Frogs and Toads

Wow. So after a really hot dry spell here in sunny SE England, we awoke this morning to hoards of tiny froglets and toadlets crawling and hopping around on our terrace. It rained last night – usual water based rain, and first for a couple weeks – but did these amphibians come down with it like some biblical plague !!?? We had some toadlets the other day in the wood, around the pond, but today there were ( and really no exaggeration at all ) hundreds today. They didn’t breed in our pond as it is in the wood, too shady, and we never spotted any toad or frog spawn this year. I have a couple of great photos of a box of frogs after we rescued them by making ramps into cardboard boxes I just hope that they will survive in sufficent number so that they can keep our burgeoning slug population down, and keep our resident single adult toad and two small frogs company too. I’ve decided I realy like toads.

Blogs sgould inform and entertain

So, that is perhaps why I don’t often update this one … but just today … well here I am looking at how Android is doing in the market … working out what might be hot in the world of open source … and sitting listening to Peaches new album : I feel Cream.

She hasn’t lost anything over the years – in fact she seems to have developed into a broader set of styles. Could be the producers has has this time, but her new work is tighter than ever, more solid than before, and thoroughly involving. It’s brilliant.

But, btw, if you don’t care for those little black and white labels on the front of CDs, I would try not to listen too hard for the lyrics. She fortunately hasn’t grown up as she enters another decade of being Merrill Beth Nisker.

Greta stuff.

How green is my recession

So – I know this is probably obvious, but it has to be said. All that hard work done in the past few years, convincing consumers to buy green. All that effort in pointing out that the planet will be here long after we aren’t.

And then some greedy b*st*rds in the banking system who think that gambling other people’s money on the price of green vegetable die in March 2010 come along and ensure that all the green drops out of the equation.

Why ?

Because the average consumer is only green in the good times.

Illogical yes, as being green will save you money in good and bad times, but there has always been a premium on green, and therefore, when money is tight, the first against the wall is the planet.

May not be quite that bad, as people naturally buy less, travel less, and generally consume less, but this is just a side effect. The real drive is to save money, and to date, greenness is not sold sufficiently on saving money. Yes I know I but things that are green because it’s my choice. I live in a ‘green’ house, but I am rather the exception.

As life loses a bit of its gloss for the next 12-24 months, I will wonder what could have been done if a small portion of the billions of dollars spent on paying bank bonuses had been spent on saving the planet.

Capitalism is generally a good thing : but extreme capitalism is only a benefit to the few, and really is not much use to the many.

Oh – and I’m not looking to explain why people have loans they can’t afford, That is another subject completely.

First part of another trip to the land of the Election

Hmm. Long time no comment on the world, but something about New York City make me want to.

So another trip to work with our business partners, and another , expensive, protracted and often tedious experience.

Tedium is managed by the survival mode : Oh no – the plane’s delayed another hour, just listen to some more music, and read the news on your phone. Try and make the most of the extra time you’ve got.

Protracted in that time stops when you’re on a trans-Atlantic or trans-USA flight. The six hours that you spend couped up with the other, frequently farting passengers seem to bear little resemblance to the six hours that you might spend working in an office. Maybe that is the survival technique working too.

Expensive. You bet. over 400 USD a night for a hotel that has seen better days, to be told after you’ve been charged 8 dollars ( yes, eight dollars ) for a single pot of yoghurt that they need your table – now, so please leave.the restaurant.I think for that price we should be allowed to have more time at our chosen table,

Moral, do not stay in the Paramount Hotel in NYC, as it is grubby, expensive, no longer shi shi, and definitely geared to any kind of customer service.

But, as befits Larry and I travelling together on business, things are more exciting when we decide to take the Limoliner from NYC to Boston. Thought this might be fun to try, and it was pointed out by a colleague from Boston. Thanks Pete. Thanks very much ….

We thought it would be a civilised European style bus, with good seats, food, drink and decent suspension.

So there are goodish things : the coffee, the food, and the seats are not too bad, with laptop power etc, Bond Movie on the video. But as the motorised technology. Is the US still in the Ice Age ?

Bounce, bump, rattle, vibrate. No good trying to do sensible work with your trusty ThinkPad like you might on a train. Nope. wobbly screens don’t aid concentration. So Limoliner is off the menu next time too : though I have to say that the attendant, as well as being a very attractive lady, is also very attentive. Thanks for that.

But sort out the suspension, please !

More of travel later, and if I can be ar*d to hire a bike in Las Vegas and manage to pedal in the 36 degree, 21 % humidity desert, I’ll be sure to add more comment son how Vegas is an immoral hole that uses more energy than is absolutely necessary, but is still a magic place.

Greeness and the UK housing business

So, it’s like this : green seems to be taking off at last. No longer do I feel totally weird about some of the thinking about saving the planet. Just a little bit off mainstream.
Seems as if the message is getting through to nearly everyone. Except the manufacturers of all the packaging that our household dumps into landfill every few weeks. It is our largest waste generator.
We compost, we have started a trial with Woking Council and the Green Cone food digester to see if a hole in the ground in our garden can actually cope with solely food waste. I say food waste, but being all vegetarians, we don’t have chicken carcasses to throw away, only the outer wrapper of the vegetables, and I’m not totally sure that that counts as ‘food waste’ as such. It will be interesting to see how the trial runs, and the results at completion at the end of summer.
I’m convinced, after going the the Grand Designs Live show last week, and having seen some of the associated TV programmes, that there is a huge interest in houses that work well, that cost less to run, that provide a smart ( as in designerly ) environment, and that have style. I am also convinced that the only people lucky enough to get all these are those errant band of self-builders who put their thoughts into practise.
There may be be many reasons for someone to build their own house ( believe me, and easy life is not one of those reasons ) but in the end they build something interesting. I can guarantee that the major builders in the UK don’t even think further than a getting a cookie cutter architect to design a range of boring, pastiche houses. ( OK Architects want to do more, but the companies don’t let them )
I can also guarantee that the self-builders are subject to all of the planning regs and checks, but that the ‘Professional Builders’ are not. I cannot practically see how a W*m*y or B*rr*t house could pass any air tightness tests.
I just don’t see that a carbon neutral house built in the traditional way will be possible. Factories and prefabs are the best way forward, and then what happens to the lounging, bodging building contractors. Where can they stamp there personality by putting walls in the wrong place, using the wrong staircases or wasting time drinking tea ?
No – I want to be proved wrong, but I won’t hold my breath.
The biggest problem in fact is existing housing stock. Glad to see people at Nottingham University running projects on renovating old stock to modern levels. Woking Council are also looking at the same kind of things.
We could save so much energy if we all had decent doors, windows and insulated walls ( let’s assume that insulating lofts is now a given, and hang anyone who still has an uninsulated loft ).
I wonder what we could have done with half of the 50 billion UKP that Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling ‘loaned’ to the banks to fix their own greed ? Save three or four power stations ? Be less reliant on imported gas ? Built a future ?
Makes me think. Hope it makes you think too.

Devizes to Westminster Canoe / Kayak race 2008

So, one of the problems with having a committed teenager in the house, is that when he does things, he does them with an undiluted passion that often surprises, but always pleases.

Over the Easter weekend he did the DW race for the second time. This year he paddled with his coach. They paddled their hearts out, won, and took around an hour and a half off the record for their class. Before I go on http://www.dwrace.org.uk/ is where you can find more details and the results. Because of his age, he can’t go through in one go yet, so it is a race over 4 days.

I made a promise last year that if he did it again, I would cycle as much as possible along the towpath and riverside paths. I did. Old man that I am, and unfit as I am, I managed to support them from the riverside, making sure they were OK on portages, feeding them on the way ( well, squirting power gels in their mouths ! ) and generally racing them.

The river was high, the weather was atrocious. We had sunshine, rain, snow, hail and horizontal winds. Awful conditions, but the flow on the river helped them all most of the time.

One section I will always remember though. At Henley ( where the regatta is held when the sun shines in the summer ) there was a headwind strong enough to deflect me on my bike, and white, cresting waves on the Thames. Paul and Sarah just kept going. They were doing 7 miles an hour into the wind. I have no idea how deep they dug, but it was just great to be beside them through it. I wouldn’t have missed that for anything.

What a great way to spend a long weekend.

Nerves, Friends, Surgery and bad fossil drawings

I have just read Jeff’s blog ( http://jbailey.livejournal.com/ ). In the years that I have known him, he never really complained about how bad his vertebral problems were. I knew he had problems, and as one sufferer to another, we kind of had that unspoken sympathy.

He has T1 - T6 problems, and is having a cage fitted. My. That is drastic.

At least I only had a ’simple’ L5 – S1 problem.

What has been been great though is that it has taken me years to get anywhere near normal after the initial problem. Great means that it has been fun living on a body that is trying its hardest to recover normal function.

When I was taught biology, it was a ’given’ that nerves, once damaged, never mended. I wonder if those who promulgated that particular nugget ever spoken to anyone who had damaged a nerve ?

It was obvious to me that my nerves were trying really hard to re-route. I could tell by the random firing of muscle groups that they were shorting out and causing ‘arcing’ across the nerve.

I can think of few of these things that probably got in the way of real diagnosis of problems, and I can only hope that the latest recruits question what they are told !

Actually – perhaps that is not such a good idea, as I remember getting into trouble with my Palaeontology demonstrator at University : he insisted that the cast of a fossil we were studying had the exact same suture line as the one in the British Museum book.

Some while later, an example of the original artist being wrong / inventive was provided, and thus I felt really good the day I found that out. I just wish I could remember the specimen in question !

But anyway, I wish Jeff well, and hope that the pain killers they feed him, don’t upset his karma too much

The joy of words

So, there can only be a couple of days a year, or maybe a decade, that the auspices come down from their trees, and make magic.

It happened to me yesterday.

I managed to use three of my very favourite English words in a less than 3 hours.

First up was Borborygmi. A colleague was apologising for her noisy stomach. That has to be my very favourite word. I guess it is also a favourite of http://blogborygmi.blogspot.com/ too. These medics, eh? Oh and for everyone’s education : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borborygmus

Second was ungulate. Such a woody word, that. I knew that taking zoology at Uni would be good for something. Never really knew quite what, but if for no more than dropping ungulate into conversation ( well, an irc chat to be more specific ), it was worth a year of my life

And then, heavens above,  within seconds, we had onomatopoeia ! What a glorious conjunction of heavenly words.

Reminds me of splunk - but that would be looking to much at work and the IT business ….

Ah yes - and the Lunar eclipse was a bit of a washout last night in the UK. Guess we have to wait for the next one. It has been clear at night now for over a wee k : and of course the night of the eclipse, it has to be warm and cloudy. Bummer. Oh well.

Size matters : for a lunar eclipse

So, in thursday / friday, there is a total lunar eclipse to be seen in the UK. They are very cool, and I would recommend if you are nearby and have insomniac leanings, you take a look.

But more importantly, is it just me who thinks these things, or is it remarkable that total eclipses happen at all ?

Thin about it : the earth has to be just the right size to cast a shadow across the moon so that it just covers the whole moon. Same as  a solar eclipse : the moon is just the right size to cover the sun and leave a little bit ( the shiny rim with all of that marvellous activity ) showing.

I guess if I do the maths, I will find that the distances are large enough that the moon and earth could be quite different sizes, and we would still see the effect, but these things concern me. Why are they ’just’ the right size for these phenomenon to happen ?

Whatever the reason, I’m kind of glad that we get a chance to see such terrific events.

Yahoo

OK, so I had promised myself not to comment on the world appertaining to business ….. but I can’t resist.

Over the weekend Yahoo seems to have decided that they do not easily want to become a part of the Empire. They are holding out for more than twice their current worth. Gosh ! That is a pretty cool thing to do. Most people would have swooned at the amount MS offered.

Meanwhile, as this has been sitting waiting to be posted, Sun has bought Innotek for their Virtual Box product. If you have not tried it, you should, it is very good. I wish Ulrich the best of luck : he deserves it !

Looks as though Sun is buying a stack like Red Hat have tried to do before. Should be fun to watch this play out.