In England it's Called "Changeable"

...and this was the weather just a little bit after the photo below...

If you alternate the two pictures in your mind, say, every 10 minutes and imagine a blustery biting wind from the west then you have almost a definition of spring weather in North-West England...well, except for the fact that it could be boiling hot or freezing cold too...

Right, back to spectroscopy...

...And the Weather Is...

...this is the view from the window where I am working...it is 10.30 a.m!

As I write, it has just got even darker and has now started to hail...

Back to work...

News from the 'Pool

I am in Liverpool for Easter. We arrived yesterday after the usual 18 hours travelling. Only fell asleep once at the wheel - which is not bad.

We got here to find it was the Ladies' Day at the Aintree Grand National meeting...the racecourse is just around the corner from my mum's. So all the girls were dressed in their pretty frocks and curls wandering around Aintree Racecourse in sub-artic temperatures and hurricane force winds from the west...BBBBBBRRRRrrrrrrrrrr.....this is the kind of weather which put me off playing Rugby forever when I was a kid! It is probably the weather we would have in England all the time were it not for the Gulf Stream.

You couldn't see the girls for goosepimples! They looked like those Mars Rover capsules which land on inflated bubbly cushions. Makes me feel cold to think of them!

This is all passing me by though as I am still in the middle of a fascinating aforementioned translation on spectroscopy which I have foolishly but economically necessarily brought with me. We plan to slip down later though and watch the drunken punters stagger out of the racecourse with their winnings or their dashed hopes.

If I can risk taking my hands out of my pockets in the searing winds I may even take a couple of photos...watch this very windy and bitingly cold space...

Anyone for Spectroscopy?

Let's see what kind of hits I get with a title like that!

Time goes so quickly when you are doing an elephantine translation about the various inscrutable varieties of spectroscopy: X-ray spectroscopy, atom absorption spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, blaze wavelengths, decade molar coefficients and something fascinating called an Ulbrecht sphere...

The only good thing I can see about spectroscopy is that it's kind of neat to type the word on the keyboard with my 2-finger technique - try it...it's kind of...spectroscopic, man!

It is also, now I come to think about it and try to pronounce it, a brilliant tongue-twister- spectroscopy, spectrocspopy, spectrocsococopy, spectrsossocpopy...

Just as well I'm not doing podcasts yet.

A Slice of Time

T-M's granny, or Omi as we say here in deepest Bavaria, is the kind of person who gets moaned at for messing about taking photos and recording things on tape... but who then, a few years later, can glow in smug, self-righteous satisfaction and guilt-driven praise when everyone looks at the photos and listens to the tapes she made and is reminded of wonderful things.

She was glowing again on Monday. We went round to see her and T-M asked her about a cassette she had made some years ago of William when he was 2. She had it of course and after a little reminder of how we had complained when she was making it and getting us to agree that she had been right to make it after all, she played it to us.

You wonder how you can forget these things and yet you do...and yet somehow you don't!

Suddenly, there was the William of 1997 with his googly little voice looking down from Omi's front window at the traffic lights across the square and saying, "Tlaffic light led! Tlaffic light gleen! Tlaffic light led again!" and all the other expressions he used to come out with then.

A little 90 minute slice of time from the past.

And you realise that you had forgotten it and yet instantly remember it. And I also wondered, "when did he stop doing that?" There must have been a last time he said it; just like there was a last time I could throw him up and catch him and a last time he would hold my hand as we walked to kindergarten; and just as there was a last time I did all those kind of things with Nicky, Biddy and Jimmy...

And even though it almost hurts to listen to these tapes or watch the videos and realise that this time is over, I also think, "I wish we had more..."

Well done Omi.

Blog Directory No Less...and MUSIC....!

I have just added a link to a blog directory from BlogExplosion...just on the right there under the picture. It's dead good - takes you to all sorts of new bloggy regions...!

And while we are on the subject of links - here's one to my 'home made' recordings page:

Home Made Sounds

Happy Birthday to Neutron News!

Cor blimey, it is exactly one year since my first post on this, my first blog.

Let me just blow out the e-candles on the e-cake.

Erm...and now? Well, how about "to boldly blog where no-one has blogged before..."?

And regarding that, I have been - perhaps justifiably - moaned at recently because allegedly all I have talked about in my recent posts has been food and beer - and the consumption thereof.

My only justification, assuming this is true, is that they are very nice things to write about! AND it has always been a source of wonder to me that we are able to enjoy food and drink.

I mean, we need to eat and drink to survive...just like breathing but you don't get people saying, "Goodness me, I had a really good breath last night...lots of oxygen and just the right amount of nitrogen plus a few noble gasses. You'll have to come round one night and have a breathe of our air..."

With food and drink though, despite the fact that they are also absolute necessities, we really can enjoy them. This is a gift from the blind watchmaker and should not be spurned.

Think of the other necessities of life: getting up, working, paying tax, getting old...

Nah, give me food and drink any day.

It's Lent...

Blame Henry VIII for it. He may have done some good things in his time...can't think of anything off-hand mind you but the one BIG mistake he made was closing down the monasteries all over England...well, he didn't just 'close them down', it was more like razing them to the ground and confiscating all their wealth.
Even that is, perhaps, not a bad thing you could argue...but ridding us of the monks and the kind of know-how they had...that is a different matter.

Look at Germany...or to be more local, Munich. It is Lent right now which means that your standard Christian should be avoiding all sorts of nice nibblies...and the eponymous monks in Munich were no exception.

However, they were as ready as the next heathen to bend the rules...

"Ok...", they argued no doubt, "...we can't eat eggs, we can't eat beef, we can't eat pork...we can't even drink wine...hmm... but there is nothing about beer right?"

So they issued forth and brewed a beer, a special beer; a beer to fill those days of abstinence between Ash Wednesday and Easter. And since Lent was a time when the rules had to be strongly adhered to, they brewed a strong beer - Starkbier - and I am just on my second and it is in the process of blowing the top of my head off!
It seems an innocuous brew...tastes great and begins by warming you around the chest and then goes to your head and begins to press ever so gently on the inside of your brain casing...and it makes you feel...just fine!

The very thing to escape from snowy cold wintry March blues...

And that Tudor burk Henry the bloody VIII...he would have loved it!

Mmmm...Beans

Arrgghhhh! This PC is driving me CRAZY!!!!

So I treated myself to...

...BEANS!! I made them yesterday and today they are just...wow!!

I put them in that little bowl so I didn't seem to be eating that much but I...erm...refilled the bowl 4 times.

There is just nothing like them...big beans in a tomato sauce...just like I used to eat in my favourite restaurant the Ivi in Ioannina when I lived in Greece..well, nearly...ah, Greece...

Meanwhile back to this *&%$§ PC and it's bloody W2K which will not &%$§* repair itself....

Vitamin PC

First my blog is down all weekend and then yesterday my PC suddenly decides that it wants to get caught in an 'unexpected kernel mode trap'...no-one expects a Kernel Mode Trap...ho hum...so I have been pissing around with it on and off - mostly off - all day to chivvy it back into action. I don't want to speak too soon but I think I may have it now.

I still don't know what happened or what a Kernel Mode Trap is...apart from unexpected which it certainly is but I might just risk trying a restart from the safe mode in a moment...wow! Listen to me!! Sounds as if I know what I am doing, huh?

Well, I don't! This is how I always fix things...mess about with them for long enough and they give up and start working again just for some peace and quiet!

I am just going to see why my virus program doesn't want to start and then I will flip the switch and press the key to try and restart the machine...ah, which reminds of the very-bad-joke which this headline is the punchline of:

"What do you give your computer if it has a virus?"
"Vitamin PC!!"

No? Please yourselves!

It is also coming up to a year since I started blogging...ha! A year!!

I must check and see when our anniversary is (my blog and me)...

No, the virus prog doesn't want to know so I will go ahead and restart....this could be goodbye (of course it won't be because I am posting this from Lappy).

Ok...do I want to restart? YES!!!

As the Scouse Red Indian prompter in the theatre said: YERONINAMO!