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Wednesday 31st October 2007
08:21 GMT
|
This
morning has started off very dull. The forecast is for cloud for the
next few days. Despite the cloud there has been no rain, although it
does feel quite damp outside. I think I would describe the temperature
as very cool rather than chilly. Maybe I should refine that description
to say that the temperature is just high enough to make standing around
in just a jacket reasonably tolerable. I think my morning paper
actually put a (forecast) number on the temperature of 9° C
(although I made no attempt to pay much attention to it, and so my
recollection is actually more of a guess !).
I never did make the early train last night. If I had walked very
fast I may have caught it, but I elected not to take a chance and went
for a smoke instead. One problem with Waterloo East station is that
once you are on the platform, it is a major hike back to the road where
you can still smoke. So I caught the 16:55 train, and it was almost
dark by then. It was well and truly night when I arrived home, and yet
I did manage to do a little housework before I slumped down in front of
the TV. I emptied Nelly's litter tray, and did a load of laundry. Then
I did very little except watch old episodes of Monty Python's Flying
Circus.
I was late getting to bed for some reason. I thought I would
probably fast asleep by as early as 8.30 pm, but it was at least an
hour after that when I did finally get into bed. Having got in bed I
was asleep within minutes. Despite getting to bed so late I was still
awake at 4 am. This morning I attempted to go back to sleep again until
as late as 5.30 am, but sleep never came properly, and I was downstairs
feeding the cats at 4.30 am.
I am not sure how I feel after less sleep than I desire. Maybe I
am a little tired, but it will be this afternoon before the effect
really kicks in. I am almost over my cold. My nose has stopped running
since yesterday, but it still needs a good blow a couple of times an
hour as my sinuses drain. My smokers cough is definitely a little worse
since going down with the cold. On both trains this morning I had an
extended coughing fit, but fortunately it was not that sort of hacking
cough that just goes on and on until you are blue in the face. Maybe it
will get worse later, or maybe it will get better later. These things
are hard to predict.
One of two things will happen tonight. I will either be in the pub, or I will be in bed earlier than last night. |
Tuesday 30th October 2007
05:00 GMT
|
I
still haven't quite got the hang of the clocks changing to GMT. Hence I
am up far earlier than I could be. Right now it is cold and dark, but
it looks dry outside. There is some condensation on the cars, but it is
not cold enough for that to be frost. I really have no idea what the
weather is going to be like today. Despite forecasts to the contrary,
yesterday remained mainly sunny all day. During the early afternoon it
was most pleasant while I was out smoking on the fire escape at work.
It faces south, and so is in an excellent position as a sun trap.
The brickwork soaks up the heat of the sun and re-radiates it back
during times when the sun goes in.
My hopes of getting home during daylight last night did not fully
come to fruition. I left early enough to make sure I caught the early
train from Waterloo East, and it was daylight when I arrived back at
Catford, but I went home via Tesco. I was only in Tesco for a short
time, but by the time I left dusk had already set in, and the sky
had already gone a dark grey when I arrived home. The same will happen
again tonight because I will be calling in at Tesco for fresh supplies
of fags on my way home. Provided there are no queues I will be out
again a lot quicker than last night, but that will probably not be
enough to compensate for the ever shortening hours of daylight.
After I got in last night I fed the cats, and fed myself. I
watched a couple of old episodes of Monty Pythons Flying Circus, and by
7.30 pm I was feeling like it was close to bed time. So I turned off
the TV and spent a little time at the computer. By 8.30 pm I was just
about fast asleep in bed. I slept soundly until 3 am this morning when
I woke up from a really rather pleasant dream. I am not sure of the
context of the dream. All I can remember was that I appeared to be in
either a plane, or helicopter, flying slowly (and silently) along the
coast line.The views were great, but the reason eludes me. After a
visit to the toilet I got back into bed and managed to sleep until a
little after 4 am. Ideally I would have liked to sleep until about 5
am, but sometimes it is not worth fighting it.
Next week I am taking the whole week off work. I have nothing
planned for that week, and I am just using up some of my spare leave.
To say I have nothing planned is only partly true. One plan is to force
myself to stay up later in the evening, and hopefully sleep later in
the morning to re-sychronise myself with the clocks. That may work, but
in all probability I will still be getting up absurdly early, and then
go back to sleep after a couple of hours. I think I would like to do
that right now, but pretty soon I ought to start getting ready for
work. It's going to feel like another long day at work, and I can see
myself being in bed well before 9 pm tonight again. |
Monday 29th October 2007
08:30 GMT
|
It
was actually daylight when I left home for work. It still seemed a bit
gloomy though. Since then the cloud has broken up a bit, and here in
Wandsworth the sun is shining. My morning paper suggested that this
morning would be very cloudy, and there was a fair chance of rain. That
was how it seemed when I left home, and I guess the cloud could clump
together later on. I made sure I kept an eye on the time it got dark
last night. For the next couple of days, provided I can catch the 16:31
train at Waterloo East station, I will just about make it home in
daylight. After that darkness will fall progressively closer to the
time I leave work, until my entire journey home will be done in
darkness. How depressing !
I didn't get up to much yesterday. I probably spent more time
blowing my nose than anything else. I couldn't even find the energy to
go to Tesco - which did not please the cats because the only cat food I
have left, does not really meet with their approval !
This morning I feel sort of good, but that is really only
relative to how I felt yesterday, and the day before. My nose, although
still getting blocked quite frequently, has stopped gushing like a fire
hose. I ate quite lightly yesterday, and that has left me feeling more
comfortable this morning. Most amazingly, despite a lot of sitting, or
laying down, my back does not seem to be troubling me much compared to
many recent Monday mornings. On the down side, the normal after effects
of a head cold are kicking in. All the mucus I did not blow out my nose
has seeped into my air ways, and I am coughing up quite big lumps this
morning. When I first woke I thought I was going to lose my voice such
was the violence of some of the coughing. Even that has settled down
now, but experience suggests that a tickly smokers cough will probably
be with me until next spring. |
Sunday 28th October 2007
04:16 GMT
|
The
clocks have finally changed back to GMT, and so we get an extra hour in
bed in the mornings. The slightly good thing about this is that it will
be lighter on the way into work. While the terrible thing about it is
that it will mean it is darker on the way home. Initially it will feel
like I am working overtime as I will have to wait an extra hour for the
clock to creep round to 4 pm. The other transitional change that will
bring some grief is persuading the cats they they ought not to get me
up at 4 am for their breakfast.
The weather yesterday was dry, but it was dull nearly all day. Today I think it will be worse with some rain forecast.
The saga of my broken hot water tap in my kitchen has now
concluded. Yesterday morning I fitted one of the tap mechanisms that
Kevin gave me, and it both fitted, and worked perfectly. The only
problem was that my old tap handle did not fit on the new mechanism. So
I went to a plumbers called Stonemans, which is a handy 10 minutes walk
from here. They came highly recommended but when I showed them my old
tap handle, and the other spare mechanism as a guide for the fitting, I
was snootily told they they do not deal with mere acrylic tap handles.
They made no attempt to offer any suggestions so I jumped on a passing
bus and went the three stops round to Wickes. I couldn't find any spare tap handles there, but I did see tap conversion kits.
These kits contain a pair of mechanisms with the tap handles, and a few
adaptors. At just £9.99 (although marked on the shelf at
£11.99) they were just what I needed - and cheap too ! I didn't
bother to take out the mechanism that Kevin had given me because the
handles from these kits fitted on Kevin's mechanism perfectly. So now I
have two slightly mismatched taps in my kitchen, but more importantly,
two working taps in my kitchen.
A final footnote about Wickes : They supply a trade where
measurements are pretty important. I am surprised that when consulting
their web pages I notice that my next nearest store is listed as being
just one mile away. I know from local knowledge that that is wrong.
Putting the two postcodes into Google maps
(which they actually link to on the store finder page) gives a distance
of 2.8 miles, and that seems to me to be much more likely !
This morning, the same as yesterday, I am suffering from a cold.
I don't feel too bad except for a very drippy nose, although the not
too bad really only refers to extreme liesure activity (i.e. lounging
about at home). I just hope that it doesn't effect my chest too much. I
know there will be some effect, but I hope it doesn't go as far as
causing me to cough until my eyes are watering all the way to work on a
crowded train. That is a most unpleasant experience, and probably
pretty unpleasant for my fellow commuters as well.
As well as the cold I was struck down by bad guts yesterday
afternoon. I felt a little rough in the morning, but I was initially
too involved in tap maintenance and ignored it. By early afternoon I
needed to go to Tesco, but I could not make it until quite late into
the afternoon. In fact it was practically early evening before I felt
stable enough to dare leave the house. In the preeceding hours I was
rarely far away from the toilet, and for a lot of the time actually
sitting on it. After everything had calmed down, and I had finally done
my shopping, I proceeded to eat normally. So far this morning I appear
to be fairly normal in the gut department - at least for now !
Today I will just be resting, and trying to throw off this cold I
have. Hopefully it will be mostly over by the time I go back to work
tomorrow morning. I have no doubts there will still be some remnants
left over in the morning, but provided my nose stops gushing I will
probably be OK. It is possible that I will have another go at my new
laser printer later this afternoon, but I don't feel like that right
now. In fact I am now going to get back into my bed and try for many
hours more sleep. |
Friday 26th October 2007
06:38 BST
|
Another
cold dark morning, but at least it is dry, or dry at this moment. The
forecast is for lots of heavy cloud, and the chance of some showers. I
think today will be very much like yesterday. I am not sure if I can
recall any sunshine yesterday, and if there was any it must have been
so brief as to be unnoticeable. There was some rain yesterday, but I
managed to miss it all apart from a few misty bits of very light
drizzle.
I should be leaving for work in a few minutes, but I am waiting
for my hair to get a bit drier before venturing out. The fact that I
have got wet hair, and have had a wet shave this morning, is something
like a stroke of luck. Last night I had a small, but significant,
plumbing disaster. The hot water tap on my kitchen sink has for many
years been a little cranky. The hot water leechs away the lubricant on
the internal workings of the tap. For maybe the last ten years, and
maybe even more than that, I have had to dismantle it every 9 - 12
months and apply the best lubricant I can lay my hands on at the time.
The time to do this has always been indicated by the tap becoming
exceptionally stiff and almost impossible to turn off completely.
Everytime I have dismantled it I have noticed that the thread that the
plunger runs up and down on has been wearing away. Last night that
thread finally stripped and I was unable to turn off the water. I was
fortunate in that I had a spare tap washer. By putting two washers in I
was able to stop the flow completely, but then could not turn the tap
on again. So I have no hot water in the kitchen, but because of my
bodge I could turn the feed back on and still get hot water in the
bathroom (where it is more essential).
Last night I had a drink with Kevin. I explained the tap problem
to him before we left for the pub, and by chance he had changed the
inner workings of his taps fairly recently, and still had the old
mechanisms. Both (hot and cold) are in far better condition than mine,
and he gave them bith to me in the pub. I have not had a chance to try
them yet, but I am pretty certain that I can use one, or the other, to
repair my tap. Ideally I should change the whole tap, but I reckon if
Kevin's tap bits fit in my tap it will keep me going for another ten
years. I might not even be alive when the time comes to do another
repair (providing I am more concientous in greasing the new tap
mechanism before it gets too stiff this time).
I will not get a chance to try repairing the tap until a lot
later tonight, and maybe even tomorrow morning. Aleemah is coming over
tonight, for a few hours, and we will be too busy to play with water
taps !
I will not be seeing Aleemah tomorrow (which is why I am seeing
her tonight) and that will leave me the whole day for other projects.
Those might include tap maintenance, trying to get the laser printer
working, and one other thing which I may well do tonight after Aleemah
goes home. I have finally received the old laptop wireless card that I
ordered last week. I tried it in an ancient laptop at work, and it
worked OK on that., but I still have doubts it will work on my old IBM
laptop. The laptop I tried it on at work only had 24 MB of memory, and
I do have a little more than that, but it was running Windows 98 on a
475 MHz processor. My IBM laptop, the only laptop I have that has
useable batteries, and hence is still mobile, runs Windows 95 on a 100
MHz processor. Maybe I will be pushing my luck trying it on that
laptop, but if all else fails I am fairly confident it will work on my
NEC laptop. The batteries on that laptop only provide 23.66 nS of life
(!) so mobile use is out of the question, but it does have 40 MB of ram
and a 133 MHz processor running Windows 98. So apart from being a
little slower, it's spec is not too diferent to the old laptop at work. |
Thursday 25th October 2007
06:48 BST
|
Overnight,
the clouds have kept some warmth in, and this morning is only mildly
cold. Mildly cold is the same as very chilly, but without any frost !
It is still at least 40 minutes away from sun rise. So I can't really
observe anything else until I can see what the day actually looks like.
The forecast is for more heavy cloud, but no rain, as far as I can
remember.
The whole can of prunes I ate on Tuesday night finally made it
through my sytem last night. It was not as bad as I feared. In fact it
was not bad at all. I had to make no sudden unplanned dashes to the
toilet, and yet there were a few times when I most definitely needed
access to a nearby toilet. Perhaps the very worst was the toilets at
Clapham Junction station. They are pretty disgusting, probably the
worst of any toilets at a major rail station. As well as the smell, and
general poor state of repair, they are small and cramped too. It is
hard to imagine at what they proudly claim to be Britains busiest
railway station, there are just two cubicles, and standing space for
maybe five men in those dingy toilets (and to get five men standing so
close together they would have to be very pally !). Anyway, the deed
was done, and I was then comfortable the rest of the way home.
I didn't do anything last night (I am not referrring to more
visits to the toilet now !). I should/could have been drinking with
Kevin, but I was not sure if that was wise once I knew the prunes were
working, and Kevin was still a fair way away when I spoke to him about
an hour before we would have been meeting in the pub. So we called it
off, and may try again tonight.
This morning it is obvious that I have not yet left for work (I
should have been on the train 13 minutes ago). My reason this morning
is not anything to do with prunes, but it is because I am waiting for a
couple of aspirins to damp down an exceedingly stiff back. I think they
are working even now. When I first woke up the whole of the left side
of my back felt stiff and sore. The only reason I can think of for this
to happen was bad sleep posture. I did not get to bed as early as I
desired, although it was not that late, and when I did go to bed I fell
asleep almost instantly. I did feel a little too warm in bed and
probably did not pull the duvet over part of my back before I fell
asleep. So I guess the left side of my back got chilled during the
night. A very hot shower has helped a lot, and if I am lucky the
aspirins will finish the job because it is almost certain that I will
have to stand all, or at least part of, the way on the late train up to
London. |
Wednesday 24th October 2007
08:23 BST
|
It
was not so cold as yesterday this morning. There was no frost, and the
air had lost it's vicious bite. It remains dry, although today, and
tomorrow, is forecast to be very cloudy. It was really quite gloomy
even as I came through the streets of Wandsworth. At least for a few
days yet, until the clocks change to GMT, it is still nice and light on
my way home from work.
Nothing much happened last night. I cooked myself a rice and
seafood concoction, something pretty close to a paella, but no chicken,
and it was most tasty. It was a pretty big dinner, but soon after I
felt like eating even more. There were possibly many bad things I could
have potentially eaten, but I chose mad over bad and ate a whole can of
prunes. What will happen to me later on is anyone's guess, but things
seem stable for now.
Our government seems hell bent on disenfranchising every one in
the country. I think it is a cunning plan. Once they have pissed off
everybody they will retreat behind their iron fortress and declare the
population too unstable to allow any future elections. They have
already pissed me off to point 5 on the aggro scale.
The aggro scale:
- Staying in bed not caring.
- Moaning a bit.
- Using four letter words to describe the government.
- Shouting four letter words about the government.
- Hoping (and praying if you are that way inclined) that some MPs get run over by buses.
- Sticking pins in wax effigies of government ministers
and certain paranoid schitzophrenics who claim to run, or
represent, the health service.
- Throwing flower bombs at the houses of parliament.
- Carrying a ruscksack filled with chappatis and hair conditioner onto the tube.
- Growing a beard, wrapping a tea towel around your head and screaming "death to the infidels"
I think I'll avoid number nine, but I might wrap tin foil
around my head and scream "death to the minister of pissing people off"
(whichever one it happens to be at the time). So what has provoked this
outrage ? Read this (it should open up in a new tab or window). |
Tuesday 23rd October 2007
08:18 BST
|
Yesterday
it was cold and dark when I left home. This morning it was even colder
! The sky was really clear and a lot of stars were easily seen
despite London's light pollution.
The most important change to yesterday was that there was a thick frost
this morning. I get the impression that it is really a little too early
for such frosts, and that we are not doing enough to promote global
warming. If I could afford it, I would definitely turn up my heating to
ensure that lots more carbon dioxide is let loose into the air.
Yesterday was a bit of a bland day. It stayed pretty cool
throughout the day, but we did have a fair bit of sunshine during the
morning. Later in the afternoon it came over all dull and gloomy. This
contributed to a fairly depressing commute home. My feelings of
depression were made worse by a terrible health and safety lapse on the
train. Both doorways from my train were blocked by prams containing
screaming brats. If we had to evacuate the train in a hurry we would
have had somehow kick them out of the way first. Why can't they be
carried on the roof or somewhere if they have to travel by train.
It was a relief to get off that train and walk the last few
hundred yards home again. (Just how far is it ? - 300 yards, 800 yards,
- I don't know, but it takes about 6 or 7 minutes at a fast stroll to
walk it). I never really did anything of importance when I got home. I
am not even sure what I did to make the evening so short. I know that I
burnt three iso images that had been downloading overnight, and during
the day, onto disks. There was the big Kubuntu 7.10 image which fitted onto one DVD, and Xubuntu
7.10 desktop and alternate images that went onto CDs. Oddly enough, my
fresh installation of Kubuntu 7.10 was the "release candidate" and was
small enough to fit onto one CD, and did not need the almost 4.3GB
capacity of a DVD disk.
Apart from burning disks, cooking my dinner (not burning it), and eating my dinner, I watched a couple of old episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus,
and then went to bed. I was still not in bed as early as I could have
been. I think I would have liked to have been fast asleep by 9 pm, or
maybe even earlier than that, but it was closer to 10 pm when I finally
fell asleep.
It is really annoying when you wake up, busting for a pee, less
than an hour before you are due to get up anyway. That happened to me
this morning. I wasn't sure whether I would get up there and then, or
attempt to get more sleep. In the end I got back into bed and was
asleep a lot faster than I had imagined I would be. Falling asleep
that easily suggests to me that getting to sleep earlier last
night would have been beneficial, and tonight I must try and make a
point of getting to bed at a reasonable hour. |
Monday 22nd October 2007
08:23 BST
|
It
was cold and dark when I left home, but apart from some dew it was dry.
It was still fairly dark as my train approached Waterloo East Station.
After spending a couple of minutes in the toilet on platform B at
Waterloo East I came out to find the sun had just reached the horizon.
For a few minutes we were bathed in a most eerie light. It wasn't quite
pink, and it wasn't quite orange, but a sort of mixture of both tinged
with purple. It was a most peculiar colour, and seemed to have sinister
overtones. For those few minutes it was like being on an alien planet.
In the few minutes it too to walk to Waterloo main line station the
colour faded away, and the sky just looked a misty blue colour.
the sinister aspect of the dawn is that it heralded more cloudy
weather. Since arriving in Wandsworth the sky actually looks darker,
but I can see one weak ray of sunshine penetrating the clouds.
The weekend was mostly fine, weather wise. Very cool mornings
gave way to sunny days on both Saturday and Sunday. Although it was
still a bit cool outside, the sun pouring through the windows soon
heated up the front rooms. Particularly the upstairs front bedroom.
I didn't see Aleemah this weekend. She was feeling tired and ill,
and did not want to go out. So on Saturday morning I reconstructed my
new laser printer. The printer was a present from Kevin, or more
accurately his wife. It had gone dead in her office and was replaced,
and I was offered the dead hulk. The printer is an HP4000 laserjet
printer, and the fault was in the power supply. Kevin brought it round
to me on Friday night and we dismantled it right then to see what had
happened. The fault was actually simple. there was a big hole burnt in
some insulation. One of two things had happened. One possibility is
that a sharp point on the connection to a relay had rubbed it's way
through the insulation on a screening plate, or a dry joint on that
same connection had caused arcing that had melted through the
insulation. Whichever it was had resulted in the connection pin of the
relay being vaporised as it had come into contact with the earthed
metal screen.
Making that diagnosis was not easy. The power supply is deep
inside the heart of the printer, and it took a lot of experimental
dismantling to extract it. I fixed the power supply problem on Saturday
morning, and re-assembled the printer. At first I thought everything
was OK. The lights came on, and the menus on the small display all
worked, but when I tried to print a test sheet the paper jammed, and
jammed again on every retry. Somewhere, deep inside the bowels of the
printer, I have made a mistake in the re-assembly. The ironic thing is
that I do have a manual for the printer, but to be usable it should be
printed out. At over 100 pages the obvious thing would be to use the
laser printer - but it doesn't work yet !
For the time being I have left the printer for another day.
During Saturday afternoon I decided to upgrade my Linux PC from Kubuntu
6.10 to Kubuntu 7.10 (aka Gutsy Gibbon). Although I say upgrade, it was
actually a completely fresh installation. So the first thing I did was
to back up some important files onto the Windows partition of the hard
drive (it is a dual boot machine). Then I deleted all the Linux
partitions and started again from scratch. Doing the actual
installation was quick and easy, but I was using a pre-release version
of "Gutsy Gibbon" and accepted the software's offer to install all the
latest releases to bring it 100% up to date. With that all done I
started doing my personal customisations to the desktop, etc. It was
gone midnight before I gave up and went to bed. I resumed again on
Sunday morning. By midday I had got everything looking like I wanted,
and installed some additional programs. I also managed to get one of my
servers automatically mounted on the root file system for ease of use.
The other server needs some slightly different parameters for the same
use, and I have yet to accomplish that yet. The final thing was to set
up the printer to be shared across my network. It was a bit fiddly, but
I managed it in the end. I then spent a happy hour testing printing
from all the PCs on my network. The old iMac was the strangest of all.
It did not look like it was set up correctly. I could not print a test
page because that option was greyed out, but when I attempted to print
out a web page it worked perfectly.
After playing with all the computers I went to Tesco, to buy my
fruit for work, and then spent a lazy afternoon watching ancient "B
movie" sci fi films, and generally lazing around. |
Friday 19th October 2007
07:19 BST
|
There
is a red glow on the eastern horizon as the sun creakily hauls itself
up over the edge of the world. Traditionally this heralds bad weather,
but the weather forecasts say today will be bright and sunny. However
the weather actually turns it it will be a cold day. There were clear
skies overnight and I think we only escaped a frost by a fraction of a
degree. Maybe there is a touch of frost on some more sheltered bits of
ground, but I haven't been out to investigate it yet. The cars I can
see from my window look to have condensation on them, but it doesn't
look like glittering white frost from here.
Yesterday started very cold, but it was reasonably bright, and
the sun was out and shining for a lot of the day. By later afternoon it
had warmed up sufficiently to make smoking out on the fire escape a
pleasant enough experience while only wearing a t-shirt.
Yesterday, in a small diversion from working, I tracked down a PCMCIA
wireless network card that is old enough that it is supposed to work
with Windows 95. It was fairly cheap too. I placed the order via Amazon.co.uk
That was the first time I have used Amazon, and it seemed a relatively
pleasant and efficient process. The card itself is coming through a
third party. So I hope they are as efficient as Amazon seem to be. The
card itself is, in reality, just a bit of a toy. I read recently about
someone refurbishing an ancient lap top (In Micro Mart),
and that reminded me of my two ancient lap tops. I once tried to use a
wireless network card in those lap tops, but the card I had demanded so
much system resources that it swamped the whole system. Maybe this new
card will work, or maybe it won't. Time will tell, but it only an
experiment rather than any major need for wireless connectivity on
those lap tops. Although I suppose there could be times when it could
be useful. Of course only one of the lap tops, the very slowest, has
any useful battery life. In fact one of the lap tops, the NEC one, has
zero battery life and needs to be permanently wired to the mains to
use. It seems that delivery of my new card could take as much as a
week, so I won't be experimenting too soon.
Last night I went and had a drink with Kevin in The Ram. I only
stayed for two pints. So that can hardly explain the really bad
diarrhoea I am suffering from this morning (and the reason I am still
at home instead of being at work). I seem to be fairly stable now, but
my stomach still feels pretty horrible. |
Wednesday 17th October 2007
06:51 BST
|
The
weather gets worse. It is wet and windy this morning. The wind is not
that strong, but occasional gusts make the rain hit the window panes.
The rain is set to last for much of the day, but I believe it should
fizzle out eventually, and drier, sunnier, weather is on it's way.
Apparently Friday should be a good day, although a little colder than
of late.
I am not looking forward to going to work in the rain, but that
is not why I am sitting here writing instead of just boarding my train
at this very moment. I decided I just had to wash my hair this morning,
and that has delayed me just enough to make running for the train
impractical. I now aim to get the 07:30 train even though I dislike
that train on account of it always being very crowded, and I inevitably
have to stand for most of the journey up to Waterloo East.
Last night I cooked myself a rather delicious meal. I wanted to
use up the rest of Sunday's beef and decided to make a rice dish
loosely based on a cross between paella and biryani. I first lightly
fried up an onion, a couple of cloves of garlic, one rather old wilted
red chilli, and some ginger. To this I added the diced up beef, and a
couple of beef stock cubes. After the onions started to brown I poured
in a couple of cups of Tesco Thai rice and gently fried that for a few
minutes. Then it I added some boiling water and let the whole lot
gently simmer with a lid on the saucepan. After about twenty minutes
(maybe less - I wasn't really counting) I was left with a really
delicious meal. There was rather a lot of it, and if I can successfully
reheat it I will be finishing it off tonight.
I didn't get to sleep as early as I would have desired last
night. It seems that last night was the night for phone calls. I had
two fairly long incoming calls that delayed me finishing what I was
doing, and made me late getting up to bed. In fact the last one came
through just as I was starting to undress for bed. Fortunately that
call was fairly short. I don't think I got to sleep until 10 pm, or
maybe even a little later than that. I slept through to 3.45 am before
awaking for the first time. Now that is an unusual time for me to wake
up in the night. 2 am and around 4 am are far more common times. I got
back to sleep again fairly easily, and finally woke up, and got up, at
5.15 am. It feels like I got enough sleep, but a bit more might have
been desirable.
Tonight, all being well, will be drinking night. I don't know who
might turn up, but I feel I will have to be unsociable and leave at 9
pm at the very latest, and maybe a little earlier than that. It seems
with these short days, with dark mornings, I need far more sleep than
during the long summer days.
09:02 BST - Update
So much for my theories about the weather. Here in Wandsworth the sky is blue, and the sun is shining !! |
Tuesday 16th October 2007
08:20 BST
|
This
morning is as grey as yesterday, but today there is some rain about. So
far I have missed most of the showers apart from a very light, half
hearted, sprinkle of rain while I smoked a fag outside Waterloo
station. The outlook for the rest of the day is for more rain, but it
will remain quite mild.
I felt dreadful yesterday, and was in bed, fast asleep, by 8.30
pm. I awoke a few times in the night, the first time being at 2 am.
With five and half hours solid sleep I was feeling better even then. I
awoke from a very interesting dream. Before going to bed I had been
watching an ancient episode of Danger Man,
and this influenced my dream. As far as I can remember I was only a
passive observer in this dream which was about "Danger Man". He had
taken some spy photographs and needed to enhance them to bring out more
details in the faces. The method used was fascinating, and I am not so
sure that it was not of my own invention. It was a method similar to
what can be done electronically using such computer programs as Photoshop,
but this was all done using old chemical film. He made a print from the
negative and proceeded to darken the faces on it even more by using a
soft pencil (or something). Then he photographed that and loaded both
the original negative, and the new negative into the enlarger to print
off a composite picture. The new negative being used as a mask for the
old negative to selectively decrease the exposure. I realise there are
some flaws in that process, but in theory it should work. I don't
think I can recall such a process being used, but I am familiar with
the technique of dodge and burn. (The link, to a wiki page, does seem to mention using fixed masks, so maybe my idea is not quite so novel after all).
After "taking a leak",
and committing to memory as much of my dream as possible, I was soon
fast asleep again. I awoke again at a little after 4 am, and once
again could remember some dream fragments. The one I would have liked
to remember better is one that was getting quite erotic, but sadly I am
left more with a nice feeling rather than any specific details. I did
consider getting up right away, but thought I might just lie back a bit
and get up in a more lazy fashion. I was most surprised when I realised
it was 5.20 am.
Obviously I needed a lot of sleep last night. I do feel so much
better for it this morning. I still feel a little creaky, but the waves
of fatigue I was suffering yesterday seem to be gone, as do the the
headaches I was also suffering from. I think I might even live !
I have no plans tonight beyond calling in at Tesco's on the way
home from work. I think it might be prudent to get another early night
in. I don't think it will be as early as last night, but I hope I can
be deep in sleep by, say, 9.30 pm. With luck I might pick up on the
erotic dream I was having early this morning, but that never happens :-( |
Monday 15th October 2007
08:36 BST
|
It's a grey morning. There is no hint of any sun, but at least it is dry. It is also fairly mild.
I feel crap this morning. I had a pleasant day yesterday, but ate
far too much. I had my big sausage breakfast when I got back from
Tesco. I never did find the spicy sausages that I mentioned yesterday,
and I had to settle for ordinary pork sausages. Later on I had some
chocolate cake, and then in the evening I had a full roast dinner. I
decided to splash out on a nice looking bit of beef. I slowly cooked it
for about 4 hours on a very low gas, and wrapped in foil. Then I
unwrapped it and gave it full blast on the middle shelf of the oven,
and with some roast potatoes, and mixed winter vegetables on the top
shelf. It was truly delicious, and I regret getting so stuffed at
breakfast because I would love to have found room for more of that
delicious beef.
I went to bed feeling very full, but I seemed to be comfortable
when I dropped off to sleep at around 9 pm. At 2 am I awoke with a
start and promptly bit my tongue deeply enough to draw blood. From then
on I could not seem to find a comfortable position for me or for the
pillows, and I kept waking up all the time.
So this morning I am tired. I feel stiff from sleeping at all
unusual angles. My gut still feels a little bloated, and assorted
internal organs feel sore. To add to the discomfort of my morning
commute into work, my blood sugar level is probably high because I have
been sweating all the way here. I have been here nearly 30 minutes now
and I am gradually feeling better, but I doubt the tiredness will go
away.
Tonight I was due to attend a lecture with Aleemah, put on by the Royal Society.
I am not so sure that I want to go now, but maybe I will feel more like
it later this afternoon. If I don't make it, all is not
necessarily lost. Many of their lectures are web cast, and the web
casts are archived for later viewing - or so their website says. I
haven't actually checked that for myself yet. In fact as I write, their
web site seems to have crashed ! |
Sunday 14th October 2007
09:23 BST
|
It's
a fine autumn morning. The sun is shining, and turning the autumn
leaves a golden colour. It's not too cold either. Yesterday was
deceptively mild. There was a lot of quite heavy looking cloud around,
but from time to time the sun broke through, and the rain stayed away.
Today the sky is hazy, but looks free from any cloud. Whether it will
stay that way is hard to guess, but if the sun stays out for a fair
time, and the same mild breeze blows like it did yesterday, it could
end up as quite a warm day.
I had a pleasant time with Aleemah yesterday. It was a bit of a
rush getting everything together before going out to meet her, and once
we were back in Catford I had to drag her round Tesco because I did not
have enough time for any shopping before I met her.
This morning I have more shopping to do. I need the usual bits
for the cats, and some fruit for eating at work, but I fancy some
sausages for breakfast. I don't know why this particular craving has
come about. Maybe it was something in a now forgotten dream,
but within half an hour of waking up I suddenly thought that
sausages for breakfast would be a great idea. I hope that Tesco have
some nice spicy sausages, but if not I am sure I'll find something
equally tasty.
After I have finished my breakfast, and attended to a pile of
dirty dishes that are sitting in the sink even now, I am not sure what
I will be doing. If the sun stays shining it would be nice to take a
wander around the park with my camera, but I am not sure if I can be
bothered. It would be nicer to be with someone to share the experience.
If Patricia was still living here I am sure that she would enjoy a walk
around the park (if she was not stuck catching up on even more
interminable translation work).
Maybe I'll have yet another couch potato day. I do have several
TV recordings to catch up on/amuse me, and do still have three quarters
of the weeks New Scientist to read. |
Saturday 13th October 2007
08:41 BST
|
This
morning it is dry, but there is still a high mist that is making the
sky look grey. Later on it should clear, and the day might live up to
the forecasted sunny spells.
I heard from Patricia that she would not be available to meet
after work last night, and so I did not attempt to rush home from work.
In fact I left a few minutes late rather than the five minutes early
that I would otherwise have done. In consequence I was too late to get
my early train from Waterloo East. My bus from Wandsworth to Clapham
Junction was obviously running early with the driver doing his best to
make the journey last as long as possible to try and get back on time.
When I got up on the platforms at Clapham Junction station I found that
there had been some severe delays. I have no idea what caused these
delays, but I only had to wait a minute before the 16:01 train rolled
in at 16:27 ! We reached Waterloo station possibly in slightly less
time than usual, and I had time for a leisurely fag before boarding my
train back to Catford.
When I got home I had to deal with the usual priorities (feeding
the cats !) before I started both the PCs I mentioned yesterday
converting avi files to DVD. Initially it seemed that the new processor
in the downstairs, back room, PC was doing it's stuff. It seemed to be
encoding far faster than the upstairs front room PC, but it was still
that latter PC that won the race. That leaves a little mystery on my
hands. Both sets of files to be encoded were very similar, and I would
have thought that they would need very similar amounts of work to
encode. Maybe it is a difference between the motherboards, or maybe it
is a difference between the graphics cards that are causing the slow
down on one machine. The graphics cards could be the answer. Some are
capable of assisting in the video encoding/transcoding process, and
maybe the ATI card in the upstairs PC is better at it than the Nvidia
card in the downstairs PC. Maybe I should swap them over, but that
would involve a lot of mucking around. So I think that next month I
will splash out some money to buy a new graphics card for the
downstairs PC.
While the encoding race was on I ordered a large chinese
takeaway. It was quite a big order, and I halfheartedly intended to
save some of it to eat today, but in the end it proved so delicious
that I ate the whole lot last night. I finally went to bed feeling very
stuffed !
This morning I got up at 5.30 am to feed the cats and potter
around a bit. Then I went back to bed to catch up on some sleep. It is
now just gone 9 am and I really ought to get cracking. I need to tidy
the place up, do some shopping, and then I have to go out to meet
Aleemah. Somehow it seems a lot to do, and I may only do the absolute
bare neccesities of tidying up ! |
Friday 12th October 2007
08:22 BST
|
Yesterday's
mist has been replaced by a fine misty rain this morning. It is fine
enough that it would be refreshing if the temperature was higher. The
temperature is actualy hovering on that fine line between being chilly
and being pleasantly comfortable. The forecast for today is that there
will be a lot more cloud than yesterday, but that it should stay dry.
Yesterday's forecast for sunshine was correct. It was an exceptionally
nice sunny afternoon. Standing out on the fire escape, wearing black
clothes, and with hardly any breeze, it did feel excellent. Had I been
in a pub beer garden I could have happily spent some time drinking beer
and feeling good. somehow I don't think that today will be nearly as
nice.
It felt like I had quite a productive evening last night. I
started with some dinner, which was two bowls of instant noodles, and
went to work on my downstairs, back room , "big" PC. After having
fitted a new, faster, CPU, and made a fresh installation of Windows XP,
it was time to install software and updates. By the time I took a
break, to watch "Yes Minister" on TV, I had already managed to install
a lot of the stuff that needed installing. I took the opportunity
during that break to download windows XP Service Pack 2. I went to bed
around 9 pm feeling quite happy that I had managed to get almost
everything I wanted installed and working.
I did a little reading in bed, and so I didn't get to sleep as
early as I could. Now that was a bit of a shame because I was woken up
at 4 am by Nelly. At first she howled at the bottom of the stairs, and
then she decided to come and sit on my bed and purr LOUDLY ! Well, some
of that might have been ignorable, but two other factors made me decide
to actually get up. First was that Nelly was also making nasty gurgling
noises. It was either her stomach rumbling from hunger, or her other
end rumbling with impending disaster. The second factor was that I was
suffering from toothache. I am pretty certain that it is not a rotten
tooth, but is the result of a bit of gum damage from munching sharp
crispy food. that has probably caused some inflamation of the gum
around the affected tooth. The main problem was that it was painful to
clench my teeth together, and it felt like this one particular tooth
was partially out of the socket and sitting higher than it should do.
If it is the tooth I believe it to be, then it is a crowned tooth, and
maybe it is loose in the socket.
As the morning has progressed the tooth has settled down. On my
way to work I bought a packet of crisps to see what the effect of
eating them would be on my tooth. It was initially a little sore, but
now I can clench my teeth together with no added pain. Maybe I needed
to force the tooth back into the socket. It sounds unlikely, but that
is the way it sort of feels. I do have a little remaining tenderness in
the vicinity of the tooth, but it is at a low enough level to be
ignorable, and I expect it will soon fade away to nothing.
In case you were wondering about Nelly. she had her breakfast
about an hour earlier than usual, and so will be hungry again before I
am home from work. She ate half a plate of food before disappearing to
her litter tray and creating a really disgusting stink. She then
returned to finish off the other half of her breakfast.
Tonight I am hoping that I will get to see Patricia, but with her
flying out to Argentina tomorrow it seems most unlikely that she will
want to delay her journey home from work for an hour. Even if I don't
get to see Patricia I do have one more "excitement" in store. Tonight
will be the big race between my two fastest computers to see which can
compile a DVD image from avi files first. When the "big" downstairs PC
used an AMD XP2100 Athlon processor it averaged about 4 hours to make a
DVD. The upstairs, front bedroom, PC only has a 1.8 GHz Duron processor
in it, and could do the same job in about 3 hours. In theory the
downstairs PC should have been faster, but maybe the difference was
down to operating systems. Both PCs now have the same operating system,
but the downstairs one now has the AMD XP3000 Sempron processor in it.
It should now be the fastest machine, but time will tell. |
Thursday 11th October 2007
08:10 BST
|
The
arrival of autumn has definitely been confirmed this morning. There is
a thick mist outside. It may be beginning to disperse now, or it may
just be that conditions in Wandsworth are slightly different to
conditions in Catford. When I left home the mist (or was it thick
enough to be fog ?) reduced visibility to several hundred metres. It
was a little thinner near the main road, but in the other direction,
towards the park and the river, it was the thickest I have seen this
morning. Strangely enough it doesn't feel as cold as it has done some
recent mornings. The forecast for today is for plenty of sunny spells,
and that may well start to happen later this morning. I have a definite
feeling that bright sunshine is now beginning to shine onto the top of
the mist and will eventually "burn" it off. Of course there is no
actual sign that it is happening yet, but it just feel that way. Maybe
it is just overzealous optimism.
Last night was drinking night so I didn't get a chance to do any
playing with my computers, but it was most pleasant to pop out for a
couple of hours for a drink with Kevin, Howard, and rare visitor, Andy.
I left the pub at a few minutes to 9 pm and went home for the second
half of my dinner (having only had a very light dinner before going to
the pub). I think I was in bed, fast asleep, by 10 pm. I didn't sleep
that well, but had some pleasant dreams about Thumpers. Thumpers being
the nickname for the class 205 and class 207 diesel electric multiple
unit train that used to run between Ashford and Hastings, as well as
from London Bridge to Uckfield, before they were replaced by rather
bland "plastic" trains. The name also encompasses the main line trains
that used to run between London and Hastings via Tunbridge Wells. The
dream(s) had the usual entertaining distortions of reality, but none
more so than the idea that the train ran through the middle of a
department store !
The Orwellian nightmare continues. There were reports in the
papers yesterday that the police are desperate to get permission to
detain terrorist suspects for 90 days without trial. They backed that
up by saying that they knew that terrorist plots were increasing daily,
and that the terrorists were planning even more deadly attacks. I am
left wondering why, if they know so much about these potential
terrorists, there are no arrests. In these draconian times anything can
get you condemned as a terrorist. Owning the wrong piece of paper, or
probably even buying the wrong make of pickled onions, is now a
criminal offence. So why wait to arrest these alleged terrorists.
Surely the idea is to prevent terrorism, and not to play some sort of
game where they all pat themselves on the back for acting in the nick
of time just minutes before the bomb is due to go off. Surely it can
not be the case that they have to allow terrorist plots, most of which
are probably just loonies not keeping their daydreams private, grow to
the point where they can make good headlines, and thus become fodder
for even more totalitarian demands. I fear it is. I am sure the
real terrorists, and other demagogues (and/or politicians) are really
thrilled that they only have to make the tiniest effort to get the
establishment to do the bulk of their work for them and destroy what
was once a free and peaceful society. I am so glad that I have no
descendants, and that the end of my life is becoming ever closer. I
don't think I would be happy living in England in the not so distant
future. |
Wednesday 10th October 2007
08:44 BST
|
It
was practicaly dark when I walked to the station this morning. It
was still a bit gloomy when I got off the train at Waterloo East. Since
then the clouds have occasionally broken up, and there were even a few
rays of sunshine. As I actually write this the clouds seem to have
joined up again and it is looking very grey outside. The weather
forecast predicts that it could be a sunny afternoon.
I did my best to meet up with Patricia last night. I stayed late
at work to make up for getting in late, and was at Waterloo East
station by half past five. I tried to call Patricia, but could not get
through to her. A later exchange of text messages revealed that she had
caught a train at Charing Cross station at 17:32, and that would
have called at Waterloo East a few minutes later. I saw that
train call there as I waited for the following train, the 17:39 to
Hayes (fast from Waterloo East to Ladywell station - nice ! ). So we
actually passed each other by without knowing it at the time.
When I got home I had something to eat and then fitted my new CPU
into my "big" PC downstairs in the back room. It needed a pair of links
changed on the motherboard to increase the front side bus to 333 MHz,
but was otherwise almost "plug and play". To provide a better
comparison to the PC in the upstairs front bedroom I decided to install
Windows XP on the downstairs machine. That went smoothly, although I
didn't get a chance to install service pack 2, or any applications. I
will have to do that later, but for now it all appears to be running
smoothly. |
Tuesday 9th October 2007
07:00 BST
|
It
is still dark and gloomy outside, but once again it is not very cold.
After I had finally cooled down from my hot shower yesterday I began to
appreciate it was not quite as mild as I thought it was outside. It is
still a little way off what I would call cold though.
After work last night I went home via The Catford Ram to have a drink with Kevin, Iain, Ivor, and Andy.
It was the first
time I have had a drink with Andy (pictured above on the left - Ivor on
the right) in many years. Maybe as many as 20, although I have bumped
into him, and had a chat in the street as recently as a few months ago,
or less.
We had a good drink together, and I left the pub, starving
hungry, at around 7 pm. When I first arrived at the pub I could smell
fried chicken, and that smell ate into my brain like a cancer. When I
left the pub I was drawn, almost against my will, to the Kentucky Fried
rat shop. There I bought an excessive amount of chicken to take home
and munch on. It was very nice, but it was far too much.
Having stuffed myself silly, and watched a bit of TV, I decided
that I had to try out a new hard disk that had been delivered earlier
in the day along with my new CPU. There wasn't really time to play with
the CPU, but I fitted the hard disk in an external USB enclosure and
started formatting it. It took ages, or what seemed like ages when I
really wanted to get to bed. The hard disk itself was a serial ata
disk, and only one of my USB enclosures is fitted for SATA disks. So I
had to take the original disk drive out of it and put it in another
enclosure. At first it didn't seem to work. At first I thought it was
because the size of the drive was too big for the controller (320 GB),
but after I had actually gone to bed it occured to me that the disk
drive had been set to "cable select", as recommended by the
instructions for the enclosure. So I got up again and changed the
jumper to set the drive as a master and all was well. I could finally
get to sleep knowing that everything was OK.
Today it is possible, although I feel not likely, that I will be
going for another drink after work. This time it will be with Patricia.
If that doesn't happen, as I suspect, I will be able to test my new CPU
out in the "big" PC downstairs.
|
Monday 8th October 2007
08:24 BST
|
It
was almost dark when I left home for work this morning. It won't be
long before it is well and truly dark when I leave, and not long after
that it will be dark when I leave work. Of course the clocks changing
from BST to GMT towards the end of this month will make one worse, and
the other better - for a short while. Apart from the days getting
shorter as we head on into winter, it was also very cloudy this
morning, and that contributed to the general gloom. It was not
exceptionally cold though, and after a very hot shower this morning
(and feeling rather too warm in bed) I felt quite warm all the way to
work. It is supposed to remain dry today, but tomorrow rain is forecast
for the afternoon.
There is nothing much to say about yesterday. I ate too much is
one fact, and in consequence I feel stodgy this morning. I found a very
nice bit of lamb while shopping in Tesco's. It was on the reduced price
counter looking fairly brown and dried up. I cooked it with rosemary
instead of drenching it with mint sauce afterwards as I would usually
do. Served with a roast sweet potato, and some mixed green veg, it was
rather delicious. As a Sunday dinner goes, that was rather average, but
my one and a half jacket potatoes with chicken and bacon sandwich
filler as a topping, was a main contributor to my eating too much
yesterday. The mixed chilli flavoured party snacks didn't help much
either !
It seems I have found a willing mug
volunteer to continue some work I was doing in between this job and the
previous job. That work, although some might say pleasure, was
transferring old disintegrating reel to reel tapes to digital files. I
must admit that I have already done all the more obviously interesting
ones. Now there is the nitty gritty stuff. Identifying short
recordings, and reconstructing edits where the splices have fallen
apart. There could be some little gems in the pile of old dusty tapes
that have yet to be investigated. That volunteer is Howard - Best of
luck Howard !!
Tonight I am hoping to grab a beer on my way home from work. It
seems an early evening drink(ette) has been arranged for 5pm in
Catford. If I rush I will be able to spend a few minutes at home to
feed the cats before rushing out again. If I miss my early train I will
have to go straight to the pub, and the cats will have to go hungry for
an hour or two. |
Sunday 7th October 2007
07:35 BST
|
Yesterday
was very cloudy, but there were a fair few sunny spells. It was also
quite mild too. Today may be similar, but it is still too early to
tell. The sun is not really up yet. The sky is a fairly uniform
grey colour, but there is a hint of a golden glow to the east.Perhaps
when the sun fully rises it will burn off some of the greyness and
start to warm the day up.
My new CPU had still not been delivered when I left work on
Friday, and so I had a fairly boring evening. I didn't really mind
that. Despite not working on Thursday, Friday still felt very much like
a Friday, and I was happy to go home in the evening and just vegetate.
I managed to find some energy yesterday morning and did a fair
bit of housework before going out to meet up with Aleemah. Prior to
that I went out and did some shopping, and visited the building
society. I had a cheque to deposit, but also decided to close down an
old account and transfer the balance into just one account. That
balance was a whole £2.84p !! At least now that mere £2.84p
will start to earn some interest now it is combined with the other
money in my now single account.
I met Aleemah at London Bridge, as usual, and we came back to
Catford and had something to eat in the pie and mash shop. By way of a
change I had double egg and chips. It was the first time I have had egg
and chips in years, and it was rather nice too. One observation I made
about the chips is that they were far nicer once they had cooled off a
bit. When still very hot they seemed to be very crisp. I don't like
very crisp chips, as usually sold in places like McDonalds, but as mine
cooled down they seemed to become softer and squidgier - just the way I
like them.
The main feature for the day was watching the film THX1138.
It was a film I have seen before, and I think I even recorded it off
the TV, but this was the "directors cut" version. It seemed pretty
similar to how I remembered it. I think the extra length just comes
from more of the chase scenes - these being essential to any movie - apparently. In fact it just made the second part of the film more boring.
I am not sure what I am doing today. I have made a very small
start on clearing up my front bedroom. I may do some more of that, but
I have already put too much in the wheelie bin, and without being able
to throw out more junk it may not be feasible to carry on the clearing
up operation. I ought to do more shopping today. I want to buy some
fruit to take to work, and no doubt I will find other stuff in my
shopping basket as I approach the checkout. I also have over half of
this weeks New Scientist magazine to read. So I reckon I will probably
just have a very lazy day. |
Friday 5th October 2007
08:15 BST
|
Clear
skies overnight have made the start of the day very chilly, but in
return have left a bright sunny start to the day. The forecast is for a
warm, generally sunny day. Saturday should be warm too, but with less
sunshine.
Yesterday turned out to be a nice sunny day. I went sick from
work yesterday, but spent most of the day indoors. By late afternoon I
was well enough to venture outside to meet up with Aleemah and Nigel
for a lecture at The Royal Aeronautical Society headquarters just round the corner from Marble Arch Constitution/Wellington/Green park Arch. I met Aleemah in Victoria, and we then went to Hyde Park Corner tube station to meet up with Nigel who was waiting for us near the Wellington Arch.
Until searching for the links to Wellington Arch I had always believed that monument to be Marble Arch. Now I know better.
It felt really nice to be sitting in the warm bright sunshine at
Wellington Arch while we passed a little spare time. It may only be
early October, but it was still an autumn day, and a most pleasant one.
The lecture we went to see was a two part lecture celebrating 50
years in Space which "officially" started with the launch of Sputnik 1.
The lecture flyer can be found here
(pdf format). It was a fascinating lecture, maybe enhanced even further
by the fun of Windows, and Windows Media Player misbehaving themselves,
as normal ! Part one of the lecture was a retrospective, and part two
was about the future, or one particular future. That particular future
was the vision of Virgin Galactic.
Virgin Galactic's presentation was part advertising, but also
revealed a fair amount of background information. The biggest
impression I got was that the whole concept was not much more than a
super expensive, super sized fairground attraction rather than the
first steps towards the sci-fi vision of rockets blasting off
everywhere. Well, I suppose it could be the first step towards the
technology to make some of the more near Earth sci-fi adventures come
true. While writing the whole thing off as just an entertainment device
I did have one moment when I experienced a thrill, and that partly
changed my mind. It was during some video footage of the maiden flight
of "Spaceship One" that I suddenly saw that it really was a step
forward. With all all the sales patter removed, and all the hype
elsewhere, it revealed itself as one brave man piloting a real
spaceship.
With two lectures the evening ended a fair bit later than the
last time I went there. I could have stayed later than I did
because there was a buffet afterwards. Food and drink had been provided
by the Russian embassy as thanks for celebrating what was really their
celebration. Aleemah had been asked to stay on after the lecture as a
representative of the British National Space Council,
but I headed for home. It was just gone 9 pm when I finally arrived
home. A rather later night than I would have liked for midweek, but
well worth it.
Tonight I had been hoping to see Patricia, but she is
unavailable. So I will have a quiet night, and I can't even fit my new
CPU because it still hasn't been delivered yet (but may still turn up
today). |
Wednesday 3rd October 2007
06:53 BST
|
I
think that once the sun comes up it will be a fairly bright day. There
is not a hint of sunshine yet, and it is still fairly dark outside. It
can only get worse when the clock change back to GMT in the next week
or two. Although it is very damp outside, it is not actually raining,
and I don't think any rain is expected today. It is surprisingly mild
right now. When I had the back door open to let Smudge out it didn't
really feel cold at all. Later in the week, maybe tomorrow, or maybe it
was Friday, the forecast temperature is predicted to be as high as
20° C. That's not bad for this time of year.
I did go for a drink with Kevin last night. As he is still off
work with a badly sprained arm I suggested we could meet even earlier
than usual. I suggested as early as 6 pm, but we actually met soon
after 6.45 pm. This was very handy because I was able to defer my
hunger pains and not eat before going to the pub. I left the pub at
about 8.15 pm and came home very much looking forward to my dinner. I
cooked up some pasta with kale and tuna before I went out to the pub,
and ate it cold (or actually slightly warm). With the addition of some
sweet chilli sauce with lime it was rather delicious. It was pretty
close to a healthy meal, and this morning I don't feel too bad.
After drinking last night there will be no drinking tonight and I
can stay in and try and do something productive. I hope that will be
fitting a new processor to my "big" PC downstairs. I found a place
still selling Socket A processors and ordered an AMD XP3000 processor.
I hope it will be delivered to work today. In theory this should give
me the equivalent power of a 3 GHz processor. That is a liitle slower
than the current trend, but an improvement on the XP2100 processor I am
currently using. (This does always assume that my motherboard will
recognise the XP3000 CPU - maybe I'll need to do a rather scary BIOS
upgrade too). |
Tuesday 2nd October 2007
08:26 BST |
Like
yesterday, it is grey and damp. Unlike yesterday it is surprisingly
mild. I was warm in bed last night, and to help soothe some of my aches
and pains I showered under water that was as hot as I could stand. With
the mild air temperature outside, I didn't stop feeling hot and sticky
until I was practically at work. Unfortunately it is very hot inside
here at work.
It was most definitely a rush putting this web page together yesterday morning. I did have an idea to experiment with CSS (cascading style sheets - or something), but I had no time for that. Then I thought I would simulate that by using an iframe
for these daily entries, but I didn't have enough time for that either.
So I have sort of simulated what the look that I was aiming for,
although how it will display as the month progresses, and these daily
entries build up, is anyones guess.
Since last Thursday, and to
a lesser extent earlier than that, I have been suffering from a lot of
stiff joints, muscular pain, etc. It has never been really painful, and
depending on what I am doing it can be totally ignorable. Yesterday
morning I felt particularly bad. Instead of taking paracetamol I tried
a couple of aspirins. The result was amazing. They killed 90% of the
pain compared to, say, 50% that paracetamol could achieve. What's more
they kept me very comfortable all the time I was at work. The effect
wore off by the time I got home last night, but by then it did not
matter. It seems that my aches and pains come from inflamation that
aspirin can directly heal, whereas paracetamol just dulls the pain.
This morning I am trying some ibuprofen, and it seems to be almost as
effective as aspirin.
After getting into work late yesterday
morning I stayed late at work in the evening. By the time I got home,
which was around 6 pm, it felt too late to do much, but tonight there
is a chance that I will be going for a pint with Kevin (he is
unavailable for our more usual Wednesday night drink). |
Monday 1st October 2007
07:19 BST |
It's
a grey, wet, miserable sort of Monday morning, and I seem to be off to a
slow start. I meant to create this page yesterday, but somehow never
got around to it.
Yesterday was interesting. In between resting, and generally
loafing around, I installed my newly aquired motherboard in my bedroom
PC. The motherboard itself was a Gigabyte GA-6WMM7, and had a 700 MHz
Pentium III processor on it. I decided to start from scratch with a
fresh installation of the operating system rather than attempt to try
and persuade the old installation of Windows 2000 to work with a
completely different set of motherboard components. The old motherboard
had an AMD K6/2 500MHz processor on it, and that seemed a little
underpowered for Windows 2000. So I decided for that the new
installation I would use a lighter operating system, and chose Windows
ME.
Windows ME has a bad reputation for being unstable, but I had
always found it to be rather good. Yesterday was the first time I had
installed it on a PC using an Intel processor, and Intel chipset. It
was a total disaster ! After ba lot of grief I daringly tried again
using Windows XP instead. That seemed to work remarkably well. My "new"
PC will never break any speed records, but it does seem very
responsive. I only use it on rare occasions anyway, and any heavy
weight stuff, like media processing, I would do on another PC. So I am
rather pleased with it. |
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