Life in the Bus Lane

I was fully intending to go to work today. I got up, got dressed, fed the cats, cleared the litter tray, put the recycling out, and then when I actually came to leave realised that I was unlikely to make it as far as the end of the road, let alone all the way to work, I could barely walk properly. So back to bed it was.

I eventually made it round Sainsbury’s propped up by a trolley (I’d run out of medicine and cat litter, so couldn’t really avoid going), and to a funeral, although the standing up was hard work.

I hope this has cleared up by Monday or it’ll be a trip to the doctors.

I could watch it for hours.

BBC Clock

From the new look www.bbc.co.uk

Mulder and Scully are chasing each other non-stop round the house and up and down the stairs at the moment. It’s quite funny watching them “power-slide” their way across the laminate floor in the dining room before “fighting” with each other or their old blankets in front of the fire place.

Mulder almost tolerates me now, but Scully is still nervous and wary of everything.

I’m still ill, I’ve survived the last three days on a mix of Lemsip-alike, Benylin, Night Nurse, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. After going to bed early Monday I finally surfaced about 3pm today, although I’m not entirely sure it was a wise move.

It looks like he’s infected me with his lurgy.

Update: It’s only 8:30 and I’m in bed already, albeit with a mug of Lemsip-alike, a laptop, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

A new toy arrived today.

I’ve calibrated both my desktop PC and the laptop already. Currently things look a bit odd, but I suspect that’s because I’d got used to the previous calibrated-by-eye look that was almost, but not entirely, correct.

BBC SPORT | Rugby Union | France 13-24 England.

A bit scrappy, but a fairly good game overall.

I’ve just retired my Shimano PD-M525 pedals from regular use, I reckon I bought them in 1992.

Bontrager Pervert Tape now comes in two long pieces rather than four shorter ones, making it much easier to apply.

Just a quick grab-shot as they are still quite nervous, Scully particularly so.

What have I managed to do with my week off work?

• visit London for two days and see Freeborn John for the second time
• adopt two new cats
• photograph 35 wedding rings
• watch or finish watching:
  • Good Night and Good Luck
  • X-Files season nine
  • Ratatouille
  • Pixar shorts
  • West Wing season six and the start of season seven
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer season one and the start of season two
  • Michael Clayton
  • Vulgar
  • Family Guy Presents: Blue Harvest
  • Band of Brothers episodes one-four
  • Various bits and pieces on TV
• have a two-day hangover

Not bad going really.

In a fit of madness, I decided to finish the brake-swap on the TriCross that I planned last November. It’s back with the supplied V-brakes and levers, but with a Thomson stem and Easton EA70 bars, the Paul Components brakes will go onto the cross bike in due course. Once I’m happy with the bar and lever positioning, I’ll just need to retape the bars.

I really ought to repair the Ribble before going back to work, the bottom bracket and pedals have been knackered for months, I’ve got replacements somewhere, I just need to get around to fitting them. It’ll be a mucky job as the bike’s not been cleaned since I built it and it’s hidden behind a deep layer of road grime.

HD DVD is dead, Blu-Ray is king. It’s a bit of a shame HD DVD lost as its region-free nature meant you could buy disks from anywhere and they’d play on any machine. Blu-Ray takes a step back to the early days of DVD when disks were region-coded and region-free hacks were less common.

I nearly bought a PS3 today to join the Blu-Ray gang, but looked at my credit card balance and decided I didn’t really need one after all, and shall stick with my standard DVD player which did an admirable job today of showing 5 episodes of The West Wing, Michael Clayton, and Vulgar.

From West Wing to the real thing. Scriptwriters modelled TV’s ethnic minority candidate on young Barack Obama.

The timing is quite apt as I’m currently sat watching the latter part of Season 6 of The West Wing which deals with Matt Santos and his presidential campaign leading up to the Democratic nomination at the end of the series.

I appear to have acquired a pair of nocturnal cats. Invisible by day, but once the sun sets they appear and then cause havoc during the middle of the night. Last night they had a lengthy fight with the mat on the floor in the bathroom, and were attacked by a particularly vicious frying pan.

Just under three months after it arrived, I’ve finally finished watching the X-Files box set of 9 series and a movie.

New Model Army are playing in Stroud in May, unfortunately it’s in the middle of the week I’ll be spending in France.

Mulder is hiding underneath my bed and I’ve not seen Scully yet today, I suspect she’s in the back of the wardrobe.

Update: Scully is indeed hiding at the back of the wardrobe, no idea where Mulder has got to now though, he’s not under the bed any more.

…and have gone straight into hiding.

Thunder and Consolation.
Green and Grey (see above).
Dante and Randal.
Jay and Silent Bob.

A much more intimate venue than the Derngate, and a much better performance, partly thanks to the excellent acoustics of the church-based venue. The only downside was that you couldn’t take drinks from the bar into the chapel, so it was a dry night. A last minute rush to get the tube back before the engineering works cocked things up meant we couldn’t hang around in the bar afterwards either.

Setlist:

Bishop Bray Speech (Stephen Burden)
Pillory Scene (Rev Hammer)
Whipping Song (Phil Johnstone)
Battle of Brentford (Justin Sullivan)
Elizabeth’s Great Gallop (Maddy Prior & Simon Friend)
Return to London (Rory McLeod)
England’s New Chains (Rev Hammer)
Oliver Cromwell Speech (Harry S Fulcher)
Bonny Besses (Rose Kemp)

Bishop Bray Speech (Stephen Burden)
Burford Stomp (The Levellers)
Oliver Cromwell Speech (Harry S Fulcher)
Lowlands of Holland (The Levellers)
Exile (Rev Hammer)
Every Woman’s Pain (Maddy Prior & Rose Kemp)
Return from Exile (Rory McLeod)
Rumour & Rapture (New Model Army)
Seventeen Years of Sorrow (Maddy Prior)
Lilburne’s Death Song (Rev Hammer)
Valediction

One of my photos on flickr has just reached 1000 views, I’m not entirely sure why it’s so popular compared with the rest of the photos I’ve uploaded.

I thought I was watching an episode of the X-Files, but given that it’s got Elizabeth Bartlet (Annabeth Gish), Mallory O’Brien (Allison Smith), Dolores Landingham (Kathryn Joosten), and General Nicholas Alexander (Terry O’Quinn) from The West Wing in it, I’m getting a bit confused.

So, ASO have banned Astana from taking part in Le Tour and all other ASO organised events. This means Alberto Contador, the defending champion, will not be taking part in this years Tour, making it a fairly worthless event and one I won’t be bothering to watch.

Organisers of professional cycling seems to be doing their best to destroy the sport from inside, using drug-taking as their excuse.

Astana banned by ASO - Contador unable to defend Tour de France title

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect tonight, reviews of last night were somewhat uninspiring, however it had been the first night which might help explain things. Freeborn John is a folk-opera by Rev Hammer about the life of John Lilburne with a supporting cast of people like New Model Army, The Levellers, and Maddy Prior and many others.

Despite my misgivings, nearly everything went well, the only noticable cock-up was when Simon Friend made a complete mess of his duet with Maddy Prior, I reckon he was pissed. All in all a thoroughly good evening, although a little short.

Same again on Saturday in London.

Setlist:

Bishop Bray Speech (Stephen Burden)
Pillory Scene (Rev Hammer)
Whipping Song (Phil Johnstone)
Battle of Brentford (Justin Sullivan)
Elizabeth’s Great Gallop (Maddy Prior & Simon Friend)
Return to London (Rory McLeod)
England’s New Chains (Rev Hammer)
Oliver Cromwell Speech (Harry S Fulcher)
Bonny Besses (Rose Kemp)

Bishop Bray Speech (Stephen Burden)
Burford Stomp (The Levellers)
Oliver Cromwell Speech (Harry S Fulcher)
Lowlands of Holland (The Levellers)
Exile (Rev Hammer)
Every Woman’s Pain (Maddy Prior & Rose Kemp)
Return from Exile (Rory McLeod)
Rumour & Rapture (New Model Army)
Seventeen Years of Sorrow (Maddy Prior)
Lilburne’s Death Song (Rev Hammer)
Valediction

It turns out that I’ve not paid the ground rent for my house for the last six years. I don’t know how I’m going to be able to afford the £12.60 I now owe

It’s sunglass buying time of year again, so following a trip into town after work I ended up with some Oakley Square Wire glasses for a reasonable price. You can all blame me when the weather changes tomorrow

Following the X-Ray on my back, apparently I have "narrowing of the L4-L5 vertebrae".

Roll on 18^th Feb.

WordPress 2.3.3 was released today, so I thought I’d fiddle about a bit and make installing upgrades easier. A quick read of Updating WordPress with Subversion, along with a sudo aptitude install subversion and everything is up and running.

There’s no real point to this post, other than to try out a new plugin, which it turns out isn’t really doing what it’s meant to be doing. Odd.

Update: It’s now all been fixed.

Last night was the second of our two visits to the fire station. After a quick test they did a demonstration drill for us,

then let the scouts loose with the hoses.

Great fun was had by all, even though some of them were rather wet by the end of the evening.

It was another outing for the Sigma 28/1.8 lens, which I’m very impressed with. Most of the photos were taken at ISO3200, f1.8, and -1EV just to get somewhere near a hand-holdable shutter speed. Luckily Noise Ninja can do wonders with the resulting pictures to clean them up.

More photos.

Marmite with a touch of Champagne available from a supermarket near you (maybe).