(Softers) Today it's all gone except for a little bit of a snowman made by next door's kids.
rab's dumpings
[rab] I think Lactulose might be a good idea if you've just made dumpings for the first time in your life!
Egregious evacuation
(Phil) I missed that. It would have given me an idea for There, there and everywhere but it's too late now. I will drop the matter.
[Rosie] I was surprised that you, Raak and Software hadn't spotted it (or had, but hadn't commented - that would have been more surprising).
Unfunny badgering
Now I'm a press officer for a conservation charity, I don't think badgers are funny. They cause too many awkward questions from the press.
[pen] You weren't implicated in the jam-slapping scandal, were you?
no comment
Badgers
I know from a friend's experience that when driving a Transit Van at 50 mph, a badger up the radiator grill is about as unfunny as it gets.
For the badger, too.
For the badger, too.
Brock
Badgers are the Holy Cows de nos jours. What's so wonderful about them, great lolloping things? They can be vicious and would make mincemeat of the average dog not that that would bother me.
[Rosie] ...unless it showed up in a pie you were eating, no?
(Tuj) Your are confusing mince with mincemeat, for which there is little excuse.
[Rosie] Not as bad as today's BBC news website (the front page story about the re-introduction of Moose to the Scottish Highlands) and their Science reporter confusing 'ungulates' with 'undulates'. Schoolboy error. I've emailed them about it already...
Oooh, and Polly Toynbee has replied in person to my quick email in praise of her column in this morning's Guardian, hehehehe! :o)
Oooh, and Polly Toynbee has replied in person to my quick email in praise of her column in this morning's Guardian, hehehehe! :o)
[Rosie] Both go in varying types of pies, no?
I appear to have developed an annoying peech habit, no?
(Tuj) Not to mention a typo habit, yes? It must be a bad day. :-) (pen) Pah! Small beer! I have received a personally-signed apology from none other than Ian Hislop for a very sick crossword clue in Private Eye, even if it did only consist of two words.
[Rosie] Now you must share the clue, so that we may all be properly shocked and outraged.
Cross Word
[Rosie] I find it hard to imagine you as Outraged of South London".
[Rosie] I should have seen that coming really. Ah well. Do carry on ;)
Happenstance or Serendipity?
End of day, ready to go home, I put "stilletto (misspelt) gerundive" into Google, got a single hit and it was you. Hello. Now I feel I have come home: will you have me?
[MD] Only if you're wearing socks.
(Raak) All right. The answer was spittle and clue involved Hawking. Filth is OK, good even, but don't mock the afflicted. The apology said "Point taken" and my guess is there were more than a few of them to be signed by the splendid Hislop, from which one cam infer that he had a word or two in the crossword setter's ear. (Softers) South London!!!??? That's outrageous! I'm in Surrey (just). (Me Dick) Well, personally, I'd rather not but there must be somebody and we are by nature co-operative.
Mouse of correction
For "cam" read "can". One can get awfully obsessed by Caprotti Valve Gear.
[pen] Yes, that was a good column. [All] I think Stilletto (Misspelt) Gerundive is an excellent game idea. Maybe Simons can get working on the rules.
Stilletto (misspelt) Gerundive
Instinctively I feel this would be a good game but what would be its aim? (CdM, pen) Toynbee's piece made a number of good points but by her standards was a bit ranty.
[Rosie] Yes, I see what you mean.
woohoo!
I've just completed my first bit of freelance writing for about 10 years - successs! And sent out the bill too... The lucky client, with a Monday-morning deadline to meet, found me online yesterday afternoon and got me working on a Saturday evening. We did the final edit this morning. Now I'm going to finish the ironing, which doesn't pay half so well.
Did that work?
Here's hoping everything went smoothly.
Hokay...
You may now find it is sometimes possible to go back and edit your last move. Any oddities, let me know. I think I've closed the loophole which would have allowed an infinite number of new games to have been started.
Rigt then
No, I meant this is a test. It works!
ooerr
[pen] Well done!
[Rab] That 'whoops' thingy made me jump when I posted earlier. It reminded me of that vaguely guilty feeling when one sees a policeman. It compelled me to re-read my post just in case I'd said something a bit wrong.
[pennylope] Me haven't done freelance writing since ooh ... way back when ... so much respect :-)
[Chalky] Hmm... I wonder if that's a desirable side-effect or not. I'm sure we'll get used to it!
Test message
Speaking of side-effects...sorry about that.
Get well soon Humph. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7360347.stm
Are there people in the Morningverse that actually know Humph or know people who know him? Could we get some kind of collective "get well soon" card in the form of a print-out of a game? It could be send via the Beeb.
Mystery Crescent - lame duck? This never looked like the server for it. Perhaps it should be culled for a good hard game of Stilletto (misspelt) Gerundive?
[Tuj] Patience my boy, patience :-)
(Kim) I used to know his trombonist and arranger, the late Pete Strange, not that that's exactly a connection, but I think your idea, or something similar, is a good one.
RIP Humph. All will miss you, I'm sure.
Irreplacable. A joybringer. To be missed by so many.
Very sad news. He was a wonderful man.
The Oyster Card of Fate has finally met the ticket barrier of Mornington Crescent.
The Humph tribute ISIHAC they had on the radio today is the only programme (radio or TV) that the cat has yet paid any attention to.
Humph
His obit in the Grauniad was written by none other than the late George Melly though it had been updated. It was less of a eulogy than some of the instant stuff we have read in the last few days but there's no doubt Melly thought well of him.
Humph
I propose to close the current Mystery game (it's trudging along anyway) and create a book of condolence for Humph in its place for all to place memories, anecdotes, comments, thoughts etc. I will also mention it in MCiOS and Orange. I suggest leaving it open until, say, Friday and then I will print it off and send it to John Naismith c/o the BBC. Agreement?
Alternatively,
I could just open an extra slot.
Ooh. Not been in for a while and just discovered the "Whoops!" feature. Lovely. The times I've needed that in the past (then again, the times I've only just noticed a typo/grammo when reading a comment years after the event). Nice one, rab.
Humph
Maybe now would be the time to send Kim's suggested "Get Well Soon" card? :)
Never mind, there's already something on Orange.
[Proj] One word at a time between us? ;)
... as I speak
There's a Humph BBC R4 programme currently being broadcast. Wonder if Rosie has caught it. I expect it will be on Listen Live for some weeks.
As the programme ended they said that there will be another Humph tribute, by the ISIHAC panellists, on May 11.
Afternoonpreferablyevenington Crescent
(Chalky) At 9.25 in the morning? You cannot be serious! I'll have a look on Listen Again.
[Roseee] we-e-ell - naturellement, I am aware [after all these years :-)] of your posting pattern time-wise - but I wasn't sure if you did the listen to Radio4 in bed of a morning - dozy off - listen again a bit - dozy off, etc etc.
Nocturnal transmissions
(Chalky) Nah, it would activate the neurons, as it's meant to, and I'd never get back to sleep. Maybe 24-hr rolling news would be better. Man Injured In Factory Accident In Solihull = Instant slumber. :-)
Radio 4 activates neurons? Shurely some mistake!
longweekendering
Morning all. Beans planted. Laundry done. Lawn not yet cut but first I must make progress on the feature I was supposed to finish on Friday. Hoo-rah for Citrix and being able to work from home, dammit.
Technically not a holiday for me today - but I'm skiving off on account that it's our first wedding anniversary. And what a glorious day it is! We spent the night at a nearby castle, had a slap-up meal and a sit in the sunshine. Unfortunately back at home now as we've both got work to do :(
Aren't people silly
I've just read my AOL news headline which says that the Postal Service is "not delivering".
We've just had new, energy-saving Dyson Blade hand driers installed in the lavs. They SUCK the water off your hands. Quite amazing. I wonder if they'll also dry socks?
The father of in[ter]vention
[pen] Flippin' Dyson - always poking his nose into other peoples' business. I actually like having damp hands when exiting the facilities. I also really enjoy changing the bag on my vacuum cleaner - and gain particular satisfaction from vacuuming in a straight line ;-)
Another thing, Mr Dyson - how are you supposed to flip the nozzle up to zhuzh up your lank, post-office (not Post Office) hair when there ain't no flippin' nozzle?
[pen] I was just talking to my son about the Dyson hand driers a couple of days ago. Ages ago I had the offer of a 30 day trial - wish I'd taken it up, but I never got round to it.
[pen] but, but ... it would SUCK your hair up. Not nice. Zhuzh by hand would be my advice.
The Dyson airblade is based on a very narrow, high-speed jet of air. I'm not sure that it does suck, but it certainly blows...very hard. It definitely collects the water blown off the hands, and atomises said water periodically into the atmosphere.
I HATE hand-driers. What a noisy waste of time, space, energy, everything. If your hands are damp wipe 'em on your bum. That's what it's for. Even if you don't do that they'll be dry in less than a minute especially if you rub 'em together briefly.
The most impressive drier I ever saw was in a bar in Dresden. It was called the 'AirWolf' and my (German) friend remarked that it appeared to be based on Rommel's desert air-conditioning system.
Air Dryers
Conventional hot-air dryers actually work and work quickly in Alberta. Something to do with the altitude, I've been told. After a few dryings your hands are like lizard skin though.
Well that one well-and-truly dried up, didn't it? In other news, I've killed ALL the ants that were invading my kitchen. Mwahahahahaha!
Formica topped
(pen) What about the army waiting outside?
[Rosie] Beautiful subject line. I was trying to think up something similar myself ;)
[Tuj] Hear hear. [Rosie] I pouffed permethrin into all the brickwork outside too.
Ant fever
[pen] Thanks for the tip. I'm a-watching and a-waiting.
All Ants on Dec
(pen) Pouffed? I can just see you. Only a lady could get away with that. Don't forget the boiling water down the cracks in the concrete. (Tuj) Cheers.
[Rosie] If not pouffed then what is the verb for the application of a powder to a surface (or into a crack or hole - oh dear, this just gets worse) by air-propulsion, generated by squeezing a slightly flexible plastic bottle? And I tried the boiling water first too :o(
[Chalks] I bought Homebase's own brand, about £3 - very happy. Ant free.
[Chalks] I bought Homebase's own brand, about £3 - very happy. Ant free.
Powder me nose and other parts, possibly
(pen) Yeah, OK, pouffed. But it does make me giggle.
[Rosie] You're not supposed to get it on your skin, so wash those affected parts immediately - you know, the ones that are making you giggle. ;o)
Ant Powder
[pen/Rosie] My family has always used the verb "to foof" (or possibly "fouffe" - the spelling has never been established) for what you do to get ant powder out of the bottle. In fact, the verb often gets repeated to become "I'm just going to foofoofoof that ant-hole."
Fizz ant
Possibly cruel, but quite entertaining is pouring bicarbonate of soda solution down the ants' nest - the whole thing fizzes quite satisfyingly and the poor wee ants themselves sometimes exhibit a certain anal effervescence too.
I have emerged, bloody, bruised but alive, from the end of term marking. How are we all?
Same as ever, ta. Do you have a clubcard?
Ants
There was a bloke on TV the other day who pours molten Aluminium down ant's nests. When it all cools down he digs it up and it looks really neat. A three-dee map of the nest. It also solves the ant problem in no small way. Like the powder, it isn't good for your skin.
Ally castings
(SM) I wonder. The ant's nest would have to be very dry or there'd be an explosion of steam, hot metal and pyrolysed ants. Not nice. Where does he get the aluminium from? He could melt down old saucepans, I suppose, but molten aluminimum is hot, 660°C plus, incipient red heat.
[Tuj] No. As a proud shopper at Auchan, though, I have a "Waaouh" card. Because the savings make me say "Waaouh!". Obviously. Yes.
Price floozies
Our local supermarket advertises something it calls a 'Price Commitment'. Since these signs disappear as soon as the so-promoted product increases in price, one has to wonder to what extent this counts as a commitment.
Changing topic...
[rab] With the "Whoops!" button, could one undo a winning move? More pertinantly, could one test several options until finding the winning move, if unknown?
[Tuj] (i) Yes and no. (ii) I think so, but would it really matter?
[rab] Yes and no, eh? There's cards close to the chest. I'm too timid to go test it ;)
And regarding the second, in theory, with patience, one could knock off the likes of Mystery Crescent single-handedly.
And regarding the second, in theory, with patience, one could knock off the likes of Mystery Crescent single-handedly.
Yes, but you could do the same thing, albeit more publicly, without the Whoops feature. If anyone ever suspects foul play I can always look at the logs.
I've just acquired a niece - what's the appropriate Unclely response? (Other than a brief note of congratulation).
[rab] No idea!
[rab] Go make a visit, if plausible, and be friendly towards. No point in sending gifts at present (lol) as too young to appreciate them.
[rab] A congratulations card. If you want to send a present, something for the parents to enjoy, rather than for the child, is better received in my experience. As Projoy says, the sprog is too young to appreciate anything, and it's the parents who will be feeling more in need of TLC, and perhaps a little neglected.
(should you doubt my credentials to offer advice, btw, I speak as one who was en-neiced earlier this year).
Visit no-go; parents live in New Zealand. Point taken vis a vis gift for them.
Family expansion
(rab) Can't remember; my nieces were born in 1974 and 1976. It's about time, therefore, that I became a great-uncle and if I were to I'd have a natter on the phone and send a nice card. I wouldn't visit - they'd have enough to do without me getting in the way.
rab] I became en-great-neiced last year, and while I agree with everyone about a pressie being unnecessary at this stage, gift vouchers were much appreciated. I gave Mothercare, and one possible NZ equivalent would be this lot www.babyfactory.co.nz/giftvouchers.html , assuming the parents live near enough to a store.
[rab] Send a cheque in the name of the new niece, which obliges the parents to open a bank account in her name, which you can then add to for each birthday/xmas, therefore saving yourself time and effort in shopping for presents. Saying that, I've just bought my godson (about to turn 13, mountain-biking, farm-dwelling, paper-round-operating) a set of Super-Duper bike lights (well, as Super-Duper as Asda will allow) and a speedometer for his birthday next week. On the other hand, my 3-year old nephew always gets cheques, and a freebie CD or DVD from the newspapers that I have to ready daily at work.
[rab] Also no idea, as I have no nieces. But something for the parents seems like a capital idea.
When my niece was born my wife and I bought things for the baby aged 6-12 months; the parent received so much newborn baby stuff they were rather grateful for things that wouldn't be useless in a few months time. I would suggest Baby Gap, as they contain really nice things that are a bit too expensive for parents to justify, but perfect for an uncle/aunt to get!
Or alternatively, the Hotel Chocolat New Baby Discovery Box, which is what we'll be getting for my sister who is due to have her second child in the next week...
Or alternatively, the Hotel Chocolat New Baby Discovery Box, which is what we'll be getting for my sister who is due to have her second child in the next week...
Thanks for your suggestion. We've emailed the proud parents with an offer of a sum of money in the form of gifts for baby, gifts for them, or invested into some kind of dullness fund. They'll let us know when mother and daughter come home from hospital.
In other news, we had the degree exam board meeting this morning and results are now posted. Most of the fun of the latter is now removed by exam numbers, rather than names, being posted.
[rab] Well that's no fun at all. I remember clearly the thrill of going to the department, reading my name, and then hearing someone hoot "LOOK WHO GOT A THIRD!"
Laughing stock
[nights] I didn't even have to go to the department - results for all subjects were posted outside on the walls of Senate House in Cambridge for all to see...
[Chalky] Could you drop me an email when you have a moment? [andrewdotjohn@ayadotyaledotedu] I can't seem to put my hands on your email address. Thanks.
[CdM] 'tis done
Aluminium Ant Nest Casting
This took me about a minute to find. There is a lot more about this on the web.
This weekend I am mostly....
learning about ancient woodland in Cheltenham, on a two-day course. Part work, part pleasure. See you Monday, thickets ;o)
Banter for its own sake
Beautiful June afternoon. Heavy sinister-looking cloud, gusty northerly wind, spots of rain, almost dark enough to need the light on, temperature 11°C. This reminds me, as did last summer, of some of the dreadful summers of the 50's. As I write this it's got lighter so no thunder. Not yet.
This weekend I will be mostly...
gardening. Finally, a weekend at home - the first one for a month!
Stormy Weather
[Rosie] It's them left-handed storms of which you must be more careful. Hopefully it turned out to be just a right-handed jobby.
[penelope] You made your new nest and have to accept the consequences. I feel no sorrow for your predicament as I have chosen to work from home. Tee hee!
[penelope] You made your new nest and have to accept the consequences. I feel no sorrow for your predicament as I have chosen to work from home. Tee hee!
[Phil] I saw his show 'Current Puns' a couple of years ago at the Fringe. It was good. Most memorable pun: I'm minded to see this one too, even if it looks like it might be somewhat similar.
Hidden text
I had a friend whose ambition was to be run over by a steam train. When he was, he was chuffed to bits.re cycling
[pen] " ... extra-tough for decades of comfortable, reliable daily service." LOL :-D
From €680? I'd want an engine too for that price! :-)
le météo
Weird at the moment. Huge storm last night, chilly yet sweaty today. Trams full of people. Nights not happy.
turns the volume right down to '0'
It's a bit quiet in here this week! Today I am mostly writing a press release, and this weekend I will mostly be listening to my mum singing in a 'Music for a MidSummer Night' choral concert in Lincoln. And planting more beans.
Home, where's that?
Mrs INJ and I will be spending a weekend at home for the first time since the middle of May. A bit of gardening is on the cards, but I will be helping out at the Derbyshire Schools Orienteering Championships on Saturday and maybe competing in an event on Sunday.
Half a silly van
I'm doing some G&S this weekend, but without the G.
Chinese Earring
[ImNotJohn] I wonder it's still called "orienteering" and hasn't made the jump to "orientationeering" in the twenty five years since I did any.
I miss the old OS maps. I stopped using them about the time they completed the old red-cover One Inch To One Mile series and began redoing the job in pink-cover 1:50 000 metric maps (talk about make-work in government!). They must have done all of the UK in metric by now I would think.
As a teen I salivated over the prospect of a complete collection of OS maps. I think I have six.
I've often wished for the same types of maps with the same degree of coverage in the places I've lived since leaving the UK, but other countries missed that particular boat and are unlikely to go that route now we have "better" GPS systems. It was one of the nastier shocks to find that other western countries didn't have super-accurate maps for the asking. I had to use boat charts and forestry "blueprint" jobs for the most part. Joni Mitchell had it right.
I miss the old OS maps. I stopped using them about the time they completed the old red-cover One Inch To One Mile series and began redoing the job in pink-cover 1:50 000 metric maps (talk about make-work in government!). They must have done all of the UK in metric by now I would think.
As a teen I salivated over the prospect of a complete collection of OS maps. I think I have six.
I've often wished for the same types of maps with the same degree of coverage in the places I've lived since leaving the UK, but other countries missed that particular boat and are unlikely to go that route now we have "better" GPS systems. It was one of the nastier shocks to find that other western countries didn't have super-accurate maps for the asking. I had to use boat charts and forestry "blueprint" jobs for the most part. Joni Mitchell had it right.
for ImNotJohn
Incidentally, it took me about five attempts to type your screen name without automatically inserting spaces (I tried Im Not John, ImNot John, Im NotJohn, then did some of them again before I got my brain to do it right). I've never had that happen before. Did you design for that effect?
Something for the weekend
I'm doing the world premiere of "What happened here - a retelling of Lear" tonite, and the second and final-for-us-but-hopefully-not-for-the-author show tomorrow nite. Sunday is a rest day :oD First Sunday without either rehearsal or show since nehwwonktnodi...
[Sierra Mike] I answer to INJ mostly. In fact elsewhere I tend to be just NotJohn - Im not sure why I've got the 'Im' in the Morniverse.
I'm also a bit of a cartophile - I've got 2 shelves devoted to them at the moment. I have a version of the StevieruleTM which goes 'No Map no Trip'.
OS maps now cover the whole of the UK at 1:25000 and are so much clearer than the 1:50000, which I use mostly for cycling. I still love the 1 inch tourist maps with the colouring & hachuring but you can't beat the large scale for navigating in mist/cloud. Also you get spoilt by the quality of orienteering maps 1:10000 or 1:15000 using specialised software, where you can navigate to the nearest 10 metres.
I'm also a bit of a cartophile - I've got 2 shelves devoted to them at the moment. I have a version of the StevieruleTM which goes 'No Map no Trip'.
OS maps now cover the whole of the UK at 1:25000 and are so much clearer than the 1:50000, which I use mostly for cycling. I still love the 1 inch tourist maps with the colouring & hachuring but you can't beat the large scale for navigating in mist/cloud. Also you get spoilt by the quality of orienteering maps 1:10000 or 1:15000 using specialised software, where you can navigate to the nearest 10 metres.
1:25000 maps
[S M & INJ] These come in an attractive orange cover, far nicer than the 1:50000s' lurid pink.
TQ 3516 5955
I have inherited dozens of OS maps from my cartophilic Dad, mostly 6th Edition but some older than that (pre-war). The expansion of some towns is phenomenal. Crawley, for example, was a compact place with a station and a high street but is now a vast, amorphous sprawl. The new 1:50,000 and 1:25,000 maps are more accurate and detailed than their older counterparts, particularly in regard of contours. There are sad (old meaning) bits such as "Course of old railway" and "Mines (disused)" (Yeah, so's mine). Even though the OS Grid has always been metric I'll never get used to heights in metres. My house is at 557 ft, not 169 metres, so I claim the title of Highest-living Morniverser.
[Non-mappies look away NOW] The OS Grid is a Transverse Mercator projection, prime meridian 2°W, based on a model of the Earth developed by Sir George Airy over 100 years ago. It's a tiny bit different from modern values both in size and degree of flattening. There is a scale reduction of 0.04%, presumably to allow for the expansion of the scale in the projection away from the prime meridian.
[Non-mappies look away NOW] The OS Grid is a Transverse Mercator projection, prime meridian 2°W, based on a model of the Earth developed by Sir George Airy over 100 years ago. It's a tiny bit different from modern values both in size and degree of flattening. There is a scale reduction of 0.04%, presumably to allow for the expansion of the scale in the projection away from the prime meridian.
ST 6370 7585
[Rosie] I cannot claim such a lofty domicile, but two minutes' drive gently uphill takes me to this point, Cossham Hospital, the highest point in Bristol at 369 feet (112 meters). On a clear day the views over the city, the Severn Valley, Forest of Dean and even the Brecons are excellent. Oh, and thanks for the techie stuff!
[ImNotJohn & Bigsmith] Blimey. We used to use the old red cover jobs when I was doing it, though admitedly I was less than serious about orienteering and probably just ran with an amateur crowd. I had no idea there was a 1:25 000 series of maps available commercially. Do they cover the entire UK? The only 1:50 000 OS map I can reliably put my hand on today would be "Land's End and The Lizard", and I can't for the life of me remember why I bought that one. I used a couple of Welsh ones until they fell apart but Land's End? When did I go there? It has some touristy annotations on it, like scenic photography overlooks and so forth, which my Welsh ones didn't. I suspect it was a detail added halfway through the print run or something.
[Rosie] That's a nice legacy you have. I didn't remember that the 1 Inch to 1 Mile series had a metric grid. I do remember that we were taught to read an OS map in Geography class when I was around 11 or 12. That's when I fell in love with the things.
[Rosie] That's a nice legacy you have. I didn't remember that the 1 Inch to 1 Mile series had a metric grid. I do remember that we were taught to read an OS map in Geography class when I was around 11 or 12. That's when I fell in love with the things.
[SM] It's the wonder of satellite technology. Effectively the whole country has been remapped (at least as far as contours are concerned) in a matter of a couple of years whereas before there was a large team of cartographers doing physical surveys. This has got rid of some of the more obvious mistakes that used to exist, although there are still paths shown going over cliff edges in a couple of places that I know.
For orienteering we normally start with a base plot (usually from the OS) with contour intervals down to 2.5 metres where appropriate (5m for very steep ground). There is then a specialised package (OCAD - there were others but this has come out on top) which has all the correct colours and symbols built in and you can build the map from that. There is still a need for fieldwork, but the whole thing is much slicker and maps get changed up to about 2 weeks before an event. Also with cheap high-quality printing most events now have the courses pre-printed - no need to copy from a master, and you can even run off more copies while the event is taking place if you get more than expected on one course. With electronic punching you get a print-out of your final and split times as soon as you finish and results from an event are on the web the same day. Up to about 10 years ago you left an SAE at the event and got the results about 1-2 weeks later.
For orienteering we normally start with a base plot (usually from the OS) with contour intervals down to 2.5 metres where appropriate (5m for very steep ground). There is then a specialised package (OCAD - there were others but this has come out on top) which has all the correct colours and symbols built in and you can build the map from that. There is still a need for fieldwork, but the whole thing is much slicker and maps get changed up to about 2 weeks before an event. Also with cheap high-quality printing most events now have the courses pre-printed - no need to copy from a master, and you can even run off more copies while the event is taking place if you get more than expected on one course. With electronic punching you get a print-out of your final and split times as soon as you finish and results from an event are on the web the same day. Up to about 10 years ago you left an SAE at the event and got the results about 1-2 weeks later.
More map stuff
For mountain walking I like Harvey Maps. They are at 1:40000, often photo-enlarged to 1:25000. They aren't as good in farmland as they don't show field boundaries, but they do show what is actually on the ground - there are different symbols for a right of way which is visible and one which is not visible as well as another for a visible path which is not a r.o.w.. They also change the colour of the contours to show rocky or marshy ground.
yes, I can't sleep
This weekend I will continue recovering.
I like maps but do not own many (only one proper map, really), mainly because we don't have much landscape over here. Or perhaps we have far too much of it. In any case, [INJ] I feel remarkably uneasy when I am in an unfamiliar place without a map, and I really need to know where North is. Changing hemispheres is very disturbing. I came very close to mapping our parts of Oman, at least as far as roads and such things go, because they (maps) either did not exist or were wildly inaccurate. But the cost of GPSrs was too high. I now have a nifty little one, and have been enjoying the occasional geocache, thanks to my sister and brother-in-law's introduction. It definitely helps break up long drives, and is a fun way to explore new places. I haven't done orienteering in at least 20 years.
I like maps but do not own many (only one proper map, really), mainly because we don't have much landscape over here. Or perhaps we have far too much of it. In any case, [INJ] I feel remarkably uneasy when I am in an unfamiliar place without a map, and I really need to know where North is. Changing hemispheres is very disturbing. I came very close to mapping our parts of Oman, at least as far as roads and such things go, because they (maps) either did not exist or were wildly inaccurate. But the cost of GPSrs was too high. I now have a nifty little one, and have been enjoying the occasional geocache, thanks to my sister and brother-in-law's introduction. It definitely helps break up long drives, and is a fun way to explore new places. I haven't done orienteering in at least 20 years.
Paths Off Cliffs
[ImNotJohn] For years I lived in a street that the local "A-Z" type guide showed as having a cross street where there wasn't so much as a kerbstone. When this error survived two reprintings I got clued in. By pure chance I was living next door to a copyright protection scheme. The map publisher had put in a fake street so that they could easily catch competitors who saved the cost of a survey just by copying their maps. I've learned since then that an awful lot of this sort of thing goes on. Dictionaries, thesauri (?) and encyclopediae (??) have fake entries in them to snare copyright infringers. The original pubishers work on the theory that you'd be unlikely to actually read the articles/entries since you can't get to them in any day-to-day use of the dictionary/thesarus/encyclopedia but only by reading through them serially.
I have to admit, sending someone off a cliff seems a bit much though. I hope this gets fixed in GPS sets since judging from recent news items some GPSers are a bit too slavish when it comes to following the directions their boxes give them and I wouldn't be surprised to read of someone stepping out into empty space.
[Bigsmith] Thanks for the map info.
I have to admit, sending someone off a cliff seems a bit much though. I hope this gets fixed in GPS sets since judging from recent news items some GPSers are a bit too slavish when it comes to following the directions their boxes give them and I wouldn't be surprised to read of someone stepping out into empty space.
[Bigsmith] Thanks for the map info.
1:25 000
Now nothing will suffice but that I order a 1:25 000 map of Land's end and The Lizard.
MapsspaM
I have a couple of 1:25000 maps covering my area of residence. A month or so ago I dug out one of them in order to scan part of it and send the resultant image to a cyber-acquaintance. I doubt that I had referred to this publication within the last three or four years. I also forgot to put it back in stowage that evening. The following afternoon my wife came home and plonked down before me a new copy of the very same map. Having given her a puzzled look she explained that the previous evening she had looked for the 'missing' map and, not finding it, thought it best to buy a new one.
midsummary
Hmmph. Raining and cool. The sweetpeas need it.
Paths to oblivion
(INJ) It could be a clifftop path that has disappeared due to coastal erosion if you're anywhere near the east coast.
(Bigsmith) So, Fishponds, Bristol, then. I had heard of it, for some reason, probably to do with the railway, which I see has been ripped up.
Bristols
Hmm, talking of Bristol, I'm going there for the first time shortly - any recommendations for good places to take a 3 year old and 5 month old? We've got the zoo on our (short) list already...
Cliff Paths
I wasn't clear enough. In both the cases I know of the path exists, but the line has been 'smoothed' to an easy curve and so doesn't avoid the feature whereas, on the ground, there is a deviation to miss it.
[SM] Yes, the false street is indeed a standard copyright protection measure.
[Rosie] You may hold the highest living Morniverser right now, but if so I probably held the title for a couple of years when we had a 10th floor apartment here in Singapore. Now we are back at sea level.
[Rosie] You may hold the highest living Morniverser right now, but if so I probably held the title for a couple of years when we had a 10th floor apartment here in Singapore. Now we are back at sea level.
higher, higher
Without having any idea of where everyone lives, I think that Dujon might be the loftiest Morniverser, since he lives on a mountain outside Sydney. The first Antipopilg in 2003 was at Blaxland, (1404 feet, or 427 metres) and I don't think he'd be much lower than that (if not higher up).
up and up
I was kidding about the apartment in Singapore, obviously, but I was living at 265m back in 2003-2004 when we were in Texas. In my pre-Morniverse days I lived at 188m in VIrginia and at about 280m in Ann Arbor Michigan. None of these surpasses Dujon. If I can go back to my childhood, though, I lived for a year at 946m, and INJ was at university at 1250m around the same time.
(I think there is a pretty good chance that INJ is also the person here who has been up the highest (while still staying on the ground) though I might be wrong about that.)
The roof of the world
flerdle) It may well be Dujon, then, for current residence. My feet-on-the-ground record is El Teide in Tenerife, 3717 m or 12,196 ft. The air pressure there is about 64% of sea-level pressure and you noticed it. Quite a lot of puffing and blowing climbing the few hundred feet from the cable car to the summit. Water would boil at 88°C, just about enough to thicken gravy but not enough for a decent cuppa.
I spent most of my first couple of decades at around 1000ft. It didn't seem very high at the time, probably because it isn't.
I lived for a year at about 420m on the Swiss/French border. It didn't feel at all high, because everything around was so much higher, namely the Jura mountains to the west, and the Alps etc to the south-east.
[Rosie] When I typed that about INJ I was vaguely thinking "we already had this conversation not so long ago", and your Tenerife posting reminds me that indeed we did.
Senior moment
(CdM) Probably my fault, then, because stuck on my bedroom wall is a b & w 1978 photo of me and half a dozen other herberts and several herbertesses, all from Croydon Astronomical Society, as we crowd round the summit marker. Where has INJ been? I think I've probably got the record for current UK residents. The modest height does make a difference in that snow, on the rare occasions that it falls, lasts much longer up here than in London and numerous occasions when there's light drizzle and mist whereas London is dry. Some of this is the London Heat-Island effect which on a warm calm summer night can be quite stark, with temperature differences of 8°C.
Walking tall
[flerdle] Thanks for adding a few inches to my height. I am at a mere 250 metres (depending on where on my little plot of paradise you stand) which is around and about 850 feet asl. As it is now approaching, if not past, the noon time I might pop down to my local club for a wee bit of luncheon delight, which should bring me home quite heady. Cheers.
[Dujon] You still win ;-) .
elevated positions
At the risk of blowing my own trumpet (but, hell, I am proud of it), my highest point is the summit of Mera Peak in the Himalaya at 6476 metres (21,247 ft). I now live at about 40m asl.
[Rosie] No, my fault, not yours. I just remembered because my highest is almost identical to yours, but in a completely different part of the world (Colorado Rockies).
(INJ) I'm impressed. Did you need oxygen? It's not warm up there either, is it? (Guess -15°C, if summer, plus a "breeze").
Just a trifle nippy
[Rosie] - No oxygen. I was slowed down by the lack of it, but not reduced to gasping. The main effect was that I lost my appetite completely. I was there in March-April, so pre-monsoon. Overnight it was regularly down to about -20°C. During the day there was a lot of bright sunshine, but I reckon the shade temperature didn't get above freezing; it was fleece jacket, thick gloves & balaclava even when working quite hard and down clothing as soon as the sun set.
Mera is the highest 'trekking peak' in the Himalaya, anything over 6500m is a 'climbing peak' even if there is no technical difficulty. However Aconcagua is higher and presents no technical difficulties and is only about 20km from a good motor road. It's probably the ultimate challenge for the non-climber.
Mera is the highest 'trekking peak' in the Himalaya, anything over 6500m is a 'climbing peak' even if there is no technical difficulty. However Aconcagua is higher and presents no technical difficulties and is only about 20km from a good motor road. It's probably the ultimate challenge for the non-climber.
(INJ) I'm further impressed. The pressure up there is about 42% of sea level pressure. Apparently the lack of oxygen causes considerable problems with cognitive tasks but as I imagine you weren't writing up a PhD up there it probably didn't matter. Well done! I could manage Leith Hill (965 ft) these days but probably not Snowdon (3561 ft) even if I called it Yr Wyddfa.
[Rosie] Acclimatisation helps a lot. We flew in to about 2400m and then walked in for about 10 days, mostly on the ‘walk high, sleep low’ principle, which got us to a camp at about 5300. We then did a short day up to 5800 and then a push to the top. I reckon the last 700m would have taken me a bit over 2 hours from sea level (I was fitter then), and actually took between 4 & 5 hours. We then dropped about 1500m, to below the previous 2 camps. As for cognitive impairment – I ‘lost’ a good part of the next day. I couldn’t remember much of it only a day or two later and have never been able to, even prompted by photos. Another interesting effect was that my tent companion went into a pattern of Cheyne-Stoking while asleep – disturbing when you first hear it, but common at altitude. Of course, one of the effects of the cold and low pressure is that the air is extremely dry – it was hard to drink enough, especially as water bottles exposed to the air froze. It’s the physically hardest thing I’ve ever done and I certainly couldn't do it now.
Result!
The good news is that we've discovered the cat is a mouser (one of the reasons for getting her). The bad news is finding this out obviously entailed a renewed incursion. We look forward to being woken up by her dropping half-dead mice on our faces and being shown how to kill them. Will need to look at the bait trays over the weekend to see where its been taken. Sometime over the next few weeks we're getting our floors repaired which should seal up some of the holes at least.
Revisiting the bait sites I discover the trays in the kitchen are untouched, which is good news, but the one I put under the sink cabinet in the bathroom had disappeared! I have an image of a family of mice living in a red tray marked 'Poison' somewhere down there...
[Rab] I've seen that Tom & Jerry episode...
A week with nothing to say? Yikes!
Perhaps we need a couple of new games, as we've not had any in 8 months (ignoring Mystery Crescent, restarted after running out of steam. Well gosh, it's run out of steam again!)
Mystery Crescent
I'll kill it off if no-one can be bothered to play (and if I can remember the winning move - I don't think I wrote it down anywhere).
I think Tuj is right. This is a great mc site, but we have perhaps let it get a bit stagnant. My vote is for keeping AVMA, since it is almost a defining game of this server, but some of the other games could be given a breather. And with that in mind, I've killed the clerihew game.
imho, pretty much any of the other games could be rested.
[Kim] I think that may be the case - it's suffered from not being quite the right game for the pace of the server.
Meanwhile, could Film Club be due a more meritorious retirement? The thing is, now we need to have some suggestions for new games to spruce up the place!
Meanwhile, could Film Club be due a more meritorious retirement? The thing is, now we need to have some suggestions for new games to spruce up the place!
I know I've not been here much recently, but perhaps Film Club could be retired in favour of a Book Club? Or if anyone was wanting to pretend to be youthful again, how about a video games club? It might test people's Google skills if nothing else!
Of course, at this time of year, Dunx's annual Festival of Crescent means that attention is necessarily (albeit temporarily) diverted elsewhere. But I'm always in favour of a cull.
You know you're getting old when....
[rab] .....two things happen. The first is - you can't remember the winning move of a game that you created and the second is, errrr...., oh yes, you have to ask for help in killing it.
[Kim] Think Richard O'Sullivan.
[Rab] None the wiser. I kept thinking of Gilbert O'Sullivan and it put me off.
Right, er, Chatsworth, or Lanhydrock maybe.
New game idea/request
Can we have a banter game of some kind?
Well, I wouldn't contribute to it.
Oh dear
Having instigated this, I feel responsible - and I certainly don't want blood on my hands if the game slots vanish entirely again =(
However, I've not really got any ideas. Except, well... I've seen an online game called NationStates where one runs a country via its inner workings. So I wondered if perhaps we could invent the continent of Morningtonia, each stake a claim to some land and then see how our national/international diplomacy skills are... and hope that the answer to the question "When does the game end?" isn't necessarily "NUCLEAR WAR!"
However, I've not really got any ideas. Except, well... I've seen an online game called NationStates where one runs a country via its inner workings. So I wondered if perhaps we could invent the continent of Morningtonia, each stake a claim to some land and then see how our national/international diplomacy skills are... and hope that the answer to the question "When does the game end?" isn't necessarily "NUCLEAR WAR!"
On second thoughts:
... I'd like to suggest a game called "Lead Balloon".
New game idea
Cat chess? This rules variant is slightly different from the last one I saw, but looks promising.
[Tuj] A game of Morningtonian Government sounds like fun to me.
New Games
I like both ideas that don't involve cat chess. I don't understand how Cat Chess would work. Bantering would be my vote if it is an ether/ore choice.
New Games
Have you noticed that there isn't a single game of "Mornington Crescent" in play on this server. Why don't we start one of those?
How do you play that then, Kim?
Blasphemy, apostasy, iconoclasm etc.
I dont' think MC itself works very well here. It really has to be played live so that the players can display all the mock-gravity and in-depth knowledge of arcane rules that this involves. It's a performance, really, and needs rather good actors.
Then maybe a game of 'Dress Rehearsal Mornington Crescent' will show what sheer hard work has to go into putting on a slick performance in the Game itself? I'm thinking this might give us an insight into the director's final, fraught instructions, the referee's frantic consultations with the rule book(s) and the performers' last-minute nerves showing through.
and then
Game slot still available, of the suggestions go along with pen.
Dusted the cob webs off the BBQ over the weekend. My only quibble was the sausages, those from the local butcher cooked a treat but the Walls sausages almost went up in flames they were spitting so much fat.
Dusted the cob webs off the BBQ over the weekend. My only quibble was the sausages, those from the local butcher cooked a treat but the Walls sausages almost went up in flames they were spitting so much fat.
[Rosie] A lot of the games are like that -- improv theatre, really. Take a look at the yorkives link on the front page here and contemplate the glories of the past, when MC was the main game played.
Ah, just seen it's CANCELLED - but I guess the question still stands...
(rab) Do you really need to ask that?
[rab] Yep, that's us. All things considered, just as well we cancelled (a couple of months back) as only one song is yet complete, and we keep going back to the synopsis and tweaking. Should show up next year in the form of a reading or full production, hopefully. We're devoting tomorrow to completing a 10 minute extract which will be done this year at Theatre 503 in London, then podcast as an audio-format musical.
Good luck. If you do ever come up to Edinburgh be sure to drop me a line so we can catch up over an IPA or something.
[rab] Coincidentally, I'll be teaching a course on the IPA next semester.
[rab, Néa] aɪd lʌv ə bɪə
Projoy's post
What do all the little squares mean?
(rab, Néa) Isopropyl alcohol is not good for you.
squarelets
[SM] They mean your browser isn't rendering International Phonetic Alphabet symbols
[Rosie] Any chance you can get the rain to stop? It's started leaking into our flat. Roofers have been called but they're a bit busy today.
Rain
(rab) Edinburgh, yes? It'll gradually peter out but Saturday afternoon brings another dollop. Hope you can get it done before then. This used to happen at work rather a lot so we set up an indoor raingauge network.
I suppose if you get 6% (21 days' worth) of your annual average rainfall on one day you can expect problems. Two surprising things about Edinburgh -it's further west than you think (more so than Bristol) and not as wet as you think. Paisley (just to the west of Glasgow) has twice as much rain as Edinburgh.
[Rosie] Rest assured, the men are up there now tying the chimney down. It needs to resurfaced or something, which means we need to get somewhere between 7 and 10 neighbours to contribute to the costs. Oh what fun!
(rab) What fun indeed! Glad it's never happened to me (yet). More rain Saturday but fairly routine stuff.
it is a-raining not in Tokyo
It has been pissing down (scientific term) here in Brussels for as long as memory serves. I drove the new Alfa to Cologne on Friday and visibility in the rain was worse than in a carwash. Don't you just love summer in Northern Europe?
Niederschlage
(ISP) The official term is AFPD. Take heart; this is a bad summer by most standards and least it's better than winter.
Smug
It has been a lot better over here than up north this summer. We have avoided rain for the most part (apart from 72mm in 4 hours the Sunday before last). It's looking a bit iffy for the rest of the week, though.
Deperately trying to think of something other than the weather to talk about
Does anyone here like cold tea? I do.
Cold tea
Yes, especially with ice and a slice of lemon or a sprig of mint.
Iced tea, yes. Hot tea gone cold: URHGURHUGHHUHYYEEAEAUURK.
I generally don't drink tea, but regularly drink hot coffee gone cold, and occasionally iced coffee. I hasten to add that if I had milk in my coffee, I would, in all probability, drink it neither iced nor gone-cold.
(Softers, Graham III) No, I meant tea gone cold. Great! Coffee gone cold is just as good. I make a virtue of necessity because having brewed it I get on with doing something and forget about the drink.
Cold tea
Well, I drink tea and coffee without milk anyway.
Once I have made myself a cup of tea, I'll drink it all, even if it has gone cold. Coffee less so. I love iced tea, and iced coffee, and make both at home in the summer. If I'm at home, I put milk in tea and coffee. If I'm in Holland, I'll drink them without milk.
Milk
Milk! Foul substance that from bovine teats expressed
For infant calves, man steals for ends perverse
Drinking that infant nourishment, whose end
Ends crated in the dark before the knife
Cuts short -- but to pick up the thread again --
Vile stuff for human stomach never meant
That rots i' the open air in scant three days
Else churned to yellow grease; or rotted more
With fungus mingled in ten thousand ways
Until it stinks like to the arse of Hades -- contd. p. 94
Re: Milk
Yeah, what Raak said!
What, no cheese?
Panna cotta, custard, Yorkshire puddings, macaroni cheese, icecream, buttered toast, cappucino, parsley sauce... [Phil, Raak] I don't believe you.
[pen] I was with you all the way until you mentioned parsley sauce, whereupon Raak suddenly started to make more sense.
[CdM] OK. Switch that to 'peppercorn sauce' for your rib-eye steak.
[pen] Well, I don't like milk, custard, panna cotta or cappucino; but the others are nice.
Lait, leche, llaeth etc
(Phil) What do you put on your cornflakes/shredded wheat/weetabix? Not syrup, I hope.
[Rosie] As a result, I very rarely eat breakfast cereals. If I do, the milk needs to be as fresh and cold as possible.
[Rosie] I put canned fruit on my muesli. If I ate porridge, which I don't, I'd make it with water.
Dairy products
I stopped taking milk in tea and coffee as a result of trying to reduce my cholesterol count. I like milk and cheese and all the things pen listed, so tea and coffee without milk keeps the intake down without too much pain.
Anyone who was a child in the late '40's will have had it drummed into them the milk was a Good Thing (free at school, off the ration) and as far as I'm concerned it still is, within limits. Nothing could beat slurping the cream off the top of the bottle, and still can't. Fortunately, at the moment I don't have a cat, which would obviously have first shout.
Showing my age
Free school milk nearly put me off milk for life. In summer it was stacked in the playground in the sun for a couple of hours before we got it, so it was always warm and slightly off.
I now only drink skimmed when I have a choice - full cream just tastes greasy to me. However I still eat too much cheese and use plenty of whole milk & cream in cooking.
I now only drink skimmed when I have a choice - full cream just tastes greasy to me. However I still eat too much cheese and use plenty of whole milk & cream in cooking.
I went off milk somewhere between 14 and 18, I reckon. I used to drink loads of it before then. The thought of the cream off the top of the bottle makes me feel queasy these days. Oh, and please don't even mention the "straight from the cow" option - yuk!
We have a cat but he doesn't like milk, or cheese, strangely. First cat I've known not to like either or both. We had school milk in the 50s, in 1/3 pint bottles, and a choice of orange juice (which I preferred) and then Jersey milk was very creamy (it's not now due to over processing). I can remember the milkman delivering the milk in churns and filling up a jug my mother used to leave on the doorstep. I think they introduced bottles in about 1956. Then bottles were replaced by humbug shaped Tetra Paks in about 1967.
(Software) Cats shouldn't have milk too often but binge-licking every now and again won't do any harm. Cats are also useful for hoovering up bits of chicken off the floor.
[Rosie] There is nothing useful a cat can do that a labrador and a mousetrap can't.
[Phil] Possibly true, but with a cat you don't have to keep careful track of which one you are petting.
[Rosie] Our cat won't eat cooked chicken either. [CdM} Another advantage of cats is that they don't need to be exercised or groomed regularly.
Ours occasionally comes along and licks the milk at the bottom of our muesli bowls. And she's much better at dealing with the mice than the traps. She also spends a lot of time sitting on the internet, acting as some kind of firewall I think.
[Rosie] True. But Phil might point out that the same is true of mousetraps.
We've recently discovered that there are at least two other cats in the building, which could be why we saw a flurry of mouse activity before we got ours.
I have just discovered that our cat likes icecream. As regards chasing mice he is a pacifist. The other day he was seen lying in our garden with a dormouse nibbling a fallen apple about 30cm from his nose.
My cat presented me with a very much alive and wriggling mouse yesterday. It was a great big ferocious critter, probably weighing well over a quarter of an ounce.
moustory
[Simons] And then? What happened next?
Well, I managed to catch it, then popped it in a cardboard box for an hour or so to give it a chance to calm down, then let it go, ready for the cat to catch at some other time.
(SM) The cat is turning into an angler, then?
random, catless
*complains about the cold*
Frigidity
(flerdle) Me too. It's a lousy August here. The temperature is staying mostly below 20 and my home-made sundial is getting very little exercise.
[Rosie] Your sundial doesn't enable you to dial up any sun?
Springy steps
As August fades into the past the promise of a new season is enticing my olfactory senses from their hibernation. A pleasant hour and a half of practice at my local bowling club (after which I was accepted as a member of the Hat-Wearing-Volvo-Driving Geriatric Club) combined with a beautiful and warm day (maximum 18.9ºC) has contrived an atmosphere of peace and tranquillity within the castle known as 'Dujon's Folly'. Oh, happy days.
Dial-up radiaton
(pen) Fat chance. I spent a long time getting all the geometry right (it's on a wall) but little chance of testing it. People on the weather newsgroup with actual sun-measuring equipment say that it the dullest August for a long time and scarcely better than January. That's when they're not hurling miss-spelt abuse at each other and generally acting like ****s, ****s and ****s, even. What gets into people? This is a haven of well-mannered sanity.
Putting a spell on you
[Rosie] Can I assume you misspelled misspell on purpose?
What do we think about that university lecturer's suggestion that the 20 most common spelling mistakes should be accepted as variant spellings? (For examples and the lecturer's argument, see article on Times Higher Education website.)
What do we think about that university lecturer's suggestion that the 20 most common spelling mistakes should be accepted as variant spellings? (For examples and the lecturer's argument, see article on Times Higher Education website.)
(Knobbly) Did you mean the "miss" or the "spelt"? The latter is an approved form in my C.O.D. 1964. Maybe the "miss" ought to have only one "s". As to the university lecturer, he is either playing Devil's Advocate, a posh way of saying "taking the piss", or is pretty comprehensively ignorant of language. His ideas have been well rebutted in the replies on the site. I see he's a professor of criminology. I'd lock him up and throw the key away. Know what I mean, guv?
(Rosie) Yes, I meant the "miss". One s from the prefix mis- and the other which was already on the beginning of the verb.
Meteorological irony
The air above about 3000 feet the last few days is very warm and dry and if the cloud disappeared the temperature would shoot up rapidly to about 28°C. But the lower layer of air is cool and moist and cloud can't penetrate the warm air, being cooler and therefore denser. So if the upper air were cooler there'd be some chance of the cloud being carried upwards and evaporating and we'd have a warm, sunny day. Maybe not 28°C but at least 23°C. BTW the sudden rise of temperature as you go up above about 3000 feet (in this case) is called an inversion and is a common feature. In Siberia in winter it can be as much as 25 degC warmer aloft than at the surface, say -20° compared with -45°.
Bah!
I'm working from home on a Saturday, trying to get stuff done before going on holiday for two weeks in a fortnight's time. But it's an opportunity to go through my CD collection one-by-one as I work. I hadn't unpacked them since I moved here almost a year ago. Right now: CD 3 of the complete collection of Vaughan Williams symphonies.
Blah!
I turned 50 while on holiday last week. I find it oddly liberating. Can anyone tell me why this is?
[Kim] It's because you know that your next birthday won't be your sixtieth :0(.
[Kim] Because you have realised that, despite the trepidation and build-up, you don't actually feel any different?
I ended up working most of Sunday too. And it rained. What a write-off of a weekend. Never mind. All of this will soon be over.
I ended up working most of Sunday too. And it rained. What a write-off of a weekend. Never mind. All of this will soon be over.
*complains about the cold. Again.*
Happy Birthday, Kim. 50 isn't that old. Not a lot you can do about it, anyway, other than walk in front of a bus beforehand (too late now).
Happy Birthday, Kim. 50 isn't that old. Not a lot you can do about it, anyway, other than walk in front of a bus beforehand (too late now).
Silver surfers
(Software) Neither will mine.
Shameless self-promotion, cross-posted at other sites
There's another beer and music festival this weekend at philspub
Re: trumpet blowing
Love to come, but ...
Since it has been so quiet here for so long, may I just say, a propos of nothing except general boasting, that I have just scored 227 in a single scrabble move? Thank you.
[CdM] Wow! How?
(CdM) Is that possible? 227 is a prime number and I thought scores were always multiplied by various factors rather than added. Apart from that, v good.
[Rosie] Presumably it was 59 tripled plus the bonus 50 for using all 7 letter from the rack.
I thought you'd never ask
[Phil, Rosie] The word was EQUISETA, played across two triple word scores on an existing Q, and also making the words ET and SWING. The letters in EQUISETA have a total value of 18 (including the double letter score on the I), which when twice tripled gives 162. ET contributed another 6 points (because it was also on a triple word), and SWING contributed another 9. That plus the 50 point bonus gives 227. (Note, by the way, that the tiles in my hand were worth a grand total of 7 points.)
It was a very high scoring game: my opponent got 417 points and still lost by over 100.
It was a very high scoring game: my opponent got 417 points and still lost by over 100.
I think CdM has stunned us all into silence with that accomplishment. In other news, I'm about to jet off for two weeks with the windy miller, taking in a road trip to Turin to visit a friend. On Monday, I am working 'from home' to finish off a press campaign (look out for Ancient Tree Hunt news about the 'Acorns to Ancients' seed collecting month hitting a local newspaper near you). And also,if anyone fancies a bosky trip to Hainault, there's a forest festival taking place in Hainault Forest from September 21 onwards - Speed Dating walks in the woods, anyone? Alternatively, learn woodland management, take part in forest art sessions, or take a guided 'Silent Walk' to listen to the sounds of the forest. If I wasn't elsewhere,. I'd go myself.
Well, you live and learn.. "Bosky" is definitely a word I'll endeavour to add to my everyday vocabulary.
To the woods!
(Phil) I'm surprised you didn't know it already, man of your calibre. I came across it as a teenager though I admit it's not used much.
[Rosie] When it comes to expanding my vocab, I'm all ears - which explains why I got called Wingnut at school, incidentally.
A propos of nothing...
Doubt if there's a game in this, but things have been quiet in here just lately, but I as wondering how high one could count with film/book names, particularly using just ordinals, rather than cardinals.. Starting with "First Among Equals".
Forty-Second Street?
The Third Man (oblig)
Born on the Fourth of July
The Fifth Element
The Sixth Sense
The Inn of the Seventh Happiness
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
10
Right up to the minute, we have The Eighth Wonder
The Ninth Gate
The Tenth Man (3.33 times more oblig than previously)
The Eleventh Hour
Twelfth Night: Or What You Will.
Apollo 13
Sticking to the ordinals concept
Friday the 13th
That classic: The Fourteenth Man
The Magnificent Seven
going in sequence after all:
15 Minutes
Pay Attention please
[Software] We're looking for ordinal numbers here, so the next one is Fifteenth
Mind you I think we must be getting close to the limit
Mind you I think we must be getting close to the limit
The Fifteenth. (But I admit that I have started cheating now.)
[INJ/CdM] I have cheated this morning and discovered that the lowest ordinal for which there is not a non-TV, feature-length film is 31st!
I have a couple in mind for later on, but I looked up 14th. On the other hand Phil's original suggestion included books, and I don't see why we should exclude made-for-TV films as long as they're feature length (say 80 mins minimum). I'm surprised at 31st not being there though as the last day of 7 months and last day of the year.
Further cheating
And when I do look I discover I actually did know a book with 31st in the title - annoying, that.
Ancient film
Knuckles rapped but - Quartorze Juliette
Then something with 33rd, then Miracle on 34th Street.
[Software] I'll say, I wouldn't stand for that kind of spelling from one of my students.
[nights] Nonono, it's a sort of French Kind Hearts and Coronets, in which Mme Binoche plays fourteen different roles.
[CdM] I see. I'm still not impressed though, Juliette Binoche is bad enough when she's just playing one role, let alone fourteen.
Quiet in here.
For the benefit of Ms Pitstop
I saw my first F1 race last night. It was rather fun in a loud fast car sort of way.
Noisy cars
[CdM] Ah - beat me to it. I was just going to ask if you'd watched it, and if not, if it had had an impact on your night.
[Phil] I saw the race from a slightly unusual vantage point. Because the race went by Singapore's business district, a number of offices with good views hosted parties, and we were invited to one of those. I was a bit sceptical beforehand, but it was actually really cool: an excellent birds-eye view of about one third of the track. A group of us also went downstairs for a while in the middle of the race, where we couldn't see much but could certainly hear it. This way of watching the race also had a couple of other advantages: food and wine; and access to television coverage. Given that I don't really follow F1 that closely, I liked being able to hear commentary while watching. I'm sure that being trackside would be a different experience, but I'm not sure I would have gotten so much out of it. All in all, a fun evening.
[CdM] Ah, but did you see where the race was won and lost: i.e. in the Ferrari Pit?
[CdM] I've heard trackside isn't so great, especially if you don't speak the local lingo. A friend of mine was phoned by someone at Spa to find out who had won the grand prix he'd just been watching, as he couldn't find out at the track.
Trackside at the British Grand Prix a few years ago, we were given little radios with earphones to get the trackside commentary, which was excellent. It's a lot more exciting close up - especially in the wet...
Shame about Dress Rehearsal. Never mind though, eh. Anyone have any ideas for new games?
I've just had one. An idea. Condensed books? Summarise the plot of a book in a particularly glib fashion, much like "So the Danish guy dies".
New games
(nights) Good idea, not that I'd be the star contributor.
New Game
[nights] I think something similar has been done somewhere before - but it could be anywhere in the last 12 years, so I'm certainly up for a new version.
New Game
I am an occasional contributor to, but mostly an amused reader of the "Ridiculously Easy Poetry" game currently being played in another place. Certain opening lines seem to come up quite frequently, sometimes involving fleas. I wonder whether a poetry-based "hillocks" game would be enjoyable for a while ("If I should die and go to Innisfree"). Any thoughts?
[nights] We definitely played that game a couple of years ago -- iirc it involved three-word and then two-word summaries. That doesn't mean we couldn't resurrect it, of course.
[Kim] I like that idea...
[Kim] I like that idea...
[CdM] I think that was "Butler Did It" and it was more than a couple of years ago. :)
Well, as the consensus seems positive, I'll create the game.
Me, too.
Who's a hillock?
I don't understand. Boo hoo hoo. What's the point of the new poetry game?
What a Hillock
Don't cry... "Wuthering Hillocks" is a game which aims to ease the poverty of the TV, film and book industries by suggesting inexpensive remakes of old hits, for example "One walked round the cuckoo's nest" or "Who wants to be a milliner?". I'm guessing that the first lines in the new game should be cheap versions of fine famous poetry. Is that it nights? As for the point of it, well...
Never Mind The Hillocks
[BL] Nothing to do with me, squire. I think Kim is the man (or possibly woman, but I think man) you need.
Oh yes...
I read back as far as "I'll create the game..." above... So - Kim?
Hillocks for the uninitiated
Yes, blamelewis has it right. "When hillocks collide" was an early-ish game on MCiOS and was set in the genre of film. It basically describes the scene of an accident. The film version generated such classics as "The Man Who Wasn't There Who Knew The Man Who Shot The Man Who Fell to Earth in Iron Mask With Two Brains", "One Million Years in Tibet" and "Sink the Titanic!". I mused idly that one could do something like that with well-known lines from poetry, hence "If I should die and go to Innisfree". I hadn't really thought about a ruleset, but perhaps there should be a minimum of two lines and no maximum, the metre of the first line should determine the metre of subsequent lines, rhyme is nice, but not essential. Is that enough to be going on with, folks?
*sigh*
It's a lovely day. I wish I'd got washing out on the line.
Behold!
(pen)
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty. (Wordsworth).
Earth has not anything to show more fair
Any more fares?
Any more fares?(Flanders & Swann)
Any more fares?
Any more fares?(Flanders & Swann)
My wife has been cleverly filtering the (snail) mail the last week so I ended up thinking the only people who had remembered my Birthday were the TV Licensing people.
rabturous
Happy Birthday!!
Happy Birthday to Rab!
Additionally, does anyone have anything fun planned for the weekend?
Habby Pirthday, rab!
[nights] No.
I'm being taken out tonight for a mystery meal. I think.
[rab] Taken all the labels off your tin cans, have you? ;) Slightly belated returns from here too!
[Tuj] Ah, what we used to call The Fabulous Mystery Dining Experience, back when I lived in halls. These days, if I cook out of cans, I'm sneered at by all the French people I know.
(nights) Not surprised; you're supposed to put it in a saucepan. :-)
I planted trees today. And then went dancing. All in all, quite satisfying.
Why on earth would anyone ever want three differently-coloured phones on their desk?
To match their handbag on any particular day, of course. (Well, if Posh can buy cars to match her clothes....)
Phones
If it was good enough for Reginald Perrin...
More Phones
...and a fantastic Pete & Dud sketch...
Seasonal update
It's blissfully cold this morning. Very refreshing.
I'm just glad the wind's dropped. The sign on the front of our local Post Office blew off when we were out yesterday (but, luckily, not right in front of the building).
[rab] It's probably a sign.
[Kim] No, it was a sign.
Just had the following train announcement: "Please note it is illegal to play pre-recorded music of popular music artists on trains or at stations because we do not hold a performing rights licence". Not simply because it annoys the crap out of everyone.
[rab] That leaves you clear to broadcast the back catalogue of any unpopular music artist...
muzak
(rab) I wonder if that applies to shops. I hope so.
Muzak
Unfortunately, most places, including my butcher, fork out for the PRS (aka thieving bastards) licence. The butcher, since you ask, has a radio playing, hence he needs the PRS licence.
The PRS
(Phil) I don't see why musicians shouldn't be paid for any public performance though I don't know the scale of charges. Yes, I am in the MU. I would have thought you would have been more put out by the cost of a music licence from the local council, for which you receive bugger all except a piece of paper and a bill.
"Music Licence from the Council"
No such thing any more. It all comes in the premises licence these days, thankfully.
Pub bore
(Phil) Ah! Didn't know that. But does it cost more if you are licensed for music or are all premises licensed thus?
On a different subject what do you think of the practice of discretionary closing times?, i.e. the pub will stay open the advertised extra half hour if the manager thinks it worth it on any particular evening. To me it's wanting to have your cake and eat it, or less formally, taking the piss. If you're in the pub you don't know how fast to drink or whether to have another half, say, or if arriving late, as I often do, whether the pub will be open or not. To be on the safe side I will be assuming that the place will be closed at all times, as are many of my mates. There's quite a good choice in Carshalton and I wonder if the new manager knows that. He will soon.
[Rosie] Here in Embra there's been 'late' opening for quite some time, which means most pubs close variously between 12 and 1am, and a few staying open to 3 (or 4 during the Festival). It's generally been accepted that if a place is rather quiet, it might close early, but that it's good etiquette for the staff to go round about half-an-hour beforehand to let you know that this is likely to happen, and to suggest venues that are likely to be open later. Seemed to work rather well. (I say 'seemed', as my late-night drinking days are largely behind me now).
I'm bored
I've stopped opening emails today. They've all been boring so far this morning - or have been asking me to do things I don't have time for, so I thought I'd save myself the hassle and stop opening them altogether. People will soon get the point and stop sending them.
pubs
(rab) That's reasonable if the hours are as late as that but my "local" is merely extending from 11 to 1130, and on Sundays from 1030 to 11, each night at the manager's discretion. For a "regular" that won't do because one of the points about a favourite pub is its predictablity. This seems a blundering accountant-driven policy or maybe the manager's just a lazy arsehole. We are taking punitive action.
I don't know why, but when I'm in a different timezone, I feel normal rules don't apply.
Los geht's
Anyone care for a mug of kitten?
[Knobbly] Milk no sugar please.
Black with ginger please.
Variable opening
[Rosie] I believe I've spoken on this matter on another site, but the crux of the matter is that I'm with you on this one. My pub is licensed until 1am on friday and saturday, but I close at 12. Customers need consistency, and they need to know where they stand. On very rare occasions, I will stay open until 1am, but that is for the likes of our football team's annual prizegiving, and they all know in advance. They tend to leave about 12.30 anyway though. If the pub has 50 customers one friday night and you stay open the extra 30 minutes, what happens next week when there are 45 customers. You make yourself an immediate target for bickering. If you going to take punitive action, may I suggest you let the gaffer know before you do so, as he may not notice. He also might be more likely to change his ways in advance of losing custom.
[Rosie] Your other question. No, there is no variation in cost that tallies with what your licensable activities are. You do, though, open yourself up to a much bigger can of worms in the matter of your neighbours and their potential objections.
Chucking-out time
(Phil) I think the manager may have seen sense, though not through customer persuasion AFAIK, because there is now a completely new regime after less than a fortnight of this arbitrary stuff and the pub now has a 24-hr licence all week and is advertised (in the bar) as being open from midday to 11.30 a.m., the half-hour closed being apparently to put a few things in order each day. There is no mention of management discretion on the notice. Does this mean I can stay there drinking, probably alone, until 4 in the morning (say)? What on earth is the point of that because Carshalton is not exactly Soho. I'd like to know what's going on but the barman (not the manager) couldn't help, or wouldn't.
[Rosie] Have you been in the bar since Monday then?
(Phil) Sanity has prevailed with the appearance of yet another regime in which closing time is 1130 (pm) except Friday and Saturday which are midnight and Sundays which are 11 pm. These are modest extensions to the original times. The manager could have kept his itchy fingers off the keyboard and printer until he'd made his mind up but all's well that ends well.
(pen) Shurrup. Wha' if I 'ave? :-)
(pen) Shurrup. Wha' if I 'ave? :-)
Hours and Hours
Over here one has to move pub to get different closing times, it's all according to the type of licence issued, i.e. whether or not the licensee is able to have live music. Very strange but one gets used to it.
Hmm, looks like this site is about to become target for a lorryload of spam. Will need to think about tightening up the security I guess.
In the meantime, you might want to check the status of our latest building project.
[rab] Nice lav ;o)
[pen] That one's on its way out. The new one is sitting in a box in the spare bedroom.
[Rosie] Glad to hear you have stability again.
zbchk bnud
maith fthmri fuqv ktndamcs yetxq latids umgjkyftd
So nice to see we have visitors from another galaxy.
I thought it was one of us posting from a palm raspberry thing straight after emerging from the dentist's surgery.
(pen) :-)
Ching
Nice dusting of snow this morning, oddly, more in front of than out the back of the block.
Noting a slot and the date, does anyone have any inspiration for an advent-themed game of MC?
[Tuj] Done. Can you wait up until midnight to make your move? Sorry if that was a bit rude...
[pen] I knew someone would be able to hatch my half-idea =) thank you!
[Tuj] You're going to have to wait another day for a morsel of chocolate. Softers just got today's.
Odd Problem
Sorry to interrupt, but I need to get a message through to rab and the firewall here is stopping me posting to OMC/N&Q at the moment. I'm seeing a nod problem with the index page here at MC5. The names and moves displayed on it are not the same as those showing last in the games themselves. Is anyone else seeing this, or is this confined to my proxied-by-idiots world? Am I living in pre-cached hell again?
All looks fine here, Stevie.
Looks like a caching problem at your end, but I've resynched the index with the game data anyway.
Chocolate covered cache. Ooh!
[rab] *sighs* Okay. I'll resign myself to never seeing the site in it's real state then.
I could try adding the appropriate http header to try and request a non-cache.
OK
See if that works.
Cache Deals Only
[rab] Seems to have fixed it for now. Clever, you.
It's almost a week since anyone said anything, so I'll break the silence. I think I've moved into the 'finishing off projects' phase at work before my last day in the office on 23 December. How strange this is...
Not at all unusual if you are a proper professional, pen, which I assume you are.
I'm definitely demob happy now. I'm finishing off other people's jobs and bringing mince pies into work. I don't even like mince pies that much.
It gets very quiet in here over the weekend. Does that imply that most of mc5s posts are posted when the poster ought to be working?
[Knobbly] I am shocked, shocked to hear such a suggestion!
[knobbers] How very dare you??!!
I'd really like to express my hurt at the suggestion but, since I'm at work at the moment, I can't.
[Knobbly] Now look what you've done! Everyone is too ashamed to play any more. There has hardly been a move in any game for two days.
Shhh! Some of us have work to do, keep the noise down.
BOO! .....apologises to neighbours.....
Chirp
We've had a lot of dealings with tradesmen recently. None of them too disastrous (although there is still one job outstanding in the bathroom, scheduled for 8am tomorrow). But when something really good happens, I get so pleased. Our roofer was scheduled to check a few things out tomorrow morning in advance of the down-tools period (I had visions of a waterfall coming though the extractor fan on Christmas day). He phoned me up just now saying "I'm in the area, shall I come now?"; leapt onto the roof, found everything that was wrong with it and told me it would be thirty-five quid to fix. It was done in about the time it took me to get to the cashpoint and back.
Oh, and when I told him that one of his rivals told us we needed a whole new roof, he looked at me like I was mad and said, "Nah... this one will last about 20 years".
[rab] Is your bathroom fixed now?
This is my last day at work...
Woken by the telephone at ten o'clock this morning. Augh! The four best hours of the day lost in slumber, never to return! Oh well, I doubt if anyone else is at work today.
[Raak] I'm trying to plan a night off on Jan 2nd. It looks like it might work -)
[Raak] I'm still at work... Can't afford any time off, as I need all my leave for the imminent arrival of a new addition to the family. So I'll take this opportunity to wish a Merry Crimbo to everyone at MC5!
Merries
Happy wotsit. I'm obliged by the cult of Jobs to tell you this comes via my Father's iPhone.
Happinesses
Phew, Christmas successfully accomplished in the traditional manner. The Windy Miller is, this moment, accompanying the AA man in their attempts to get the car started, in anticipation of driving back to the Netherlands tomorrow. I have a chicken curry simmering on the hob, and was until a few moments ago, studying a book of Heath Robinson illustrations. Next, we will play with the new kitchen-windowsill weather monitoring station and see if we can't find out how to turn the outside temperature up a bit.
twelve days of Christmas
Monday, 2 December - the third consecutive day with a visit from the AA man. Today, they are taking the car away to a garage to be fixed. The advantage is that I get to spend extra time with the Windy Miller (we went to the cinema to see Australia last night - our first-ever cinema date. Marvellous cinematography, probably a lot of it CGI, but sh*t writing - maudlin, predictable and worst of all, it had Nicole Kidman in it). The disadvantage is that he is getting impatient as he has work to do back at home.
this year
I'm packing, and moving. Moving and packing. Eek!
[pen] You have my deepest empathy.
[CdM] Ignore Pen, it may not be great, but her way of seeing Australia is a lot less bother than yours.
[pen] It's a new beginning - sounds exciting. I enjoyed my 2 years in the Netherlands and would probably have stayed longer except for my ex.
epjlqroab nfpaub
hajoqpr budr znbq zoaidfeum cbrglknov mtsjiaex bveowfzyt
My heavens he's found me - anyone available to give me a lift to Bletchley?
Very cryptic, Duj :o)
I wonder if epjlqroab nfpaub is the same person as zbchk bnud from back in November?
[Knobbly] Don't be ridiculous, the names are completely different from each other.
Moving day T-3
I have two chairs and one lamp left. Everything else has been sold or is in boxes. Even my bed will sell on Ebay today, and a mate with a garage will sell my car for me. Lummy.
So you weren't joking when you said you were leaving, pen. :o)
Holland
[penelope] Where will you be living? Will you be using only public transport once you move? I've never been to Holland but I understand they have invested heavily in public transportation.
dead game?
Has Film Club run it's course, or does someone else want to suggest a new subject for it?
Public???
[SM] Public transport? Heavens no. I will be riding a stately omafiets, a birthday present from my schatje molenaar.
omafiets
[penelope] Would that be a bicycle, horse, moped or skateboard?
It's a 'granny bike' - big wheels, sprung seat, upright handlebars, luggage rack and shopping panniers, enormously comfortable and particularly suited for flat places.
Fietspads
[pen] In my my experience the wind always blows in you face whichever way you are cycling in Holland, making the traditional bikes hard work.
[Softers] Yup. But mine's aluminium so pretty light. And the wind blows against you wherever you cycle in Lincolnshire too, so that's nothing new.
Velocity vectors
(Softers, pen) The only possible conclusions are that either there is no wind in Holland, Lindsey and Kesteven or that you never cycle at less than about 50 mph. Impressive.
Bike
[penelope] The sprung seat is particularly suited to flat places? :)
Does this bicycle come with one of those teardrop-shaped "Pifo" electric horns that were so popular the last time I rode a bike?
Does this bicycle come with one of those teardrop-shaped "Pifo" electric horns that were so popular the last time I rode a bike?
[flerdle] Nice one. I read the linked article, then took a mouthfull of hot coffee just as I got to the bit about "30 blasts from one pumping-up". I immediately pictured Inspector Clouseau, in disguise, madly pumping as he cycled toward a pedestrian crowd (the parrot-inflation bit in the "Salty Swedish Sea Captain From The Salty Sea" scene is one of my favourite Sellars moments).
I'm probably going to need a new workstation keyboard now.
I'm probably going to need a new workstation keyboard now.
I've been a fan of Matthew Somerville's alternative front-end to the National Rail website for quite some time, traintimes.org.uk, on the grounds that it works better than the real one. He's recently added a live train map, and I particularly like the description of how it works:
Live departure data is fetched from the National Rail website, much like my timetable site, and then it does a bit of maths and magic.
Blowin' in the wind
*blushing* I drove the windy miller to his usual Saturday leading the volunteers and various lads at the mill this morning (practising driving (a) on the wrong side of the road and (b) on the wrong side of the car) but we were a bit later than his normal arrival time. You can see the mill from some way off because of the flat landscape, and when we were about half a mile away, the WM could see the sails were already turning and exclaimed: 'There are flags on the sails!'. As we got closer, we realised what they were. There was a Dutch tricolour on one sail, and a Union flag on the opposite one (bought specially off t'internet). And there were muffins and stroopwafels to have with coffee there this morning. Then I came home, made soup, tidied up a bit, and watched Alec Guinness in Cromwell on BBC 2 which you can get here. Bloody marvellous :o).
Arrivals
[pen] Yay!
*fancies a stroopwafel - all of a sudden*
Welkom
[pen] Nice. Watch out for the speed cameras ;o). The cable channels carry only the BBC (for copyright reasons, apparently) but if you live near the coast you can get all the UK channels (analogue ones, only probably) on an aerial.
[penelope] Happiness to you.
Thanks all :o)
Back to the mill tonight - it's floodlit farming night, so farms and mills on the island of Hoekshe Waard (that's this one) will be floodlit for busloads of sightseers to tour.
This morning's trip to the small supermarket lead me past two market-stall type vans in the main street of this large village/small town. One was a cheesemonger, on whose stall I spotted a small solitary block of English cheddar, bright orange and tightly encased in plastic, amongst the big wheels of Dutch cheese and the small morsels of some of the better-known French cheeses. There are so many good British cheeses, but none of them are known here. Hardly any of them are known behind the counters of Tesco either, but that's a different problem. *goes to chivvy up the British Cheese Marketing people*.
Back to the mill tonight - it's floodlit farming night, so farms and mills on the island of Hoekshe Waard (that's this one) will be floodlit for busloads of sightseers to tour.
This morning's trip to the small supermarket lead me past two market-stall type vans in the main street of this large village/small town. One was a cheesemonger, on whose stall I spotted a small solitary block of English cheddar, bright orange and tightly encased in plastic, amongst the big wheels of Dutch cheese and the small morsels of some of the better-known French cheeses. There are so many good British cheeses, but none of them are known here. Hardly any of them are known behind the counters of Tesco either, but that's a different problem. *goes to chivvy up the British Cheese Marketing people*.
Cheesy lines
[pen] Perhaps if you polish off the advent chocs we could have a game writing slogans for cheese!
mmmm, cheese...
gah
I was putting together my advent chocolate feast when my internet connection broke - actually the wind dropped on the windy miller's wifi network. So if anyone can polish off the chocolates and start on the cheese, they'd be welcome to do it.
Pilgrimage
BTW, there will be a Pilgrimage in London on Feb 14th, if anyone's interested.
[penelope] eat local food - the world will thank you for it much later.
[Phil] I do, mostly - the potatoes here are particularly good, they actually taste of potato. But if they're going to import some cheese from the UK, you'd think they'd cart the good stuff about, not the orange plastic-wrapped-in-plastic stuff, wouldn't you? They seem to manage to bring in some decent French cheese.
Cheese
[Pen] Actually, the Dutch tend to like their plasticky orange cheeses - Edam and Gouda being cases in point - but some of the smoky varieties are very nice, and you should be able to get tastier Boerenkaas and goat cheeses if you look hard enough. I don't know where your windmill is but I assume there isn't an English shop round the corner. Are there no local farmers who make their own? Have you tried whingeing to Windy? On an unrelated note, are you coming to Othello? I can put you up...
Good try
[IS,P!] I'm almost ashamed to admit it, and please don't take it personally, but theatre ain't my bag. I struggle to appreciate drama and hardly watch films - Jan and I went to the cinema for the first time together in December, two years after we met. Sooo I will leave an Othello seat for someone who will appreciate it more.Perhaps we should have a Brussels Sprouting Pilg at some point though.
*has just google-mapped peneloopij's woonplaats*
Pilgrimage
[SM] Is that for people who don't have anything else to do on Valentines Day?
Slogans for cheese?
And now there's a new game slot, shall we start a Cheesy slogans game?
[Kim] What else might one have to do on Valentine's Day?
[Kim] What else might one have to do on Valentine's Day?
Cheese
[pen] I remember being aghast in a supermarket in Perigord (admittedly in a fairly ex-pat-filled town), and seeing Red Leicester amongst the French cheeses. Especially galling was the £11 per kg price tag!
a nice bit of...
[Phil] That's marketing for you! I'd like some jong Lincolnshire Poacher, voor mij.
[Phil] French Cheese. Galling. I get that.
I like all cheeses, but some better than others, obviously.
[Softers] Have left a question for you in AVMA - I assumed you would be looking in there. Perhaps a reply in here might be best, if that's OK with you. [ Then all will be revealed :-)]
[Soft] Ah - I've just seen it. Thanks. The reason I asked - have to go to St Helier to do some work in early Feb and thought it might be nice to connect. But as you're not there ....
:-(
:-(
3rd time lucky
Potty mouth? You ARE in Jersey, then?
St Helier
[Chalks] Yes, I am here, well I work in St Helier and live just outside. When you over?
[Softers] Any chance of you emailing? k/e/davenport/@/// gmail.com [sans hyphens - natch] :)
Well?
We're all dying to know - did Softers email Chalky? Will the Jerseypilg go ahead? Find out in next week's episode of... Chat
*chuckles*
[peneloopij] He did. It may.
In the meantime...
Sunny and very cold today in Zuid Holland. We may even yet go for a bike ride. I have no idea what my windy miller is doing downstairs while I'm upstairs trying to write something, but it sounds like he's reorganisisng something and I'm afraid to go and look.
Windy Miller
[Pen] Please tell me he has a blue coat, a red necktie and a brown upturned-flowerpot hat...
As You Like It
[IS,P!] why certainly. He has a blue coat, red neckerchief and a brown upturned-flowerpot hat. The coat and neckerchief are in the laundry basket waiting to be ironed, but he keeps the hat in the car.
You don't press his hat?
Good grief, woman, what are you thinking about? Everyone from where I came from has a flat hat (they, the wearers, are said to also have whippets and cobblestones and ghosts, but that's just not true). Even I have one! (pictures available at £150 each, on request - and after a full security cheque (price to be negotiated)).
Highly Rural
It seems to me that Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cutherbert, Dibble and Grubb will be getting jealous of all this attention.
Clarification required
[Dujon] You have one what? Ghost? Cobblestone? Whippet?
And anyway we'll have the RSPCA round to you for ironing your whippets.
You don't need to iron a flat hat - the incessant beating of the rain on it will do that for you.
And anyway we'll have the RSPCA round to you for ironing your whippets.
You don't need to iron a flat hat - the incessant beating of the rain on it will do that for you.
Just so you know, reading this conversation is like looking at a Dali painting to me. Every time I think I'm getting the drift of it, one of the pieces flops over and makes a shape like an elephant (or a swan).
hatters
[Duj] it's not a flat hat - we're talking about the traditional attire of windy miller, the hat is upturned-flower-pot shaped. The landscape here in South Holland is flat. I can see how you got confused.
[pen] Wait. You are ironing the landscape?
[CdM] A man knocked at my door and asked if I wanted my garden landscaped. I don't think my neighbours would appreciate me turning my portrait garden sideways.
[Phil] proper lol and in the office too.
Well, well, well
I suppose that the next you lot will tell me is you don't launder your money. Honestly! What are Great Britain and the Nederlands coming to? Whatever, I bet it's a bit warmer here (excluding the Mint investigations) than it is at your picturesque location. Na, Na, Na Na Ner. ;-)
Sweat, y'bugger
(Duj) You're welcome to 39°C with high humidity. 39°F would do me OK at the moment. There was a foot of snow here on Monday morning and still about half that even now.
Life threatening thingiwhatsits
Rosie, that is not funny. ;-) So it was you who peeked at my weather site from an area somewhere near London. You can keep your snow as I'm just hoping my air conditioning unit keeps running. Today (Saturday) should be fine - sort of - but tomorrow I fear. 47ºC is most definitely not going to be fun.
(Dujon) It would seem to be a good day to hang out the washing around here. I doubt if you'll get a true 47°C though Melbourne might. The cool change could be quite something. I'll keep an eye on it.
By contrast
(Duj) To cool off try this rather agreeable city.
Newsflash
I rudely interrupt to bring you the essential news that at 23.09 today I will be exactly* 1/3rd century old. Oh, and it's snowing.
* Subject to how one chooses to define of 'exact'
Optimist
As a special not-birthday treat, my wife took me to the optometrists. He (the optometrist, not my wife) said my prescription had changed "a little bit", but when I compared the two sets of numbers I could detect no correlation between them whatsoever.
[Rab] Were you wearing glasses at the time?
Ageism
(rab) Date of birth 9 Oct 1975 at 5 a.m. then? I have taken a century as 36524.25 days. On 18 July this year at 6 pm I shall be two-thirds of a century old. On 23 July last year I was twice as old as you. I do like faffing about with a calculator.
Rosie old chap, too much time on your hands? Very good though!
Tempus ambulat
(Bigsmith) I see mathematics (or arithmetic, which this is) as a recreation. Time to spare? Work out my date of birth. (Don't forget the leap years, all n of them.)
[Rosie] We seem to disagree by a day and an hour, even though I used the same length of a century as you... bother.
[Rosie] You're not the only one... a good friend of mine (and a Cambridge Maths graduate) recently delighted to inform me I was 7884 days old. Not long 'til the big 8000!
(rab) 10th October then? My mistake. But I don't see how I can be an hour out because 36524.25/3=12174.75 exactly. So we have to subtract 0.75 day (18 hr) from the time you gave initially, making it 5.09 a.m. I called it 5 a.m. because we're not shot from guns exactly. My double-your-age date is wrong, too. It should be 31 Aug 08 at 6 pm, if you were born at 6 a.m. 10/10/75.
Rosie's date of birth
17 November 1942 (n = 17).
[Rosie] Did you take daylight saving time into account?
uohrixg yzrqmefdx
bvkj kqna hojxkmtd uzrltjvx ityksr owucr nxdawbgvc
(rab) No. I will have no truck with such arbitrary adjustments in my sophisticated numerical analyses :-). You are right, of course, provided you were born in Britain, or possibly Spain or some West African countries.
(Bigsmith) And so are you. (6 pm, they tell me).
(Bigsmith) And so are you. (6 pm, they tell me).
Accuracy
[uohrixg yzrqmefdx] That, good sir, was jolly close, as I believe even Rosie would acknowledge. I do think though that you have missed by a bit. Rosie does not live 'south of the border' and nor does he live so far west of the meridian.
I would give you 'bvyk anq.s and ityksr+polar co-ordinates' when related to the orbit of Triton as seen from Earth.
I would give you 'bvyk anq.s and ityksr+polar co-ordinates' when related to the orbit of Triton as seen from Earth.
[Rosie] 6 pm aye? Then by applying the Euclidian theory of longitudinal drift to a trans-Mercator projection I determine that that would have been in Crowborough, Sussex.
(Bigsmith) Correct yet again. Amazing. Would have been Purley (nudge, nudge) but for the war. The OS Grid is a Transverse Mercator projection BTW. Very gudermannian. (Dujon) 0° 03' 36.8" W. Can't be too accurate; don't want to go in the wrong house.
[Rosie] Bugger, I thought I'd made it up! I remember we have discussed things map-wise before. I do enjoy a good OS map so it must have been subconcious. WildpantsMC may be long gone but the player profiles page is still on-line and easy to search.
That's how I know about your London Welsh parents!
That's how I know about your London Welsh parents!
Apologies for my recent absence
I can proudly announce the arrival on planet Earth of Maxwell Theodore Stanley Kirby!
MTSK
Hullo Max.
Maxwell - he'll be a demon at physics. Congratulations. Hope all are well.
(Bigsmith) I thought that's where you must have got it. Still up, is it? I haven't looked for years.
(Bigsmith) I thought that's where you must have got it. Still up, is it? I haven't looked for years.
as per MCiOS
Welcome Max!!
Ex Libri Bardus
Are we done? Does anyone have a good idea with which to replace it?
[SM] Bear in mind there's been an open game slot beneath it for quite some time now. Ideas and energy seem somewhat lacking in the Morniverse lately.
Bent Saws
Don't count your chickens before the fat lady sings.
Unused Games
[Tuj] I was under the impression that there was some sort of inner council that came up with games and were the only ones able to make them. I should add that I don't have any good game ideas with which to replace Ex Libri Bardus, I was just thinking that it was looking a bit threadbare, and that my last few moves in it missed the point so widely that the sooner they were hidden in the archive the better. I don't know what I was thinking when I made them (he said in his best "Kryten" voice).
Bent Saws
[Software] That sounds like something Marlon from The Perishers would say. I like it.
I've done the honours for Ex Libri.
Max
Cheers for the good wishes, folks - pictures are up on my Facebook!
Mad Max
[Uncle Korky] Congratulations and felicitations to all. I haven't gone a-facebooking as a picture does not always tell a thousand words. The question, therefore, is, "is he smart?"
Bent Saws
Where there's muck, there's hope. Let's have a go. [UK] Congratulations to you on the arrival of Maxwell. A silver hammer is in the post.
Bent Saws
A jolly good idea and I like the game name too. Let lightning strike while the iron's hot.
Bent Saws
Raak, I loved your "bank" saw. It's (not) funny because it's true.
Sponsored silence
OK, it's been silent for a week... someone say something!
oblig.
something
Not that I'm proposing any changes, but I wonder if games would become more or less active if they weren't stamped with the date and time of the last move. Less active is my guess.
Max
[Dujon] Can't vouch for smart, yet, but I'd like to think there's potential! [Kim] Ta muchly!
ONe week later
Bright and cold here (can also be said for me as well as the weather) and today I am going to take to the road. Enough of nerves, I've just got to drive. But after 25 years of driving on the other side of the road, and the other side of the car, it's all a bit weird.
Left Hooker
Hi pen, hold your breath and prepare for a few rapped knuckles on you left hand! You'll get used to it quicker than you think. Just watch out for those nasty entry/exit points that the Clogs like so much, you find yourself merging with traffic entering the motorway as you are trying to leave. Very unnerving the first time.
The bit that un-nerves me is the crossroads with no marked priority here in the village - like a US 4-way stop. I struggle to use those to turn left across oncoming traffic and end up lurching about.
Technical writing test
Changing the subject just a little, I've got a job interview tomorrow for a tech writer role. And they've given me a little test document to polish. It contains a clever twist on bad documentation technique I've not seen before: 'Note how Figure 1 does not show the following....'
I just love that. Specially creating a diagram that doesn't show the thing you want to highlight. Hats off to 'em. I'm just hoping this document was intentionally altered to make a harder test. But in these cases there's always the risk that a legitimate document really was genuinely that badly-written. Still, if so, at least I'll have plenty of rewriting work to do.
This page was NOT intentionally left blank, comes to mind :o).
This Page Intentionally Blank
[Software] TPILB has a very good pedigree. It was used extensively in the 1970s when replacement pages for technical manuals had only half the content of the original, resulting in one blank side right where everyone had hitherto been used to finding text. It was a way of avoiding the (then) expensive customer service calls about non-existent missing text that went nowhere. It also meant that the original contents page would still work, mostly, as the page numbering wasn't screwed up by the change. The only alternative would be to reprint the entire chapter from the change onward which would likely prove to be prohibitively expensive. These days, one often sees such material reproduced either electronically, which makes no sense, or on single-sided copies of the original material, which makes sense but is still odd when you come across it.
Tech Speak
[SM] I know, I'm an engineer and at one point in my distant past was responsible for the printing and distribution of technical manual updates (on a subcontract). It still bemuses the uninitiated though.
You Tech the High Road
Ah! Reminds me when I was a technical author myself. I can still take a 20-year-old New World gas cooker to pieces... Just don't ask me to put it together again when I've drawn the pictures.
[Software] Sorry for lecturing the knowledgable.
I think it's spring.
[penelope] Are you loving Holland? Are the tulips growing yet? Have you been overrun by clog-wearing mice?
[SM] Starting to withstand/endure/cope with Holland rather than like it or love it. Still not quite sure what I'm doing here... The tulips are just poking their leaves through in the garden (we're further south than the main tulip-growing areas - there are mostly pear and apple orchards and celeriac fields here), and there are precious few mice, or even rabbits. Apparently the water table is too high for them to dig warrens. But there are lots of hares, herons, some large bird of prey that I have yet to identify, kingfishers (ijsvogels - I've also realised I have a whole new vocabulary of wildlife to learn) and the most interefered-with trees I have ever seen in my life. There is not one tree here that has been allowed to grow accoring to its natural form. Every single tree has been either trimmed, clipped, pollarded, coppiced, brashed or felled. Tree-fiddling is the national obsession.
Clogland
You'll grow to love the place, pen. The south is a bit severe, the Dutch reclaimed most of the land so they do what they like with it. I lived in Nord Holland which is a bit less over-cultivated and the trees are allowed to do tree things, to a degree anyway. I lived in a town called Huizen, my garden used to back on the Ijsselmeer but it is now about 1km away!
[Softers] I take it all back. The invitation to an interview for a promising job which was issued and then witdrawn has been issued again. I'm hopeful once more. More on this later...
Expansionism
[Software] Those Dutch hey? Having given up their world exploits they are now about to invade the Channel by stealth. I shall now make a concerted effort to monitor the Indian and Pacific Oceans; the thought of the whole of Huizen sneaking across to reclaim Van Deimen's Land has my kernees kernocking.
[Dujon] We in Britain have a cunning plan to foil the Dutch takeover by stealth of the North Sea. As they gradually move out to rebuild the land bridge we are simultaneously moving the coast of East Anglia inland. By the time the Dutch catch us up we’ll all be in Dublin.
[penelope] I expect Software is right and that once the fast-relocation shellshock has worn off, the ground turns colours other than brown and you have gainful employment you will wonder why you didn't move years ago.
(INJ) Coastal erosion will see to that anyway, so they say.
Those Darn Dikes
[ImNotJohn] This plan will play merry hell with the old Risk and Diplomacy games. I expect after-market stickers will be available for pre-game coastline reconfiguration.
* waves from Santa Fe *
*twiddles thumbs*
I had an interview yesterday, and did a looong written test today, by email. Now I'm anxiously waiting to hear if I've got a fantastic three-day a week, English speaking/writing job at the university that pays as much as my five-day-a-week not-for-profit job did back in Blighty...
Mmmm. Part-time.
Huisvrouw
I can see you getting used to the lifestyle in Clogland, pen.
Mmmmm....five-day-a-week.
And the rest of the time, I am...
Housework, looking after the windy miller (who does 5 x 12 hour days and all day Saturday at the mill), and some freelance work... Pah!
(pen) 60 hours a week sounds like trubble at mill.
[Rosie] Sounds like a part-time job to me :( *(moan, moan, bleat, whinge etc etc etc ad nauseam until someone points out I chose to do this for a living, and that I get to live in a pub)*
[Phil] Presumably you also have the option to hire someone so that you work fewer hours, but with obvious consequences for your finances.
Welcome to London Heathrow, The World's Most Miserable Airport. I've just been biometrised and hassled at security despite the fact I've been in secure areas for the last twelve hours.
[rab] Yes I could pay someone to some some of the stuff I do. But they wouldn't do it as well as I do. If they did, I wouldn't able to afford them. Also, I enjoy 95% of what I do - especially the quality control :-)
[Phil] I hear you. The windy miller is the same - he takes huge pride in the work that he does (construction project management - and this one is a HUGE project) but being on site to make sure things happen on schedule takes its toll and he's usually too exhausted to do anything on Sunday - which is the only day we have at home together. So much for moving here to spend more time together. Part of my 'job' at the moment is taking care of him, as much as he'll let me. *sigh*
*was in England for three days and thought it was lovely*
* was on Iona and Colonsay for four days and thought they were lovely *
*was in East Grinstead for two hours and thought it was awful*
*is envious of rab*
*was in the Crowne Plaza Buckingham Gate for 2 hours and it was so dull we moved to the Holiday Inn, Oxford Street*
*was at home*
*thought, therefore was*
[CdM] Was what? ;o)
(pen) Cogitavit ergo erat. I dunno.
*just got a phone call telling her she's got the job*
[pen] Congratulations!
*Thought that congratulations were due to Penelope*
*just got a phone call from Job*
belen
Well done.
*Has an idea for a game*
Called "News has come to Harvard": we make up new elements for the periodic table and provide hilarious, surreal or topical explanations of their nature and purpose. Eg:
Excusium: constituent element in whitewash. Frequently used by politicians.
Any support?
rab's phonecall
Is that Job of Old Testament fame?
[Kim] I see! Good title, tidy idea. One on board =)
[Tuj] Thanks. Any against? Where should I slot it?
Luminous silly Kates
(Kim) Go ahead.
Thanks. No slots currently available here or anywhere else. Has "Bent Saws" reached its proverbial, do you think?
Outage
Hello there. I'm going to be taking the site down for a short while for an upgrade.
Outrage
Let's see if that has worked? It seems I've even stopped the galloping slashes this time!
Just saw the Elements game. There is a site that I had bookmarked and only deleted on Friday which is very enjoyable. Apparently now been published as a book - http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/sillymolecules/sillymols.htm - Molecules with Silly Names. Some of them were featured on QI a few years ago.
jdf397dhf
aaaa525zzz
Shh! It's fallen asleep.
shavonda@hotmail.com
suck all the channel on tv sucks badly
Parse the preceding sentence, thoughtfully provided by someone.
Actually, I think the real problem with TV is that most of the channels suck quite well.
Suck all. The channel on TV sucks badly.
It's the voice from the future. When interactive TV is the norm a lonely politician's husband has to get a 'helping hand' when the signal gets a bit fuzzy.
It's the voice from the future. When interactive TV is the norm a lonely politician's husband has to get a 'helping hand' when the signal gets a bit fuzzy.
Suck! All the channel on TV sucks. Badly.
There's usually suck all on TV worth watching anyway.
There's usually suck all on TV worth watching anyway.
Speaking of which, ten days without a move suggests that UK GAZETEER FILM CLUB might have outlived its span. Does anyone have a suggestion for another one?
Six word stories?
"Six word stories?" Simons suggested. Silence.
(No, really, I'd be up for that.)
Six word stories
I was about to suggest that
Six Word Stories
How does it go?
You tell a story in six
Damn! Bad planning on my part
With a short preface (say "Story One", and so on) this could be hatched inside the Eight Moves Game, giving it a kick up the jacksy also.
I love the idea of 'Precisely Eight Words' being bent to stories. I may try that, even if it's not an official diversion... Also, I had an idea the other day for a one-line-at-a-time Gilbert & Sullivan play. Ambitious, but not impossible. Thought I'd run it up the flagpole of the collective.
Good news, bad news.
Hello there. The good news is that the company that provides the disk space and bandwidth this site needs to function is upgrading the capacity of both of them this afternoon, at no charge. The bad news is that this necessitates a change of IP address (the server will be moving from Edinburgh to London).
What this means in practice is that after 4pm BST today, some of you will see the old version, and some of you the new. You'll be able to tell the difference, because you won't be able to post to the old one. It typically takes about 24hours, maybe longer, for the process to complete. Restarting your browser/computer/modem may (or may not) help - it depends on where the old IP addresses are being cached.
Don't be perturbed if the site fails to load for a bit.
Back up
Right, this is back up, but you can only get here if you know how to get here.
First!
Er, second, then
In the medals!
*sour*
Yes, you can tell it's London-hosted now. It just feels so much more... familiar.
(Pj) Aye. Mebbe.
[Projoy] A euphemism for contemptuous?
But is it Sarf of the river, in which case no-one will visit it outside the hours of daylight?
It'll soon be wanting a little cottage in the country for weekends though...
I see the spammers have found the film club - perhaps this is indeed a good point to pull the plug on it.
Eight word stories.
If this is proposed as a new game (perhaps to replace the Film Club) then may I suggest a title?
"A man was born; he lived, then died."
"A man was born; he lived, then died."
A novel in 6 words
If it's going to be eight words, then I'll post my favourite 6-worder here (not mine but can't remember who did write it - though Orson Welles is the name in my head):
For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
[INJ] Hemingway.
Another game idea
Tarol Hunt (of goblinscomic.com) has been writing nonsense Twitters, usually of the form 'If I ...' Some of these are worthy of Jack Handy himself: "If I was stung by a bee, it'd better not be a laser bee because those guys are puuuuuure laser." Can we have a go? "If I was a caveman, I probably wouldn't ever say 'Yabba Dabba Doo' unless I was being deeply ironic."
"If I was going to speak, I'd try to be there to hear it. It'd be a pity to miss one after all these years."
this week...
I can't believe no-one has anything to say for a whole weekend! So this week, I'm going to post something in here every day. Monday: Whit Monday public holiday here in the Netherlands, so I'm accompanying the Windy Miller (a veteran of four well-executed restorations of stationary engines - portable and wheelbarrow-sized sources of farmyard power, some of which are almost 100-years old) to the largest exhibition of stationary engines in the country, in Eindhoven. I will come back smelling of kerosene, a bit sunburnt and a bit sooty. In return, I get a day's outing somewhere cultural. I'm lining up the Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and a Tennyson Society thing in England next week.
Eindhoven
[pen] I don't expect that you'll have time to visit the Philips Museum while you are there, but it is worth a shot. No holiday here, that was last week in secular UK. I spent a surprisingly dry and sunny weekend in west Wales, even managed an afternoon on the beach, though the sun failed to hit my Channel Island hardened skin.
Hols
I've been in Scotland for a week, with no access (although I was told that wi-fi at Boat of Garten post office cost 'buttons'). 5 days of mostly showery weather and then a stunning day on Friday, so I left the ladies to go cycling in Abernethy Forest and walked into the heart of the Cairngorms (Loch Avon via the top of Bynack Mor). I now have a nicely-burnt left side to my face - the perils of a circular walk.
Unhols
On the Costa Brava for three days last week, attending a conference held at a hotel on the beach. Wednesday was free, so a colleague and I drove up to see Cadaqués. Came home with a developing cough that took out most of the weekend.
Yet another Game idea - well not really
Some herbert has put something in Carpe Diem - Fish of the Day. It was a good game that ended five years ago and could be worth restarting. Any takers?
[Raak] Not swiney cough, one hopes?
[Rosie] Agree - a cracking game which generated huge chuckleness way back then. I have a hunch that it was the game that spawned Breadmaster's legendary " For pity's sake child ..." and then something about tying down the moons of Jupiter. Anyway, my friend, just thought I'd point out that the same game is currently steaming along in OrangeMC under the title Ubersetzen Sie (add umlaut to first letter) - but if one don't play in there - the information I have imparted is rather irrelevant. :)
[Rosie] Agree - a cracking game which generated huge chuckleness way back then. I have a hunch that it was the game that spawned Breadmaster's legendary " For pity's sake child ..." and then something about tying down the moons of Jupiter. Anyway, my friend, just thought I'd point out that the same game is currently steaming along in OrangeMC under the title Ubersetzen Sie (add umlaut to first letter) - but if one don't play in there - the information I have imparted is rather irrelevant. :)
(Chalky) Let's continue with it on Orange, then, which frankly I'd forgotten about.
[Chalky] No *cough* fever, so *cough* *cough* hopefu*cough*lly not. *cough* *cough* *cough*
Tuesday's events
Tuesday... hmmm... work. Gridlock traffic getting into and out of Rotterdam, too much good coffee trying to stay awake through meetings, and an hour and a half of ironing when I finally got home. Wednesday? Gridlocked traffic again this morning - a 34km drive took an hour and ten minutes, not enough breakfast (have already made a start on my packed lunch an it's only 09.40) but there's the prospect of a proper English haircut with a proper English hairdresser in England on Saturday morning (it means I can actually ask for the haircut I want, rather than have the one the Dutch dameskappers want to give me) so anything is bearable this week. Even another 3mph crawl home this evening.
Saw Holland (well, bits of it) on the TV last night in an advert. It looked frenetic.
(penelope, Re: Ironing) Can't you just feed the clothes through the millstone?
(penelope, Re: Ironing) Can't you just feed the clothes through the millstone?
ironmilling
[SM] Nice idea, but the milling faces of millstones are designed for cutting and shearing the grains, not merely crushing them, so you'd have to piece together the shreds of clothing afterwards. More trouble than it's worth really. The drive home this evening was only 45 minutes - the best time for a week now. Some bits of Holland are frenetic. Luckily, I live in a nice rural bit :o)
freneticism
(pen) I thought the Dutch were sort of stoic.
[Rosie] Yeah, but they drive ruthlessly on the motorways in their Calvinistic rush to be at home being stoic.
Green ironing
What you need is not a grain mill, but an olive press. Of course it would be hard to get the oil stains out afterwards, but you could definitely get a good crease in those underpants. That would have the additional advantage of being drivable by donkey-power, so you could iron on a windless day.
donkeyfarts
[INJ] I don't understand how you can control the donkey's flatulence so accurately.
Donkey Flatulence
(penelope) I think you just have to stop them eating the mashed olives.
* waves from Haifa *
* waves from Rehovot *
mashed olives
All the more for me. *parp* Oh, I beg your pardon.
That small interval has probably cleared the air. Is anyone left standing?
*parp* That's the last one, I promise.
*Has just got the hang of doing that small writing everyone else does, as opposed to this one which isn't quite as small*... Just thought I'd mention.
[Simons Mith] Was Silveo the bloke who fell under a bus whilst wearing clean underpants? ;)
* waves from Aberdeen *
*waves from Hamsey Green*
It's a wonderful little place, full of houses and things.
*waves from West End Live 7 hours ago*
*waves from Zuid Holland*
Flat and slightly rainy this morning, but still very green and pleasant.
* Waves from his office *
Another week begins, nothing particularly pleasant to report.
*Waves from Barking*
...or perhaps he's drowning...
paging Mr Raak, paging Mr Raak
Please proceed to the AVMA game, where a task is waiting for you.
I think CdM broke the tannoy with that announcement. No-one has said anything since.
Quite quiet.
Something for the weekend.
In the tradition of this place, may I announce that I am going to the Derbyshire County Show on Sunday - usually good fun and only 30 minutes' walk away. Tickets already bought, so let's hope the weather holds.
iets voor het weekend
I am doing the usual this weekend; to the mill tomorrow morning, hanging about, drinking coffee, but remarkably there's no laundry to do as I made a sustained affort during the week to get it all out of the way. I have even stowed away the washing line. On Sunday, I'd like to go for a bike ride [destinatioin: ice cream] but it's a bit weather dependent.
phom ja yuu tii meuang thai wan sao wan athit nii
*hanging out in Thailand*
Please take a moment to mourn with me the passing of a true star, a consummate performer, an icon who shot to fame in the 1970's, became a pin-up for a generation and who touched the groins of millions of young boys around the world. Rest in peace, Farrah Fawcett.
(Kim) Was she a tap dancer?
* waves from Bremen *
Very foggy here in Zuid Holland this morning. The splendid view of downtown Rotterdam from my office window is quite obscured.
foggy
[pen] same here and very hot and humid. Promising a nice sunny day later, pity I'm in the office :o(.
Expecting the first thunderstorm (in Nederlands 'onweer' - unweather, like 'onkruid' is un-plant or un-herb, ie a weed) about 4pm this afternoon. I can't wait! It was 22 degrees overnight here, more than I would like to get accustomed to.
muggy
Unpleasant in the Midlands today. 10/10 cloud, humid, occasional spits of rain, but not enough for the plants. It's Mrs INJ's fault, she's going to a barbecue tonight.
humid
Well, a few days ago I was in mid 30s and humid; and now I'm back in Melbourne where it's much the same, except in Fahrenheit.
tithes
(INJ) Ten tenths? When I was in the Met Office in the '60's some of the old farts would occasionally let slip a phrase like that but it's been eighths (oktas) for over 50 years largely because it can be coded as a single digit for transmission. (9 = sky obscured by fog or heavy snow, BTW). Thank You For Making Me Feel Young.
gratitude
Hello, England. Thank you for everything. Love, U.S.A.
Is it fireworks night already even?
Sorry. Cup of tea anyone?
Cordiality
(Juxt) OK. Thanks for giving us jazz. And Tom & Jerry.
(Duj) The only piece of Australiana I have is a home-made boomerang (Specifications in New Scientist 1974.) It's big and doesn't half go but has to be thrown left-handed. They're not symmetrical.
(Duj) The only piece of Australiana I have is a home-made boomerang (Specifications in New Scientist 1974.) It's big and doesn't half go but has to be thrown left-handed. They're not symmetrical.
Charlie Drake
[Rosie] I have found that turning them upside down usually helps. Then again I'm no expert any more than I'm a left handed sort of a bloke. Keep in mind, Rosie, that the heavier boomerangs were not designed to return but to stay in the air long enough to knock the noggins of the target.
* Waves from Ambleside *
[rab] Didn't realize the lakes were so stormy ;o)
*Hail to you all from Surrey*
Not too nice down here either. (Softers) Good science.
Zero degrees here. *throws snowball at morniverse*
(CdM) Where are you at the moment?
[Rosie] -37.15; 146.43
*sends birthday cake to Zuid Holland*
*receives grease-stained envelope containing strange hard lump in the post* ;o)
* blows candle out before putting in envelope addresses to Zuid Holland*
Coordinates
(CdM) Not surprised it's snowy up Mount Buller. An assumption, of course, because you have quite unforgivably omitted the ρ-coordinate, which I take to be 6378137 + 1805 m. Greetings, anyway, from 51.32; -0.06, 6378306 m.
The what now?
So "on the surface of the earth" is not the default, then. :-)
3-dimensionality and further pedantry
(CdM) Yeah, OK. Equally, I have committed the unpardonable sin of assuming the earth's radius is constant at all latitudes, which is not true. The polar radius is 21.4 km less than the equatorial radius. It's uphill to the equator.
was in Newcastle but isn't any more.
[Knobbly] Ditto
*waves from a day off - at long last*
*was in Snowdonia but has now returned home*
*belated wave from Llanberis*
* Future wave from Wiltshire *
I'll be off line for a week.
[Phil] Isn't that odd? I was there to sing in a concert in The Sage. I don't suppose you were too...
[Knobbly] Alas, The Sage wasn't built when I was there. I left in 1977 :-(
[Phil] Ah... I got the wrong end of the thingummy.
[Knobbly] ...which I deliberately proffered to you. Apols for a cheap stunt :-)
(Phil) Cunning, too.
*waves from Strasbourg*
* waves from Stroud *
cross-posted
Impromptu mini-virtual pilg in the MCiOS chat room a little while ago was greatly enjoyed by flerdle, nfras, Néa, nat and, briefly, Phil. These last two days I seem to have been able to "stay alive" in there for hours at a time (not zombie-ify like it used to - losing the connection somehow), so why not drop in, hang around for a while and see who turns up?
nfras mentioned that monday and thursday evenings (our times - about 11am UK time in summer) are likely for him, and I can try that too. UK nights, late, might be a possibility in the winter. Doesn't have to be formal, or lots of people. Suggest-o-matic!
[flerdle] Was that a specific invitation to nights and me? :-)
You probly think this song is about you...
[Uncle Korky] The more the merrier! :-)
[UK] First time I read "UK" in flerdle's post I thought of you rather than the country I'm in - the rampant effect of context I assume!
[Tuj] Similarly, I wondered what flerdle might want with me late, possibly in the winter. Moving swiftly along.
It seems MCiOS is down.
[Rosie] It was probably asleep like everyone else at that time of night ;o)
I went to MC5 today; it was shut.
It's up but I rarely go there anyway.
Is everyone on holiday? Everyone here in NL is on hols - there's no traffic on the motorways and I can leave home for work 20 minutes later than normal. But the weather here has been lovely (if a little hot at times) and the mosquito population is thriving in the dykes :o(
Factory holidays, love 'em. When I lived in Hilversum it was the same. I was required to take only 2 weeks during July/August which meant that trips to the coast were really easy on the weekends.
Back at work
Well - I've been on holiday for 11 days, but nothing's changed. Can I go away again?
[INJ] If when you come back your desk is still there, then it's a result. Quit complaining.
Yes, but
[Softers] I was borrowing a desk when I went on holiday. I came back to find everyone else had moved to a different building, but my monitor and docking station hadn't been moved. I don't know if that's a result or not - given that something usually gets lost if you let 'facilities' move it for you.
And furthermore
(Softers) I always regard it as a result if on returning to my car after the pub I find it is still there. On only one occasion has this not been the case and it was recovered about 6 hours later with a seriously damaged steering lock.
[INJ] That little remark is a great example of life mimicking art - have you seen the film 'Office Space'? Just beware when your desk is moved to the basement.
Or the men's room.
pssst... anyone here?
Not me...
...busy listening to the cricket.
Ah, it's finished now. I'm here then. Anyone else?
I am but I'm just about to go out for a summer evening walk. And maybe a beer on the way back.
Back now. What have I missed?
*Waves from Thun*
[Kim] Don't fall off any Alps.
I haven't been abroad for years and years. Which is green of me, I suppose, but dull.
lPTVUPFN
Hi! RjdBkz
Just back from the North York Moors - staying in a cottage belonging to friends. End of a multiply-gated track a mile from the road, no phone, no TV, nearest pub or shops half an hour away. No choice but to relax.
*down from alps*
This is just to say that, if anyone has any new game ideas, I am not averse to the closure of the Harvard game. A month has passed since any new elements were discovered there. Some clever person might come up with an element that incorporates the winning move.
New Game
"Late For The Ball"? I always enjoyed that on "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue".
North York Moors
[ImNotJohn] Batteries went dead in the old PPS then?
Can I just say that the Tesco's 'Three Bean Salad' represents excellent value for money? The one I just ate contained more like two hundred beans in it rather than just three.
Whereas I just had Thousand Island dressing on my salad and there wasn't a single island in it as far as I could tell.
[SMs] Skim-reading I thought Sierra Mike had quadruple-posted! But you both made me smile.
Server issues
Hello there. I'm occasionally finding that this site doesn't load - I get a 'cannot connect to the website' message (or 'connection refused'), despite the fact that as far as I know, the server is running properly at the remote end. This has happened to me from two different networks, so I'd be interested to know if anyone else is experiencing this before I investigate further. It's quite sporadic, so you may not notice anything amiss.
Connection refused
I'm seeing it. About 15% of the time, at a guess.
Me too.
Right - that points to some kind of server problem.
I've seen it as well, in the last week.
Me too, occasionally, recently.
Support tell me it should now be fixed. Let me know if it happens again.
No problem this morning. I'm here, aren't I?
Not bitter
I've got a bottle of Angostura bitters. With roughly four dashes used so far, which leaves about a millennium's supply remaining. Does anyone actually use this stuff?? If so, what for? And how often? I'm wondering if Mr Angostura and company have a real racket going here, or if they're actually doing themselves a disservice by selling their customers centuries worth of their product in a single hit. Perhaps their sales would be better if they sold it in the same size bottle as, say, Tabasco or something. Just idle speculation as the chat here seems otherwise quiet…
(SM) It's like pepper. Get a jar of it and it lasts for ever. I had a girlfriend who was very keen on the said bitters whereas I preferred bitter. I had a sip of her drink once - it was vile.
[SM] Have you got a bottle of gin handy? Add a couple of dashes to a G & T and you get pink gin. Used to be very popular in the '60s when I used to work behind a bar.
Pink gin
Gin could be arranged, although it's not something I normally drink. But plainly I could buy a couple of crates of gin and the bitters would still outlast them. And a bottle of gin would lakst me 3-6 months. Y'know, I was viewing using up this bottle of bitters as a challenge, but unless I really go for it, which is sort of cheating, I don't think I'm going to manage it in my remaining lifespan.
Pink gin and water is also nice. 2 or 3 drops added to a ginger beer is one of my favourite very, very low alcohol drinks. Oh, and one of the several versions of rock shandy is 50/50 ginger ale and soda water, with a few drops of bitters.
A bit of searching and I've found culinary uses at this site
A bit of searching and I've found culinary uses at this site
Bitters added to lemonade cuts some of the sweetness and makes a nice summer garden drink.
gin clear
Is it any good for cleaning shower heads?
[pen] Only if it can dissolve the dead spiders.
That 'Shakespeare in Crescent' game we've just had brought to our notice was pretty good. We must do that again.
[Simons Mith] When I was a student, one of the drinks of choice at the time was a long vodka which consisted of a few drops of bitters smeared round a highball glass, ice, a shot of vodka, a dash of lime and topped up with soda water. A bit girly but very drinkable.
Poncy booze
(nfras) How does that help achieve the main objective of student drinking which is to get pissed as quickly and cheaply as possible, then as now?
[INJ] I'll second anything in iambic pentameter!
[Rosie] Well, it's a cheap drink. No charge for bitters or soda, normally. When my dad was in the Royal Navy, it was traditional for midshipmen, and some other low-ranking officers, to drink pink gin, as all you paid for was the gin - hence it was the cheapest drink in the Officers' Mess - because midshipmen were so lowly paid.
(Phil) Didn't they have grog? Maybe not often enough. When I was a student we only drank spirits if we were deliberately trying to get as pissed as possible because in those days a shot of spirits was nearly twice the price of a pint of beer. In today's money I'd estimate the prices as £2 and £3.50.
When I was at Uni (mid-late 90s) my University Union used to do a happy hour. 50p a pint (the usual price at the time in a pub was £1-£1.25 depending on the brand). At about quarter to seven you'd see the bar packed with students buying 4 or 6 pints at a time. They would take them back to their table and drink them over the next couple of hours. You might think that the beer tasted awful after sitting in a glass for over an hour, and you'd be right. But it was cheap.
[Rosie] Yes, they did have rum until July 1970 (one eighth of a pint per day), which I think was issued as two-water grog (watered-down 2 parts water to 1 part rum). Pusser's Rum has been made since about 1980 to the old Admiralty recipe and a donation goes to the Royal Navy Sailor's Fund from every bottle sold. I have some of the blue label, bottled at 54%abv, and it's quite a fierce nip if you don't water it down at all.
However, when the officers gathered for a social in their mess, the poor midshipmen (officer cadets, essentially) would have to join in, and behave like an officer, while on a phenomenally meagre wage, hence the most popular cheap, "sophisticated" drink for them (i.e. not neat spirits or beer) was pink gin.
However, when the officers gathered for a social in their mess, the poor midshipmen (officer cadets, essentially) would have to join in, and behave like an officer, while on a phenomenally meagre wage, hence the most popular cheap, "sophisticated" drink for them (i.e. not neat spirits or beer) was pink gin.
Naval drinks
[Phil] You may have just enlightened me. I've heard my father (who was in the Navy), talk about 'Pussers Kai'. I thought, in the context, it was cocoa with a slug of rum. This now looks likely and a quick google supports that. However this was a long time before 1980.
According to a relative, the grog ration, at least for the CPOs, was issued as a mess bar credit in the 60s and 70s.
"Mug of Kye, Sir?"
[INJ] Ah, Kye (the spelling I've grown up with)! I've found some web sites that describe it as thick cocoa made with condensed milk, but according to my RN dad, it was cocoa made with water and no milk at all. As he's a hardy soul, that's still how my dad makes cocoa. It takes some getting used to, but it's OK.
Did the disappearance from the Tube Map of the River Thames pass unnoticed within the Morningverse?
[Kim] Why do you think it was re-instated so quickly? Of course Boris took the credit, but we have our people in the right places.
It is believed that the disappearance was as as a result of a misfiled email from one of CAMREC's more obscure sub-committees which was looking at the possible effects of global warming on the great game. That, together with an excess of zeal in the TfL publications department caused this somewhat embarrassing episode.
No long-term harm done, although there has been an official protest against the result of the Harlesden MCC vs Leytonstone Strilers 3rd Division top of the table clash on Tuesday evening. Rodney (Bridges Up!) Spurlington, lost his board 3 clash against the up-and-coming Shane Clotswold and blamed it on an inability to use the tactic which earned him his nickname. This one could run and run.
It is believed that the disappearance was as as a result of a misfiled email from one of CAMREC's more obscure sub-committees which was looking at the possible effects of global warming on the great game. That, together with an excess of zeal in the TfL publications department caused this somewhat embarrassing episode.
No long-term harm done, although there has been an official protest against the result of the Harlesden MCC vs Leytonstone Strilers 3rd Division top of the table clash on Tuesday evening. Rodney (Bridges Up!) Spurlington, lost his board 3 clash against the up-and-coming Shane Clotswold and blamed it on an inability to use the tactic which earned him his nickname. This one could run and run.
CAMREC?
I googled CAMREC but nothing I got there deciphered the acronym in a meaningful context (which I assume is involved with games of Mornington Crescent). Could someone let me in on what it stands for? I very rarely get to listen to I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, so if I'm asking about something well-known I apologise for not having the faintest. Thanks.
What is CAMREC
[SM] You need the Encylopaedia Morningtonia
*waves from Vancouver*. Where I have been talking about eggs. As one does.
[CdM] Olé
Or, to steal a prior joke of Dan's, perhaps that should have been *huevos from Vancouver*
(CdM) Can't follow that. Nor, it seems, can anyone else as it has now been a week.
To be fair, Rosie, I've been away!! I feels sometimes I chitter incessantly on here...
I was thinking of a new game: Wizards' Duel. You have two teams of wizards. In order to make a move you must change shape into a creature or thing that beats, defeats or otherwise trumps whetever the other side has just changed into. So you might get a sequence like
Wizards: Elephant
Witches: Mouse
Wizards: Cat
Witches: Dog
Wizards: B - A - T - H
Witches: Telephone
at which point I have to admit I'm stumped so presumably the witches win that round. We'd have to kill off news Has Come to Harvard, but I believe that game's only hanging on while we await a replacement anyway.
[SM] Done.
[pen] Anywhere nice/interesting?
Normandie sur mer
[Softers] Down the coast - eating our way around Normandy! Marvellous thank you - perfect weather too.
[pen] Watch out for those dodgy moules ;o)
Am I the only person in the world who doesn't like seafood? I love fish, but if it comes out of the sea it's got to have a backbone if I'm going to eat it. The windy miller is the same. I wish I did like seafood, because so many other people seem to enjoy it so much.
[pen] Shame, the French love their moule et frites and it is standard fare everywhere.
Marine mouthfuls
(pen, Raak) With you on that. I'd rather eat Co-op Fish Fingers, let alone the real thing, than fancy stuff you have to pick at. What other people like doesn't bother me; I'm not a social eater, or a particularly elegant one.
Something fishy
[Raak & penelope & Software] I have tried eating (or swallowing) oysters but, regrettably, have yet to manage ingesting one. The same applies to asparagus. I suspect that it's something to do with the smell of them but have no solid evidence to support the hypothesis.
[Rosie] Whilst I do like fish meals, at least the ones I cook myself, I find they become cold long before I've managed to scoff the lot. When it comes to fine-boned fish I tend to your approach as it really is, unless one is starving, not worth the effort.
[All] Don't get me started on calamari. Maybe it is my aging teeth or the manner in which the samples to which I have been subjected have been cooked, but I'd rather try to eat a standard primary school 'rubber'.
[Rosie] Whilst I do like fish meals, at least the ones I cook myself, I find they become cold long before I've managed to scoff the lot. When it comes to fine-boned fish I tend to your approach as it really is, unless one is starving, not worth the effort.
[All] Don't get me started on calamari. Maybe it is my aging teeth or the manner in which the samples to which I have been subjected have been cooked, but I'd rather try to eat a standard primary school 'rubber'.
Swimmingly
[Duj] Ditto calamari. It's just fried rubber bands, innit? And Aspragus... anything that makes your wee smell so bad can't be good for you, can it? Sadly, the Dutch here go a bundle over it, and I have to eat it to be polite. What's worse, they like the fat, white ones that have lived in the dark (like forced rhubarb), which are bigger than the small green shoots you get in Engeland.
Rhubarb, on the other hand, treated the proper way (plenty of sugar, and paired with either ginger or strawberries) is yummy. Fooled, crumbled or just stewed.
Rhubarb, on the other hand, treated the proper way (plenty of sugar, and paired with either ginger or strawberries) is yummy. Fooled, crumbled or just stewed.
Stinky wee
[pen] Asparagus does have that strange effect but it is delicious. But I am with you all the way with rhubarb as long as there is cream, ice cream (the Belgian/Dutch way) or custard.
I have eaten plenty of asparagus, but I don't sniff my wee, so I've never noticed the oft-claimed effect.
Calamari (or squid, if we're not going to be all precious about it) is blummin' gorgeous in my opinion. Deep fried in a light batter (50/50 self-rasing and cornflour), it should be light and lovely. If it's rubbery it has been over-cooked.
I've had oysters, but I'm not as impressed as I thought I ought to be. Sweetbreads though are another contentious foodstuff that I love.
Calamari (or squid, if we're not going to be all precious about it) is blummin' gorgeous in my opinion. Deep fried in a light batter (50/50 self-rasing and cornflour), it should be light and lovely. If it's rubbery it has been over-cooked.
I've had oysters, but I'm not as impressed as I thought I ought to be. Sweetbreads though are another contentious foodstuff that I love.
I have seen oysters eaten, whole and raw. That's quite enough for me.
Oysters
Are overrated in my opinion. Back in the 19th century they were poor peoples food.
I'm with Phil on this. Asparagus - delicious when fresh and in season (and the after-odour isn't that unpleasant or strong IMO). Calamari - rubbery = overcooked, properly cooked and fresh they almost melt and taste lovely. Oysters - nice - taste of the sea - but too expensive for what they are. In fact I like most molluscs and crustacea (though it's hard to do much with whelks).
We need to take some lessons from the chinese - Sour is as good a flavour as sweet and slimy is as good a mouth sensation as crunchy - just different.
We need to take some lessons from the chinese - Sour is as good a flavour as sweet and slimy is as good a mouth sensation as crunchy - just different.
[INJ] Have you tried sour beers (i.e. Belgian Lambics)? Fantastic once you eradicate the "beer shouldn't be sour" conditioning from your head.
Aerial oxidation
(Phil) How does that differ in principle from eradicating the "butter shouldn't be rancid" conditioning from your head? Sour beer tastes awful, like vinegar, which is what it is, at least partly.
[Rosie] Start with something like Hoegarden which is a wheat beer and has a slightly sour note. It's made with a sort of wheat porridge that gives it a great cloudy appearance and the orange and cardamon notes give it a spicy aroma. Once you have developed a taste for that the leap to things like the Lambics is not so great.
[Phil et al] I am rather partial to Franziskaner on a warm day. This is a wheat beer with an interesting smoky flavour. In fact around Munich there are many microbreweries that offer similar smoky beers.
Purveyors of sour beer
[Phil] I don't think I've tried Lambics. I've had plenty of wheat beers, including Hoegaarden and don't mind the slight sour edge to them. Whether I'd like anything further down that line will have to be determined by experiment.
BTW if you're ever in Derby you might like to visit what used to be a fairly unpleasant and run-down pub called 'The Royal Standard', now taken over by CAMRA and revived as The Brewery Tap. At quiet times they do a 'tasting tray' consisting of 3 or 4 different beers - about 1/3 pint of each.
On which thought, will you be serving in 2/3 pint measures?
BTW if you're ever in Derby you might like to visit what used to be a fairly unpleasant and run-down pub called 'The Royal Standard', now taken over by CAMRA and revived as The Brewery Tap. At quiet times they do a 'tasting tray' consisting of 3 or 4 different beers - about 1/3 pint of each.
On which thought, will you be serving in 2/3 pint measures?
[Rosie] Think of sour sweets, like fizzy-cola-bottle-type things. Or a really crisp granny smith apple. That sort of sour, not vinegar. I have a few bottles of Mort Subite Gueuze (which is a fairly easy entry point to the world of lambics) lying around, and may have one with my dinner tonight, now that my mind is on the subject.
[Software] Have you ever tried the Bamberg-brewed Schlenkerla Rauchbier. "Smoky" would be a massive understatement for it. Again, a shocking flavour and aroma at first, but it is truly wonderful once you get past that.
[CdM] A pub run by CAMRA? I shudder to think. It reminds me of the car that Homer Simpson designed.
More seriously, I hope their tasting tray is exactly a third of a pint of each (unlike the glasses CAMRA provided at the Derby beer festival, and at least one other I know of, where the third-pint line was at 0.3pints, instead of 0.33pints, meaning CAMRA themselves were selling 10% short measures). And I shan't be bothering with stocking 2/3pt glasses, if the legislation ever comes in. I don't do 1/3pt at present anyway, but 2/3 just seems silly to me.
[CdM] A pub run by CAMRA? I shudder to think. It reminds me of the car that Homer Simpson designed.
More seriously, I hope their tasting tray is exactly a third of a pint of each (unlike the glasses CAMRA provided at the Derby beer festival, and at least one other I know of, where the third-pint line was at 0.3pints, instead of 0.33pints, meaning CAMRA themselves were selling 10% short measures). And I shan't be bothering with stocking 2/3pt glasses, if the legislation ever comes in. I don't do 1/3pt at present anyway, but 2/3 just seems silly to me.
(Phil) Aye, mebbe. I've had sour beer once or twice, the difference being it had gone off as opposed to being deliberately sour.
[Phil] I've not tried the Bamberg but it sounds interesting. Why does the government not grasp the bull by the horns and dump all imperial measures for good and just get on with what was started half-heartedly 40 years ago.
[Software] If we abandon the pint, what measures would you permit, or would you allow any size measure to be used?
[Phil] 25cl, 33cl, 50cl 1l
Hello again everybody. Turns out that I'd totally forgotten how to operate a keyboard. How are we all?
[INJ] I can appreciate your thinking, although I think a litre is a bit big for responsible consumption of draught beer. I don't want the law to change for a few reasons. One of which is that I seem resistant to change in general and I "like" pints. Also, I'll (probably) have to re-stock all my beer glasses, which could cost me over 500 quid.
It's currently a little frustrating that I can't sell a pint or half-pint of lemonade. I can sell a "large" or "small" lemonade, in pint and half-pint glasses. Or I can sell "568ml" or "284ml" in the same glasses. As far as I know, only beer, cider and milk can be legally be sold in pints in the UK, although there is no such restriction throughout the rest of Europe, where it is perfectly legal to use Imperial measures for anything.
Curiously "shandy and any other beverage of which beer is a constituent part" counts as beer for the Weights and Measures (Beer and Cider) Act 1998. So anything with a bit of draught beer in it, should be served in thirds or multiples of halves. How odd. I have in mind things like the Irish method of serving a Black Russian (with a Guinness head on it). Sorry, I've started thinking out loud now.
It's currently a little frustrating that I can't sell a pint or half-pint of lemonade. I can sell a "large" or "small" lemonade, in pint and half-pint glasses. Or I can sell "568ml" or "284ml" in the same glasses. As far as I know, only beer, cider and milk can be legally be sold in pints in the UK, although there is no such restriction throughout the rest of Europe, where it is perfectly legal to use Imperial measures for anything.
Curiously "shandy and any other beverage of which beer is a constituent part" counts as beer for the Weights and Measures (Beer and Cider) Act 1998. So anything with a bit of draught beer in it, should be served in thirds or multiples of halves. How odd. I have in mind things like the Irish method of serving a Black Russian (with a Guinness head on it). Sorry, I've started thinking out loud now.
How rude
[nights] Hi ! :-)
[Phil] I did not say abandon the pint glass in pubs, the continentals do use them but you never actually get a pint in them - they do like their froth. What I was alluding to was the indecision of whether we are a metric or imperial nation. At the moment it is a=half cocked with some things sold in imperial and some in metric (metric martyrs in the marketplace for example). There needs to be clear leadership. As for selling liquids in taverns the UK still has a half-cocked approach. Spirits are metric; beer is imperial. While I agree that spirits should be sold in standard sizes (many continentals have a relaxed view on what constitutes a measure) I think that draught beer could be sold in whatever size glass that the licensee chooses - provided that it is priced accordingly and clearly stated.
Softers) Uniformity of units is not necessary except to the tidy-minded. All you need to know is what you're getting and for all users to be familiar with those units. A pub that sold beer in metric units would very likely lose a lot of customers. If it is not necessary to change it is necessary not to change. A pint glass of whatever style is a very familiar object (shut up at the back). This keeps people happier except for the aforesaid tidy-minded commitee members and they are very few in number. Actually we should use cubic attoparsecs (19.34 to the pint).
I've written about this before, but beer sizes in Australia are weird and wonderful.
In Melbourne the standard drink is a pot, which is 285ml. In Sydney this same measure is called a middy, in Hobart a ten and in Darwin a handle, while in Adelaide it is called a schooner (or even an up-sized schooner as the old schooner was 255ml or 9 fl oz), however, asking for a schooner in any other city will get you 425ml. If you want 425ml in Adelaide you will need to ask for a pint, but if you ask for a pint in any other city you get 570ml. To get this size of drink in Adelaide you need to ask for an Imperial Pint. In Darwin and north Queensland (where men are men and sheep are worried) you also get a 7, which is 200ml (probably because a small measure of beer stays cold, while a big beer goes warm over time - not because they like drinking girl sizes).
It makes travelling in Australia more adventurous.
In Melbourne the standard drink is a pot, which is 285ml. In Sydney this same measure is called a middy, in Hobart a ten and in Darwin a handle, while in Adelaide it is called a schooner (or even an up-sized schooner as the old schooner was 255ml or 9 fl oz), however, asking for a schooner in any other city will get you 425ml. If you want 425ml in Adelaide you will need to ask for a pint, but if you ask for a pint in any other city you get 570ml. To get this size of drink in Adelaide you need to ask for an Imperial Pint. In Darwin and north Queensland (where men are men and sheep are worried) you also get a 7, which is 200ml (probably because a small measure of beer stays cold, while a big beer goes warm over time - not because they like drinking girl sizes).
It makes travelling in Australia more adventurous.
Physics
(nfras) How can a small measure stay colder for longer than a large one? It doesn't; you drink it quicker. The small Queensland measures wouldn't go down too well in Carshalton (London Borough of Sutton) where not only are men men but women are as well.
[Rosie] He didn't say it stays colder for longer. He said it "stays cold" -- presumably for the period while you're drinking it. And there's no assumption that you drink it quicker; you drink it at the same rate :-) </outpedanting>
Blinks
[Phil] Is it really true that our friends on the continent can use imperial measures? I'd not heard that before, but I can believe it on the general observation that UK governments tend to believe that they must follow EU rules, whereas other European governments (notably France and Germany) know that nothing bad will happen if they don't.
I saw the moons of Jupiter last night, and very nice they were too - four of them, strung out in a line... didn't appear to be tied down at all...
[rab] It is UK legislation that has specifically outlawed imperial measures. There is no specific EU legislation to the same effect. So it is not the case that France and Germany et al have not applied EU legislation to the same extent as the UK, but that we have created extra legislation to deal with our own indecision.
This is what I have been told by someone I believe. I await correction though :-)
This is what I have been told by someone I believe. I await correction though :-)
Pint
[Rosie] It would make no difference if beer were sold in either provided they were uniform and priced pro rata. Anyway, it would give unscrupulous barmen/maids the opportunity to short measure even more. [Phil/Rosie] my rant was about the indecision of government to go properly metric. Selling beer is pretty small beer (if you excuse the pun) it is the other nonsense that gets to me. Supermarket solids packaged in metric, liquid sold in imperial; Petrol sold in litres; building standards metric, distances measured in miles; temperature still given in Fahrenheit as well as Centigrade; metric taught at school and public weighing machines in imperial (my son was taught metric at school and does not understand pounds and ounces); the list of confusion goes on.
Furlong/elephant/fortnight
(Softers) Internally, railways still use chains and I don't mean the bit joining old loose-coupled goods wagons. I think we should remain Imperial because the words are part of the language and culture. Sixteen tonnes and what do you get? Deserved mockery.
[Software] Deep down, I know that standardisation is right, but I just simply love old Imperial measures (and coinage). A friend of mine who runs a flower wholesale outlet spent an entire day last week quoting all prices in old money, for fun. He didn't restrict himself to pounds, shillings and pence, oh no...tanners, florins, guineas, crowns, half-crowns and farthings were all brought into play. It made his day go by much faster.
There's a wonderful list of unusual units of measurement at one of my favourite websites, Phrontistery, which includes the dalton, the darcy, the footlambert and the face-cord. For sheer frivolity, I try to incorporate some of the words from that site into conversation, so I think it's quite easy to see why I want to cling on to Imperial measures.
There's a wonderful list of unusual units of measurement at one of my favourite websites, Phrontistery, which includes the dalton, the darcy, the footlambert and the face-cord. For sheer frivolity, I try to incorporate some of the words from that site into conversation, so I think it's quite easy to see why I want to cling on to Imperial measures.
My thrupence-worth
My infant school, which was attached to the junior school I also attended (built in the 60s, I think) had a hall shaped like a 'thrupenny bit' and was known locally, for a time as 'The Thrupenny Bit School' to differentiate it from the junior school buildings, although there's no reference to it on Google, as far as I can find. It was Lacey Gardens Infant School, if anyone is interested...
[Rosie/Phil] Despite over two centuries of metrication the French still use old measures if you are worried about their eradication from the culture. They often use puce for inch, livre for pound (weight) and of course the demi for a half (pint).
[Software] Indeed, on a few occasions in France I've forgotten about that and have asked for a demi when I wanted a half-litre of beer.
(Softers) I know. Did you mean pouce? :-)
[Rosie] Oui.
Threp'ny Bit
[penelope] A pre WWII threepenny bit, or a post-blackout one?
Dodecagons
(SM) Few people, even of my age, have seen the silver threepenny bit. I was once given one as change by a bus conductor about 1953 but had to spend it to get home, or walk two miles. I have found another one (1920) in my heap of old coins. They're tiddlers, 5/8" across. The chunky version was around in 1940, as I have one, and two more from the sixties. They're nice. Equivalent in the fifties to about 30p in today's money.
Ag 3d
My mum used to have a few for sprinkling in the Christmas pud; although I can't remember ever seeing them in circulation. Here in the Channel Islands we had our own 3d bits. In Guernsey they were nickel silver with a scalloped edge and in Jersey they were round. The latter reason was why we never had 3d slots on our pay-on-answer paypghones.
Another broken tooth
I can just recall the silver threepenny bit in the Christmas pudding, but I think they'd all been lost by my adolescence. I don't know about the buying power of the dodecagonal version, but I can remember being able to buy a poke of chips for 3d around 1960.
Boose fare? Ye 'ad boose fare?
I'm pretty sure I remember seeing a silver 1.25p piece when I was very young, but I don't think we still had them for the Christmas pudding. I expect INJ had eaten them all.
CdM, you just made milk come out of my nose. I wouldn't have minded so much, but some of the cornflakes I was eating as I read took the same route.
[SM] I'm re-assured that you were eating cornflakes at the time. I'd be worried if this was a phenomenon that could occur spontaneously.
*wanders out into the back garden with a book and a drink*
Finally, we are getting some warm weather. Well, warmish: 21°. Yay sun.
Autumnal evening classes...
My first Dutch lesson tonight, with a new teacher. This batch should be more effective than the first lot, which I did when I was still in England and not hearing Dutch every day.
(pen) How are your gghhhutterals?
gggghhhastly
[Rosie] Loosening up nicely. All I need really is a heavy cold.
A propos something else, I think I just persuaded the global director of Shell to stand in front of my video camera and give me his opinion on ethical management. My job amazes me sometimes.
A propos something else, I think I just persuaded the global director of Shell to stand in front of my video camera and give me his opinion on ethical management. My job amazes me sometimes.
(pen) Do they give you a Welsh primer? If you can pronounce Machynlleth correctly you will have problem with any language anywhere in the known Universe, except possibly Xhosa and Scouse.
Cockup
"problem" = "no problem"
prrrroblems
[Rosie] The trouble with Machynlleth (with the lisping 'L' like Sister Wendy's, is that right?) is there is no R in it. In Dutch, the Gs are gagging, as are the aitches, the Rs are rolled, the emphasis comes just about every other syllable and there are usually at least five syllables per word. Nouns like 'verzekering' (insurance, with the emphasis on the 'zek', pron. 'zay') are compounded from all kinds of words mulched together. It all takes an awful lot of effort for a poor Anglo-Saxon speaking accustomed to putting together one syllable at a time.
cok op
speaking = speaker, toch?
Gegokoop
[pen] When I worked in Hilversum my team leader used to speak Dutch with a Cockney accent. He got by, though - even married a nice Dutch lady.
(pen) Maybe Welsh not the best idea, then, though the gutturals are splendid. Try chwech ( = six). Vowel is "ä." The Welsh "r" and the breathy unvoiced "rh" are rolled but too short and front-of mouth for Dutch, if my hearing is correct. Isn't the Dutch "v" often pronounced "f"? In Welsh the "f" is always pronounced "v". Not much help there, then.
Couldn't hear any double-L in Sister Wendy's speech. It's a non-plosive hiss from the sides of the tongue about halfway back ("voiceless lateral fricative" apparently). Don't spoil it by following it with an ordinary "L". Dead easy. :-)
Couldn't hear any double-L in Sister Wendy's speech. It's a non-plosive hiss from the sides of the tongue about halfway back ("voiceless lateral fricative" apparently). Don't spoil it by following it with an ordinary "L". Dead easy. :-)
*wipes keyboard with damp cloth*
Blimey!
This old place still exists. Horrah!
Hail Boolbar!
[Boolbar] Horrah! You're back!
...as you once said yourself!
...as you once said yourself!
Sailing
I'm sailing over to the UK on Sunday night - hurrah! I love sleeping on ships.
Rotterdam-Harwich? Hope its not rough ;o)
[Softers] Rotterdam-Hull. Some parts of Hull are very rough indeed, but I shall keep the car doors locked when I disembark ;o)
enough silence
I know it was a terrible joke, but three days of silent protest is enough. I'm sorry, OK?
Forgiven
Not your fault I sure, pen ;o)
hasn't thought of anything witty and amusing to add to any games recently.
*waves from England, for a change*
Had a surprisingly calm North Sea crossing last night, despite driving to the port in gales and lashing rain. The geordies complaining this morning that 'the curtains were moving' made me giggle though.
Had a surprisingly calm North Sea crossing last night, despite driving to the port in gales and lashing rain. The geordies complaining this morning that 'the curtains were moving' made me giggle though.
[Knobbly] I know the feeling!
[pen] Welcome back! Hope we've managed to keep it much as you left it.
[pen] Welcome back! Hope we've managed to keep it much as you left it.
Calm Nordsee Crossing?
[pen] Shurely an oxymoron?
Meteorological orthodoxy
(Softers) Can happen, like a dry day in Blaenau Ffestiniog.
Timing
ticker ticker Timex
[Rab] Good, bad or indifferent?
Time
Aren't all the electronics made in the same place now anyway?
[rab] What's the secret of good comedy?
[CdM] Is this a reverse chat game now?
I was wondering earlier what a game of Reverse Reverse MC would look like. Any thoughts?
I was wondering earlier what a game of Reverse Reverse MC would look like. Any thoughts?
Anybody got any new game ideas? Tuj?
[Raak] Good to see you back. i was just thinking today that you hadn't posted for a while (whether that "while" is a few days or longer I didn't check, but I was aware that you were missing...).
[CdM] That's odd, I haven't been away much, although by chance I might not have posted on mc5 for a few days.
[CdM] Nearly as good as your waiting for T comment on the MCiOS chat =D
Which reminds me
Not that anyone will will notice... but there will be a brief outage on Thursday night when the Powers That Be perform a memory upgrade ('bout 9ish or thereabouts).
[Raak] Ah well. I guess your contributions are just always so good that even a few days absence is noteworthy!
game idea?
I'd always wanted to try Cheddar Gorge Haiku... perhaps too similar to what we've got going now. I also thought it'd be good fun to write a play one line / stage direction / light cue at a time.
Obviously still too new... What does Simons Mith mean in the limerick game by 'see comments'? Where do I look for comments?
[Knobbly] If you do 'view source', however that works on your particular browser, nested in amongst all the HTML muck you'll see a hidden line 4 and line 5 that occurred to me. Why I didn't use the HIDE tags is beyond me. I must have thought we were temporarily back in 1998 or something.
backetry
Back. Ferry apparently headed back towards the English coast in the middle of the night so some poor chap with fits could be helicoptered orf. After all the fuss was over, I got up at 6am and went out on deck with a huge cup of tea and a piece of my mum's neighbour's best fruitcake for breakfast expecting to see the lights on Rotterdam and we were still in the middle of the black North Sea. Quelle disappointment. However, all was well. The customs people didn't object to the vintage stationary engine I had stashed in the boot, and the trousers I bought for the windy miller fit like a charm.
Trousers
[penelope] You bribed the customs officers with trousers?
This weekend I will be mostly...
we're leaving the mill on Saturday lunchtime and heading back to Blighty via Dover for a wedding near Bath on Sunday. And then dashing back to NL. This time, the windy miller is coming with me - hurrah!
Huwelijk
Dat is groot. Veilige reis!
OzjYFXdF
Hi! crEgCiaE
Great, now we've got Klingons as well as Dutchmen.
So we have double dutch?
I believe Klingon is actually a 70-30 mix of Polish and 133t-sp33k
Gormless old git
(SM) Can't figure out what 133t-sp33k is. Something to do with teaspoons, 133 of them?
[Rosie] Something along those lines. And good afternoon everybody.
It's a count of the average number of grains of demerara sugar. 133 teaspoons hold 33,000. Obvious really.
That's a mere 225 grains per teaspoon, which doesn't seem quite enough. It all depends on de size of dem grains. Is there an EU standard?
It's a level teaspoonful.
That means about 22 mg per grain, which is probably about right. If it were cyanide or nicotine you be approximately 50% dead.
[Rosie] Interesting coincidence, work today has had a similar effect on me.
*waved from Palma de Mallorca, message delayed in transmission*
It was surprisingly nice there.
I hestitate to mention it...
... but here in sunny Strasbourg, Christmas is upon us, with the opening of the annual Christmas markets. How are things looking elsewhere in the Morniverse?
Bah humbug... or pepernoten
Here in the Netherlands, Sintaklaas (December 5) is more important than Christmas. His arrival from Spain, as documented on national TV, was dogged by bad weather, but he is already out and about with his blacked-out moorish assistants, strangely all called Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) and gathering information about how good the children have been. Children leave their shoes out overnight in the hope of having them filled with sweets (snoepjes) if they've been good, and a lump of coal is they haven't. Traditional sweets are particular to Dutch tastes - pepernoten which looks like earwax and tastes of aniseed, and strange crunchy things that look like dog meal and taste of aniseed. I'm not fond of aniseed...
Pelargonia
I made some pelargonium cuttings earlier in the year - far more than I could ever possibly use. Enough to start a small nursery, in point of fact. And of course, as I didn't really care whether they lived or died, most of the little blighters have survived. So what shall I do with 'em all now? I've got dozens and dozens! Any suggestions? Anyone want a few pot plants?
Oh, they're Mabel Grey. Small, pretty purple flowers, but their main schtick is that their leaves smell of lemon sherbert.
gerania
[Simons] Give them away as Christmas presents or let a a charity market stall sell them? I'd have a few for my purple patch - they sound nice.
OK, it just took me about 45 minutes to cross the city centre on my bike, versus the usual 15. The markets are beginning to annoy me.
(nights) Which city? Truro? Los Angeles?
[Rosie] Strasbourg, capital of overpriced tat - at the moment at least. Oh, the tourists.
Invading markets
[nights] I shouldn't worry too much, at least not just yet. I think the plan is to do England first.
Blue geese
[Simons Mith] I knew it. I knew all that money and time wasn't being expended for the simple reason of spreading holiday cheer and joy.
Surfing archives elsewhere...
Next time there's a slot open, I vote we use the team colours option for a game of "Eamon the Chivalrous".
[Tuj] What's that, then?
Such a ladies' man, so he is.
(nights) Good question. I Think We Should Be Told.
[Eamon the Chivalrous] I like it, a lot.
quietly now... someone might be reading this
*whispers* It's my last official day in the office before Crimbo. I'm only coming in tomorrow (a 70km round trip, btw) to collect my Christmas box! Below freezing all day today in Rotterdam. Nearly -5C this morning as I got into the car - and surprisingly as I reached the campus too.
Brass Monkey
Chilly this morning although no frost, the air was surprisingly dry and pretty well no wind here on the island. I think it felt colder yesterday because of the wind chill. [pen] if you are on yers 'ols you can maybe squeeze in some practice for the canal skating ;0)
More brass monkey
It's been snowing here since 11.30 a.m. and has just about stopped now. Total less than an inch. Temperature zero and last night it went down to -7°. (Top right-hand bit of Surrey).
We had a high of -1 here in Strasbourg, and a few snowflakes. Météo France are promising a lot of snow this weekend, but frankly, I don't trust any organisation that insists its name is written in print in ALL CAPS.
Happiness is
[Rosie] Twenty minutes ago the temperature at my humpy was 40.3ºC. It has now dropped by nearly a degree. I'm ever so happy. ;)
Megathermality
(Dujon) You're welcome to that even though I see from the latest Richmond AFB METAR that the humidity is quite low. Highest ever (i.e. since 1983) at Hughes Hall is 35.9°C, 10 Aug '03. Interesting, but I are a sweaty little f****r and don't want too much of it. 30°C is all right every now and then but we haven't even reached that in the last 3 years.
[Rosie] I assume you'll have got the snowshoes out to ensure that you get snowed in at the pub, rather than at the Hughes residence tonight, what with 20cm forecast for your area.
Bah! Its rain again today here. Still chilly, though.
A light covering of snow here, but a very slow thaw at between 0 and +1C. Grey and overcast though, so useless for taking photos. More snow later!
(INJ) I'm just beginning to think they've overdone it for this particular area because the wind is too northerly whereas it needs to be north-east for us to get a good dumping when the snow is generated by convection over the North Sea, which is still surprisingly warm. East Anglia and north Kent will get it but I'm probably just too far west, even allowing for the altitude (560 ft). Verification time (as they call it) will be tomorrow afternoon. There won't be much after that.
Snow
3 inches so far and not much more to come, I reckon. The newsgroup (uk.sci.weather) are absolutely wetting themselves but many of them seem to have little other life than weather + computers.
No relevance, I just really quite liked this sentence.
The visiting fans were aghast when she blatantly snorted a powdery substance up her nose and nearly cause a large scale riot but although she stopped play and quickly looked in her rule-book, just because an uppity linesman stated that Thomas Cech definitely was offside, an official spokesman snorted and stated sarcastically that such a strange combination of circumstances would hardly explain how the former mistress of the Compte de Bergerac was magnificent but forever embarrassed that her sinuous proboscis protruded into the area.
I thought it was supposed to be summer
I caught the Great Melbourne Run on Sky Sports last night in my hotel room. I'd rather be in Leeds - torrential rain and a grey sky down there, when we'd had mostly cold & clear.
Oh, and about 2 inches of snow in the evening and overnight - roads clear, pavements tricky.
it sneeuwt
-4°C outside the house and -6°C outside the village, plus a couple of inches of snow. It all looks very nice indeed.
After a 20 minute flurry yesterday which left very unrealistic-looking white powder on my garden, which melted a bit, then froze solid, it's snowing again now. It's settling nicely too. Lovely weather for the funeral party who will be arriving in 90 minutes
[Phil] Yes, if one of them were to fall and hurt themselves it would cast a bit of a gloom across the proceedings.
Verification time
3 inches of snow (8 cm). Rainfall equivalent 8.3 mm after I'd melted and measured it. This is just slightly more than the normal amount for such a depth. In February I got 28 cm (11") snow from 21.3 mm rainfall equivalent.
(INJ) You are a very naughty boy.
(INJ) You are a very naughty boy.
[INJ] One of the funeral (cremation) party commented that at least the departed ended the day warmer than they did. He didn't say this to the bereaved family though.
It's snowing again in Leicester, with plenty forecast (or not, depending on whose forecast you believe) overnight.
Here for the duration
6 inches of snow since last night - Coniston in the Southern Lake District.
I haven't brought my power supply for my laptop, so this is probably my last communication for a week. I'll therefore be the first to say Merry Christmas to all of you. Have a really good break and may you all receive what you would have hoped for.
I haven't brought my power supply for my laptop, so this is probably my last communication for a week. I'll therefore be the first to say Merry Christmas to all of you. Have a really good break and may you all receive what you would have hoped for.
Well, the snow didn't arrive. So we have now had the sum total of about half an inch over a period of 3 days. We do have very, very icy roads though, so at least I can have some fun.
(Phil) Handbrake turns at your age? I dunno.
(INJ) Cheers, and may your stocking contain an adaptor.
I sent a card to my newsagent for delivering my paper every day, having all the stuff I want etc etc. But I'd bought the card there. Is there a term for this?
(INJ) Cheers, and may your stocking contain an adaptor.
I sent a card to my newsagent for delivering my paper every day, having all the stuff I want etc etc. But I'd bought the card there. Is there a term for this?
[Rosie] Yes - agedness.
[Rosie] Driving is one of the few pleasures left in my life....
Donuts (or doughnuts)
It appears that many regions of the U.K. are experiencing rather cold weather. As I type there is a cyclone banging around and about the northwestern bit of Australia. Now, just about anyone who lives here would tell you that Marble Bar is hot and could possibly be nominated as the hottest location in the country. The said cyclone has just clipped Marble Bar.
So I had a little bit of a look at Marble Bar. Even though I live here and know its reputation I didn't know this little bit of information relative to the town.
"It is known as 'the hottest town in Australia' a fact which is still recorded by the Guinness Book of Records. For 161 consecutive days to 20 April 1924 the temperature in the town never dropped below 100°F (37.8°C)."
I do so hope that that bit of trivia will make you feel a wee bit warmer. ;(
So I had a little bit of a look at Marble Bar. Even though I live here and know its reputation I didn't know this little bit of information relative to the town.
"It is known as 'the hottest town in Australia' a fact which is still recorded by the Guinness Book of Records. For 161 consecutive days to 20 April 1924 the temperature in the town never dropped below 100°F (37.8°C)."
I do so hope that that bit of trivia will make you feel a wee bit warmer. ;(
(Dujon) Doesn't the record actually say that the maximum temperature each day reached 100°F for 161 consecutive days. I can't believe that it stayed above 100°F all night, every night. That has happened very occasionally in the Sahara (and probably elsewhere) in high summer but is very rare.
At the moment a temperature of 5°C would be nice. It hasn't been that high since last Sunday week and it's been down to -7°. White Christmas? No thank you. That white stuff is cold and stops you getting about.
At the moment a temperature of 5°C would be nice. It hasn't been that high since last Sunday week and it's been down to -7°. White Christmas? No thank you. That white stuff is cold and stops you getting about.
Bing Crosby
[Rosie] As usual here in the channel we have missed the worst of it. A sprinkling last Thursday which caused mayhem on the roads and now the sun is shining and its about 7C.
Yeah. White (near-)Christmases aren't all they're cracked up to be. Though we've had some crunchy goodness here, so I've not been sliding around too much on it.
[Rosie] Possibly so, but I don't really know and thus accept the data. In Dec./Jan. 1988/9 or thereabouts I spent four or five weeks in a place called Hillston. That was a dreadful period. At a guess I'd say that I experienced 14 days of overnight temperature above 100ºF. I shall check and report back should I find any objective observations.
Desert songs
(Dujon) I looked at OZBOM, an excellent site, and it confirmed that it was the maxima that were all over 100°F. I suspect the minima were mostly 25° to 30°. In the last few years Adelaide has had a record high minimum of 34°C. To get a minimum of 100°F (37.8°C) you really need quite a stiff breeze to stop the lowest layers cooling and becoming decoupled from the circulation. You get a sandstorm thrown in for good measure, of course. The only place that doesn't seem to need this condition is Death Valley, where there have been several well-authenticated instances of the night minimum being above 110°F. Glad I'm not the weather observer there, or in Ojmjakon, Siberia, January mean -50°C. Yes, fifty. Wrap up well, as my Mum used to say.
the season
Festive Fun wishes to all x
No sweat
[Rosie] Thank you. I must have missed that information, thanks for the clarification. As far as wrapping up well is concerned your Mum's advice sounds like it should have been originally decreed by one of those pesky Yorkshire men (before they subsisted on gravel, of course). ;)
Happy Christmas, whether you believe in anything or not. I like Dec 25th - probably my happiest day of the year.
Merry Christmas from your friends in the States. Today in Seattle (where it is still the 24th for another few hours) the weather was truly lovely - a Christmas oddity since we usually receive rain every December.
Thanks for inventing MC, and then for letting us with no Tubes play too. =)
Thanks for inventing MC, and then for letting us with no Tubes play too. =)
Ching
Merry Chingmas!
Happy Non-Demominational Generic Winter Season Festival, everyone. (I'm told Hannukah is still on back order.)
Hakunnah? True, there's none in the shops here either, SM. I blame the Buying Department.
Looking back, if that was my happiest day of the year, the rest must be bloody miserable.
Wow!
Well - the finest winter week I've had in Britain for many a year. Most days crisp and clear, some snowfall most nights to top up any thaw and to keep it all looking nice. Plenty of fairly low-level walks with stunning views of the Lake District tops. It was real picture postcards stuff. Temperatures at valley floor level 0-2 during the day going down to -4 or -5 overnight. Got up to about 500m one day but just too much snow - breaking trail and post-holing to mid-thigh has me knackered after about 10 minutes these days.
A recommendation: try the Church House Inn in Torver - 5 locally brewed real ales and a chef who really knows how to cook.
A recommendation: try the Church House Inn in Torver - 5 locally brewed real ales and a chef who really knows how to cook.
[INJ] Sounds wonderful. I've just caught Julia whatserface doing one of Wainwright's walks on the BBC this mrorning - in summer, I presume - and I can imagine it was an uplifting Xmas week for you. Here in Zuid Holland, we're back to the dim, dank 2-degrees-and-withering-damp weather that eats your core. Yuk.
Happy New Year
Farewell the noughties, hail the new and sparkling teens.
(Softers) Well, at least the sun has come out. Well, I presume it's the sun.
I take it all back. Minus 5 degrees, dry, cold and clear-ish, with plenty of snow at ours, much less in the centre of Rotterdam and mostly clear roads. There was a lovely red sunrise this morning as I drove (late) to work because the car needed scraping free of ice a second time after the windy miller did it for me earlier. And a lovely street party last night with the neighbours - pea soup, rokeworst, rum punch and a brazier. And a enlarged version of a board+puck game similar to shove-ha'penny, at which I did not suck. Hurrah!
If anyone's interested - it's not gone above zero here in Strasbourg since I got back, heavy snow and wind shut the trams down for a bit on Friday night, and everyone's just getting on with their lives. It doesn't, however, stop me cursing the security guard at work's name up and down when he won't open the building at 7h45 instead of 8h. Grr.
[nights] Getting on with it? Whatever next!
[nights] Let's all sing together, shall we: "Jobsworth, jobsworth, it's more than me jobsworth". Blimey where did I drag that one up from.
"I don't care, rain or snow,
Whatever you want, the answer's no."
Is that as old as TW3 - I have an image of Lance Percival singing it.
Whatever you want, the answer's no."
Is that as old as TW3 - I have an image of Lance Percival singing it.
I always thought it was a Jeremy Taylor song; certainly I remember him singing it, and I always assumed he wrote it. Now I must go to the google.
Looks like you're right, but that's not the context in which I remember it. It's definitely in black and white in my memory.
[IS,P] Did you spend any time in South Africa?
[IS,P] Did you spend any time in South Africa?
Whoever sang it, I would love to teach it to the people of France. However I've yet to find a good translation for "jobsworth". But yes, people are just dealing with the cold - the phrase "Keep Calm and Carry On" seems apposite.
Jobsworth
Looks like it's probably 'That's Life' I remember it from.
The Jobsworth Song
I don't know that song, but in my head as I read the words they fitted themselves to the tune of christmas carol 'Torches'.
Hellooooo?
It's been very quiet in here for the past week.
Oh sorry. I had the volume turned right down :o(
*speechless*
Warning, sports joke
[pen] You are Daryl Harper and I claim my 5 rand.
*gazes upwards at sports joke flying overhead, out of reach*
Howzat!
I think if you consider, you'll
Find that the game called Wizards' Duel
Has joined the choir invisibule -
In other words, it's dead.
It's not too much to do with me -
I've played but intermittently -
So would anybody mind if we
Played something else instead?
Find that the game called Wizards' Duel
Has joined the choir invisibule -
In other words, it's dead.
It's not too much to do with me -
I've played but intermittently -
So would anybody mind if we
Played something else instead?
Not in the least. And an extra point for rhyming.
I was at a Burns supper on Saturday night at which the songs were accompanied by mandolin and musical saw. Not quite as silly as swanee kazoo but an interesting combination nonetheless.
[rab] There's evidence that it was 'cutting edge' music in the heyday of the mandolin.
Bugger. Missed Burns Night. Always meant to go to one of them.
We hae meat an' we can eat
[Projoy] It's not too late. Burns Night is tonight - Rab is obviously not a true Scotsman if he's prepared to go to a supper on the wrong day just because it's the weekend (unless he's going to another tonight).
We'll be having our regular 'confuse-a-foreigner' night tonight with guests from Spain, Germany and China. This is one of the times when my Scottish blood, through the maternal line, takes precedence over the Welsh, on the paternal side.
We'll be having our regular 'confuse-a-foreigner' night tonight with guests from Spain, Germany and China. This is one of the times when my Scottish blood, through the maternal line, takes precedence over the Welsh, on the paternal side.
Alas, philspub is acting as a neutral venue for a skittles cup semi-final tonight, for which no supper is required. Any other week, and I'd've been able to do haggis for the skittles supper.
I suspect I might cook some tonight anyway, and have a small glass of whisky (Scapa 1993 is looking very inviting) to wash it down.
I suspect I might cook some tonight anyway, and have a small glass of whisky (Scapa 1993 is looking very inviting) to wash it down.
Malt Teasers
I suspect I'll be having a Ledaig 1990 before bedtime.
[INJ] Hate to disappoint you, but I am not in any reasonable sense a Scotsman.
Well, Burns Night was a non-event here. I did however have my birthday party. Involving a cake made of marshmallows, and being spanked for my years in the middle of a rowdy bar at 1am. It was great!
Age-related corporal punishment
They were all oldies, were they? Serves you right, young man. :-)
Worse, they were from the south. They have strange ways, down there.
I'm enjoying the new Cat on a Warm Tin Roof game (being a fan of the various film clubs). However, I was wondering if it was worth having an entry convention to differentiate between films, books, & songs... I was thinking - keep films in bold, books in italics, and songs in quote marks?
[Uncle Korky] I don't see the point in doing that. Am I missing something?
[UK] It's all that most of us can do to even post in the right game most of the time. I think you'd be asking way too much of us. :-)
Eh, if you're posting something unusually obscure, just post a hint as well. Besides, what typographic notation would we use for plays, musicals, etc.?
balloon.a.down.lead.like.goes.idea
[UK] Is your idea based on some local government entry convention/system/policy - ie. why do something once when you can employ three people to do it in triplicate? :)
[On the plus side - at least it blew away the tumbleweed in here]
[On the plus side - at least it blew away the tumbleweed in here]
Everything in its place
I'm sure we can work out a comprehensive notation system. Things like poems in UPPER CASE(unless they're by e e cummings) etc.
Clearly we need to start a notation game to sort out these little stylistic niggles before the new process is formally adopted.
Although, if we do that, we're going to need meta-notation to distinguish between styles proposed, under consideration, accepted and rejected. [Chalks] That's why we need a committee, of course; if you start doing this sort of thing properly it's bound to turn out to be more complicated than one head can contain.
I nominate Chalky to be on the ad hoc search committee charged with finding a steering committee to oversee the establishment of a notation game.
But surely we need to agree on the nomination procedures first?
[rab] Agreed, as long as we don't make things needlessly bureaucratic.
OK then, so I suggest the usual: each candidate will need the backing of twenty (20) signatures. In the event of more than one nomination, we'll need to instigate an election process. Obviously, the most sensible way to do this is a two-round procedure, where we use a single-transferrable vote to whittle down to two candidates, and a second round to decide the final victor. We will of course need to do this for each committee post, but it's a pretty straightforward procedure, so won't be much hassle to implement.
[rab] You start :o)
[pen] No can do - as maintainer of this site, it would open up a massive conflict of interest and leave me open to prosecution by the EU, probably.
*Resolves not to post anything stupid in future*
[Korks] Please do. Post, that is. Not 'not post'.
:):)
:):)
I wish I hadn't said that
[UK] I've made that resolution about once a week since debuting on the morniverse. Hasn't worked yet.
(INJ) Still doesn't work, does it. :-) Debuting??? Go on; it's a wind-up.
Daybooing
[Rosie] It's a tricky one, isn't it? It ought to be OK as a word, but I'm unhappy with all ways of pronouncing it.
verbing weirds nouns
I see what you've done there. Avoid 'debuting' at all costs. You can only 'make a debut'.
(INJ, pen) - I think I'd prefer deb-yewing with the accent on the first syllable. It'll turn up on Five Live now you've let it out of the bag.
While we're on the subject, how do people pronounce "valeting"?
deb-OO-ing
I would not say it, but if pushed, after thinking for a while: val-AY-ing or perhaps VAL-ay-ing.
Ugly.
[Flerdle] The common pronunciation I hear is 'VAL-ett-ing', at least when you're talking about car cleaning. Not heard it for being a gentleman's gentleman.
On a similar basis, I'm looking forward with relish to the challenges of gerunding "ballet", "fracas", "wii", "Playdoh" and "adieu"
(I've often thought the word "Boeing" looked rather awkward for related morphological/phonological tension reasons).
Ah, another good one to add to the list above would be "algebra".
I do have a fondness for the (not terribly prevalent, but permitted) alternative spelling of "queuing" that keeps the "e", resulting in "queueing"; a whopping 5 consecutive vowels.
Semi-tangentially
I seem to recall reading a newspaper article about an RSI-like injury that had been christened "wiiitis".
[INJ] That reminds me that "buffet" is pronounced "boo-fay" except when referring to catering provision on British trains, where it's "buff-it".
[rab] Really? I beg to differ. "Buff-it" would only be used by me as a verb relating to what strong winds can do to a person.
Buff, Eh?
[Rab] Not to mention the notices on the cross-channel ferries which say: 'To the buffet/Au Snack-bar'
aye, buff, ay!
Saying "boof-ay" here would get you strange looks.
(and that's for any pronunciation of "oo")
[flerdle] even "stool"?
I thought girls had "boof ay's" in the '60s.
(Phil) When you've polished your nice brass beer pump don't you then buff it for that extra gleam?
[Phil] Especially!
[Rosie] No. I have staff to do that for me :)
[flerdle] how are you pronouncing the "boof" of "boof-ay"? Like "boo" or "book"?
[flerdle] how are you pronouncing the "boof" of "boof-ay"? Like "boo" or "book"?
actually, it's Smörgåsbord
Either works just as badly - as I said. It's always "buff-ay" here unless you're over 80 and posh or putting it on. Buff as in huff, puff, stuff and, um, buff.
Snoo
I don't think we've had a week without at least a small covering of the white stuff since before Christmas. Most weeks, it has been topped up at least twice, but mostly melts away before the next lot comes. Gah.
(pen) - Are you bemoaning the fact that it doesn't stay or that it's there at all? With me it would be the latter. Cold, messy and stops you getting about. This view doesn't go down well with the weather newsgroups but they're mainly inhabited by 13-yr-olds, it seems to me, even if their actual age is over four thimes that. Roll on summer. Then they'll start throwing their toys about because they haven't got their promised thunderstorms.
[Rosie] That it's *still* coming. It started snowing this morning when I was eating breakfast. By the time I got in the car to drive to work, it was white over again. And then there was a snowstorm for an hour or so at mid-day. I have to concede that the roads have been fine though.
(pen) - Nothing mild in the next week but no ferocious cold either. Just well, crap, really. Haven't seen the sun for ages or much of the night sky.
Zonne
[Rosie] Poor you. Seeing the sun from time to time *does* make a difference. It was sunny this morning, and it was an incredibly cold but incredibly sunny day last Friday, when a friend visiting from England and my sister-in-law drove down to Belgium to see an exhibition of hellebores (surprisingly interesting - and incredibly fragrant) and took two walks - first through an arboretum deep in sunlit snow but full of colourful flowering witch-hazels, and secondly across a brilliantly sunny heath, covered in about 6" of snow, when I nearly froze my face off. And the stars last night were quite incredible too. Minus 3.5C this morning. Light ice on the car. No traffic - school holidays - hurrah!
Oh, and there were two storks sitting in a rudimentary stork's nest on a stork's nest pole alongside the road as I drove into work this morning. Perhaps they can see spring coming from that height.
feeling the need..
To dispel any ugly thoughts about stork baggage, no, I'm not.
[Penlope] Oh, poor you. ;)
Well, that thought certainly shut us all up!
[INJ] Don't let it. As I tried to say on Facebook (for those what do it) I'm much better Professional Uncle material than I am parent material. Besides, kids are so annoying, and so expensive. I just got a fresh bit of freelance work in, and celebrated by buying a new handbag. Now is that responsible parent-like behaviour?
Uncle pen
The mind boggles. BTW My mum had a nice handbag and we were still fed.
A thought of more than 8 words
Somehow, CdM continues to make splendid contributions to the 8-word game despite belligerently flouting the laws. Top Crescenteering.
[Tuj] Thank you. My greater pride, however, is that I just provoked pen into a rules violation.
Well done all of you.
Pride comes...
[CdM] as a fallen dish, left cold. Or something. ;o)
breaking the silence
SIX degrees on the way to work this morning. All the ice has disappeared from the water in the canals. Meanwhile, in Vancouver, NL's golden boy Sven Kramer (one gold medal under his belt already) was mislead by his coach as to when to change lanes in the speed skating, and lost a second gold medal in speed skating last night. The whole country is gutted this morning.
kiddiwinki
[pen] Professional Uncle? Is there something you are not telling us?
Losing a gold medal
[Penolope] How can you lose a gold medal on a skating rink, never mind two? Perhaps he needs a tighter belt or a better piece of string. On a more serious note: How can an experienced competitor get it so wrong and then blame his coach?
Sorry, penelope, it weren't deliberate like. :(
It's amazed me how little the French seem to care about the Olympics. But then we have political problems to worry about - oh, no, wait, that was the Netherlands too!
voting
Yep - a tumultuous week here in the flat country. I get to vote in local elections here next week, which will be interesting. But I've also made sure I can vote in the UK elections. Hurrah!
Jesus HUGHES
(Ping INJ) - One of the answers (correctly given) in last Monday's University Challange was "Anarcho-Syndicalism".
[Mono] Ditto here. It feels a little immoral being registered in two countries, but I wanted so much to vote for our regional council. We're also battening down the hatches because according to Météo-France, "WE'RE ALL DOOOMED!"
Yoo-hoo!
Anyone about?
Bum. The windy miller and I didn't vote - we were sitting drinking coffee in a very genteel Dutch front parlour, looking over a stadhuis and a canal and talking about planning issues and weather lore.
Bum. The windy miller and I didn't vote - we were sitting drinking coffee in a very genteel Dutch front parlour, looking over a stadhuis and a canal and talking about planning issues and weather lore.
Windy
No not the Miller, pen. Just bloody windy. Cold too. Brrr! Bring on Spring.
Coming out of London City Airport the other day, I was intrigued by two large signs instructing pilots to "CAUTION YOUR BLAST". Obviously this was the first thing I typed into Google when I got home, and it brought up many webpages with people asking what it meant. The answer I like best is the one that says it means not to accelerate too rapidly going onto the runway because you run the risk of blowing the ground crew over in the process.
(rab) How do you caution a blast? Do you say "OK, blast, you've committed an offence but we've decided not to prosecute this time provided you admit culpability"? Why don't these buggers speak English?
I think it might be due to limited sign space. I trust the interpretation of the message is part of a pilot's training, as being a native English speaker won't even help you with this one.
[rab] The turning points at LCY are very tight, and I suppose it must be to remind pilots to be wary of where their blast is directed.
This video shows an example of people not cautioning the blast of a Airbus 340, where the pilot has no choice of where to direct his full throttle "blast".
This video shows an example of people not cautioning the blast of a Airbus 340, where the pilot has no choice of where to direct his full throttle "blast".
It'd be interesting to collect signs that don't entirely say what they mean. The only two I can think of are "Blind Summit" in the UK, which means "there's something you need to be ready for beyond the crest of this hill; such as a single-track bridge, an abrupt curve or a yak crossing, but we're not telling"; and one you often see when exiting tunnels in the US, which just says "Lights". It's reminding you that you might have left your headlights on when leaving the tunnel but presumably they don't want to say "Turn your lights off now" for fear people would obey it at night.
(Dan) There was a (maybe apocryphal) example of that at a level crossing in Yorkshire where it said "Wait while red light shows" in case there's another train coming in the opposite direction. But there were cases where motorists stopped at a green light because colloquially the sign means "Wait until the red light shows". There are so many ways of rephrasing it but they missed them all.
[rab] I had exactly the same reaction when I last went through there.
Weather
Foul weather here last night, our coastal roads were closed because of the high tide overspill during the rush hour, resulting chaos. Very windy and torrential rain at times. So much for BST!
(Softers) I see you've still got a nice bracing force 6-7 with a few hail showers. It'll calm down pretty soon, though. And don't forget that but for the clocks you'd have got them an hour earlier. Not everything is bad.
Ten, long days and a lot of chocolate eggs
So has everyone finished their chocolate stash? The windy miller and I have resorted to buying the half-price leftover Easter Eggs in the supermarket - cappucino flavoured mini-eggs for me.
Any plans for the weekend? We'll go out to Willemstad (look it up on google maps - the town's fortifications are shaped like Lisa Simpson's hair) for coffee and appeltaart tonight, and the windy miller will have a trappist beer or two. Other than that... I have no idea.
Any plans for the weekend? We'll go out to Willemstad (look it up on google maps - the town's fortifications are shaped like Lisa Simpson's hair) for coffee and appeltaart tonight, and the windy miller will have a trappist beer or two. Other than that... I have no idea.
chocolate? what chocolate?
I had a Lindt mini egg. As I've all but wiped saturated fat out of my diet since about a month ago, the pleasure of eating it was overwhelmed by the disappointment that I had given in and eaten it. I'm enjoying getting into the jeans that I kept for 2 years in the hope that I'd fit into them again some day though.
[Phil] Now I feel fat and guilty. Cheers. ;o)
Trappist beer?
(pen) If anything loosens the tongue......
[Rosie] I imagine the brewers' taste testing sessions were conducted behind locked doors, and not everything was written down...
[pen] Soz, that wasn't my intention :-(
Html..
Hey guys, don't mean to butt in, or anything, but how do you do all the html thingies for the posts? I can do bold, italics and line spaces, but how do you do the other things. Please can someone help?
all the right moves ..
[FGZstar] Go to main menu page - bottom right you'll see 'settings - info' - press info :)
(FGZstar) Unfortunately, "info" links to a website (Dr Qu+xum, a former Morniverser) that is no longer there. Here are a few you might like:
hr = a page-wide grey underline
sup = superscript, sub = subscript
p = paragraph (adds an extra line space)
font size="x" where x can go from -2 to +2.
strike = a line through the text
href="url"> any message</a> for an external link.
There is loads more which you can Google. Go for the simplest stuff or you'll end up learning the entirety of Hungarian literature when all you want is to ask for the loo.
hr = a page-wide grey underline
sup = superscript, sub = subscript
p = paragraph (adds an extra line space)
font size="x" where x can go from -2 to +2.
strike = a line through the text
href="url"> any message</a> for an external link.
There is loads more which you can Google. Go for the simplest stuff or you'll end up learning the entirety of Hungarian literature when all you want is to ask for the loo.
Cockup
Before "href" insert <a
As an alternative to monkeying with the font size, you can use <small> </small> and <big> </big> tags.
HTML Primer
I have a saved copy of DrQu+xum's helpful primer stashed away somewhere. I'll dig it out and make it available online again.
primed
Might be simplest to host it here if you find it. Whatever, I'll update the link if the source material can be tracked down.
yer tiz
Okay, here goes!
fraser+info2=success!
Thanks, guys! I seem to be cured of my affliction!
Dr Q
(INJ) Bugger me, it's still there. Why couldn't I get it earlier?
hmmm
[FGZstar] Curiously enough - I had a hunch you might demonstrate your new found prowess. All power to you :)
more html queries
Okay, now that I have the basics, I would like some direction in terms of photos. Can i put in the file ref of my memory card or temp storage device and it will upload, or do I need to keep the file in permanent storage on the computer?
[FGZstar] There's no uploading to this site, and unless your computer is running a web server and is online all the time, a picture stored on it won't be visible anywhere else. You would need to upload the picture to somewhere of your own on the web, and link to it from here.
There are sites like Photobucket that will allow you to do that. (Although I think that one's owned by Rupert Murdoch, so you may have philosophical objections to using it). ImageShack is another.
(Raak, rab) Can I do that with Flickr? My God, you're all doomed.
If it's on Flickr, or Zooomr, or anywhere else, you can link it here. Whether you should...
[Raak] Nice panoramic - but a bit sticky-outy to the right. Where be it?
(Chalky) Click on it and you'll find it's probably not far from Naarj.
[Chalky] The view from my office window (carefully zoomed and cropped to avoid the concrete). Doesn't stick out on my screen. :-)
One day, I'll put up a pic from my office window - downtown Rotterdam, skyscrapers, splendid bridges and all. One the other hand, from my home office (the spare room) I can see the sails of a windmill, a thatched barn, and the village hall. And a load of very, very ordinary houses, all very close together.
What about Facebook? I've got some pretty panoramics pics i've taken over my travels, I'll put some up soon, or I'll link to my facebook for any other FB members out there