Abracadaver

Links to the past

I'm in the process of adding a links part to this site. This will include all my writings, going back deep into the past. I've even found some of my very old blog posts (as far back as 2003). No, they aren't very funny either. 

The DaVinci Code as a force for good

Went to see "The DaVinci Code" tonight. I'm the one person left who hasn't read the book, (I did this specially so I could approach the film with an open mind). It is an OK film staring Tom Hanks, his hair (which I think deserves special billing) and Audrey Tatou (who seems to have attended the "Allo Allo" school of acting specially for her part). It was directed by that red headed kid from Happy Days.

I knew something was up when one of the dodgy cardinals turned out to be Dr. Octopus from Spiderman. OK, so he had dropped down to the normal number of limbs but there was no mistaking that leer and wonky accent.  Things got even stranger when the symbol of one of the mysterious sects turned out to be the same as is used by the Boy Scouts in the UK. In fact I remember having a woggle with the same emblem on when I was a kid. If  only I'd known what I was getting into....

Then we were into a maelstrom of double dealing detectives, secret banks, image processed artworks, strange codes, flights across europe and lots of other staples of the adventure movie.  The killer albino monk with a penchant for Mr. Whippy added a certain extra something to the proceedings, although I've been wondering how you fight against someone who enjoys pain as much as he seemed to. Give him a cushion? Perhaps a nice cup of tea? Tricky.

Everything moved at breakneck speed, almost in real time. Nobody paused for breath. I only saw them actually eat once, and that was interrupted by a raid by the french police. These people had the stamina of true academics.  Normally there is a lull in the action when you get to know the characters a bit. Not in this film. I don't think that Audrey got to take her coat off at any point.

Even with my lack of foreknowledge spotting the baddie turned out to be even easier than usual. A clue: It isn't Tom. Or Audrey.

There has been a lot of talk in the press about how the underlying tenet of the movie strikes at the very heart of the christian religion. Well, all I can say is that any church that feels under threat from a very implausible story with holes in it through which you could drive a double decker bus with an oil tanker on its roof rack is indeed in trouble.

If you sit through it to the end (and everybody in the packed cinema seemed to manage this) you will find a rather uplifting message concerning the importance of faith above all else.  Which only added value to the experience.

New .NET Micro Stuff

I've added a new article to the .NET Micro Framework area of the site. It has a sample program which flashes an LED. On Saturday I bought some switches, so the next step is to write a program which uses a switch to control a light........

Dalby Noise Reduction

Went to the Dalby Forest today. The weather forecast was pretty horrible, it is a Bank Holiday and so we knew we were taking a gamble. But it paid off. Weather was great and it was very quiet when we arrived. We had a walk around the Bridestones. These are lumps of stone which for some reason or other haven't eroded like the rest of the valley. So they stick up out of the ground in a rather impressive way.

By midday we confidently expected to be underneath a lot of rain, but as it turned out we weren't.  We even had a chance to walk around Staindale Lake.

There are more pictures on Flickr.

On the way round the walk we bumped into a few people who had also ignored the weather forecast and sallied forth. They always seemed to be chatting about something. We discussed things you culd say to be overheard by someone as they pass you on a country walk:

• "...we buried it quite a long way from the footpath. I don't think anyone will find it in a hurry...."
• "...apparently the plan is to put runway one just over that hill....."
• "...and they say that even today he wanders the moors looking for victims..."