belay glasses

I was at the climbing wall on Thursday, and a geezer was there handing out belay glasses for demonstration purposes. The purpose of the glasses is to allow you to keep your head comfortably level while looking 90 degrees vertically up to see what your climbing partner is doing. The experience was a little weird, but I reckon I could get used to it. The glasses seemed well made and durable. A bit on the bulky side perhaps.
I didn't buy a pair, seventy-five quid being more than I can comfortably drop on an impulse purchase. Maybe I'll just put up with a stiff neck for the time being, but for my reference:
---> www.cubelayglasses.co.uk ++ edit ++ The price is currently £85 on the website

I am not a Jedi

Someone pushed a leaflet into my hand this weekend, about religion and the census. I'm generally happy to accept religious pamphlets from any nutjob with an axe to grind, because I'm interested in what other people think. This time, however, I found that I strongly agreed.
http://census-campaign.org.uk/what-is-happening/
Apparently the Census of 2001 recorded an unusually large number of religious people in the UK populace. Much more than would be suggested from the results of other surveys where the question is asked in a non-leading manner. And, the leaflet continues, the figure that 72% of UK citizens are Christians was used to justify government policies such as state funding of faith schools.
A young man of my acquaintance has three nearby schools to choose from. But, a little detective work shows that two of these are faith schools, and so I consider them an unsuitable place to send an impressionable child. As you can imagine, I object to my council tax being spent on schools that would rather teach funny stories than science
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/mar/21/free-schools-creationism-department-education
Wikipedia tells me that in 2001 there were 390000 people who gave their religion as Jedi. But this hasn't resulted in a single, state-funded Jedi Academy.

Dan Lepard's mocha fig muffins

I've recently been baking cookies to my own special recipe, but I've run out of ground flax seeds and Wm Morrison didn't have any. So I thought I'd have a go at the fig muffins from the Guardian magazine this weekend link They turned out pretty well. I like figs - rich in calcium I think - and these muffins complement a glass of whisky very nicely From the frankly awful picture of the muffins you will notice that I'm still using the Nokia X3-02. It has another feature which makes it difficult to browse through the photos using the windows picture viewer

Nokia X3-02 Touch + Type

I got a new phone because I wanted to improve on the camera (2MP plus scratched lens) that my old phone was sporting. I looked at the specs very carefully and picked the above because it has "full focus" according to Nokia. I'm not really sure what full focus means. I have found it extremely difficult to get an acceptable picture of my intended subject - a small child who moves frequently and unpredictably. Even this picture of my largely immobile breakfast is poor, only the cup handle at the back is sharp. Still, I can get another phone in twenty four months. Until then I'll have to use an actual camera

Easy french bread

Ran out of bread while on holiday, but had flour and yeast. So... Used the recipe on p269 of La Dolce Vegan. Pretty tasty fresh or toasted. And since this sounds like a shameless plug I might as well finish it off with an amazon affiliate link:

Paradise Mll, Macclesfield

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

House renovation

Cathal Coughlan again

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

Ubuntu 10.04 can't connect to wireless network

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.

Hair

I'm trying to decide if I'll be working a high-maintenance up-do this
party season

Autumn

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.

Gooseberries

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

The cupboard under the stairs..

..now has a shelf. Also I've maxed out my saw storage space - no more saws for me

Not british

I failed the uk citizenship test with only 67%

The good thing about snow..

..is that it makes the garden look tidier

Ample supplies

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

Lunch at Fuel

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

Drivers

Here's a web site that I found useful today

Gig - Ida Maria

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.

Hot food

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.