Life in the Bus Lane

City of God is the first foreign-language film we’ve attempted so far, and unusually for me a subtitled film that can keep my attention all the way to the end.

The last set of Bell Lap bars have been removed, all my drop-bar equipped bikes now have “normal” bars fitted.

As part of their 20th anniversary the Levellers played a mostly acoustic set at the Royal Albert Hall. The venue is certainly impressive, and not somewhere you’d expect the Levellers to play. After a quick pint in an nearby Imperial College union bar we started off with a fantastic meal in the restaurant. Due to a lack of bookings they’d had to move us from the “cheap” restaurant to the expensive one, so to make up for the increased prices our desserts and most of our drinks were provided free of charge which knocked a fair chunk off the bill.

The support act was Nick Harper, lets just say we decided to head back to the bar after a few songs rather than have to listen to any more of him.

The Levellers did a two-part set, all of it seated. This was probably due to the fact that Jon Sevink had a foot in plaster and walked out with the aid of crutches. The first 50 minutes or so was all acoustic, and they were joined for several songs by an acoustic string quartet. After another swift pint in the bar during the interval we returned for the last hour or so which was a more normal electric set cumlinating with the obligatory rendition of One Way.

Another swift pint in the Imperial College bar was in order after we left, then it was time for the tube back to Harrow.

Setlist:

No Change
Elation
Edge of the World
Julie
The Boatman
Together All the Way
Lowlands of Holland
Before the End
Chemically Free
Another Man’s Cause

Far from Home
Beautiful Day
Death Loves Youth
Behold a Pale Rider
Exodus
Hope Street
Burn America Burn
Carry Me
Dirty Davey
Cholera Well

This Garden
Men-An-Tol
One Way

Dan led me astray whilst shopping in Harrow today. I came out of Waterstones with 7 books costing £62 or so, then ended up spending another £23 on 6 DVDs in HMV. I managed to resist temptation in the comic book shop, partly ‘cos that’s what I’d been buying in Waterstones. I now have a tired arm from carrying everything round town, but there’s a bottle of Badger Golden Champion in front of me which will no doubt prove an effective cure.

This is how it should be done.

At the third attempt we made it down to Dunkeswell airfield for Father’s 60th birthday present, a flight in a de Havilland Tiger Moth. The first flight was cancelled when we got there due to bad weather, the second was cancelled before we left Bath due to even worse weather, and today the weather behaved itself.

A slow trip down was followed by lunch, then it was time for the flight which lasted just under an hour in the end, I stayed firmly on the ground taking photos.

A last cup of tea and then it was time for the drive home again.

Tiger Moth flight photos
Other Dunkeswell photos

It’s time for yet another attempt at resurrecting the cross bike. I sort of fell out of love with it, and stopped riding it a year or two back, after deciding it was too short for me. However if I’m going to ride home with Ian a couple of nights a week, I need to bring it back into service.

The first job is to replace the bars. Currently it has fairly narrow Salsa Bell Laps fitted, after work today I picked up some Bontrager Race Lite VR bars in a super-wide 46cm. If they improve the position then I’ll swap the XT triple chainset for a compact Tiagra or something and fit a bigger cassette to keep the gearing the same. If they don’t improve the position then it’s probably time for a Surly Cross Check or similar.

I’ve got a day off work tomorrow, then I’m off to see the Levellers at the Royal Albert Hall on Saturday night.

Today was the District Scout outing to Woodlands Park in Devon (I’d link to their website if it wasn’t so obnoxious). First Group laid on a private train to Totnes for us, then coaches to the park, and the same in reverse coming home again. Thanks to the seating plan we had to endure the hardship of sitting in the first class carriage each way.

After the fog had cleared the sun shone and it was a nice hot sunny day. The Beavers, Cubs, and Scouts were mostly well behaved, and I don’t think we managed to leave any behind. The only downside is that it’s wrecked my back again.

Photos to follow at some point, probably.

You can also set Facebook to use “English (Pirate)” as a base language today.

Facebook like a Pirate

In honour of International Talk Like A Pirate Day, you can now Google Like a Pirate.

Google Like a Pirate

Google in one more language

Canon have finally annouce the EOS 5D Mark II, the long overdue replacement for the 5D.

Whilst the 5DII is way more camera than I’ll ever need, and most likely too expensive, it does open up the possibility of being able to pick up a cheap 5D towards the end of the year which would make a very nice christmas present to myself.

There’s some interesting weather ahead according to This is Bath

Today it hasn’t rained, it was even quite sunny at times. However that wasn’t any use at all to me, as I’ve been stuck in the house all day with bad back ache.

…and poking fun at the MPAA. After they banned his last poster for Zack and Miri make a porno, this is what they came up with.

Zack and Miri make a porno

It’s a shame that we’ll have to wait until next year to see it.

I’m glad I bought my 160GB iPod Classic last year as they’ve now upgraded the 80GB version to 120GB, and dropped the 160GB completely. I wonder if it’ll become a sought-after collectors item?

My Asus EEE PC 900 turned up, and after a brief dalliance with Ubuntu 8.04, it’s now running a streamlined copy of Windows XP. Even with essential applications like Firefox and Open Office installed it only uses half of the 4GB flash drive leaving the additional 16GB drive free for porndata. It talks to my phone for mobile data via a USB cable at the moment, a Bluetooth doohickey is on it’s way to replace the old one I appear to have misplaced.

I also appear to have jinxed my back. After saying the other day that it’d been fine lately, I’ve been off work for two days with chronic back ache, I didn’t even make it out of bed until 5pm today. However this evening it’s been sufficiently better to hopefully go back to work tomorrow, there’s only so much daytime television a man can take.

‘e’s not the Messiah, ‘e’s a very naughty boy!

Thank’s to a fairly hefty price-drop from ebuyer, I’ve finally ordered myself a netbook-type laptop. An Asus EEE PC 900-W to be precise.

Once it arrives I’ll stick a proper OS on it, most likely Ubuntu, and maybe upgrade it to 2GB of memory. A longer lasting battery is another possibility.

Yet another in a long line of wet weekends. Friday night was spent supping ale in the local pub, and once everyone had surfaced on Saturday morning we headed off for a “Big Boy” breakfast at the local cafe. A trip into town followed breakfast where I managed to spend no money at all in HMV for a change, and fortunately got home before the rain started.

Late saturday evening I decided to take a quick shower. The shower itself was fine until I ran the bath tap to rinse the soapy water away. When I turned the tap off it seemed to forget it’s primary purpose, and the water kept running. I ended up removing the panels from the end of the bath to get at the ball valve in the pipe, whereupon I discovered that the ball valve had also forgotten what it was meant to do, and failed miserably to stop the water flowing. I ended up turning the tap off as much as possible and then shutting the door to mask the noise.

Father was duly summoned this morning where we replaced the washed in both bath taps and fitted a new valve which then proceeded to leak slightly. My “fixing” it made things worse, so another visit was required to refit the valve. It’s still seeping slightly but my “fixing” seems to be helping this time.

In between the plumbing and the rain I’ve made a start on my James Bond box set, and watched plenty of episodes of M*A*S*H which has given be a craving for a very dry Martini, mixed “five to one, five parts Gin and one moment’s silence for the Vermouth”. The Tuesday night video group is planning a “Martini and Medicine” evening as the first of a number of themed evenings.

Following another trip to Ikea this morning, I now have a sofa to match the armchair I bought on Monday. It was slighly too long to fit in my X-Trail, but fitted perfectly into Father’s C5 estate.

The old armchair went to the tip first thing this morning, then once we were back with the new sofa the old one was taken to pieces, loaded into my car, and taken to the tip as well.

The dark brown leather does make the front room look a bit darker, but that’s probably also down to the crap weather we’ve had all this week, and it doesn’t look like it’ll be any better next week.

A group of us from work should have been heading round the Approach Golf course after work tonight, but due to the rather moist conditions settled for a few pints in the pub instead.

Annoyingly it didn’t actually rain whilst we were in the pub, but to make up for it there’s torrential rain at the moment.

Somehow I’d got through life without having seen this film, something which I’m glad I rectified last night. All bar a couple of minutes of the film are set in one room, and it’s entirely character-driven. Something of a rarity these days.

Coming next: Life of Brian

We headed out to Ikea last night in pursuit of a new armchair, after 12 years or so I’ve managed to wear the old one out, probably by sitting in it too much, nothing lasts these days.. Fortunately Ikea had one that I liked, in a size that would fit in the car, and more importantly a size that would fit through the front door and into the house (the last sofa and chair necessitated the removal of the front window).

The first thing we did when we got there was order the chair as you have to collect it later, they reckoned it’d be ready in 30-45 minutes, time to get some food. However the queue for the food was huge, so we did the rest of the shopping first. Heading back to the restaurant later the queue wasn’t any better, and wasn’t even moving, time for plan B.

After driving into what seemed the middle of nowhere we found the Ikea collection point, a very badly parked Discovery, and a queue. Thirty minutes later a plastic-wrapped chair-shaped object appeared on a trolley and soon made it’s way into the back of the car.

In lieu of the missing meatballs, we had to settle for picking up a curry on the way home.

The chair is still plastic-wrapped and sat on the floor in the dining room, I’ll endeavour to swap things around tonight before trying to get the old chair to the dump one morning. Then I need to go back to Ikea and order the matching 2-seat sofa taking advantage of their 0% credit for a year.