A Race Through Dark Places

There seemed to be some sort of local power failure near the station the other evening. A lot of the street lighting was out, including all the lighting in the Leeman Road tunnel that goes under the railway. This meant that the tunnel was very dark. There was a literal light at the end of the tunnel, but all this did was serve to make it seem darker in the tunnel itself. You could quite literally see nothing. Because it was dark.

I had to be careful to not walk into the old lady who was walking in front of me. I could just see a vague thing, with roughly the shape of an old lady, but absolutely no detail. I expect she was quite scared. I think old ladies must get scared in dark places.

Or perhaps they are used to it due to the blackouts in The Blitz. Maybe the darkness brought back happy memories for her.

Anyway because this happened a few days ago, before I started replaying Metroid Prime, I didn't think the following thought at the time: "I wish I had my thermal visor". I'd have thunk it now though.

Metroid Prime Revisited Again

And there goes a second evening in a row devoted almost entirely to replaying Metroid Prime. I made more good progress, but have not yet reached the point I had got to three years ago.

I hope there's not something useful that I'm supposed to be doing instead though...

Running: 34 miles to go.

Metroid Prime Revisited

I have a bad habit of buying computer games (that's not the bad part) and then never playing them properly. Not cos they're crap, just because I never seem to have enough time, and I'll often get distracted by other things - sometimes a new game will do it! Or sometimes I just go for weeks without touching a game at all. This means that of the many games I've bought over the years, I haven't finished as many of them as I should have done.

I was tempted to buy Gears of War at the weekend, but in a fit of sensibleness, I stopped myself. Instead, I decided I would play an old game instead and try and finish it. I chose Metroid Prime - a true classic, but one which I never got all the way through the first time I played. I think I maybe did about two thirds of it.

I was surprised on loading it up this evening that the last time I had played was March 2003 - three and a half years ago. It really didn't seem that long...

But it still plays brilliantly. I've just had three straight hours on it, and have pretty much cleared the Chozo Ruins. Now onto the Hot Bit (can't remember it's real name!) and after that... no idea. Things seem familiar as I get to them, but it's been too long since I last played for me to remember what's around every corner.

I can't see me finishing it before Wii is released here, but attempting to do so will be a fun challenge. And if I don't manage it, I can just play the game on the new console instead :-)

Right, back to Tallon IV I go!

I believe that children are the future

I'm not keen on the current trend in TV where shows aren't having proper opening title sequences anymore. Lost was the first one I really noticed - just a rubbish noise with the word "Lost" turning on the screen a bit. But it seems to be becoming more widespread, even on UK programmes. Torchwood for example, has an opening title sequence that's about three seconds long. And the otherwise fantastic Heroes has one that's very much in the Lost vein.

Thinking about it, even 24 doesn't really have a proper title sequence. I guess that's more excusable though, since it all takes place in real-time, which doesn't normally have a two minute break for a song every hour or so.

I don't want shows to start this way. I want tunes. I want songs. I want the main cast members doing things (with optional cheesy smile shots) one by one, with their names and actor names on screen - how else will I ever know anyone's name. Without this, type of thing, Tom Cruise would never have learnt Katie Holmes' name, and he'd still be calling her "that pixie-like girl off of Dawson's Creek". That may have stymied their relationship.

But most importantly, I'm thinking of the kids. I spend approximately 95% of my time singing old tv theme tunes. I'm particularly keen on Mysterious Cities of Gold and The Littlest Hobo. If we are to leave a similar legacy for our own children, we need to act now to restore songs to opening titles. This is actually important.

Someone should start a petition that could be given to Tony Blairs. He could try and sort it out.

Broken Reception

I used to have really good radio reception in my flat - never any major problems. Then earlier this year, it started to get quite bad and much harder to pick up a clear signal. Radio 1 is particularly patchy. Until last night I didn't have any idea why this had changed. I didn't worry about it too much.

Then, last night at a meeting of our Management Company, someone suggested a reason that sounded very plausible:

It's the bloody Yorkshire Wheel. The large 54 metre high metal wheel is probably acting as some kind of waveguide (no idea what that means) or something to mess up all those radio waves. Other people said they were having trouble with TV too. It seems to vary quite a lot within short distances, but the reception of all these devices is definitely much crapper than before the Wheel came.

I'm not an expert at physics (well, ok, I probably am compared to most of the public, but the finer points of electromagnetism are beyond me. I remember there being a lot of upside down triangles in the equations...) but this theory sounds more than plausible to me. Can anyone give an actual expert opinion here?

And can I sue?

Blind Ignorance

I passed a friend in town today. He appeared not to notice me and hence ignore my proffered smile. This could be considered rude. However, since he held in his hand a SpecSavers leaflet, I made the correct assumption that he was merely blind not rude.

Speccy get.

No "Early Month" in 2006

After my awful sleep two nights ago, last night was much better. I was in bed, drifting off, well before ten. I did then wake up just before midnight 'cos I needed a wee, but it was actually quite nice to wake up in the night at that time and think "Fantastic! I've had two hours sleep already!". After that the night flew by. Still ended up being late for work though due to not getting out of bed quite early enough. Oh well.

Two years ago, in November, I decided to make a special effort to get into work before nine o'clock each morning. And I managed it. Last November I tried to get in before eight o'clock each morning (or possibly earlier - I forget) and I managed that too. Even after nights out drinking.

This year I haven't bothered to even try going in early. A slight shame as I quite liked the idea of having one particular month each year that would regularly be my "early month". But I think I like more the idea of not getting out of bed.

It was always good to be in at that quiet time though, when not many others are in yet. You can get so much more done when there are less distractions. Maybe this time, the others who get in before me (ie most of them) can get more things done when I'm not in to distract them!

Jelly Belly

I had such a f**king stomach ache last night it was untrue. Mainly my own fault, I think. Substituting a proper tea for some crisps and a big bag of Jelly Babies is not a recommended action. I think the babies formed a big jelly lump in me and didn't react well to the two and a half pints of Guinness that joined them soon after.

It was about four in the morning before I was finally able to sleep. Hence I have been a little tired today. I'm having an early night today. Goodnight world!

Moral of the story: Jelly Babies do not a good meal make, whatever Tom Baker says.

And in today's FT

It's not like the Financial Times to resort to name-calling, but it seems they don't like Mr George Bush. Today, they actually refer to him as "Butt-Crack" on the front page! A bit harsh? No.

Museum of Madness

There's an article in today's Guardian about a Creationist museum that's going to open in Cincinnati. It's very funny. Or at least it would be if the people involved weren't serious. Actually, it's still funny, just in a different way.

These people are just bonkers. No two ways about it. They look at things with perfectly sensible explanations and seem to try and find the most ludicrous explanation they can think of, to ensure they fits in with the daft idea that the world is just six thousand years old and that everything in the Bible is actually true.

The bizarre thing about this museum is that they've got dinosaurs in there and are claiming that they were actually around within that short period but from before the fall of Man. Man and dinosaurs living together in perfect harmony. Isn't that sweet?

I'd actually quite like to go there once it opens, but I suspect I might get thrown out for ridiculing the exhibits.

Apparently, although the museum has a planetarium, it doesn't explain "what God thought he was doing when he made Pluto, or why". And did he mean it to be a planet or not? And if he did, what went wrong?

The final countdown

I've now passed the final (non-literal) milestone in the Run-a-Thon 500, and have obliterated the 90% complete point. Just 49 miles more to go. Still 49 miles more to go. I'm not sure which of those sentences is most appropriate. Sentence does seem an appropriate word though.

Unlike when I went out last Sunday, the skies were quiet and not filled with bangs and explosions. There were a number of times then when I was quite alarmed by the loud noises (this won't surprise anyone who has ever sat beside be during a fire alarm). I'd be a bad person in a war zone. Not bad in a war-criminal kind of way, just kind of generally not best. Please don't send me to war. I'd probably drop the gun on someone's foot.

Fireworks are really annoying. I'm pretty sure most people feel the same way - that they should be allowed to be used on the 5th November (or whatever date in your country you let the lunatics out) and at no other time, no exceptions. Clearly though there are plenty of people who don't agree and they have been out making noise every day this week. It's a shame more fireworks don't accidentally blow up when they're lit, or when you touch them. That would be something of a disincentive to use them.

I'm sure they were more dangerous when I was a kid. I remember all the public information films they had. You had to always, always keep them in a metal tin (preferably a biscuit tin, sans biscuits) and never go near them after they were lit. Now it's all films about the dangers of heavy drinking and having sex with bears. Kids today, huh?

Wii, wii, wii, all the way home

I've ordered myself a Nintendo Wii which is quite exciting. It won't be out for a few weeks yet though, so I will have to just wait.

I'm still not really sure exactly what it will feel like to play with. The controller is like a motion sensitive remote control that you can wave about and point at things. A bit mad. I'm sure it won't be long before I accidentally hit somebody with it. Or maybe even hit myself. I hope the edges aren't too sharp.

One thing I hadn't realised until today is that it will also play Gamecube discs, so I won't have to increase the number of boxes under my telly. I hope it's better at being backwards compatible than the Xbox 360 is with old Xbox games, where half of them don't actually work (yet?).

American Stuff

Twas good to see the Dem's do well in the elections yesterday. I think it was because the Repulicans spent too much time on hanging Sad rather than on hanging chads like last time. Ahem. I'm sure there's a good joke in there somewhere.

Tigger gets told off

This is possibly the best photo of me ever taken.



It's from Matt & Jen's wedding that I went to at the weekend and was taken by my brother in law. We have no idea what poor Tigger had done to deserve such a seeing to.

Perhaps he had been too bouncy again.

5 Things

1. Yesterday I had my first mince pie of the festive season. Yum.

2. This Life is currently being repeated on TV. I never watched it much the first time round, but now it's mostly entertaining because of Jack Davenport's hair.

3. I'm enjoying series 2 of Prison Break, but surely this has to be the last one?

4. Lost is still going good guns, and the last one I saw was great - Monster! But do the flashbacks really generally add much? I like the way though that they have now introduced two survivors from the original crash who so far have never done anything at all, but are now able to look at things afresh and point out obvious things the regular characters have been too stupid to spot.

5. Speed Quizzing is cancelled on Tuesdays until after Christmas. This is just for information to avoid anybody reading turning up at Kennedy's expecting to put their fingers on some buzzers.

Am I Running Out?

I got the following automatic email today from Lotus Notes. I think it was having a bad day (paths in the following email have been changed for probably no good reason):

"** Directory Space Warning ***

This warning relates to your Personal Data Area \\DATA01\Lint\stuff

This message has been generated because -2.00% of the total allocation of
295.639 MB has been used. Once 100% is reached you will be unable to save any
more data to this directory.

You must now remove any unwanted files resident on your Personal Data Area
\\DATA01\Lint\stuff.

If you need help with any of the above please contact your relevant IT
Service Desk.

************* "

I wasn't sure what it means to have exceeded -2% of my allocation. I'm wasn't even sure whether it means I'm using more or less than -2%. I'm just confused. Again. I didn't bother to contact the service desk though.

A Sign In A Coffee Shop

Some signs in toilets are wronger than other signs in toilets. Here's one I found this morning in Costa Coffee in Ely:



Here is a list of all the things that are wrong with this sign:

1. (Fundamental!) Since the alarm is disabled, it is unlikely that pulling the cord will have any effect.

2. In the unlikely event that the alarm did work, I find it unlikely that staff will immediately enter the toilet. Assuming they had some way to actually open the door (that I had locked) it would take some time for them to notice the alarm, move from their current location and give aid where it was required. We could be talking up to 30 seconds here, maybe. That is not in any way immediate.

3. The sign is punctuated as two sentences, when in fact it should be just one. The first full stop should be a comma. No excuse for that.

4. It's very red. Too red.

5. It has begun to peel from the wall. This makes the whole toilet appear scruffy and dilapidated.

6. Why would staff enter the toilet? It would be constricted, wet and smelly. I suspect they might enter the toilet room (subject to the constraints mentioned in 2 above), but not the toilet itself.

So overall it was a rubbish sign. It should have said "Here is a cord. Pull it if you like, but nothing is likely to happen if you do. Maybe the light will go off.".

Late!

I'm off down to Ely for a wedding later. Technically when I say later, I mean about half an hour ago. Darn. Is it far?

PTH XIII

Yesterday was the thirteenth Pub Treasure Hunt, and for the second time I was helping to organise it. Should have learnt my lesson the first time possibly. I think it went well. Certainly most people seemed to find their way to the end, which is a good thing.

I may well write more about it later. When I've started to remember...

I Smell Winter

Since the clocks went back at the weekend, winter seems to have come on apace. Suddenly there are drifts of leaves everywhere, like the trees were just waiting for a signal from Greenwich for them to drop their leafy loads.

But this is unlikely, because trees do not operate according to an arbitrary external system of time labelling, unlike say trains or video recorders. From the perspective of a tree, nothing would have changed at the weeekend, except that maybe people started passing it at a later time on Sunday morning. Perhaps a tree can actually pick up on this small signal and then start shedding.

Or maybe it was the weather getting cold that gave the trees the signal to lose their leaves. That sounds more likely.

But that begs the question... how did the weather know that the clocks had gone back???

I'm confused.

Trick or Treat?

It may be Halloween, but I'm not going trick or treating tonight. This is because
a) I'm 30 years old
b) I have no children
c) It's fricking cold.

Instead, here's a treat for you: A ghost story!

Once upon a time there was a scary ghost called Goat. Goat had not been a goat when he had been alive, he had been a man just like you. Unfortunately, due to his little beard and unsteady gait, he had been nick-named Goat at an early age and it had stuck. His real name was Henry

Goat didn't like being called Goat. He found it insulting and degrading. But nothing he did would ever stop people calling him it.

So he died and became a ghost.

Scary!

Train Ticket Blues

I was supposed to be taking the train down to Norwich tomorrow, but at the last minute we've had to postpone until later in the year. Because I'd already booked my rail-tickets, I needed to get a refund for them, and to do this I needed to collect the tickets. Therefore at lunchtime I took a trip to the train station to collect them from the FastTicket machine.

When I got there, the first machine I tried wouldn't recognise my credit card. This was annoying, but not terminal. I tried the next machine and it recognised it and then asked me for my reference number. Darn, I thought, I was hoping since I only had one ticket on order, it wouldn't need the ref number. It doesn't normally. Oh well, I remembered I had written it down somewhere and put it in my wallet. Probably. I might just have left it on my desk. I had a look through, and amongst all the old train tickets, money notes, receipts and random detritus, I found a small folded in half post-it note with a likely looking reference on it.

I went to enter the number, but by this point the machine had timed out so I had to start all over again. When I finally entered the number, it then told me that it was unrecognised or that the tickets had already been collected. Darn. It must have been a ref number from an old journey. I called work to see if anyone could see the reference number on my desk. Nobody picked up the phone.

This wasn't going well.

I gave up and started to walk back to the office. I could come back in the evening with my number and sort it then. I had one last look in my wallet and spotted that the "old" tickets that were in there weren't as old as I thought. In fact they were for my journey tomorrow. This was good but also irritating. I had gone to the station to collect some tickets that I had had all along.

My first thought was that they must have really improved the FastTicket system to the point where it now teleports tickets direct into your wallet. That would be really cool.
My second thought was that I must have collected them on my way home from the pub on Friday night and then forgotten about them because I was a little tipsy. Applying Occam's razor, I settled that the second thought is probably what happened.

I think that a good type of drunk to be, is the sort who does dull jobs that need doing, when they get drunk (like collecting tickets, or tidying up). As opposed to the sort who starts fights or wees in the street. I like it that I am in the first category.

So it ended up alright. I can now apply for my refund. I have to do this by snail mail addressed to "thetrainline.com". That feels wrong.

Other People in the Terrier

In the Yorkshire Terrier tonight were a number of what can only be called "Star Trek Geeks" (2m, 1f). They discussed Photon Torpedoes, ST: The Slow Motion Picture and other stuff. Often I had to actually not laugh whilst they were talking to avoid showing I'd been earwigging on their stuff.

Hypocrittical b**tard you might say.

Fair enough, but I know the limits.

Anyway, after they left, the table next to us errupted in laughter which caused us to some extent follow suit. We had all been aware that the Trekkies were in the building. The table next to us turned out to comprise a) a magician; b) a birthday boy with a spud gun and a potato; c) the long-suffering (I imagine) girlfriend of spud-gun boy.

Much amusement ensued by us watching in regards of i) how spud guns can lead to fights; ii) how big potatoes don't fit well into either pint glasses or coat pockets; iii) how you shouldn't attempt to dispose of your girlfriend through a "Bosman Transfer".

I hope they didn't all end up in Casualty. Or The Bill.

Or Bagpuss.

Sing Your Heart Out...

New Singstar game... Singstar Legends... Best yet?

I think it might he...

In the meantime, I saw a rat today... It was well cute but still a potential rabies/scabies magnet. I smiled at it/him and he walked away.

Payments In Kind

I was running a session of a business game today and got not one, but two bottles of Champagne as a thank you:



Not bad really, for two hours of entertaining "work", for which I was arguably being paid anyway.

However, every silver lining does have a cloud, and my big fat cloud is that I have to go to Norwich next week and do it all again.

Where did all the sediment go? Where? Where?

In New Scientist's "The Last Word" section this week, a reader has asked the following, quite brilliant, question:

"How long would it take an average cow to fill the Grand Canyon with milk?"

Hopefully another reader will write in with an answer. I won't attempt to myself, as since I don't drink milk, I know little about cow milking. However, my gut feeling is that it would be a very long time since, even for the most profligate cow, the milk would tend to run out of the bottom end of the Canyon some time before it actually filled up.

I wonder why she wants to know? Perhaps she fancies a really big milky bath, like Cleopatra but more so.

I suspect that even if she gets an answer, she won't be able to try it out. The American National Parks Service are very strict on not leaving things in the canyon that shouldn't be there and I think several gallons of milk would certainly fall in this category.

Anyway, on a related note, this is very funny.

It gets worse...

Oh balls. Yesterday was embarassing, but today I bought a Rod Stewart album.

Shoot me now.

A slight guilty pleasure

Have you done anything today that you feel guilty about? Even a little bit? I have.

Today, I intentionally went into a music shop and bought the new Meat Loaf album, Bat Out Of Hell III: The Monster is Loose. I'm listening to it now and it's great. Big, daft and ridiculous, like the man himself.

The original Bat Out Of Hell is one of the best albums of all time ever and if you don't agree you're clearly in your own personal hell. I've possibly been listening to it all my life (since it came out 30 years ago!).

I even saw Meat Loaf live once, at the Sheffield arena. I think it must've been around the time of the second Bat album, so some years ago. It was back when I originally liked him, before I had a teenage phase of being too cool for The Loaf. When I got even older I realised that you can never be too cool for The Loaf and so here I am now.

Though I still feel a little guilty.

I'm also quite partial to meatloaf as a food.

Thundercats... Go!

I went to Clifford's Tower today. I hadn't planned to go, it just sort of happened. You know how it is - one minute you're sitting in a pub eating steak with some friends and the next you're paying three english pounds to enter a burnt-out 14th century castle. Happens all the time.

I blame Chip this time. He's leaving York soon and after lunch he said he wanted to visit the tower before he left, because he hadn't been before. I hadn't been in either so I went along today for the ride. Not that there's a ride in there, mind. It's not like the Yorvik Centre.

There's not actually a lot in the tower, since it is a burnt out ruin but if you go up on the battlements you can get a good view of York. Not as good as you get from the top of the Minster, or from the Yorkshire Wheel, but still pretty good.

And it's cheaper than those other places.

Human Traffic

Sometimes things juxtapose themselves in a nice fashion. In today's Guardian there were a couple of leaflets that went well together:



The first was from Amnesty International and concerned people trafficking, particularly of young women sold into lives of prostitution in the UK. The second appeared to be encouraging it somewhat.

Although I think it was actually selling sofas.

Hi BiL!

Much as I love my Brother in Law, sometimes he's a bit pushy.

There: done.

xxx

End of the road

I've got hold of a picture of me finishing The Great North Run a couple of weeks ago. Proof that I wasn't dreaming the whole thing, though it feels a little like that now.



Still haven't really decided whether or not I want to do it next year though...

Prague (3) - Terrorist Alert!

I read today that whilst we were in Prague, apparently the city was at HIGH RISK of a major terrorist attack. Is that not something they could have mentioned somewhere? Shouldn't there be signs at the airport: "Welcome to The Czech Repulic! And btw, we currently have a major risk of terror! Have a nice stay!"? Prewarned is prearmed, after all.

We're lucky to have got out alive.

It does explain why there seemed to be a lot of policemen about. This is one we found by a synagogue:



See how alert he is? Makes you feel much safer!

The State of my Pension

When I was a kid, I would often be told tales of a man called Father Christmas who would bring me presents each year if I was good. I never saw any real evidence that he existed, but as a child that doesn't really matter. You get the presents and the actual mechanism of delivery is much less important.

The fabled State Pension has always felt similar. I've been told it exists but I've never seen any real evidence of it and I have had to assume that its actualisation will be my dad in a silly suit pushing bundles of fivers through my door. Hoping I'm too old to realise the truth. On his deathbed, perhaps he'd tell me the secret and it would then be up to me to continue this charade with my own offspring.

In this way the myth of the welfare state is perpetuated.

Today I have to recant. I have received evidence from "The Pension Service" that this most legendary of state benefits is real and accruing to me even as I write. I got a letter in the snail post.

It gives me a forecast of my estimated state pension upon retirement. In total, including both the basic pension and my additional state pension, I can look forward to getting around £180 per week at today's prices. This actually sounds quite good to me. If I think about what old people spend money on, it probably breaks down as follows.

I have assumed that
a) My mortgage is paid off, so costs of housing are minimal.
b) I will be fit and well and will not need nursing.
c) Should I need nursing, euthanasia pills will be cheap (say £10 or less)
d) The government never lie or renege on promises
e) Global warming does not lead to the removal of rainy days that people need to save for

On this basis, I would spend money per week as follows

£30.00 on food
£12.99 on Domino's pizza
£3.00 on the local paper
£50.00 on sherry
£10.00 on clothes and bedsheets from charity shops
£1.00 on 20p pieces given to small children (grandchildren, nephs etc) in a pretence that I like them
£10.00 on miscellaneous items (pipes, slippers, extra sherry)
£50.00 on utility bills

This would leave me with a few quid left over to secrete away for a rainy day.

I have therefore bought everything I could possibly need and would have no need of extra money. There is no point in me saving any extra money now into my company pension scheme - I may as well spend it now on dresses and calamities.

They say old age is a time of depression, sadness and anxiety. I disagree. It's going to be one long party!

Prague (2) - Sights of Prague

There are many things to see in Prague - the so-called "Sights". Here are my thoughts on some of the ones I saw.

Charles Bridge
This is a stone pedestrian bridge at the bottom of the hill that leads up to the castle. It has statues on both sides along its length and is quite busy. But when all's said and done, it's just a bridge though. Whoopee doo.



Prague Castle
Perched on top of one of the hills to the west of Prague is Prague Castle, which also contains a cathedral within it. The best thing here is the guards who stand and guard the doors in some smart blue uniforms. They're not supposed to smile or laugh so people have a lot of fun trying to make them do so. Some of the guards are better than others at staying staid, but they all do much better than I could do. I'm quite smiley. I think you can go on various tours around the castle area if you like that sort of thing. Or you can just wonder around aimlessly and look at things like we did.

Wenceslas Square
Wenceslas Square is badly named as it isn't in any way square. It's a long wide road with shops on each side. More like the Champs-Elysees than Trafalgar Square. There is a statue of St Wenceslas at the top end. He is on a horse which has one leg in the air. Since St Wenceslas was murdered outside a church and didn't die as a result of battle wounds, this statue nicely disproves that old thing about being able to tell how a statue subject died from the positioning of the horse's legs.

Lots of historic things have happened in Wenceslas Squaare over the years, such as the declaration of the end of Communism in 1989. Last week however, nothing notably historic seemed to be happening. This was a little disappointing so we had an overpriced coffee.

Old Town Square
This is actually a proper square. It's got one of those bloody clocks in it that has little people that come out and move around on the hour. ie jumped up cuckoo clocks. Many big cities have them and they are always, always crap, underwhelming and anti-climactic. This one, the Astronomical Clock, was no exception.



The skeleton on the right hand side does a little jig which was almost cool. But only almost.

And those are the sights of Prague.

Reading Glasses

I'm sure it's supposed to be people wearing glasses to read books rather than books wearing glasses to be read by people...



But then what do I know...

Prague (1)

So I've just had seven nights in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. It was my first time there, indeed my first time in Eastern Europe, and so everything was new. A week is quite a long time to spend in a city so it's important to pace yourself and take things at a leisurely pace. Don't eat all the sweets at once.



We were staying in a hotel, La Boutique, to the south of the city in an area called Smichov. The hotel itself was right next to the Staropramen brewery, and from our room we could actually see into it and see bottles coming off the production lines. It would have been good to have beer piped straight into the room but this wasn't happening. Oh well. There were plenty of bars nearby.

Whilst the brewery didn't seem to do tours, it did have a bar/restaurant attached which served a variety of typical Czech dishes. Most of these involve cabbage and dumplings. Bread dumplings, potato dumplings, stuffing dumplings and dumpling dumplings. They like their dumplings. With cabbage. We ate there on the first night, and I had a huge piece of duck (with bread dumplings and red cabbage, natch). It was nice enough and was washed down well by the several pints of beer.

Generally, I ate quite well over the week. Since we were out for lunch and dinner every day, it was hard to ever feel hungry especially after allowing for breakfast in the hotel. I tried to eat a mixture of Czech and non-Czech food (ie Italian, Mexican, random) to save on dumpling over-exposure.

If you stayed there long enough it would be easy to turn into a giant dumpling. With cabbage hair. And beer wee.

Tomorrow: Some Thoughts On The Sights of Prague.

Expectations of Applause

A question: If you are doing a presentation, what's the minimum size of audience so that you have a (say) 95% chance of being clapped at the end?

If you did one to two people, I think clapping would be unusual. Whereas to 1000 people, it would be pretty certain (if only out of politeness). Where's the middle ground? Where's the turning point?

I'd guess around 12 people, but I have no evidence of this.

Back from Prague

Well, I'm back from the Czech Republic. Hello! I'll write about the holiday over the next few days but in the meantime here's a photo of Prague Castle to prove I've been there.



Based on my experiences, here are the top ten things to do in Prague:
1. Drink czeap Czech beer
2. Visit stuff
3. Look at stuff
4. Go to the shops (inc Tesco)
5. Eat Czech food (mostly with dumplings)
6. Eat non-Czech food
7. Visit places on the train that aren't in Prague (eg Germany)
8. Sleep in your hotel
9. Sit in the park and read a book whilst eating salami
10. Drink more czeap Czech beer.

An Haitus (2)

So farewell for a bit. See you next week. Don't touch my stuff whilst I'm away.

Off up and away...

I'm off to Prague for a week tomorrow. I've never been before and if I'm honest, I don't know much about the place. Since I'm there for a week though I figure I'll have plenty of time to work out what it's about once I'm there and there's not too much point in me reading the guide book beforehand.

So far I've only managed to learn the Czech for "Good day" (Dobry den) but I'm working on also learning "Farewell", "Yes", "No", "Please", "Thank you" and "Please don't use the leather one this time".

I'm not fully packed yet, but I'm not far off. I'll do most of it in the morning - we don't need to get the train until half past ten. I think I'm allowed to take most things except liquids on to planes now (do I have to do a big wee before I get on? Or is wee allowed?) so that should make life easier. I have passports, insurance, foreign money and electrical adaptors.

My holiday reading will be Richard Dawkins' new book, The God Delusion. And some more Stephen Baxter for after I've finished that.

I will not be running in the Czech Republic. Unless I find myself chased.

Great North Run, My Time At The

First thoughts on the Great North Run when I got there... it's quite busy. If you imagine the entire population of a day at the Reading Festival, lose a sixth of them because they're too drunk on cider to stand, then line all those people up along a motorway... that's your start line. 50,000 people standing around waiting for someone to fire a gun half a mile away so they can start stumbling towards the South Shields.

The starting arrangements actually made it quite hard to do any kind of decent warm up or stretching. Everyone was just too close together. I had a go at doing the best I could but it was a bit half-hearted. And it was hot and sunny too. As a plus point, I didn't feel like I was going to need the toilet anytime soon.

The race started at about ten to eleven (a little late) and 25 minutes later I crossed the line and actually began to run. At this point I felt ok. But it was early days yet.

The first few miles were fine - I stuck to ten minute miles and was enjoying the novelty of running with thousands of other people along motorways. It was annoying to find people dressed as (for example) Spongebob Squarepants that it seemed hard to overtake (they should have a special lane for fancy dress people) and even more annoying when they overtook me... but what can you do?

There were a lot of people (mostly girls from what I remember) who had started walking after less than two miles. They were really pissing me off a bit since they just get in the way and make it quite hard for people to progress. I don't see the point of entering a half marathon if you can't even run a couple of miles. Why would you do that? Why? They should instigate a system like in that Stephen King story The Long Walk where if you drop below a certain pace you get shot. Dead. That would give 'em a kick up the ass. Maybe they'll bring that in next year - I know the organisers are always keen to make the event go more smoothly.

Up to about six miles, everything was going fairly smoothly. I was sticking to the 10 minute miles and not feeling too dead. However, shortly after this, disaster!

My shoelace had come undone.

I had to stop at the side of the road and tie it before I could carry on. Annoyingly this was also about the time my left leg started to hurt. Not in a can't-carry-on way, just in a hi-I'm-your-left-leg-what-are-you-doing-to-me kind of way. This then carried on to be a problem for the rest of the race. However, I don't think it actually slowed me down significantly. It did make me not push things too much though. Maybe this was a good thing.

I kept up the pace to ten miles - at this point I'd been going for 1 hour 45. Ten is the longest I'd ever run prior to the race. But then I just started to feel very bad and the next two miles took me about 25 minutes. Even the spectators by the road who were offering biscuits to runners didn't help. I was tired and I was miserable and I wanted a beer. Somehow I kept on going.

Just before the final mile along the sea-front in South Shields, there's a very steep downhill. It was tempting to go fast down this but I knew that to do so would quite possibly cause me further injury or worse so instead I went dead slow. It seemed to work and then I passed the twelve mile mark and knew the end was in sight. Not quite as close as I hoped, but I was able to speed up a bit whilst heading for the line.

It's a lovely feeling to know that something you want to finish is going to finish soon. It helps you put in that last little bit of effort. With about half a mile to go I spotted one of my friends that I'd started the race with going very slowly. Rather than slowing to encourage them on, I crossed to the other side of the road and tried to secretly overtake so that I'd finish in front. Sadly, she spotted me and started to speed up so that she overtook me just before the end and finished a few seconds ahead. Darn. Serves me right for not being nice, I suppose.

It felt very good to cross that finish line (after 2 hours and 22 minutes). A definite sense that I'd done something that I never thought I would. After all, a year ago I'd never even considered doing any running, let alone a long one.

I haven't yet decided whether I'll enter next year or not.

But for now I need a rest. Which is fine, as I'm off to Prague for a week shortly. Running will resume mid-October.

As a bit of an aside, it was good to see that the main purpose of St John's Ambulance seemed to be to hand out Vaseline to any runners who wanted it. The jury's still out on whether this is to put above your eyes to stop sweat running into them or whether it's to rub on your bits to stop them chaffing...

It's not too late to sponsor me, if you want to and haven't already done so, either for the GNR or for the Run-a-Thon 500. Both are combined on my Justgiving page. Cheers!

Seven seconds short of a complete set of 2s

Today, after literally many months of anticipation, waiting and some trepidation, it was the Great North Run. I was hoping to beat two and a half hours, and actually got 2 hours 22 minutes and 15 seconds, so was fairly happy really.

Now, I am home (after a five hour car journey - don't ask!), tired, bathed and ready to go to bed for a good long sleep. So that's what I'll do.

I'll try and write something about the race tomorrow. Until then, adios!

Booking a sleep

One more sleep to go until the Big Run.

We're off down to Ely for a wedding in November. Ely is a small village in Cambridgeshire which has aspirations to be more than it is due to it having a big old gothic cathedral there. I went there once, ten years or so ago and remember there being not much there other than a few second hand bookshops. And the cathedral.

It also has a train station that can be a very cold and empty place when you're stuck there in winter.

Because Ely is small, it doesn't really have proper hotels (ie the sort where you have to queue for four hours to check out in the morning) and so most accommodation is in the form of B&Bs and little family run hotels. I got round to trying to book somewhere this afternoon and quickly found that all the half-decent looking places seemed to be full on the night of the wedding, even the Travelodge - the only chain hotel anywhere near by.

Luckily, I found somewhere in the end - a smallish B&B but it looks nice enough and is well situated for the wedding. I had to actually use the phone to book - no nice interweb booking was possible - which was irritating but seemed to work. Except that I have to post (snail!) a cheque down to them as a deposit.

I'm always faintly amazed when I see people still using cheques. Primitives. It's worst when people use them in supermarkets but I'll get annoyed if I think too much about that, so I won't.

Anyway, I wrote the cheque and put it in an envelope with a handwritten (!) covering letter. And I'll post it soon.

I'm hoping that this archaic chain of events will result in me actually finding a room there for us when we arrive. If not, I'll be knocking on the door of the blasted cathedral begging for sanctuary.

Now I need to go and eat pasta.

A good Friday afternoon game...

I invented a new game this afternoon at work. We use Lotus Notes for email, and it always tells you exactly how many bytes each email message is. My game involves two people both racing to send an email to the other person that is exactly 1,000,000 bytes. This includes attachments. First person to send an email that shows as this size wins the game.

This isn't as easy as it sounds and an element of trial and error is needed to get to the magic total.

Unfortunately, my friend wouldn't play with me because he thought it was a stupid game. I had to resort to sending emails to myself instead.

It took a while but eventually I achieved the million byte goal. I was very proud of myself at this point and gloated a little bit. Then I went back to doing some work.

It was a very enjoyable game and quite addictive. I'd recommend it to you if you also are on Lotus Notes or a similar system.

Apple aren't couriering my favour...

Much as I love Apple, they can be bloody annoying sometimes. I ordered a wire from them to connect my spare flatpanel monitor to the mini-DVI port in my iMac. Now, it's annoying that they've invented mini-DVI in the first place - if they'd stuck to normal DVI, I already have a wire - the one I used to plug into my Powerbook. But that is not why I am annoyed today.

The new wire cost £15 which although quite expensive for a short wire, isn't going to break the bank. Despite this low cost, Apple insist on sending it via courier in such a way that I am unable to receive the blooming thing unless I'm in. And the courier company doesn't do weekends. Grrrr.

Luckily, I'm off work next week so have arranged for it to be redelivered then. But for such a small, cheap thing, it seems mad to use a courier service rather than just sticking it in the post. Maybe it's just that the wire comes in a ridiculous amount of packaging.

It'll be good to be set back up with two screens though. However large your main screen it's always useful to have a little one next to it. It just feels... better.

That moment... in a toilet...

It's always a slightly disconcerting feeling to enter a mens' toilet for the first time in an unfamiliar building. You never know what you'll find. Will they be clean? Will there be a hand dryer or paper towels? How many cubicles? So many questions.

It's especially annoying to go in one and find that it's all cubicles, no urinals. You have to look around and do a double take... where are the urinals? Have you entered the wrong sex of toilet? Is there a hidden section of the room round the corner? Are there ladies present?

This happened to me yesterday. But it was ok. It was just an odd mens' toilet that was only made of cubicals and not urinals.

If you run quick, you might see a wild animal!

A proper athlete came to work today to give us motivational tips and help for the Great North Run on Sunday. I think his name was Nick McCormick. I hadn't heard of him, but this didn't surprise me as I can name only about three sportsmen in general and one of those is Pele. Because they used to be a band.

The session also featured free sandwiches, free Lucozade Sport and free Lucozade Energy Bars. It didn't, sadly, end up featuring the aforementioned athlete since he was stuck in traffic somewhere in York. Although there was a second session scheduled for later in the afternoon, I had to be over the other side of town by then and so had to give him a miss.

Shame really, as I'm sure I could use all the help I can get. At least I got some free food though.

After work I went out for my final training run - just three miles. I hadn't intended to try and go particularly fast but somehow I did anyway (it must have been the motivation) and beat my previous best time by a couple of minutes. Down to a miniscule 27 minutes. OK, Nick M ain't going to be quaking in his running shoes (yet) but I was happy enough.

Especially when I got back to the flat and saw a fox outside! How cool is that? Obviously not cool if it's eating your rubbish bags or your chickens, but since it wasn't doing either (and in any case I own no chickens)... how cool?

Weasel Bulemia

Some time ago, a friend bought me some Weasel Coffee for my birthday. Weasel coffee is a speciality that comes (apparently) from Vietnam and differs from normal coffee in that it has been eaten and then regurgitated by weasels.



The little weasels wander around Vietnamese coffee plantations, find coffee beans lying around, eat them, find that they don't like them and then vomit them up. Locals then find the small pools of weasel sick, remove the beans and then make them into coffee as normal. And this is considered a normal thing to do. This coffee is then sold on to people who like the "finer" things in life.

This is yet another example of how it's generally best not to ask too many questions about where food described as a "speciality" comes from. Think also, "Monkey Brains", "Sheep Balls" and "Big Macs".

It's hard to imagine how this practice got started. Often whilst walking around the streets of York I will come across a pool of regurgitation on the floor - particularly on a Friday or Saturday night. I generally take great pains to walk around such pools. Should I be able to make out the remains of a kebab, I don't pick them up, put them in a fresh pitta bread and sell the new creation on to drunks as a "speciality kebab". Not even Efe's do that (I hope).

The right response to finding a pool of weasel sick should be to ignore it. Even allowing for cultural differences between myself and the average Vietnamese peasant... c'mon! No!

But anyway, they don't ignore it, they make it into roasted coffee beans and sell it worldwide.

(nb I'm assuming throughout here that this is a genuine product and not just a joke. I think it's real...)

I finally got around to having some today. I would have tried it sooner, but my girlfriend has point-blank refused to try it (wuss!) and since I normally only make proper coffee when she's around, it has just sat unloved in my cupboard. But no longer. Since she's away for the weekend, I made myself a pot this afternoon.

It tasted alright. A bit different to the stuff I normally drink but that could just be because it's a different type of coffee, or a different roast rather than because it's been in contact with a weasel's gastric tract.

It doesn't seem to have harmed me yet.

I'm still going to avoid the pools of sick I see in York though.

Oh, the disappointment

Today was York's Fourth Annual Pork Pie Festival. Last year I went along and had a jolly good time, eating all the pork pies and drinking some beers. Sadly this year, despite having planned to go for several months, I only got round to trying to get tickets on Thursday and it was sold out. So no pies for me today.

Shame, really, as it's been a lovely sunny day. It would have been nice to sit out in the beer garden with some pie and lager.

Where did you go?

I love you... yes, you :-)

The Event Looms...

Just over a week to go now until the Great North Run and my training is pretty much finished. I did a 10 miler this evening, my first since the 9th July. It was quite hard work but I think I'll get through the 13 next week. Just.

But for now, I need to rest.

I'm up to 410 miles in the Run-a-thon 500 - nicely ahead of schedule but I'll be really happy when the bloody thing's over and done with.

This evening in Acomb I saw a house with an open upstairs window and a large 12 foot trampoline on the ground below. Surely the best invitation to thieves that can be imagined. In a slightly cartoonish way. I'd have liked to have a go but it would have been illegal and I'd likely have hurt myself.

Where'd the cheap times go...

We went to Silvano's tonight. The food was good, but I felt like we'd been given a menu denominated in Euros. Did I miss a period of high inflation or something?

And more to the point, where has the lovely seafood rissotto gone? Is it the wrong time of year for seafood?

Eh?

Bring back the balls or the human race dies...

Do you have an optical mouse? Pick it up and turn it over. See that big red light shining back at you? Scary isn't it. Does it remind you of anything? Of anyone?...

Does it perhaps look a bit like a... Cylon?

Could Cylons evolve from our current generation of wireless mice? I'm not saying that they definitely will but there are some good reasons why I could be right:

1. Scientists are always experimenting on mice. Witness Pinky & The Brain, and the infamous Mouse With Ear Mounted On Back. It's only a matter of time before they start engineering experiments with their electronic brethren.

2. Lots of things in so called "Science-Fiction" end up coming true, or at least potentially plausible. Witness Virtual Reality or the Space Elevator.

3. A lot of weird shit happens. Who'd have thought twenty years ago that Arnie would actually become president of California?

4. The red light is clearly an embryonic Cylon eye.

5. I'm right.

6. I'm so right.

The only way to stop this threat to the human race's very existence is to stop using optical mice and revert to bally ones. They're not as nice, they need cleaning and work colleagues will regularly steal the ball as a joke, but they may be our only hope for salvation.

Ball mice may save us all. Bring back balls.

Adult Entertainment

I went to Certificate 18 last night for an Acoustic Night, cos Drew was playing there. Along with about nine other bands.



The overall quality of the turns was variable - ranging the full gamut from rubbish to very good. I saw at least one harmonica being abused beyond forgiveness. Dylan has a lot to answer for.

On the other hand, I saw an acoustic version of Monster for the first time. It worked remarkably well.

Drew's set featured a few new songs and seemed to go down very well with the audience. Possibly because he played damn well, possibly because the crowd was getting a bit drunk. The mad dancing girl especially. I don't think he's used to people dancing to his tunes. They ain't exactly Bee Gees.

Monkey!

Normally I'd have a lie-in

This morning I ran in my second and middlest race of the year - the 10km Harrogate Theatre Race. In Harrogate. Although it was by no means the longest distance I've ever done (that's still 10 miles) it was twice as long as the previous race I did, and on a much more demanding course.

The race blurb describes the route as "pleasant" and "undulating". What it should have said was "bloody" and "hilly". Quite hard work in places, but I seemed to have less problems with the uphill parts compared to many people and did my best overtaking at those points.

The final kilometre was all downhill which meant I could do a nice fast final section. Several spectators mistook me for a speeding missile and hid behind trees to avoid the explosion. There was no explosion and I crossed the finishing line without accident and then collected my goody bag.

Because that's what it's all about. It's not the taking part. It's not the winning (which I didn't technically do). It's about the free stuff you get at the end.

This time I got a free pair of running socks (worth £7), a bottle of Harrogate Spa Water, an apple and a ginger cereal bar. Given that entry to the race was £8, I don't feel I did too badly. I probably won't use the apple though.

My time ended up being about 1 hour, 0 minutes and 20 seconds. Not spectacularly fast, but I beat the girls this time at least. It would obviously have been nice to break the hour, but there's always another time. And it's nice to have a target.

Afterwards we went into town for lunch and drink. We had to sit outside because we were a bit smelly.

Bargain Spam

The Yorkshire Hussar does some pretty decent food. Last night they had a special on: Spam Fritters and Chips. For just two pounds.



I couldn't resist having it. It must be many many years since I last had Spam fritters, but they still tasted as good as ever. Deep fried Spam is a hugely underrated dish - simple yet tasty. I could eat it all day. And yet, you hardly ever see it on restaurant menus, even in the better ones.

The perfect condiment to compliment Spam Fritters is English Mustard. I mention this purely for informational purposes should you find yourself in a place where you need to compliment some spam.

And can I just repeat that they were only two pounds?

Just ridin' the storm

I spent lunchtime in a local pub playing Mario Kart DS wirelessly with some friends. I've played the console versions with real people, in the comfort of my own home on many a happy occasion. I don't normally do very well at the business of actually winning, but I have a good time nevertheless. However, I've never played it in a pub at lunchtime before. I guess until recently it just wouldn't have been possible. Now that it is, I'm surprised more people aren't doing it!

Like normal, I wasn't very good, but I was managing to just about stay in fourth place (last human, ahead of the CPU players). I won one race (out of 25!), Baby Park, so it was not a total write off.

Of the four of us, three including myself were using white DS Lites. The other had a black one. He was clearly an evil person! He said that black was the only colour they had in the shop when he bought it but I find that story unlikely.

I think I'm going to have to do some practice on my own to improve my karting skills.

York Beans

My favourite hotel in York for meetings is still the Royal York. For one reason only. They give you individually wrapped Jelly Belly jelly beans. The wrapping is pointless, but I love the beans.

Tuesday's TV

I'm not going to be watching any television tonight myself, not even Battlestar Galactica on DVD (currently h'way through S2). The Actual TV on telly looks pretty boring. But that's only if you believe the descriptions in my TV guide. If you take the descriptions and re-attach them to different programmes, it gets more interesting (albeit only slightly). Here's, then, what you could be watching on the five main terrestial channels later tonight:

BBC1
Celebrity Masterchef
Nutritional experts Dr Wendy Denning and Vicki Edgson explore how to improve the 10 parts of the body people most dislike. 1745096

BBC2
Extreme Dreams with Ben Fogle
Musicians David Grant, Paul Young and model Marie Helvin are in the kitchen. 9893

ITV
Emmerdale
Howard begins to struggle as the group climb a mountain pass. 473

Channel 4
Ballet Hoo! Backstage
Viv and Bob attend their first scan. 4589

Five
The Diet Doctors: Top to toe
Birmingham Royal Ballet's Shoe Master Michael Clifford reveals cobbler's secrets. 815638

See - only slightly more interesting.

Name that tune

I reckon I could sit here for hours and still not think of anything worth saying. One of those evenings where the old brain just gets too tired to do or say anything useful. I should just sleep.

I've just searched my iTunes library for all instances of "lint". It got five results:

Flint (For The Unemployed And Underpaid) - Sufjan Stevens
Clint Eastwood - Gorillaz
Splinter - Seafood
Meet The Flintstones (theme from the TV show)
Meet The Flintstones (version off'a The Simpsons)

Why not try this fun game with your own fake name?

Magnetism and Magic

I know that in principle, magnetism isn't the same as magic. This is what my head tells me.

But c'mon. It is magic really, isn't it? It has to be!

Magnets are so cool!

Big Insects

Maybe it's the weather. Maybe it's the place. Maybe it's the time of year. But I've seen a lot of Daddy Long-Legs in Sheffield today. One just landed on my face whilst I was writing this! I'm in bed, with the lights off. It scared me!

Pamphlets

In the old days, people used to write pamphlets.

Then they'd get into trouble and be tortured.

Or executed.

Nobody writes pamphlets anymore.

Where have all the good pamphlets gone?

I don't even know what makes a pamphlet a pamphlet and not a leaflet, a booklet, a flyer, a magazine, a waste of my time.

But where have they gone...?

Bustedstar Galactica

Busted were created by man
They evolved
They rebelled
There are many copies
And they have a plan

Now that's a concept for a show! Or it's possibly real life...

Fat Boy on a Chopper

On my way home today I saw a sight that I thought was a long time gone from these shores: A fat boy on a Chopper.

He was cycling, slowly along the pavement, swaying slightly from side to side. His tyres looked to be quite flat but that may just have been because he was fat. Despite the fact that he was on a bike, he didn't really make any faster progress than myself. This was again probably because he was very fat.

I found him funny. This might be cruel, but then I'm sure that you would find a fat boy on a Chopper to be funny if you'd seen one too.

It got into my hand and it went bad, so I lopped it off at the wrist

For the first time in over nine years, I am now actually registered with a doctor in the town where I live (as opposed to where I went to university many years ago). *Gasp*

Why has this happened, I hear you ask? Let me tell you a story. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

I woke up on Saturday morning and found that not entirely unusually I had a bit of the old pins and needles in my hand. I attributed this to having perhaps slept in a funny position or something like that and paid it no heed initially. But after a while, I found that it wasn't going away. I had a tingling and numb sensation on the right side of my left hand (little and fourth fingers, plus the bit of hand below them down to the wrist). It felt strange.

There was no pain or major impairment to motor functions, just the constant tingling and slight numbness. I figured that I'd leave it for a bit to see if it cleared up on its own accord, but by the end of Saturday morning there was no sign of this happening. Bugger, I thought.

On Sunday, with still no improvement, I popped down to the Walk-in Clinic to see if they could help. They don't have doctors there, just nurses, but I figured that it was worth a try - especially as it was next to Sainsburys that I was going to be going to anyway. I had to wait over an hour and then the nurse wasn't really sure what the problem might be - she recommended I go and see my GP as soon as I could in the week.

When I got up this morning, the hand was starting to feel a little more normal. Still numb and tingly, just not as much. Since I didn't have a GP, I had to register first but this was straightforward and I was actually able to get an appointment to see a doctor less than two hours later. They clearly respected me and wanted to give me the best possible service because I'm great.

The doctor had a quick look at me and then decided that it was probably nothing serious, just some kind of damage/inflammation to my wrist that was causing one of the nerves to malfunction a little. But since it seemed to be getting better, she wasn't too worried and told me to take a few Ibuprofen and come back if things started to get worse.

She wasn't sure what might have caused it in the first place, but thought that it was likely to have been either some kind of computer-related injury or possibly a sleeping in a ridiculous position injury. Both seem entirely likely.

As of now, I reckon it's about 50% to 75% back to normal so it looks like there's no major problem other than that I now have to take a sample of my wee back to them next week (which is always not much fun).

And at least they're not going to have to amputate my hand.

Not yet, anyway.

B5 actors: Where are they now?

I'm currently working my way through re-watching all of Babylon 5 on DVD. 10 years and on and for the most part it is still fantastic viewing. Best ever (long running) sci-fi series? Quite possibly.

But watching it today, I was struck by how most of the main actors seem to have disppeared into nowhere subsequently. The only person I've noticed anywhere was Delenn (Mira Furlan) turning up in Lost as "the mad french woman". So using IMDB I've done a bit of research to see whether anyone else has done anything of note (ie proper roles, not just one-off appearances in American shows I've never heard of) since B5 ended in '98. Here are my results:

Bruce Boxleitner: Nothing I've heard of.
Bill Mumy: Ditto
Claudia Christian: Nothing much, though she did turn up in Broken News. Which was rubbish.
Jerry Doyle: Nothing much.
Andreas Katsulas: A few episodes of Star Trek.
Peter Jurasik: A couple of episodes of Dawson's Creek. But they must have been after I stopped watching.
Richard Biggs: Died a few years ago. Quite a good excuse.
Jeff Conaway: Nothing much, but since he was Kenickie in Grease, he can be forgiven.
Jason Carter: Played Aragorn in Lord of The Rings. Nearly.

So overall, not a great showing. But I'm sure there's room for plenty more of them to turn up on that bloomin' island...

Jump!

We have a weekly fire alarm test at work, every Thursday morning at 11am. The alarm goes off for about twenty to thirty seconds and then stops. Despite this being a regular event, and despite signs being put up in the entrance to warn of the impending test, I get scared by it every single time. If I'm sitting at my desk, it makes me jump quite visibly. People around me are now quite used to my reaction and find the whole thing fairly amusing, but it annoys me. It's like I have no self control. Even if I remember a few minutes before the test, I still jump come eleven of the clock. This has happened pretty much every week for the last four years or so.

So I was very surprised when we had a proper fire drill yesterday (Friday) morning and I barely was scared at all by the noise. I was in a meeting at the time, but when the alarm went off it didn't cause any significantly amusing reaction in me. It was very strange. Am I only scared by noises that I'm expecting? I don't think this is the case because often other people's phones will scare me when they go off, particularly if the ring volume has been set overly loud.

At least I don't get a fright when my phone starts vibrating in my pocket any more. I used to, but I think I did eventually get used to it.

Air-con-con

In Fibbers tonight. British Sea Power. I'd forgot how sweaty it can get in there even though it's now got the air-con. Cool.

Parcel Delivery

Whilst I was at work today a parcel from Amazon arrived at my flat (some DVDs and a book). As I wasn't in, they left a card saying what they'd done with the parcel, which was to have left it with one of my neighbours. This was a good thing because it meant the parcel was nearby. It was bad news because it meant I'd have to have contact with my neighbours. I actually wouldn't mind this, as I know most of them, but the delivery man had managed to leave it with the one neighbour I've never met, and indeed have no idea what he/she looks like.

I tried initially to go for the approach of hoping said neighbour would bring the parcel down to me and save me having to climb two flights of stairs. On the basis that they'd have nothing better to do than sit around watching out of their window for me to get back from work (because obviously they'd know who I was!) so that they could rush down and give me a package of happiness.

But this didn't happen so I had to resort to plan B: going up to... see them, a complete stranger.

Bit scary.

I went upstairs, and had worked out what I was going to say ("Hello! I live downstairs, why weren't you watching out for me returning home, can I have my ball back?") and approached the front door of the flat. What I saw wasn't what I expected to see. My parcel was just leaning by the flat door. I took it relieved that I'd avoided a confrontation (oh, ok, conversation) and went back downstairs. But I was puzzled.

Either a) the delivery man had gotten into the building and left the parcel outside completely the wrong flat (for safety?) and then left me a message saying he'd done that or b) the owner of the other flat had left it outside his own door in a bid to avoid having to speak to me.

The second option seemed more likely, but I didn't really understand why they hadn't just have left it by my own front door. It wouldn't really have been any less secure - it's not like there are hundreds of people traipsing round the place. Maybe he was thinking that he knew the delivery man would leave a card saying the package was at his, not mine, and so he should go for the approach that made this as true as possible.

I don't know. But at least I got my stuff.

Return of The Yorkshire Hussar

The First Hussar wasn't one of my favourite York pubs, but it was one of the closest to work so I'd find myself there from time to time. It was recently taken over and refurbished, and it reopened a week or so ago under its original name of The Yorkshire Hussar. Whilst it's still in the same location, it features some new and improved features inside such as:

1. A bigger bar
2. An extra door leading to the toilet corridor
3. Better beer
4. Not being sh*t (i not u) any more.

Apparently it had a VIP opening.

.

I wasn't invited though, this wasn't my invitation. I didn't go.

I'm not bitter though because when I went to the newly opened pub for the first time, Jack the landlord gave us a free bag of crisps. My custom can always be bought with free crisps (hope you're reading this, Landlords of York).

What to do with spare chocolates (part 3)

It's surprisingly easy to convert your flat into a hotel using only chocolates taken from a local curry house.



Ujala!

Sticking a puppy where the sun don't shine

My current toilet roll has small pictures of puppies on. This is apparently some form of innovation. Andrex, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that what users of toilet roll really need are small embossed dogs. Several per sheet. "Puppies on a roll".

What is the point in this? Does having a puppy there make the paper softer, more comfortable, more absorbent? No, of course it doesn't. I just don't see who, in their right mind, would find the whole bum-wiping experience improved by the presence of puppies up their arse-crack.

It's madness, and a product that just isn't needed. If I wanted to clean my bottom with pictures of dogs, I'd pop down to York central library, head to the "D" section, find the first dog book they had (something like "The Observer's Book Of Dogs"), check it out, take it home and wipe to my heart's content. Because that's what any normal person would do.

Obviously I'd wipe the book down with (puppy-less) toilet paper before returning it to the library. I'm not a caveman.

I've never been to prison

When you go to prison, do the police give you half an hour to sort out your life before you are locked up? For example, can you:

1. Top up your ISA?
2. Do the washing up (imagine how mouldy your cups would be after 5 years in the slammer!)?
3. Lock your front door?

There must be many other things as well that I haven't even thought of.

I know prison is supposed to be a punishment, but is part of that punishment the continual worry that your kitchen might be overrun with new species of growth?

Yellow Sock

I'm not sure that I'd wear socks like these.

The Tinkler Bell

I'm enjoying the current series of Dragon's Den. The main things people seem to be inventing this year are:

1. Bags that turn into blankets (or vice versa)
2. Premium rate phone lines

There have been two inventions in the second category, both equally retarded. The first was Car Doctor, a premium line you phone when your car's broken. They give you advice on how to fix it, most of which appeared to be along the lines of "take it to a garage". Genius. The second was The Knowledge, a service where if you are lost in London you phone a premium rate line where a taxi driver will answer and give you directions. There are so many flaws in this idea that I won't even begin to list them.

But the reason I mention the program is that I have an idea that is brilliant. However, I'm too lazy to patent it, design it, prototype it or to try and make any money from it whatsoever. Instead I'll describe it here and the world can take it as a present (though if it wants to give me a percentage, I won't say no).

My Idea - The Tinkler Bell
Isn't it annoying when as a male you visit the little boy's room and forget to do up your fly when you've finished having a tinkle? Often the first moment you'll realise you've forgotten to do it up will be when you emerge on to a street and small urchins point at you and laugh at you and say "eh, mister, yer fly's undon'".

This need happen no more, not when you've fitted a Tinkler Bell.

Imagine the same scenario, but this time when you've finished your tinkle, forgotten to do up your bits that should always be done up and begun to walk away, you hear a small bell from down below. "Aha!" you think. "Silly me!" and you do up your trouser fly, embarrassment avoided.

It's a revolutionary idea, but how does it work? I'll tell you!

Attached to the bit of the zip that you hold is a small steel bell. At the top of the aluminium zip itself is a magnet (could be built into the trouser button). Hence when the zip is open, the bell is free to ring and ring it will as you move about, fly undone. But when the fly is closed, the magnet holds the bell still, preventing it from ringing.

This really is a genius idea. Up there with the paper clip.

And I personally would find it quite useful. Come on world, make my dream into a reality.

No more nieces

I was pondering the other day on how you should refer to your nieces and nephews as a whole - ie with a collective noun. I think I may, for possibly the first time in my life, take Bert's advice and try to invent my own word and try and get it into proper widespread usage. Quite ambitious, but no harm in trying.

When inventing a new word, I think it works best if the word starts from current words and expands on them. I'm going to take a cue from Adam Roberts. In his book, On, he uses a system for family members which typically start with a root related to a currently used part-word, followed by a "he" or "she" to denote the male or female. For example, parents are "pas", the male parent (the daddy!) is a "pahe" and the female parent (the mummy!) is a "pashe".

I don't think I need to go quite so far from current usage. I suggest the following:

1. Nephews stay the same and are called "Nephews".
2. Nieces become "Nepshews"
3. A collection of Nepshews and Nephews (Nieces and Nephews in the old parlance) are now just called "Nephs". Maybe this technically should be "Neps", but "Nephs" sounds a bit softer so I'm going to run with it.

So, now, I have two nephs - one nephew and one nepshew.

I think this actually works quite well and I'd encourage all of you to start using it as quickly as possible. Together we can improve our langauge.

Now, I realise it's emminently possible that someone else has already tried to instigate this usage. I did check Google though, and didn't get any usages of "nepshew" apart from a few instances where it looked like "nephew" had just been typed badly.

The only outstanding issue is pronunciation. Should it be Neph-she-ews or Nep-shoes? I think I favour the second one...

Brummies don't sound funny

I saw some research today that said all jokes are funnier when pronounced with a Birmingham accent rather than a Yorkshire one. This is clearly bollocks. For example:

Q: What has eight arms, eight legs and eight eyes?
A: Eight pirates!

I could hear you laughing so loudly when you heard my voice in your head saying that. You're still rolling on the floor, you silly moos. Now get up and imagine the same joke in a Birmingham accent:

Q: What has eight arms, eight legs and eight eyes?
A: Eight pirates!

Hah! Not funny at all, now is it? Stupid researchers. They know nothing.

If anyone has a funnier accent, please feel free to try it on me - you won't win though!

Do you deliver? Yes? Can I have a liver and pineapple pizza then please?

I quite enjoy dirty pizzas - not ones that are actually dirty, but pizzas that come from your generic takeaway kebab/burger/fish/pizza outlet (I nearly used the word "restaurant" there but thought better of it). Actually, most of them probably are dirty. You never know quite what you are going to get and some places do much, much better ones than others. Each new place is a new experience.

Found a great new one last night - Salsa Pizza in Acomb. The best thing was that the pizzas weren't overloaded with cheese - sometimes you get one and you can hardly find the pepperoni for the cheese, if indeed you're lucky enough to have real mozzarella rather than the strange cheese substitute that I believe sometimes acts as a stand in. These ones had just the right amount of cheese - much closer to what you'd get on a Dominos or Pizza Hut pizza. But much cheaper!

I had pepperoni, jalapenos and green peppers. Tasty. I wasn't really particularly hungry because I'd had a big plate of pasta before going out. However, I was a little drunk and I managed to get through three quarters of an 11 incher.

So if you're ever in the area, consider this to be a recommendation.

Mmmmm... pizza.

Exciting New Blogging Toys

Well, I've just migrated over to the new Blogger Beta. Very exciting for a saddo like me. I still have a bit of fiddling to do with fonts and the stuff in the sidebar but I'll get there eventually.

Best new features I've found so far:
1. The spell check is now much faster and easier to use (not that I need it...)
2. It's much easier to manage lists in the sidebar
3. I can put labels on my posts
4. Because it is now all linked to my google account, I have one less password to remember!

I had planned to go running this afternoon, but all this fiddling has cut into my available time. Ah well, there's always tomorrow...

W***ers

And, finally, like a half legged leper, Big Brother Seven has crawled drippingly to an end. Thank God. I kind of wanted welsh muppet Glyn to win, but inevitably it was sweary Pete instead.

This series has been unique in that it featured somebody (Graceless) who was so f***ing horrible that I often felt physically angry when she came on screen. I hope she gets a job on one of those interminable late night quiz channels. That's the kind of hell she deserves. ****.

New Baby

I got a brand new niece yesterday. She's now 1 day old and looks like a baby (though a very cute one). Welcome to the world, little one! Behave well and cry not a lot.

She's my second niece/nephew - is there a word for that? If I myself had two children, one of each gender, I could say I have "two children" rather than "one son and one daughter". Can I do a similar thing with niece/nephews? I suspect there's a very obvious word that I've forgotten due to being stupid.

Lorraine - Live and Not Live

I went to see Lorraine play at Fibbers last night. They're an electro-pop-rock band from Norway, and unlike most bands from round there, they don't seem to be satanists. They were very good indeed. Sounds of the Pet Shop Boys, New Order and the Eighties (in a good way).

I've been on their mailing list since I saw them supporting The Feeling in February. They have been sending me a series of free promotional CDs - those half-size ones that you can't play in slot loading CD players. The first one was a great song (Tell me where you want to go - there's a lovely key change part way through) and the CD case had a picture of an alarm clock with the track length (4:20) displayed on the screen.

The next one came a few months after the first. The cover looked familiar - it had the same alarm clock with a different track length on (4:16 as it was a shorter track). What I didn't realise at first (due to a bad memory) was that the track name was... the same as the first one. It was the same track but a version that's 4 seconds shorter. I have no idea what has been cut out.



What's the point of sending me the same song twice? Why? And why is the second one slightly, pointlessly, shorter?

The only thing I can think of is that because the CDs can't be played in my Mac as it is slot loading, it's a hassle for me to rip it. They've therefore realised this and have sent me the second one to put in a different room to the first. This is actually quite thoughtful of them.

Norweigans - they're such nice people.

Shower Fixing(s)

I've had a plumber round this afternoon to fix a leaky shower. It was a very, very small leak, but it was pretty constant and was enough to cause problems elsewhere. The water had been pooling on the front edge of the bath and was then getting under the sealant between the bath and the wall which wasn't quite as tight as it should have been. This had then leaked down the wall, behind the bath, and had started coming through as a small damp patch on the living room wall.

I think he fixed it. Looked like the whole magic part of the shower had come away from the wall a little, as one of the hidden fixings had come loose. This meant that one of the pipes going into it wasn't as secure as it should have been. So he fixed it back up properly and applied some new sealant round the side of the bath (after first filling it right up to the top). That was actually a job I'd meant to do years ago but never bothered to do as it didn't seem urgent. There's a moral in there somewhere.

He told me that I had a very powerful water supply. I said that yes, I had and that that was a good thing. He agreed but thought it was unusual to find such power in a newish flat such as mine.

Maybe he's right, maybe he's not. I don't really know much about showers and plumbing. When I phoned the plumber this morning I spoke to a lady and she asked me whether it was an electric shower or not. I wasn't really sure. Which was daft because thinking about it a little more, I've used a lot of electric showers in the past and they tend to be notable for one main thing: you have to turn on the electricity before using them. Since I don't have to do that, I could perhaps have made a clever deduction.

But given my shower doesn't have electricity, I'm not really sure how it works. It has a thermostatic feature that keeps the water at a constant temperature and in my head this had always been powered by electrics. So now I don't know how it works and I'm confused, and can only assume that it does indeed run by magic.

Or perhaps, to paraphrase Arthur C Clarke, any sufficiently advanced technology will look like magic to an idiot.

This post covers minimal new ground and is mostly other people's ideas. That doesn't make it untrue though.

One thing I worry about from time to time is whether we are all real or whether what I am experiencing as "reality" is in fact just a giant computer simulation. Yadda, yadda Matrix etc.

Whilst browsing the New Scientist archives yesterday I came across this old article, from July 2002, which pretty much proves we are in a simulation with a probability approaching one.

The argument broadly goes as follows:

1. We need to make one assumption - at some point computers will become powerful enough to simulate a consciousness. I personally think this is reasonably likely.

2. Then either three things can happen:
a) we all die (from terrorism, natural disasters, asteroid impact, grey goo or just from plain old worrying) before the computers get powerful enough. In this case, we are in the original timeline :-) But we're all doomed :-(
b) computers get powerful enough but nobody mimics consciousness for ethical reasons. Yeah, right. In this case we're also in the original timeline and lions are our friends.
c) computers get powerful enough to mimic consciousness and they do actually do this.

3. Under 2c) it is likely that a very large number of universes will be simulated. Therefore on the basis that I, today, find myself in a universe (which I do), it is quite improbable that it would be the original one. In fact, as the number of computer generated simulations grows, the probability of me being actually in one grows towards one.

And that's how it goes. We are The Sims.

Now this does actually explain quite a lot - all those glitches - the way my memory doesn't always tie to everyone elses, the way road markings sometimes move from day to day and so on.

The article later points out that if we are in a simulation then there is a risk that we could be deleted. The best way to stop this would be to work out the purpose of the sim and then act in a way that fits best into it so the creator will like you. If for example it's an entertainment sim, "then you'd better make sure you're part of the fun. What that means varies across cultures, so to be safe you should be funny, outrageous, violent, sexy, strange, pathetic and heroic all at once" which sounds a bit like a Big Brother contestant to me. Horrid to think that maybe this whole universe might be designed purely to produce Big Brother contestants.

A final thought on this (as I could go on all night but I'm planning to go out for a drink shortly). I was watching Odyssey 5 earlier, a nice little show, shame it was cancelled after one season, and the episode featured one of the characters (Robocop) becoming trapped in a computer simulated reality. Now, this could be coincidence. Or it could be someone from the outside trying to give me a message, a clue that I'm on the right track.

But I think I'll stay in the sim for now. At least while it's warm and I'm having fun.

Animals and People

There's a lovely juxtaposition of stories in this week's New Scientist. On page 6 there is a story about how vets need to start taking bestiality more seriously, as it can be quite harmful to the animals.

Then, over on the opposite page, a completely separate article starts: "Should medical researchers be allowed to create human-animal hybrids to investigate disease?".

Girly Race Results

I've got my time and placing for the race I did on Tuesday - 124th out of 168 runners, 29 minutes and 29 seconds. I was also slower than the entire main mens' race which makes me think I definitely made the right choice when I categorised myself as a "slower man" and joined the girls' race. Unfortunately, they've labeled me as an "F" (girl) on the results page of the website. Darnit.

Next race looks like it will be twice as long - a 10k race in Harrogate in September. And after that, about twice as long again for the Great North Run. I can see where this sequence would go next, but that ain't happening. No. Way.

Reasons to be cheerful (part pizza)

1. I have only one more day at work before I have a nice week off.

2. I'm due to be either an uncle or an aunt again shortly. Not sure which yet, my sister hasn't told me what flavour baby it is, but I'll find out soon enough.

3. I avoided the rain this evening.

4. I was at work until seven pm but that's ok because I was doing good stuff and I should have everything finished that I need to before I leave tomorrow.

5. I'm about to order pizza.

6. Not going out tonight, but there's a lot of good telly on a Thursday at the moment. Dragon's Den, Time Trumpet, Extras.

7. Big Brother's nearly finished. Thank God. It feels like forever.

8. Four Day Hombre have landed a support slot on the upcoming Embrace tour.

9. I've now just ordered pizza.

10. I don't need ten reasons, just to be cheerful!

A New Dance

Dancing class tonight as normal for a Wednesday. New dance: The Empty Car Park Tango.

Yep, turned up, nobody else there, no class this week, nobody told us, own fault, should have gone last week to hear the warning to not go this week.

Slow and steady wins the race...

This evening I've taken part in my first ever proper running race! It was a whole 5km down around the river and the millennium Bridge. There were two races - the first was for men, and the second was for women and slower men. I clearly went in the second one. If I'm going to be beaten by girls, it might as well be by hundreds of them.

It was strange running that way, with marshals pointing the way and random people clapping. As I got near the end I was being encouraged along by shouts of "Come on Liz!" which helped me no end.

Anyway, suffice to say, I didn't win the thing. I don't have my final position yet, but it was definitely not top ten. Or top hundred. Oh well. My time was twenty nine and a half minutes which I was happy with since I don't normally do that distance any faster than that and I was dead ill yesterday.

If you're worried that I might be over-exerting myself, then you're probably right and I intend to now take a few days very easy and relax and sleep and get back to 100% health, or at least as close to that as I ever am.

And this will be helped by the lovely bags we got at the end of the race containing Smarties (standard), Fruit Pastilles, a Kit-Kat Chunky and... Twenty Yorkshire Teabags. Can't complain!

I was ill. But I got better

After my incident at the level crossing last night, the last thing I wanted to see when I turned on the TV was that public information film with the cute rabbit ambling along a railway track where it eventually comes across bits of wreckage and eventually, at a level crossing, a full on car crash. Message: Don't piss about on level crossings.

Strangely it was pretty much the first thing I actually saw when I turned on the TV.

After that I sat in my shorts watching my favourite engineering programme, Megastructures on Channel 5 (this week featuring the Dubai dude and his bizarre island building plans) and slowly started to feel colder and colder. I swapped my shorts for jeans and put on a fleece. I was still cold and was starting to shiver so I added a dressing gown on top. This didn't quite do it and by now I was shivering a lot so I added my duvet to the mix. That just about did the job (after a bit). I was also running a bit of a fever at this point - if I'd had a thermometer I think it would have shown a temperature of about a million degrees.

I assumed that this was some new feature of the cold I still had. I'd been sneezing and sniffing and headachy all day, indeed all weekend, so it seemed strange for the thing to suddenly move into full on fever mode.

It lasted for an hour or so and then I started to feel better and was able to remove some of the excess layers until eventually I was comfortable again wearing just my normal clothes. Then I slept ok overnight and I feel now pretty similar to how I felt yesterday (ie a bit crap but not exactly bedbound).

I'm hoping that I'm over the worst of it and it'll be uphill all the way now. But I'm going to take some Lemsips to work just in case.

The light of an oncoming train

I was out running this evening (how nice for the temperature to have dropped below 20 degrees...) and for the first time ever the level crossing barriers at Nether Poppleton were down and flashing when I got to them. There were a couple of lorries waiting on one side and a car and a cyclist on my side. There was also a railway man in a yellow jacket who seemed to be looking after things and talking to the drivers to explain the delay.

As I got close I slowed down to look around and see if the man would wave me across as he was starting to do with the rest of the traffic. Once he'd cleared most of it (the lights were all still flashing and there was a loud siren going off) he waved me over. I crossed the tracks carefully, thankful that there was someone there who knew what was going on and would prevent me from being run over by a speeding train.

He said to me that the things were all out of order. Ahh, thought I. That's annoying. Lucky you were here to prevent me waiting around for hours!

Then, as I started to run off, the man in the yellow jacket got back into his big lorry and drove off! Yes! He wasn't a railwayman at all, just a fat trucker! He could have had me killed! I trusted him and believed he knew there was no train coming, but he likely knew no such thing. He was just guessing.

They don't warn you about that kind of thing in running school.

Driving Practice

I took a friend out for a drive this afternoon - he is currently learning how and needs practice before his test. Since I have been driving for longer than 3 years and am also over 21, I am a suitable person to sit beside a learner whilst they attempt to move a large dangerous hunk of metal from A to B without passing through Dead.

We went up to the test centre at Osbaldwick and then drove one of the actual routes they use for the test. My knowledge of the roads of Tang Hall is now much higher than it was yesterday. I found it quite hard to get all the directions right - a lot of them say things like take the 5th left turn but it's not always obvious which one that is. Also the routes don't always do what you might expect them to - they dive off into little housing estates and do little loops and things. We only made one proper mistake though and I was able to get us back on course fairly easily.

I think I was quite a good driving supervisor overall. I was calm and didn't scream once. The actual driving itself seemed better than the driving of certain people who have driven me places in the past that had passed their tests. I think he'll be fine as long as he keeps practising and works on his starts a bit.

A Mild Cold

I'm currently labouring under a mild cold. Definitely in the annoying rather than debilitating category. Slight runny nose, slight sore throat, slight feeling of grogginess (that could just be yesterday's wine), lots of sneezing, etc.

I got some Lemsips (my favourite drink) from the shop though, so I'll be ok.

I'm not just making fruit up...

It's hard to belive that two years after launch there are still good, decent people out in the world that haven't yet been introduced to the wonders of Fruity Smarties. They're great!

I think I've done adequate brain correctionage on the subject tonight now...

Time Trumpet

Tonight I've particularly enjoyed watching Armando Ianucci's Time Trumpet. It's like one of those annoying talking heads retro clip shows but from 30 years in the future and about times that haven't quite happened yet.

Some reasons why it's good:
1. It has Armando Iannuci in it (really just guessing at his name spelling though I should know it by now)
2. It has Stewart Lee in it.
3. It is funny (I hear the career as a TV critic beckoning...)

It's not as good as The Day Today or Brasseye, buy maybe the closest I've seen for some while.

To update on a previous post, I'm now 99% certain it was Herring I came across on the train at the weekend. I'm going to always go first class now!

Love Poetry

Here are the contents of one packet of Love Hearts, in the order they come out. I'll type as I eat.

It's Love
New Love
Looking Good
How Sweet
Just Me
I Want U
For Ever
Groovy Chick
Bye Bye
You Fat Fuck
Find Me
Cool Dude
Nice Girl
I Won't Tell
Whore Yourself
Cheeky Boy
My Angel
Just Me
My Pal

I enjoyed creating this post. It tasted good.

So wet

It's been very very wet this evening. I had thought that I had left work at the wrong time since I was absolutely soaked when I got home (I hadn't bothered to take a coat or umbrella). It turns out that this would have happened pretty much whatever time I left. I'm sure Summer will return soon though.