arrow_circle_left arrow_circle_up arrow_circle_right
The Banter Page
help
If you're wanting to get something off your chest, make general comments about the server, or post lonely hearts ads, then this is the place for you.
arrow_circle_up
None
[Dunx] I have another daisy-cutter ready, but I've been holding off, hoping for other people to carry on.
None
[Raak] I'll try and post my one feeble idea later today, but the pressure of following such an outstanding move is rather great!
Brainwave - I mean wash
Ah - so I clued the same word. Not quite as serendipitous as it might at first seem, as brainwash was one of the words I'd considered but rejected - but it looked like a nice sort of word to clue, so I did. I still don't really see why it's the answer though. I think I'd put that on my crap clues pile along with about 20% of the Daily Mail ones that I only get once I have sufficient letters.
None
That came out a bit peevish - perhaps I'm missing something.
gaming license
Hello again. I've been away, but sadly nowhere exciting (And i've been keeping my eye on things by the joy of WAP). I'm looking forward to the cryptic page, sounds like my cup of tea! Anyway I've had an idea for a game. Not sure if the technology is out there (and I'm sure someone far cleverer in such matters will be able to say "yay" or "nay") or if its been done before (and failed) but anyway, The idea is a caption competition. Someone posts a piccie and then we all suggest captions until we get bored, then someone else posts a different piccie. Will it work?
Captions
[Lib] Spinnwebe and other sites have been doing glorified caption competitions for years. Don't see why it can't work here too. You just have to be careful about where you get the pics, of course. Spinnwebe (aside from the ill-fated DFC which ripped off the Family Circus cartoons) used to get pics from people submitting their own photos into the stockpile. We could do that here, it would be a lot of fun.
Cryptics
Oh, and as for cryptics, if anyone ever ventures into rec.puzzles.crosswords, I was the creator of the FSCC (five-second crossword competition) which afaik still runs to this day. (You make a 5x5 cryptic crossword with certain restrictions, and the participants vote on the entries to see who wins.) Typical of me, though, I never took part in it again after the very first round!
Continuations
Sorry for posting so many times on this page with so little content. Here's a link for Spinnwebe's caption stuff: http://www.spinnwebe.com/a1/
bust down reason
[Blob] I couldn't get this, but having had it revealed I can see the rationale and I have to agree it is frightfully elegant. Both MF and CdM have described the mechanism, so it is probably redundant of me to point out the double definition: reason bust is down = bra in wash; to bust down reason: brainwash -- but as MF will no doubt attest, I'm always ready to be ploddingly literal at times like these.
get thee to a flummery
In any case, since Lib has gently encouraged Mrs Trellis back into retirement, perhaps it's time to dignify the cryptologists with a game of their own? I'd do it myself if I had the aptitude, but (as should be painfully obvious) I don't.
Technical support desk
[matt] Well, you click on 'Start a new game' and then... oh. I see what you mean. Yes we need a suitable title and intro blurb. In the absence of other titles, perhaps 'Bust down reason (9)' would be appropriate?
'Start a new game' and then...
Or Obscure vault 99 (7)
None
Or "Cry 'Picts!' - resolve difficulties"?
Anyway, can anyone help with "Bank's route to the deposits" I-C-I--? I think it might be Incline, but why?
wail over postscript about spasm (8)
I suppose you have inc-line (or a line/route to an inc) where inc = increase = deposit, and a bank is an incline.
Me being picky
[Boolbar] Your "wail..." clue isn't quite legitimate as it omitted the straight def, and it doesn't really work as an &lit imho either. Maybe make it "Clues wail over postscript about spasm" but that doesn't have a very good surface, unfortunately. [matt] Incidentally, "bust down reason" isn't a double def, it's an &lit. A double def is where you have two definitions next to each other. An &lit (meaning "and literally true") is where the whole clue is simultaneously both the cryptic form *and* the straight def.
Today's Everyman
Some nice clues but I can't get 6D. Maybe it'll come to me when I go for a swim presently. For the record the clue is "Hope chest contains last gift brought over (6,6)" and I have B_T_O_ D_A_E_. I would also explain why I find some of today's clues quite elegant, but think I should wait until someone makes a ruling on what the X-word game should be called.
Everyman
BOTTOM DRAWER. I tried the Independent crossword yesterday, and solved exactly one clue. Completely baffled by the rest -- how does the Independent crossword rank against the others for difficulty? Left it on the train, so I can't quote examples.
Deep down and dirty
[Raak, re your solution[ That's what I thought but why?

[Raak, re Indie] I had a go at this too, and solved four clues. My Dad does the Indie on a daily basis, and I can't remember which setters he claims to be easier than the others. I think they range from somewhere just above the Everyman to somewhere just below Arucaria. But I might be wrong.

Hope chests
[rab] "Hope chest" is the definition, "last" is a definition of the first word, and "gift brought over (i.e. reward reversed)" indicates the second.
Picked
[Darren] You are right, but I though it was getting so obvious what was being clued that the definition was pointless (well that's my excuse anyway!!)
Chesty teaser
[Raak] Thanks for that... I've never heard of a hope chest, but I did at least manage to get a fruity desert I'd never heard of in the same puzzle so that almost gave me a feeling of pride and accomplishment.

[Game names] Any of those would do. Someone care to cut the ribbon, or do I have to do it?

Update update The requested simulpost-during-preview warning has been added. But not, I'm afraid, on this website. It's on the 'working copy' which, for good measure, has been converted to use an exciting new cauliflower to drive the HTML sprocket. What this means in practice is that you'll notice no changes in the forseeable future, but I might one day get round to writing alternative interfaces (eg WAP). Job etc.

None
Hey, look at that. My connection has stayed alive three mornings in a row. Which is handy, with me working on weekend time for two of them, and forgetting to check on my way out again this morning.
Busted flush
[CdM, MF, matt] O.k. I see it now - and as you say, it does have a certain elegance. My only quibble with is really is that it is a bit two-staged, in that <hidden_bit>one has to get to "bra in wash" as a reason for the bust to be down, and normally such two-stage clues are inadmissable. Like having to find a word and then anagramise it. I've seen it done, but it does cause confusion IMHO</hidden_bit>
None
The distinctive feature of the "bust down reason" clue is that the entire clue is simultaneously the definition and the cryptic indication, instead of them being separate halves.
Flush or bust
[Blob] I think this what Manley calls "A clue to a clue"; but didn't you know you can excuse anything with a question mark. In any case as Raak and Darren point out, it's an &lit clue. This type of clue is what people entering the Azed clue-writing competition usually aim for. Often with disastrous consequences, as it's extremely difficult to get a clue that is both crossword-grammatically correct and furnish a sound definition of the whole.
Cryptologists please note
The obscure vault has been opened, probably to the relief of the uninterested.
*pipes up*
But what shall we talk about, now?
None
No fluffy clouds here today.
None
Dark here now.
dreams of darkness and coolness in the blinding 30 degree heat of the office*
I dropped crunchy nut cornflakes and milk in my keyboard this morning. :o(
Talking points
[pen] Whoops.

Meanwhile I'd like to point out, though I will suspect none will care, that the 'Extended overhaul' of the DJ Shadow track 'Organ Donor' (on the Preemptive Strike compilation) is a triumph.

*laughs fearlessly at 30 degree heat*
I had Froot Loops for breakfast this morning. mmmm sugar.
I skipped brekkie and went straight onto lunch.
PUBLIC HEALTH WARNING.

On wednesday, newly qualified Dr Lib and hundreds of her Doctor friends are being let out onto the British public at large, allegedly to make them better. It is your duty to do us all a favour and avoid getting admitted to hospital (preferably for ever! but if you must get ill then at least wait a week or two so the new baby doctors will have had chance to work out whats going on). I thank you all for reading this announcement and wish you all the best of health.

None
Not the best time to have my knee go dodgy while working out, then?
*Insert hen pun here*
Tuesday is the day that our Chickens arrive. We'll be trotting over to Craven Arms in Shropshire (sounds like a pub but isn't) to collect them. Hooray!
Chicken Pun
[Btd] Egg-sellent!
Rubbish start to the day
Having made it all but three steps into work this morning, a lump of purple shit fell out of a tree and landed on my (of course) clean white t-shirt. I've spent several minutes in the gents scrubbing it like crazy and am now back in my office on one of the hottest days of the year with the fan heater blasting out in a vain attempt to make the slightly-less-stained shirt less moist. Of course, now the heater has cut out, deciding it to be way too hot. Grrr...
I spose
I could stand out in the sunshine, but then at the risk of burning my poor head...
Head of the class
[Rab] I concur. As I have stated before: Summer = evil.
Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Eggrything.
[BtD] Which are you getting first? The chickens or the eggs?
Counting chickens
[BtD] I'd love to keep chickens. Are they RIRs or fancy ones with feathered legs?
Chicken tikka marsala
[BtD] So they're LIVE ones - what fun! I 'did' bantams for one rather rustic year when I was younger and foolish enough to want to impress a potential husband [animal husbandry pun obligatory].
IN the Hen House
[Chalky] But did it work?!! We need to know these things! Is it worth investing in half a dozen chickens and a hutch or is my money better spent on posh underwear?
Defurcation
Someone's shat on the furcation game? Do we want it reinstated? I guess that's aimed at Martha Farquar really.
Ready... aim...
The subject of the aiming being the question about reinstatement, not the shitting. Just to be clear.
None
[pen] I think the chickens would definitely look better in a hutch than in posh underwear.
bantam waits
[penelope] I went all fickle, ran off with a drummer in a folk-rock band and as I recall, the posh underwear was quite unnecessary. hehehehe.
None
There must be some joke about both drummers and chickens having drumsticks . . . .
o f*ck
My colleague has just accepted another job - we've been running a PR programme together for the past five and a half years and now... eeeeek!!! *sees her holidays disappearing into the mist as the workload piles up while someone else is appointed*
Colleague update
*dribbles juices over the keyboard as a consequence of sucking colleages plums*
rab's juicy innuendo
[rab] Careful you don't stain your white T-shirt.
[penelope] That's a bit of a bummer. So - this PR malarkey? Could any one do it?
Sticky fingers
[Chalky] Yup. Any dipstick can do it. As long as you're smarter than the average, have newspaper experience, can tell the difference between a good story and a bad one and be able to tell the client exactly what you think and hold your temper when they disregard everything you say, be able to turn a phrase or two and don't mind having red pen through your work every now and again.
Closure
Sorry about the brief closure (if anyone noticed it). Just reinstating The Furcation Game at Projoy's request. There'll be no need to close the station for such essential maintenance when I roll out the next major upgrade, sometime in 2008 (subject to Government funding).
Re: Closure
[rab] Ah yes, those long-awaited updates... you will recall how long it took me to finish the code that fixed the "this game is too long" problems, and similar longeurs have affected exactly the kind of admin screens which I suspect you are talking about (well, not strictly true - I did write the necessary admin screens at the same time as String itself, but they've never worked). The urgency of the whole random Lock Cup game creation fiasco thing is making me work rather more rapidly on logins, which is really about minimising the amount of work I have to do in removing the detritus.
Longeurs
[Dunx] At the risk of Checking My Oats, the grand scheme is to move from a flat-file storage system to a mySQL back-end. Then I can use an off-the-shelf frontend (with appropriate security cauliflowers enabled to prevent any old Jack coming along and dropping his spade) to do the tweaks when required. It will also remove a shed-load of concurrency issues and, in principle, provide better data integrity, removing the need for having a+w mods on parts of the server (evil). Currently (i.e. on the [not-]working version) the front page is converted: just need to do the creation page (easy) and the thread page (hard) before it's done. Hence the 2008 ETA.
Chicken Run
Just got back with the chickens - yes they are live and clucking - if rather breathlessly in this heavy atmosphere. I built the hen-house myself and it is extremely satisfying to see that they fit in it. What would I have done if they hadn't?
Penelope
What are RIRs? They are hybrids chosen for free-range hardiness and egg quality. Two Black Rocks and a Speckledy. They are currently pecking at a cabbage we left for them. Must try one of rabs security cauliflowers.

Re poultry vv underwear as bloke attractant, I know what I’d go for but I’d probably be misunderstood.
I said, I said, what are RIRs?
[BtD] RIRs are Rhode Island Reds, the rusty tawny brown chickens. I'm not sure what sort of chicken Foghorn Leghorn was... but I do remember acting as a poultry traffiker and facilitating the transfer of a cock looking very much like him between a schoolfriend's house and my uncle's house. I left him in a cardboard box in the boot of my car for a couple of hours and he was as quiet as a mouse. Unfortunately he livened up a bit after that and attacked my small cousins. I think they probably ate him.
What's a security cauliflower? Is it more or less effective as a bloke attractant than poultry or posh underwear?
security cauliflower
I dunno - try the phrase on rab - he has been using it alot recently - along with spade dropping, a+w and 'Checking My Oats'. Good job I know my RIRs from my Marans.
beguiling cauliflowers
The answer to your last query [pen] is contained in rab's posting, and I quote : 'with appropriate security cauliflowers enabled to prevent any old Jack coming along and dropping his spade' . . . which I guess means less effective.
None
[rab] Arr. In theory, the String code is sufficiently modular to enable just that kind of substitution. In practice, is it bollocks like. I do like the idea of using someone else's admin code, though... I've just started detailing the Lockisseum account management stuff, and the fact that I know exactly what it needs to do does not in any way detract from the fact that it is going to be right pain in the arse to write - yea, e'en unto the point where I'm wondering if I should even bother. Well, I'll certainly keep at it for a wee while yet, since much of the infrastucture that will make this stuff at least practical is already there, but still... it's not fun.

I'm really really glad I'm not trying to do session management though.

Explanitude
[Dunx] Response in 'Oats', hopefully by the time you get up.

[Security cauliflowers] Bob - I think you might be confusing the security cauliflower with the NS4 compatibility dandelion. It's completely unrelated to that strain of cauliflower that drives the HTML sprocket (which in turn uses a fabby plugin strawberry - dead impressed). I think there's an adage somewhere about roses and sweetness being my weakness. <timmy_mallet>Ah-yeah!<timmy_mallet>

Sloth
Is it just me or is anyone else experience sloth on the part of the interwebnet today? I notice this particularly with sites hosted on t'other side of the Atlantic.
Sloth
[rab] Nope, just the usual Gluttony and Lust for me...
NS4 compatibility dandelion
I recently put pinkhat 4.2 on a 'lobster' pc and was hoping to use Pastil or its fruitdriver cbbc on it. (I am also interested in using the orgasmatron 5.7). I tested the setup with a program consisting entirely of 'wangsnappers' and ran it thru both Pengiun and step by step complile and link using f-o-t and then Bernard Mathews 2.2. I am left with an executable which, when run produces no output. Do I need a NS4 compatibility dandelion???
Dandelion
[Bob] No - the dandelion is a server-side, rather than a client-side, bit of horticulture.

In the meantime I notice that it's rather quiet today. Am I the only one working? Not for long though, I hope. I'm thinking... Hmmmm be-er. Hmmmm gar-den. Hmmmm Private Eye crossword so I'll probably bugger off at 5.

None
[BtD] Ignore rab [who simulposted]. I say yes. But watch out for CiSloops which curdle 5.6i interfaces. I found G-ripetool [the citrus version] had more centenniel compatibity.
Work?
Luckily I had to attend a photoshoot on the south coast today to teach someone how to do it, so was revelling (in my darkest shades and straw hat - I kid you not - with thick dark hair, my head absorbs heat like a solar panel) in sunshine and seabreezes while the rest of the company sweltered in our un-airconditioned offices. Then of course, I had to take my student out to lunch. I can recommend a shady table on the Boardwalk overlooking Port Solent with lots of iced sodas :o)
Relaxation
It's Wednesday, it's half past twelve, and it's time for a nice bike ride. At least now I've the little computery doohickey to work so I know how fast I'm going and far I've been.
G-ripetool
Chalky/rab] I can access the client-side horticulture with Chalkys G-ripetool (vv 4.3 downloaded for €1 from www.nerdnest.com). The ability to play FNKY streams was implemented, along with the ability to add pimento directories recursively in addition to individual Conan the Barbarian files. Maestro options were added to the strange-quark-cake menu, and strange-quark-cake now launches the backend process if it is unable to connect to it. Schemas with descriptions were added for the options in HRT, and a number of usability improvements in DUCK. Despite this, my pc is still cak. Am I using the wrong DUCK?
None
Here's a link to www.nerdnest.com.
None
Does anyone ever post lonely hearts ads on here? Can I do it?
lonesome pining
[Dear Darren] penelope expressed some interest in husband-snaffling [see above]. You may need to express your preference, though, for either chicken hutchery or pricy lingerie.
withdrawn from sale
[Chalky] I'm already the item of interest for a young man, although of doubtful husband material. Let's see what Darren has to say anyway!
None
Well, there doesn't seem much point if there's no-one available!
window shopping
[Darren] That sort of attitude won't get you anywhere. C'mon, let's see what you've got to offer!
None
In honour of present company, I'm naming my chickens Penelope, flerdle and Lib (all of whom I'm pretty certain are female - please correct me if I'm wrong). Pen is the Speckledy and flerdle and Lib are both Black Rocks.

Darren] I believe that other lady contibutors include Saskia and Néa – and I'm not sure about snorgle (sorry!). Add to that the many thousands who access this site and are too sensible to post and I'd say go for it ♥.
Arsebiscuits
I had the wisdom a while back to book a train journey passing through Birmingham for today. According to the nationalrail website, the first leg of my journey will be avoiding the station I want to get on at. I tried calling Virgin to ask them what to do instead, and they put me onto the rail enquiry "helpline" who said they didn't know that that train wasn't running and what I should do instead...
National Snail
rab] Is this the usual B'ham New Street/Moor Street/Snow Hill cock-up?
chicken fancier
[BtD] I am indeed honoured. And it has casued a giggle around the office :o). I bet I lay the first egg!
Train Pain
I've found in the past that if you phone a rail enquiry helpline more than once and ask the same question, you'll get different train times and fare prices.
Egg Betting
[BtD] I'm putting my virtual money on flerdle for first egg. Can we have a photo of the three lovely ladies?
Let the train cause the pain
[BtD] Don't think so. Occasionally Virgin Trains think they can get away with not stopping at minor stations like Manchester Piccadilly. [Boolbar] I'm going to try again later. At first I wondered if I'd got one of these outsourced Indian or Taiwanese call centres, but it turned out the chap I was speaking to had a Geordie accent. I feel slightly bad about talking to him. In very simple sentences. Just to make sure. My query was understood.
Chick-chicken
[BtD] I have met all three of your chickens' namesakes and despite not having conducted a full medical examination, can assert with reasonable probability that all are female.
Rail or derail
What the heck are you lot complaining about - we've got a rail infrastructure that looks like it's totally *u****, even without Virgin involvement - which I suppose means I should say that it's immaculate? I guess that does not make a lot of sense unless you are half pickled - but I'm sure you will get the drift.
Rack and Ruin
[Dujon] Whence do you hail?
Lonely hearts
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
♥ Incredibly amusing male Crescenteer seeks similar, except for the male bit, for initial slightly-awkward conversation with a view to extended hugging sessions*. I'm mid-20s, in the south-east, own business, overweight. What more could you possibly want? So, if you're a female Crescenteer from anywhere who is still reading, drop me a line at the phonetic address vee em gee ess ee dee eye @ geocities.com.

* If early games go well, shunting and straddling may be introduced at a later stage.

 ♥
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
email
Dammit, that shouldn't be geocities.com, but msn.com. (Treat this as an intelligence test!)
Commercial venture
Did I tell you it's 36p per word + VAT + P&P ?
not a bloke
[BtD] I'm a girly. And I'm sure that snorgle will confirm that she is. There's a lot of it about.
I can name that chicken in three clucks!
[BtD] You'll have to get more hens to keep up with all these girlies.
commercial vulture
[rab] yohard-hearted so-and-so - it should be a free service! Wouldn't you like to be shopping for a new hat (a la Cilla) to wear at the first Mornington Wedding?
oops
sp/yo/you space*
Gaah?
What's next? Who Wants To Marry A Crescenter?
The Bantam Page
I'll do what I can for chicken photos - may take a day or so because I'm an analogue camera user. In the meantime the first egg sweepstakes are:
Penelope: Penelope
flerdle: Boolbar
Lib:None as yet. br>
Disclaimer. Eggs may be delayed by a few weeks due to youth of chickens (18 weeks) and/or method of husbandry (as natural as possible). And Bob the dog will not bear the responsibility for any gambling debts.
Hmmmm
I think I'm honoured.... All the best with the chooks, BtD. I think I would really need to be an Australorp though. But I suppose a Black Rock is ok...
None
[rab] Should you rename this "The Bantam Page"??
Eggy
[Bob] Stick my name on Lib's egg. I'm sure she'll be thrilled :)

[penelope] That's what I need the money for, of course.

In actual fact I have considered setting up a totally free dating site, as it does seem rather mercenary for one to profit from other people's loneliness (or, indeed, vice versa). However there are two unresolved difficulties. Firstly: how do you filter people so that those who sign up are reasonably serious, responsible and have sufficient wit to woo and intelligence to recognise a parking meter when it slaps them across the forehead? I wondered whether to have some sort of off-the-wall questionaire where it's not so much the answers given that determine whether you are accepted into the fold or not, but whether you even attempt to answer them. I'm not sure I'd have the wherewithall to design such a thing. Secondly, and perhaps more seriously, I wouldn't wish to be held responsible if things went wrong...

flerdle chook
Thanks rab - any one else wishing to place a bet?

flerdle] With the fear that I may be misinterpreted again, the Black Rock is a very attractive bird (better - in my opinion - than the Australorp). As you will see when the photos arrive.
Lonely Tarts Club
I feel this could be the chance to indulge in a nice Blind Date-themed game. Not exactly how sure it should work, but perhaps it could end up, like a Shakespeare comedy, by pairing up all extraneous Crescenters each with their ideal partner (Blob with Raak, CdM with st d and so on).
Hearty loons
I had a similar idea. Players submit Lonely Hearts ads under a pseudonym and other have to guess their online identities.
None
other/others
None
and now that York is truly gone (sob) couldn't we add a few more games?
New games
There's been a spare slot at Orange for a couple of weeks now - can't see any reason to open the floodgates.
Madeira / !York
If !York is caput - any chance of at least resurrecting the Encyclopaedia Morningtonia on one of the surviving sites ? I believe fairly recent tarballs exist, do they not ?
Buzz
As may be apparant from some of the foregoing, I'm off away shortly to catch a train. Maybe it's the one I'm booked to travel on, maybe not. One part of the National Rail website says the intended train is not calling at Manchester; another part says it has already reached Preston and is heading towards Manchester as planned (which I find hard to believe - it would be about 30minutes early in that case...). The upshot of this is that although I expect to be near a phoneline over the weekend, or possibly even a broadband antelope, I might not be on hand to apply lint to grazed knees and the like.
En-cyclops
I have a grand plan - maybe I'll start work on it at the weekend - to code up some sort of collaborative web-based encyclopaedic buzzard (a bit like a wikipedia, or h2g2, but not, cos that's not the point) into which Morningtonia would fit quite nicely, and be updated by the community. Good idea? (ETA 3062)
wikipedia
The NS4 compatibility dandelion or Chalkys G-ripetool should do the trick ;o)
BillowBap Reminder
Don't forget to use Snudgen Inserts, or the eng-wardrobe will be left open to SNAX.
Yorkishness
[BtD] rab speaks truth, as ever. [Blob] Publishing !York's archives is one thing on my list to do. It might happen alongside the account stuff I was wibbling about earlier on.
Not killed anyone yet....
[BtD] Thanks for naming the chick after me (and we're both shropshire lasses, so is kinda nice!), its the nicest thing anyone has done for me today. (Have decided that being a doctor is no fun!)

[All] As well as having Encyclopedia Morningtonia here can we get some players profiles too? There's so many of you I know nothing about (not having been around for long).

[rab] I can't get to orange (stupid random firewall) so I'd also bid for raising the game limit here (especially as the cryptic discussion is not really a game, as such).

[Darren] Nice advert. Shame I'm not really eligible!

Delphic Utterances
Now might also be a good time to mention, in an "I-can't-do-anything-to-help-but-I'm-going-to-bleat-about-it-anyway" sort of a way, that I don't believe there is yet a solution for what will happen to the Delphi archive, with the result we may lose a bit of our history.
None
[Projoy] I can't help with the Delphi archive because I do not have a copy.
you mean this doesn't help, Lib?
Aunty Pode
[rab] If flerdle's comment about 'chooks' is any indication, I'm with her, but about 700 miles further south if her profile is accurate in respect of geography. To give a straight answer - near Sydney, Australia.
Arrival
Wow - I made it. Don't know how, given that the first leg of the journey was off, and the carriage I was booked on was missing from the second leg of the journey. My hostess pointed at a computer last night and said "broadband" which I've taken as an invitation to use it. It's quite fast (first experience of the same) tho' XP is horrible.

[Lib] Maybe that can be arranged.

[Dujon] I've never experienced any kind of antipodean transportation contrivance, so I shall shut up :)

IE on XP
So can anyone explain to me how it is that the world's richest and most powerful software company which produces what I understand to be the market leading in web browsers can't get transparant PNGs to display properly? I'll have to see if I can tweak the graphics to sort this situation out. But really...
None
s/leading/leader/.
Chicken update
Day 3. No eggs yet. Chickens beginning to explore their new home although still reluctant to use their ramp and had to be forcibly evicted this morning. Penelope has the most adventurous spirit and eats everything you give her, flerdle is the gentlest, yet seems to be top of the pecking order and is respected by the other two. Lib is the naughty one. Likes to steal food. All enjoyed a good dust-bath yesterday evening.
Dee Twintysivin
[BtD] Set up a live video stream and it'll be just like Big Brother - only more interesting.
chick-watch
Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. *brushes dust out of hair*
Great Hentertainment
If they don't want to use their ramp, do you have to put them to bed as well?
*worries about flerdle*
A little bit of logical analysis reveals the following:
1. Penelope eats everything you give her.
B. Lib steals food.
I conclude, therefore, that Lib must be stealing this food from flerdle. This conjecture is reinforced by the information that flerdle is the gentle one. What use is respect, if she is going to end up starving to death?
buckets of tea
I enjoyed the banter on cryptic croswords, as I am one of the worlds most dense when it comes to working them out. So it was useful reading all your hints on definitions and clues. Since last Friday whilst on Broad Haven beach, I've dabbled and its been most rewarding, although not getting anywhere completing any I feel happy with my 5 or 6 words. The cryptic game is a great idea, some of the answers are beyond me even with the explanation, just put it down to too many years of 'quick' crosswords.
Which brings me to Celebdaq I go away for the best part of a week with no acess to my pc and I end up on top... makes note to go on leave again and pencils in last two weeks of August.
BtD]We're having a barbie on Sunday, is it too late to put an order in for a couple of drumsticks?
None
Inkspot] No such cluck. But I know a really good organic and free-range farm you could try.
Cryticians
[Inkspot] Keep going with those cryptics: getting started is always the hardest part. Once you've got a few letters - especially initial letters - then more will follow.
*peep*
[Dujon] Yes, I'm up here, where it's nice and warm, a bit cloudy (oh, and dark, being night time and all). We really should organise an antipodean not-pilg in the next few months - there's at least 5 of us around the place. Sydney is quite central...

Hmmm, I'm hungry... *wanders off in search of munchies*

Strailian geography
[flerdle] Wouldn't Alice Springs be more central?
Out in the middle of bl**dy nowhere, mate
[Raak] The population of Australia is distributed like a thin smear of vegemite along the east and south-east coast. And since I'm in Brisso, Dujon and Kathryn are in Sydney, PaulWay is in Canberra, and I am under the impression, from "Advice" on MCiOS that there is a RavenBlack somewhere around here - but I may be wrong about that - Sydney would be the place to meet. Howaboutit?
Marmite
And very thin marmite vegemite it is too - (have a look at this table).
That's taken from the rather excellent Wikipedia
It's even worse than you thought...
And only 1% of the area of Australia has 84% of the population in it, according to this.
.... and ...
And 61% of the population lives in just the big five cities - which must account for a tiny percentage of the national area.
sex and chickens
I am, indeed, female. I also do not have a hen named after me. I will survive.
making up
snorgle] I am sorry - I've only got three chickens. However, if one goes broody, I'll be getting some fertile eggs for it to sit on and will keep at least 1 female progeny. Your name will be first on the list.

Day 4: They've learnt how to use the chicken ramp. Penelope made a bid for escape but was easily coaxed back with some parsley. The henhouse-mates are getting on well so it is unlikley that any will be put up for eviction. The sweepstake for the first egg is still open, so far it is:
Penelope: Penelope
flerdle: Boolbar
Lib: rab
chickens
Ok, I'll vote for flerdle. If she's the top of the pecking order, maybe she'll lay first. I don't know much about hens - do they normally lay unfertilised eggs every day, or every few days?
BTW - my last apropos brought up some interesting google hits..
Big Clucker 2003
It's like some mad Big Brother inversion. When will the humans for the chickens to look after be arriving?
This is Big Clucker
Nik] I'm already here! snorgle] Number of eggs depends on variety of chicken. Black Rocks and Speckledys lay about 280 (unfertilised) eggs per year, so I'll have about 16 eggs a week over the next three years. Black Rocks lay particularly high quality eggs and as the hens are being reared out doors on grass and natural feed (no egg colourant) I'm hoping the yolks will be bright orange rather than mass produced anaemic yellow. The most fantastic sponge cake I've ever tasted was baked with eggs from a friends farm and it was a wonderful golden colour because of the quality of the eggs.
Teach my grandmother to lay eggs ...
[BtD] If they're on grass do make sure they have access to plenty of grit somewhere, or else their eggs will have brittle and/or thin shells and may well smash "on delivery" so to speak.
Poulty husbandry
We used to have chickens until foxes ripped them to shreds. They would each lay an egg a day until we were so sick of eggs we didn't know what to do with them. I remember that on one occasion one of them didn't eat enough grit, and it produced eggs that weren't brittle so much as wobbly. Truly revolting, and a splendid thing to view at an impressionable age.
Wibbly wobbly ?
[Bm] Please do define "wobbly".
True grit
Blob/Breadmaster] Thanks, job done. They've got oyster shell (for calcium - shell strength) and grit which helps digestion (it grinds their food up. They also get a supplement of layers pellets containing calcium too. I've been reading an 18th Century book on animal husbandry and they used to bake and grind up eggshell and feed it back to the chickens. I’m fairly sure that this is now against the law (fear over build-up of pathogens and salmonella being possible reasons for this). The book (Cottage Economy by William Corbett) is full of grand ideas such as harvesting nettles and drying them for winter feed. Nettles are stacked with nutrients and we’ve got plenty of them so I’m going to try that one. As for foxes, I'm pretty sure these chickens are safe - hedgehogs may be more of a threat (they eat alive anything they catch). The run is enclosed, our garden has a 6 foot fence (usually adequate to ensure fox exclusion on its' own) and although the chicks are thick, they have learned to go in to their house at night. I've designed it so that the run is raised to cover the pop-hole, keeping them secure.
Still no eggs by the way. Chicken photos with Boolbar for uploading (I have no website).
Chick-o-vision
We want WebCams!
You can be sure of Shell
I have friends who have kept chickens for years and have always baked the shells to add as grit. I think it's only illegal if you're taking part in a commercial enterprise - ie selling the eggs, in which case you have to have them salmonella-tested anyway. I doubt any salmonella bacterium would survive the heat and desiccation of baking. But in the general view that cannibalism is a bad thing, I think you're better off not doing it. And 'define wobbly'? Well, I've seen an egg like this... it is egg-shaped, but instead of shell there's just a thick membrane - imagine a balloon full of water but not-quite-fully extended. Tasted fine though.
It had to be said....
Euwwww!
wobbly bobbly
Aha - a sort-of shellless egg. I see. Yughk. Though excellent for water-bomb (o.k. egg-bomb) fights ! Ha ha ! The yolk's on you !
Thin skinned
Funny that this subject should rear it's head. I boiled an egg the other night - in the fond hope of having a curried egg sandwich - and deliberately boiled it for 6 minutes. I had not eaten for around 48 hours and was quite looking forward to the feast. I left it in cool water for a couple of minutes, which is my usual ploy to avoid blistered fingers, and then grabbed it with the intent of stripping the thing naked. Now, I was half tickled at the time, but, when it simply collapsed in my hand in an approximation of the childrens' goo stuff that one sees advertised, I threw it in the general direction of the compost bin. Luckily my aim was straight (not bad from 6 feet into a 4" x 4" container). My wife was not impressed! I now have to search my locality to find someone who grows roses which I can nick. So, BTD, I look forward to your contributions on chicken (whoops, sorry, flerdle, chook) husbandry. I'd love to have a few banging around in the back yard but I suspect that, apart from local council regulations, my two cats might just have a say in that.
And again
EUWWWWW!
Lovely birds.
[BtD] I am unable to upload photos at work, but will do so tonight.
Dujon mustard
Dujon]:o) What rotten cluck! I'll be very happy to supply you with fresh eggs if I ever make it down-under or if someone invents a way of sending food as email attachments.
Cats are an endangered species here in Warwickshire. I witnessed a Buzzard attack on our own cat a year or so ago. The local Buzzard population is booming and There are reports in local papers of missing or mauled moggies. The chickens, however are safe. I hope. I think.
Boolbar] Yipee! And thank you.
Safe chickens
They may be safe, but I'll have to be careful.
Being buzzed ...
[BtD] Where abouts in Warks ? I used to live on the Staffs / Warks border, and spent many a happy day driving around the county.
We've started to get buzzards occasionally in & around Tring - (whereas I'd not seen one there for the previous fifteen years). I also saw a kite (of the feathered variety) fly over our house last year - I think it was just on a recky mission coz. I've not seen one since. But they're certainly spreading their territory from the Stokenchurch area northwards - loads round Thame now.
The Birds
[BtD] I like the picture caption at the top of that report :"The cyclist is planning to protect herself from attacks". Looking at the picture I assume that the cyclist is planning to disguise herself as a buzzard.
Who put the red in Celebdaq? err... no, that doesn't work... whatever
*finds all sorts of interesting things crawling around on the trading floor* OMG - I had completely forgotten I was supposed to be making money.
absent mindedness
*cackle*
elevation, elevation, elevation
You remember I told you my colleague was leaving? The boss and I just went out for lunch and a chat. We're restructuring... I get to be manager, get a pay rise etc etc...YAY!!!!
Yey!!
[pen] First you get a hen named after you, and now this. Yey!
promoting
[pen] Yay! That's excellent. Well done. Hope its a significant one!
modesty...
[Lib] 'Kin 'ell. I've only just thought about that. It's 20%!!!
Pen buys the next round
Yay! Well done! However, your namesake hasn't layed an egg yet.
egg-nog , anyone?
I'll admit I'm chuffed to bits. What's more, I may just be able to flog my tent (sleeps four, dark green tunnel tent, used once) to my soon-to-be-ex colleague who has snatched not only a hot-air balloon ride in the Northampton Balloon Festival on Friday, but also a last-minute ticket to the Stafford V Festival this weekend. Jammy sandwiches, virtual beers, Pimms and shandies all round. Unfortunately, unless BobTD starts squeezing chickens' heads, there's no egg-nog.
Yay!
[pen] Congrats!
Defining wobbly
Yes, what Penelope said. I can't believe she actually ate the thing though. [BtD] Nettles are great. They're terribly healthy. The Victorians would sell them at market as a vegetable. I used to pick and eat them frequently, partly for my obsessive healthy eating drive and partly because I was incredibly poor. You have to pick them as they are growing, not when they're old and raggedy late in the season, and you pick just the top four leaves. This means that you have to pick an awful lot to get a decent quantity. Then the best thing to do with them is steam them. They cook extremely quickly. You might think you would have to cook them for ages to kill the sting, but in fact the sting goes almost instantly, so you can treat them essentially as spinach. They taste similar but with a pleasant velvety sort of texture.
joining in the back-slapping and hoping for a pimms
Superb skills penelope. Sounds as though the promotion is well deserved. Hope the new responsibilities won't gobble up your 'online chief crescentess' time, though.
Whoops!
Forgot to add my congratulations. Well done, pen. [Chalky] I thought one of the management skills is "delegation" which, as I understand it, could be used to free up plenty of time for the same.
Delegates
[rab] Better that than delegating someone else to play, certainly.
Orangeless
Cross-posting of course, but a note for Orange MC players - the server which hosts Orange will be down for repairs at some time between 4:30pm and 7:30pm ET today (that's 21:30-00:30 BST). The outage should be for 20-60 minutes, and is to replace a broken CPU. Hopefully Orange will be a bit less sluggish afterwards, too.
Re: Orangeless
It's back. Not that it went away for long in the end.
A delegation of minions
[rab] Good point about delegating - and delegating someone to make moves on my behalf (especially in MC where you know my skills don't shine) has given me an idea. I'm going to be involved in the interviewing for the underling position(s) [tbc], so maybe I could ask the applicants to make a move in one of the games here, then you can all judge whether they deserve the job or not!! Whaddya think guys???!!! Do I have the skills to be a manager or not, eh? :o)
Filet Minions
Have a care before introducing professional colleagues to MC before you know them well. For one thing it gets harder to post cross rants about the bastards in the office in the Advice game.
Filet-o-Fish
[pen] I suggest a game of 'Straight face'.
pokered
[rab] Straight face? I guess it means anything but, but would you explain? :o)
Delegat-hen
[pen] Get BtD to stick a tube map in the hen-house. When pen-the-hen pecks at a station, that's your move!
[BtD] Did you get my email(s)? Hen pics are online!
Beef swellington
[pen] On the contrary. The aim of the game is to maintain a straight face while your opponent says things to bring this state of affairs to en end.

Meanwhile I'm trying to cancel my contract with the Carphone Warehouse. If I have to listen to Connected being played down a tinny old phone one more time...

Henpics
[Bb] url?
Me again!
It's amazing how long it takes for a salesperson to realise that the reason you want to buy something from elsewhere is that their opponents give a better deal and nothing they can offer matches up...
url
BtD is somewhat busy - so using some left over bits of HTML and sticky backed plastic, may I present . . . Big Clucker!
Geoshity
Ignore those pesky errors that pop-up. Geocities is the only upload place I can access at work - and they bung their own code on top.
chick flicks
[Boolbar] No pesky errors when I looked. Just three surprisingly pretty hens in a very clean place. Penelope's obviously a heart breaker, Flerdle looks mischievous and Lib rather enigmatic. So now we've had the individual mugshots, how about panning back so we can view the whole Big Clucker House and its environs?
slipping up a bit
[Boolbar] Sorry, I realised after I posted that you are the technical chief who enables the picture viewing. My camera positioning instructions should have been directed at Bob the Dog, the producer of the show.
Long distance chickcheck
Chalky] Acknowledged. As Boolbar says, I'm not at home at the moment, but I will try to upload a floor plan and more photos. Saskia is looking after the chickens while I'm away, she says they are being very good girls. No eggs yet. I'm not worried about the lack of eggs because the chooks are still very young and need to settle in a bit more. However, Penelope is looking particularly perky and her wattle appears to be turning red. Whatever that means.
wattling daubs
I know *exactly* what it means but I'm darned if I'm telling you.
a toast
[pen] Many congrats, both on your chicken namesaking and the promotion. I suggest you ask prospective employees one of two questions. 1) Would they straddle or strile in a half closed farkle situation if blue tokens were wild?, and 2) What's a good rhyme for "chihuahua"?
None
[blamelewis] Ah, the old trick question! [Hidden Text]You can't have a half closed farkle situation when blue tokens are wild, unless the blue tokens became wild after the half closed farkle situation arose. In this second case both straddles and striles are impossible until the farkle is fully closed. See Ackerman's thesis on half-closed farkles, a good bed-time read.[/Hidden Text]
None
F*ck. I would have fallen for that one.
Cickcheck
Day 9: Flerdle has grown in my absence and is now bigger than Penelope. Lib and Pen are probably about the same size now. Chickens were freaked out by a glider that went over our house, Pen making a dash for cover whilst Lib and flerdle tilted their heads this way and that in an endearingly quizzical fashion. All chicken eating well, they seem to like carrot - fed them the dried head of a sunflower yesterday - but they didn't really get the hang of it and the seeds had to be pulled out for them. At about nine o'clock, they tramped up their little ramp and waited for me to lock the pop-hole. They are such good girls!
Day 10: Still no eggs. Estimated (with help of a calendar) that first egg may appear on 26th August (Day 21), although a friend of mine suggests that they won’t really get going until mid Sept. I am very busy at the moment, but I will try and draw up a plan of living quarters and maybe upload it to a Big Clucker website (which for me is a big step, never having done anything more adventurous with HTML than this!) Looking for reasonably priced no-ad site host. Any suggestions?
chuckyweb
There are several sites like this one which try to recommend free site hosts. As they say, free sites usually come with little or no help and most have annoying adverts/pop-ups. I've used Vispa for 2 years now and have had no problems (except in the first week when they were down for a day). Their on-line help was adequate for my needs. There must be many other free ad-free site hosts out there, some of which may allow you to have your own webby addy (like www.bigclucker.com instead of www.bigclucker.isphostname.com).
Slooooowwww....
BTW, is it generally half-slow on the internet today - I can't get into MCiOS or eBay (due to timeouts) but this site is speedy.
None
. . . and no sooner do I type that, when MCiOS springs back into view. eBay is still way too slow though.
Again!
Ebay is now OK. Hmmm, it seems the moment I post something here, it ceases to be true.
Gosh, I am lacking in money.
living on air
Glad flerdle is doing so well. Have been at home sick for last two days, able to do a little work remotely, but generally bleurgh. *totters back to bed for a while*
sickbay
*sends flerdle a mug of virtual hot chocolate and best wishes for a speedy recovery*
Hennery
It seems to me that after all this chicken related discussion, this should be renamed the Bantam Page!
Eggstraordinary
crack'd
[Rab] How complimentary to have one's ideas confirmed as good ones prior to having them!
Reasonable, ad-free hosting
[BtD] I think I could probably be persuaded quite easily.
None
Although image-heavy pages (like the one blob presented) would probably kill my connection quite quickly, so somewhere with more bandwidth might be better.
Bantam?
[Thos, rab] "Sorry, old man, we don't understand your bantam!"
Blowing trumpets
For the second time, Dujon has hit the high point of Celbdaq - don't worry, fans, at 0600 BST this will change. Disappears back into left field chanting "percentages, money, percentages ..."
None
Have made a surprising discovery. Chickens love grapes. And porridge. Not mixed.
oooooh, hot chocolate!
[pen] Thanks, much appreciated. Am still not well, and not particularly enheartened by a visitor yesterday saying "Oh, I had that for six weeks" :-o

But that didn't stop me from going to the football today (my second AFL match, and why complain when someone shouts you? Just rug up warm); hopefully some really nice photos... telephoto gooooooood.

Few words
Sorry folks. Mini Cheddars. Bit confused. Two words? Really, penelope. Wrong game!
Oof!
I've been kneecapped!
Chopping
[rab] You and several others by the looks of it. Bravo all. I'm finding it tough to make any headway this time round, but I'm not bitter . . .
But what about the chooks?
Ooooh, strawberries have started to come into season here! Yay!!!
[penelope] I don't see the problem there. Oh, and your hot chocolate remedy works a treat.
I'm back!
...and looking forward to regular posting!
Advance notice
I've just ordered new disks, one of which is for the web server. At the same time as moving to a new disk, I'll be taking the opportunity to upgrade to newer versions of the OS and web server.

This is the first of 3 or 4 planned outages during the remainder of this year, and will incur the largest downtime - I hope to keep it under 24 hours but promise nothing. If anyone has a problem with the machine being down on a particular day this week, let me know, either here, or by email to an address that should be fairly obvious. If I don't forget entirely, I'll point out the cause for outage at MCiOS and/or Orange at the time.

As an aside, the other planned upgrades are: a UPS, more RAM, and yet another disk.

On another note entirely; Rab - it's really quite annoying that the HTML checker insists on apostrophe pairs inside title="". Still, I guess that's what &apos; is for; I'm giving up my contractions for nothing or no-one. Nothing or no-one!

Indeed
[Nik] Point taken - I'll have a look at the HTML checker and see if I can get it doing something more sensible viz the quotes. Will you be upgrading MySQL too? Not that - I think - I need any of the features of the newer version when I finally upgrade, but just curious.
Also...
[Nik] Obviously if you drop me a line indicating when it'll go down, I'll arrange for a backup to be made of the game data at that point. I'm away for the bank holiday weekend, but with sufficient warning can set up a cron job to do the business, so it's irrelevant really.
Calm down!
What are you saying, like? Don't trust me to not destroy all the data, like? Eh? Eh? A benefit of switching disks and installing fresh is that the current disk won't be modified at all during the process, so data should be safe, although I'll be dumping /etc, /home, /var and /usr to CD anyway (a slightly neater variation of which will become a weekly backup to CDRW). I might go to Apache 2 and Mysql 4; I'll have a look at their feature lists and see if it's worth the risk.
Just A Minute - 2003-Aug-11
In a complete change of subject, did anyone catch last week's Just A Minute? What the hell were they saying about celebrity colonic irrigations?
JAM Last Week
[Dr Q] Which bit? "I'm A Celebrity, Get It Out Of Here"?
Getting Nik's back up
[Nik] Well - I didn't anticipate any loss of data but I never thought having too many backups was ever a problem! I'm using MySQL 4.0.12 here without difficulties. The main bonus is subqueries (not that I use these at the moment) but there is a slight difference in the way certain priveliges work, so you might find yourself saddled with some additional admin overhead if you were to upgrade. I know nothing of apache 2 - last I heard it was "experimental" which I understand to be a euphemism for "best avoided".
Toxic celebs
[DrQ] The JAM reference: IIRC, around the time of the Aussie Jungle Japes, a group of D list celebs 'volunteered' [paid obscene amounts of money] to go abroad for a filmed Celebrity Detox Week [Ch4?]. Along with most of the viewing nation, I didn't watch it but in an effort to generate interest, the red top coverage glorified in the contents of alleged celebs bowels after CI. I'm told it was a load of sh*te and believe none of them have worked since.
Ding! Dong!
The disks is here! Expect angrycake.com to fall off the world in approximately not too long.
*pulls the big red shutdown lever*
Right I'll close the games so as not to confuse everyone...
*yanks big red lever*
*big red lever clatters to floor*

*ACME Maintenance Squad drives off faster than you can say 'Spare any change?'*

*proffers new red lever*
What cowboy did this, eh? Me you say??
Good to be back
As you can see I've tightened a few screws here and there. If you notice any bugs, tell me.
Woo-hoo!
Our long international nightmare is over -- MC5 is back! Well done, rab & Nik.
Minor layout bug
[rab] See Mini Cheddars for an example -- the last word before an <hr> gets right-shifted.
Oh
Not on my browser it doesn't... probably just a small tweakette required somewhere. ETF March 37th 2008.
grrr
It was justified text wot woz doing it. Now disabled which is a shame cos where it worked I quite liked it.
Jubilation
Welcome back, Rab!
It's back! It's new improved bluey whiteness! Horrah!
Layout bug
It was doing it on mine (Mozilla Firebird 0.6/Linux), which turned out to be a pain because I'm running it at 1600x1200 with small fonts, which required me to shift my eyes a relatively long distance....
Aye, Cone
[rab] Nice new look - particularly fond of the "Stance" heading (Len Ganley, anyone?). I'm afraid I find the icons a little murky, though... there doesn't seem to be enough contrast between the grey background and the ochre/blue foreground. Indeed, I cannot distinguish them at all using peripheral vision (which slows down mouse navigation). Maybe this looks better on your PowerBook LCD, but on my PC CRT it looks grey and blobby (haven't connected my iBook to the net for four days, so don't know how it looks there).
Bluey whiteness
Yea! Its back and its prettier! Well done all concerned.

Current score:
Penelope: 3 eggs
flerdle: 1 egg
Lib: 1 egg

What a fantastic start there from Penelope.
hmmmm
I actually find this font slower to read. Just so you know.
ooooh
It seems to look different at work... hmmmm
Hokey-cokey
[Dunx] I agree with you about the murkiness of the icons. They were designed in a dark room on an LCD display, and I'm looking at them on a CRT right now. I might apply some transformations to them later.

[flerdle] I used to use your browser default font, but now have requested a sans-serif one. In principle you can override it, but in practice it might be more sensible to go back to the browser default.

[all] Keep your opinions rolling in.

New look
Love the refit - although I agree with Dunx that the buttons are murky. But a really nice feel to the site now.
[rab] Well, the buttons look better on my iBook screen! Something I will certainly need to remember next time I do some graphic design work... there is something in the OSX settings panel somewhere to change the colour balance to match that of a CRT; don't know if that would help.
Chook update
Penelope: 4
flerdle: 1
Lib: 1

Go for it Penelope! (Perhaps it was the promotion wot done it).
Henquiry
How can you tell who laid which egg?
design
Very nice, although the transparencies still aren't displaying properly under IE.
Transparently
[Projoy] That's not my fault. OK, so it is my fault that I insist on using those new-fangled PNGs rather than the old-school GIFs. I think I know of a workaround, but will be fiddly to apply.
Hey! It's working!
I'm sitting in the kitchen, with not a wire in sight, posting this. Hurrah!
Range
[rab] Sounds like you get better range than I do/did. What base station are you using?
Big range in the kitchen
[Dunx] I suspect it's because I live in a smaller house than you do :) For the record it's a LinkSys Wireless Ether-G, or similar (the one that's a four-port ethernet hub and a wireless access point). It's in the next room, I would guess about 10m, with a wall and a half in between.
Four bars, though, even on a Titanium-clad patlop.
Titanium-clad patlop
Would you like to borrow my NS4 compatibility dandelion for that?
Egg Identity
Boolbar] Two ways to identify egg layers - a sensitive art!
1. We know that a chicken is about to lay because she gets all busy looking for somewhere to go. They lay inside the chicken house ('cos they like privacy) so we see them go in. The only confusion could occur if they lay at night or if we get flerdle and Lib mixed up.
2. Egg colour. As a chicken gets into laying, her first eggs will be small and pale. Libs, being the last to start are small and light brown and flerdles are medium and tan. Pen, being a different variety, lays speckly eggs.
font fickleness
[rab] What font are you using? I wonder why it looks different at work. I've worked out what the trouble with speed of reading is - the letters in this font are quite crowded (upright strokes are close together, and overall the space between letters is small) and rounded letters like p, g, u, d are quite large, in comparison, and quite squarish, which makes them more difficult to distinguish quickly. I'm not advocating a return to serif, just noticing things about whatever it is you've chosen. I will cope.
Font affront
[flerdle] I ask for 'sans-serif'. You may be able to change your browser's default sans-serif font. I could specify 'helvetica' which might make more sense, but I'd need to check my CSS book (which is at home) to find out how to do it properly.
The Great Egg Race
Lovely. I've just had me summer holidays - two days in Lincs with my Mum. I'm back home, there was a queue on the M25 and it's raining. What's worse, now I have to empty the vacuum cleaner with all the sucked-up spiders in it. :o(
Love nest
[penelope] Tricky. One could imagine them all jumbled up inside the cylinder and thinking 'as we're stuck in here for a while - why not?' - then mating like fury so when you do the emptying bit, a whole new generation of spiderlets bent on evil revenge, burst forth with the taunting cry 'ner ner ne ner ner' . . .
[pen] More likely the spiders nuked it out and ate one another so now there is one single spider left - a very LARGE spider with LONG legs.
'racnids
Pen] Just stick 'em in a bag and send 'em to me. Chickens love spiders. And woodlice.
Re: Font. I dunno about anyone else but I like this font more than the previous one.
the lesser of two weevils
[BtD] I would gladly send you all my spiders. For some reason (too embarrassig to go into here... well OK, he was a boyfriend of mine a long, long time ago), we 've always called woodlice 'jonathans'. And I have lots under all the plant pots in the garden. Can I borrow your chickens for a couple of days?
Guess what time it is?
Having decided to not rebuild the server again, I'll be taking it down for ten minutes later (this evening, tomorrow, never) to figure out what sort of RAM I need, and also to take out the old disk and screw the new one in. This process should be painless, requiring no software changes at all.
While I remember
I'm going away tomorrow (Sun 31st) for just under a fortnight. I may have sporadic connectivity from there but one can't really rely on it.
Have a good one. I'll try not to ruin everything in the mean time.
Celebdaq Update
Congrats in advance to Uncle Korky for his upcoming first kneecapping.

Ahnold is now over £200/share with no end in sight. Even Becks couldn't top that.
Spiders
[penelope] But why did you suck them up in the first place? Spiders are on our side!
Boris
[Breadmaster] I embarked on a spider-killing spree after being dumped. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Arachnids
penelope you are CRUEL,
I am sure that flerdle will back me up here - I get spiders in the house, in summertime mainly, which are 6" to 8" across the legs and varied in body size - some are an inch or two. Whilst I detest spiders - in fact the larger ones give me the heebie jeebies - I catch them and toss them outside. So, in future, behave yourself! "Four legs is better than two..." or was that something else? ... :-)
Hairy legs
[Dujon] Sounds like you've got some Huntsmans. Huntsmen. Whatever. Greeaat big black hairy ones. I've only seen them to about 4 to 5 inches across, managed to trap one in the bathroom at a former house under a plastic container - the tok of it against the sides was fairly alarming, and spiders don't really worry me. I put it outside.

[Dujon, again] Are you in Sydney?

arrow_circle_down
Want to play? Online Crescenteering lives on at Discord