onward!
let 'em have it!
May 31, 2003
value subtracted content 30 may 2003
Couple of interesting links I've come across:
May 29, 2003
and then the fish jumps 28 may 2003
I'd just like to go out on a limb here and say that I really enjoyed the Matrix Reloaded. OK, so the metaphysics were annoying - but they were annoying in the first one, they just weren't as glaring. OK, so the occasional sexism was a bit off (why couldn't the Monica Belucci character have just handed over the stuff because she was sufficiently pissed off? We've already got Carrie-Anne Moss in skin-tight black PVC, why go for more adolescent wank fantasy with the snog?). OK, so it wasn't the best movie ever in the whole world. But, y'know, it so rocked. C'mon, it was a heck of a lot of fun. It preserved the wonderful visual look of the first movie, had some stunning vignettes, and had some nice little headfucks in place. If the script was a bit leaden, there was a certain wit to the underlying concepts (Smith having become a virus, how many levels of matrices are there, who the heck is good/bad?). And c'mon - you loved the twins. Admit it.
And as a wise man once almost said: everyone's gonna be in line come November.
Looking through the Edinburgh Bicycle Co-op website (highly recommended), I was interested to note that I've inadvertantly done both of the Cambridgeshire loops on their Route Guide page. The Cambridge to Ely loop is basically there-and-back via the route we used to come back from Ely on our Saturday epic, and is rather nice. Up to Cottenham it's a bit of an A-road thrash, but after that it's really very nice until the entry to Ely (main roads for a mile or two). The bit between Wilburton and Ely is particularly nice, actually. The other suggested ride, the Circular Route in South Cambridgeshire, we've done a number of times. This takes you through about the only part of Cambridgeshire that includes hills, so it's a nice wee ride. Also it relies on B-roads much more. Hmm. It's tempting to write up a slight variant to that one, including a bit of offroad - there's some good bridlepaths and byways that link up some nice bits of tarmac out there. Hmm.
Apparantly, just before he pulled out of the Giro d'Italia this year, Mario Cipollini was planning on pulling out a secret weapon on one of the nastier climbs. Cipo - wearing his rainbow jersey as the current World Champion - had planned to change bikes at the foot of a 3km, 15% climb. Specifically, to hop off his team issue road racing bike... and get on the team issue (for a different team!) mountain bike. Now that would have been hilarious to watch - the expressions on the other riders' faces would have been gorgeous, and I can't think what the commentators would have come up with. In other sport terms, imagine that Michael Schumacher changes cars during a grand prix and hops in a 4x4 for the last couple of laps. It's things like this that just make it more frustrating that Cipo's not riding in this year's TdF. That sort of showmanship is just what we need.
May 28, 2003
countdown to oblivion 27 may 2003
Saw The Secretary last night. Excellent film. Clearly a large subsection of the audience had read the first line of many of the reviews - "a powerful, unorthodox love story" - without reading the second "...that includes a strong sadomasochistic element that some may find disturbing." Highly recommended; the sadomasochism wasn't too overstated, the film never tried to shock the viewer just for the hell of it, and it was genuinely pretty uplifting. James Spader seems to be doing a line in playing people with a couple of sexual wires crossed (cf Sex, Lies and Videotape, Crash), and gave a good performance - ditto Maggie Gyllenhaal as the eponymous protagonist. A lot of understated emotion. And wanking. Worth seeing, although since it was actually made two years ago it's entirely possible that it's already made the art-house circuits in more civilised countries already.
I note with interest that Stuie's got his web presence back, at walk-the-planck.org. You zany postmodernist, you. If Stuie was the adopted Chinese orphan son of an old English lord with a double-barrelled surname (and some argue that he should be), he'd be Huan-min Mather-Farquhar.
Spent much of the weekend gardening. I now have the sense of quiet pride, in that I have two working compost heaps, complete with plethora of worms. We watched the highlights of the Chelsea Flower Show after a couple of beers on the Saturday night, and ended up doing quite a blitz on the Sunday. Fortunately, we hadn't ended up doing any drunken garden planning, so there was no need to have an embarrassed conversation justifying the removal of a gazebo from the plans. I can confirm, however, that heavy weeding did occur. I performed my annual ritual of planting out my sunflower seedlings.
I love sunflowers. They're a ridiculously rewarding plant to grow. Since they're an annual, you go from a seed in a packet to 6ft of golden-topped goodness in five short months. The fact that they're very attractive, and make an excellent specimen plant in themselves, is a mere bonus compared to the simple fact that you can get such appreciable results in a very, very short space of time (comparatively speaking!). And, y'know, sunflowers rock, man.
Cracked off a happy 53 mile round-trip to Ely on Saturday - not bad, since it's only about 17 there as the crow flies. We took the circular route, taking in such picturesque wee villes as Swaffham Bulbeck, Swaffham Prior, Upware, Soham, Prickwillow (the temptation to sing Gilbert and Sullivan was enormous), and thence to Ely. A medium lovely day - as in, it rained occasionally. There's definitely three stages of cycling at the start of a rainstorm:
- "It's just a quick sunshower - it'll be over in a second. Can't be arsed with putting my jacket on."
- "It's getting heavier, but it'll blow over soon. No point in stopping to put my jacket on."
- "OK, it's pissing down, but I'm soaked through already. No point wasting time putting my jacket on now."
Or: we don't have colds, but it's not through lack of trying.
May 21, 2003
Off to see the massively overhyped movie of the season tomorrow. Please god, don't cruelly dash my dreams again. It must be good. I need this fix, man. I need it bad.
faintly dishevelled 20 may 2003
Went past a time trial when I was on a training run last week. I kept passing geezers on very expensive bikes with their heads down, giving it their all (although all of them responded well to my friendly nod). It's the first time that I've seen people wearing aero helmets in cold blood. Impressive stuff - particularly the speeds the buggers were doing.
Much fun over the weekend with the presence of Jim and Jo, Heather's brother and his wife. As they are crypto-types who like the outdoors, we spent a happy weekend wandering around Bletchley Park and various bits of the Cambridgeshire countryside, notably Wicken Fen. Bletchley was quite inspiring: a lovely old manor house surrounded by some rackety and decrepit WWII-era huts, with some brick buildings as well. They had several original Enigma machines, and the better part of a rebuild of Colossus, the first ever electronic computer. Colossus was created in 1943 to break German codes, beating ENIAC by about three years. Of course, since ever fecker was sworn to secrecy (and they dismantled all ten Colossus machines at the end of the war), no information got out about it for another thirty years. Impressive stuff. The crypto makes your head hurt after a while, but. The sheer amount of computation they managed to do using analog equipment is incredible.
About halfway through the afternoon at Bletchley, they had a flyover by a Spitfire and a Lancaster bomber to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Battle of the Atlantic. Man, those Lancaster bombers are loud buggers - it's like having a Harley zooming past 50ft above you.
And from the sheer joy department: the classic Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy interactive game is now available free online. I spent a lot of time back in my youth nutting my head against this one. Go bathe in the beauty of lunatically frustrating text adventures.
A fun week ahead. We've got the Cambridge beer festival on: having been once already, it's got a damn good range of stuff this year. I've got my eye on one or two oddly named brews - I fancy a half of the Norwich Terrier, for instance. And so the annual tradition clanks in: it always pisses down during the beer festival. Yesterday, it alternated between monsoon-class rain (absolutely belting it down) for 15 minutes, then piercingly bright sunshine for 30. It was like an arc light had been turned on outside the beer tent. And then it would start pissing it down again. We stayed inside and quaffed Raspberry Wheat Beer. I was a bit disappointed with the Oyster Stout: made with real oysters, nicknamed 'Black Viagra'... and absolutely horrible. Mind you, a number of my co-imbibers were mucking in with vigour, so it's just my opinion.
May 14, 2003
cavalcade of cleavage 13 may 2003
It's surprising how quickly cleavage fatigue sets in. I spent a large amount of Saturday night spectating at the Playtex Moonwalk, while Heather and Lisa got on with the actual exercise and fundraising. I was spectating with Lisa's partner Paul, who very generously drove us all around for the entire night. Paul and I basically spent the better part of four hours sitting on a succession of park benches, attempting to stay warm while not looking like dangerous perverts. This wasn't as easy as you'd think: it's quite difficult to huddle down with your hands in your pockets to preserve warmth without looking slightly like you might be having a clandestine wank. I thus tended to adop a "laid back" pose, usually sitting with my legs crossed and a polite smile. I was attempting to maintain a faintly distracted air intended to reassure each individual marcher that I wasn't staring directly and fixedly at their breasts. It seemed to work, as I didn't get decked at any point. Paul took the more sensible approach of brandishing a large camera, and looking faintly offifial while he took shots of the marchers. That also seemed to work.
So we were pretty wiped out for most of Sunday, having got back to Cambridge at 5:30am. Still, the recovery went pretty well. My sister Charlotte was around for much of Sunday/Monday, and a good time was had. The weather unfortunately failed to cooperate - fairly windy, rather cold, occasional rain. It's not looking much better: I think we're in for a nice, typical English spring. Still, nice to see Charlotte again.
May 08, 2003
emitting occasional groans 7 may 2003
It's been a bad few days, due to a sudden burst of some highly nonspecific illness. I've been laid up in bed for the last couple of days with something a bit nasty - as far as I can tell, some flu variant, but minus the sneezing (something to be grateful for). Very sudden onset: I did a 38-mile bike ride on Sunday afternoon, got home about 7pm feeling fine, and then started feeling really dodgy at about 8:30pm. A veil will be drawn over Sunday night through to Tuesday afternoon; I will admit to emitting occasional low moans and to cursing this foolish restriction on the maximum safe dosage of paracetamol. I'm an appalling patient, by the way: 177cm of self-pity with a beard slapped on the front. Still, the worst is over now. Annoyingly, the weather's been absolutely lovely recently, and I've been flat on my back in bed for most of it. Ah well.
Heather's birthday party went damn well on Saturday night, though. Much merriment, and indeed much purpleness occurred. The Reverend Jim waxed lyrical in the kitchen, various members of the Goth Posse turned up grinning broadly in velvet, a certain amount of belly-dancing was seen to occur, and I am reliably informed that at least one of the guests was being very generous with some fairly potent herbiage that knocked a number of the other guests for six. And I know that Clare was handing out Parfait Amour shots. A good time was had by all.
I swear to god, half the rural economy of the English countryside is based on roadside honesty boxes. Half the houses you go past seem to be flogging something, usually bedding plants or flwoers. The best I've seen so far was a place selling turkey eggs: heck, I stopped and got some. They're not dissimilar to hen eggs, but about 20% bigger and more speckly. Tasty, too.
I broke my chain the other night. Had to stop at a roundabout, then wanted to make a rather speedy start to get around through the intersection. I gave a fairly mighty heave on the pedals, while probably in slightly too high a gear, and bang. I coasted through the intersection OK, but heard something dragging on the ground and discovered that I'd managed to pop one of the links open. Fortunately I was only 300m from home, so I pushed the bike. Now, I'm in two minds about this one:
- My mighty legs gave such a powerful heave that they broke a precision-machined chain.
- Those things cost ten bloody quid each.
More seriously, it's not that big a deal, as chains are pretty easy to fix (remove broken link, replace it with a spare, bob's yer uncle), and it's at least giving me a chance to give the chain a good soaking in white spirits (easiest way to clean it). Of course, it's a bit of a worry that it might happen again at an unfortunate point - must make sure to carry some spare chain on all trips.
And, of course, fixing the chain has buggered up my indexing. Or rather, it's working, but noisy. I now sound like I'm pedalling a coffee grinder. A bit more fettling tonight, methinks.
In the "you go girl!" department: our shining example has lead Cat to the path of righteousness: she hath started cycle commuting. Good stylee.
May 02, 2003
legal now 1 may 2003
Many years ago I arrived in this country, this shining bastion of hope in the free world. Since then, people have welcomed me into their hearts. Many things I love about this country, many ways they make me feel at home. The cuisine! From the "Sauce brune � HP", the "Plein petit d�jeuner anglais avec le lard, les champignons, les saucisses et le pain frit", to the "Vraie bi�re anglaise de vieille poule tachet�e". The weather! From the beautiful day of summer, to the touching beauty of the snowfall, to the slow sizzling drizzle of spring and autumn. The friendly citizens! Their happy cries of "Not with those trainers on, mate", "Suits you, sir", and "You're not singing anymore".
Britain good. Its beautiful weather, its fine food and its friendly citizens. And the beer. Always the beer.
And now I can remain. The Home Office has seen fit to award me leave to remain in the UK indefinitely. I now have permanent residence. This puts me on a par, immigration speaking, with Mohammed al-Fayed, but it's a step up from where I was.
May 01, 2003
do ya thang 30 april 2003
Biking through the countryside, you really notice the lack of fences. OK, so there's plenty of hedges, and fences between fields. But in a lot of places there's no fences preventing you from just walking into the field. Partially this is because there aren't many sheep around East Anglia, so you don't need to stop the livestock from wandering off, but partially I think it's because of the slightly more relaxed British attitude to farmland. Back home, everything is fenced in and cordoned off. Here, it's fenced where necessary, and often isn't where a fence isn't required. I think it's a psychological legacy of the right to roam legislation: since you can, quite legally, take off across large swathes of other people's property, a certain 'fuzzy' attitude to boundaries is to be expected.
All of which musings are completely disproved by the "Get orff moi laaaarnd" attitude legendarily displayed by a number of British farmers, but there you go. I guess I'm just kind of astonished at the right to roam legislation: back home, if you could prove that local people'd been taking a particular short cut for the last couple of hundred years, the legal attitude would be "well if the landowner wants to cut off the access, it's their bloody land". Over here, it's "Ah, so there's a lot of precedent? Well, if it's a historic access, then it's legal..." - and so we end up being able to walk through a wide variety of farm tracks. Nice. A great way to get to know the countryside.
The wildlife tally for last night's training run: a weasel (or stoat - hard to tell, it was moving pretty fast) and a heron. Both moving at no little speed, I should say.
An unfortunate side effect of last night's ride is that I'm now having to wander around the office doing a humourous Chaplinesque silly walk in order to disguise the fact that I'm in extreme pain. To explain: I've laid off squats as part of my gym workout for about three months due to slight knee pain. My knees are much better now, and on Monday I had a crack at a moderate set of squats. I didn't get massively heavy, but I concentrated on doing nice slow sets with good form. And I definitely did feel it afterwards. One of those workouts where you have difficulty walking down the stairs afterwards. This resulted in me waking up yesterday morning with fairly sore legs. "OK," thinks me, "I'll just take the bike out a bit after work and run some blood through the old legs." Y'know, flush out the toxins, get them stretched out a bit, etc. Try to keep the heart rate down, have a nice easy ride, don't go too hard. I kept to this for, oh, about twenty minutes. Then, while pootling along at about 12mph at the top of Madingley Rise, I got passed by a bloke I recognised from the office (don't know his name). The competitive instinct came to the fore, and I caught the bugger up, passed him, and then of course had to keep going like the clappers for the next three miles so he didn't pass me again. It was all downhill from there. Or rather, it wasn't. So the idea of a nice easy ride dropped off a bit, I had a fast training ride and I woke up this morning feeling very sore indeed. Still, overall I'm feeling pretty good about it. I just have to put on a funny walk so everyone else thinks I'm being humorous rather than feeling the aftereffects. The pisstakes will be less this way.
Classic link found by Heather: why C S Lewis is an agent of Satan. It is - importantly - not a pisstake. These people do genuinely believe that last statement is literally true. Worth reading, mainly for fear value.
And congrats to my little sister, who's just become a member of the filthy hated landed gentry. Very nice looking wee house in Te Aro in Wellington - hopefully on the sunny side of the street. Good stuff.
I can happily report that our perfectly legal honest guv copy of The Two Towers on DVD works like a charm. Of course, the phrase "For your consideration" periodically appears at the bottom of the screen, but it's nothing we can't put up with. Those wacky Indonesian street vendors, eh?
archives
