May 28, 2004  

big and purple 27 may 2004

Watching the coverage of this year's Chelsea Flower Show (and may I just say well done the NZ team, getting a gold on their first outing - nice one the home side) I've noticed a trend of which I thoroughly approve. Two of the show gardens incorporate Sarracenia as part of their planting schema. In both cases, they're using the sarras as interesting foliage plants - one using the upright pitchers of Sarracenia flava as a specimen plant, one using the decumbent pitchers of Sarracenia purpurea as part of a children's interest section of the planting. Excellent. Sarras are great fun to grow, and I think any trend towards growing them more widely in contemporary gardens should be thoroughly encouraged. Especially Sarracenia purpurea, which is my favorite plant (as well as being the provincial flower of New Brunswick). There's just something beautifully bulbous and statuesque about the curve of the pitchers - it's hard to describe, but I love the wee things. Other advantage is that they're tough as old boots: their natural range extends from Canada to New Jersey, they've been naturalised in the UK, and they're equally at home under a foot of snow in the winter or growing under an inch of water in summer. Lovely plants.

Looks like the US election campaign is shaping up to be a battle of the cyclists. John Kerry is on record as being a keen ultramarathon cyclist. And now news breaks that George Bush has taken up mountain biking, and has managed to fall off and hurt himself. Personally, I'd rather vote for someone who can knock off a 110 mile ride in freezing rain than for someone who can't even manage a 17-mile offroad loop, but that's just me. And I'm not a US voter. Maybe we should arrange some form of endurance cycling challenge between Tony Blair, Charles Kennedy, and Michael Howard?

I've spent a couple of happy lunchtimes this week at the annual Cambridge Beer Festival. So far, my picks of the Festival are the Milton Brewery's XXX Depth Charge, the Boggart Hole Clough's Arnhem Bridge, and Hobden's Wessex's Naughty Ferret. I'll happily admit that I just buy these based on silly names. I particularly fancy having a go at the Gunner's Daughter (a rather nice pint from the Old Cannon brewery in Bury St Edmunds - we got royally wazzocked on it a few years back during a very boozy day out in BStE), or getting stuck into the Village Bike (Potton). None of them are particularly strong: they tend to be in the 3.5-4.5% region (it's too hot for Skullsplitter), so it's basically just a nice way to spend an hour or two on a summer's afternoon. S'chill, innit?

Mind you, it really reminds you of the sort of people who run beer festivals. Now, as a card-carrying hairy hippie odds-and-sod myself, I can't really talk about the beards and hair. All I'm saying is that the word "svelte" doesn't often come to mind. This lunchtime, I saw a woman in her late 30s, approximately spherically shaped (except for an entirely belt-enforced waistline approximately midships, where the flab went in 2 inches all around), wearing a staff t-shirt and a radio headset, buy a slab of cooked pork from the hog roast stall. Halfway through, she picked up her radio and I distinctly heard her say "Unicorn, this is Batgirl". I don't want to think what "Unicorn" looked like. I may be being a bit snippy here, but really: pick proper codenames, damnit! "Hindenburg, this is Goodyear", that sort of thing.

Two fun things about walking around town with an infant strapped to your chest. Firstly, the punt touts ignore you. Secondly, it's a skirt magnet - young women keep giving you glances, or starting random conversations. Bit unexpected.

May 20, 2004  

it looked like an ostrich to me 19 may 2004

I'm sure there's some odd rural conspiracy to make me fall off my bike by surprising me. The other week I was cycling past Hardwick, and just past the turnoff on the A428 I passed an alpaca farm (as previously mentioned). Sunday morning I was pulling a quick 22 miles around the countryside, and just outside Willingham (down t'Over Road) I passed an emu farm. What next? I'll be down near Newton and spot a Wombat-rearing enterprise? Porcupines pastured near Peterborough? Escaped prarie dogs by Shepreth? Actually, there's some truth to that last one - and with the recent growth in the wild boar population and sightings of the Fen Tiger, I shouldn't joke about this.

Hit a few minor hiccups last weekend, when I removed all the bits off the drivechain on my MTB in order to fix the front mech. Then I discovered that the front mech was a bit past fixing, as the main spring had gone and it's not a user-serviceable part. A replacement wasn't a problem - they're a pretty cheap bit - but obtaining one was. The bike was duly put into the shed in bits, awaiting a new front mech. Halfords obliged the next day, but I've not had any time since to put the damn thing back together. I'm currently hoping that I'll get a spare hour or so this weekend to get her working again. In the meantime, I'm commuting on my road bike - it's great fun. As long as I can remember not to try bunny-hopping anything, and to stick to very mild offroad.

One of the easiest ways to make money is to take a standard item, whack the word "cycling" on it, and bump the price up. For example, latex gloves. Damn handy when doing the fettling (stops you getting your hands utterly filthy and spending 10 minutes with swarfega). Park Tool sell them; Wiggle (who have very good prices generally) sell them for £24.99. Of course, they're not just handy for fixing your bike: any DIY job that you don't want to get your hands greasy. So you can get latex or nitrile gloves from a variety of sources (Screwfix will happily sell you a box of 100 for £4.99). But if you want the Park Tools logo on the front, you're stumping up literally fives times as much.

The moral is: shop around and be canny. Anyone know where I can buy citrus degreaser in bulk?

One of the tactics that the people who keep spamming me (I wanted to write "my spammers", but that sounds terribly upper-class and implies that I have a select coterie of spammers who I use, dahling, terribly good and all that, very exclusive, bit expensive but you've got to pay for quality haven't you?) use is to bulk out their email with plaintext. Presumably this is to get around some of the heuristics used by spam filters, such as checking that a message isn't largely HTML, appears to contain actual content, etc. Anyway, a lot of the spam I get has huge swathes of plaintext at the end. This is where it gets interesting. The text is obviously nicked from somewhere else, and often from multiple locations and then remixed (to prevent spam filters from identifying common phrases). The end result is like getting a daily email from William S Burroughs in full cut-up mode: tantalising fragments of meaning, occasional bursts of lucidity, mixed in with nonsense and random dictionary words. Art! Driven by naked greed and human folly! Which is in itself a meta-comment on the art! It's all so beautiful.

The new Milton pedestrian/cycle bridge opened yesterday. I biked past on my way home and had a shufti: it's rather nice. Good access from either end of the road (particularly at the Milton end), a nice view, and a pleasing shape. It's a gentle arch, so the midpoint is actually comparatively high (for East Anglia!) and you get quite a good view. Thumbs up to the city council on that one, we say.

May 12, 2004  

daphnia 11 may 2004

So I'm in the supermarket yesterday, queuing at the checkout. I'm at the express checkout, where a single line feeds into a block of about eight tills. When you hit the head of the line, you wait for the next available till. I'm behind a wee, sweet looking little old lady. She looks maybe in her mid eighties. Small, frail, white-haired. She's got a medium full basket. We get to the head of the queue. The checkout area is L-shaped, with the short edge in front of us and the long edge to our left. Directly in front of us, a customer finishes up and walks off, leaving the checkout open. The bloke working the register is a young lad, late teens, and is British Asian. There's a short pause. The old lady doesn't move. The young lad gestures and calls her over. She looks at him, shakes her head, and moves slightly to the left so she's standing in front of the other bank of tills. The lad looks bemused and looks at me. I bowl over, haul my basket onto the counter, and say "Buggered if I know, mate." As I pack my groceries (diet coke and bagels, mainly) I look over. She's still queuing, waiting for one of the other operators - who are, I notice, all white. As I finish, one of the other tills comes free and she steps up. The till operator is a middle aged white lady. The little old lady smiles and chats to her.

I guess I'm just more middle-class than I'd thought. I was quite taken aback by this little bit of casual racism.

Especially since she ended up waiting an extra three minutes for a till. Tch.

Lack of sleep is making me slightly more prone to mistakes and considerably more snappy. This is annoying in the office - I'm having to apologise for being pissy with people - but is a bit worrying on my commute. I'm worried that the next time some chav cuts me up, I'll lose it and remove their wing mirror with my D-lock. Still, it's all part of the rich tapestry that is parenthood.

Speaking of which, there's a notable border in the telly on between 5 and 6am. 5am is still Open University, BBC News 24, or odd satellite broadcasts of obscure sports or the Spanish football league. At 6am, the kids programs start. Suddenly, it's no longer long, lingering updates on the financial situation in Asia. Suddenly, the screen is full of large characters, in primary colours, with clearly defined shapes, babbling nonsense. It's quite a jarring change - Tellytubbies can come as quite a shock at that time in the morning.

The weather was good yesterday, and since Heather's parents are in town and providing support for the wee 'un, I managed to get out and take the long route home last night - 15 miles, to be exact. And can anyone tell me, what's with the alpaca farm just outside Hardwick? I nearly fell off me bike. "That's a funny looking sheep, with a very long neck," I thought to myself, "and it's on stilts!" I also saw a rabbit, but that's not quite as exciting.

May 06, 2004  

technically it's celeste 5 may 2004

Rebecca's grandparents (maternal) arrived in town yesterday for a visit. Much hugging of baby ensued. They were ecstatic to see her, and she seemed quite chuffed to see them. Since her idea of a good time is to be gently held and jiggled, with someone talking to you, it looks like she's going to have a good couple of weeks while they're over here. I anticipate many exciting days out to improving locations, which Rebecca will sleep steadily through, occasionally waking to scream for more food. Pictures available soon - we've got a slight backlog to process, but will be bunging another gallery up soon.

She's definitely started to take more of an interest in the world around her; notably, she's started playing with some of the toys in her cot. Since she's still very wee, this mainly takes the form of batting at the dangling toys, many of which make amusing noises when thumped. She's also looking around a lot more, and is definitely taking an interest in things beyond food and sleep. A particular favorite is the mobile over her cot. It's composed of a number of brightly painted fish, and she just loves staring up at it.

Speaking of fish, we got a couple of goldfish at the weekend. Hey, we've had the tank set up for the last month, it's about time we scored some inhabitants. Not wishing to overstock the tank, Heather and I each chose a single fish (we'll get a few more when the tank has matured). I chose a shubunkin, and Heather a golden oranda. In the spirit of "never waste a good name", we've named them Tarquin and Arabella. I'm trying to train them up. To start with, I splash the surface of the water a bit just before I feed them. Despite looking like a bright orange tennis ball, Arabella got the hang of this within two days. She now comes and hangs around looking expectant as soon as I do a bit of a splash. Tarquin is a bit slower off the mark, and spends most of his time lurking nervously at the bottom of the tank. It's fun having goldfish again. They'll be something for Rebecca to look at when she's a bit older, and I think she finds the hum of the air pump quite soothing.

Having put it off for a while, I've just finished writing up my experience building up a road bike based on the Planet X Kaffenback. Executive summary: it's a damn fine little bike, and it was great fun to build. I am now having to forcibly prevent myself from building another one. Hmm... maybe a cheap fixed gear for winter...

Speaking of bicycles, one that snuck in under the wire a bit is that as of last Saturday all bicycles sold in the UK must have a bell. This is presumably intended to reduce the number of accidents from illegal cyclists barreling down footpaths. Two points. First, the compulsion is just to have the bell "fitted" at point of sale. This puts it in the same category as pedal reflectors, which are required when a bike is sold. However, there's no requirement to keep the bell on - the new owner can remove it immediately if they want. And as Carlton Reid points out on Bikebiz, "fitted" can mean "is in a plastic bag attached to the bike". Second, the sort of person who's going to cowboy it around the pavements and cut up little old ladies is unlikely to actually bother ringing a bell, even if they've got one attached. Still, it's only an extra 25p on the price of the bike - and you've got to admit, the sight of a Whyte 46 with an ickle Shanghai bell on the handlebars is going to be hilarious.

My LBS, Ben Hayward Cycles, has a Whyte 46 in the window. It is far and away absolutely gorgeous. Unfortunately, I'm a bit short of the 2.5K it costs. Ah well.

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