Spring Squallifications

Amidst the squally showers and blinding winter sun, I thought I had spotted something momentous in the garden (actually, the neighbour's garden). Is it me or are there little pink buds on these branches above the greenhouse?

Surely spring has not yet sprung?

Out of bleary eyes I saw pinkish sort of things from the window and had a look with a little telescope (yeah, seriously), it's just too squally and cold to go out and have a look.

Anyhow, "squally" is my word of the week. It's pure Radio 4 Shipping Forecast - and you know how I love Radio 4. Hearing words like that restores my faith in the English people's ability to speak their language. This faith has been shaken a couple of times in the last few days by a plethora of "sikthes" - one of my pet hates - and was almost demolished completely when I heard an interview with the headmaster of a public school talking about quotas for university places and how any system of quotas could be demotivationising. I wish people wouldn't do that. Given that I listen mostly when I am driving, it could have a highly destabilisationising effect on my driving and could lead to me destructionising the car and maybe even decapitationising any passing pedestrianationers.

Squally showers, squally showers, squally showers... ah, that's better.

This REALLY Sucks...

This is Darth Vader's hoover...

It is really rather good - it makes a StarWars sort of sound too as it whines and dines on the dirt.

The dust cap is nicely booby-trapped so that when you click on the button to open it and try to lift the flap off at the top, you discover that the flap is actually at the bottom and all the gunge inside has now fallen out onto your foot!

Unless, of course, you have some Yedi foreknowledge and empty it outside in the blustery wind - in this case the gunge gets blown all over you.

In the review I read one person complained that it didn't work very well - I find that totally undustified.

18!

Happy Birthday Jimmy!

Another of my children puts childish and teenagerish things behind him and turns overnight into an adult. This picture is from 17 and a half years ago and I don't think he can still pick his nose with his toe!

Cooler than Cool

There's a handy little feature on the Ubuntu desktop which tells you what the local weather is like. It saves looking out of the window.


Right now though it is telling me that it is -10°c (= some bloody cold temperature in Fahrenheit) outside but the 11.1 km/hour wind from the east makes it feel like -15.6°C (= an even bloody colder temperature in Fahrenheit). That's not so cool... or rather it's too cool. Cooler than cool... f***in' freezin'.

Rather Cool

I know my fellow Angles and Saxons are freezing, getting snowed into pubs, suffering delays in travel, etc, etc due to the couple of inches of snow that have fallen over there but it has provided us with a most tremendous satellite picture of a snow-bound GB which is breathtaking!

Walking on frozen clouds...

(Thanks to Phil Plait for spotting it)

IKEos

I have mentioned elsewhere (here and here) that I don't do New Year's Resolutions as a result of being far too irresolute but this could almost be regarded as resolutionary. I ordered this sort of desk-chest-of-drawers thing hoping that it would help me reduce the chaos which is my 'office'. It came just before Xmas and I was going to enlist Biddy to help me assemble it, knowing that her calm patience would be needed as normally putting these things together drives me bonkers.

Unfortunately, this was not to be, mainly because I completely forgot about it all over the holidays.

They look so neat and tidy in the box, these things ... but then you slit open the flap and out comes ... chaos. This is the part I hate - all these bits of wood and packaging and screws and strange plastic nobbly things strewn around in irreducible complexity and a page or two of badly printed instructions which seem to bear no relation to the contents of the box. At this point I get a hopeless sinking feeling in my stomach and usually go and make coffee or get a beer, depending on the time of day, with images in my head of Homer Simpson building his Bar-B-Q.

However, this was not an IKEA chaos (I ordered the 'thing' from the very prompt and reliable Office Discount who deliver the next day and give you four weeks to pay and don't even get nasty when you forget to pay which I invariably do). So without too much shouting and swearing, assembling and disassembling because the bits are back to front, futile searching for missing screws and shouting and swearing, I ended up with this! Order from chaos.

Now I just have to decide which pieces of chaos to fill the drawers with...

Tara 2009

Did I read that in her Christmas speech the Queen said 2009 was a pain in the arse?

Well, if she did, she was dead right! I am quite pleased to see the back of it.

However, optimistic as ever I wish you all...

A Happy and Prosperous 2010!

What's Smart about it?

The Smart - inspired by the sardine can.

We had a gig last night and after it I drove the band van with all the equipment back to where we store it and got a lift back into town in a Smart. This was the first time I had ever been in one... and may well be the last time.

Apart from anything else, I could hardly get in in the first place. The Smart is not recommended for two people whose "diets" are not going too well.

This one (it was a rented semi-automatic cos the guy driving it has a broken toe at the moment and can't use a clutch) didn't even have power steering and I was getting exhausted just watching him struggling to get this little tin can out of the parking space - especially after driving a van full of equipment which was feather-light to drive.

I suppose there is one thing...you can rest you chin on your knees as you tootle along... but as Paul (driver - broken toe) said, you wouldn't want to be in one with someone you didn't know too well, it's a little too... intimate.

Anyway, another first for NeutronNews - and one more thing that I never need to buy.

Too Late...

...you have all missed Carl Sagan Day! I have just left the chat room which was linked to the live stream from Broward College in southern Florida. I was the last one still standing in the chat room...another first!

Carl Sagan is one of the very few people on my list of "people I would really like to meet/to have met" and the speakers made me even sadder at not being able to achieve this.
The most moving tribute was kept for the last... paradoxically coming from a very frail looking but still keen-witted, belligerently atheistic James Randi. He mentioned the many rumours about Sagan "converting" to religion on his death bed (so reminiscent of all the twaddle about Darwin's last words) and very emotionally told how Carl was together just with his wife Ann Druyan as he lay dying. She told Randi how they had said their goodbyes, knowing that it would be for the last time... and that was it.

It's easy to see how wishful thinking can fuel a wishful belief in the "afterlife" but you have to imagine there's no heaven...

New (Old) Look

I got a mail from my younger daughter last night about a website she had found:

www.yearbookyourself.com

You have to upload a suitable picture of someone and then you can choose a "look" from decades gone by.

This is how our Bid would have looked if she'd been a dedicated follower of fashion in 1960:

She looks frighteningly like a couple of my old teachers from when I was in infant school!

I was going to do the same with a picture of mine but then I realised I already have real pictures from that time which look like that ... duh!