Mon, 4 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0100
Monday, 4 July 2005 :
the Virtual Spongy Animal of the Day is a Duck!
![[ Duck.jpg ]](http://www.tartarus.org/~gareth/stuff/spongy/Duck.jpg)
Quack! Quack! Bear that in mind.
Sun, 03 Jul 2005 22:49:59 GMT
---------------------------------------------------[Sun Jul 03 23:49:59 2005]--
From: (S) Cow milking enclosure (steph)
Subject: Is
That's it. I've had enough. It is obvious to _everyone_ that this reduction
in anti-depressant dose is doing me no favours at all. I'm jittery about
everyday things, nervous about anything out of the ordinary, even more
reactionary and curmudgeonly than usual, and far too often prone to finding my
eyes welling with tears for no clear and present reason. Hell, I'm even
missing some of the side-effects.
I shall make an appointment with my GP tomorrow and see if I can persuade him
that I still appear to be a bit of a wreck without them. (And in the meantime
up my dose to what it was before I most recently started to reduce it.)
LJ
Sun, 03 Jul 2005 22:46:28 GMT
Multi-excuse party
We had a party yesterday at home: my and Tony's pre-wedding not-hen-and-stag-night, my birthday, Steph's birthday and Pete's birthday (whose birthday it actually was). There was lots of booze and silly amounts of cake (Tony & I bought three birthday cakes, and then the neighbours brought round three home-made ones), and barbecue and interesting people and random underwear removal and silly photographs of people and general good stuff. My bridesmaids brought me a bright scarlet sash saying "Bride To Be" with flashing LEDs. They know me so well. I wore it all the way through, and then hung it on Keith when I went to bed.
We'd settled on it being an invitation-only event, partly out of respect for the capacity of the house, and partly to keep it from blurring into all the other summer barbecue parties we have. Each host invited approximately ten guests, not all of whom turned up (not least because the organisation ended up slipping until we gave very short notice), and it was very pleasant to meet some new people from both Steph's and Pete's guest list, and to catch up with some friends I don't see often enough. I surprised myself with how long I lasted - the strategy of sitting down at every opportunity and letting other people do as much as possible organisationally seemed to pay off.
When I did eventually go to bed, Tony came with me to kiss me goodnight, which somehow turned into a long loving sweet serious conversation. Things we hadn't had time to talk through since I got out of hospital, things we'll probably continue to talk about on the honeymoon. We talked until far too late but it was worth it. I caught up on the missed sleep (and some extra) this afternoon.
Sun, 03 Jul 2005 22:21:54 GMT
To round off the series…
31. Cole, Stephen.
To The Slaughter32. Parkin, Lance.
The Gallifrey ChroniclesThese two round out the
EDA series. In both of them Fitz and Trix get lots of quality air-time, and the Doctor is (comparatively) background.
To The Slaughter is a bit on the mediocre side – of the
Doctor unearths a conspiracy and saves some stuff
variety.
The Gallifrey Chronicles is very much a
tie up all the loose ends
volume. We do get to discover part of why Trix acts so strangely, but the
Grand Master Plan to resurrect Gallifrey
that's been rumoured in fandom for some time turns out to be rather hogwash. Still, they're both enjoyable books, and (unlike many people) I like the ending of
The Gallifrey Chronicles; even if the entire book kept on giving me
So Long And Thanks For All The Fish flashbacks.
I've also picked up a second-hand
The Shadows of Avalon, so I hopefully have a complete EDA collection. Next thing to do is to collate it, ensure it's all there, and then rattle through the whole thing as quickly as possible – some of the books on that list I haven't read since 1997….
What I can't find right now, is a comprehensive list of EDAs in order. If I can't find one I'll have to make a
Wikipedia page….
Sun, 03 Jul 2005 22:07:39 GMT
Pleasant weekend
Friday night Mike and I went out: dinner at Nando's, Sin City at the Cineworld and picked up Magic Numbers tickets from the Junction box office before heading home through the rain.
Saturday I had the world's longest lie in, and got up as Mike was getting *back* from the bike shop, with new saddle and fixed wheels and gears. Pottered around their house for a while til Ian wanted his computer for Aliens, then came home, had some lunch, dyed my hair, and headed out partying. Small gathering at Nursery Walk celebrating 3 birthdays and a forthcoming wedding was pleasant: though since it had been going on since 12:30 everyone had got quite a head start on the booze compared to me. A couple of people demonstrated the technique for removing a bra without taking your top off, and Keith ended up challenged to do the same trick with pants and trousers. By some minor miracle he did in fact succeed. I'm not sure the elastic in them will ever be the same again. A toast in bubbly, some excellent cake, a couple of burgers and some nice chats later I headed back to GR to help Ian celebrate his new job offer.
Today my lie in was somewhat shorter, and breakfast has already been documented. Ian didn't want his computer til much later in the afternoon this time, so I got to potter around there and geek most of the afternoon. At home I've been trying to get my poor washing (left in the machine too long) to stop smelling horrid. With little success. Perhaps I should dry it, run the machine empty to clean it, and then try washing things again. A bad mistake to make anyway. Other than that I've been quietly geeking with a pleasant snacky sort of dinner and some knitting for when irc goes quiet. Current project is a stripey hat for Mike. It's not going *quite* as planned (this is what you get for just making things up without thinking about them in enough detail first). Oh well, it's a learning experience, and I'll have enough wool to knit a more sensibly shaped one too.
Bedtime soon. Looking forward to Mike finishing his glasto writeup though :-)
Sun, 03 Jul 2005 21:42:53 GMT
Edinburgh was pleasantly warm but not hot, just the way I like it. I have a kilt now, but am still smarting a bit from how expensive train tickets are sans Railcard. In purely petrol terms it's probably cheaper for me to drive there & back now.
In amongst being in Edinburgh and work having generally taken over my life I seem to have almost completely overlooked the fact that I turn 33 tomorrow. I haven't given a thought to holding a party - there being a somewhat more important party next weekend! - but I don't have a very functional living room just now so it would be a bit of an odd party anyway ...
Sun, 03 Jul 2005 16:15:52 GMT
I just saw on some flour that the product was sutiable for pies tarts and flans and (elsewhere) that it was suitable for vegitarians, though not for the gluten intollerant.
Which got me wondering whether you were a pie, a tart, or a flan?
Sun, 03 Jul 2005 15:54:42 GMT
Weird dreams
I had a series of dreams last night where I had accidentally been identified as a conceptual artist, and had to design an installation at the Tate Modern. It wasn't clear why I couldn't just tell them about the mistake!
In the first dream I decided that I would pump water up onto the top floor, and let it all drip down through the condiuts and ceilings of the building, down to the basement, and then pump it back to the top again, and all the plaster would come off the walls and the light fittings be destroyed in unpredicatble ways, and perhaps evenually the building would collapse. They didn't like this idea, so I decided that I would install little gutterways and holes through the ceilings on various floors, and banches and waterfalls, and estuaries, and so on, scattered around the building, which people would come across as they wandered through the building. Perhaps where the gutterways were particularly wide, there would be little bridges.
In the second dream, I decided that, following on from the big sun that was in there, I would just fill the entire turbine hall with water in a fierce storm or downpour type effect, again pumping water up from the floor back into the ceiling. And I'd provide umbrellas.
The third dream was the longest (I was slowly waking up, I like Sundays!). In that, I had a display which I called "Hymen" which was a series of exhibitions in connected rooms, which was obviously influenced by the bloke with the goldfish in the blender. In the first room, there were two kind of sarcofogi, a bit like Egyptian mummy's, identical, rigid, but very close fitting and anotomical, and self-supporting. They would both be hollow, but inside one was a person, and the other was empty. They would stand next to each other, and you wouldn't be able to tell which was which. In the main room there was a similar arrangement, with another rigid "sarcophagous" except this was in the fetal position, and was suspended from all four corners of a wall by springs, like expensive microphones are with their stands. There was "the artist" inside, again totally inaccessible by the people viewing the exhibit, and vice versa. There were cables leading in, which would give the person inside an unpleasant, but harmless, electric shock.
Each command wire was connected to a separate display. The first was a button you could press to give the person inside a shock. The second had a hundred buttons, one of which would give a shock. The third was the same, one would give a shock, but all hundred would display a random erotic image on a wall projector. The forth was the same, except the image would be a short film about the painting style of an old master. The final one had a hundred buttons, one of which gave a shock, and all hundred, after a second's delay, displayed on a large screen, whether or not you had shocked the person inside.
Sun, 03 Jul 2005 15:10:51 GMT
After going to support people at the Race for Life this morning, I decided it was a nice day for an bit of a bike ride.
However, about 5 miles outside Cambridge on the
A603 Comberton turn-off, I had a small problem with the bike. The pedal fell off. Again. Last time that happened, it was the crank that snapped. This time the bottom-bracket sheared.
Many thanks to
![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
pjc50 for driving out and rescuing me.
Sun, 03 Jul 2005 12:59:35 GMT
27:45 by their clock. Or 27:33 from when I crossed the start line to when I crossed the finish line (managed to start fairly close to the front, which was good.)
Maybe I'll do a big review later. It's probably enough to say that this is my fastest time for 5km by a bit, and that I've got blisters now and am a bit tired. Debating whether or not to go watch Helen finish the race this afternoon, or just to go to sleep!
*Is chuffed*.
Sun, 03 Jul 2005 12:23:17 GMT
Shopping...
So I went through the Glasto reviews, and made myself a shopping list. Then I looked at the price and took some of them back out of the basket. Another time.
1 "So Much for the City"
Thrills; Audio CD; £6.99
1 "Cold Water Songs"
Broken Family Band; Audio CD; £11.99
1 "Let There Be Rockgrass"
Hayseed Dixie; Audio CD; £7.99
1 "I'm Wide Awake It's Morning"
Bright Eyes; Audio CD; £10.99
1 "Silent Alarm"
Bloc Party; Audio CD; £7.97
1 "Bleed Like Me"
Garbage; Audio CD; £8.99
1 "Elevator"
Hot Hot Heat; Audio CD; £9.99
1 "The Magic Numbers"
Magic Numbers; Audio CD; £8.99
All on 24 hour dispatch so hopefully will be here soon!
Sun, 03 Jul 2005 10:53:08 GMT
Breakfast
Quavers, 3 crumpets, olives, fruit and fibre, lindt milk chocolate, black coffee, and the rest of last night's glass of vodka and red bull. That's normal right?
Sun, 03 Jul 2005 07:41:57 GMT
Books 88-110
I've been reading a
lot of books in the last three weeks.
88. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffreyI remember when I saved my money for weeks for new books, and this copy is now old and battered. I had a sudden urge to reread it anyway.
89. Diaspora, Greg EganI read this on recommendation from Ian Jackson, without which I might not have stuck past the preface and the first chapter, which hit too high a density of invented words for me. I'm glad I did, as it's a good read once I got past being irritated with the vocabulary.
90. The Little Broomstick, Mary Stewart91. Ludo and the Star Horse, Mary Stewart93. A Walk In Wolf Wood, Mary StewartIn a change from dashing post-war heroines, Mary Stewart wrote these three children's fantasy stories. The story-telling quality is still as high, and utterly enjoyable.
92. Touch Not The Cat, Mary Stewart94. Thornyhold, Mary StewartAnother change again, back to adult romantic suspense, but with some fantasy elements woven in.
95. Stormy Petrel, Mary Stewart96. Rose Cottage, Mary StewartAnd finally two "straight" adult suspense stories, with the usual beautiful evocation of landscape.
97. Tell Me Lies, Jenny Crusie98. Crazy For You, Jenny Crusie99. Welcome To Temptation, Jenny Crusie100. Fast Women, Jenny Crusie101. Bet Me, Jenny CrusieThese five are
brilliant - really. Romantic comedy, excellently written, especially on the comedy side. These five kept me sane during a tough weekend. I thoroughly recommend. People should borrow them off me, along with
Faking It which was my introduction to Jenny Crusie. There's a certain amount of similarity between the six books when read all together, but even so, these are by far the funniest, most entertaining books I've read in a long time.
102. So You Want To Be A Wizard, Diane DuaneI've read
The Book of Night With Moon and
On Her Majesty's Service, and I wanted to read the original series of children's books. I knew which was the first and thought I'd start with that (especially as I bought this with the following Duane books on the nominal excuse of an entirely different series ...)
103. The Wounded Sky, Diane Duane104. My Enemy, My Ally, Diane Duane105. The Romulan Way, Diane Duane106. Doctor's Orders, Diane DuaneThoroughly enjoyable, well-written, Star Trek novels. My first introduction to Diane Duane was
Spock's World: while movie/tv tie-in books can often be dire, the Star Trek ones are usually reasonable quality and Diane's are consistently good. I need to find the rest of her Star Trek books now.
107. Stealing the Elf-King's Roses, Diane DuaneThis one I picked up "while I was there" as the Abebooks-connected bookstore had it along with all the other Duane books I was getting, and am glad I did so. Kept my attention thoroughly, provoked some interesting thoughts, and in general the contents more than made up for the rather dodgy American cover. Fantasy/mystery/alternate universe stuff, not related (as far as I know) to her other books. It doesn't feel like the sort of book that could stand a sequel.
108. The Brother Quest, Lori Handeland109. Small-Town Girl, CJ Carmichael110. The Wrong Man, Laura AbbotI know I'm tired and ill when all I want to read is Mills & Boon.
I also bought and tried to read
Attention All Shipping by Charlie Connelly, which is a sort of travelogue around the places named in the shipping forecast. It's a neat idea, and it's similar in style to Iain Banks's wonderful
Raw Spirit. However, Mr Banks did it far better, and I found Mr Connelly neither as funny nor attention-holding so gave up halfway through when I had a better choice of books available. It's on Tony's queue now - I'll be interested to see whether he finds it better or worse than I did.
Sat, 02 Jul 2005 18:31:43 GMT
Glastonbury 2005, in images
Sat, 02 Jul 2005 15:09:00 GMT
I've got 7 1/2 books of Green Shield Stamps here. Wonder what that's worth, then.
Sat, 02 Jul 2005 13:06:12 GMT
Good mummy day. We've been making moonscapes.
Fri, 01 Jul 2005 17:30:14 GMT
tags
Just for fun, I've amended my tag settings. Anyone can add tags already defined; all my friends-list can add and define new tags.
The tagging concept seems to me one that is likely to benefit from the maximum user input.
Fri, 01 Jul 2005 17:24:36 GMT
Progress
I slept most of yesterday afternoon, woke up in time to do the most urgent accounts (in order to pay the mortgage today) and rewarded myself in the evening with a trip to the pub. We taxied there and walked back, partly me testing my limits, partly laziness. It was nice to see people and natter, though I hope I didn't go on too much about Me Me Me things.
Today I've split time between the desk and the sofa, and dozed sometimes but not slept. Caught up on LJ, finished the accounts for this month, and managed a first-pass through my email, deleting or filing as much as is instantly possible. I may have a minor crisis about taking over Treasurer of CUMC, as the current incumbent graduates today and is going home to South Africa. However, there's not much I can practically do except mail her all my contact details and tell her to find me if she can before she goes.
Also managed to coax people into being ushers and readers next Saturday, having insisted Tony and I sit down yesterday to pick people from those coming. This means no barriers in the way of typesetting the Order of Service, which is the last really essential thing for the wedding, and in Tony's capable hands. From my email-skimming, my immensely talented bridesmaids have the reception-planning under control too. Hurrah for delegation.
I'm struggling with the Grisham I've been reading. Superromances seem to be more what my tired brain can manage when I need a break from the computer, and I'm half-way through the second today.
Amy and Lee completed their house purchase today - Amy got her keys around lunchtime and moved her bags out some hours ago. I'm assuming she'll be back at some point, but not sure. With Kate off for the summer, the house is going to seem a bit empty over the next month until Andrew moves in.
Tomorrow is our pre-wedding/birthday/birthday/birthday party. I'm really glad I roped extra people into the party in the first place, because I am all out of organise at the moment. Off to doze/read a bit more now I think.
Fri, 01 Jul 2005 17:00:00 GMT
It's a one-time thing (it just happens a lot)
Suzanne VegaCambridge Corn Exchange, 30th June 2005I'd seen
Suzanne Vega perform twice, maybe three times before last night? The uncertainty is because all the previous occasions have been at festivals, so it's harder to distinguish between one muddy field and another. (Sometimes, even, hard to be sure if I was there at all.) Last night's performance came as a refreshingly civilised change from all that (particularly given that I'm still in the Glastonbury recovery period), being a seated concert in a good venue where the sound-tech crew haven't been at the scrumpy all day and I can actually
see the stage.
Not that there's much to see: Vega is understated in her movements, barely shifting from her spot except to pick up and put down her guitar, and occasionally confer with the bassist (
Mike Visceglia) who provides her only other accompaniment. When she does move, though, it's with poise and assurance -- the same assurance that infuses all her songs.
The striking thing about her music is how crystal clear every note and every word is. She plays from a back catalogue that goes back to her eponymous debut album from 1985 (though 1990's
Days of Open Hand seems to have been quietly dropped from her playlist altogether), but all the songs retain their crispness and newness, still glittering with beautifully-observed images and rippling with the ringing guitar sound which is her trademark. Admirably, she mostly manages to retain this freshness without substantially altering anything -- "Cracking" replicates the album version note for note, but it's
alive, there's an extra dimension, more play of shadows and light. When she does make alterations to the style, they sound less like cover versions and more like privileged close-up views of the original songs -- as with "Blood Makes Noise", which is stripped to its bare essentials, Vega's intense voice set against the dark and punchy pulse of Visceglia's bass.
The new songs -- "Unbound", "Anniversary, "Rosemary" -- are promising, though noticeably not as polished as the rest of her material. "Unbound" is a simple, slight lyric which sounds (appropriately for its metaphor of rootbound plants) as though it needs growing into. "Anniversary" is poetic and moving, though it didn't really gain anything except expectations from the explanation of its origins in the anniversary of 9/11. "Rosemary", a characteristically bittersweet vignette, was by far the most finished of the three. Taken as a whole, though, if these are a sign of the direction the new material is taking then it's a direction I'll gladly be following.
Her second encore ends with a version of Rodgers & Hart's "Have you met Miss Jones?", with the lyrics changed (as by Ella Fitzgerald) to "Have you met Sir Jones?" -- it seems an odd choice, but she manages to give the song a smoky jazz feel (helped out by a virtuoso bass solo as Visceglia is allowed free rein at last) without turning it into a novelty number. (The real novelty number is, sadly, "Tom's Diner", which becomes an audience participation item. Self-awareness saves it, though; "That wasn't a
bad Tom's Diner," Vega says. "You're better than Newcastle.")
Vega bids the audience goodbye without fanfare or fuss, and there's a slight feeling of something left unfinished as the audience applauds politely. But then, what are her songs but stories left half-told? The clarity of those songs is not just about the words and the notes, it's about the spaces between them; there's a richness of detail and an intensity of emotion, and yet there's always a secret hidden core which shapes the songs and yet remains silent -- "a silence more eloquent than any words could ever be". And it flies by, and is gone.
a Linux distribution for the Linksys WRT54G
Christian Alliance For Progress
Fri, 01 Jul 2005 12:05:57 GMT
Things I like about Scotland:- It isn't properly dark at midnight in the middle of summer. (I had forgotten this...)
- Soft Scottish water makes a cracking cup of tea.
Things I dislike about Scotland:- Not being able to stick around here for longer - but this time around, it seems that avoiding the rally is a good idea!
Have experimentally enabled tags on this journal and filled in a few on recent entries. Even more experimentally, they're open to my entire friends list.
Fri, 01 Jul 2005 10:57:45 GMT
Meme
Finally I saw one of these I had an answer to, and figured having answered one I should let others do me too.
Please leave a one-word comment that you think best describes me. It can only be one word.
No more.
Then copy & paste this in your journal so that I may leave a word about you.
Fri, 01 Jul 2005 10:06:34 GMT
Gigs...
The Magic Numbers are playing at the Junction on Wednesday October 12th, tickets are £10. I'm going, Mike's going if he's still here, anyone else want to join us? Given the reaction they got at Glasto and resulting publicity I won't be surprised if it sells out. Details
Fri, 01 Jul 2005 09:46:16 GMT
N.B.
To anyone confused about the date of the Battle of the Boyne, I wrote
a monograph on this subject last year.
Fri, 01 Jul 2005 09:36:57 GMT
Blatant plug: Wicken Proms, TOMORROW
The
Cambridge Concert Orchestra will be giving a concert tomorrow, at 7pm, in Wicken. It's an outdoor concert, so you can take advantage of the glorious heatwave we're having (stop smirking at the back there!) and bring a picnic (marquees are available for shelter or shade) and listen to some bouncy music. You could even bring the whole picnic-hamper-and-candelabra assemblage and pretend you're at Glyndebourne. And all this for the frankly bargain price of £3.50!
The programme includes music from films and shows ("My Fair Lady", "The Empire Strikes Back", "Where Eagles Dare") and a lot of random fun stuff. We're also doing some of the traditional Last Night of the Proms stuff, so you'll get an opportunity to bob up and down and honk your hooter (oo-er) if that's what floats your boat.
So here's those details again:
Wicken Proms
7pm, Saturday 2nd July
The Camping Field, Stretham Road, Wicken
All proceeds are going to the Wicken Church vestry project. (Apparently they're building new toilets, but I guess "Wicken Church loo project" doesn't sound as good.)
Fri, 01 Jul 2005 09:17:42 GMT
Fri, 01 Jul 2005 09:11:39 GMT
Uuurrgh
For the past few days I've felt very tired and apathetic. This morning, after what seemed like an excellent night's sleep, I feel as if what I need is to go straight back to bed for another excellent night's sleep. This is not normal, so I assume I'm ill in some fashion.
It might be a nonspecific viral uurgh of some sort, but actually I'm rather tempted to speculatively correlate it with accidentally being fed gluten on Tuesday evening. I'm not quite sure how I feel about that. On the one hand it would be pretty annoying to think that my entire week could be ruined by a small amount of undeclared soy sauce in a home-made beefburger, but on the other hand I've never before seen any perceptible symptoms of coeliac disease and it was also rather annoying to think that I was going through all this dietary hassle on nothing but a gastroenterologist's say-so; so it might be a relief to think that I am actually getting some benefit out of it.
Meanwhile at work, almost everybody in the office has disappeared to go to a marketing presentation. I avoid these (they're voluntary) on the grounds that marketing bores the wossnames off me; but when nobody else is in the room for an hour I occasionally start to wonder if I've missed some vital point and they're actually more interesting than they sound. Or if everyone here is actually expected to go to these presentations and I'm blighting my future career by sitting here doing real work instead. Or, in fact, any of the other collection of feelings normally grouped together under the umbrella term ‘peer pressure’. Bah. I avoided most of that at school (the really cool people smoke and drink already, the middling-cool ones can be persuaded, but nobody has any interest in even trying to persuade the geeky outcasts) and it's slightly annoying to find it turning up in the workplace :-/
Thu, 30 Jun 2005 21:49:13 GMT
Because
Reading much milSF gives me desires to play Strategic level milSF games.
Thu, 30 Jun 2005 20:37:32 GMT
I wish people wouldn't put random crap in my recycling bin. It's difficult enough for me to keep on top of my own rubbish without having to fish other people's rubbish out of a repellent-smelling bin that's deeper than my arm is long. Of course on this occasion I can see that, having already filled my other bin up with their random crap, my recycling bin was the only space that was left, but FFS. Can we not deport these toerags, or something? And, you'd think the council binmen would recognise takeaway detritus as probably not the fault of the resident householder and not implement sanctions against you.
Thu, 30 Jun 2005 20:26:32 GMT
Gosh
I feel kind of blank now I've written all that up.
Quiet night in tonight anyway, nice food bought on the way home, and some rearranging of my room, and this writing. A pleasant way to pass the time. 6Music on while I type too, which makes a nice change. Knitting now I think. I keep meaning to catch up with cam.misc and uk.misc but they're just too large and daunting to be bothered right now.
Thu, 30 Jun 2005 20:16:01 GMT
Glastonbury 2005, part 3
Well, not much left to go:
Sunday morning began, as is traditional, with the Town Band playing on the pyramid stage. They opened with the imperial march from Star Wars, which is a glorious tune, and continued with various things including a medley with Beatles tracks in and the theme to Hawaii 5 O - which made me smile particularly since our band used to play it when I was a kid. We watched and listened from up at the tent, which was good for the loud bits but I think we lost a lot of the quieter stuff. After that the next act on stage were a belly dancing troupe! Mike and I went down to see them from closer up, and discovered the front near the stage was now like standing in a hay stack. But the dancing was nice to watching, especially in the sunshine.
After that we headed over to the John Peel tent hoping to catch a band called Client who Mike has vaguely heard of - only to discover while waiting and reading Q Daily that the entire programme had moved up a slot due to the headliner (Ryan something?) pulling out. So instead Gear were playing, and they were quite nice boring indie :-) Boring enough for Mike anyway, especially when we realised that in fact Client weren't going to be on next after all, because Hard-Fi had had to pull out too, so they were on in the evening instead. It was definitely a bit of a shock to find that the clashfinder (which Ned had printed out for us in advance, and which we'd highlighted and had relied on happily all weekend) was no longer our friend - at least for that stage. But worse news from Q was that Cake was cancelled. I'd been quite looking forward to seeing them, and for Ed they had been the expected high point of the weekend. Bum.
This news all left a bit of a gap in my intended schedule. We wandered over to The Crown near the Other Stage to catch Rick and Ed, hearing a bit of Thirteen Senses on the way past (Mike rather disparagingly said they sounded lots like Coldplay) and bought some beer, then suddenly realised that in fact because Cake were no longer on we could go and watch Jools instead, which we'd all ruled out because of the clash and promptly forgotten about. So that's what we did, and sat in the sunshine pleasantly chilled out for a while. Faye and Art spotted me as I wandered past them and texted a hello ("was that you in the pink stripey hat?") so when Jools took his bow I wandered over to join them for Van Morrison, and was pleased to fing doop too. Faye lent me sunblock, Art bought me chips, doop bought me cider - I definitely owe you all a pint. And we sat and talked and listened, and chatted to the nice couple sitting next to us and their smallish boy. And well, it was *great. He played a lot of lovely feel good music and we did. And as he played Gloria near the end doop and I got up to dance, and were briefly caught in the act (short video clip avi, 3.4MB) - oh dear oh dear. Joools and Van together with the sun beating down was just perfect glastonbury relaxation for me though. Glorious.
After he was done I went for a wander, pottered up through the circus field and looked in lots of the shops and at the strange statue things. Tried on rings with no success, and looked at cute cuddly frogs, but in the end didn't buy anything. Then back through the main market area stopping for some food and just taking it easy, while Brian Wilson played. More nachos to eat, this time with Buffalo chilli, which was indistinguishable from ordinary beef actually, plus guacamole and sour cream and cheese and salsa - yum. Then it was time to potter back to the main stage for Garbage. Tried to get hold of various people but failed entirely, so find myself a spot to the right of the sound stage where I could see both stage and screen and settled down to sit comfortably through a good set. Shirley Manson stealing a blow up sex doll from the crowd and climbing on top of it and crooning a song into its face was priceless. And she bounded back and forth along the stage in her stripey minidress with great energy. Lots of the hits, good stuff. Well worth seeing.
The rearrangement of the John Peel stage meant that the next band on were LCD Soundsystem, and Bright Eyes were going to finish. This cheered Mike up no end since it meant he could go see Tori Amos in the acoustic tent without missing the latter. But while just about everyone I know seemed to go with him, and apparently it was very good, I decided LCD Soundsystem were more my cup of tea. The sea of mud en route was gone, and I had time to buy a couple of odds and ends: a very pink studded belt for me, a couple of bracelets for Mike and a squeaky duck keyring for rjk (not that I'm pred or anything) and to grab a waffle with strawberries and chocolate sauce, before joining a very long loo queue and having an amusing conversation with a couple of people in front of me. Not that they'd been taking E and turning extremely cheery and garrulous as a result or anything - oh no. LCD Soundsystem were good anyway, though I did feel I'd have done better to go inside to listen, and to have heard the album a few more times before seeing them live.
It seems nearly all the rest of the gang (Mike, Ed, Jamie, Rick, Ben, Johnny, Ned) all came over for Bright Eyes. Mike led me and Jamie into the crowd and got separated from us during the first track. Then there was a long pause. There was a technical problem but he just stood there looking like a muppet and was a bit cross with us for not being enthusiastic enough. A couple of tracks later Jamie decided he'd had enough and went to find something more cheerful. And at the end of that track there was another glitch and another silence, and we were encouraged to clap our credit cards together because it was all for making Poverty History, and to be honest at that point I think I decided he was a bit of a wanker. I'd had enough of being in the increasingly bemused and pissed off in places crowd, and headed for the edge and a sit down. Moments later Johnny emerged too, and joined the others who it turned out were right at the back edge, and they all decided they'd had too much and left. I stayed however, and despite the repeated cynical jabs at John Peel and Make Poverty History the music remained good so it was worth it, even if it was the oddest gig I've ever seen - especially for a finalé! He cheered up a bit right at the end though, for the amusing reason (which I couldn't see from my spot on the floor) that a naked girl came on stage and snogged him lots. Way to go. And soon that was that.
Mike and I wandered to find the others, and discovered Jamie where expected. Later determined Ed, Rick and Johnny were backstage and after much faffage Jamie headed off to sleep and Mike and I were brought out passes and could go in to join them. They've got quite a nice bar behind the East dance tent it seems, with sofas and big tables and chairs, and a DJ was playing too. We didn't stay terribly long though since Johnny was shattered and needed to be up in the morning and we left him nodding off into his pint. The pie stall next door turned out to be a favourite haunt of Ed and Rick, and we were tempted into trying their wares. Real mushy peas for the first time in ages, plus pie and mash and cheese and gravy: great. We wandered off stuffing our faces (having decided the silent disco queue was just too much) and bought some "recycled fuel" on the way back to the tent to light a campfire. It was strange up in the field since various gaps had appeared from people leaving early, and with the lack of landmarks people kept getting lost. But it did mean there was more space to light the fire in. Which promptly went out several times and had to be coaxed with lots of loo roll and torn up stella box. By the time it finally got into its stride it was 4am and we were flaking out, so we went to bed just as it was beginning to get light.
Monday morning it was kind of sad to wake up around 9:30 and know it was time to go. We packed up in reasonable time, and Jamie kindly gave me, Mike and Ed a lift off site in the car, which was quite a hike away. It's annoying being the least fit one because you're constantly struggling not to get any more left behind than you are already and going as fast as you can the whole time, while they're pottering more gently *and* get to rest a bit while waiting for you to catch up now and then. We made it eventually though, and the drive off site only to 15-30 mins or so, despite the usual dire warnings to avoid the busy times and the fear of mud. We drove off through the pretty countryside in the sunshine, with the car complaining of all that weight. Reached Chippenden station in time for the 12:55 train to Paddington, and hence missed all the crush of queueing for buses and trains, which was fabulous. And we spent the train journey chatting and playing I-Spy with the people on the table next to us: 3 teenage girls and the mum of two of them, who hadn't been able to get Glasto tickets this year and were heading off to London to see Coldplay as a treat to make up for it. They seemed really nice, and it helped the time pass.
And with a tube across to Kings Cross and a semi-fast from there to Cambridge we were soon home. Snogged farewell in the station carpark before Mike and his bike headed one way and I headed another to get home and unpack a little and get clean and sleep. A quiet end to a loud and wonderful weekend. Can't wait for the next time, and even now several days later I wish it hadn't had to end. Taken my camera in to be developed today, so hopefully tomorrow I'll have some pics to go with all this text.
Thu, 30 Jun 2005 20:02:28 GMT
frog
A visitor last night:
Thu, 30 Jun 2005 20:01:34 GMT
oh to be in Cambridge now that summer's here
Amusingly bad, all your base (Flash) (Sound)
Thu, 30 Jun 2005 14:52:11 GMT
I'm back from Jersey.
Some of you might have seen that there's been an attempt to create a newsgroup for "journal" type postings on a local linux box that a bunch of people have accounts on (i.e. chiark). This was mostly done because some people don't like web based discussion forums and believe Usenet to be better.
I think they're half-right, for prolonged, detailed discussion and debate amoung multiple participants, usenet is an extremely good technology. However, it's an undeniable fact that it has declined in importance in the face of web forums and blogs. I think you need to look at why, rather than just complaining that things were better in the old days and these new-fangled toy systems just aren't as good.
Usenet's strengths, when it works, are in a well structured format where conversation threads can be followed over weeks or more, branching and potentially following multiple paths amoung multiple participants. A combination of the newsreader software and social convention make reading textual information easy. I still find news much easier and faster to read than web forums.
One of the largest failures of news was the newsgroup creation and propagation model. Newsgroup hierarchies differed on how they allowed new group creation, the ones that worked had structured committees and the attendant politics and inertia. If you wanted a new newsgroup for whatever reason, you couldn't just create it, you had to argue and justify its existence to a group of people who at best wanted to maintain news as a well structured system, at worst were just on petty power trips.
On the one hand you had alt.*, where anybody could create a group, but propagation was dreadful (although going through alt.config could help that, but that had all the problems of the big-8 with fewer advantages). Overall the quality of alt.* was dreadful, there were some good groups, but mostly dross. Finding the good groups in alt.* was every bit as hard as finding good blogs and forum posts today. One relied on word-of-mouth or just stumbling across them.
Another reason Usenet declined was those of us insisting on lowest-common-denominator; text only, 72 columns, etc. The web offered a much richer environment that people wanted, with markup, graphics and hypertext all integral to the medium.
Usenet's primary advantage over earlier BBS systems was it's distributed nature. That's also caused it to become obsolete. The distributed nature means it's too hard to change. As technology moved on and the web hyperlinks overcame the disadvantages of earlier BBSes being stand-alone (pace any Fidonet fans); news looked old, people didn't want to fight political battles just to create a new forum that everybody would have access to.
News was a superbly designed technology of the 1980s, and has remained a superbly designed technology of the 80s. I think current web forum software could learn a lot by looking at the interface for trn or gnus. It's probably true when the detractors say there's been a retrograde step, there has in some ways. RSS, trackback and now OpenID improve things a bit, but there are still some shortcomings. For one, I'd love a trn-style tree-based navigation for forum posts, and (for LJ at least, others are better) better mechanisms for prolonged discussions (e.g. new comment notification for all interested parties, your LJ home page could contain a list of conversations you're interested in, with notification of new posts).
Thu, 30 Jun 2005 14:49:25 GMT
Heathr-Oh Dear-Connect
Thu, 30 Jun 2005 12:55:35 GMT
Well, that was the Wrong Time to go for lunch.
Happy July, everyone.
Thu, 30 Jun 2005 12:28:28 GMT
Just for those who are worried about loosing me...
Some (slightly biased) contextHmm. There has already been enough discussion on this that noone will
want to hear their own opinions delecately rehashed in this comment,
but I will do so anyway.
For a start, I think that whoever said LJ was like having a discussion
in your livingroom and not in a pub was spot on. (I think it might be
Stark, but am not checking out of fear of agreeing with Stark ;) )
No-one would think it pathological to chuck dirty random strangers out
of your livingroom. It may be flawed to invite them in in the first
place, but this is an arguement in favour of more censorship, not
less, so is not one that I expect to hear Ian making. No-one would
think it pathological if, occassionally, you had a huge screaming
row with a friend and threw them out of your livingroom. (Or at
least, if it is, I'm a bad offender) People might think it
pathological if you did lots of throwing out when people haven't done
anything wrong, but I think people think this is broken on LJ too.
It is wrong to say LJ specifically encourages this broken behaviour, I
think. People deal with broken people badly IRL as well as online
(
arnhem made a good list of this) and I think this is a "noone knows
what will help people who behave irrationally, and so find themselves
encouraging them by mistake" problem, not a "LJ encourages people to
encourage people to behave irrationally"
But the main point of this too long post is to argue that I believe in
not telling everyone everything, and LJ filters let me do this well in
a way I will never be able to acheive on .cabel. Also, for .cabel
to pretend it isn't in some way doing this is wrong.
I mean, we are greated with "Things people say in cabel.journals
should be assumed confidential if not otherwise stated (or otherwise
clear). Readers should not repeat them in places where non-cabel
users can see." So cabel.journals is not arguing for openness (or it
would just be a public newsgroup, and there would be no comments like
that) just openness within the friends group "cabel". Now, I'm sure
the argument is that this is less broken than LJ friends groups
because it's not cherry picked by one person, but by a fair selection
process of references, but whether someone is suitable for a cabel
account is, although roughly corralated to their niceness, not
directly linked to whether i want to talk to them about stuff.
Obviously, my post holds no water if it is utterly wrong to talk about
people / things so other people don't know. But I would hold that
most of civilisation rests on people doing just that. After all, I'm
sure my supervisor would qualify for a cabel account if he knew the
right people, he seems far more computer literate than me. And I'm
sure if my supervisor had a cabel account I wouldn't want to bitch
about work on cabel.journals. But I feel that not only should I be
allowed to talk about work, it is positively healthy for me to talk
about work in a way that isn't censured by trying to maintain a good
working relationship with my supervisor. Therefor, I want friends
groups that I talk to that are controled by me, not by the self
selecting friends group "cabel". "Is suitable for a cabel account",
while a good first pass selection filter for "nice people" in many
ways, will never give a group of people I am willing to talk to about
anything to.
cabel.journals will always be a pub. Livejournal will remain my
livingroom. While I'm interested in what people post there, and may
work out some way of cross posting my public (or indeed, slightly
locked) entries, people who want to get to know me better and hear the
things that I'm not going to say out loud where they can hurt me
should come and visit me at home.
And of course, some of my closest LJ friends are nothing to do with .cabel anywhere, so of course this is going to remain my primary journal. Not just that I've just got a shiney perminant account and believe in throwing good time after bad, or that I'm an obsessive control freak who couldn't live without filters at all, honest.
I will make a personal plea for people who are going to write interesting comments on a duplicate article to write them in LJ and not cabel.journals, because then I am far more likely to read them and I like reading your comments. But I assume you will all reach your own descisions without me intervening.
Thu, 30 Jun 2005 11:02:08 GMT
Wah!
I have a brand new shiney theory for the cause of the Mad Data Drift. However, verifying or disproving this involves me measuring with two programs, observing the data drift on the old program and not (or otherwise) on the new program
Except the drift has gone away. Even the old program is not drifting.
I *hate* intermittent problems.
Thu, 30 Jun 2005 10:54:57 GMT
Warning
Bad design decisions will dog you (or more likely your successors) 10 years or further down the line.
Thu, 30 Jun 2005 09:58:19 GMT
Sick note
Got a phone appointment with the GP who saw me last week, in order to get a sick note for at least the rest of the week. She suggested a whole week, but as I'm off for two weeks from next Friday for wedding+honeymoon, we settled on until next Wednesday, so I get Thursday to answer any really important questions. She's leaving the paperwork with the receptionists for Tony to collect.
It occurs to me (10 minutes later) that actually today until next Wednesday is a whole week. This stunning mental capability is one of the reasons I don't trust myself with work at the moment. I haven't started reading my email yet, for similar reasons. LJ is generally easier going, and I don't have to reply to anything.
When I want to work again, I'll know I'm nearly well again.
Wed, 29 Jun 2005 22:36:45 GMT
Glastonbury 2005, part 2
The grey of Saturday morning meant a better lie in than on sunny days, and we woke to the soundchecks on the Pyramid stage and watched Heyseed Dixies from the tent while we talked and faffed with layers of sock in damp boots. The purchase of overknee socks from a stall the previous evening turned out to be an inspired decision though, and two layers meant feet were almost dry nearly all day. Mike and Rick headed down to see them closer up, while Ned and Beth and I followed later. It was the only time I really saw much of those two to be honest - Beth's sunstroke on Thursday had taken it out of her somewhat. We had a rather excellent breakfast however of french sausage on a bed of sliced potatoes in a cheese sauce with bacon bits in. Yum. Then we pottered along to the Acoustic tent to catch Martha Wainwright. I think it was partly just that I vaguely knew the name, as I certainly didn't know the music. I enjoyed it more or less, though we only caught the second half of her set. It didn't grab me enormously though apart from the last track. Then we wandered back down in the circus fields and sat on a bench trying to work out what to do next, for long enough that by the time we'd decided and made our way to the Avalon field we'd already missed half the Broken Family Band set. Which was excellent, and included a couple of tracks I vaguely recognised. And the singer mentioned his good friend Chloe in the audience, who'd been going to gigs for years, and said this was a very special day for her because she wanted to take this opportunity to ask her partner Sam to marry her - and he said yes! Much cheering ensued.
Afterwards and outside we bumped into Rick and Mike (and Ed) who'd been there for the whole thing on the other side of the tent - and apparently we just missed Jan and Owen too. I'd been planning to catch a bit of the levellers next before wandering to the main stage, but the opportunity of company changed my mind and Mike and I headed over earlier and caught the end of the Goldie Lookin' Chain set: which was good at what it did (getting that many MCs on stage all working together is quite impressive) but not really my cup of tea. At this point I got a call from my dad saying they'd found a cheap cornet in a junk shop in Whitby and should they go think about buying it for me? In a fit of enthusiasm about being more involved in music I said yes, and they hung up, hoping whatever was next would be an improvement on what they could hear of GLC in the background. And it was. Because it was the Kaiser Chiefs, who were wonderful. I've not listened to their album much, but enough to be able to sing along to much of it, and their energy and enthusiasm was catching. The lead singer bounced around like a mad thing (there's a great photo in the paper of him in mid-leap with tambourine and muddy wellies) and also tried crowd surfing. He failed to wrestle the giant inflatable dinosaur back to the stage with him, so instead got Security to pass it up and adorned it with his tie while they played on. Priceless showmanship. By the time they got to "Oh my god I can't believe it" they had the crowd in the palm of their hands. Enough so to play an entirely new song as their last and still leave everyone cheering and happy. Excellent set all told.
Mike wandered off at this point for something else, I think he caught The Departure, and I stayed for Ash, though first there was the official "moment" and an unexpected appearance from Bob Geldof on the main stage to encourage us all to hold hands and chant "Make Poverty History". A cynical part of me found it all a bit too calculated in its tear jerking and enforced good-cause-ery but he really was sincere and in the end I was quite touched as I held hands with the strangers beside me. It was quite a tough act for Ash to follow I guess, but they did it well. A mix of mostly hits and old favourites, one of which has been running round my head all day today "Yeah we've been walking barefoot all summer" - they played quite a few summery ones despite the grey day. The crowd jumped up and down despite the mud. A guy in a tigger suit near me went crowd surfing and reappeared with an enormous beaming grin. It was a feel-good set. And a lovely pared down duet between lead singer and bassist on a cover of "Teenage Kicks" dedicated to both John Peel and Joe Strummer. A nice moment.
After this I realised Mike was out of phone batteries, and I had no idea where he'd be for quite some time. So since that was at the Avalon stage and there were a couple of other things I fancied up there I pottered on over, stopping for some nachos and homemade lemonade on the way. Did I mention how much I love the variety of food? By the time I got there I'd missed Session A9's set though, and they were just being thanked by the compere. I did unexpectedly get to listen to short set by Polly Paulusma, who had been due to play the previous day but missed out due to the tent being out of order. Nice stuff, possibly worth investigating more. Lovely voice. And after her came Rory McLeod who I last saw at Ely Folk Festival a couple of years ago when we'd gone for the day to catch Oysterband. He played a nice set, including London Kisses, which is about my favourite track of his, and his missus Amy sang backing and played percussion, while he played guitar and harmonica and the spoons. Fun to dance to. I began to look out for Mike and Rick and Ed at this point but there was no sign of them, so I danced to Hayseed Dixies on my own near the front, and just grinned at strangers instead of friends. The set was a little too similar to the one on the main stage in the morning, though not having heard it properly there this didn't matter to me so much. Sabbath and ACDC and Led Zep amongst others, plus some tracks of their own penning (which weren't really that good) and some fab banjo and mandolin playing. Sadly they didn't do the Green Day cover again, but still, was fun. OK and I admit I felt a bit smug for knowing ACDC better than Mike does when I managed to catch the others afterwards.
We had a nice wander down through the Glade towards the John Peel stage again, though Ed and Rick abandoned us in the Dance area and Mike and I went on for the Magic Numbers alone. This was definitely a huge highlight of the weekend. I really like their album, even if I've only heard it a couple of times. The music is lovely and rich and well played and the lyrics are great, and they're obviously wonderful musicians, but what they are more than anything else is awfully awfully sweet. They weren't in a million years prepared for the reception they got, and the more they blushed and looked almost teary and bewildered the more the crowd went wild. Saw a lovely review on 6Music's webpages somewhere (ah
here which really summed it up well.
We split up again at that point and I caught Razorlight on the Other Lake. OK so that's a slightly unfair name for it. I did have to wade through the lake a bit to get into the crowd proper, but after a few tracks my legs were aching so I waded out the other side and was pleased to find some land dry enough to sit on. I carried my mac around all weekend, not to wear but as a handy seat. Invaluable. But yes, it was a good set and I enjoyed it but would have enjoyed more if I'd been less cold and achy by that point. Fish and chips on the way back to the tent was the order of the day, and accidentally got caught in the coldplay crowd, and had a brief chat to a teenage lad who'd obviously loved it while I sat on one end of a semi-submerged bench. When I struggled up hill to the tent Mike was there already and a bit sorry for himself for having wussed out so early in the evening, and it seems Ben had slept half the afternoon and the whole evening away in his tent after a few too many of something or other. A drunken Ed who'd been at the spicy cider popped his head in the tent for a while, necessitating a quick hiding under the sleeping bag from me, and he said Coldplay were good too. Perhaps there's something in it. As we settled into bed the traditional cries of "Bollocks" echoing round the field were disrupted by a wag who interjected "Catherine Zeta Jones" and a new game was born. Later Rick got back too and we could hear his dulcet tones joining in with cries about Stephen Hawking, assorted bad TV quiz shows and presenters, and the refrain of "Up the arse". And so I giggled myself to sleep as it continued into the night.
It's getting late. I think Sunday and Monday will have to wait until tomorrow.
Wed, 29 Jun 2005 21:09:51 GMT
Wed, 29 Jun 2005 21:06:22 GMT
Profile change
I've updated my
profile to include notes on copyright and general journal policies as
discussed earlier.
It's now very busy and full of notes :(. Perhaps I should fill in some actual biographical details, and possibly even do something magical with it like
meallanmouse has done.
Wed, 29 Jun 2005 20:59:54 GMT
The beautiful colours of nature.
I went bird ringing for the first time in ages this morning. It was great. It was not my woods though. The day was warm but cloudy, and there was a slight shimmer to everything. Willows and reeds, where I am used to hazels and oaks.
The upside to that was that nearly every bird was exciting. When you're used to woodland birds and go ringing in the fens you see all sort of new things. Even the 15th
sedge warbler was still exciting me. And I saw
reed buntings And bestist of all, I held a
Kingfisher!Tonight, cycling home, there was a glorious
rainbow.
Not sure why I felt I had to post links to random bird and rainbows pictures though :-)
Nature is pretty cool, really.
Wed, 29 Jun 2005 20:33:13 GMT
Home again
I got let out this afternoon. Actually, I got told I could come out this morning, but it took ages for the hospital pharmacy to prepare my drugs. I dozed quite a lot of the time though, so it wasn't exactly wasted. I am now almost without pain, but easily tired and frequently sleepy. I'm going to talk to my GP tomorrow as I think I probably shouldn't go back to work until at least after the weekend, and I've now been away from work for nearly a week so need a note to do that. Tony's mother suggests even longer off, but I'll see what the GP thinks.
My ultrasound scan showed nothing wrong at all - no cysts on the ovaries, Mirena in the right place. However, pumping me full of antibiotics at regular intervals has steadily reduced the pain since I was admitted on Monday evening, to the point where I'm no longer needing any pain relief. The consultant this morning concluded that my pain was being caused by an infection not among those commonly swabbed for, and as many-antibiotics were getting me well, they should send me home with a course of many-antibiotics. At the moment they are leaving my Mirena in, and if this clears up with no further problems they will probably leave it there. The Daphne Ward should make a follow-up call in four to six weeks, so I need to keep an eye on things between now and then.
I have doxycycline to take twice a day, metronidazole to take three times a day and cefalexin to take four times a day. I can neither drink alcohol, nor spend long in the sun as a result. I am drawing little charts in my diary to tick off so as to keep track. The nurses were doing this for me through the IV while I was inside, but I definitely prefer not having a canula in my hand, despite the extra tracking effort on my part. The antibiotics were
cold going in ...
So, my diagnosis is "?subacute pelvic inflammatory disease", with advice to go back if it starts hurting again. We found a leaflet on pelvic inflammatory disease, which turns out to mean "infection that causes inflammation in the pelvic area". Among other things it does advise that sexual partners get checked out too - which I guess is obvious once you think about it. Due to a cancellation Tony was able to get an appointment at
Clinic 1A today and as a precaution, they've given him a course of antibiotics too (if not as many as me), so we can rattle together.
Wed, 29 Jun 2005 20:32:19 GMT
Harrumph - S2 in ugly shocker
Yesterday: late to work, town at lunchtime, fail to buy alarm clock, top up phone, buy nice lunch from Sainsbury. Helen's birthday party after work, they're packing up as we arrive, so we help clear up and walk stuff back to Caius. Bottle of Pimms as reward. Dinner in Teri Aki with Mike v nice. Early night but neither of us sleep well.
Today: early morning: snooze is depriving Mike of even more sleep so get up and leave him in bed. Work not bad: got some scribbling done on damned PD33 and it'll look a bit more sensible with these alterations, long way from finished though. Grafton Centre at lunchtime, bought alarm clock, batteries and 2 DECT phones from Argos. Nice skirt and rings from Evans. Lunch from Boots. Chip and pin in Evans refused my card and I had to go get cash. 5 mins later it work in Boots. Go figure.
Evening: got new phones working with old base station: result. Charging batteries. Need spare 4way adaptor for bedroom now. Spent some time faffing with S2 but it's *hard* - wish S2 classic was more like S1 classic. Will try it for a few days and see how I cope. No way am I competant to write my own yet. Long call to mum on phone to talk all about Glasto. Will send her write-up once written. Must write :-)
Edit:
23:28 < Kosai> LNR: Hello. Are we supposed to know what S1 and S2 are?
23:37 < LNR> K: two different ways of doing styles on LJ. S2 is newer, more powerful,
and allows tags to be more useful.
23:37 < LNR> I was quite happy with the default S1 style though, and unfortunately there
isn't an exact replica of it.
23:40 < LNR> anyway, the joy of tags means you can now easily see all the stuff I've been
going on about relating to glasto:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/lnr/tag/glastonbury
23:42 < LNR> it has a huge programming language of its own, which I looked into briefly,
but the amount of work to create a coherent style with it is *scary*
Wed, 29 Jun 2005 16:23:44 GMT
cabal.journals
Another machine I have an account on has recently created a "journals" newsgroup, which I will refer to here as cabal.journals. The idea is that cabal users will post their lj/blog/mono/whatever diary entries into it along with a subject-line tag to say whose they are. So, if my username on cabal was herringl, this entry would appear as something like:
From: localpart@domain
Newsgroups: cabal.journals
Subject: [herringl] cabal.journals
...
And any comments would start a usenet-style thread.
I was initially a little uncomfortable with the idea, so I thought I'd set down what I thought about how I use LJ, and how that interacts with such nntp-gateways. During the gestation of this essay, OpenID has come along, so excuse me if my thoughts about that are a little dysmature, as it were.
So, what do I use LJ for? I can divide my entries up into a few broad categories:
- Essays on things I consider important or interesting (e.g. the comments on the Lancet's paper on the death penalty)
- Essays on professional topics (e.g. the organic milk rant)
- More or less lengthy/interesting comments on what's going on in my life
- Plugs for events or church services
- Writings about what I'm doing at work
- Requests for help
- The odd meme
- Keeping up with my friends, both "real" and "online"
Now some of these are obviously things that I want to achieve wide readership, so are posted publically. Some of them I don't really care who reads them (so are posted publically). Some I want to be extra sure that googling parents, future employers, current co-workers and so on can't read, so get friends-locked. Some I only want a few close friends to read, so can be posted to small friends-filters.
cabal.journals provides a means whereby people who don't want to use their own RSS aggregator of choice can read my public entries. I don't feel I can post any of the categories of friends-locked posts there since I don't know all the people with accounts on cabal, and I know that at least some of the accounts on there are pseudonyms. Also, while I can be pretty sure I'll never friend a co-worker on LJ, I can't really say to sysadmin@cabal "no, don't give that person an account because I don't want them to see bits of my journal". Furthermore, there's absolutely no way of restricting who can read my postings to cabal.journals, so I want to discourage people I actually know reading my witterings there, as they could read more of my LJ via a method where I can restrict readership (LJ or OpenID currently).
The downside of propagating articles to cabal.journals is that because the propagation technology is one-way, it means I have to go chasing after comments in more places than I do now, and that I might end up with two different conversations out of sync with each other in response to the same entry. Experience suggests that people aren't good at following instructions of the form "you can read this in this medium, but please go and comment on it over there". I clearly also have an interest in my friends maintaining journals in the same place, as it makes keeping up with them easier. If everyone I wanted to keep in touch with had LJs this would be ideal; blogs that can be syndicated to LJ are OK, but there's the faff about keeping up with comments (LJ doesn't currently extract comments from syndicated entries and put them into the LJ-feed).
OpenID will complicate matters, I think. If Fred is using blogspot, and starts wanting to OpenID-filter their posts, then the current LJ-feed mechanism is going to become inadequate (already, you can't usefully friends-lock an LJ-feed). OpenID should make it possible for people to read my LJ, including some friends-locked posts, without them needing an LJ-account, although I'm not sure if this can actually be usefully made to work yet.
I should address some of the supposed advantages of cabal.journals. Firstly, it has been opined that LJ-comments are a pretty ropey way of holding a discussion, particularly between third parties - if you're not the journal's owner, you can't get LJ to email you all comments to an entry (and AIUI the RSS support for comments on LJ isn't useful), so keeping up with old discussions is hard. Also, the comments interface to LJ isn't great for large discussions. I must accept these criticisms of LJ. I think the answer is to fix LJ, though. Many of my LJ-fiends don't have access to cabal, so LJ is currently the only place that discussion can carry on and be participated in by all readers of an entry. Maybe if it could be fixed such that comments went both ways that would help...
Also, it has been pointed out that some LJers have a very autocratic view of what goes on in their LJ, and will delete comments or whole entries on a whim, or if something someone says offends them. Also, users may be de-friended by someone, and then be unable to read the long insightful comment they left in a locked entry in that person's journal. This, I think, is a social problem. Whilst posting to cabal.journals would stop me deleting discussions on a whim, there would clearly have to exist a mechanism where I could require cabal's newsmaster to do so for me (if a commenter disclosed confidential information about me, for example), and that's a whole extra can of worms, unless the relevant policy is exceedingly well-written. So, dear reader, you'll have to take it on trust that I won't behave like an arsehole here ;)
In summary, I remain unconvinced that cabal.journals is not a bad idea. It addresses valid problems, but not in a manner that seems to be compatible with what I reasonably want to use my journal for.
[As an aside, I've added the facility for readers to tag my entries. Friends can create new tags and so on, too. Please don't abuse these powers.]
Wed, 29 Jun 2005 16:18:20 GMT
Lift-off
Work has finally started on the Pembury Tavern. Here are some pictures I took today.
The plasterers at work in the main area of the pub.
The tackers installing insulation in the coldroom. Once that's done they will cover it up with two layers of fire-resistant plasterboard.
Some of the enormous pile of stuff that we unloaded from a lorry and put in the pub cellar this morning. It took up most of the space in a 20-tonne truck; the insulation was the bulkiest bit, but the plasterboard was the heaviest and most time-consuming. 72 sheets of standard plasterboard, and 122 sheets of fire-resistant board. It took four people about three hours.
Wed, 29 Jun 2005 14:52:03 GMT
Black tar rivers
Glastonbury Festival, 24-26 June 2005Having been cast in the role of guru and guide for
addedentry's first Glastonbury, I was determined to make sure he got a good taste of the Glastonbury experience. To be fair, I was more thinking of the music, cider, happenings and random hippy shit than the knee-deep mud, but I guess it's all part of the rich tapestry of the... no, wait. Time for some debunking:
"It wouldn't be Glastonbury without the mud!" == NOT ACTUALLY TRUE.
"It's all part of the fun!" == ALSO NOT ACTUALLY TRUE.
Fortunately we arrived on Wednesday afternoon, so we had a day and a half to wander around the site in the glorious heatwave, resist the temptation to buy silly hats, and drink perry with other LiveJournallers. Then came Friday morning... well, I'm not going to go on about the six-hour thunderstorm, the 8-foot-deep lake, the 400+ tents submerged, or the 3m litres of water pumped off the site: you've all seen the
news reports and
blogs. Suffice to say that the weather, after one morning of TAKING THE PISS, returned us to our scheduled heatwave (it is entirely my own fault that in addition to a muddy lower half I ended up with a badly-sunburned top half).
The main problem with the mud is that it renders it impossible to dash from stage to stage (as you have to do for maximum gig potential). In fact, in some cases, it made it impossible to
get to the stage, as when we watched Rilo Kiley from the other side of the John Peel Lake. In one case, it went one stage further and stopped them
building the stage in time: we missed Polly Paulusma because the Avalon Stage wasn't finished in time for her set. In more clement conditions we'd have done more, but that's not to say we didn't do anything; 20 bands (and that's not counting the interesting snippets overheard as we walked past other stages) is a pretty action-packed weekend by my reckoning. We saw (or at least heard):
Tori Amos (who played two pianos at once and did a lovely cover of "Feelin' Groovy");
The Beautiful South;
Billy Bragg;
The Broken Family Band (who namechecked the Arbury and helped some people get engaged);
Elvis Costello;
Fatboy Slim;
The Futureheads ("Hounds of Love" with audience participation!);
Garbage;
The Go! Team;
Headland;
Interpol;
Jem;
The Levellers (THERE'S ONLY ONE! WAY! OF LIFE! AND THAT'S! YEROWN!);
K. T. Tunstall;
The Magic Numbers (who nearly lived up to some of the hype);
Rilo Kiley;
Solar Fields;
Sons & Daughters (alt-country goth metal -- yes please);
Martha Wainwright;
Yeovil Town Band (non-ironically good, every time); and
The Zutons (who may have only been included so that hacks could say "from Athlete to the Zutons", but were still great).
I'm not going to do full-length reviews of them all -- ask me about a particular one if you like, but there are
some reviews on the official website which will tell you roughly what happened;
addedentry will cover the music better than I do. What he
doesn't have, though, is access to a copy of Photoshop at work; so, cashing in on my sole advantage, I give you:
Glastonbury 2005 in road signs
Chances of
good weather |
Good news for
water diviners |
"Cheers, God" |
Tent |
Gazebo |
Footpath |
Indecision ahead |
I'm sure this is
the way we came! |
I know where
we're going! |
No holding hands |
Jesus Army ahead |
That's not JUST mud. |
And finally...
Wed, 29 Jun 2005 14:31:20 GMT
Wed, 29 Jun 2005 14:20:22 GMT
Taggity tag tag tag
So, much as
ewx (
↪) and
ghoti (
↪) I have allowed my
fiends to modify tags on my entries (within the limites of the set provided). Don't piss about and I won't undo this change :).
Wed, 29 Jun 2005 12:55:52 GMT
I've configured my journal to allow people on my friends list to add tags. Please apply common sense.
People reading via chiark.journals currently won't see these. I'll change the script to make it add a Keywords: field at some point, as they are in the RSS. Even then they'll only see the tags on the posting when it gets scraped into the newsgroup, although I suppose I could use Supersedes:...
People who are interested in the script I use to repost this journal into chiark.journals are directed to rjk@greenend.org.uk--2004/lj2news--mainline--0. Currently Arch is the best way to get an up to date copy, I'll make another proper release when I'm sure it's not about to change again.
Wed, 29 Jun 2005 12:47:55 GMT
Can anyone recommend an 802.11g capable wireless access point? (I'm currently using a PCI card for this purpose but am getting tired of driver doom.) The only wireless device it'd routinely serve is my iBook but visitors might be expected to bring their laptops occasioanlly.
Relatedly, can someone explain what level these devices operate on? I get the impression from manuals and googling that they are layer 2 devices and act like a repeater or bridge between a wired ethernet LAN and a wireless LAN, but could do with confirmation from someone more knowledgeable.
Wed, 29 Jun 2005 09:41:10 GMT
Error
I am consistently (but irregularly) irritated when I get errors or warnings to stderr that don't identify the process that they come from. I'd like some general sort of solution to this that I can implement and ignore.
My best thought so far is to use LD_PRELOAD to wrap fprintf such that outputs to stderr get [pid] prepended, but I suspect that this is insufficiently general; plus it is ick.
Any suggestions, anyone?
Wed, 29 Jun 2005 09:20:29 GMT
Snippets
At long last, the kilt is definitely happening. I am taking the train northwards tomorrow, getting the kilt on Friday and running (well, training, YKWIM) back south as fast as possible on Saturday before the hordes descend on Edinburgh for whichever G8 rally is going on.
On Monday,
met24 was kind enough to offer me a bimble in one of
Modern Air's Archers. They're based at Fowlmere and, as the name suggests, have a
modern fleet. While they're more expensive than most clubs (which have 30-40 year old fleets), you get what you pay for: clean aircraft with modern panel, splendid instrument fit (GPS, Mode S transponder and autopilot in most of their aircraft), leather seats ... the list just keeps on going. In a word, yum!
I learnt three useful lessons at the weekend. Number one, new kitchen knives are sharp. Two, that the warning on the box of tinfoil that it contains a sharp blade isn't joking. Thirdly, if one has just put a little washing-up liquid and rather hot water in a Thermos flask to clean it and is now shaking it with the lid on, there will be hot high-pressure soapysuds lying in wait for their chance to escape when you open it.
Oh, and I've finally finished the roll of film on the camera. Being (prepaid) slide film, it's now in Fuji's hands and I expect to get the slides and scans back in a few days.
Wed, 29 Jun 2005 09:19:46 GMT
Weak and feeble
I'm starting to get annoyed by the fact that I'm so biochemically unstable.
Coeliac disease is the obvious starting point: not only can I not eat obviously wheaty things like (ordinary) bread and pasta, but I have to be insanely careful of cross-contamination from things containing trace amounts of gluten. This makes it very difficult to eat anything I haven't cooked myself, either at restaurants or at friends' houses; there are only about three or four people I currently trust to cook for me, and it's annoyingly common when I risk letting someone else do it that I get most of the way through a delicious meal and then they tell me what one of the ingredients was and it rings an alarm bell.
In addition to that, as some of my readers will already know, I'm hypersensitive to caffeine. I haven't always been: I can pin it down reasonably accurately to mid-2001, at which point I suddenly started to find that drinking any perceptible amount of coffee gave me something approaching a panic attack. These days I find that a cup of decaff gives me something like a normal caffeine buzz, four cups of decaff make me uncomfortably jittery, and the last time I tried drinking even half a cup of ordinary coffee I got panicky and paranoid. (Oddly, though, I seem to be fine with tea, so perhaps it's not the caffeine but something else in coffee specifically.)
I'm currently off alcohol, because I suspect it of interfering with my sleep, and since some of the recent hot weather has certainly been interfering with my sleep I decided to stay sober for a few weeks on the basis that my sleep needed all the help it could get. (Particularly annoying is that last week I found some Hambleton GFB – a gluten-free real ale which I've wanted to try for a while – in Asda, and now I have to wait until I think I'm ready to go back on booze before I can drink it!)
I'm also unpleasantly hypersensitive to cannabis smoke. This one doesn't cause me a problem very often, thankfully; I think there have now been a total of two occasions on which I've been in the same room as someone smoking a joint and it's affected me. The effects are hard to describe, but I definitely don't like them, and in particular they seem to involve disturbed sleep. (The other problem with this one is that not everybody is willing to admit to smoking dope, it being technically illegal and all that, so it can be socially difficult to arrange to be warned in advance so I can leave the room! Not being able to get advance warning from the smell doesn't help there either.)
This is just getting beyond a joke. It's particularly aggravating when several of these things cause me trouble in the same evening; occasionally I feel that if I have to say one more time ‘I'm sorry, I can't eat / drink / go anywhere near that, I'm intolerant of it’ I'm just going to scream. It's also annoying because five years ago I had none of these problems; I was fine with alcohol and caffeine, coeliac disease was something that happened to my grandfather but not to anyone else I knew, and I might or might not have been hypersensitive to cannabis but it didn't matter because nobody I knew used it. Somewhere between then and now I've turned from a reasonably robust human being into someone brittle and fragile who has to avoid any number of perfectly normal things because they variously cause me to get cancer, lose sleep, panic or (I wouldn't be too surprised) spontaneously combust.
It's stuff like this that makes me particularly cross with Creationists. I can only assume that most fundie Creationists are extremely physically fit and healthy and have no food intolerances, no minor ailments, no dodgy muscles or joints, no missing senses and no aggravating psychological quirks; because some days I'm incapable of inhabiting this body or this mind for more than half an hour at a time without it being totally and infuriatingly obvious to me that it was designed very badly by trial and error. Intelligent design? Pah. You can stick it. If there was an act of intelligence in the design of the human body, it was the one where the designer realised that a sizable portion of the species would still worship him no matter what he did, and hence there was no reason he couldn't get away with doing a quick and shoddy job and sloping off early to the pub.
Wed, 29 Jun 2005 09:04:00 GMT
When the dog bites…
Tue, 28 Jun 2005 21:45:37 GMT
Plug
Tommorow (Wednesday June 29) is the Feast of St Peter. Little St Mary's will be having a sung mass at 7pm, to the setting of the first prayer book of Edward VI (of 1549[1]), with music by Tye, Wylkynson and Byrd performed by the Cambridge Voices.
Do come along :)
[1]This was the first time the order for Holy Communion was officially published in English
Tue, 28 Jun 2005 21:34:24 GMT
Wow, lightning!
Tue, 28 Jun 2005 14:55:46 GMT
Thank you to the medication fairy, whoever they may be. I discovered that we do have Day Nurse but the childproof cap thwarted me, and it's really icky stuff anyway. This afternoon I decadently watched
Chaplin.
Tue, 28 Jun 2005 13:58:09 GMT
Occasionally people ask me what my eating likes and dislikes are
I'm not really that fussy. I'm not vegitarian and I'm not allergic to anything (except penicillin and pollen and cats, and if you're trying to feed me those I'm worried).
Things I don't like:
Tomatoes that are close to their natural state. I will do all I can to avoid eating a raw tomato. One of the most disheartening sights you can serve me is a salad with slices of tomato in it, so I can't pick them out without the little slimey seeds getting everywhere. I don't have any objection to you making a salad with nice whole cherry tomatoes in it, so long as you don't expect me to eat them. But I will eat red sauces made from tinned tomatoes, pizzas, ketchup, etc etc.
Tinned tuna. Although to be honest it's the smell I don't like, so once it's in a pasta bake or similar I'm fine
The jelly you get round pork pies.
Whole bananas
Things I think "shrug" about:
Pasta. I don't dislike pasta. I will quite happilly eat pasta. It is cheap, and healthy and nourishing, etc. But I don't think it tastes of anything. It doesn't have a nice taste, and it doesn't have a nice texture, but it isn't at all unpleasent and so pasta with a really nice sauce can be a really nice meal. Noodles with the same sauce are probably nicer though :-)
Birdseye potato waffles. Jon cooks them a lot. I cover them in tartare sauce until they taste of something
Things I like:
Anything sweet, really. I have a soft spot for chocolate, sugar, cream and fat, that I should do something about but haven't yet.
Specifics include
Chocolate, in all its many forms
Duck
Rare steak
Apple sauce
Lamb
Salmon
Fishshop Fish and Chips
Chinese. All things chinese. Inc. sweet and sour, and lemon chicken
Creamy curries, like kormas (not too hot)
Vegetables, inc baby sweetcorn, corn on the cob, tinned sweetcorn, asparagus, sweet potatoes, sugarsnap peas, leaks, mushrooms
Olives.
Sausages. Especially pork and apple.
Mashed potato, and chips
Mussels. Most seafood. Prawns
Things with honey glazes
Icecream. Especially chocolate
***
Anyway, there's lots of other stuff, and a large part of what I really like about going round to someones house for dinner is finding out what they cook best, and what they like to eat. But when I ask people what they like and they go "whatever you want" I get sort of frustrated, as it's nice to have a starting point to be inspired by. So that's what this was supposed to be. I may think of more stuff later.
Tue, 28 Jun 2005 13:10:46 GMT
Time passes
The Veizla was excellent - I'd missed one or two recently, which is a shame. It was also my new camera's first outing; I've already posted the pictures.
I spent a while going through the backlog of photos from my old camera. Most I junked, though I've kept a few. I added a couple more sky pictures, of a particularly colorful sunset last year. Other keepers might turn up on the web at some point.
I watched From Hell on TV. It's a very bad adaptation of a very good graphic novel. Don't bother.
Karate is full of fairly new stuff at the moment: we're still getting to grips with jyu-ippon kumite techniques, and starting to learn Bassai Dai. (The current set of basics are pretty much unchanged however.) It'll be six months to the next grading.
Work is busy - a key deadline is fast approaching. I'm struggling with a mysterious bug, with the same code apparently doing different things in different contexts. A couple of days of bug-hunting have led to a one-line fix.
Tue, 28 Jun 2005 13:01:12 GMT
Hmm, I said I'd post this. Although on second thoughts I think that it would have been far better left as a drunken memory than exposed to the world in its sober shaggy dog tailed ness. Then again,
robhu posted the Prawn Joke earlier, so at least I'm in good company.
(approximately accurate) Background - every year at the CUSFS annual dinner the Reeve poses a challenge, and during the course of the evening everyone has to stand up and make their attempt at the challenge. How a society with a reputation for attracting introverted geeks came by such an extroverted custom is a mystery to me. This years challenge was to come up with an Excuse.
I’m sorry I didn’t do the washing up yesterday like I was supposed to. I was about to do it, when there was a knock on the door. It was my friend Nathaniel from CULES.
“Hello Nate” says I.
“Hello Sally” says he. “I have a great plan. We must go to Queens’ library”
Well, I’m a great fan of procrastination in all its many forms, but I know my responsibilities. “Sorry, Nate”, says I, “I have to do this washing up”.
Nate looked crestfallen. “But it’s my final exam tomorrow. And after carefully studying past papers I’m convinced that a question on balancing static forces will come up. Sadly my dog ate my lecturenotes, and the only copy of ‘Mechanics for people who need to pass their exams tomorrow’ is in Queens’. And I don’t have a library key”.
Well, obviously academic pursuits come before household chores – after all, you’ve seen the state of Rivendell – so off we went.
When we got there, I unlocked the door. The place was surprisingly empty for the middle of exam term. We wandered in. I turned round to put my pannier down, when suddenly I felt a blow to the back of my head – I fell to the floor, the world turning dark around me
When I awoke, I was gagged and bound and propped against the wall. “Mwahahaha!” cried Nate “no-one can resist the power of the CULES rubber chicken!”.
Oh dear. I was trapped in a library by a mad man who had played too many CULES villians. I wondered if it was worth trying to explain to him that there were easier and more consensual ways to end up with a neatly tied up woman, but he had launched into Evil Villian Speachyfying:
“Mwahahaha! You see, I am not really from Cambridge! I am from Oxford! And I’m sick of your poxy upstart university rivalling ours. After years of alchemy and dark research I have discovered the source of your mystery and power comes from the river Cam. And by consulting ancient plans of the university, I have discovered a way to destroy it! Here in this very library is a lever that if pulled, will pull up the plug and drain the river! And then we’ll be the best university! And they’ll be no punts! And no boaties! And no ducks! Mwahahaha!”
Gosh. I was somewhat worried. Luckilly I am a resorceful woman, even when tied up and gagged. I scanned along the bookshelf I was next to. “How to be a French chef, by Sue Flay” “Animal Illnesses, by Ann Thrax”. I was running out of time. Nate had already moved the ajacent bookcase to one side, and a large rusty lever was exposed. “Deux ex machina for wrapping up shaggy dog stories quicky” That was more like it! The corners were sharp. I rubbed the rope against them until I was free. I didn’t know what to do, but Nate was about to pull the lever, and the thought of my town berift of its academic status and the joy of summer punting made my blood run cold. I lunged for him with the book, burying its sharp corners deap in his heart. He fell to the floor dead.
I moped home, distraught by what I’d done. I couldn’t eat or sleep. Still, eventually I pulled myself together, and got on with the washing up. Sorry it was late. Sorry I ended up murdering one of CULES’s better actors. But, all things considered, better Nate than lever.
Tue, 28 Jun 2005 12:55:36 GMT
Aaaagggghhhh!
CPAN is a good idea whose implementation hasn't yet come.
Tue, 28 Jun 2005 11:01:58 GMT
Haha. Seen in someone's icon on my FOAF page: "I'm Zenning as fast as I can." How true that is.
Tue, 28 Jun 2005 09:34:09 GMT
I'm off to Jersey in a few hours for a couple of days of fun sitting-in-a-datacentre. Or at least one night of that and then sitting around knackered all tomorrow hoping that nothing surprising happens.
Tue, 28 Jun 2005 08:57:54 GMT
OpenID
Coo, livejournal have got around to implementing
OpenID. I see some hacking coming on.
Tue, 28 Jun 2005 08:49:04 GMT
Legal Loophole
I'm sure that "open for browsing 30 mins earlier on Sundays" at supermarkets is the kind of legal loophole of which we should not wot.
Tue, 28 Jun 2005 08:39:19 GMT
Naked Law
Naked Law is a Technology-Law 'blog written by Mills & Reeve’s Technology Team. It is available on livejournal as
![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif)
nakedlaw.
Mon, 27 Jun 2005 21:50:54 GMT
Glasto 2005
I'll start with the notes I made while I was there, which go up to Friday night, and try and write up the rest later.
Weds - arrive later than intended. Brandy on train. V long hike across site - shattered - but view worth it. Hour up in stone circle then bed.
Thurs - glorious day lots of pottering about. Dance area huge. IDSpiral nice lots of white aty things and little tables to sit at on floor. Crepes for lunch with Jan and Owen. Then wander through Green Futures. Realise catching sun and head back to tent. Chilled in shade with Rick and Ed - impromptu jam with some other guys - acoustic guitar, bongos, harmonica and some crap singing fun. Spent evening doing poi and hanging out in stone circle again - talking to Richard the Cambridge naked cyclist enjoying the evening and the perry.
Friday - Woke early to the storm. Don't know when it started 6ish maybe. Lightning galore and heavy rain til about 11 when we all crawled out of bed and ate breakfast. They hadn't been able to start the music because of the weather (stage apparently struck). So Undertones were first band. Watched from borrowed gazebo in the rain as it tipped it down again. They were OK but didn't really grab us. Now the sun's out and the John Butler Trio are playing gorgeous guitar music - sounds a lot like Chris Whitley - lovely music. Time to go do stuff soon.
Writing by the light of my keyring torch, as the White Stripes belt out Jolene. I'm back at the tents alone after a great day. Mike Ed Rick and I headed down the hill after faff and I sat on an isolated dry spot while the others wandered off - Mike to catch The Editors and the others on unspecified errands.
Contacted assorted people by text but didn't manage to meet up. Mike however reappeared to find us partway through The Thrills which he'd been looking forward to and recommending. He was a bit disappointed though, and I have to admit to only finding them mildly diverting. Ed + Rick wandered off part way through and we caught the again at the Other Stage after a minor amount of wading through nearly boot-high water. There we found Hot Hot Heat - they only played one familiar track but it's one I like (even if I can't now recall) and I must investigate more.
Then on en masse through another small lakte (this one with tents in - poor sods!) to the John Peel stage for "your codename is: Milo" who were OK I suppose but noticable most for the opening "your codename is: Milo, your codename is: Milo, I think you're called Dave". Also rather lovely was the quote from Teenage Kicks balancing out the "John Peel Stage" sign. Brought a slight lump to my throat.
Next planned stop was pyramid stage for Elvis Costello - but the route from J.P. to P. had an unfortunate ford part way. Mike took his shoes off and paddled bare foot - I though my boots might just cope but I was _so_ wrong. After that I took them off, wrang out my socks, and paddled on in just tights. Quite pleasant in some places and nice to stop worrying for a bit, but overall a bit grim. Seemed wise at this point to head back to the tent to dry out and clean up a bit - heard E.C. from up there and I rather enjoyed much of it and sang along. Others seemed less impressed.
A programme reading error on my part lead to Mike and I making an impresive time down to the Other Stage to catch Johnny Wav and BlocParty who were excellent - wish I'd heard them properly in advance. An hour's break to get back for the Killers lead to unexpected catching Alabama 3 as we stopped by the JazzWorld Stage for noodles and a pint of perry (a random girl asked what the seaweed was like, on her friend's behalf, the answer was unfortunately "a bit bland really" but the rest was good - and she complimented me on the Terrorvision Tshirt too). Lots of people dancing to "Peace in the Valley". As before I enjoyed it more than Mike but I think it was a nice way to pass the time.
And we found Jamie in time to paddle through the shallowish mud into the middle of the Killers crowd for a _storming_ set. Highlight so far and I think it'll be hard to beat.
J+M headed for Fatboy Slim but I decided my feet and legs had had enough and kissed them goodnight. I'd have quite liked to see some of the other stuff on last thing tonight (including The Tears, or Oysterband) but nevermind. Mike no doubt will prob go for Tears - and Silent Disco in dance area after - but I think this was right choice for me - and although Meg's drumming is still a bit weak (ha) I'm enjoying the White Stripes - inc stuff from their new album which is cool. Lots more choices tomorrow - but hopefully no regrets.
It's wet, it's muddy, one dance stage is closed due to collapsing after being struck twice by lightning, I'm shattered and I've not seen half the people I'd like but I am having a fabulous time still. Wouldn't miss it.
Mon, 27 Jun 2005 21:42:20 GMT
This was a return visit, and I've tried to restrain myself to pics that dont duplicate
last time's. Also, I was trying out the movie button on my camera, so I have some real-time gong-hitting with sound but I don't know how to upload it.
So, we did gonging and theremining and pianoing and bashing and whatnot.
We also did putting things in bins and seeing what they sounded like.
Kathy's main interest, still, was cutting elastic bands up and sellotaping them to things.
She did spot this excellent view of I-think-Kit under the piano lid.
I blotted my copybook rather with the piano; I brought in an allen key, which we laid on the strings and which made them all twangy, as suggested by someone here present. Alas, I didn't get a recording of it, and then it fell irretrievably into the innards of the piano. We don't think it's affecting the sound.
It was, again, very hot. There was lots of exuberant play.
Everyone had a jolly time.
Mon, 27 Jun 2005 21:39:44 GMT
Another medical update
fanf writing:
Earlier today Rachel phoned to find out when her scan would be and was rather upset to hear that it wouldn't be until Friday. She was in too much pain to wait that long (she said similar in level to Friday, before it really flared up), so tried to get it expedited. When she phoned the Daphne ward again they said she should come in.
So, trek to Addies, more recitals of the medical history (to nurse and doctor), and another unpleasant examination (fortunately not so bad as Saturday's) with the conclusion that she needed even stronger antibiotics delivered intravenously. She will stay in hospital overnight, and they should be able to do the scan tomorrow - much better than Friday! After they stuck a cannula in her hand and pumped her full of drugs, she was put on a saline drip and rolled in a chair to ward D6.
I then went home to pick up an overnight bag for her. When I got back she was sitting up fiddling with the entertainment console, complaining of boredom and feeling better already. With any luck the infection will be dealt with properly this time, and we hope they won't have to remove the Mirena (which, being a foreign body in the uterus, can make this kind of infection worse).
Tomorrow is Rachel's birthday, so I will be taking a cake with me when I go to see her.
Mon, 27 Jun 2005 21:36:29 GMT
AmISueOrNot?
OK, so here's a list of characteristics...
- Frequently described as beautiful, but unable to see it
- Solves an impossible problem (once) in the first couple of chapters and is then punished for it, but comes out of that punishment better off than she started
- Everyone either:
- Likes her
- Dislikes her, but comes to like her
- Hates her and is killed
- Hates her and is a scumbag
- She has a rare variety of pet
- Actually, make that a symbiosis with an alien sophont
- By the end of the third book she's:
- received the Personal Thanks of the Monarch four times
- become a hereditary noble in two different states
- had three ships practically blown away underneath her
- Over the course of a 10 year war in a society with life-spans 2-3 times longer than ours she rises from Captain JG to Admiral in two different Navies
- She's genetically modified, supposedly a major social faux pas but noöne leaks this information to her political opposition
- She goes from ingenue to political mastermind in about 3 years
- Dropped on a planet of religious misogynists she gains almost total respect within the course of months
- Even the best minds in the enemy's forces like her!
- And I could go on…
Mon, 27 Jun 2005 20:51:47 GMT
Bugger, my head is now full of gunk again and we're out of Lemsip.
Mon, 27 Jun 2005 18:07:59 GMT
GIP
rjk has a shiny new camera and has been playing with it.
Mon, 27 Jun 2005 16:58:26 GMT
Mud, mud, glorious mud
I'm back, we didn't sink, we did wade through lots of mud, but also saw a lot of damned good music, in nice company, and had some glorious sunshine too. The idea of work tomorrow just doesn't seem real right now. More will follow when I've bathed and had time to write it all down. A wonderful wonderful weekend anyway.
Mon, 27 Jun 2005 15:24:42 GMT
Traffic
Histon/Impington had a lot of traffic along my route this morning – backed up inbound from both the Railway Line (Girton end) and the School (Milton end). Most of it seemed to be turning down the B1049 into Cambridge though, which isn't what usually happens when there are A14 problems…
Mon, 27 Jun 2005 15:04:30 GMT
Cycling across the Fens
On Saturday I went to Kings Lynn. The observant among you will have noticed that there was no train service between Cambridge and Ely and will already be wondering how I got there. The more observant might have read the entry title.
Anyway, I consider Bustitution to be a necessary evil, so long as it happens to someone else. However when National Rail start recommending allowing an entire hour to get from Cambridge to Ely, and you live in Girton (a good 20-30 mins from Cambridge Station) you start thinking "I could do better".
All would have gone well, except that I couldn't find the map with Girton ona Cottenham on it, but I did consult other maps and decided that that bit was easy. Unfortunately conditions actually in Cottenham disagreed; particularly in the way that the signpost (pointing to Rampton one way and Histon the other; neither of which I wanted to go to) was unhelpful. Still, I soldiered on (wrong move!) and got to Willingham before deciding I was definitely on the wrong track and phoning ahead for directions.
Blue shows my planned route (and the route I took home), Pink is the diversion I actually took.
Still I eventually got to Ely where, having just missed a train, I ate lunch in the pub by the river and got the next one. A lovely afternoon with my parents and grandmother ensued and then I returned, with none of the mishaps that catagorised my outwards journey. The return route has a couple of very nice down-hill sections, and runs past an "Old Station" that looks nothing like (and four Station-worker's cottages, which do), along what must be a road on the old railway route.
My estimate is about 45 miles for the entire round-trip cycling, over 4.5 hours (2.5 out, 2 return (more leisurely)).
ETA: Google Maps makes it closer to 42 miles.
Mon, 27 Jun 2005 14:18:12 GMT
Sheepishness Brit
1. Waited for forty minutes in the rain for a bus and then two come at once.2. Fought someone bodily for the last packet of butterscotch Angel Delight in the convenience store.
Supermarket
or Grocers
please...3. Failed to find Last of the Summer Wine at all amusing. But only the later seasons when Foggy wasn't around any more4. Danced with delight the morning after a general election.
Never had the chance…5. Shouted at Radio 4. Particularly Woman's Hour
, but not limited to it6. Bought Marks & Spencer's underwear.7. Made bubble and squeak.8. Complained about the weather. All the time!9. Stood in the doorway or by the window gazing out at rain/snow/hail as though it were a new phenomenon.10. Tried to use a public loo and been forced to walk out again and cross your legs till you got home due to the sheer disgustingness.11. Had a Hornby train set.
I don't think my mother's old set was Hornby12. Said 'ah well, mustn't grumble'.
13. Honestly believed that Marmite is an actual foodstuff. It is!14. Thought that cider was a girlie drink and only realised the error the day after, when that whole hideous karaoke striptease incident comes flooding back and you realise you're wearing someone else's pants.
Ineligible!15. Made Heath Robinson-esque sculptures out of Meccano.
LEGO doesn't count16. Used leaf tea, warmed the teapot, and put the milk in last.17. Been taken to 'The Nutcracker' as a Christmas treat.
18. Taken ballet lessons.
19. Been to a panto.20. Read Noddy books as a child.21. Had riding lessons and joined the Pony Club.
22. Watched 'Blue Peter' twice a week, every week, for at least five years.23. Know that 'Dr Who' had an existence prior to his incarnation as Tom Baker. Of course
!24. Consider 'Blake's 7' the apotheosis of British TV science fiction.
25. Had nits.
26. Seen a performance by Morris Dancers.27. Been to the Glastonbury festival.
28. Said 'bollocks' a lot. Bollocks!29. Played on an old Second World War bombsite as a child.
30. Had a father/grandfather who fought in the War.
One grandfather was already in the Clergy, the other (IIRC) did useful things like driving Fire Engines31. Know that the Second World War started in 1939, not 1941. Don't you mean 1938?32. Have parents/grandparents who remember the Blitz and rationing.33. Been hunt sabbing.
34. Played in a children's playground floored with SOLID CONCRETE!35. Been stuck on the Tube for more than 20 minutes for no reason that is ever divulged to anyone.36. Gone Christmas shopping in Harrods/Selfridges.
37. Bought the Big Issue.38. Given old clothes/books/stuff to Oxfam.39. Been to France on a school trip.
40. Made a crown for a nativity play with old-style Rowntree's Fruit Gums.
41. Made anything from a Blue Peter programme. I'm sure, but I can't remember details42. Carry an umbrella for more than three hundred days a year. Not currently, though43. Had a parent who stood for local council elections.
44. Managed to live in the UK but not visit all of its constituent counties. "Managed"?, it's quite easy really!45. Been to a foreign supermarket and stocked up on Nutella to a ludicrous extent.
Nutella? eww
!46. Been on a booze cruise to Calais.
See #1447. Holidayed at the seaside and caught fish in rockpools.
48. Consider Europe a foreign country.
Which bit? It's all foreign, but so's Lancashire49. Were christened C of E, but never go to church except for at Christmas, Easter, weddings and funerals.
50. Had a Sindy doll.
I think my sister may have done51. Remember 'Opal Fruits', 'Jif' and 'Oil of Ulay'. You mean they've gone away? Nah, I'm sure I bought a Jif Lemon this Shrove Tuesday52. Consider fish 'n' chips a basic food staple, not a Quaint British Novelty.53. Had curry sauce on your chips.
You don't mix Curreh and Chips. Vinegar for Chipsses, pressciouss54. Don't celebrate St Patrick's Day. Why on earth would I?55. Never say "gotten". Not intentionally, anyway.56. Harbour fond memories for the Beano and Dandy before they got crap. I'll have to take your word on crap
57. Was a Brownie.
See #1458. Remember Kathy Gale (Honor Blackman) in the Avengers.
Don't even remember the Avengers!59. Get ALL the jokes in Monty Python. OTOH, how could you ever tell?60. Remember the days when 'Top of the Pops' could make or break a popstar. I guess. I didn't really pay that much attention61. Travelled from one end of the country to the other in one day and called it a long but do-able journey. Less far, but still…62. Used a racist term and then paused, waiting for someone to come arrest you for being un-PC
63. Cried when we lost the World Cup in football.
Why? Can't be arsed shedding that many tears for a dream that was old 10 years before I was born…
Mon, 27 Jun 2005 13:28:30 GMT
Town was strange yesterday evening. It was crawling with police riot vans, full of coppers who were either wearing stab-proof vests under their reflective jackets or had had one too many doughnuts (the thought of which caused me to smirk excessively while walking past a pair of them, earning an "Evening, lads"). All the pubs had shut up early, or had "private parties", or all the windows blacked out. For a quiet Sunday evening there was a real atmosphere of impending doom.
The best guess we had was that there was trouble expected from Midsummer Fair, but have no idea if anything did happen.
Sun, 26 Jun 2005 23:43:48 GMT
Attractive Celebrity Meme
Well, since
mst3kgirl asked so nicely here it is:
List 10 celebrities that you find attractive and then tag 5 of your friends.
In no apparent order:
The
last
three of those required some thought…
Tagging:
Sun, 26 Jun 2005 22:23:09 GMT
Not only am I three letters and a two-digit number, but…
Sun, 26 Jun 2005 21:54:45 GMT
Superceding the Reeve
So, on Friday, after having a wonderfully rainy and wet day, 0x20
∗ of us proceeded to New Hall for the annual
CUSFS/Jómsborg mead reception and dinner.
ceb had produced a seating puzzle involving wooden-blocks with pictures on, and a pair of adjectives for each person. I was given a star, and the adjectives
Stellar
and
Six-Legged
.
Seating I found myself between
atreic and
ewx. For the menus this year I had done my home work and produced about 1400 words of microfiction
† which I'd printed on labels and stuck into menus; having to resort to a pen only for my name and the people I hadn't been sufficiently organised for. Fortune smiled on me, and I was able to scribble congratulations in the Y-Reeve's menu just after he was raised.
cartesiandaemon found himself the new Omnipotent being for the year, making me now the V-Reeve (hmm, these letters get smaller every year…). And I got pouncehugged by Louise, and less enthusiastically by other people. And whilst my excuse didn't get a standing ovation, it didn't go down badly.
All in all a very enjoyable, and well organised, evening.
∗ Well, actually 0x1d initially, 0x2 of whom turned up later and one was eventually absent.
† Well, including two haiku, a limerick and a resetting of the Jómsvikingar Saga as a sonnet. And unfortunately this was only 20 pieces :(.
Sun, 26 Jun 2005 21:43:31 GMT
In a bizarre repetition of fate, I've managed to use my Sunday to turn around on a generally pisspoor Saturday and end the weekend reasonably happy - just like last weekend, and the weekend of the 4th/5th. This really is feeling like Groundhog Week.
Quote of the day comes from an interaction between a little girl of maybe 8-10 years and her father whilst in close proximity to
lark_ascending's and my pitch at the Cowley Road car boot sale:
Girl: *sees something in our everything-for-£1 box* Ooh, it's a pound!
Father: And have you got a pound?
G: No, I spent it on a wristband *shows off*
F: Well there you go then. Welcome to the wonderful world of economics.
Sun, 26 Jun 2005 20:44:41 GMT
The cheek of it
Sun, 26 Jun 2005 19:21:42 GMT
Techy question
I have an evil idea™ that requires automated modification (deletion and uploading) of lj userpics. Does anyone know of a library (preferably perl or C, but I'm not too fussy) that already has these features?
Sun, 26 Jun 2005 18:35:09 GMT
More Veizla pictures
Sun, 26 Jun 2005 18:32:51 GMT
Being Thirty
Knock, knock! Who's there, in the other devil's name? Faith, here's an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale, who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven: O, come in, equivocator.
Well, I'm thirty! So, what of my twenties? How have I grown, or decayed!? I think that four things stand out. First, I'm much more of an equivocator than I was. Almost everything I experience now is equivocal, and I tend to be equivocal in my attitudes to most things. It doesn't seem good or bad, so much as inevitable, somehow.
Secondly, I don't feel any need, really to experience. I had quite a quantity of really very rich experience over a limited period of time in my twenties, hedonistic, spiritual, absentive, and so on, which I suspect it will take me a very long time to comprehend. I'm half minded to consider it arrogant, but I'm still minded to believe it true, that with most of the people my age I meet most of the time, I seem to have had a broader experience of things, along many common axes, than they have. I think it's this plays into the equivocation I feel. It's a bit like feeling to be the centre of gravity of an explosion, which stays where it is, as parts go flying to the four corners. It surprises me, as I always think I'm quite sheltered, if you ask me, out of context. As a result, now, I don't really have any drive to the edge, and that makes things difficult, because it means I lose purchase on lots of advertising, which is often based around experience.
Thirdly, I've become much less enamoured with the way things are run, and am much less likely to think of this as the best of all worlds. In a way, this is backward to what it should be. I never have been much of a radical, but every year makes me less satisfied with the way we run the west. Perhaps that's influenced by my lack of a real drive to experience, that makes much of the enterprise seem less worthwhile. Perhaps it's just that I've learnt about people's true attitudes directly, rather than via media. Perhaps it's that one's desired level of comfort is calibrated to conditions when you were young, so that much of the subsequant increase in comfort seems superfluous. Perhaps it's that I've experienced many lacks and an amount of pain, and the're not so bad as I feared. Bad is the wrong word, not so fearful. Things happen, I act in such a way, and that's what happens. Less willful objection to them, I suppose, is a better way of describing it. I'm not making any sense am I!?
Perhaps it's the growing influence of wicca-related ideas as a framework. But I think it's more to do with an idea which is still growing in me, which I can't quite place a finger upon. Someone said, There never was anything but a thoroughly modern man, implying in context that the unbalance, koyanasqatsi, future-shock, and fears and insecurity of modern life would have always been experienced through the ages, by iron age man, stone age man, and so on. And that's something that I think I now believe. The best I can do to explain this is to say that it's this that's kind of detemporalised civilisation for me, and deromanticised it, and really crumbled the idea of forwards. It's like the Hans in the sanitorium in The Magic Mountain, the way the scale of time collapses with the regularity of the regime.
Finally, there's been a greater disconnect somewhere between, I'm not sure fantasy and reality. More than that, an increasing number of layers of 'meta-want': "Yes, I want that, but do I want to want that", and so on. Which makes the more fantastic and less reasoned desires more interesting and innocent, and potential sources of power, as they don't hold so much thrall.
I wonder if I'll have an lj in ten years time? I wonder what I'll be saying then?
Sun, 26 Jun 2005 18:06:15 GMT
Medical update
NHS Direct told me to ring my GP and/or their emergency cover service. My GP's number got picked up by CamDoc, where a nice nurse took my story and got a doctor to ring back. The doctor rang back some time later, and told me to come in to the Chesterton Medical Centre, and was deeply unsympathetic to the suggestion that this might be difficult as I could barely walk. As it seemed I'd get seen by a medical professional sooner if I got myself there, I sighed and asked Amy to drive Tony and I there. Not fun. The Medical Centre has a huge waiting room full of people staring at me as I failed to manage sitting on a chair and settled for sprawling across the floor. Which was hard.
Eventually I was called. The doctor had a student doctor in tow, who led the consultation with him hovering. She was pretty good and I was beyond caring very much at that point. I ran through the medical history for them, including how much I didn't want another examination, and they checked my temperature to discover I had a fever. Which was interesting as I hadn't had one on Thursday. They suspected salpingitis (inflammation of the fallopian tubes) caused by an infection, which was also causing the fever. The senior doctor said that the swabs taken on Thursday might not show up some infections for a couple of days, i.e. right about then. He then rather apologetically said that they really did need to examine me to be sure.
So I let them. It was awful. They had to move my cervix to confirm that it was my reproductive system that was hurting. I gave them confirmation. Thankfully Tony was very nearby and came to hold me the moment they had finished.
This done, they prescribed me extra-strong antibiotics, at three pills per day, and I was instructed to take three pills over the remainder of the day, to hit whatever the infection was as hard as possible. This should reduce the pain, but if there was no improvement in 18 hours, I was to call the emergency line again. Tony called Amy who fetched us home, settled me in bed and went off to fill the prescription and generally looked after me all evening, during which time I did start to improve a bit. This morning I was very definitely much better, in that the painkillers are keeping the pain bearable and I can move around and sit upright relatively easy.
I can definitely manage until tomorrow like this, and tomorrow is when I was told to call the Daphne Ward back about the ultrasound. I still want that, because I want to be absolutely sure what is going on, and fix it, before I go back to work.
Sun, 26 Jun 2005 16:28:42 GMT
Entry-length Meme
Length Distribution of senji's Last 25 Entries
| 0 - 100 words | 9 |
| 100 - 200 words | 8 |
| 200 - 300 words | 1 |
| 300 - 400 words | 2 |
| 400 - 500 words | 2 |
| 600 - 700 words | 3 |
Sat, 25 Jun 2005 19:24:08 GMT
Going to the Carlton now for a few drinks with
pseudomonas, feel free to join us.
Sat, 25 Jun 2005 16:14:25 GMT
Musing on guesswork
Games of hidden information are very weird in their randomness.
Minesweeper, of course, is well known to be annoying for its randomness, which is why I went to the effort of writing a version that didn't require random guesswork. When you have no choice but to take a risk, it's annoying to be wrong because it terminates your game.
But I've recently been sent an implementation of the puzzle/board game ‘Mastermind’ for my puzzle collection, and I've been finding that the annoying randomness works the other way in that: it's much more annoying to be right. When you've just constructed a guess which you've carefully designed to narrow down the possibilities and bring you one step nearer to the actual solution … it's terribly irritating if that guess turns out to be the exact answer. In a game played against an opponent, where each of you was scoring points for how quickly you solved the other's problems, this would at least be useful to you because you'd get a lot of points for it. But in a solo context, you're not really after the high scores; you're after the satisfaction of reasoning your way to the answer step by step, and to unexpectedly hit the right combination at an early stage rather spoils the fun.
Sat, 25 Jun 2005 14:57:01 GMT
I took my new camera out for the first time last night, to the Veizla (Jómsborg the New's annual dinner). Quite a few shots I wasn't really happy with, but here are some of the ones I like most:
For some of the pictures I took the Gimp to them. Some were much improved by throwing away the blue and green channels:
Inspired by Mobbsy's closely cropped faces:
Further Veizla photos.
(Constructive criticism welcome, “be less drunk when wielding a camera” can be taken as read...)
Sat, 25 Jun 2005 11:59:58 GMT
help someone with their research!
Sat, 25 Jun 2005 10:56:39 GMT
Is your call urgent?
Last night it all got a bit much and with Tony's help I rang NHS Direct to ask about the safety of taking my paracetamol+codeine pills rather than just paracetamol, on top of the diclofenac. I also rang home, but mum was out, so I rang his mum instead, who calmed me down - hurrah for second mothers. She also urged me to get more pushy with the doctors if I didn't improve. My own mother said the same thing this morning, so I'm currently waiting for an NHS Direct nurse to ring me back (calling the Daphne ward directly didn't get an answer).
I hate hate hate the recorded message that says they are facing exceptional demand and to hold the line if my call is urgent, or call back later. It takes both my mothers' voices in my head to keep me telliing myself that taking three different painkillers and still hurting too much to sit upright counts as "urgent".
Both mothers have told me to consider going private. I don't want to be someone who uses money to jump the queue, but it's amazing how that objection starts melting away in the face of everything hurting.
Yes, I'm whining. When I have something good to talk about, I will.
Well, I am reading some good books: Jenny Crusie writes very good romantic comedy, which is helping to keep me sane, and a whole stack of Diane Duane books arrived yesterday for me from Canada when I finish those. Hurrah for Abebooks.
Fri, 24 Jun 2005 23:38:00 GMT
Watched
Kung-Fu Hustle tonight
I was initially very skeptical about seeing this, the trailer had put me off, giving the impression of a formulaic slapstick based, loser-centered comedy. Those elements are there, but are less than half the film, and as such work in the context of the rest of the film.
The story is of a gang of sharp-suited 1930s style gangsters deciding to go to war on a previously ignored slum, and the kung-fu masters who defend it. The central character, played by director Stephen Chow, is a cowardly loser who is trying to ingratiate himself with the gang.
A large number of the jokes are genre references; just as Ford, Kurosawa and Leone traded ideas across the Pacific 40 years ago, Chow acknowledges the development of the kung-fu film that has been carried over to the US and has been taken up by the likes of Tarantino and the Wachowski brothers. There are many direct references to the likes of
The Matrix and
Reservoir Dogs. The many fights are choreographed by Yeun Wo Ping, who worked on
The Matrix and
Kill Bill, they are finely balanced between being great Kung Fu fights, some totally over-the-top comic pastiches.
The film isn't perfect, while the visual gags are usually great, sometimes the script falls a little flat. Overall though, I'm glad I went to see it.
Fri, 24 Jun 2005 15:11:03 GMT
New
NMA album in September!
