Spent Friday to Sunday in the South-West supporting 'The Prince's Trust Wild UK Challenge' sponsored by Capgemini. I took part last year but once was enough. So 3 days of camping, manning checkpoints, lugging gear around and clapping and cheering. A successful event - plenty of money raised and only 2 competitors hospitalised after coming off bikes (neither seriously injured).

[flerdle] Well, that sounds like a plan that takes into account the circumstances. I hope it mends like what it's supposed to.
Well, my weekend improved. Making something always improves my mood, so the construction of seven jars of marmalade before breakfast on Sunday, followed by a couple of hours out on the bikes with the windy miller in the glorious late-summer weather did wonders. Today, I'm not officially at work, so plan to splend some time writing up a review of the one-day course on writing for SEO (last Friday, Utrecht), an hour getting a bit further with writing up a report from the mini-conference/debate on private equity (last Thursday night, Amsterdam), and three hours ironing (my living room, in front of the TV, tonight.)

[pen] Quite right: who'd want a wrinkly living room?

Well, I just did my first ever TV interview. Live. On national TV.

[CdM] Did it go well? Is there somewhere online one might be able to see it?

[flerdle] Please explain how you will be decorating your crutch? While you were in getting the leg fixed did you have some more intimate operations performed? Perhaps a spot of vagazzling? Oh, sorry, plural, my mistake, carry on. Coat!

[Phil] Thanks for asking. I guess it went OK, given that they have asked me back. On the other hand, I really don't want to become a pundit. On the other other hand, the pen-equivalent at my institution is constantly pushing me to do this sort of stuff. Can it be seen online? I certainly hope not. :-)

I don't do PR anymore! I'm just English Editor.... and I sneak in marketing advice at the same time.

I want to write a cookbook. Of course, all my measures are American. I wonder if I should find British equivalents and published a British edition, too.

[KS] If you want to publish in the UK (and this will probably also be the case for places like Australia), you'll certainly have to change the measurements, but you should also get someone to check over the names of ingredients and their availability as well as possible substitutes unless you want to confine your readership to people who live in the major English cities. For example, I live in a small city of about 250,000 people with all the major supermarket chains but the nearest source of buckwheat flour for me would be a 90 minutes round trip.

It's a source of constant irritation to me that any internet search for a recipe draws you to lists of ingredients in US imperial units, mostly because I can never remember what a cup is. One gotcha to be aware of is that US pints are smaller than UK pints (16floz instead of 20floz).

For ingredient substitutions my procedure is the following. First, look for something in your cupboard that you think tastes like the missing ingredient. If that fails, look for something that looks like the missing ingredient. If even that fails, look for something that sounds like the missing ingredient.

My gelignite-based desserts have made many a dinner party go with a bang. (Although they do have the advantage of being strictly vegetarian).

[KS] don't change the measurements! Just include imperial and metric along with US cup measurements... Lots of recipe books and websites do this. Then you only have to produce one version.
[INJ] Try your local windmill for buckwheat. Alternatively, I can bring you 5kg next Saturday. The buckwheat is free but it'll cost you merely the price of the ferry ticket.

[Pen] That's the distance to the watermill who make the flour I usually use for breadmaking. I can buy the normal white, wholemeal and malted grain from my local butchers, but more specialist stuff is only sold at the mill.

I meant to add...
[INJ] Doesn't your mill supply any other shops? Poor you. I think even though I complain about the paucity of food here, (no big chunks of meat, for a start - there's nothing to roast in this bit of the Netherlands) I can actually get a lot of local produce, and just have to cut my culinary cloth accordingly.

[Pen] It might do, but I haven't found it yet.

making sandwiches to feed 50 new volunteers at three windmills on the island. I volunteer that I am a complete idiot.

[pen] You must be using yards of Edam and spek.

[Softers] Metres. There's still several decimetres of it left in the fridge, dammit. Tasteless cheese. But no-one can say I'm not inburgering into my new life here.

[pen] as an engineer I seriously slipped up there.

I posted this on MCIOS as well: Anyone in the Morniverse know of a suitable family for an Italian language student in or near Hastings? She is a charming young lady mid 20s and she stayed with Mrs Software and I for a month this summer.

[rab] finding ingredients that way sounds dangerous. Taste? I can see how that would work. However, looking alike, I think could get really confusing! My sister says I should give this link to show how that could be dangerous. Though, I'm not sure that you'd have a lot of these in your house. Now, I just need to find the metric equivalents to US - I'm sure they're online - just gotta get going in a bit. I'll bother y'all about ingredients over times, maybe ;) I don't think I'll be using too much different, though - baking powder, sugar, flour, salt, pepper, garlic powder, butter . . . things off the top of my head that I'll be using at times.

I hope no one had too much of a fire in their belly...

Am I being over-sensitive, or has the tone of the Limerick Game taken a slide down a particularly sexist hill this week? Kagome Shuko provided a dreadful first line, so I *ahem* said something. And now I find the next line refers to 'a prude'. I don't think I'm being a prude, but I do like to see standards maintained, and I think there are plenty of alternatives first lines that don't include referring to women with tits like melons. That's not a limerick I would enjoy contributing to. And I'm sure some of the chaps here similarly would avoid contributing to limericks about everyman's small cocks, erectile dysfunction and disappointing conjugal performance - and all the other male foibles and deficiences. The MC community has never felt the need to scrape the bottom of this particular barrel before (although there are plenty of other barrels that everyone enjoys delving deep into), so why now?

By limerick standards our output is exceptionally clean. I think the occasional dive into the depths of depravity is necessary and indeed unavoidable. Citations:

[1.] The lim'rick packs laughs anatomical
In space that is quite economical,
But the good ones I've seen
So seldom are clean,
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

[2.] Legman, who compiled the largest and most scholarly anthology, held that the true limerick as a folk form is always obscene, and cites similar opinions by Arnold Bennett and George Bernard Shaw, describing the clean limerick as a periodic fad and object of magazine contests, rarely rising above mediocrity.

That said, I don't think an excess of filth, whether or not it's folklorically accurate, is particularly funny either. One, or, perhaps I should say 'the MC community' needs mostly clean stuff to throw the filth into sharper relief. So I think my conclusion is to bring on the odd willy joke, and not to start complaining until we've had several in succession.

[Pen] I was about to agree wholeheartedly (and indeed KS's first line was singularly juvenile), but I went to the game and in fact there aren't any crude limericks currently on the top page. So, although I agree with your sentiment, you may actually be overstating the issue. Actually, I think we went through a dip into the area where saucy starts bordering on filthy a couple of weeks ago and have climbed out again.

Maybe you're influenced by the output on MCiOS - but I wouldn't class any of the currently visible lot as more than saucy.

Also, I don't actually think tits do like melons.

I'm with penelope in this instance. That line was pathetic, and completely out of keeping with the tone of the website.
More generally [SM] I believe your example #1 shows the type of limerick many of us prefer. The form may have its root in ribaldry, but there's a clear market for amusing rhymes and syllabic dexterity rather than innuendo.

*waves from Strasbourg* Well, I've emerged victorious from my part 1 exams - what are we all up to this weekend?

I'll be drumming at this event on Saturday. Have spent this morning sanding down a batch of new bachi.

My son turns 16 tomorrow ("arrrghhh, not more fireworks, Dad!!!!"). Having family & friends round on Sunday to celebrate. Can't do tomorrow as it's the school open day.
Next Friday is more interesting, as I'll be playing The Last Post, alone, at Beaumont Leys Shopping Centre (which covers 7 acres (2.8ha), as I presume you've never been). Never played it in public before, so I'm somewhat "bricking it".

Happy Guy Fawkes Day/Night!

Making an official request for a new round of Clerihew poems. Always liked the metrical freedom they afforded me as a rookie MC'er.

[Juxtapose] Given the glacial pace of game turnover here, I feel obliged to point you gently in the direction of a Clerihew game currently taking place over at Orange.

You know you've been in a brace for too long when you reach for the velcro strap to haul your other (unbound, uninjured) leg around too.

Only two more days, i hope.

Fingers crossed for you, flerdle.

Fingers also crossed, flerdle.

Things are incredibly dangerous around here - a thick fog has enveloped the city and driving is an exciting adventure in remembering which is your exit as the signs have disappeared in the mist. Oh well.

I'm free! FREE! Ahahahahahah!

Oh sh!t. I have no muscle now. *crumples*

[Flerdle] Just get started on going for walks to build it up. When you're no longer walking in a circle, you're better.

lol - genuinely :)

mijn ook. Ik lollt. Oooh... converting txt-speak into Dutch is fun!

[pen] share the joke.

I make that either:
'Me too, I lol'd' or
'My Orang Utan is slumped in his chair'

[Softers] the Dutch have a fairly regular set of verb endings, and have co-opted quite a few English words, which they adapt by tampering with the verb endings. So, you'll get something like 'Checken' - to check; Ik checkt, u checkd, etc. And 'Springen' - to jump. Although I was disappointed to learn that they hadn't bothered to co-opt 'trampolinen' - to jump on a trampoline. Ik trampolint would be very useful, I thought.
[INJ] Correct.

[pen] Of course my experience of Dutch predates txtpraat.

French has done the same thing, except worse. They don't just text LOL, and write G instead of j'ai, they say LOL in conversation. No sign of 'j'ai LOLé' for the moment, but it's only a matter of time until I see my nieces again.

It's sop foggy here in Rotterdam this morning that from the window of my 6th floor office, I can see nothing but mist. But I can hear the pile-driver thud-thud-thudding away on the building site in the middle of campus.

Getting weathered on near Southampton. Walked from the hotel to the office (through woods) and in half an hour got a sharp shower, mist, a beautiful sunrise and mirky greyness. Plus a couple of roe deer - always a bonus.

It is bright and sunny here, 15C. :o)

Max 14.0°C here and sunny. The sky is still clear (8.15 pm) and it's only gone down to about 9° so no excuse not to get the telescope out, though I'm sure I can find one.
The snowheads on the weather group have gone very sulky and are reduced to looking at charts 16 days ahead which everyone (including the snowfreaks) knows should be labelled "For entertainment only". Ho ho, hee hee.

33°C and humid is forecast for the day. Currently very sultry (the weather, not me).

Not quite so warm a forecast for Dujon's place. About 30°C today. Tomorrow though is different. 36°C is the current guess. I do hope that the BoM is wrong.

(Dujon) Hmm, 36° is a bit much. It exceeds my record by the smallest possible amount. (10 Aug 03). Last December 36°F (2C) would have been a bonus. (Monthly mean 0.1°C, should be just over 5°).

Yes, when I moved down here I was somewhat unaccustomed to the heat. My first day of 42°C was somewhat of a revelation. When the wind blows it's a bit like living in a hairdryer. Still, it's a fairly dry heat in Melbourne, not like that nasty humid heat you get in the tropics.

[nfras] Indeed. I vividly remember 43+ degrees combined with gale force winds as something I had never encountered before. 43 degrees, been there done that. Gale force winds, likewise. The two together -- a completely new meteorological experience.

[CdM] Presumably you'd have a wind warming factor, so that 43 degrees in a wind feels as hot as 50?

(Raak, CdM) It's the wet-bulb temperature that counts. This is the temperature of a wet or moist surface, lowered by evaporation of water or in this case sweat. I know that the hot blast from the interior is very dry and the wet-bulb could be as low as 20° if the humidity is about say 10%. So the stronger the wind the cooler you'll feel. My guess is that those conditions are far from intolerable. Was that actually the case?

[Rosie] Yes and No. Remember that it's relative humidity that is normally quoted. Then there is the problem of how much an individual sweats and thus the effectiveness of its cooling. Perhaps this is why some people enjoy warm weather whilst others find it uncomfortable.
I cannot speak for others but in my case when it becomes really hot and the relative humidity is high (say, over 20%) my sweat pores open and drench me in my own perspiration but affords no relief.

[Rosie] Yesterday I went for an experimental hop around town and it was fine. Very pleasant in fact. Then again I don't perspire much, and have a famously warped sense of temperature. The wind was strong enough to affect how easy it was for me in my somewhat delicate state to move about (out at Tulla it seems to have measured a constant 40-50km/h all day; in the city it was all over the place). Temp was 34°C with rel hum of 23% and "wet bulb depression" according to the BoM of 14 - so i suppose that made it a nice 20°C day.

[flerdle] Wet Bulb Depression? Sounds like what happens when you have a nurse take your temperature.

(flerdle) Those figures all tie up according to my Tables of everything to do with meteorology. It seems to me that the climate of Melbourne is mostly rather bland and pleasant but every now and then someone leaves the oven door open and SE Australia gets scorched but that's probably preferable to the constant high humidity of somehwere near the equator even if the the temperature rarely rises above about 33°. Power to yer lallies, BTW. Kangaroo motion sounds hard work.

In just over a week Mrs Software and I will be landing in Melbourne. We plan a trip along the coast to Narooma to meet an old coleague and then Sydney where we fly to NZ for my daughter's wedding. so lets hope the weather is up to speed by then.

[Software] When do you arrive? And are you staying in Melbourne for any period of time? Because if so we should definitely organise a meeting in your honour. I think flerdle is game to walk just about anywhere now.

[Softers, CdM] I concur.

Will only be in Melbourne briefly as we are heading down the coast to Warrnambool. Sadly we have planned a tight schedule visiting relatives and friends so on this occasion it may not be possible. But as I now have a daughter down under this will not be my last trip!

NZ is not Down Under. It is Under And To The Right of Down Under, but close enough. :)

(nfras) Shurely it's even more Down Under than Australia from a UK point of view.

I am a straight female, just so y'all know.