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| Tuesday, May 15th, 2012 | | 8:44 am |
| | Sunday, May 13th, 2012 | | 10:55 am |
Don't cut the hedge!
I'm pretty sure we have wrens nesting in our privet hedge. I sat in the garden for a while yesterday and heard lots of scuttling noises, plus random branches kept moving as some small creature jumped on and off them. I saw quietly and eventually saw a small, round brown bird with a pointy beak, peeking out at me and pecking at branches. He / she never stayed still or showed herself for more than a few seconds, but I can't think what else it could be than a wren. Far too small and round to be a sparrow. Yay for garden wildlife! | | Friday, May 11th, 2012 | | 8:52 am |
Virgin Media still down...
It's a good job I don't use my ntlworld (now Virgin Media) email address for anything important! The webmail is generally pretty flaky - at least half the time, when I try to log in, I get an error message saying they've got technical problems, try again later. But for the last 4 days, the entire virginmedia.com website has been down. I managed to log in once or twice to see emails, but mostly it's just not there.I understand from t'internet that this is partly due to a DDOS attack by Anonymous. But the news articles only talk about the attack lasting for an hour. The site is still down! And I can't find anything to say whether it's because of the DDOS attack, or some other reason. LiveJournal manages to come back quicker than this, and it has the whole Russian government against it. Virgin Media just aren't very good are they? | | Wednesday, May 9th, 2012 | | 6:37 pm |
| | Thursday, May 3rd, 2012 | | 7:04 pm |
So here's a random pet peeve for you, apropos of nothing
It really ticks me off when a book says "Henry VII built this palace". Really? What, on his own? Awesome! Grr. Why can't authors say "Henry VII commissioned this palace" - or, if appropriate, that so-and-so designed this building or commanded 5,000 slaves to build it for him. A small thing, but I hate the way it dismisses *everybody who actually did the work*. | | 11:39 am |
| | Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012 | | 5:57 pm |
Part of my Plan for the next month includes visiting Tenby for a few days, if the weather looks like improving towards the end of May. I can of course search t'internet for B&Bs. But just on the offchance, can anybody recommend a nice B&B in Tenby? Must be: - not too expensive - near the beach - non-smoking - Wifi enabled I would prefer a small guesthouse to a hotel, and of course I would prefer there to be a harmless, necessary cat. | | Thursday, April 26th, 2012 | | 4:52 pm |
Yet another tech query...
...sorry, you guys are just too useful! I want to start keeping all my work in progress, docs etc on a webspace so I can access them from anywhere with web access. However I don't really want to use a third party cloud or skydrive. I'd like a free tool that I can put on my own webspace so I can easily use it as a remote hard drive. Something with a web interface rather than having to ftp or whatever. I had hoped there would be a Wordpress plugin, because I plan to rebuild my site in Wordpress at some point. But I couldn't see one. I am surely not the only person who wants the convenience of cloud storage but would like to use webspace that they have some control of? | | 2:58 pm |
I have a new hero...
I don't think I'd noticed Mary Beard before. But on Tuesday evening I happened to catch an episode of her series "Meet the Romans". http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/tv/2012/04/meet-the-romans-mary-beard.shtmlI thought, "I probably won't learn a lot because I know quite a bit about Roman life already and it's just a TV show. However it will probably be a pleasant enough thing to have on while I eat my supper." The programme was much better than I expected, taking a novel slant by examining Rome for evidence of how ordinary people lived. There was a definite "Falco" feel to her narrative. I found it interesting that she stuck to looking at extant remains and there wasn't a single Time Team-style visualisation of how it would have looked at the time. She showed us the interior of a Roman high-rise block - I hadn't realised any had survived so nearly extant - Roman toilets, baths etc, and talked very interestingly and entertainingly about daily life and class divisions. As a presenter, I found Beard engaging, entertaining and informative, plus clearly passionate about her subject. I would guess she is an excellent lecturer. It was a programme with a clean, simple format, very well done. I couldn't help noticing that the presenter was that rare thing on telly, a normal-looking woman in her 50s. Obviously I was pleased with this but wish it wasn't such an event that it stood out. And now I read that some eejit has had a go at her as being "too ugly for telly". Oh grow up! Mary Beard is ace! A woman I can admire! More like this please! | | Wednesday, April 18th, 2012 | | 1:55 pm |
| | Saturday, April 14th, 2012 | | 10:41 am |
Alternatives?
Huh. I search google for something including "midi" in the search term. Google decides I want "mid". I put "midi" in quotes to say no, I really do want "midi". (+"midi") Google ignores me and returns "mid". OK. Can anybody recommend a reasonably good search engine which will allow me to specify exact terms and not "do a Microsoft" by assuming that it knows what I'm looking for better than I do? Usually Google works pretty well but it is extremely annoying that they've removed the "search for exactly this and don't try to be clever" feature. | | Wednesday, April 4th, 2012 | | 1:20 pm |
| | Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012 | | 7:19 pm |
Food!
Wooo....I'm still feeling a bit broken after a week that involved a shocking head cold and running my first big re-enactment event of the year. I only made it through because some very lovely people gave up a lot of their time at the event to help organise, cook, clear up etc. But I did all the planning and shopping and organising and directing, and did a lot of stuff on the day and a huge pile of washing up! I want to note down a couple of recipes that worked well, and it'll be ages before I can sit down and put them on my website - by which time I will have totally forgotten them. One of my larger-and-further-in-the-future tasks is to rework my website as Wordpress so I can update it more easily. Until then, it's manual work and best done on my home device. So I'll pop the recipes up here - then I can transfer them over when I have time. ( Read more... )I'm hoping for a quiet evening tonight - I've leftovers to reheat at my digs, and I shall spend a sleeping tablet to try to ensure a thorough rest. I still have a cold, though I'm less ill than I was... | | Wednesday, March 14th, 2012 | | 7:54 pm |
Lord love a duck, gardening is behind the times. I though it would be fairly easy to search the web for shade-tolerant perennials with good value to pollinators. Is it heck! I haven't found a single site whether commercial or not, that lets me search intelligently. Does anybody know of one? If only I can find some likely-sounding plants, I can toddle over to Wisley and raid their excellent garden centre. But I want to know in advance what I'm looking for! OK I could just turn up and hope to find a knowledgeable member of staff, but surely the interwebs ought to be able to inform me? Lungwort, Geranium macrorhizome and hellebore sound worth investigating, but I'm amazed that I can't find a simple searchable database that will give me a list of plants meeting my requirements! Edit: oooh, thank you everybody! I feel inspired to get out there with a fork and boot out the nasty old shrubs (which will take a big effort) and try a load of the plants suggested below. I also have some tubs that could be planted with sun-loving, drought tolerant species. Again, ideas welcome! Alas there will be a short delay, as the next week is going to be manic and not permit time for gardening... | | 4:22 pm |
A question for gardeners this time
I'm seeking suggestions for plants to put in a particular bed in the garden. We've agreed (I think) to remove a few of the plants that the previous owners left us - which have no wildlife value and are a nuisance to maintain, as they get too big for the space. (There's a nasty succulent thing that overwhelms the compost bins, and a smoke tree. The filbert coppice is nice enough but not really suitable for the site!) I know very little about plants, but here are my requirements: - the bed is north-facing and gets very little direct sunshine. - the ground is fairly dry and sandy. - Must attract bees / butterflies - Must be perennial and low-maintenance - Must not get gigantic! Something that required no pruning at all would be perfect :) Any ideas, anybody? I know there are flowers that do ok in these conditions, as the bed already supports a hypericum, a late-flowering purple clematis Jackmanii, and some yellow stuff I don't know the name of but I like it :) from a quick look on google images, it might be yellow loosestrife: http://wiseacre-gardens.com/plants/perennial/yellowloosestrife.htmlSo, I seek suggestions for plants we haven't already got! Thank you! | | 3:04 pm |
| | Friday, March 9th, 2012 | | 3:43 pm |
A question for the programmers...
...especially those who've written GUIs. What do you consider to be the best, and worst, ways for a designer to communicate a design? This might be a screen layout, workflow between screens, interaction of elements on the screen or whatever else. Do you like pictures, flowcharts, tables, text descriptions of behaviour? What do you WISH a designer would do but they never did? | | Friday, March 2nd, 2012 | | 2:27 pm |
Pinterest
Huh. Just took a look at http://pinterest.com/ to see what it's all about. And immediately saw 2 pics I thought were stunningly cool: Pirate ship bedroom http://pinterest.com/pin/45528646202915383/Curvy indoor pool http://pinterest.com/pin/251638697898893948/Interesting site in that the web page appears to be endless - when I tried to scroll down to the bottom of the page, it just added more stuff! I wonder how they do that? I'm also interested in the legality - are they making a copy of the pic or just using a link to an external website? i.e. will the pin disappear if the URL to the original website ceases to be valid? The practical use I can see for it is to create "mood boards" that can be used for architecture and interior design. | | Thursday, March 1st, 2012 | | 9:14 am |
| | Tuesday, February 28th, 2012 | | 1:44 pm |
Interesting Radio 4 programme on video games
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/frontrowChoose the "Video Games Special". It missed some bits for me - for example there was no explanation of what video game writers do. What is the form and purpose of the text? Were they talking about "text adventures", cut-scenes, arcade games??? And there was very little mention of gameplay, in particular how it is achieved. Still, it had some points of interest. |
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