Just had a lovely evening doing some fireworks in the back garden. I can barely remember the last time I did fireworks in the back garden, but I reckon it’s of the order of 20 years ago!
Obtained said pyrotechnics from Asda (who bizarrely sell fireworks which, in the main, have a minimum viewing distance of 25 metres. TWENTY-FIVE meters!?!? These are sold as domestic “garden fireworks”.. Who has a 70 foot garden??) It was their cheapest box; something like 4 quid for 12 fireworks (it was also the quietest box, as poor Ben is only 10 months!), so my expectations weren’t too high, but actually there were pretty good. Not exactly quiet either (Ben ended up watching indoors through a window, as one or two of the bangs and whizzes upset him!)
Good variety, several which behaved like 2 or 3 fireworks rolled into one – the colours were good and bright, and reached a good height (easily 2m off the ground, 3m in some cases). The fuse was a bit scary though – last time I lit a firework it used blue touch-paper, which sort of faintly glowed for a bit.. these used mission impossible-like gunpowder fuses! I planned to set off 2 at once to kick off the display, but when the first one started fizzing and zipping down the fuse wire I legged it!!
And yes, we even had some sparklers (which were Ben’s favourites). Give it 5 or 10 years and he’ll be after the biggest, loudest, heighest fireworks just like his Dad. 🙂
Seems to me like 2004 has been the year of going digital for me. I retired my faithful filofax after around 11 years of service, having at one point believed I would never manage without it. This perception was wrong, of course – I wouldn’t manage without a system of writing down addresses, dates, notes, lists, etc etc, but it turns out that Palm devices hit the bill perfectly! Ebuyer are still doing the Palm IIIxe for around 30 quid, and it’s a fantastic little device, it does exactly what I want, AND I can play chess against it on the train.
Course, an equally seismic shift is to trade in my 35mm SLR for a digital one. The digital photography revolution has come upon me while I wasn’t looking.. we got a 3MP point and shoot a couple of years ago, and (more or less) since then I haven’t used my SLR. It gets dragged out for ‘proper’ photography, but then I just get frustrated when the pictures eventually come back from the printers, and half of them go straight into the bin! My strategy for picture taking is always to take loads, and expect around 10-30% ‘keeps’, but having lived with this in the digital era it’s too frustrating. So, Canon D300 is the one – 6.3Mp is easily enough to rival 35mm at A4, probably at A3 too. I’ll pontificate about this camera some more when I get my mitts on one (December 25th being a significant date in this case).
Final digital switch is in song-recording. I haven’t written many songs, and haven’t recorded any of them in a way I’m happy with, but I had built up a collection of gear (4-track, compressors, reverbs, minidisc, …) to this end. Actually said equipment involved a significant amount of space and wiring… so that’s all gone on eBay, and instead it’s a Boss BR-864 digital 8-track porta-studio thing. Ok, it has limitations (can only record 2 tracks simultaneously, for example), but the quality is fab, it has built in effects, including drum machine, and is pretty much perfect for the level of tinkering I do in a musical type way.
So, year of the digital revolution. Paper, film, and tape has been replaced by LCD and Compact Flash!
Didn’t like the SX1 at all – was just big and clunky, and have got so used to the SonyEricsson interface that trying to get my head around the Siemens one just didn’t do it for me. I thought I’d like the whacky key layout too, but just wan’t really up my street. So – that’s gone on ebay (sadly didn’t quite make up what it cost me – lost about 30 quid, sigh), and instead I’ve got myself a K700i, which is an awesome phone. Does everything I want, without any fuss or bother or irritating little features (unlike both the Sagem My-V65 and the SX1).
Actually that’s not true – with the newest firmware it makes a horrid crunching noise (that I think is meant to sound like a shutter) whenever you take a picture. On the older firmware you could turn this off. Still, nevermind, eh?
It’s extraordinary how meetings just sap all your energy and mental capacity. I ended up in meetings all day today, and just find myself incapable of stringing more than about 3 words together coherently. (Typing this doesn’t count, as I can take 10 minutes between each word if I want!).
Funny old day too – really low visibility due to nasty cold fog. Actually it was only early morning – had cleared up by about 9am. Haven’t had a really good fog for ages, and I do find them quite exciting. The paper was also predicting a mega-cold winter, with average daily t emperatures of only about 4 degrees, and lots of snow. On the one hand, this is good (we like snow), on the other hand you just know it’s going to stuff up the trains. Perhaps it will only snow at the weekends? H’mm, and here’s me with 9am lectures to take from February.
Still, I consoled myself by buying a new phone today, which should arrive in the next day or two. Plumped for a Siemens SX1 (mainly because it’s a bit wacky), and think I will probably switch over to a PAYG tariff – I simply don’t use a mobile enough to justify a monthly contract anymore. If I hate the SX1 then at the price I’m getting it I should easily recoup my costs on e-bay. The Sony-Ericsson K700i was a close second, btw!
Another two films bite the dust – Girl with a Pearl Earring, and Cold Mountain. First was ok – nothing special, and not nearly as good as the book. Second.. well stunningly produced, but essentially a cross between a tragedy and the waste/inhumanity of war – not my favourite viewing. Loved Nicole and Renee in it though; they rocked!
Phew – made it home after a holiday in the Dales. Stayed in the lovely cottage in Horton-in-Ribblesdale, which was marred only by Ben’s continuing illness. Still, he appears to be on the mend about now, which is great, and hopefully he’ll back at full speed when we’re both back at work next week.
Anyway, point of this entry is that autumn seems to have happened while I wasn’t looking. We came back after only a few days away, and suddenly all the trees are red/golden, and there’s leaves everywhere! Of course, the scientist within knows that the hues are due to programmed cell-death as the trees try and reclaim as many nuturients as possible from the leaves, but it’s still very beautiful. Still, I just love kicking through big piles of leaves (unless there’s something unsavoury lurking in the middle, of course)
Oh yes, there was one other thought – are people no longer taught to put headlights on when it’s raining? Several times now I’ve noticed it’s been chucking it down, and probably most cars driving along without lights. I concede that they have been quite bright days, but the purpose is not so that you can see, but so that others can see your vechicle, and see that’s probably active. When visibility and road grip are reduced, it’s important to be able to tell at a glance where the other road users are and what they’re doing. I’ll get off my high house now.
Closing thought – just been handed the baby, and sadly my typing is only a little slower using one hand than two!
Well, the end of another week. Been quite an eventful week – little Ben got a tummy upset that kept him off nursery, so I had to stay at home for a day and look after him, and just this afternoon a couple of friends asked me to be an usher at their wedding next year, which was dead nice of them!
On a rather different note, almost exactly this time last year, Arriva trains started a loco service to Leeds in the morning (I wrote about it extensively) – I got it the first ever time it was run back then (with a brass band and everything), and today I got it for the last time it’s going to be run. Yup – after a year of running an extremely comfortable, successful, and popular service, they’ve decided the whole thing was only a trial after all, pulled it, and are replacing it with a two carriage set. I would estimate that the loco has between 4 and 6 times the capacity of a 2 carriage set, and the loco was always chocka by the time it left Horsforth, so exactly what’s going to happen I don’t know. Oh yes, and I’m sure the fact that Arrive have lost the franchise for this area is nothing to do with them withdrawing the service. Come to that, I’m sure the fact they started it at all was nothing to do with bidding to keep the franchise – course not.
For completeness sake – I do still have the mock-leather card holder (which I use for my season ticket.. seems appropriate somehow), and I have usually seen the young lady I chatted to that first time on the rare occasion when I’ve got the loco, but we have never talked again.
Random entry – here’s a procmail script that will automatically squirrel away any e-mails with [ ] in the subject into a mail folder with the name of the contents of the [ ] (after stripping out any nasty characters):
The observent among you will have noticed a stuff up in the last entry.. of course $670 is nearer 380 pounds on it’s own, putting the total cost up to 510 pounds. The reason for this error? Well, when I first checked the website, said camera was listed at $485, which was the figure I used throughout my previous calculations. At some point they must have realised the 485 figure was a mistake, and changed it (but I didn’t double-check my calculations!). With that price difference it’s not worth the time/effort of ordering from the states – mainland Europe is probably a safer bet! … it also puts it firmly out of my reach (as opposed to merely being out of my reach) 🙁
