Monday, May 18, 2009
Talking to them
Gas board visited the other day and pleased to record that they did not announce that our boiler was on the way out or sell us a sulphur trioxide or any other sort of detector. We hav'n't even got a letter from HQ pointing out that the ventilation of our boiler is not up to enlarged euro standard. So not a bad visit at all.
On the other hand, had another brush with the congestion charge yesterday. Bearing in mind my previous complaint (30/4/2009) that one cannot find out whether or not one has been in the congestion charge area, I find that you can indeed enter the zone without knowing, first, somewhere in the southern hinterland of Waterloo station and, second, somewhere in the northern hinterland of Kings Cross Station. The only clue was one post near St Thomas's hospital carrying a red 'C' which I correctly took to mean that I was in the congestion charge area and another near Vauxhall station with a struck through 'C' telling me that I was leaving it. Remain unimpressed with this job creation scheme for starving IT service companies.
Yesterday a mission to refill my compost bin, the level of which has been dangerously low since the winter clear out. Dangerously low in the sense that it might have been below the critical level needed to sustain arthropod life. So off to north London - hence the brush with the congestion charge - to collect no less than 13 dustbin bags of soft green garden waste, mostly lawn clippings. Compost bin now two thirds full although I fully expect it to revert to less than one third full once the waste has settled down. But it should be quite hot; the dustbin bags were quite warm to the touch after just four hours.
In course of all this, pushed by some police attended event out of Clapham High Street into Kings Road, which runs through an area known as Clapham Park. Very leafy with some rather handsome - if rather tired - houses of the order of 200 years old. Presumably a rather posh area at some point. Managed to get slightly lost coming through Streatham, winding up back on the Dorking Road at Tooting Bec rather than at Morden Hall Park as I had intended, at the cost of one hoot from some impatient youth in a banger. But perhaps just as well as there would have been plenty of scope, reading my ancient skip sourced A to Z while I drove, of getting even more lost around Mitcham. Must get onto A to Z replacement, the skip sourced one starting to look very tired. Unfortunately, last time I looked, Geograhers' don't seem to make this posh blue hard backed one any more. Might have to switch to the AA version which will take a bit of getting used to. Much prefer the Geographers' layout of twenty years ago. No date in the thing but a female hand has inscribed it February 2009.
Clapham High Street itself was awash with bicycles and motorcycles. They more or less filled up the bus lane, were weaving in out out of the cars in their lane and were spilling over into the north bound carriageway and onto the southbound pavement as need arose. Some of them seemed to have neither manners nor road sense. How long will be it be before the worm turns, and people start to withdraw the generous road facilities they have been accorded of recent years? Perhaps they should start by getting rid of the more or less useless cycle lanes, ignoring the inevitable protests from the road marking industry, which will thus lose much good business.
Prompted by an article somewhere recent about how the expiring fashion for gene science has not done quite what the applicants for research money had claimed for it, to close with a ponderous thought, fully worth the light of day - or perhaps the time of day - in some up-market saloon bar. That is to say, to think that a genome for some large animal is a bit like the machine code for a large computer program. Yes, you have all the information in principle and some features of the computer program can be picked out from the machine code. But for practical purposes, if you have lost the source code and the documentation of the program you are stuffed. Your chances of working it all out from the machine code are about nil.
On the other hand, had another brush with the congestion charge yesterday. Bearing in mind my previous complaint (30/4/2009) that one cannot find out whether or not one has been in the congestion charge area, I find that you can indeed enter the zone without knowing, first, somewhere in the southern hinterland of Waterloo station and, second, somewhere in the northern hinterland of Kings Cross Station. The only clue was one post near St Thomas's hospital carrying a red 'C' which I correctly took to mean that I was in the congestion charge area and another near Vauxhall station with a struck through 'C' telling me that I was leaving it. Remain unimpressed with this job creation scheme for starving IT service companies.
Yesterday a mission to refill my compost bin, the level of which has been dangerously low since the winter clear out. Dangerously low in the sense that it might have been below the critical level needed to sustain arthropod life. So off to north London - hence the brush with the congestion charge - to collect no less than 13 dustbin bags of soft green garden waste, mostly lawn clippings. Compost bin now two thirds full although I fully expect it to revert to less than one third full once the waste has settled down. But it should be quite hot; the dustbin bags were quite warm to the touch after just four hours.
In course of all this, pushed by some police attended event out of Clapham High Street into Kings Road, which runs through an area known as Clapham Park. Very leafy with some rather handsome - if rather tired - houses of the order of 200 years old. Presumably a rather posh area at some point. Managed to get slightly lost coming through Streatham, winding up back on the Dorking Road at Tooting Bec rather than at Morden Hall Park as I had intended, at the cost of one hoot from some impatient youth in a banger. But perhaps just as well as there would have been plenty of scope, reading my ancient skip sourced A to Z while I drove, of getting even more lost around Mitcham. Must get onto A to Z replacement, the skip sourced one starting to look very tired. Unfortunately, last time I looked, Geograhers' don't seem to make this posh blue hard backed one any more. Might have to switch to the AA version which will take a bit of getting used to. Much prefer the Geographers' layout of twenty years ago. No date in the thing but a female hand has inscribed it February 2009.
Clapham High Street itself was awash with bicycles and motorcycles. They more or less filled up the bus lane, were weaving in out out of the cars in their lane and were spilling over into the north bound carriageway and onto the southbound pavement as need arose. Some of them seemed to have neither manners nor road sense. How long will be it be before the worm turns, and people start to withdraw the generous road facilities they have been accorded of recent years? Perhaps they should start by getting rid of the more or less useless cycle lanes, ignoring the inevitable protests from the road marking industry, which will thus lose much good business.
Prompted by an article somewhere recent about how the expiring fashion for gene science has not done quite what the applicants for research money had claimed for it, to close with a ponderous thought, fully worth the light of day - or perhaps the time of day - in some up-market saloon bar. That is to say, to think that a genome for some large animal is a bit like the machine code for a large computer program. Yes, you have all the information in principle and some features of the computer program can be picked out from the machine code. But for practical purposes, if you have lost the source code and the documentation of the program you are stuffed. Your chances of working it all out from the machine code are about nil.
# posted by Jim @ 10:29 PM 
