(pen) re no. 5 - Thank God for that. (from the Ghetto)
(Giertrud) There y'are - we're the wittiest nation on earth.
(Raak) But does the cold night air know this?

[Pen] Somewhat topically, I had a strange impulse to apply those responses to Tony Benn's five questions to power:

What power have you got?
Do you always believe what The Poke Says?

"Where did you get it from?
The only people who type '[county] is ...' into Google are the thickos who don't know anything anyway

In whose interests do you use it?
It's unscientific.

To whom are you accountable?
Get orf my laaand.

How do we get rid of you?
Google doesn't cover Wales.

I don't know about you but I think that works perfectly.

1. Do you always believe what The Poke Says?
no, I just thought it was silly.
2. The only people who type '[county] is ...' into Google are the thickos who don't know anything anyway
It can be fun to see what comes up, especially when the name also applies to something else.
3. It's unscientific.
duh.
4. Get orf my laaand.
whyyyyyyy?
5. Google doesn't cover Wales.
Try telling that to Google The Powers That Be! (If you told me Bing didn't cover Wales, I'd be more likely to believe it.)

(Giertrude) Hmm, maybe they aren't such bastards after all. Should be Gŵgl, of course, but the title won't accept the HTML.

I still can't get those characters up there! Only copy-paste works.

Does no-one have any more banter? Tonight I have served a late curry to the very busy windy miller, made his sandwiches for tomorrow, watched a lot of lambs being born and slapped about on the telly, tried to catch up with the strategies of William and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and washed up. Tomorrow I will try to write some sense, then dine at the university before attending a marketing masterclass, hoping to learn something. And then it's Friday.

Should we now start calling you 'Wednesday's Child', penelope?

Being called a child of any description would be nice.Sadly it's not true. But talking of times gone past, I did make contact yesterday with two people that I hadn't spoken to for almost 20 years; both I met during formative experiences. One I worked with very early in my first newspaper job (which I didn't start unti I was 30, having had another kind of career before that) and one who organised a road trip to the Arctic Circle and beyond that made me realise that I can't bear very much heat on a summer holiday. That realisation has saved me weeks, if not months, of expensive uncomfortableness.

I went to a marketing masterclass last night, all about how to make social media go viral. Turns out that it's an art not a science, and that you can measure and analyse it all you like and be none the wiser, except knowing that you must 'light a lot of fires' and then 'use the right seeding nodes' to get anything that spreads. Oh, and before any of that, have a great product and hire GREAT creatives. </ marketing discussion>
In other news, I have just done a phone interview, bought birthday chocolates for my sister in VT, USA and am looking forward to Lincolnshire plum bread and Lincolnshire Red cheese [special imports] for Breakfast #2 at my desk. Happy Friday, crescenters.

I'm worried about you, pen, you're showing distinct signs of succumbing to marketing bollockspeak. And don't let anything go viral; let it stay bacterial and be amenable to antibiotics. Boo-boom.

Hear bl@@dy hear. I wish to G@d that "social media" had never crawled out from under the carpet.  My status message on Skype says 'I don't have a "mood message", a "wall", or any other so-called "social networking" nonsense -- I have a life !'.

[Neophyte] Got it, dear. But you don't boycott it? On the other hand, I live in a different country ( with a different language) to all of my family and the vast majority of my friends. I work in an international environment which relies on it. My view is the opposite of yours. Oh, and I also have a life.

[Pen] Yes, I boycott it completely. A binding vow of total lifelong abstinence from Twitter, Facebook, and all of their their ilk, and Linkedln only for professional contacts. I am also extremely intolerant, and shout "f*** Twitter" whenever someone on Radio 4 tells me how to contact the programme through that obscene medium. And a similar reaction whenever I read a newspaper article that cites anything containing commercial-at and hash prefixes.

Alexander Graham Bell refused to have a telephone in his workroom so he would not be interrupted. Disliking a new medium of communication is not new.

My mobile is permanently switched off and nobody, except my next of kin, knows the number. Speak to the answerphone if it's important. When I'm out I'm not at rhe office. Like McCavity I'm just not there. The mobile is for me to ring the RAC if the car conks out.
As for Twatter and F*ckbook nobody expects me to be there so I'm not. Anything significant from it will in the papers/on the radio. I wouldn't say I would never use them but at the moment I simply can't see the point. Let others spout their banalities or make fools of themselves. (Just going to update my MCiOS status).

I never get calls on my mobile either. I use it if the car breaks down (which it never has, yet, touch wood), to find out who has the keys to the mill (and how far away from home they have driven before they remembered they forgot them) and to find out what time the windy miller will be home for dinner so I can time the rice. Occasionally I also use it for shouting at cold callers.

My mobile is largely an SMS-powered remote control for my daughter, and an alarm clock. It's paid for by work, but doesn't scroll up, due to dilapidation.

[Rosie] Outside the MCverse I've never adopted social networking in any substantial way, for reasons of privacy and compartmentalization; it always comes down to an insuperable dichotomy: nothing I could post to the whole world is worth posting, anything worth posting is something for which I'd trim the recipient list first. I've a number of chats of between three to six participants on the go in Skype, some of years standing, but their membership is kind of arrived at kind of organically -- or perhaps the word I want is empirically: each came to exist because it did and has lasted because it has.

(all) This site (and a couple of associated sites) is the nearest I want to get to social networking.

[Rosie] Honoured! Any Saharan sand-related weather details for us? I have the dust on my car in NL (but the countryside is dry and they're working on the fields non-stop at the mo*, so it could be North African dust or it could be Zuid Hollandsche dust)
*it smells of cow poo everywhere

(pen) The dust comes down with the rain but you only notice it if the rain is very light as it was here early Monday morning. There was so much dust on my car I actually had to wash it, an event of some rarity. Your car dust must be Saharan. It's been a bit breezy there recently and the atmosphere is highly convective, i.e. it's hot and rises rapidly and the upper winds have brought the dust over Europe. It's a fairly common event but the upper winds have to be right for us to experience it and some light rain helps bring it down.
Cow poo is the least offensive poo smell there is, at least to my nose - I rather like it but then I was an industrial chemist.

[Rosie] Oh I dunno. I find the rather sweet and cloying smell of human primary sludge as it enters the treatment works brings back good memories. For seven years after graduating, I worked as a laboratory technician analysing effluent of all kinds - from abattoirs, vegetable processing, and over one whole summer primary sludge during a BOC trial at what was then the UK's largest sewage treatment works just outside Norwich. My laboratory that summer was a caravan. My samples were mostly black and stinky.
This country usually smells of either poo or celery. Mostly.

I was noticeably hazy yesterday, and people have been mentioning itchy throats etc. I a totally unrelated development, I put new wiper blades on my car yesterday, and the difference in visibility is remarkable!
PS, the own brand sets from Halfords would have been £30 for all three. Ordered Bosch wipers from Euro Car Parts, with free 3 day delivery - £17 the lot. Hence, or otherwise, Halfords is a rip-off!

How are the wipers doing, Phil?

(pen, Phil) Belgium's the place for Wipers. Boo-boom

[pen] Oh, the wipers are glorious. It's like wearing reading glasses for he first time!
[Rosie] Oh dear :)

[penelope] You worked at Trowse Beach? Awesome.

[Phil) Your comment re wipers:
Some many years ago I owned a A.H.Sprite. It was modified. It had a habit of breaking half-shafts every now and then. Fortunately a fellow car club member alerted me to the fact that the half-shaft for the Sprite was the same as that for the A30 (well, I think it was the A30 - memory is a tenuous thing). Anyway, I rang the local supplier and checked the price and obtained the BMC part number for the A30 item. A day or two later I attended the parts place and asked for the price of a Sprite half-shaft and, for future reference, its part number. The two part numbers were identical. The Sprite part was nigh on twice that of that for the A30. Caveat Emptor.

[Stevie] That's it.Trowse. And stayed for a couple of months during the week in a lovely ivy-covered and tiny hotel somewhere near Loddon that I can't find on Google Earth. Monsieur le Patron was a Cypriot who used to bring me tea in bed in the mornings.

I'm trying to write a new standfirst for my article in the next issue of the alumni magazine. It's tough. So I'm faffing about in here instead.

(pen) We should be flattered that you have considered deriving inspiration from our musings. Er, what's a standfirst? Is it the head of the queue at a bus-stop or sunnink?

[penelope] And why do the Dutch have a magazine just for aluminium formulations?

Standfirst = the meaty chunk of text at the top of the page that gets you salivating to read the whole article.
It's a magazine for all the alumnuses/alumnas/alumni (I try very hard to stop people calling them 'alums') that I hoik together twice a year. Some very clever freelancers write the three or four tricky articles, under the direction of our managing editor, but I write one or two, and pull together all the news pages, and the message from the Dean (in my guise of professorial ventriloquist). It takes bloody ages.

Now using my wireless raspberry Pi to make posts. It's triffic. A linux computer no bigger than a packet of fags. The cables take up more room.

The GUI is still flaky though.

[Stevie] Impressive. I've never even seen one.

[pen] Are you hinting that the "message from the Dean" is — gasp! — not all his own work?

I did actually get a list of bullet points to compose into a message this time.

This week, I am mostly writing parts of a booklet to accompany a new professor's inaugural lecture in June. It helps that I find the subject interesting.

Going to view a house this afternoon. I'd buy it if only for the delphiniums in the garden and the uninterupted view out of the kitchen window across fields, rows of aspens, willows and alders, countryside and rivers to Europoort and the Pernis oil refinery and its flare stacks on the south bank of the Maas/Rijn (Meuse/Rhine), but the windy miller might take a bit more persuading. As many of you know, every time I moved jobs, I moved house (and usually at least 150 miles). He has never moved. Ever. This might be an interesting experience.

I'm glad there are no aspens here. They're so damnably noisy! :)

Blimey I love bacon sandwiches and tea. Sunday breakfast.

I am distressing un-British in my concept of the perfect breakfast. Coffee, really good bread, cold meat/dry sausage, cheese/cream cheese. Optional glass of red wine if it's a late breakfast.
Almost needless to say, I haven't had that breakfast for about 18 years now.

*distressingly

[Phil] Counter with Eggs, Sausage and cheddar on a croissant. Alternatively, four link sausages on a buttered bagel with HP sauce. Dammit, now I'm drooling all down me shirt.

[penelope] Your description of the view cued (unfairly) the following in Mr Brain:
Oh I often take these night-shift walks when the foreman's not around
Turn my back on the cooling stacks and make for open ground
Way out beyond the tank farm fence where the gas flare makes no sound
I forget the stink and I often think back to that eastern town.

Stan Rogers.

Which comes from Northwest Passage, his last and best album.

[Stevie] Ah.
As it happened, the estate agency used a very talented photographer, and the house was disappointing on many levels, not least the many levels (steps up and down into EVERY room, despite being re-built ten years ago or so). And the spiral staircase was wound so tight it could have fitted into a submarine. Imagine carrying laundry baskets up and down that! So we're re-thinking. And looking at another one in similar location (sans view of the refinery), a better aspect to the garden, but which is the current owners' unfinished project. We were hoping not to have to take on a project, but as the windy miller is a construction project manager by trade and we can't find the ready-to-move-into house that we were hoping for, it seems daft not to take advantage of his talents.
In other news, it's raining.

I always wanted a house with a spiral staircase after seeing The Haunting of Hill House, but in real life they are too narrow for my manly frame.

[Phil] Then unwind the DNA a bit - you can have them as shallow and broad as you like. That's why I was so disappointed that the odd couple selling the house we looked at had decided that no-one with feet larger than size three - and certainly no-one ever carrying a basket of laundry - was every going to attempt to go upstairs.
Mill News In other news, it's national mills weekend in the UK and in the Netherlands this weekend. Can I recommend that you make an effort to visit your local mill, take the tour and buy some flour or a tea towel? (And then go home and make scones, obviously - I can send you a very easy recipe in Dutch or English if you like.) The windy miller's mill (De Korenbloem (Cornflower) in Zonnemaire, Zeeland, if anyone's interested) will be open all day, and the chef from the local restaurant (De Ouwe Smisse - a fab place where all the meat, fish and lobsters are cooked on an open fire) will be making pancakes for visitors in the mill. I think I will be washer-up for the day.

{Stevie] penelope thinks you should unwind the DNA a bit - you can have them as shallow and broad as you like. That's why she was so disappointed that the odd couple selling the house they looked at had decided that no-one with feet larger than size three - and certainly no-one ever carrying a basket of laundry - was ever going to attempt to go upstairs.

As a committed fan of staircases (I was looking at stairporn.org yet again on my lunch break yesterday) and a pedant, I would be much happier if they were called "helical staircases", unless the radius does actually increase or decrease as one climbs.

Alas, there are no working mills in Berkshire.

*boggles*
Thanks Phil...

(Phil) Nonsense! Didn't you know that when "costs are spiralling" they're going up. :-)

Apparently it is limerick day . . . well, unless in it no longer May 12 where you live . . . But it is here, so, hmmm . . . I shall create a limerick A woman who knew she was blue Said, " 'ello, how do you do?" The children all ran As fast as a van Making her cry, "Oh, boo hoo." I know, it's not great. But, it was quick and fun.

These stupid made-up holidays
I wish were a long-dead past phase.
Every day a new thing!
What will next Tuesday bring
That will fail to amuse or amaze?

May 19th is "Boy's Club Day" May 20th is "Be a Millionaire Day" and "Pick Strawberries Day"

It's also Real Bread Week, Gluten-free Week, and National Doughnut Week in the UK. They need to get co-ordinated.

It's Real Gluten Free Doughnut-Bread Week!!!

I announce The back door is back on and properly sealed to the house with glue that stinks of vinegar but the wooden frame still needs painting and I need some new aluminium screws before I can rehang the storm-door day.

(Stevie) Acetic acid as a solvent should not be allowed - it pongs.

I think it's used as an inhibitor to the setting process more than a solvent, but I agree with you on the niff. The small screw-cap versions are easier to use, less niffy and they stay useable after opening longer than the big tubes used in caulking guns even though they work out three to four times as expensive.

You may be right; I thought it was just a diluent for benzoyl peroxide. The neat stuff would be a bit hairy, like most peroxides. Bang, Bang!

Egad! You mean I now have an exploding back door?

Hidden text

7 seconds of recorded laughter

Must've been exciting to be developing caulk. And those break'n'shake glowsticks - they use acetic acid as a moderator to prevent catastrophic exothermic excursion.

Real science should occasionally explode violently, as I explained to my chemistry teacher.

(Stevie) Yeah, but not too often and not too big. A work colleague was severely burnt (20%, months off work) after an ether vapour explosion set off by an open tin of lithium aluminium hydride falling into a bucket of water. I'm glad I was in the office.

Oh yeah...
In other news, it's raining.

It's raining again. In the meantime, we've had a splendidly lovely weekend. (But it was too windy on Saturday to ride me bike, dang)