Category Archives: Home

Stuck at home

Posted on by
Reply
19°C, cloud & sun but dry.

Stuck with no cycling. Still held up with that cold from a week ago- how frustrating.
Nevermind, I’ve drafted a letter of complaint to Eclipse; set up the computer so the expected RAM delivery can be tested tomorrow;  the ladies have had a haircut, but I have been playing FEAR on the computer too much. STALKER should arrive tomorrow also.
FEAR: Currently playing this the second time around, with the difficulty set higher. It’s far more entertaining doing that- previously the game was spoilt by being too easy. I shlln’t make that mistake with the follow-on game STALKER. Stalker has been out a few months now, so the developer have had time to finish it. It’s a ludicrus situation where the game is published before it is ready- and they all do this. So best to wait a few months untill the patches are released (which is now). This one should keep me going until Bioshock is published.
STALKER is loosely based on a Tarkovsky film which must be worth getting. The story centres around Tchernobyl, Ukraine in it’s post nuclear accident desolation. See this clip:
Isn’t Tarkovsky the director that made "Solaris"? Yes, but that’s loosely based on the book "Roadside Picnic" by Strugatsky. Now stop talking to yourself.
 
Below is a photo of Stugeron’s field, one month on from the last one. Much of the grass is now flattened by heavy rain but it should spring back over the next week or so.

We’re going again!

Posted on by
Reply

16°C, light cloud, no breaks, no wind.

Looks like we may have another bash at beating the 3 Peaks, this time with lessons learned and a determination to beat the challenge, not the other way around. Some good people have expressed an interest. No more to be said for now.
My knee is ok now (almost)- no more limping then!
More good news: it looks like the RAM for my computer upgrade is available now.

Recovery

Posted on by
Reply
20°C, sun & light winds

At home: a quiet day, mow the lawn, walk the dogs and sleep and sleep. this knee is trying its best to be good but sometimes is strikes a lightning bolt up my leg. ouch.
 
Rice: is a good thing. Good for returning energy to tired muscles. Rice pudding on the drive yesterday was amazingly effective. The pot of pseudo-potnoodle was not- the lid burst.
 
Below is a photo taken last time on Snowdon showing the effect of clearing clouds from the summit.

Recovery

Posted on by
Reply
16°C, showery, with sun

Recovery day today: Legs are sore down the front (Quads) and lower back is very stiff indeed. One of the women who gave s a lift to fetch our cars yesterday, said they’s seen a bloke being airlifted off the climb that gave us so much trouble. The newspaper report today reveals that he didn’t survive. There is a short article on the BBC website. 
 
Shopping: ordered a nice big new monitor. It’s a 24" Dell widescreen LCD panel. *clasps hands in vampish glee*

Answer- Checkhov

Posted on by
Reply

probably 20°C later, + sun hopefully.

Next week’s play is by Checkhov, “Three sisters”. Also worth looking at is the coming Lichfield Festival. You get some fantastic things on there: Arvo Pärt, Five minute theatre, Shostakovich’s- “The Nose”, and so on. It’s so much better than going to the cinema.
Later: 43 miles cycling, loads of marking and assembled that computer. It’s taken so long to get the last few parts delivered that the list price of the first arrivals has fallen in the same shop. The sun has done its thing all afternoon.
Interesting: Flash Earth, 2D version of GoogleEarth, but needs no installation apart from a browser with Flash player- which most people have anyway.

Scaffolding down

Posted on by
Reply
18°C, wet then dry, 73% humid.

Scaffolding: the house is now uncaged: I really hated having that surrounding us; it was ugly, restrictive and blocked the TV antenna. The worst bit for me was sleeping in another room because the window couldn’t open against a steel pole. Sleeping with a window closed is really quite unpleasant.

Left-handedness: I just marked some coursework which has to be bound by the pupils. This one had put the binding on the right-hand edge so pages opened to the left. Sitting with it on my desk, leafing through pages as I mark while checking against the criteria booklet justified my decision to accept that presentation gracefully. It was actually easier to mark- so thanks to Catherine W.. I hope your handedness is accepted by the others.
We can be this flexible with art-books too- the books are symmetrical and I issue stickers for name-writing. For a few years now, the left-handers are informed that it’s fine to put the sticker on the "other cover" so it opens to the left. I have started to do that myself with sketchbooks. A practice I intend to expand on- why not do it with ring-binders.

Eternal damnation

Posted on by
Reply
19°C, rain.

Homecoming: Got home tonight to find the dogs barking energetically at the door. It was that "intruder" bark- each barkworthy event has its own bark. In this case there were a pair of smartly dressed young men who had the aura of religious loonacy. My opener was very blunt-
Who are you then?
in a smarmy US voice "we’re from the church of god" (or something similar)
so I sent them off with :
"I’m not interested- go away"
Then they did. Result!
 
I really was not in the mood for that delerious starry-eyed smarmy nonsense.
Music:
Lisa Gerrard- Mirror Pool
I’ve had this album for years, but rediscovered it recently. There is something sublime about it- especially when the male voices fill the background- such restrained power, paced out and volumous. Breathtaking.

Scaffolding

Posted on by
Reply
19°C,

Builders: we are surrounded by scaffolding. There is a new roof above, dust on the garden and some delicate delightful flowering plants crushed out of existence. On the upside, despite the high cost of the kind of house repair, there is a new loan in the bank. It pays the builder, and also means that my hirepurchase car is actually mine now. Final icing on the cake is that the monthyl repayments are for the same period but fewer monies each month.
Good innit?
 
Notice the tree in this picture. It was blown down in a January gale. But look closely – it’s growing still- it has leaves and pollen things. Look even closer and you can see Rosie the poodle having a poop.

Hearing

Posted on by
Reply
9°C, showers and very windy.

1/ Tall trees make the most fascinating sound against the stronger winds. A soft, deep roar, with smaller flutters, bows and groans. Looking up at the dark orange sky, there are long branches springing with the gusts, their ends waving frantically on the top end of majestic boughs. those slender branches were twice my height, and must have weighed as much as I do- but to see them flung around…
That sound really did stop me during the dog-walk, enough to keep me there until the cold took a bite.
 
2/ Headphones: been thinking about this after reading: Trashing Modernity by Colin McDowell in the Sunday Times. he’s been called a luddite – which I suppose is inevitable, but he did say one thing that stood out for me. After a passage debunking the mobile phone, he went on:
"The iPod is just as bad….
…How anyone of sane mind can think that having music shot through your lughole at close quaters can equate with listening to music, I can’t imagine"
It’s a shame he didn’t go further with that thought. Over 10 years ago I spend £75 on a pair of headphones because I’d moved in with a family who ate into my precious listening time. that turned out to be a notable waste of money. They were a carefully chosen pair, plugged into a much better than average hifi. there is something fundmentally wrong with listening to music on phones. It just doesn’t work as a way of communicating music. The sounds are clearer, textures more explicitly portrayed, but something was so wrong that these qualities were offset. I still can’t put my finger on what it is that phones do that change the hifi’s output into something that sounds like music but just is not.
I’m considering buying an iPod clone, also giving serious consideration to not buying one. It will be used to shut out the distractions while marking, sitting on a train or similar. There’s no point pretending that the sound those machines make is music- it simply isn’t. the magic of music doesn’t some out, partly to do with headphones and the rest is the effect of mp3 conversion (or wma) removing the spirit of performance. All is left is a shadow, a reminder of what it might sound like.
 
Open the window so you can listen to the gales.