Monthly Archives: Jul 2007

the world is going to be alright

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17°C, heavy rain (again)

Wormwood: I’m getting a strong feeling that the world will be alright- once the human race is gone. In Chernobyl’s exclusion zone, there are feral horses, mainly in two herds, each led by a dominant stallion. In one story from Wormwood forest, one of the stallions broke into a farm full of confidence and at the peak of his physical strength, breaking down fences and rounded up mares to add to his herd. Wildlife is thriving in the zone, the damage caused by radiation is greatly offset by the lack of interference by the human race.It’s only been just over twenty years since the event, and already rare or endangered species are well established and indeed thriving.

This blog: the edit link is well hidden on the new-look blog, the page furnature is very Vista, but ease of use has been overlooked. It now has a very poor user interface. Worse, many functions no longer work- uploading photos only works with Firefox, MS IE6 fails on this nad buttons don’t have obvious functions: where it was labelled "Edit your space" now it says "Your space" follwed by a further two clicks, each held up with a long delay as it loads.

flood retreat

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21°C, sunny, like summer.C=41 miles
Digging roots: in the garden is not easy- old plants that have been there need deep deep digging to get the stubborn roots that grip the deeper ground. Hedge trimming is nice, but not with a machine- I use shears and hate the noise that so many gerdeners make with their trimmers, mowers, strimmers and saws.

Unfortunately, Microsoft have broken live.spaces, upload pictures no longer works and pages take several times longer to open- this means I can’t make the
blog entry I wanted to today.

Below is a panoramic picture taken on the bridge where Sunday’s panorama was shot. Although MS have shrunk the picture to an extreme degree, it’s still just about possible to see the difference. Though the floods have gone, the smell of rotting straw in fields is strong under today’s sunlight.
try this page and Today’s

Summer floods

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 21°C, clear. C=54 miles

The River Tame has flooded: Oddly the R.Trent hasn’t. I suppose that the Tame sources in an area where the rain has been heavier.
Three times I was turned back by impassable roads while cycling today. It turned into a search for photo-opportunities instead. The river Trent was full but not overflowing, so travelling north was clear.

Below is a picture of a road that I use on most Sundays rides, I’ve never seen it like this. Five or more years ago, the Tame flooded up top the road’s edges, but didn’t actually spill over. The surface was like this for nearly a mile, so I didn’t attempt it on the bike. In practise, this all means that we can’t get to the east from here- the river cuts us off and all the crossings are blocked.

FFI:The R. Tame sources near Birmingham airport and rambles around Warwickshire before turning north. Since lots of streams join the river, then in practice, rivers have many sources and the designation of one starting point must surely be arbitrary.

Wormwood: is a plant, it turns out, one that leaves poison in the soil, hence the book title discussed yesterday. The book says that "Chornobyl" is the Ukrainian word for Wormwood. I will try to find out the British name for it. It’s of the Genus "Artimesia", Tarragon is a member of that group too. Absinthe Wormwood is used as an insect repellent, especially fleas!

Seems like a good book so far by the way.

Summer holiday

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 14°C, rain, non-stop & heavy.

Wormwood Forest: a book on the natural history of the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
It’s the first day of our long summer holiday- and this is my summer read. Time will tell how good it is, the book is not well illustrated, but there’s more to life than pictures.
Waterstones weren’t of much use today; all I wanted to do was browse books on the Chernobyl disaster, but they are proving very scarce.
Here is a good idea; an offline test editor for making blog entries:
Unfortunately, it is not a valid win32 application- does that mean Vista 64 only?
Windows have updated this blog interface, it looks all Vistalich now- but it takes longer to load.

Purity ring.

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24°C, looks like summer is here (for now)

BBC news: schoolgirl looses courtcase after appealing against her school uniform rule:
A 16-year-old girl was not discriminated against when she was banned from wearing a "purity ring" in school, the High Court has ruled.
Lydia Playfoot was told by Millais School in Horsham, West Sussex, to remove her ring – which symbolises chastity – or face expulsion.
 
She said the ruling would "mean that slowly, over time, people such as school governors, employers, political organisations and others will be allowed to stop Christians from publicly expressing and practising their faith".
 
Playfoot) was under no obligation, by reason of her belief, to "Whatever the ring is intended to symbolise, it is a piece of jewellery," he said. "…she voluntarily accepted the uniform policy of the school and there are other means open to her to practise her belief without undue hardship or inconvenience."    
 
Miss Playfoot was one of a group of 11 girls at her school who joined a movement called the Silver Ring Thing. 
 
The judge ordered Miss Playfoot’s father to pay £12,000 towards the school’s legal costs.
See bbc
 
If she was serious about her chastity, then a ring won’t do- she’d wear a belt!

Make a girl-noise here

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22°C, showers, some electrical bumps & flashes.

Fight: In the staffroom we heard a loud girl-noise at lunchtime yesterday. It lasted longer than the girl-noises we often hear, so had a look out the window. Much to our amazement was the sight of a girl-fight. The girls in the fight, as well as those spectating were all contributing to that girl-noise so that it sounded like a large flock of seagulls. Apparently, lots of kids have been squabbling recently, which if it gets out of hand, turns into that distinctive girl-noise. It seems more likely to escalate in this humid, thundery weater.
 
In other circumstances, there are other less gull-like girl-noises, like the ones that they make in normal social interactions. This appears to include a group of friends all shouting at each other as a "normal" part of conversation. They all do it simultaniously, no talk-listen cycle, taking it in turns, it’s all at once and loud as a shout. They are all keen to express themselves, but no listening goes on, just a very loud cacophony of girl-noise.
 
Their throats must be sore by the time they get home. I wonder if they have tinnitus too.
 

RAM- with trepidation

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20°C, sunny spells & dramatic clouds:

Will it or won’t it?: Just fitted in the replacement RAM, which marks the third return but a different brand this time.
Just about to boot it up – concerned that it won’t work again.
Success!: it works, Dual channel the lot. …almost. Programmes load faster, and more noticably, unload very fast- just a split second. There is, more importantly, no waiting while programmes run. Now I can get on with the video project started a month ago.
Still feel ill though.

Game screen

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24°C, clear & warm

Took the day off today and drove to work. Exhaustion set in again- frustratingly.
 
Two pictures today-
1/ Game screen of a bunch of characters who all seeme magnetically drawn to the spot over a fallen foe. The all bunched toghtly together and looked upwards in a detatched religious way.
2/ Our cat sleeping in the shower.