2007 — 6 May: Any road up, as they say where I come from...
Today's theme is (earth)-moving.
Chalvington Road is to be resurfaced. The department concerned with such matters has posted local notices to that effect, warning us of the road closure as far as the north bit of Trevose Crescent. They estimate it will take from 8 to 10 May, but have allowed themselves three months of potential road closure. It occurs to me that their time estimating is not really any more advanced, therefore, than that of UK government software development projects. But then, they're probably just a bit messier and noisy (and smelly, though I quite like the smell of hot tar1).
It's a kind of magic
To celebrate my next pension payment which, with luck, is now redirected to my new account, let's take a look at one of the three poppies that are currently "out", as it were, in the back garden.
And here's a close-up of my first piece of Photoshop 5 magic!
Totally cool gadget
I've treated the iMac to a Microsoft Comfort Optical Mouse 3000 with built-in magnifier. (The "Mighty Mouse's" scroll button not only felt too much like the awful ThinkPad trackpoint,2 but it has lapsed into an annoying "upward scroll only" modus operandi that has pissed me off once too often.)
After an initial hoot of disbelieving dismay (caused by the need to restart my OS X system in what can only be described as a totally familiar [but completely unexpected] Windows fashion), I'm now gobsmacked and delighted by the ability to casually zoom in and out of anything on the screen, keeping the pointer at the centre of the action. Dammit, I'm almost tempted to say "Well done, Redmond!" But a 10MB driver, and 30MB during installation? Come on, I ask you, is that elegant?
"Whatcha got there...?" department
What, these? Oh, just a couple of DVDs and books:
- The adventures of Tintin at sea by the National Maritime Museum — I kid you not
- Cocks only by Piffa Schroder; a collection of 60 of her columns from Shooting Gazette — not my normal reading fare
- capote who, unlike "ee cummings" always seemed, to me, to use more conventional capitalisation
- Death Wish the original 1974 film, which I've never seen
- The king of comedy the 1982 Scorsese comedian-kidnap caper
- The last kiss Zach Braff, who is far too young to be having a mid-life crisis
- Road to Perdition which She fell asleep over last night, so I thought (at £3) I could risk getting a copy
- Shadow Makers another telling of the Manhattan Project story
And now, I really must put some clothes on (after a shower, after a large amount of pea-shingling — read on) as it's time for supper with our neighbours, the foster parents of all those fish...
There yesterday, gone tomorrow
I must say, driving a mouse gently around the screen sure beats shifting pea-shingle into a fishless, waterless pond. Speaking of which, I thought it fun to offer a couple of photos from much earlier in said pond's family history. It was, after all, originally a joint Anglo-NZ excavation:
Compare and contrast today's forlorn, ex-lawn, state:
