A Full Weekend

That was a good weekend with a remarkable amount crammed into it but still felt reasonably relaxing

Friday evening saw a trip to a nearby meeting for a get-together with our antenatal group, which is turning into a really nice little social and support group. We had the earliest due date for our baby, but last weekend we were gazzumped by one of the other couples, who produced something like four weeks early. We haven't seen them since, but apparently they are doing well.

After this, I dropped <3 back at home and scooted off to the pub to join in the session which was still running. This was a little quieter this time by approximately one piano accordion and four melodeons. The only squeezeboxes present were a couple of concertinas, which seemed a little odd. I think the morris men must have had some other engagement. One point of amusement was a local drunk constantly requesting that someone sing an Irish rebel song, and bemoaning the fact that everywhere he goes people only know one rebel song. Of course, this level of (non-) success may have been influenced by the facts that (a) this was primarily a tunes session, so not many songs got sung (there are usually a handful though) and (b) what the writers of the rebel songs were rebelling against was the English, and the session was full of (mostly) English people in the heart of England. Ho hum.

A good chunk of the rest of the weekend was spent by <3 and meself pottering about at home and around nearby towns buying DIY materials, food, wool, etc., with the rest involving me fitting scotia around the new nursery floor (there are a few gaps, but not bad overall) and painting woodwork, while <3 chilled and knitted. All in all it went well, and I must admit it was nice to go out for a Sunday lunch that I hadn't cooked!

Still no baby, though.

A Whole New World

Sometimes you just have to love the customer reviews on Amazon. The new Katie and Peter album has spawned some awesome reviews. Probably the top of the heap for my money is the one entitled "Two Monstrous Talents", which is a work of genius. Who can ignore a recommendation like: "How can two monstrous talents such as these, who so shun public exposure, have plucked up the courage to make this bold, vibrant statement of artistic splendour? And lets not forget Peter's contribution either"?

Thanks to the guys at The Session for spotting this.

Three Men in a Canal

This Sunday's pub session was very quiet, with only myself (with harmonicas), J. with a fiddle, and W. with a concertina (and occasionally whistle and bodhran), though we were later joined by the landlord and the cajon (that's one of those boxes that you sit on and smack with your hands to make nice drumming noises) which had been presented to him by the band which regularly plays there. Despite the lack of people, I had a great time, joining in on a handful of tunes, starting a couple myself, and spending quite a bit of time just chatting away. While it was light on the music, it was a really nice, relaxed atmosphere and I got to find out a bit about the workings of a duet concertina.

Inspired by the evening, I went home and learnt to play one of the local session standards, The Canal In October (known elsewhere as Le Canal En Octobre), and now I am kicking myself for not tackling it sooner — it's one of those really elegantly simple tunes which is easy to play and nice to listen to. Of course, now I need to learn something to play with it in a set...

Still no baby.

Them Pesky Cats

This weekend I did something that I have hardly managed to do over the last few weeks: get into the garden during daylight. A few days ago I posted about burglars who apparently used a wheel barrow in their nefarious exploits, and Phillip made the comment that perhaps I should worry more about my wheel barrow than my fish. Well, I looked by the shed where the wheel barrow usually sits and it is there no more (and it isn't elsewhere in the garden either). Putting two and two together, it looks entirely likely that our rusty old barrow, with holes in the bottom, was used as a getaway vehicle. D'oh! Did Phillip have insider knowledge?

We'll let the police know, but frankly we could hardly care less about the barrow: I was wanting to get a new one anyway and then this one would need disposal. I think that the main issue is just how open and visible from the road our garden is. As our hedge grows over the next few years, this should improve significantly. It just takes time...

Poster Child

So I finally submitted my final submission for this year's OU course — a project poster and post mortem discussion on the project as a whole. This year was the toughest yet and I genuinely have no idea if I have passed; it'll be about 3 months until I know, by which time I will be well into the next course, which starts at the beginning of February. If (fingers crossed) I didn't stuff this year's project up too terminally, then next year will be the last course I need to finally earn my degree. If I did fail, then I'll have to do another project the year after, making for 8 years of study in total. It's a long road...

In other news, still no news on the baby. <3 is now at home on maternity leave and finding it quite hard work to do anything at all at the moment. It is a little over a week until the official due date (for what that is worth), so it won't be much longer one way or another, but I'm really hoping it comes sooner so <3 can be able to walk again.

Cat Burglars?

Yesterday we received a letter from the police looking for information about a burglary in our area. It's worrying that there are burglaries taking place in our area, but it is clear that these villains were highly motivated specialists: "It is at this time believed that the persons responsible for the crime used a wheel barrow to remove a stolen fish tank and transport it along ?????? Road towards the main A??? ?????? Road."

Are our goldfish safe?

Two Front Teeth

In a conversation with <3 the subject of Christmas presents came up and what we both wanted. To be honest, I've really not been thinking about Christmas this year, and the best present I can think of is a happy and healthy wife and baby. But, just for the sake of greed, I'll point out my running wish list which has some ideas on. It's getting more music (and specifically harmonica) centred these days, but what can you do?

Munchus Maximus

That was quite some weekend... Friday after work <3 and I drove to Heathrow to pick up F., then zapped over to Blackwood to crash with I. & E., who welcomed us with a log fire and a big bowl of chicken soup. Saturday morning we set off in convoy to Little Haven, a Pembrokeshire village, nestled in a tiny valley on the coast near Haverfordwest, where we were attending this year's banquet.

This year was set in the Byzantine Empire and presented more-or-less Roman style, with a series of tables carried in, each laden with food and placed amongst a group of reclining banqueters. Food was plentiful and included the now legendary beef-cooked-like-bear, baby octopi, quail, stuffed squashes, venison, cheese, baklava, and more other stuff than I can remember. Drink flowed freely, and due to problems related to everyone eating from the cushion-strewn floor, occasionally flowed across said floor, which got a bit sticky from mead and ale in places. Songs were sung (I'm pleased to say that we managed to find the words to "Old MacDonald" and other songs in Latin) and much silliness occurred.

The next day we had to leave fairly early in order to get F. back for her flight from Heathrow, but managed to do this in good time, introducing her to almost the entire length of the M4 and (including the trip down) no less than five service stations (note: we even got free steamed milk for <3 at the Swansea West services, which shocked and pleased us in equal measure). A great weekend, though I still need a couple of days to relax.

Milling and chatting before things got started. Thanks to F. for the pic.

Learning Openly

It has been in the pipeline for some time now, but the Open University has now launched OpenLearn, a website which makes OU course materials freely available and provides "state-of-the-art learning support and collaboration tools" to boot. The selection of materials available at the moment is modest, and appears to be suffering from some teething problems (some courses have been noticed appearing and disappearing) but provides an interesting sample of the breadth of OU courses and looks like it could become a valuable site. I still have a year to go until I finish my degree, but afterwards I wouldn't be surprised if I look to this site for the odd extracurricular learning experience, as it were.

More broadly, I think this is great. Our tax pounds go to support the university system, including the OU (maybe not supporting it as much as it could, but that's a whole other story) and this has the obvious benefit of helping to educate the nation, but with the free distribution of these materials, I feel we are getting even more value for money. Sure, I still need to pay if I want to follow a course properly and get a qualification, but now I have the option of looking over the shoulders of the "real" students and get some benefit from well written study materials. I believe some other universities are also publishing course notes. Long may it continue.

On The Dangers of Having Too Many Legs

Poor little Forzie, it's not easy being a chicken with four legs, even in New Zealand. He lasted not much more than a month before he "got glugged up" due to complications involving what is usually found between and behind a pair of legs. The picture on the page at the other end of that link is dead cute.

Ryan's Crib

The last weekend was a good opportunity to unwind and smell the coffee a bit. An old friend of ours came visiting, ostensibly to drop in on Friday's pub session where he wanted to listen to the music and hopefully pick up a tune or two to play on his flute.

<3 was too tired to come out with us (less than 2 months until the due date, so no surprise really), so G. and I want to the pub and listened, chatted, and even managed to join in a bit. This month's session had a rather more eclectic selection of instruments than last time; alongside the usual fiddles, mandolins and squeezeboxes we had a hammered dulcimer and a didgeridoo. Some magic moments, including a rousing rendition of John Ryan's Polka, which the group plays as something of a game with musicians "tagged" in to play a few bars (almost) solo. Lots of Fun. G. then spent some time the next day learning the tune.

The following night, with <3 away elsewhere (I'm giving the impression that she wasn't around all weekend, which wasn't the case at all), G. and I sat chatting and playing cards well into the night, something I haven't done for far too long. It's the little things like this that make life worthwhile.

Legal Code

I don't want to lose track of this concise analysis of new US anti-terror legislation. The code looks sensible enough at first glance, but if you know programming in C you may well spot the logical error...

if (person = terrorist) {
            punish_severely();
} else {
            exit(-1);
}

More Hedging

So I've just submitted another order for plantage from Ashridge Trees. Most of last year's trees that I planted in our proto-hedge have done fairly well, so this order is largely to fill in a few gaps and also run along the bottom of the garden, where there is a bank of pretty much unsupported earth, so a new hedge should help keep our garden from escaping as well as improving our boundaries.

This order includes a new apple tree (Spartan, to go alongside our existing James Grieve and Bramley) and a heap of roses, some of which are wild roses to go into the hedge, and some being for loading into beds to make the garden prettier. OK, it all means more work, but it'll be worth it in the long term.

It'll be at least a month before we receive these goodies, so we just have to hope their arrival doesn't coincide with Asbo.

Back to the Bottle

New toys! A couple of days ago I received my first ever harmonica microphone and amplifier, the much vaunted (and alarmingly cheap for what it is) Bottle O Blues mic along with a dinky little Smokey Amp. The amp is so called because they originally came built into cigarette packs — you can still get them like that, but the one I have is plastic cased, although about the same size, which should give an idea of scale in the picture.

Now, I've never played amplified harp before, and I'm very much a novice harp player anyway, but plugging it all together and blowing a few simple blues licks was fantastic. It may not sound exactly like Little Walter, but there's this really thick, grungy blues sound in there, which made me (to my ears, though <3 may argue) sound better than I could possibly expect. I guess it's like playing electric guitar and getting your first effects pedal — it doesn't make you a better player, but it's great fun mucking about with those new noises you can suddenly make.

Now, of course, I need to practice, practice, practice. Lately I've been concentrating on playing folk music (that's what I get to play with other people) but the new toys may well bet me back onto working on the blues. (Though it's great fun playing a reel or jig through the mic!)

Jigs, Bugs, Ackee, Gonking and Babies

<3 and I have now been to our first Friday session at the Abingdon Arms. Great fun. The first half of the evening there wasn't much music that I knew, although I was encouraged to start The Butterfly, which didn't go as well as it did when I played it the previous Sunday, but was OK, and <3 even got to join in with her new low D whistle, which has a lovely sound to it.

Later on though, as people drifted off and the (tiny) pub started feeling less crowded, we had more familiar (to me) tunes, and I ended up managing to play almost my whole repetoir. This isn't particularly impressive at the moment, as I can count the number of tunes I know on my fingers, with some left over, but that is slowly improving.

The next day we headed off to the Valleys to meet up with friends who introduced us to the delights of crunchy cheesy mealworms and cream cheese and onion flavoured crickets. Yup, real bug snacks. I feel I have stepped over another hurdle as regards experiencing stuff. So what were they like? After getting over the fact that the crickets seemed to be looking at me, they were pleasantly crispy, but otherwise disappointingly boring. I don't really know what I was expecting, but these weren't nasty and weren't a fab taste sensation. They were just... something I ate, really. However, having got over the initial aversion to eating invertebrates (somewhat irrational as I have always been happy eating prawns and shellfish), I'd be happy to try something similar in the future.

Next up was going into Cardiff for a slap up meal at the Caribbean restaurant in the bay, followed by a trip to the rock club, Bogiez, in honour of the recent birthdays of three friends. The meal was awesome, having not eaten Caribbean food before, so I am now happy to say that I enjoyed a bowl of ackee and saltfish plus accompanying goodies. The club was weird, having hardly been to any clubs over the last ten years. Happily though, the air guitar skills have not all gone (though they are a bit rusty), and I also got to see some old buddies from past lives.

On Sunday we visited some other Valleys-resident friends and their six-month-old daughter, who was being a complete charmer. There is something immensely rewarding about finding how to keep a baby laughing and burbling away happily. I can't wait to be able to do that with my own kid. It won't be long. Eventually we went back home with a car load of stuff for a young baby that our friends no longer needed. Our pile of baby stuff is steadily growing now.

Hung Short

Ok, so this is yesterday's news, but much as I broadly agree with Ms Short on this, I still can't work out exactly how one campaigns for a hung parliament. It's not as if there is a box for it on the ballot.

Ultramonkeys Are Go!!!

At long last, after a lot of dithering, confusion and tinkering, I have built my first ever highly available, load balanced web server cluster using the intriguingly named Ultra Monkey software. What does this mean? Well, basically I have two old PCs on (or under) my desk, which act together as a web server. If you request a web page, one or the other will respond (you can't tell as a user which it will be), and if you turn off either of them, the web site is still available.

What's the point? Well, at work we supply quite a lot of data over web and FTP services, and need to make the system more resilient so that (a) if one computer breaks, the service is not interrupted, and (b) if someone is accessing an enormous amount of data, this shouldn't affect other people's access to their own data. My toy system is a test to try out the technology, see if it will do what we need, and an opportunity for me to learn on the job. It's not really that complicated as these things go, but I've learnt a lot from the process, having started off knowing very little about what was involved. A small personal triumph!

Sorry, no you can't access my system from the internet. As a test system it is only visible from within our site firewall. Besides, it's not really very exciting (except to me and my boss) and I'm going to turn it off in half an hour or so.

Being Terrorised

I've been saying this for ages: the terrorists are winning when we change our way of life out of fear. Their aim is not to kill people: that is just the means to the end of sowing chaos, disorder and fear, and they seem to be doing a very good job of that right now. Bruce Schneier puts this better than I ever could.

Paddy and Willow

I'm feeling pleased with myself and that I have stepped past another milestone in my learning about the harmonica. Last week I got hold of an electronic chromatic tuner and a toolkit designed for harmonica maintenance, and over the weekend I took my first steps in customising my own harmonicas. I took a cheap and fairly nasty harmonica that I had previously damaged, and with a couple of hours work I had an instrument that played better than several of my far more expensive harps and was retuned to the "Paddy Richter" scheme (by tuning one reed to a different note you can make it a lot easier to play certain tunes, especially traditional diddley-diddley music). By the end of the weekend I had a second Paddy Richter (in a different key) and another harp just retuned slightly to sound better — and I was getting a bit quicker at the job.

This is a true revelation. I can buy a £3 harmonica and make it sound at least as good as one costing £20 (though the resilience, etc. probably still isn't as good). Once I've messed with a few more cheapies and get the confidence up, I'll try tweaking one of my decent instruments.

---

Saturday evening was fun. A friend was celebrating her birthday by hosting a ceilidh in Chippenham, so <3, the in-laws and I all turned up with our best dancing pumps on. The band (Random) were good, the caller did a great job, and we all danced our socks off. <3 was feeling a bit tired (pregnancy does that to you, apparently) but joined in on plenty of times, even managing to survive the bonkers Orkadian strip the willow towards the end. I keep forgetting how much fun ceilidhs can be.

Terror Alert

I've just stumbled across this cartoon which pretty much sums up some of my thoughts on the subject. I'm just glad I didn't have a mouthful of coffee at the time.

Turlough O'Carolan, in the Tent, with the Plastic Bag

So, there I was in one of our local charity shops. I took my purchase to the till, paid my money, and as the old lady went to get me a plastic bag, I said, "No thanks, I already have a bag," and indicated the little backpack I had brought with me.

"But I have to give you a bag," she told me.

"But we have a house full of bags and are trying to not get any more, which is why I brought my own bag with me."

"Well, I have to give you a bag. I think it's to do with advertising."

"You know I'm going to just put your bag inside the one I already have?"

She shrugged and gave me my purchase in a plastic bag, which I proceded to put into my pack. So what's all that about then? I thought we were all trying to reduce waste these days.

---

Later on we were with friends playing Curse of the Pharaoh, a murder mystery game produced by Freeform Games, a firm co-run, as it turns out, by an old acquaintance of mine from a past life. This was lots of fun, more of a roleplaying game than the boxed murder mysteries that we had tried before, and I singularly failed to achieve any of my goals.

---

And finally, last night I finally got to play at our local folk music session. This was terrifying for me: I only started playing harmonica early this year, which is the first musical instrument I have ever learnt to play, and the first session I went to was only a couple of months back (where I just sat and listened).

The regulars were very supportive and encouraging though, and soon it came to be my turn to start a tune. I said that I only knew two tunes and wasn't confident enough to lead either, so someone kindly started Miss McLeod's Reel for me and I tried to play along. It went more quickly than I was comfortable with, but I just about managed to keep going despite losing my way a few times. Whoa, that is a completely different experience to playing on my own — or with one other person, as I have done before.

By the time it was my turn again there were more people around, and I got nudged into starting my other tune, The Kesh Jig myself so it could go at a speed I was happy with. I pretty much fell apart during the first time through the tune, but after some encouraging noises from the others, I got going again and then suddenly just about everyone was playing along with me. This was awesome, and I felt so much more comfortable this time

Now it's time to learn a couple more tunes for next time. The other musicians were good enough to play The Butterfly, a slip jig which I'm now trying to learn, and I think The Boys of Bluehill is another good candidate for the list. We'll see how I get on...

Foiled Again

A plot to blow up planes has been foiled.

I was just wondering what the terrorists' real aims and objectives are. I had an argument along these lines with a friend after the London bombings in July last year. My thesis was that the number of deaths were incidental. Yes, more deaths makes a bigger statement, but the key is to disrupt our "way of life" to the point that we have to do whatever it is they actually want us to do in order to stop being hassled so much. They basically want to inconvenience us so much that we have to accede to their demands. Granted, being dead is pretty inconvenient, but that is not the only way they can succeed.

Today's "disrupted" terrorist operation has resulted in grounded flights, travellers being unable to fly, and those who can being prevented from taking any hand luggage, not even a mobile or a drink. Apparently even baby milk must be tested before going on board. We can be thankful that (if the intelligence was accurate) a significant loss of life has been prevented, but I reckon that this has probably actually been a successful terrorist attack. Unfortunately we haven't been able to avoid dancing to their tune.

State of the Harp

I'm slowly making progress with the harmonica, currently working from two main angles: (1) learning folk tunes, and (2) working through exercises to develop technique. Of course, I'm also noodling around with the odd blues lick for a bit of fun as well.

On the folk tunes front, I can now play a passable Irish Washerwoman, and am starting to get somewhere with Miss McLeod's Reel and The Kesh Jig. At least, I'm getting somewhere when on my own with nobody listening. Lunchtime today I got together with a colleague who goes to the local pub sessions for a bit of a practice (me with the moothie and him with a fiddle), which was the first time I have ever played with anyone else (I think the messing about with Gav on Saturday doesn't count). This was great fun, but revealed just how far I have yet to go (unsurprisingly I was slipping up all over the place). At least I have stepped over another hurdle in my musical development and am slightly more ready for the next session (as long as I keep practicing in between).

The current exercises I am doing are from Charlie McCoy's All-American Harp book, which is doing a good job of getting me over one of the major technical hurdles: bending notes. This is a technique that allows a player to play most of the notes that are "missing" from a harmonica, meaning that the little 10-hole blues harp has a full 3 octaves of range. More advanced techniques allow access to all chromatic notes, but I'm not worried about that right now — many successful harp players go through life happily not playing those extra notes. Anyway, I can now just about do semitone(ish) bends on the first four holes. Go me!

The McCoy book is really good, but I'm glad it wasn't my first bit of tuition material. It runs over the basics very quickly, and would have probably just put me off. As a bit of follow-up material, though, it is great. The book that got me started was David Barratt's Basic Blues Harmonica Method, which was a great starting point (and I still haven't got through all of it), though helped massively by getting the DVD which accompanies it. Other than that, I have Ben Hewlett and Paul Lennon's Get Chugging (the linked one is a newer edition), which is just great fun for playing with rhythms and breathing exercises, and have more recently picked up Brendan Power's Play Irish Music on the Blues Harp which does what it says on the tin and was a great opportunity to get hold of a pair of customised harmonicas at a discount. Seriously, those Suzuki harps are wonderfu

Pimlico, Here I Come

I forgot to mention that my new passport finally turned up a couple of weeks ago, having taken about 6 weeks to work its way through the system. So I am now the proud owner of a shiny new e-passport. What that 'e' means is that the passport stores 'biometrics' (i.e. a scan on my mugshot) and the rest of the passport details on a chip which is laminated onto one of the pages along with an antenna so that anyone with appropriate equipment can read the card from a distance. Officially this is only readable at very close range (I couldn't find the official figure, unfortunately) and is protected by strong encryption, but the range can be extended with the right kit and encryption can, under the right circumstances, be defeated by a man-in-the-middle attack. Dealing with this sort of thing is not easy, but I can't help thinking that a contact only reader should be safer.

Interestingly enough, a £15 hike in the cost of a passport was announced recently, which pretty much makes up for the waste of me getting my new passport a couple of years early. This is on top of the rise last autumn, which I make to be a 57% increase in two years. That's a good bit of inflation there.

State of the Onions (or shallots)

We're well into the summer and we've been eating quite a bit from the garden, so I figure it is about time to think about how things have gone so far...

Broccoli

...of the Italian sprouting type (calabrese)... We've had a few portions of this, and delicious it was, though after the first couple of heads I harvested, the others grew rather loose. I suspect this was due to a combination of being planted too close together and not being watered enough.

Peas

Delicious, but didn't sow enough.

Broad beans

These were great: better than anything you can buy, but were massively attacked by blackfly. Still, we had a few meals out of them and before scrapping the remains of the plants I froze the better part of a pound of beans for later.

Perpetual spinach

This stuff is great. You have a big pile of spinach-like stuff to eat, then a week or so later it has all grown back again. I'm growing a few more plants to take over when the original batch gets tired — apparently these babies will crop into the winter.

Potatoes

Not as fab as last year (and needing more watering — the story of my life this year) but still great and better than buying. And there are still some left to lift — many of which are planned as spud salad over the coming weekend.

Carrots

This year's crop hasn't been too good, partly because of lack of rain, but also because I sowed in soil that has loads of stones in, which is causing the carrots to come out all mandrake shaped. They taste nice, though.

Shallots

A decent crop of very tasty little fellas, which amounts to about 5 or 6 times the weight of the sets I planted. I'll try keeping a few bulbs over to replant for next year.

Garlic

Not quite as successful as the shallots, with only small bulbs being produced. Probably again due to not enough water. Still, it's more than we started with, and they didn't take much space in the corner of the garden.

Rhubarb

Enormous quantities available: this really is a "fire and forget" crop that keeps giving. We now have a freezer full of stewed rhubarb and a load of rhubarb chutney. I'm planning on splitting the crown before next season so I can try forcing a plant and getting a nice pink, early crop.

Lettuce

Used up the remainder of last year's selection pack, which has already produced a silly quantity of multicoloured leaves and there are a load more young plants coming along which should see us through the rest of the summer.

Gooseberries

Leaving the best 'til last... I harvested these yesterday, possibly leaving it a bit too late, but these were huge, sweet and succulent berries (good enough to eat raw), in enormous quantities on our one little bush. I've really got to get more fruit bushes — so little work for so much tasty fruit.

I need to consider companion planting more carefully next year. One of my big enemies in this garden is blackfly, so anything to discourage them would be good. I understand marigolds are good as they encourage predators, but this year most of my marigolds got dismembered — by pigeons, I think. However, there's another possibility: I understand garlic is a good deterrent for blackfly (with the added advantage that cats don't like it either, so they don't crap in its vicinity). Evidence from this year supports that: last year we had a sunflower which got badly infested, but this year we have a row of sunflowers right next to the garlic and not a single aphid visible on any of them, despite not being far from the suffering broad beans. It's hardly scientific proof, but it's good enough to encourage me to dot garlic around the veg patch next year.

There's loads more to cover as further crops arrive: cabbages, runner beans, courgettes, squashes, sweetcorn, and so on. Maybe there'll be a follow-up post.

ID No More?

After a weekend where a leaked email called into question the civil service's confidence in the UK ID card project, and the ensuing denials, counter-claims and spin, The Register is now confidently predicting the death of ID cards. I'll wait for a while before I'm completely convinced, but the sliding of schedules and reducing of scope does look good for The Cause. You never know, Windows Vista might actually get here first!

Another thing to smile about

Today we heard our baby's heartbeat for the first time. :oD

Things that are making me smile

• <3 is back from a 3 week trip to America and now little Asbo is starting to be visible in the shape of a definite bump.
• Last night's "diddly-diddly" session at the pub was cancelled due to the World Cup final getting in the way. This in itself was not a good thing (I'd far rather do music than watch football), but we had a great chat with a couple of the regulars and I now have a list of (and sheet music for) a load of tunes that the group likes to play, so I can start learning them.
• <3 brought me back a nice new harmonica and an excellent case to carry my harps around in.
• It's raining. This makes me smile because I don't have to water the garden and the weather is cooler, which makes me happier.
• We saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest yesterday. While it isn't a patch on the first film, and rather annoyingly leaves an awful lot of stuff unresolved, ready for the next film (due out in the spring), it was still heap big fun and I'm looking forward to the next one. (Hint: if you haven't seen it, don't forget to wait for the end of the credits.)
• Life is basically good.

Well I woke up this mornin'...

It's a few years old, but I am pleased to see that according to an article in the Onion, not all wives of blues men are willing to sit back and take the accusations of "messin' aroun' with another man" and so on.

Independence Day Again

The people of Blaenau Gwent have spoken. In last year's general election, New Labour fielded a candidate from an all-woman shortlist in one of their safest seats, only to be whipped soundly by Peter Law, a traditional Labour man (who ran as an independent) and Welsh Assembly member who was popular in the constituency and seemed a natural choice for parliament. The lesson being clearly that even in a safe seat, the big parties need to listen to their constituents.

Sadly, Law died in April, triggering yesterday's by-elections for both his Westminster and Welsh Assembly seats. Both elections were won by independents, the new AM being Law's wife, Trish. Again New Labour gets a bloody nose.

There have to be many reasons for this. It is often the case that a government party performs relatively poorly in by-elections, and there must have been a significant amount of votes cast out of loyalty and respect for a dead man, but I would like to think that this might be the start of the realisation in the old Labour heartlands that New Labour is no longer the party of the workers and the dispossessed. This is a party fighting over middle Britain, assuming that the traditional support will always be there — which it won't, of course, unless its needs are addressed.

Besides, this country needs a few more independent MP's. It helps to keep the major parties honest.

Blue Skies and Barbies

Over the weekend I camped out at Southampton Kite Festival, and a very enjoyable time it was too. As is so often the case, the wind was a bit too light (and the sun too bright) most of the time but I still got to see V&K coming second in the pairs ballet competition (and top of the experienced class, which is great) and the new look Scratch Bunnies, now a six man team thanks to the addition of UK champion Chris Gough and all-round kite deities Carl and James Robertshaw who have won more kite competitions than anyone else has had hot dinners. They are already looking pretty darn good, so I'm looking forward to seeing them fly together after some more practice. Word is that they are working on an assault on the international kite competition circuit.

For me, though, the highlight was probably the impromptu barbecue that took place in the camp site. There was a big whip-around and a trip to the nearby supermarket for a nice selection of burnables and drinks, followed by a really mellow evening of eating, drinking, chatting, and looking at the flashy lights that were hanging off the small number of kites that were still flying.

I even spent some time flying kites myself over the weekend, which is a rare thing these days.

Diddley diddley di do dum!

A week or so ago, <3 and I found out about a folk music "session" in our vicinity from a colleague and as <3 used to be in a folk band and fancied having the chance to sing and blat her bodhran and I rather like listening to music of just about any sort, we turned up at the pub yesterday evening to check it out.

We thought we were playing it cool by turning up half an hour after the intended start time, but found only two others there. The others soon turned up from their respective barbecues, and the session got under way, giving me the distinct impression that Wantage is Squeezebox Central with the amount of concertinas and melodeons about. The whole evening was refreshingly friendly, with even us newcomers encouraged to take part, though I must admit I was too nervous to have a go myself — I bottled out of singing (though I did join in on some choruses) and hadn't brought any harmonicas (which I wouldn't have been confident playing folk tunes on, even with the friendly atmosphere). <3 sang a few songs though, and seemed to go down well with the others.

This was a really fun evening and we are planning to go again — and with the good natured goading from the other musicians, I now have a challenge for myself: to learn a tune to play at next month's session. I've ordered a book to help get myself started...

Project X Unveiled

I doubt there are many/any people who read this page that haven't heard the news by other means, but here goes anyway... If all goes well and there are no major problems, by the end of the year I should become a father. It still feels weird and distant, but it is rather less so for <3, who has spent quite a lot of time feeling ill over the last couple of months. She has, however, scanned our 11 week ultrasound and added a couple of annotations so you can tell which blob is which. So, without further ado, let me introduce little Asbo...

Well Rounded

Well, who'da thunk it? Today was my first Rounders game of the season and we won. Last year, despite our team doing pretty well overall and winning a few games, I don't think I ever played when we won. Perhaps this is a good omen.

Jousting and Corrupting the Young

That was a fun but tiring weekend, particularly Saturday which saw a trip to see Sister1 and family, which included a visit to a mediaeval fair near them. I managed to buy myself a good new ale mug, and sat watching assorted shows including fellers hitting each other with assorted bits of metal and wood (sometimes on horseback) and a falconry display which culminated in flying two falcons (I can't remember what they were — they were two different species and neither was a peregrine!) to one lure, which was pretty cool.

Later on I managed to have a lot of fun with my 5-year-old niece, who took an interest in my harmonica, so I gave her a spare and taught her a little bit of chugging, and in no time she was getting quite good (though she couldn't get her head around the draw notes) and we had some fun chugging away together for a while. Later, when the rest of us were doing something else, the sound of "tock-a-diddley, tock-a-diddley" could be heard from the garden. The niece tells me that she has a friend at school who has a harmonica, so I am fully expecting her to be far better than I am by the time I next see her (in a couple of months, probably). If she stays interested, that is.

A Future Identity

Here's something nice: a speculative piece about the state of the UK's ID card system and national identity database in ten years' time, written by an SF author who is working on a novel set around then. It's well thought out and scarily plausible.

Incidentally, I finally managed to get my passport application in the post. The first working photo booth I found was an old style one that takes four photos with no warnings and ended up producing a bunch of pictures that looked like an extra from a George Romero film. Later I managed to find a modern machine, one where you can see your picture and check that it is vaguely OK before printing. I still don't look like Johnny Depp, but it's a good enough picture. So now I have to wait. The passport agency should be emailing me with progress notices about my application...

Standing on Shoulders

As this year I will be producing a project report for my OU course, it is great to find some good advice on how to cheat good. I think the advice on color/colour might be reversed in my case, but there you go...

Boothless

Having filled in my passport renewal form and paid online, all I needed to do was send in my old passport and a fresh photo. How difficult can that be? Well, I was in Cardiff for the weekend, helping with a shop stocktake, so I figured I'd be able to get a picture sorted in between doing other things. I found various photo booths around town, all of which were out of order, as were the ones in the motorway service stations on the journey there and back.

Could this all be part of the conspiracy to stop people renewing their passports before all the new rules, regulations and bigbrotherisms are introduced? I guess I'll just have to find a booth somewhere around here...

A Time of Renewal

Well, May is the month where the spring is at its height (though looking out of the window, where rain is lashing, driven by howling winds, it doesn't much look like spring!) and is traditionally a time to celebrate rebirth and renewal, what with Mayday and all. Well, this year there is the Renew For Freedom campaign, which is encouraging folks to renew their passports in May as a protest against the oncoming ID cards.

It's not just a protest though: it's a defence measure. The government plans to introduce additional biometrics to newly issued passports within the next few months, a process which will include requiring applicants to attend "interrogation centres" and the beginnings of the national ID register to be put into place. This will not be optional. It will, apparently, be non-compulsory to carry an ID card when they come out (though how long that will last is anyone's guess), but we will only be able to opt out of the ID register (and the fingerprinting, eye scans, and storage in an IT system which probably cannot be built correctly, let alone to budget) if we do not have a passport. So renewing now means not going through that process for another 10 years, during which time hopefully the politicians will have changed their minds — or at least listened to people who know what they are talking about, and have modified the plan into something that will do some good.

Actually, I don't think the idea of the "interrogation centres" is entirely bad. Current ID verification pretty much comes down to a couple of bits of paper and getting someone to sign a photo for you. Going through the verification in person might be useful if handled right. But don't tell the Home Office I said that.

Anyway, I've just got the form filled in, so all I need to do now is get a photo taken and sent off with the form. That's one of the jobs for the weekend.

Roofus Novus, Part 3

Well, it's all done. Our house is now nicely roofed and cladded. And thanks to <3's phone...

Before:	After:

The colouring and size is different between the pictures due to a phone upgrade in the middle of the process, but you get the idea. We're very pleased with the results, but now this means we'll have to tidy up the rest of the place and give the lower half of the house a fresh lick of paint. Oh well, it never ends...

Bell, Cherry, Republican... Nudge

Recently word came out that there is a critical flaw in the machines used as electronic voting booths in some US elections. It is important that this technology is done right and not just rushed into — as with the postal voting fiasco in some of last year's elections in the UK. What is more worrying is that these voting machines are subject to far less rigorous controls than slot machines. So which is more important: gambling or democracy? I guess we can look at that in a different way: which is a bigger source of tax revenues and which is an expensive overhead?

Roofus Novus, Part 2

It seems to be taking longer than expected, but I think we are nearly there. As of yesterday evening, the cladding was complete, the roof was all there, and all that remained to do was the downpipes from the gutters and a bit of edging and trimming on the gable end.

However, there is still the small matter of the lean-to fuel store thing on the side of the house, which is also having its roof replaced. This hasn't been done yet as the scaffolding runs right over it, making access difficult to say the least. Apparently the plan is to clear the scaffolding today and do the lean-to at the beginning of next week — a two day job, they say. After that we get our new, improved house back.

And a bill.

If You Can't Stand The Heat...

D'oh! Yesterday was a fine, bright hot day, which is all well and good but when I got back from work I took a look in the greentent (we don't have a greenhouse but we have a neat plastic sheet covered tent type thingy) and, opening the doorflap I was greeted by a cloud of steam. Not good. Most of the contents were looking distinctly the worse for wear. Apparently most vegetable seedlings aren't keen on saunas.

What I'm most concerned about are the globe artichokes I have in there, which are due to be planted out fairly soon. Time for a bit of TLC and hoping that their roots haven't been terminally poached.

Another gardening lesson learned.

Identity Crisis

Just to get all techy for a moment, a recent thread on Python-Forum involved a newby who felt he had spotted some weirdness in how the Python programming language handles variable assignment and particularly when working with lists (and the '+=' operator). It was fairly clear what was going on, but I couldn't find anything in the official documentation to cover the 'list += ...' behaviour. Happily though I have now found an article which nicely covers the area in question. I'm basically posting it here as a note to remember this site myself.

Over the last year and a half I have really grown to love Python as a language. Occasionally there is weirdness but in general those bits do actually make sense when I sit and think for a while.

Mini Meet

I neglected to post a report on the main event of last weekend: MiniMeet, a get-together kindly hosted by E&I in their old farmhouse in the valleys a few miles fromPontypool. The idea was for a bunch of their friends to stay for the weekend, eat, drink, talk and play games, with a break in the middle to cram about 15 people into a small room in order to watch Doctor Who.

The weekend was great, giving me a chance to play one of my all-time favourite boardgames, El Grande, finally have a go at the excellent Carcasonne and its 2-player variant, The Castle, played lots of Are You A Werewolf? (I actually managed to win as a werewolf and survive as a seer one evening) and even did some roleplaying thanks to James and his hysterical "Broken Crane" Feng Shui scenario and <3's Nearside Project game (though the Nearside web page doesn't seem to be working right in my browser).

Anyway, that was a fun weekend and E&I deserve big thanks for organising and hosting it. Hopefully it won't be a one-off.

Roofus Novus, Part 1

Our house is currently shrouded in scaffolding and, as of half an hour ago, only had half a roof. <3 took a picture yesterday evening...

The story is that we have an old prefab house which still has its original asbestos roof. Asbestos cement isn't anything like as nasty as its more often worried about cousins, but it is still unpleasant stuff, doesn't look nice, and is brittle so there is a constant worry that it will develop a big gaping hole in the next gale. <3 and I decided to have it replaced this summer and were in the process of getting quotes when, on Friday morning, a roofing contractor dropped a letter through our door. It turns out that they wanted a couple of filler jobs to do before a big, delayed, contract got started, and they were willing to offer a fairly decent discount for someone wanting the job done right away.

By lunchtime we had a visit from a rep from the company and had found out more. We thought about it over the weekend and confirmed that we wanted the work done (including getting new cladding, which should massively improve the house's insulation) on Monday. Yesterday they put up scaffolding, and as I type they are removing the old roof -- apparently by the end of the day we should have a new felt roof and the proper covering (metal sheets which look like tiles) will be going on over the next few days.

I know how they are proceding at the moment because I had a phonecall earlier to say that they couldn't get any power for their tools, so I had to take a quick trip back to check it out. It turns out that they have a shonky transformer that was tripping our power circuits, and so they'll be getting a new one in. Doesn't bode too well, but other than that they seem to be doing a good job so far.

Open Contentment

There doesn't seem to have been much in the way of fanfares and flashing lights about this, but last month the Open University announced their Open Content Initiative. The idea is that as, over the years, it has made programmes freely available over the TV and radio for anyone to watch or listen to, it will start publishing some of its books and other course materials on the interweb for anyone to read. This sounds great to me: you can get a good source of educational materials for free, or you can pay to get the full tuition and matriculation package. I'm not sure what or how much will be published this way in the near future, but they have £5.65M to spend on the project.

Designed to Provoke an Emotional Response...

A couple of months ago I remember Phillip posted about CAPTCHAs, the technology where you prove that you are really a human by typing in some information from an image, which is theoretically tricky for a computer to do. Well, this morning I spotted a post on Bruce Schneier's blog pointing to a cute variation on the theme: KittenAuth, where you prove you are human by telling the difference between kittens and other fluffy lumps of cuteness like chicks and baby rabbits. Awww...

1 1 2 3 5 8

Fibs
Words
Poems
New era haikus
A web-based fad, I love this stuff!

Dip Me In Chocolate...

Yesterday evening we took a trip into Oxford to see Jerry Springer The Opera. We saw this a while ago when it was controversially shown on BBC2 and was impressed with its wit, humanity, high quality music, top notch cast and utter disrespect for taboos. The controversy is quieter now, but has not gone away: as we approached we were handed leaflets by the small group of Christian Voice protesters.

The leaflet argued that the show is blasphemous and a vehicle for the writer's "unreasoning hatred of Christianity", going into some detail about the perceived evils of the production before going on to be more positive about the Christian message. The author of the leaflet says that he has seen the show ("and rather wishes he hadn't"), and I don't doubt that to be true, but what I saw didn't strike me as an unreasoning attack on Christianity. I saw some quite intelligent debate on morality and society wrapped up in so many cuss words that you have to either walk out or laugh. It just so happened that the Judeo-Christian stories form much of the cultural background for the writer and most of the intended audience, so made an appropriate setting for the show. Unfortunately in taking such an uncompromising view, the writer created something that would certainly offend many people. Of course, there has never been any secret about this and those who watch and are offended can't say they didn't know what they were in for.

A few miscellaneous points...

• There is a f*** of a lot of swearing.
• Critics of the show say that Jesus is portrayed as a man in a nappy. This is not accurate — he wears a loincloth much as depicted in most images of the crucifixion.
• There are some "cheap shot" gags at the expense of Jesus: "Talk to the stigmata", "Grow up and put some clothes on!", etc...
• The show shows Jerry largely as shallow, self-important and with more concern for his own career than his "victims" (despite protestations to the contrary), but JS has seen the show and has given it his blessing.
• The swearing really is relentless.
• In the midst of the nastiness there is some real humanity and some beautifully drawn, sympathetic characters. The wife of the man who wants to be a baby is one great example. The woman who wants to break out of her trailer trash lifestyle and "just dance" is another, a fine example of true beauty amidst the freak show.
• The descent into hell and the theme of an attempted reconciliation between heaven and hell (which is obviously doomed to fail) is truly epic stuff.
• The music is pretty much all great, and ranges across so many styles. You just don't necessarily want the kids singing those catchy tunes.
• The fact that the entire second half appears to occur within the fevered imagination of a dieing man says quite a lot about the character of that man.
• And finally, how can anyone fully hate a show which has the Ku Klux Klan doing a camp tap dance routine?

Love it or hate it, I reckon this is good art. It made me laugh and think, and that can't be all bad.

OU TM421 06 TMA01 (hut...hut...)

Last night I submitted my first TMA (Tutor Marked Assignment) for this year's course, TM421 The M301 Project. The cryptic course title hides the fact that the aim is to specify, design and implement an application in Java. I figure about the hardest part of this sort of task is to decide what to do in the first place, but I have actually managed to get past that stage: I will be writing a system to manage backups (an online mirror) of files across a network, which has some relevance to what I do at work. This first assignment covered writing up a proposal, drafting a schedule for work, doing some background research and, something which is a major feature of OU project courses, reflecting on the process so far.

The course runs for longer than is usual for OU courses, with the final submission in December, which means it will be February or March before I hear the result. By that time I should be getting in to my final course to complete the degree. It seems like such a long time since I started (January 2001), but at last the finishing line is almost in sight.

What sort of fool decides to study for a degree part time through correspondance courses, anyway?

Tuttle Cracked?

I'm a few days behind on this, but it seems that the poor people of CentOS, a Linux distribution, have been experiencing a free and frank exchange of views over a misconfigured web server which almost had the FBI called in to investigate. *sigh* Well, at least it yields a good story and a load of publicity for CentOS.

To The Batcave!

Now, this is cool. You want a bookcase that hides a secret passageway, or stairs that can hide a dragon? Well, for a few grand your dreams can come true. I think the dragon may cost extra though.

Thanks to Bruce Schneier for bringing this onto my radar. As Bruce says, "Who cares about the security properties? I want one."

Word From On High

Some time ago I exchanged emails with the Home Office regarding ID cards. More recently I received an email from them with the content...

Please see letter from the Home Office attached.

...followed by the usual stuff about intended recipients and virus scans. The attachment was an MS Word document which, on this occasion, could be opened and basically said that the HO had commissioned a Customer Satisfaction survey and I would shortly receive another email about taking part.

Now, I generally feel that it is rude and lazy to email information (like this letter) in attachments when it can be easily be included in the body of the email, and that it is poor form to use proprietory formats for exchanging data, particularly with people outside of your organisation, when alternatives exist. Others have written at some length on the subject, though I am not as militant as some. So I sent an email back to the HO, raising some of my concerns and, for good measure, I sent a copy to my MP, Ed Vaizey, too.

I quickly received an email from my Vaizey's PA, asking for more information, which I provided, and this was followed by another email saying that if it was OK by me, Vaizey would contact me once he had heard back from the Home Office. A few days later I had an email from the Home Office, acknowledging that I had made good points and that they would do better in future. A week or so after that I received a real, honest to goodness letter from Vaizey's PA, enclosing a copy of a longer letter from the HO, which was similar in tone and content to the email I had received. OK, so I didn't get a personal letter from my MP this time, but I'm quite happy with the outcome overall. (I tried contacting my constituency's previous MP, Robert Jackson, once but never heard anything from him, so my 2-for-2 with the new guy is a definite improvement.)

Of course, if the Home Office send me a Word document again I'll be a bit annoyed, but that will be a good excuse to have a bit more fun with them.

Holy Harmonica Batman!

I've been trying to learn to play harmonica for about 2 months now, with some small amount of success — I still suck, but sometimes it is now through the right hole. Poking around the net it is possible to find some great examples of harp playing to inspire me onwards. And then there are things like this mp3 which just make me want to give up in dispair. One man (Richard Hunter), one harmonica, playing acoustically. Awesome.

High Cross Squeak

Funny things, harmonicas. For the last month or so I've been steadily working through my tuition book, doing the exercises and practice tunes, and steadily improving. Even <3 has been complimentary on a couple of occasions.

The thing is that there are 3 octaves on a standard diatonic harmonica, though there are notes missing in the top and bottom octaves. I am learning blues style playing, which is most often played in "second position" (also known as "cross harp"), which means that the starting note for scales is on the "2 draw" rather than the "1 blow". This means that my C-harmonica, for example, is played in the key of G, and has 2 octaves, with a few extra notes top and bottom. (Actually, it's not truly in the key of G as there is no F# available without some clever techniques, but don't worry about that.) Following so far?

So far the exercises I have been doing have been based on the lower of these two G octaves, plus some adjacent notes. This has been going OK, though sounding the 2 draw was initially tricky due to a well documented quirk of harmonica physics, and both notes in the 1 hole are awkward because they are right at the end of the harp and my lips keep falling off the instrument. With practice, I learned ways around these problems. But then I reached some exercises based on the upper G octave, and all of a sudden I could barely make the damn thing squeak, let alone play nice, clear notes!

It would seem this is common, and new players often have difficulty playing the high holes due to puckering up too much and restricting air flow to the holes. The solution is, apparently, to make sure the mouth is well relaxed and ensure the air is breathed up from the diaphragm. Easier said than done, but I am slowly... very slowly getting there. If I can get through this section the next few exercises should be a bit easier.

Slow, Slow, Quick Quick Slow...

A few years ago, <3 and I decided to learn to dance. We signed up for a jive class and kept going, on and off, for a couple of years. As time went on this became more off than on for various reasons, until we moved house a year ago and fell off the wagon completely. Since then we have been meaning to learn some more dancing together — <3 has been doing bellydancing, but we haven't managed to sort anything out for both of us.

Well, on Friday we got ourselves to a "social dance" class: a short course over six weeks which teaches the basics of a number of dance styles. So now we can (just about — slowly) waltz and foxtrot, and did a bit of rock 'n' roll (the latter seemed a bit trivial after the earlier jive lessons). This was loads of fun and the class had a great atmosphere. Over the coming weeks we look forward to learning to cha cha cha and quickstep, and possibly other stuff too. Look out Fred and Ginger...

Incidentally, <3 put a smile on my face by noting that Ginger Rogers was reputed to have pointed out that she did everything Fred did, but backwards and with high heels. Good point...

Seeds of Change

It's getting towards the planting stuff season, so I've been digging patches of the garden and planning this year's planting. We have a selection of spuds chitting away on the windowsill, a load of broad beans already planted out under cloches and (by way of this year's exotica) a few pots containing globe artichokes which are in the process of germinating. Hopefully I'll end up with enough decent artichoke plants to get a few out in the garden and trade a few for seedlings of other varieties. It'll be next year before we get a real crop, but I'm looking forward to that.

In addition to the small heap of fresh seeds acquired over the last couple of weeks I still have some left over from last year. No idea if they'll germinate OK, so I've put a few of each (leeks, carrots, lettuces) into small pots to grow indoors. If they work out on the windowsill I'll be able to plant the rest out later. If not, I'll just haveto get some replacements...

Respect

Yesterday evening we stumbled across the Olympic pairs figure skating on TV, where the couples were going through the free programme part of the competition. In a classic piece of sporting drama, Zhang Dan (of China) landed badly after a big aerial move, apparently doing some serious damage to her leg. After some four minutes of uncertainty the couple resumed their routine and, thanks to an impressive bit of skating and the new scoring regime which did not heavily penalise them for the fall, they managed to secure a silver medal.

Today there is a great deal of controversy about the whole event. How can athletes that botch their routine so badly only be penalised a single point? Was it fair that they were allowed four minutes of recovery time before resuming? In most other events, if an athlete crashes and burns on their single attempt then tough, that's it. A downhill skier who falls is not given a second chance. This is top level competition, not some school sports day.

However, for me this controversy is not the real story. Forget for a moment the arguments over the scoring and whether Zhang and Zhang should have been given a silver medal for a routine that had a four minute break in the middle. What I will remember is that a young Chinese girl took an injury that would have benched any professional footballer for a couple of weeks at the least, got up and finished the job she started, despite the fact that if she had another fall on the injured leg it could have ended her career. Sheer guts and determination. Surely this is what the Olympic spirit is all about. Do, or do not. There is no try.

Different

Wow! I thought it was cool that the Science Museum built a replica of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2, but now some nutter has gone and built a (miniature) difference engine out of Lego!

Thanks to David Bau for the link to this.

Blue Jam

Well, I now have the first book and DVD from David Barrett's Harmonica Masterclass series and, after a week of blowing, sucking and making $DEITYawful noises, I have just about got the hang of "12 Bar Jam #1", which is a simple 12 bar blues progression played on a C-harp. There are 30 of these jams in the book/CD, so it may take me a little while to get through them all.

<3 is going away for a few days at the weekend. She says it is to give some support to her family while her father goes in for surgery (many good wishes are going his way for that), but I have the sneaking suspicion that this is a convenient excuse to get away from the incessantly squeaking harmonica. (No, I didn't mean that! Well, I did mean the bit about the squeaking, but not the bit about the motivation to travel.)

On Strangling Cats

For years now I have been saying to myself that I really should learn a musical instrument, but I've never really decided what to learn. Well, last week it came to me in a flash of light: the harmonica! It's small, portable, cheap, doesn't require batteries, annoys the hell out of people, and besides, with my surname it's too good to miss (if you didn't know, the harmonica is often referred to as the blues harp, or just harp — apparently a nod to the aeolian harp, which has some similarities).

So I poked around on the internet, placed an order, and on Friday my Lee Oskar Major Diatonic harmonica in the key of C arrived. I am still awaiting the arrival of the tuition book I ordered, but in the meantime I found some info and advice on the web to give me something to practice. <3 has been very calm and understanding in the face of repeated, inexpert playing of the first two bars of "Love Me Do" and the first couple of lines of "Three Blind Mice". It ain't exactly the blues, but the book should get here within the next couple of days...

Pentigone

Over the last couple of days there has been assorted discussion about how Intel have chosen to abandon the 10 year old Pentium brand name for its mainstream processors. Is this a good thing? A nutso move by a company willing to try anything to maintain its market position now it is under threat from rival AMD?

Actually, I think it makes sense. Now that the megahertz myth has been busted wide open and even Intel have stopped cranking their clock speeds ever higher (perhaps in fear of an inevitable China Syndrome when they hit ~6GHz), everyone wants to market their processors without relying on clock speed. A couple of years ago, Intel introduced a new naming scheme for its processors, playing down the clock speed, but still people ask for a 3GHz Pentium, or whatever. So here we are, moving away from the word Pentium and hopefully getting the punters used to the fact that not all chips need to be sold by how many mega-, or nowadays, gigahertz it clocks at.

Of course, supposedly one of the main reasons that Intel started using the name Pentium was so that they could trademark the name — in the olden days their competitors would build compatible chips with the same numbering scheme because numbers cannot be trademarked. Now the product name is back to a bunch of numbers, we have gone full circle...

Anarchy in the... no, sorry, I can't bring myself to type it

On Friday, <3 and meself went off to Newbury to see the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain for an evening of culture and sophistication. From the "real classical music like what this is" (the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy) to the "Yorkshire folk song" (Wuthering Heights, sung swing-style) I had a great time. Seven ukuleles (we are faithfully assured that the one on the right was a bass uke, not a guitar) played well by some people with good vocal skills (a couple of them are really good singers) and a serious sense of fun — what more could you ask for? Of course, being uke players they had to do a George Formby song and, with typical lack of respect for expectations, they performed Leaning on a Lampost in Russian folk style (think Kalinka). Too many highlights to mention.

Technical

As a bit of a diversion to the norm, I thought I'd flag up some humour. Who can resist a good blonde joke? And this is one of the best I've heard in a long while.

Happy New Year!

Well, after a couple of weeks offline, I'm back up and running. Xmas and new year were good (and thanks are due to loads of people for nice prezzies), though marred by some 2.5 hours of delay on the way back at Dublin airport and the demise of our car on the way to Devon for the new year. Thanks to our rescue company we were provided with a loan car for the weekend, which meant we could actually go ahead with our new year plans

...Which were to be in Bideford, my home ancestral, which has long been the scene of some great revelry but over the last few years (since I moved away!) it seems to have become one of the top spots to celebrate new year, with a massive party on the quay — a town with an adult population around 30,000 (half of whom are over 50) was home to a free outdoor party with an estimated 15,000 attendees. And fun it was too — great kudos to Jude, the DJ lady who spent much of the night prancing around on the stage whipping up the atmosphere.

Bideford at new year (image nicked from the BBC)

Last year I had one resolution: to eat some stinging nettles. I succeeded (they are a lot like spinach when cooked). I think I will stick with these achievable, expand experiences in a small (edible) way type resolutions. So this year I will expand into two resolutions: eat tripe and smoke my own bacon (and probably other stuff too). Both eminently doable, but easy to not get around to. Watch this space...