New year resolution

How many people have you given dignity this Christmas? It's a rhetorical, so I'm leaving it there.

Twas the night before Christmas

And all through the house, not a creature was stirring. not even a mouse...

It is probably the most exciting time of year for children. this year was pretty good because it has been snowing up to Christmas, the snow has all melted now, but that does not change the white Christmas feel. In fact I'm not sure a frost feast-day is all that great a deal. before someone comes out in Grinch mode, we will just clarify, it's Scrooge mode this year, although the boys are not that hard done by in the end. This year there is just not a 'big-ticket' present under the tree for each of them.


I have gotten out quite cheaply too, all I have is a Mr Men coffee mug - appropriately it's the Mr grumpy character. I hope that's not a predestination.

Iced in for Xmas?

Tomorrow we will decide if we are going to be traveling on Christmas day. Looks pretty poorly, it snowed 5 days ago, and there is no sign of this stuff melting away. More cold weather, and some sleet already falling tonite means more slippery conditions.

On a lighter note, 2010 may be a good year :-)

Resistance is really futile

That is if you name is David Nutt .
But, if you are made of ABS plastic, then it looks like it could be hours and hours of fun, 'you shall be assimilated'.

Holiday Banana

Mailing List, Electronics Junk, Holiday Reading

North Cumbria - Wow, that was a beeeuutifulll bit of England. If this pic of the back yard is interresting, visit Dickinson Cottages site.

I read another book from my fave Clive Cussler -'Plague Ship', and am still drudging my way through David Gibbins' 'the Last Covenant'.
But now we are back, with a vengeance.

TGIMBOEJ
I have picked out some basic character-LCD units off E-Bay and should drop one spare into the 'box'. I am slowly adding bits because it looks to me as if it is no simple matter finding someone who wants more curiosities clogging up the workbench.
So far I've crossed off the royal-mail list:

• Scott (busy moving)
• Tristan (no response)
• Trying - John Lindley (found, and arranging)
• double-booked : Martin (sorry) I'll start a second box.

After getting a few non-responses and a non use-able email address or two, I started to double-up my attempts to move my box of junk, and got 2 responses almost at once. I'll be sending it off to John in Bristol - and starting a second box to send to Martin.

• Update: box sent to John in Bristol - 11 August.

Updates to this TGIMBOEJ post to come once the first box moves.

Going on Holiday

here at the Dickenson Cottage, Allonby on the Cumbria coast. Looking forward to that. Will have to take along my laptop, microcontroller and a good book in case it rains.

Twitter/Ditter/Shitter
Created a account so I can try and reach somebody, dunno why I bothered because twitter is very buggy and useless anyway. I am not sure yet, whether 99% of all internet content is for consumption of the over-commercialised, or just lame? Can we start a brand new internet task-force and hire some reliable Italians to "mark" and off the internet profit-wasters?

Either make money or don't, this in-between place where everything is just noise and spam is getting to me.

PS:
I'm still waiting for a twitter reply from Scottofthedead1. Update: I got a NAK from scott, and worked out how to "send" in twitter by prefixing with an @, there are many more incantations in the twitter religion. Perhaps I will learn a few next week.

Peak District Holiday over

So what is it like going away for 6 nights on £350 self-catering? If you are not in the peak-season, you can (pun-intended) because everything opens at end of march, and although the weather is well, 'English'; you can see most everything. The boys had a good time, we say Chatsworth house, some ruins above Castleton, the 'Blue-John' caves nearby. A cable-car ride up Heights of Abraham, and a visit to the lead-mine on top of that hill.
The cable-car is not huge by Cape-Town standards, even the trip up lions-head in the new proposed cable-car is longer, but the green countryside is awesome, and you get slung over a river, complete with canoists doing a slalom. If only it was not sleeting.

If only? well, if only it did no pay to lie and manipulate. I enjoy a bit of manipulate and lie myself, but twisting the truth is all good, while subverting a national election for Zimbabwean president is another matter altogether. I tire of this problem now, and am amazed how it fills the english media at the moment - probably just unlucky to be at a time when the most interresting things for papers to publish is about one of the royals catching a serious bout of flu. I actually tire of the media and the total lack of depth that comes about when you get stuck in 'PC' land and are too lazy to publish more than one side of the story. I mean what happened to opinion? New rules mean we cannot publish 'opinions' just-so anymore and have no idea how to interpret what goes on around us. I am not saying please tel me how to read, on the contrary, please tell me how I could read this story, and for Pete's sake come back 2 weeks latter and finnish the job. I am too often left wondering what hapenned to that fellow who was on the front-page last week, did he become nobody, or is the contents of someones gut suddenly more important?

Is there life? or is it only intelligent life?

More camping pics

I took lots of pics of the sky, I imagine it will still look like this 100 years from now, so maybe it was a bit pointless.

This one was not

Here are one of those helicopters I was chatting about...

This strange fellow is not directing traffic at all.

Caister castle, In this castle reflection.

It is not well preserved, I suppose that is the problem with all history, people deface it in the present by scrawling their names, pretty much in the same way as they did when if first probably fell into diss-use. I suppose it just started to fall down one day, so everyone ducked. Maybe they were taken prisoner, or worse, it was just too damn cold. Looking around inside the single standing tower was a bit spooky. I mean it is only one tower, the spiral star built into the stairwell is very steep (the original stairs would have been steep and heavier, hence going up or down would have to be done slightly stooped).

The nice part of the castle visit is the vingtage transport collection, with cars and bikes lovingly collected by the owner. The displays are light-hearted, alsmot whistfull, and packed in between is a lot of nostalgia. This was a worthwhile stop for £22 to get us all in.

I think the 'reflection' photo shots were not too bad, seing there is not much left of the castle, but the main wall ruin, and one opposite it. The inner courtward (it appears was divided in two) is well kept, and is a great picnic area. As you can see from the photo, the moat has been dredged, and actually works.

Our tent pitch

World gone mad

Or just a little cheap.

I spotted the fellow above taking these fake chimneys (obviously fibreglass) up north on day 1 of our little camping holiday. I wonder what the world is comming too. I imagine the chimneys are low-maintanance, and the brickwork looks real anything up to 4 yards away, as I drovepast I took a glance (my navigator was aiming the lense) and could see the fake brick-pattern.

We went to Caister-on-sea on the first day after pitching the tent, here is the lifeguard boathouse. The Sea-rescue thing is a big noise on the popular beaches, and there are large helicopters (clearly resue or transport opperations) flying over every few hours.

This statement (see detail below) was also a little too blatantly sexist, I mean what does the lady pilot do?

Your mind could turn in other directions as well, but the signage is just unfair to 60% of the population of the island.

Frequency oh blot

So why would you want to admit your mistakes? Well plenty. In a world where everyone is perfect, you can hardly be blamed for lapsing into paranoia whenever you find there are some things you did not know. The perfect person mitigates this by saying, hey I have not been doing it for long enough. The paranoid madman just gets depressed (me).

Office life is tough sometimes and keeping up with the Joneses is probably goal number 1. Although you cannot ever be sure of your progress if the playing field is strewn with obstacles that you have never encountered before (see above philosophy).

/interrupt F1 GP!
Sometimes I just love the way the brain works, I was explaining to my neighbor James about a new feature I wanted to add to my modbus simulator program. When suddenly while doing on about it I get a brainwave.. Hey there is an easier way to create custom graphical forms, I mean you can use a browser, but everyone has browser favorites. The solution is just to let the user use any browser he wants, and hence no need for embedded a IE-activeX control into my program, just pump out the HTML. I mean having a graphical form inside your program is neato, but it is heavyweight, and for all the control you get, you have to write lots of extra code, then stress about the browser ActiveX stuff being there at all. Nobody wants to wish DLL hell onto their little program do they?

Oh, F1 you say :-) Groovy. Now I am no motor-sport fan, but this weekend is Silverstone weekend. OK enough messing about, lets do some work.