[CdM] I like it, hope they recover the tapes one day. Or it might have been a working title for the second Star Trek movie...
Kirk: "Duuuuuuuujonnnnnn!"

Anyone home?

Quick, while no-one's here...

Oh dear, thanks to the 8 word game, I have a new hobby. I didn't need another one. This morning's effort doesn't make a lot of sense, but I think it could, with a bit of work....
Re-vent some racist sin at a Syria hero. My latino gets EU quest, e.g. on Italy. More hairy satanists. I care most? Never!

I heard a tale recently that Drew Barrymore was asking Johnny Depp about the rumours that Nick Saban, the Alabama football coach, was a fully inducted member of the Mafia, and was operating under an assumed name.
"Drat! Saban a made man, eh? Depp? Answer!" Drew snapped.
He named a man. A bastard!

I may create a new game on another server in which to write palindromes, but in the meantime, here's another:
Pist now. It's a free beer. Fasting is a sign it's a free beer fast. I won't sip.

Sorry, Phil. Not clever enough for that sort of thing. Well done, btw.

[Phil] O no. O no. O no. O no. Not on. O no. O no. O no. O no.

Conversation between secret agent and Q, when the agent refuses to sign for his new vehicle:
"One man sub? Autogyro?"
"Mr Armory got u a bus. Name?"
"No!"

Q now briefs by SMS?

[Stevie] Yes, m8.

As I appear to have killed the chat with palindromes, I take them all back.

[Phil] That last one didn't work. It was gibberish when read backwards.

I've just bought a calculator, a rather posh quasi-vintage Hewlett-Packard with RPN, and along with a guide in English is one in French. A calculator in French is une calculatrice which makes the noun obviously feminine but makes the object itself sound feminine as well. To English ears the word sounds like "calculatress" cognate with words like actress, manageress, temptress, goddess etc. A computer though, is un ordinateur not une ordinatrice. Maybe that reflects its attraction for nerds, almost exclusively male.

A calculatrice suggests an intelligent cockatrice to me. Beware the hidden key combination that unleashes its deadly stare.

Briana: Once there was a sailor Who sailed the seven seas On a ship called the limburger Me: It was stinky cheese! (beat) What do you expect when you say something like that?

(Raak) It already has one - the display. It's horrible, characters far too narrow and they've re-inserted the crossbar in the noughts which is simply taking retro too far. A bit like fitting coupling rods to an electric locomotive.

(Kagome Shuko) Looking at the Games list I'd say we were the only two people in the building.

I have lots of stuff coming up . . . been busy with my theatre stuff mainly, BUT on Tuesday night (Central time) Giertrud and I will be seeing Weird Al in concert!!!

Add, please . . . Inappropriate Audition Songs . . . Hi, I'll be auditioning for the part of Bruce the Shark in Finding Nemo and I'll be singing "Blood in the Water" from Legally Blonde: The Musical. Annnnd . . . go!!!

I am procrastinating like a pro this afternoon, even with a full list of tasks to complete at work. I think I blew all my brain's synapses this morning on a four-hour proof-reading blitz (which needed 10 hours but didn't get it. I guessed that if my eagle eyes didn't spot it on a speed-read, then Joe Average's eyes wouldn't spot it on a normal read-through either.)

Didn't I once read somewhere that fatty food is essential for brain function? Does that mean I can legitimately have cake and chips as part of my recovery?

(pen) You can have chips. Then you can have cake and a cuppa. But not cake and chips. Even I wouldn't do that.
I used to do proof-reading in the Met Office and quite often this would involve reading it out, with punctuation marks, font styles etc, to a colleague who would have another copy. You could put deliberate mistakes in to see if he was still awake. It was technical stuff, published by HMSO and had to be spot on.

When I first found this place, everybody was so good at limericks. Have we really forgotten the rhyming pattern and rhythm of limericks? These are the general rules of limericks.

[KS] That's a rather restrictive definition of Limericks, IMHO. One is not restricted to anapests. Iambs can also be used within a line, as well as in the first foot of each line.
I think it's nice, but not a necessity, that lines 1, 2 and 5 should match. Ditto for 3 and 4.
Also, their 2nd example ("the LIMerick packs LAUGHS anaTOmical") is appalling, as most people I know pronounce "Limerick" as three syllables.

If you accept that site's made-up rule that 1, 2, and 5 must match in structure, then you have to read the first line of that first limerick as "The LiMErick packs LAUGHS anaTOmical". The second limerick they quote also violates the rule that same rule, while the third limerick rhymes details with emails and females, thus revealing that they don't understand feminine rhymes. All in all, that page is a total fail.

So does anyone have any news? I've got a university friend + partner coming for the weekend. From England to the Netherlands. On motorbikes. We met in 1985. :o)

Ummm, not a lot really, other than what has been declared in "another place". A friend of mine is very p***ed off that today's Tilehurst Festival has been cancelled, due to bad weather. He found out today, despite the decision being made yesterday. He had taken on extra staff to run his cider bar there, and had loaded all the cider on his van at 6am. It's not even raining here, 10 miles away.

Bummer, Phil. Here, it's getting clammier and more overcast as we anticipate another humdinger of a belt of thunderstorms passing over at about 4 o'clock (which reminds me - I need to get the washing in). Last night's four-hour lightning and thunder display was incredible - flashes every second or so from all around, torrential rain and hailstorms (although no golf-ball-sized hailstones here to damage the cars as there were in other places in NL). I'm working from home today. It's sluggish, frankly.

Morning all. Was that heat really three weeks ago? I'm waiting for the thermostat to ping the central heating into action - and making a mental note to get some warmer clothes out of storage. Anyone doing anything interesting this weekend?

[pen] Mrs Phil is planning to watch Dr Who with our grandson on Saturday - which depends on him being permitted to come home from the neonatal unit tomorrow! *fingers crossed*

[pen] After spending today driving a quad bike around Paros, I'll be travelling home over the weekend after a week and a half in the Cyclades. I had a round-numbered birthday in the process.

[Raak] A good friend of mine is in Paros right now. Did you see her?

[CdM] That is quite possible. How would I tell? In the next twenty minutes, before my ferry leaves.

After 10 months in the new house, we finally put up the first picture rail last night. Today, I'm going to unpack the prints, maps, photographs and paintings I have been collecting over the past 6+ years (some of them were secret purchases and I have spent a ruddy fortune on mounting and framing) in anticipation of having a nice house to hang them in, and the time has come!

[Raak] Well, I assume that she would have been wearing a locket containing a photograph of me, because I assume that is true of all of my female acquaintances.* You know, something along these lines.

*

Hidden text

(Actually, I suppose that should be more like 98% of my female acquaintances and 5% of my male acquaintances.)

I have just seen a gentleman wearing a tweed jacket and a deerstalker cycle past my house. Santorini and Paros were wonderful.

A truck pulled into the university just in front of me this morning, but stopped in advance of the car-park barrier. I drove around him, and in my rear view mirror I saw the driver's legs emerge as he jumped down from the cab - he was wearing yellow wooden clogs.

(pen) Did he then do a dance?

Do you think it's time to choose a vice-winner in AVMA?

Photographing this:

Click for bigger.

(Raak) V good. What instrument did you use and at what point in the eclipse was it?

Pentax K-50, with a Russian-made 1000mm catadioptric lens. This was at 03:27, shortly before the most total coverage. I have a few more pics on Facebook. I bought the camera in rather a hurry for this — on Sunday, in fact. It was the only one in the shop that would attach to the Pentax mount on the lens without an adaptor. The body is pillar box red. At least I'll always know which camera is mine. I previously used the lens with a Ricoh film camera for the total eclipse in 1999.

[Raak] This was precisely the time I woke up and went for a pee and peered out through the bedroom curtains (although it was 04.27 here). I saw this! I stared long and hard, fixing the image in my mind's eye. Over the farmland at the back of our house, it was so still, so starry, so other-worldly. Beautiful photo.

The photo looks markedly different from what I saw at the time through 12 x 40 binocs and with the naked eye. The contrast in the photo is much greater and the moon far redder. I saw a dull yellow-orange moon that was just a little brighter on one side. The eclipse was some way off symmetrical.
It would be interesting to know the exposure, f-number and ISO setting. It would be even more interesting to be on the moon and see the earth with its bright ring.

[Rosie] 1 second exposure, ISO 800. The exif data reports the f-number as 0, which probably means it doesn't know. There's no aperture adjustment or designation on the lens. The lens is 1000mm, but the image is substantially larger on this camera than on my Ricoh KR-10, so the effective focal length may be longer. The original picture is very dim, and the above was derived from the RAW+ file by level correction. The exif reports that auto white balance was on, but I'm not sure if that applies to RAW data or just the JPG, which was too noisy to be useful. Also, the eye doesn't see colours so intensely in the dark, so even a perfectly accurate photograph may look more intense than the reality in the light of day. What would you have seen through binoculars of the same magnification but much larger aperture?

I've looked at a lunar eclipse through my telescope in the past and the moon looks a gloomy translucent orange. The focal length of this home-made contraption is 1276 mm (50.24 in.) and the mirror diameter is 8.3 in. so it's about f/6. With a one-inch eyepiece the magnification is about 50. The moon's diameter was 1776 arcsec which would give an image at the prime focus of 0.43" or 11 mm but it's not adapted for photography so I didn't get it out this time.
If the aperture of the binocs were greatly increased there would be little improvement because then the size of the exit pupil would exceed that of the eye pupil and light would be wasted. You can't increase the surface brightness (per unit area) of any extended object whatever telescope you use visually, but photgraphically that's obviously not the case. The binocs make the moon bigger and easier to study but the surface light variations are the same as with the naked eye.

Innit autumnal?

(pen) Yeah. Trouble is, it's autumn.

[Raak] Dropping in here for the first time in a few weeks, so only just saw your picture. That's stunning.

Very quiet, innit? Weekend a mere two days away - so what's everyone doing?

(pen) Good question. Both MCiOS and this place seem to have gone to sleep. Where's Gusset Login? I reckon I've won AVMA.

I've just remembered I have a three day weekend. I booked Monday off to use up my annual leave allowance. I'll probably just catch up on toilet cleaning.

(Pen) You sure know how to enjoy yourself...

[Knobbers] Actually it wasn't so bad. The toilets still need cleaning, because instead I went for a long bike ride in the still and sunny weather. We live in the countryside and there are no hills here in the Netherlands so it was lovely.

Some place in the Lake District has had 358 mm (just over 14") of rain in the last 24 hrs. Provisionally this is a British record. More later!

Record confirmed. It was at Honister Pass or thereabouts, an Environment Agency gauge.

[Rosie] Cripes. *moves clothes upstairs from below-dijk-level-bedroom*

So it turns out that a risotto is quite a common solution to the post-Christmas veg surplus problem.

Hello, everyone, by the way. Glad to see this place is still going, and that nothing's broken. I've had to do some behind-the-scenes tweaking as it turns out the venerable database library that this whole thing sits on will disappear when I come to upgrade the server OS, so perhaps things will break now. I'm a bit scared when I discover files that haven't been touched for nearly 10 years...

Merry Christmas rab. I hope all is well with Mrs rab and the rabling.

Happy 28th December from me too. BTW, a pilgrimage has been mooted - see the Dunxatorium for the proposed dates.

Happy New Year all. Hope you all have a happy, healthy and peaceful 2016. Got a houseful just settling into the first of the 'Back to the Future' trilogy (I won the box set and a hoodie from the University of Lincoln Facebook page - the big imposter that I am). Hoping for volunteer potato peelers in an hour or so - they will be rewarded with garlic bread, because it's a long time until dinner.

(pen) You won a hoodie? New toyboy then. :-)

Happy New Year, even though I am some hours behind!

[Rosie] Nah, just the garment. I don't think the yobbish type wear university hoodies do they?

Depends. Red or blue brick?