notes: September 2006

Here come the Limbersnigs marching along

I can't remember where my copy of The Limbersnigs came from, but it's been on my bookshelves since I was a very little boy.

Beautifully illustrated, it tells the story of the eponymous island race and their plucky hero, Prince Kebole, born a tiny baby and only saved from certain death by the dodgy-sounding dietary remedies of mysterious apothecary Gogo.

Having saved the Prince's life, Gogo promptly decides that the young Prince is nothing but trouble and needs to be bumped off. The rest of the story is all about Gogo's various plots and the cunning ways Kebole avoids them.

I loved this story when I was little. I spent hours pouring over the incredibly detailed drawings, themselves packed with slapstick humour and gags. At the front there's a cross-section of the Limbersnig king's castle; at the back, a fantastic map of Limbersnig island and its capital city, Sigficil.

The map is filled with amusing notes and captions: "The vasty ocean"; "No gold or gems found here"; "No fishing here, nothing but nasty octopus". It's just a joy to read. I'll be reading it to my son very soon.

I found out this evening that this is a very rare book indeed, and if mine is a first edition (I think it is), it could be worth as much as £120. Blimey.

Not that I'm thinking of selling it. Barney deserves to enjoy it; and I'm looking forward to enjoying it with him.

Labels: books, life

Wednesday, September 27, 2006
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Noo moo cards

Moo cards, originally uploaded by gilest.

I'm thrilled with my new business cards, which arrived this morning. They're very cute.

Some observations about the moo.com service: the box and the cards are recyclable, and Moo makes a point of telling you this; they include a returns sticker in case there's anything wrong with your order, so you can just pop it back in the post to them; simpler, more abstract images work much better than any with recognisable *objects* in them; one or two of the images were very dark, much darker than my originals.

Next time I make an order I'll be more careful with selecting and cropping the pictures. I'm still pleased with my order, even though some of the cards didn't come out the way I expected. Given that I hand out perhaps five business cards in the course of an average year, these are going to last me a long time anyway.

Labels: photos

Tuesday, September 26, 2006
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St Laurence School Street Party

St Laurence School Street Party, originally uploaded by gilest.

The town Arts Festival is off to a great start, and this annual street fair is one of the highlights. This year's was the best yet, crammed with friendly people, good food and fun things to do. We watched Pete's band, chatted with friends over noodles and beer, and mopped up bloody noses as the children ran wild and tripped over the dodgy paving stones. A grand day out.

Labels: photos

Saturday, September 23, 2006
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My lost albums

Albums I remember owning once, but can't remember how I got rid of (not that I miss any of them very much anyway)...

World Clique, by Deee-Lite
It was very popular at the time, wasn't it?

Killer, by Adamski
Good grief.

Every man and woman is a star, by Ultramarine
Actually I do miss this one. I'm pretty sure I let someone borrow the LP, and never got it back.

The big lad in the windmill, by It Bites
Prog rock was still alive and well in the late 80s, and It Bites were its curators. Awful, awful stuff.

Jazzmataz, Volume 1, by Guru + others
Back in the 90s, there was a time when everyone suddenly thought: "Hey, you can dance to this jazz stuff!" Of course, people had always been dancing to it.

Thunder and consolation, by New Model Army
I started liking NMA because my girlfriend did.

And now the legacy begins, by Dream Warriors
I cannot remember a thing about this record.

Of the heart, of the soul and of the cross: the utopian experience, by PM Dawn
Once again, the reason why I bought this pile of shite escapes me.

Comedy and Wonderful life, by Black
I think the attraction of oh-so-clever minimalpop waned quickly.

Labels: music

Wednesday, September 20, 2006
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Kidsequences

These are just some of the things that change when you become a parent...

Your concept of "busy"; once you have children, you start to notice just how much time you used to have for yourself. You also realise how much of it you wasted.
Your priorities; naturally, the welfare of your kids suddenly becomes the most important thing in your life. If half the picnic gets spilt into a muddy puddle, you'll give the little ones your share and go hungry yourself, because that's what you need to do. And you won't mind in the slightest.
Your sleep patterns; you'll be waking up much earlier, every day, for many years after your child is born. A lie-in will be a luxury. A lie-in with your partner an extremely rare luxury. Suddenly, early nights won't seem such a bad idea anymore.
Your reading habits; there's very little time to read books when young children are around.
Your appreciation of spontaneous things; although children can be very spontaneous people ("Let's build a Thunderbird out of paper and this egg box right now Daddy!" says mine at 7.15am), they're not very flexible. They need to be fed when they're hungry, they need to go to bed when they're tired. It's hard to be spontaneous when you have to plan for your little one's every requirement in advance.
Your diet; suddenly you find yourself hoovering up your offspring's leftovers. This can amount to a surprising amount of food.

Labels: family

Tuesday, September 19, 2006
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Peggy and me

1991: in our shared house on a quiet Cambridge back street, my friends and I have gone Julian Cope crazy.

His single "Beautiful Love" has been a chart hit, which is why Caroline rushed out and bought "Peggy Suicide" - but she was distraught to find the rest of the album very, very different.

But my best male friend Dickon and I love it. So much we buy a vinyl copy each - unheard of for students usually content to make taped copies for one another.

Dickon, however, has a huge pair of home-made speakers, everything sounds so much better through them. Every time I play Peggy Suicide now (probably once a week), especially every time I listen to "Western Front 1992 CE", I remember an occasion in Dickon's room where he and I sat mesmerised, our cups of tea going cold and our need for study fading into the background.

Labels: music

Tuesday, September 19, 2006
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I stole this look from Evan Williams

I think Matt Webb's Interconnected was the first site or weblog I noticed that pushed all the stuff traditionally kept in sidebars down to the bottom. You know, stuff like archives, links, "about this site" info. Shove it down to the end of the page, let people find it if they need it. I like that. Despite toying with them in the past, I've never been a fan of sidebars and prefer to keep everything I post in nice simple horizontal chunks.

So I've ripped Evan Williams' CSS to form the basis of this new look, because he uses the same approach and I like the way he's done it. Basis? Who am I kidding? I've almost copied it exactly, even the yellow highlights on the links. Hope that's OK, Ev.

Next week: Giles plagiarises Robert Scoble and Jason Kottke in a desperate attempt to get noticed.

Only joking. Last week I was mostly writing about rats. Next week it's hydrocarbons.

Labels: tech

Monday, September 18, 2006
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Home grown aubergines

Home grown aubergines, originally uploaded by gilest.

Our greenhouse has been incredibly productive this year. The tomatoes have been delicious, and the peppers are just ripening now.

Labels: photos

Saturday, September 16, 2006
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Dome of St Paul's

Dome of St Paul's, originally uploaded by gilest.

I had an hour free in the City, so I climbed up to the top of the Cathedral.

Labels: photos

Saturday, September 16, 2006
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Texture

Texture, originally uploaded by gilest.

Labels: photos

Monday, September 11, 2006
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Things I've given away on Freecycle

Make-your-own will kit
Pocket FM radio
Single bed
Authentic Moroccan tagine
Dining table and four chairs
Yellow Dog Linux 3.0
Palm Pilot
Large pile of wood chippings
Collection of half-used paint pots
Internal door (with hinges)
Ubuntu Linux disks
Barbecue (on wheels, rusty)
Selection of electrical switches and sockets

Which just goes to show, people will take all sorts of crap off your hands if you're giving it away for free.

Labels: writing

Saturday, September 09, 2006
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Well done Tom Watson

It's bizarre to read through the comments under Tom Watson's resignation letter to Tony Blair.

Watson gets roughly equal shares of support and criticism, but what leaves me perplexed are those who criticise him for "starting a civil war" (their terms, not mine) in the Labour Party.

This is crazy. If there are already two sides (at least) in the party and they're ready to fight politically bloody battles to win control of Number 10, then why on earth should Watson be blamed for "starting" them? What's the sense in arguing that Watson should have kept quiet, only for the opposing sides to merely plot against, and keep secrets from each other?

Personally, I think Watson's done the sensible thing. Not in the sense of looking after the future of the party - I couldn't give a monkeys for Labour anymore - but in the sense that he has allowed himself to live by his conscience, rather than have it dictated to him by the Whips Office.

Like one or two of his supportive commenters, I don't know anyone who actually likes this Government any more. I can't forgive them for PFI, which looms over our schools like a death sentence, or for bending over for George W Bush.

I hate it when I come over all politically bitter. I should get out more.

Labels: writing

Thursday, September 07, 2006
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First day at school

First day at school, originally uploaded by gilest.

So here's our Barney, four and a bit years old, ready to go to school at eight o'clock this morning. He was very excited and keen to talk to other children about Thunderbirds. Thanks to all the pre-school preparation, he already knew his teacher and his way into his classroom; so in he trotted, perfectly happy, giving me just a cursory cuddle as he went.

I strolled home in a thoughtful frame of mind. My gorgeous, wonderful, funny, argumentative and entertaining little son is now starting his own life; from now on he'll be learning to form his own opinions, choose his own friends, decide his own future. Good luck to ya, little fella. I love you.

Labels: family

Tuesday, September 05, 2006
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A Golden Wedding party

There was a big family knees-up this weekend, to celebrate my aunt and uncle's 50th wedding anniversary. We met old friends and made some new ones, and Barney had fun with his cousins and second cousins. My uncle reminded everyone how important it was to stay close to your family and loved ones, and we all nodded and said how right he was.

More photos.

Labels: photos

Sunday, September 03, 2006
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A Freecycle webapp

Freecycle is a great idea; giving away stuff you don't want to people happy to come and take it from you.

The problem is that Freecycle operates via mailing list, and isn't very well suited to it, especially when subscriber numbers increase beyond a hundred or so. Suddenly you're being swamped with messages and it's very hard to keep track of the status of any particular offer. People end up sending many unnecessary messages finding out if something's gone, is still available, and so on.

What Freecycle could benefit from is a neat little webapp to make the process simpler.

Let's say we start with a home page at freecycle.org - something nice and easy to remember, much better than the Yahoo! Groups URLs that members currently have to deal with.

Local Freecycle groups could all have a subdirectory of that, perhaps also subbed within a country dir, such as freecycle.org/uk/bradfordonavon.

On this page, logged-in members would see a list of current offers, colour-coded with the status. Pale green background means on offer to all; yellow background means reserved and awaiting collection. Red background means taken; these items will drop off the bottom of the list fairly soon after being snapped up.

Each item is controlled by its owner. When you log in, you have access to another page called "My items" which shows everything you are offering or have claimed.

Making a claim would work a bit like comments on a web page, but only the item owner would see all the claims. Other members would see only their own claim, along with the total number of claims made by others. Such as: "You have made a claim for this item. There are 5 other claims."

A successful claimant will be chosen by the item owner simply by ticking a checkbox next to their name; a message will appear in their "My items" page informing them that they've been successful, and perhaps they could optionally have an email sent to an address of their choosing with the same information.

Freecycle's ingenious concept is constrained inside mailing lists. I think that a well-designed webapp along these lines - almost an eBay without the payment involved - would go a long way to freeing it up and getting more people taking part.

Labels: tech, writing

Friday, September 01, 2006
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