structure and certainty August 29, 2005  

Spent a bit of time last night getting some new photo pages for June, July, and August online - anyone wanting concrete evidence of Rebecca's slow but steady acquisition of hair and climbing ability should have a shufti.

Also put my CV online. Like the big red box up at the top right says, I'm currently looking for work in Wellington, ideally starting from early November 2005. I'm an experienced technical author, with a solid grounding in build management and analysis. Some team/project lead experience. If you're interested - or, for instance, know someone else who might be, and stand to get a recruitment bounty if you pass along a good candidate - please download/pass on my CV as appropriate. Life would become a lot easier if we knew we were going back to a guaranteed job back in Wellie (heck, I'd be satisfied to be able to line up a couple of good interviews before we go).

hence and thenceforth August 28, 2005  

Odd day. Heather's down in London watching Ewen "get me knob out at any opportunity Kenobi" McGregor in Guys & Dolls, so I've been Becca-wrangling all day. It's been action-packed; we've been into town, hit the supermarket, picked up a package, hit the local farm shop (and saw a Kune Kune pig), and spent a fair bit of time at Milton Country Park. Rocked comfortably steady all up.

Then, at 7pm, R crashed out. Pausing only to cook a mushroom quiche, I've spent the evening watching TMF's "Pimp My Ride" marathon. While drinking beer. And occasionally flicking over to ITV2 to see bits of Ali G Indahouse. It's like being what a 14-year old thinks being 29 is like.

Though the Ali G movie is worth is solely for the opening credits - NWA's "Straight Outta Compton" cut to remove any lines containing a swear word. Like, it's about 30 seconds long. Seriously.

Jan Ullrich lost this year's Tour of Germany by 31 seconds to Levi Leipheimer (yank, currently riding for Gerolsteiner). But, y'know - if his mechanic had actually fitted his front aero wheel correctly for the time trial, it could have been a different story. I mean, man - they've got a little painted indication of how to fit them. How hard can it be?

Hang on - is his brother still his mechanic? Man, that's going to be one quiet Christmas dinner at their house this year.

Man, things I didn't realise when I was a kid: it's the adults that come up with the names for the toys. When I was wee, I had a teddy bear named - imaginatively enough - Ted Bear. I always kind of assumed that I'd just started calling it that when I was learning to talk. Now Rebecca's old enough to actually be interested in stuffed toys, I've realised that it's actually the adults who come up with the names, becuase the toddler is still too pre-verbal to do it themselves and there's a requirement for some way of differentiating between the various toys. I mean, Rebecca's got two 'standard' sized teddy bears and three bunnies of various sizes (plus a plethora of other toys), so we need some way of telling, say, Gap Bear from Honeymoon Bear (respectively, made by Gap and a freebie from the hotel suite that we booked for our wedding night). Or Big Bunny from Medium Bunny from Little Gay Bunny (giant, average, and small and lavender). The kids grow up hearing the adults refer to the toys in these ways and think - in their innocence - that the nomenclature is of their own coinage. In reality, it's harassed and sleep-deprived parents trying to subtly indicate that the wee 'un's favorite toy is in the wash, and do we think that we can pass off the one from Auntie Mabel without the bairn noticing? Or just that you feel a right twerp referring to "your stuffed toy kangaroo" to a toddler, and yo feel that said toy should have a cutesy name.

I noticed this this afternoon, when I bought Rebecca a stuffed toy zebra at Aldi. Before I'd actually got to the check-out, I was referring to "Zebee!" - as in "No, you've got to put Zebee down, we've got to pay for her now."

For the record: I've still got Ted Bear. Funny how these things stay with you.

hairline stress fractures August 23, 2005  

On Saturday, we had a coworker from the US in town. This guy's a keen cyclist, and wanted to see a castle while he was here. We split the difference, rented him a bike, and rode to Ely to see the cathedral. Nice, fairly sedate (but quite hard due to severe headwinds) ride out; a good lunch, then a wander around the cathedral marvelling at the whole amazingness of it all. By the time we'd finished that, it was 4pm, and we had to get the hire bike back by 5. Whoops! Fortunately, Chris' car had a bike rack - we loaded up the bikes, Chris tied them down, and off we went down the A10.

About eight miles out of Cambridge, my bike came off. That's the last time I put my bike on a rack without double-checking the attachment myself, then. We were doing about 50mph, and it just got bounced up and off the back of the car. Fortunately the driver behind us had good reactions (and had probably noticed the bike bouncing around), so he swerved to miss it - even more luckily, there wasn't any oncoming traffic in the other direction, so there weren't any knock-on accidents. On the whole, we were pretty lucky about the whole thing; no-one was hurt, and the bike didn't get hit by a car. At the scene, we didn't have much time (had to get the hire bike back!), so I only managed a very quick look at my bike. Taking a closer look later, it seems to have hit on the right side - the right pedal and bar end are heavily marked, and the saddle was knocked around on the seatpost (plus the covering is heavily ripped). The rear wheel has been knocked out of true (but not significantly - slacking the rear brake off, it still turns). Apart from that, it looks OK to the naked eye. However, the problem is that bikes are designed to deal with particular forces in a particular direction - and since the bike was mounted sideways on the car, it basically took a very hard hit laterally through areas that are designed to cope with straight-on forces. This means that it's entirely possible that there's non-obvious damange to the frame. I guess that the next thing is to thoroughly clean the bike and have a good inspection myself, and then take her into a bike shop to get them to de-taco the rear wheel and check the frame integrity. In any case, since I wasn't racing, pacing, or riding trials at the time (all specifically mentioned in the terms), the insurance should hopefully kick in. I'm now quite glad that I decided to take out my second-best bike. But will the insurance cover a Thorn Raven Catalyst (which looks to be the ultimate bike for Wellington, I reckon)? Possibly if I also give up alcohol for a year, is the answer.

Sunday, in contrast, was very calm and mellow. I took Rebecca to the supermarket and the pet shop in the morning - Rebecca is now a big fan of Koi carp and bunnies. Not in the same enclosure, obviously; but the carp were big and colourful, and came up to see whether she was going to feed them. And the bunnies were small and cute, and lolloped around at toddler level. She also displayed a connection to some of the marine aquaria, staring intently at a tank full of Blue Tangs. After that it was a spot of lunch and off to Wee Jack's naming ceremony, via a frantic last-minute scramble for some amplification kit so the bangin' choons off Lisa's iPod would be audible while the guests came in. A nice day all around, and we only ended up spending about an hour after the ceremony preventing Rebecca from running into the carpark. Wee Jack took the event in good order, sleeping quite a bit of the time and giving gummy grins all around the show while awake. Rebecca particularly enjoyed the bit where mummy played the violin, and kept trying to run over and join in.

Rebecca has also started giving me hugs on cue. I crouch down and open my arms wide, and she runs towards me for a hug. She's been doing that for a while, but now she's starting actually opening her arms up and hugging me back. It's great. This week's words: "hot", "moo", and "aiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!" [full-volume high-pitched scream]. We're happier about some of those than others.

I now have the flu that's been afflicting Heather all weekend. I feel absolutely terrible. Pass me the industrial decongestants, please.

Another good man done gone.

my idea to make a million August 18, 2005  

So the big trend in children's television is to produce programs for kids that are cut-down versions of adult programs. They're tried and true genres, they play well in that all-important 7-9pm slot, and so it's a reasonable bet that the wee 'uns will go for them as well.

Balamory is explicitly intended by its makers to be a "soap opera for tots". There's a consistent cast of characters, it's at least semi-realistic, and there's heaving sexual tension between some of the characters. Narrative progression does occur, and there's a number of unresolved questions about the ongoing plot. Will PC Plum and Miss Hoolie get it on? What exactly is up Josie's jumper? And will Spencer ever find true love in the paintpots? All these plot elements - and more - will be resolved before the series comes to an end in season five.

The genre 'cookery show' is covered by Big Cook, Little Cook. In it, the eponymous cooks (one normal sized, one transformed through the magic of camera tricks to a tiny, foot-high sprite who rides on a flying wooden spoon) run a cafe. During the course of each show, they have to prepare a meal for an unseen customer. The customer is always some kind of interesting character: a pirate, a ballerina, a dentist, etc. The meal they make is in some manner appropriate to the customer: a "treasure chest" full of "gold" (bread roll with sweetcorn) for the pirate, for instance. Each week Little Cook has to go off and find out about some ingredient - for corn, how it is grown and harvested. As with an adult's cooking program, there are demonstrations of how to actually cook the meal, and then there's a short song about how cleaning up is really fun. It's surprisingly similar to most other cooking programs, although I'm sure that that Nigel Rhodes or Jamie Floyd or whoever doesn't get given a treasure map by their grateful customers.

On any given weeknight, you can guarantee that there'll be at least one program on about gardening - well, for the kids there's Gordon the Garden Gnome. The main character, Gordon, (a gnome who maintains a garden - and whose catchphrase is "let's get mucky!") is voiced by Alan Titchmarsh. The female gnome (not, as far as we can tell, voiced by Charlie Dimmock) is called Rosie. The gnomes dig the garden, plant seeds, and teach toddlers basic gardening skills while having adventures and learning lessons about life. Comic relief is provided by two slugs, named Les and Des.

But I've spotted an obvious gap in the market: there is not - as far as I can tell - a children's program about property development. This should be fronted by some suitable animated character: say, Percy the Property Developer. The characters do up houses and then sell them on, closing each show with a little animation of the characters holding big fistfuls of cash and giggling. Each week, a different tradesperson could be expected to show up but fail to do so, forcing Percy the Property Developer to do it himself - and explain it to the kids as he goes! "Well, it looks like we'll have to do the grouting ourselves, then! Remember, use slow, careful strokes of the sponge!" And of course, Percy would have to have humorous sidekicks - say, a pair of rats. Or estate agents. Or rats who are estate agents. They could be called Des and Res.

And then you could do a version of Sex and the City for toddlers: Kissing and the Playground. Or possibly Desperate Toddlers? 3 year-old eye for the 2-year old child?

And of course there's the old vice-versa argument: imagine the ratings for an adult versions of the Teletubbies!

Though obviously not an adult version in "that" way.

new service going live August 14, 2005  

Righto, one of our other long-range projects has come to fruition: blogorrhoea.com is live. This is Heather's new, separate online home, including value added syndication via atom. There's a redirect on her old page so all existing links should still work, and her archives are still available from her new pages as well, but otherwise it's a case of head over to blogorrhoea.com and groove on it, man. Go Heather!

space in lost August 11, 2005  

So we were in Bristol over the weekend, and I'd popped out to the shops with our mate Andy (and to give Rebecca a walk). On the way back, we're walking up the hill, and a mad bastard on a unicycle goes past and stops at the lights. I can't say that I'd commute through Bristol traffic on a unicycle, but he seemed pretty happy.

Of course, that was absolutely nothing compared to this mad bastard, who's built up a unicycle designed for touring.

Bristol was very nice, and Nik and Andy were lovely as ever (despite spending most of the weekend attempting to teach Rebecca to say "shut up!" in an estuary accent). We visited the national arboretum and everything. Nice place. Lots of trees.

The master place ticks over apace. We've started making toe-in-the-water preparatory steps: booking quotes from shipping companies, eating all the tinned food, and cancelling direct debits for subscriptions (so far: Cambridge Cycling Campaign, the National Trust, and various pornographic magazines). The house sale is moving slowly through: it turns out that since the city council charges a small fee to retrieve documents, it's actually cheaper to buy a one-off insurance policy against us not having obtained certain permissions when we did up the house, than it is to actually get a copy of the document proving that we did. It's a funny old world.

and another thing August 04, 2005  

In a slight expansion on my recent comments, here's my take on the shock ending of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Text is in white to avoid spoilers - select the text to read it.

Or something like that. Anyway, that's where my money's going for the final book.

I had this brilliant, epiphanic idea for a television program the other day. If you've accidentally flicked onto one of the recent crop of "celebrity" programs - perhaps changing channels from a BBC4 documentary about the funeral traditions of Papuan highland tribes to a program about wherever that nice Mr Palin's been recently - you've probably spent a lot of time wondering who the hell everyone on television is. They're ostensibly celebrities, but had anyone actually heard of any of the participants of - say - Celebrity Love Island? How about Celebrity Fit Club? Thought not. Hence my brilliant idea for a new TV show:
"I'm a Celebrity - No You're Not"

The premise is this: five z-list bozos, all frantically claiming to be "well-known" celebrities, have to appear in front of a studio audience and justify their claims to celebhood. Their claims to fame should be fairly tenuous (but no more so than the current crop of "celebrity reality TV" grist) - say, having appeared as a corpse in every morgue sequence in the most recent series of Holby City, acting as a judge on the Northeast regional TV dog obedience program, or having appeared in tabloids with their name romantically linked to the former Ms Poland. The celebs can each bring one witness and submit one video clip to support their (quite literal) claim to fame. The studio audience then has to vote as to who's the most famous. The catch is that one of the "celebs" is in fact a ringer, a jobbing actor with a forged video clip and a brylcreamed vulture vouching for them. Whoever the audience think is most famous wins a cash prize - anyone that the audience think is less famous than the ringer walks away with nothing (though, ironically, this may boost their notoriety). Expect lots of vox pops from the video audience saying things to each other as they press their voting buttons - "Wasn't number 3 on that yogurt ad?" "No, he's the 4 x 400 metre hurdler!" "They all look the same..." etc. C'mon, admit it: you'd watch it.

If I formed a bluegrass band, it'd be called Stan Satan and the Devilhoppers.

back and forth August 02, 2005  

Rebecca had a very good weekend. Most of Saturday afternoon was spent around at our friends Juliet & Jake's place, for their daughter Ishbel's first birthday party. Rebecca gets on very well with Ishbel, and ended up spending most of the day running around being fussed by a variety of adults. After about 3 1/2 hours of near-constant fuss (including one insanely funny moment when she chased a pair of small remote-controlled tanks around the garden, while two other guests frantically piloted them away from her) she started to fall asleep in the swing. Even turbo-toddler runs out of energy sometimes.

Sunday went in a similar vein. In the morning, we took Rebecca to Linton Zoo. Rebecca spent a lot of time wandering around, pointing at various animals and shouting with joy. Initially, she was fascinated by the cage by the entrance full of parrots. The parrots fulfilled Rebecca's three main criteria for interest: they were loud, brightly coloured, and moved quickly. She stared up, unblinking, completely absorbed in these astonishing new things. Similar scenes were played out for a number of other animals. The snow leopard was a particular favorite: as it paced lazily up and down its cage, Rebecca ran alongside the bars, following it. She wasn't so good on the animals that weren't brightly coloured/loud/moving fast - it'll be a while before she appreciates tortoises, for example - but the animals she did like, she liked a lot. She also had great fun on the kiddies' play area at the zoo, displaying her recently acquired ability to climb ladders by climbing up to the top of the biggest slide and zooming down it, shouting "Whee!" as she did so. We even managed to show her a kea - which astonished us, as we didn't think the zoo had one.

Sunday afternoon, we stopped off for an underwhelming lunch at the Unicorn in Trumpington, during which Rebecca ate a large amount of cheese and then ran around the pub garden for 90 minutes. After that, we went for a walk around Wandlebury Hill Fort. After a wander around the full length of the ring ditch, we went down for a walk down the hill through the woods. Rebecca walked alongside me for a long distance, holding one of my fingers in her hand as she toddled along. As we went down the woodland path, we saw a fallen tree to our left. It'd clearly been down for a year or two, and the branches had been chainsawed off. The result was a 12m log, about 40-50cm in diameter. We went over and had a look - for a laugh, Heather picked Rebecca up and helped her walk along the top of the log. I followed. At the other end, Heather lifted Rebecca off, and she immediately ran back to the log and started trying to climb back up. We ended up spending twenty minutes holding her hands as she walked back and forth along the log, an expression of delighted concentration on her face. In the end, we had to forcibly remove her from the log and carry her off, screaming and protesting.

Also read the new Harry Potter this weekend, Harry Potter and the Furtive Gropings Behind the Bike Sheds. It's about what you'd expect: competently written, no significant surprises, bit of fluff. I was quite annoyed to discover that I'd lost that ten quid I'd bet on the twist turning out to be that Harry's father was actually Darth Vader (who'd presumably been putting it around a bit, but that's what bionics are for, eh? Two words: Energiser bunny) - I missed out on a chance to get some money on that back in the '80s, and I figured it was worth a punt this time. Ah well.

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