Found ourselves in Macclesfield on a dull day with nowt much to do. We looked around for some signs of culture and found the mill where silk was woven into fabric. Really interesting to see the machinery, and the punch cards used to reproduce the designs. Well worth a look round
This geezer has been mentioned before on here, but I've been
reminiscing about old songs with the help of Youtube, and found the
awesome Fatima Mansions cover of Bryan Adams' sanity-destroying and chart-topping monstrosity
It turns out that you can polish a silk purse out of a pig's ear
This was driving me mad, but today I found the solution. From a terminal I typed
> lspci
Which showed that the wifi card I have installed was detected. Also I could see that it was a BCM4318 chipset
I could create a connection to my wireless network but not get an IP address by DHCP. Kept getting 10.42.43.1 which isn't the address range that I use.
Eventually google lead me here
--> http://ubuntugeek.com/forum/index.php?topic=268.0
And after installing the b43-fwcutter app (I have no idea what this is) and rebooting I was connected
> sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter
Installing the app required a network connection of course. For added annoyance I had to move my adsl router into the room where this PC lives, and the onboard nic didn't work so I had to install a netgear fa311
I like windows.
I'm not really a fan of winter. Don't like snow or high heating bills. Summer isn't a fave of mine either - sticky sun cream and/or stinking hot days in the office. Spring is okay, though I think my pleasure at Spring's arrival is mainly relief at Winter's departure. Autumn is okay though. It has a nice smell, and I like it's colour scheme.
From the garden. Only the middle bush of the three has borne fruit this year ("Careless" variety, the "Invicta" have nothing)
Eaten in a gooseberry-and-apple crumble
Getting ready for the winter holidays is a lot like preparing for armageddon. Tinned food mainly, with some dried stuff. And fresh fruit so I don't get scurvy. The shops will be open for a few more days, but the last morning they tend to be picked locust-clean so I've done my hunting/gathering in plenty of time. Actually I still need to get cheeze and soya yogurt
I haven't been spending so much quality time with the Internet lately. I had an idea that making this moref a photo blog might help it keep limping along, without too much effort from me. On that basis, went for lunch at a localish café. Had a pretty decent vegan breakfast plus decaf coffee.
The boarded-up White Lion pub is a bit melancholy. At least it hasn't been bulldozered yet, like Cine City which was previously to the right
It was a fairly spontaneous thing, and we got the tickets with just minutes to spare. From the description - a kind of punky Bjork - I didn't really know what to expect, but it turned out to be pretty good. Not particularly punk to my ears, but I could detect some of the influences cited like the Stooges, Interpol, the Strokes, Sugarcubes. Put me in mind of the Detroit Cobras. With the added bonus of a top hat.
A sustained period of hot and dry weather has lead me to the inevitable purchase of a barbeque. Got a nice one too, folds up really small but held enough fuel to cook food for the four of us: our guests G and L, my lovely gf and me.
Didn't take any photos till it got dark, and then took a snap on my phone. Photos taken in the dark always look poor, so grainy. I've tried a bit of photoshoppery, but the only technique I've found that improves things is colour invert.
Since I'm on a nocturnal shift this week I had the chance to get a cup of tea with MV at a charming little deli in the village. Licorice tea turned out to be the opposite of normal herbal tea - it smells bad but tastes good. Freaky.
Today I changed the oil in my motorbike. Not a massive achievement you may think, but it's the first time I've done my own oil change and now I consider myself to be among the ranks of people who say "doing your own oil change is pretty easy".
Actually I still need to get rid of the old oil. For this I will need about three old detergent bottles and a trip to somewhere to recycle oil
There's a strange feeling to a house after a party. The cranial fogginesss of the participants (heh heh - i said pants) is just part of it. check out all those empty glasses and half finished plates. A-and the way that all the furniture is pushed against the walls.
Part of the wierdness is that my entire MP3 collection has been on random play tonight, and there has been a number of tracks that I didn't recognise. On the other hand, my MP3 collection has a folder called "Unlistenable" and I don't think any of these have hit the play list tonight - which is probably a good thing. Some peolple may have thought that songs played were in the "Unlistenable" folder but that is their problem
Anyway, it's been good to meet some of the neighbours and to see some of my friends who havent had an excuse to come round until now. Now I'm going to polish off the ?th bottle of wine and the 68th vol-au-vent and get some sleep. The washing up can wait
... we played Risk. I was blue. I had to concede defeat shortly after the picture was taken.
And I updated my blog, something I've not done for a long time. Did you miss me?
I often see references to xkcd but I never really looked at it much,till recently when I saw this one that really made me laugh. out loud. several times.
It took me back to the days long ago when I found matrix transforms baffling. So much has changed since those days. Not my reaction to matrix transforms though.
I think spending time on facebook has resulted in a decline in my blog postings. Now when I have trivial and uninteresting stuff to relate FB tends to be my first port of call. I'll try to fight it though and keep this blog alive. Here's some uninteresting stuff which won't be on FB ever:
Status: I am pleased with the result obtained when I took my bike to the jetwash. It isn't amazingly clean but it's cleaner than I usually get from handwashing and with much less effort
