"real ear-bashing".: Funniest news story of the weekend. Mr Smith, what were the films called? I bet you are looking back on the story and wondering if it was really worthwhile for a hand-shandy.
A Migraine: could this be one, Cycling towards home today in the blazing sunshine- I could see a shimmering lightshow, nice but this one was in my eyes. It was rather like christmas decorations flickering at double speed, or maybe like my eyes recovering from an accidental glance at the sun. I’ve had this at work once or twice; parts of my vision can’t resolve printed words if I am reading. Each time it seems to clear up after half an hour or so. A disturbing event; I was about an hour from home when it started, so I rode faster and faster in case it it became prohibitively bad. I rode fast so I’d be home before the worst happened and I couldn’t see to ride safely.
Incidentally, I have had a dull headache for the last few days. A connection seems possible.

Teeth: I need new ones. Mine are all broken and worn down. The edges of the breaks are quite sharp, you can feel it if you push your tongue against the shattered edges.
iPodding: I have* a pile of 24 CDs to convert in iTunes. It’s going so fast I can’t stop, half way now, can I last* the whole course before spinning out?.
That should say " iHave " and can " iLast "

Getting colder, I may have to switch on the heating tomorrow.

Saturday was a bad day for this cold, I was all a shiverin’ in the late evening after sleeping most of the day. There followed a rotten night.
That bout has given me a chance to take big bites out of "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. The book meandered a during some of the middle passages, but then regained its pace near the end. There are many instances where I have read arguments and felt thoroughly supported in my own views. My own distaste for faith schools is a good example. RD went further and suggests we resist the practice of referring to children as a Catholic child, or Moslem boy or Jewish girl, we could though, say child of a Christian family (and so on). There is a little more to read, but then I can start lending the book out.

If there weren’t so many wanting to borrow it, I could consider the practise of "Bookcrossing". That is some organised way of planting a finished-with book so someone can pick it up to read.

Weather and worrying about it: hold back a little,
Here is a graph of recent trends

Nothing in there to start excessive panic. Curiously- 1940 peaks as a warm year, a year famous for it’s harsh winter her in the UK and western Europe.

It is taking time for me to look at things, there is a delay and everything is viscous. Yep, I have a cold- an all throaty detatched achey feeling one.

Goodnight.

27°C,

---

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that does fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

Shakespeare

I want a new digital camera. We are going to Cephalonia (Kefalonia) in May and I want it by then, so I dropped in on Jessops camera shop today.

Photography is plagued with the same problem that Hifi is:  Marketing by numbers. I want a lens that is equivalent to 28mm to about 180mm, so the shopkeeper shows me all these cameras with 10x zoom! But none of them go wider than 35mm equiv. so what’s the point. I don’t care that they sport a massive zoom range if they don’t cover the one I want. The zoom at the long range is wasted because you can’t take a picture more than about 150mm zoom without a tripod. All that fuss made over a wide zoom range is a waste. The other problem is "megapixels".4 megapixels is enough to print out onto A4 paper, there is therefore no need to get any higher resolution CCD than that. In practice, if the CCD is small but high res then there are going to be noise problems and colour distortion. Small cameras have small CCDs.

I want a good quality camera, all the numbers used in marketing the different models are no guide to the potential quality of the pictures it creates. Buying a camera has to be made from a bewildering range of choices, the marketing people are making it more confusing than ever.

These are on my list:

Fuji finepix 9500

Sony E500