I’m expecting an important phone call in the next 24 hours or so, but I don’t know exactly when it’s going to come. I’d forgotten what the anticipation of waiting for a phone call is like – I remember when A. and I were courting, and for about half an hour before the time we […]

One of those online quizzes has been doing the rounds at work – the ones with numbers and letters where each letter stands for a word, so you have 24 H in a D = 24 Hours in a Day Well, you get the picture. Anyway, there’s two parts to the quiz; the first part […]

I’ve been spending the last few days with some other church-y folk, and one of the things that we generally agreed upon was how important food is in the C of E. I have always found that eating together is one of the best ways to relax together and get to know people, and it’s […]

I’m very upset that so few people appeared to have watched Bleak House. Apart from being Dickens on the BBC (which makes it worth watching before considering anything else), it was actually really good. Star studded cast, great acting and directing (although I’m not at all sure about the whoosy cuts at the change of […]

Got next week off. I do enjoy my work, but I also really like having time off. As it is I’m away for the the first few days, in Stoke of all places, but am looking forward to just kicking back on Thursday and Friday. The theoretical plan is that I start work on the […]

Coffee room today, something describes a programming language as “loopy”. “Ah-ha” think the ensemble group of computing freaks… Descriptions of programming laguages: Loopy Classy Conditional Functional Routine Pointed Pragmatic MainStream (I know, I know) Prototype Typecast Argumentative Variable Defined These are chiefly the product of Chris and my deranged imaginations.

Late last year my tripod gave up the ghost (just as I needed to take a photo with it, of course), so the GPS receiver has been shunted back another few months to fund its replacement. I’ve had a number of tripods over the years, all of which have been (a) cheap, and (b) less […]

The other thing I was thinking about on the train were my ambitions in life. My three ‘wish-list’ ambitions are to write a book, make a movie, and create a computer game. Now it could be argued that I’ve already done all three. My PhD thesis is basically a book – in Germany you have […]

Sometimes I daydream on the train what I would do if I won the lottery. Actually I don’t play the lottery, so I probably have to give it back – but if ERNIE came up say. Obviously some would go off to needy causes and family, and equally obviously mortgage would be paid off – […]

In the funny way the web works, I recently ended up looking at a site all about how to make the best coffee. In fact here it is: the coffee FAQ. The upshot seems to be that you need to grind your own beans, but what’s more those beans need to have been acquired within […]