Friday, January 05, 2007
Smuts
Maybe TE is right and I am cranking up to business. Two symptoms.
First, I am doing stuff on Powerpoint that I would not have dreamed of doing while still at work. Left all that sort of thing to the flotillas of contractors who seemed to have masters degrees in it.
Second, I am moving into the brave new world of digital music - in the form of something called http://www.eclassical.com/ - after some prompting from Guildford. I am now the proud possessor of the complete cello suites from one Boris Pergamenschikov which I can play at the same time as doing Powerpoint. Very cheap and the only catch is that the six or so suites have been chopped into thirty six or so peices. There is no doubt a way to splice them altogether but I have yet to find it. Other oddments so far: the MP3 player insists on regarding all peices of music as songs and regards the player as of greater importance than the author; a bit of Verdi freeware taught me that the theme music from the Godfather was a crib from same; the visualisations provided are clever but not very helpful; and, the eclassical people are very keen on flute concertos. But all very cheap, lots of it and lots to learn so I am sure I will. Maybe even to the extent of piping the stuff through a proper amplifier.
Further culture last night in the form of 'Much ado about nothing'. Something explained recently that the name was a play, amongst other things, on the contemporary invention of the important concept of zero. But who has noticed that the initials also spell the name of an important Jordanian town, a town which was a railway and garrison town in the Turkish era? No coverage in Chambers, thin in SPOW and even Wiki is a bit thin so no doubt Shakespeare acquired his knowledge of the place from Plutarch.
Show itself pretty good, but as is the custom these days, it ran well beyond a sensible 2 hours to 2 hours and forty minutes - excluding interval - by which time everybody was rather tired and it was rather too late to go to the pub. Good to see a show which involved team work - and which was not dominated - as would be quite easy in this case - by the two leads. Watch scenes rather over egged. Musical stuff good fun but presumably accounted for quite a lot of the stretching. Play as a whole rather more substantial than I had expected - and certainly not not a farce. And certainly hugely less fluffy than the 'Importance of being earnest', recently outed at home.
A plus point was that whoever put it on was obviously a fellow disbeliever in our forthcoming nanny rules on smoking and had the actors smoking whacking great cigars at every opportunity - with some defaulters on the fags. One result of which was rather more coughing and spluttering in the audience that one might otherwise have had.
Now had first bonfire - probably the first of three. Suprised how much the willow had dried out in the two or three weeks since I cut it down, despite the wet weather. So I had a good fire with very little smoke. This was no doubt due to the thoroughly boy-scout approach to the thing. Start with a corral of short branches. Give it a floor to keep kindling out of the mud. Crumpled newspaper. Kindling from garage. Topped up with willow twigs. Light in more than one place using not more than ten matches. Be suprised how badly newspaper burns when you want it to. But within 10 minutes one has a respectable totally under control bonfire - unlike the sort preferred by some members of the family. Short branches of the corral start to froth at the ends after a while as the sap is driven out by the heat.
The fire then starts to creep towards the fuel heap which itself starts to creep towards the fire. Much self discipline needed to stop the whole lot going up - which would be spectacular but would probably result in a neighbourly busy getting the fire brigade sent over. Another possibility would be that the fire spread to the neighbouring bramble patch which would have gone up with a tremendous whoosh.
After a while heat starts to build up in the ember heap - which poking reveals to be mainly charcoal. Drop a twig on the heap and it ignites throughout it's length more or less immediately. Stick a rolled up newspaper into the heap and it ignites but does not burn very well at all. Much fun still to be had.
Got to the allotment day before yesterday and realised that I was wearing what had been my second best office shoes. Executive decision was that cleaning them after digging in them was quicker than going back home to get allotment footwear. Not the way it turned out as I am still polishing them as I type. But they have, at least, had a clean.
I see the Navy is having to pay up front in surface ships for the proposed new submarines (which I believe are always regarded as boats, whatever the size). Much huffing and puffing from the recently retired but I bet if it was put to the admirals in a straightforward way they would still go for the submarines because being nuclear keeps them at the top table in Whitehall - rather than being relegated to fishery protection in Ag&Fish. Or whatever they call it these days. Department for rural affairs or something.
Must work harder on proof reading. Far too many typos.
First, I am doing stuff on Powerpoint that I would not have dreamed of doing while still at work. Left all that sort of thing to the flotillas of contractors who seemed to have masters degrees in it.
Second, I am moving into the brave new world of digital music - in the form of something called http://www.eclassical.com/ - after some prompting from Guildford. I am now the proud possessor of the complete cello suites from one Boris Pergamenschikov which I can play at the same time as doing Powerpoint. Very cheap and the only catch is that the six or so suites have been chopped into thirty six or so peices. There is no doubt a way to splice them altogether but I have yet to find it. Other oddments so far: the MP3 player insists on regarding all peices of music as songs and regards the player as of greater importance than the author; a bit of Verdi freeware taught me that the theme music from the Godfather was a crib from same; the visualisations provided are clever but not very helpful; and, the eclassical people are very keen on flute concertos. But all very cheap, lots of it and lots to learn so I am sure I will. Maybe even to the extent of piping the stuff through a proper amplifier.
Further culture last night in the form of 'Much ado about nothing'. Something explained recently that the name was a play, amongst other things, on the contemporary invention of the important concept of zero. But who has noticed that the initials also spell the name of an important Jordanian town, a town which was a railway and garrison town in the Turkish era? No coverage in Chambers, thin in SPOW and even Wiki is a bit thin so no doubt Shakespeare acquired his knowledge of the place from Plutarch.
Show itself pretty good, but as is the custom these days, it ran well beyond a sensible 2 hours to 2 hours and forty minutes - excluding interval - by which time everybody was rather tired and it was rather too late to go to the pub. Good to see a show which involved team work - and which was not dominated - as would be quite easy in this case - by the two leads. Watch scenes rather over egged. Musical stuff good fun but presumably accounted for quite a lot of the stretching. Play as a whole rather more substantial than I had expected - and certainly not not a farce. And certainly hugely less fluffy than the 'Importance of being earnest', recently outed at home.
A plus point was that whoever put it on was obviously a fellow disbeliever in our forthcoming nanny rules on smoking and had the actors smoking whacking great cigars at every opportunity - with some defaulters on the fags. One result of which was rather more coughing and spluttering in the audience that one might otherwise have had.
Now had first bonfire - probably the first of three. Suprised how much the willow had dried out in the two or three weeks since I cut it down, despite the wet weather. So I had a good fire with very little smoke. This was no doubt due to the thoroughly boy-scout approach to the thing. Start with a corral of short branches. Give it a floor to keep kindling out of the mud. Crumpled newspaper. Kindling from garage. Topped up with willow twigs. Light in more than one place using not more than ten matches. Be suprised how badly newspaper burns when you want it to. But within 10 minutes one has a respectable totally under control bonfire - unlike the sort preferred by some members of the family. Short branches of the corral start to froth at the ends after a while as the sap is driven out by the heat.
The fire then starts to creep towards the fuel heap which itself starts to creep towards the fire. Much self discipline needed to stop the whole lot going up - which would be spectacular but would probably result in a neighbourly busy getting the fire brigade sent over. Another possibility would be that the fire spread to the neighbouring bramble patch which would have gone up with a tremendous whoosh.
After a while heat starts to build up in the ember heap - which poking reveals to be mainly charcoal. Drop a twig on the heap and it ignites throughout it's length more or less immediately. Stick a rolled up newspaper into the heap and it ignites but does not burn very well at all. Much fun still to be had.
Got to the allotment day before yesterday and realised that I was wearing what had been my second best office shoes. Executive decision was that cleaning them after digging in them was quicker than going back home to get allotment footwear. Not the way it turned out as I am still polishing them as I type. But they have, at least, had a clean.
I see the Navy is having to pay up front in surface ships for the proposed new submarines (which I believe are always regarded as boats, whatever the size). Much huffing and puffing from the recently retired but I bet if it was put to the admirals in a straightforward way they would still go for the submarines because being nuclear keeps them at the top table in Whitehall - rather than being relegated to fishery protection in Ag&Fish. Or whatever they call it these days. Department for rural affairs or something.
Must work harder on proof reading. Far too many typos.
# posted by Jim @ 5:54 AM 
