Sushi in Cambridge! It was a while coming, but Teri-Aki has finally got their sushi chef in.

And very lovely it was, too. We are very happy girls.

The US government is testing a new scanner for airport security, but it appears tha it reveals too much.

I'm not shy, nor religious, nor even all that modest, but I can't say I'd be terribly comfortable with any old airport security yobbo seeing my bits.

Just ran across turningtables, a Iraq-based US soldier's blog. The poor boys - they are learning terrible lessons right now and I feel bad for them. That said, they will be bringing back messages of reality to their friends and family at home. It's a wafer-thin silver lining, I suppose.

Do read the blog. It's absolutely heart-rending.

My second appointment today was in what could possibly pass for the 'burbs in Cambridge. Loosely speaking. Very loosely, as we have nothing that resembles a suburb. Anyway, the "high street"* probably looked much the same 50 years ago as it does today from some perspectives (the one where the superstore is behind you, for example) but I wonder for how long.

Greengrocers are wonderful. No one has the time to go to multiple shops anymore - at least not in Britain. It's still common in Italy. Perhaps with more flexible working hours, it could become more attractive. It's quite a relaxing way to shop, I find.	When was the last time you had a pair of shoes repaired? My shoes never wear out and for those who don't have my extensive shoe wardrobe, it's much easier to buy a new pair when the get worn or break. Soon we'll drown in a sea of barely worn shoes. Wasn't that a scene from the Hitchhiker's Guide or something?	Eh, good riddance to 'em. Why do they always have to look so seedy?

* for my non-British readers, a high street being the main commercial road in a village or town. Never could figure out why it was called a "high" street though.

Not that it isn't a terrible thing to have happened, but it does surprise me that anyone would consider using sniffer dogs in home searches in Islamic countries. And if they're not aware of the cultural implications, someone urgently needs to get some education on the subject.

In any event, why use dogs, which tire after a couple of hours, probably aren't very happy about the heat and need specialised handlers when a spectrometry scanner can sense more than 30 compounds as opposed to the few that the dog has been trained to detect?

Mr Pax has a couple of interesting posts - all good stuff so I won't bother to quote, nor comment other than to say that the US would be well-advised to get our Salam to advise them as he seems to have an excellent understanding of all sides of the conflict (as conflict it most certainly is).

Not that he'd want to endanger his life by doing so of course...

Oh yeah - and he's also joined the ranks of photologgers with his own excellent offering (bless him for not calling it a photoblog).

I had an early morning doctor's appointment - a medical for my insurance coverage. It was the most thorough I've ever had - hooked me up to some machine with little stickers all over myself and all. Timing's everything for these things and today, of course, my blood pressure was borderline high. Not surprising when you consider that I've had one of the most stressful weeks ever and have worked every day far into the wee hours. Oh the joy of self-employment. I do hope they take that into account or I'll need to moonlight to pay the premiums.

Today was graduation day for some Cambridge students if the furry capes and motherly types in big hats were anything to go by. A big congratulations to all of you!

Coming back from the centre, I stopped at the Quayside and noticed that the replacement for the nasty horrible Quay Bar had opened. Poor things - not a single customer, despite the rest of the Quayside being quite full. I warned the very lovely barkeep that all else had failed there and that we'd speculated that it was the lack of sunshine (we'd also often thought it a good location for an internet cafe for that very reason). Nevertheless, the new restaurant, called Ishca, looks nice.

Similar to the new (and garish) tapas bar that opened just up the road, Ishca serves a small selection of tapas-like starters and some other nice things like Wild Boar Sausages, Seared Scallops and Tomato and Basil Gnocchi. It's a gorgeous place, with trendy leather sofas and poufs. I hope they do better than their predecessors.

And I hope the food is better than the other recent openings. I don't know what it is, but whenever a British restaurant tries to get trendy, inevitably they get it wrong - at least outside of London. The food at the Riverside is really quite bad and the B Bar, despite being a fantastic venue, was only sort of ordinary. A tip for visitors, stick to the traditional dishes (Steak and Kidney pie, Roast Dinner, Fish and Chips) and you're likely to be happy.

Anyway, fish and chips is what everyone comes to Britain for anyway, isn't it? No H.Salt Esquire here though. ;-)

Cool programme on BBC1 about a project to re-introduce wolves to New Mexico. They showed a couple-years on of Yellowstone wolves who have learned to hunt as a group and whose numbers are increasing more quickly than they anticipated. A good thing, though, because the elk population has now stabilised and the overgrazing reduced. Nice to see the system working much better than artificial management.

Here in the UK, (and funnily enough, precisely 1 year ago), one of Scotland's wealthiest landowners called for wolves to be re-introduced to the highlands after the last one was shot in the 18th century.

Needless to say, this has proven controversial and the Wolf Trust is working to improve awareness of wolves in the hopes it will change some minds.

The programme simulated wolf vision periodically, using a sort of bluey tinted filter which was probably pretty accurate.

Many thanks to all you Mac people who sent me screenshots of my seriously messed up layout. Not having any clue how to fix it, I posted a cry for help on Web Design Forums.net.

Apparently relative positioning is a no-no for compatibility. Let that be a lesson to us all. A horrible, painful, headache-inducing lesson...

Wow - another North American Lisa in Cambridge. As Lisa says, what are the chances, hey?

I'm working on a site with a sort of tricky layout. I've got it working (mostly) on IE6, Netscape and Opera, but need to try my hacky solution on IE5 on the PC and any broswer on yon Macintosh (that Safari thing would be helpful).

And kind souls willing to look at my page, please could you drop me an email (yoyo at nicelytoasted dot net) and I'll point you at the URL?

Just to counter impressions that I'm a nerdy, gadgetty geek, I should point out that after years of trying every PDA/Electronic Organiser/Mobile-phone-that makes-the-tea, I've finally found a brilliant way of keeping track of my appointments.

How clever am I?

Mr. Bush can fuck right off.

Do you ever get the feeling you're being bullied?

I do. And if Tony joins the bully boys, he can fuck off as well.

It's all complete rubbish - kinda like the justification for war. Hmm, I sense a pattern. Indeed, genetically modified crops will help only a few people, and they happen to be friends and cronies of the Bush administration. Funny that.

In 2002, an estimated 145 million acres of farmland around the world were planted with genetically modified crops. The biotech acreage is dominated by four moneymakers: soybean, corn, cotton and canola. None is considered particularly useful for nourishing hungry people in developing countries.

Gordon Conway, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, a philanthropic organization interested in applying biotechnology to farming problems in Africa, offered this analysis in a speech last month:

"The field is dominated by ... five very large multinational corporations. For these corporations, there is no profit to investing in expensive research on new products that can only be purchased by subsistence African farmers with little money.

"So quite logically, these companies are not focused on improving the basic crops of the developing world such as millet, sorghum, cowpeas, yams or cassava."

That comes from this article.

Perhaps running the risk of information overload, but still quite a cool idea. Take a look at the bag of potatoes sitting in your potato place (I don't have a potato place, which is, I'm told, why my potatoes sprout). Just below the "Display Until" there may be a number that you can use to track where your potatoes came from. Potato Info is Sainsbury's organic traceability facility, which allows you to trace your potatoes back to the grower. A bit OTT as websites go maybe, but a way to trace all your food would be very cool.

Probably. Or it could just be me being a food geek.

Two gb to install Mac OSX?! I guess there's not much chance of being able to run any applications on my poor little iMac.

Believe it or not, I've never read any of the Harry Potter books and consequently, I think the circus surrounding the latest release is, well, a circus, actually.

I suspect I haven't read them because I'm really quite sick of Harry Potter this and Harry Potter that - and have been for some years now. The movie was simply passable - nothing special.

Anyway, JK may now be richer than the Queen, but Dickens has been there and done that (not the "richer than the Queen" bit - the other stuff).

It just occured to me that digital photography has had an unexpected benefit to the planet. After browsing through Cath's garden(check out the macro of the purple flowers on page 3) and Clayton's critter shots, I realise that a lot of people are having a much closer connection with plants and their associated insect life than I'd previously noticed.

It could be that people have always been closet bug-lovers, but I'm more inclined to think that photography helps you to see things you might have missed if you weren't looking for something cool to photograph.

I guess my libertarian streak is fairly weak, but I'd like to see way more government control over the appearance of things - homes and developments - in England. In the absense of government action, the Campaign to Protect Rural England is calling on the public to help safeguard the "distinctive character" of local landscapes.

Living in Cambridge is like living in the middle of a picture postcard and the pleasure that this provides is really quite priceless. It is so because the university is quite fussy about its heritage and doesn't allow too much development within it's boundaries. That which it does needs to meet their requirements.

So, for the most part, we are protected from garish signage and plastic frontages on the shops in town. Not as much as I'd like, it must be said, but they do a pretty good job.

I expect that capitalism will win out - greed being the powerful force it is - and GM is pretty much an inevitability. Hopefully I won't be around to see it, but being full of predictions today, I think we'll end up in quite a mess in a couple hundred years when all that GM stuff starts going haywire. Former environment minister, Michael Meacher is urging caution and mentions:

...the only human GM trial commissioned by the Food Standards Agency found genetically modified DNA did transfer to bacteria in the human gut. Many scientists had denied this was possible.

"But instead of this finding being regarded as a serious discovery which should be checked and rechecked the spin was this was nothing new and did not involve any health risk," he said.

Celebrity's a funny thing. David Beckham is hailed as a phenomenon in Japan while remaining completely anonymous in the US.

Prince Wills, on the other hand, is a huge celebrity in the states. If my own friends and family are anything to go by, articles about the prince are being eagerly lapped up there. Amusing how the "21st birthday party gallery" labels Tara Palmer-Tomkinson as an "unidentified guest".

I can't help thinking, though, that the future King being born on midsummer's day would have had huge significance in pagan Britain. In a few hundred years, it will have metamorphised into a myth of Arthurian proportions, no doubt.

Oh, how nice to have the dear wee digicam back. The afternoon was spent as far away from midsummer fair as was possible with a pint at the Granta and a very nice burger and pizza at brb@the Cow.

See the tourist guide snaps here and here.

Today is, of course, the longest day of the year and here in the UK it means that Mr. Sun and his chirpy little friends are up rather early these days. Officially the sunrises around 4:30 but actually starts getting light about half 3. Night doesn't really seem to fall until after 10. It's all a bit strange for a California girl, even after 6 years or so, but kinda cool at the same time.

Midsummer day is turning out well and all. I've caught some sum, did a little work out in the garden (work-work, not garden work) and waited patiently for critters to photograph for Photo Friday.

My entry is not the most original or even technically all that great, but I liked the colours and so entered it anyway.

It's going to be the next big thing, I'm telling you. If not an Olympic Sport (I'd watch the Olympics if there were entries like this), then the next line-dancing craze is definitely going to include dogs.

You gotta love it. (And you gotta love b3ta)

Like any "scientific" report released by biased parties, we really shouldn't believe anything in the EPA's Environmental Report.

As sweet as stories about animals living in haromony with man are, I'm not sure I'd be ready to admit to my town having an annual Beaver Day.

I really do have to get back to work, but I couldn't resist this other link from the aforementioned Spinneyhead. Apparently someone has managed to turn tables on a Nigerian scamspammer.

Priceless.

I've been chaffing under the expense of software and wanting to be a good girl and only use that which is legally obtained is becoming quite a financial challenge. Finding a free, open source MS-style Office suite is like mana from heaven.

Cheers to Spinneyhead for that.

Following on from the extra male brain-gene thing and continuing the battle of the sexes, the BBC is asking, What are the 78 differences between women and men?.

Already the thing is broken with one person insisting that "Women have the 'Oh dear, the toilet paper is on its last sheet; must replace it immediately' gene," which I must have missed out on entirely. So far the others simply focus on colour perception (women like colours, men ignore them - probably because they're more often colour-blind). [Update: the list is getting better! Some nicked quotes in there, but some hilarioous ones as well, like: "At weddings, women cry then get drunk. Men get drunk, then cry" and "For men, 2am is time for sleep. For women, 2am is time for a discussion about where our relationship is going". ]

So, what are those other 77 different genes for, do you think?

As we were walking down the boardwalk across the river from Magdelene admiring the dodge-ems set up in the college gardens for their ball, I heard a pack of tourists trying to figure out how to get over there.

I guess you had to be there.

I would have a had a photo to accompany this snippet, because I got my camera back and it was in my purse, but after so long without it, I'd forgotten it was there.

Kind of a non-post really, innit?

Scientists have deciphered the Y chromosome and found that men have an extra "brain gene" that the women don't possess.

They forewarned us about the inevitable map-reading and parking gene jokes, but I reckon I know what it's really for.

It's the switch that shuts the brain down when that other organ kicks in.

Many apologies to the anonymous photographer and many thanks to Piers for this rather amusing image from a protest outside the PGA tour in Augusta Georgia. Apparently the club doesn't allow women. Check out the guy at the back.

to life, the universe and everything.

Another reason for being excited about a slide scanner is the bunch of slides my step-mum sent the other day. Pictures of us all back when I was 6 or 7 I expect. Very cool old images - but that look like they were taken yesterday because of the quality of the film.

She also sent some prints, including the one below of my great grandfather, waving his arms about for some vitally important reason, I'm sure. I really dig this picture - click to see it bigger and look at the faces on these guys. Do they look like they're having a laugh or what? And check out the trompe l'oile walls. Hey, it was just after the revolution - I guess they were being frugal. Either that or they'd blown up all the posh buildings.

Damn! I just took an almighty swig of a yoghurt smoothie from Sainsbury's and it was well off. The fizzing should have been my first clue, but I figured it was foam from the shaking.

Blech, blech, blech. If you don't hear from me again, I've died of food poisoning.

What a shame. I just called my local print shop to see what they charge to scan 35mm transparencies and it's a whopping £3 a slide! Boots, apparently, no longer scans slides to CD so I guess I may be forced to buy a slide scanner. The question is which one? Even the cheap ones have tranny adaptors these days, but is 1600x3200 or even 4800x2400 enough resolution for a decent scan? Next step up is a dedicated 4000x4000 slide scanner for £470.

Hmm, I say...

Hot and sultry is the phrase for the day and I'll hear no whinging about it. I've got my tall glass of iced tea to hand and that along with the sticky heat makes me really rather happy indeed.

Funny thing about iced tea in Britain - I've rarely been able to persuade people here to try it - it's considered rather heretical to drink tea cold. Recently Lipton has resorted to giving away cans of iced (actually lukewarm) tea to passers-by in the city centre. There's no shortage of takers and all I overhear is surprise that it's drinkable. Still, the ad campaign focuses on how "unusual" a drink it is. "Don't knock it 'til you've tried it!" Makes me laugh - like drinking iced tea is the equivalent to wearing a mullet. (It's not, is it?)

Other things to be happy about besides the swelter: I should get my camera tomorrow (I'll believe it when I see it!) and I got my photos from last weekend's Strawberry Fair back. The bog-standard 200ASA prints came out horribly. Not a decent shot in the pile - all grainy and blurry. The slides, on the other hand, are gorgeous as far as I can tell. Bright and sharp as slide film always seems to be. Now to get them off those tiny little bits of plastic and onto my 'puter...

If my 'puter behaves that is. It's got a rather annoying habit of either exiting Explorer with no notice or completely shutting itself off - also with no notice. I suspect it's the wireless keyboard and/or mouse driver since it seems to happen when I single click on an item in a window, but I've updated them both to no avail. Tsk. Bloody computers. Who'd have 'em?

A nursing home in Kent has decided that council rates aren't providing sufficient funding and have decided to forego council-funded tenants. The consequence is the eviction of a 102-year-old woman from her care home.

Unfortunately for her, compassion and capitalism are completely incompatible concepts.

Putting on my best Lloyd Grossman accent, I present Who lives here?, another groovy web project that gives us a glimpse into other people's homes. If you're like me and can't resist peeking into open windows to see how your neighbours have decorated, you'll love this.

My poor digicam is lost in some Royal Mail bag somewhere, but should I ever get it back, I'll show off my little houselette, being the houseproud frau that I am.

(via IdleType)

Clayton has taken some amazing macro photos of butterflies. Who knew Houston was so full of them? Go look.

As for me, I'm going to be in the back garden trying to sunburn my other side. I'm not planning on coming back in until I've achieved my goal. Happy Sunday!

Right, so if you haven't heard of it, the Beeb is doing a joint TV/internet gaming thing where you have to create and train a "warrior" to be the "perfect fighting machine".

I joined and was setting up to be a contestant on the TV show since so few women (girls) were getting involved. The problem is that I don't like the game.

They originally said that they had designed it to appeal to girls as well, but the sum total of that female friendly design seems to be offering warrior body parts with breasts. Otherwise, it's a bog standard fighting game. You don't so much train a warrior as train yourself to control the character and you don't so much build one as choose from a pretty limited set of body parts.

I found it not in the least interesting. Guess you won't be seeing me on the TV show anytime soon...

Ah, I nearly forgot. Today is Father's Day and although my father passed away some years back, I love him and miss him very much. So, in honour of my own dear daddy, happy Father's Day to all you lovely Dads!

My Dad was an amazing guy and even though he and my mum divorced when I was only a year or so old, he had a huge effect on me. He and my step-mum lived in southern California while my mum and I lived up north. Nevertheless, I'd visit several times a year when possible. When I was 19, I moved down to LA and in with my Dad as my half sisters and brother had done before me.

Daddy wasn't perfect. God knows he had plenty of flaws. A short attention span was one of them and it meant that when we were little he didn't really have a lot of patience for us kids (which may have something to do with both his divorces). As we got older and were able to carry on more intelligent conversations our relationships with him always improved.

And boy did they. Dad was a brilliant and funny guy who had grown up amongst the hoighty-toighty on Long Island. His father (my grandfather) had a New York ad agency and travelled in socialite circles. Guy Lombardo was a neighbour and my grandfather hung with loads of bigwigs like Charles Limburgh and the Aga Khan.

While in the Air Force, Dad was a sharp-shooter and went on to participate in the Olympic shooting trials in Mexico City back in 1968. During the 60s and early 70s, he worked at NASA in the Apollo division and from there went onto Rockwell and the B1 division and then (for some unknown reason) joined CBS. I'll always remember his giant Mercedes with the gold trim and the CBSCH2 personalised plates that would always get us into any event - no questions asked. He took full advantage of that, the scamp.

My dad was very, very conservative and a huge fan of Ronald Reagan. We disagreed about politics but I think he always blamed my lefty leanings on a lefty education and never thought any less of me for it. He was extremely open-minded but very firm in his beliefs. For him, success was the most important thing in life and he always seemd to compete in his own mind with his father's success. He needn't have worried because he was handsome, charming and intelligent. Success just followed him around. He had periodic bouts with bad luck (and a few run-ins with racism in the 60s when Mexicans were seen as migrant farm workers above anything else) but always rose above them. Quite stunningly well in some cases.

Dad loved cars and gadgets and at one point bought himself a huge stretch limo. He had a driver for a few months but when that got to be a pain, he took over driving the thing himself. It was a bit strange but my dad was an eccentric if nothing else! He'd take me to Ontario speedway and always dreamed I'd be a racecar driver. He got me my first proper job at a friend's Porsche dealership, set me up with my first Nikon camera, taught me how to shoot, how to use a video-editing suite and how to service my own car. Really, it was from him I learned to be interested in absolutely everything.

I was always a daddy's girl and being born on Father's Day seemed somehow appropriate. My father died relatively young (a result of too much high-living to be honest), but had a full and happy life, I think. I'm honoured to have known him and even more so to have been his daughter.

What is it about rabbits and things-balanced-on-their-heads, I wonder?

I didn't know it was possible to fall off a Segway.

(via Dr Menlo)

Lewis Carroll, AKA Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was both a lecturer in Mathematics at Christ Church Oxford, and a clergyman. He was also a fine photographer at the very beginnings of the artform. He specialised in portraiture, and in particular photographs of children. It's suggested that his gift of story-telling helped him keep the children still for the very long exposure times that the old wet colloidal method required. I found a few pages of his lovely and evocative images here and here.

A proposal for a redesign of the Union Jack has been tabled and frankly, I'm offended. I mean, there is absolutely no representation of pinkish tan people!

I blame the blue people myself.

I'm getting very antsy not having my digital camera. The slides I took on Saturday won't be ready for another week and then I have to get them digitised somehow after that. It's all so terribly old-fangled.

In the meantime, I dug out some old pictures of my baby when she was a baby. (also at left)

A bit of email silliness sent to me by Mark: "Imagine if all major brands started making their own condoms and kept the same tagline". See "more" for more.

Sainsbury Condoms - making life taste better
Tesco Condoms - every little helps
Nike Condoms - Just do it.
Peugeot Condoms - The ride of your life.
Galaxy Condoms - Why have rubber when you can have silk.
KFC Condoms - Finger Licking good.
Minstrels Condoms - melt in your mouth, not in your hands.
Safeway condoms - Lightening the load.
Abbey National condoms - because life is complicated enough.
Coca Cola condoms - The real thing.
Ever Ready condoms - keep going and going.
Macintosh condoms - It does more, it costs less, it's that simple
Pringles condoms - once you pop, you can't stop
Burger king condoms - Home of the whopper
Goodyear condoms - "for a longer ride go wide"
FCUK condoms - no comment required.
Muller light condoms - so much pleasure, but where's the pain.
Halford condoms - we go the extra mile.
Royal Mail condoms - I saw this and thought of you.
Andrex condoms - Soft, strong and very very long
Renault condoms - size really does matter!
Ronseal condoms - does exactly what it says on the tin
Domestos condoms - gets right under the rim!
Heineken condoms - reaches parts that other condoms just cannot reach
Carlsburg condoms - probably the best condom in the world
Mars condoms - a condom a day helps you work rest and play
AA Condoms - for the 4th emergency service
Pepperami condoms - its a bit of an animal
Polo condoms - the condom with the hole!

Once again, excuse me if I have a mini-rant against GM foods. Despite the continual ravings from the right that denying GM foods to poor African farmers is somehow evil (supposedly because countries that grow GM crops can not sell them in Europe, Europeans being fairly dead-set against GM), the truth is GM is motivated by corporate greed, not altruistic warm fuzziness for the world's poor.

The real reason corporates want to press for GM foods is purely commercial. Multinationals want to control the world's food chains and can not sell that which is natural and free. They can only sell those seeds for which they have a patent. There's big money in GM foods - not for the poor, but for the biotech giants.

Says George Monbiot in the Guardian:

The principal issue, perpetually and deliberately ignored by government, many scientists, most of the media and, needless to say, the questionnaire being used to test public opinion, is the corporate takeover of the food chain. By patenting transferred genes and the technology associated with them, then buying up the competing seed merchants and seed-breeding centres, the biotech companies can exert control over the crops at every stage of production and sale. Farmers are reduced to their sub-contracted agents. This has devastating implications for food security in the poor world: food is removed from local marketing networks - and therefore the mouths of local people - and gravitates instead towards sources of hard currency. This problem is compounded by the fact that (and this is another perpetually neglected issue) most of the acreage of GM crops is devoted to producing not food for humans, but feed for animals.

The second issue is environmental damage. Many of the crops have been engineered to withstand applications of weedkiller. This permits farmers to wipe out almost every competing species of plant in their fields. The exceptions are the weeds which, as a result of GM pollen contamination, have acquired multiple herbicide resistance. In Canada, for example, some oilseed rape is now resistant to all three of the most widely used modern pesticides. The result is that farmers trying to grow other crops must now spray it with 2,4-D, a poison which persists in the environment.

The third issue, greatly over-emphasised by the press, is human health. There is, as yet, no evidence of adverse health effects caused directly by GM crops. This could be because there are no effects, or it could be because the necessary clinical trials and epidemiological studies, have, extraordinarily, still to be conducted.

Along these lines is this article from Transnational drawing attention to the biodiversity pirates hoping to cash in on South America's rich pickings.

Once a biological resource with commercial potential is identified, the corporation that "discovered" it can claim a patent on it, and thus turn what was once freely available to all into private property. Corporations are applying for patents on everything from trees and rice varieties to proteins, gene sequences and human stem cells. All living organisms and their components are patentable.

Unfortunately for Corporate America, most of the world's biodiversity is outside the borders of the United States and is concentrated mostly in the tropical countries of the Third World.

Finally, for another example of why GM is risky business, consider the fact that rice, the world's staple food and the one that was among the first to be patented has more genes than humans do. As Steven Pinker points out in The designer baby myth, "it's easier to disrupt a complex system with a single defective part than to improve it by adding a single beneficial one."

Surely that's a frightening prospect?

One of the world's most famous beauties and possibly the most powerful woman in ancient Egypt may have been found in Egypt. Well, bits of her at any rate.

The mysterious Nefertiti, mother of King Tut and wife of the enigmatic Akhenaten is one of ancient Eygpt's more interesting characters. If this truly is her (and other scientists are quite doubtful that it is), it could answer a lot of questions about the 18th Dynasty.

Kinda amusing Guide to the A-List Bloggers. The list is a bit selective. No Hammersley (whence this link comes) or war bloggers, for example. I'm not sure who wrote it or what their beef/agenda is, but I link it 'cause I'm mentioned in the very first sentence!

OK, so that's probably not me. Which is probably a good thing.

Working for yourself also means spending your own money on the tools of the trade, in this case, software. I will admit to having used hooky software in the past, but after working in software development, I'm not inclined to do that again. Still, the prices really are quite shocking when it's your own money. I spent the first month using trial versions of Freehand, Fireworks and Flash, but when I got my new PC, I bit the bullet and bought Macromedia Studio MX .

Print work is another story, however. Back when I started in design so long ago, Pagemaker was the only layout software available and when Quark Xpress was introduced, we snapped that puppy right up and it's been an industry standard ever since. They've always annoyed me though, with their arrogant attitude towards licensing, their extortionate pricing and complete and utter lack of support. I really wasn't looking forward to buying Xpress again.

I gave Adobe's InDesign a go and it's really very nice. None of my printers will take InDesign files, but the software does export very good PDFs (not surprisingly as PDF and Postscript are Adobe products) which the printers will take. As soon as the trial runs out, I'm adding the Adobe Design Collection to my list and that's your lot. Incredibly, those two software suites alone will have cost about 50% more than my entire computer system.

While I take a short break from the never-ending hell that is cross-browser css, I thought I'd post a little about what's going on here-abouts. I dislike doing it as I'm not sure how many people actually care about the tedious goings on of my life, but when my camera broke recently, I found that recording this stuff often means I have information to go back to (like when I bought my camera, for example). Handy that.

It's a bit long, so if you're really interested, read the rest.

Speaking of cameras, I sent my camera back to Fuji and after about a million phone calls, they finally admitted to having received it. With luck, I should get it back this week sometime.

This whole working for myself lark is a bit hard and all. I recently suffered a rather intense bout of RSI with my middle and index fingers gone completely numb. Obviously there are about a number of things that could be done, from radical surgery to anti-imflammatories to time off work, but since I'm not keen on surgical blades and drugs and no longer have the leisure of taking time off work (no workie, no money), I thought I was going to be a bit screwed. Michael sent me some excellent reference material (which is on the laptop at the moment - will find it later) and I believe I've managed to control the pain with a few simple changes.

For one thing, I've got a shiny new PC and 18" flat-screen monitor which I've placed on a shelf about 30 cm high so no more looking down at the screen (laptops are evil, I've decided). The other thing that's helped a lot is changing my seating position when using the mouse extensively. The whole idea of sitting up straight is fine for typing, but when using the mouse, I've found that leaning back in my chair and using my whole arm to control the mouse makes a big difference. Of course, frequent breaks and lost of stretching are also important. Easy to remember - I take a break as soon as the pain starts!

As for the whole business name and the like, well, I thought I'd decided on a name and even went so far as to register the domain name. Unfortunately, the name I chose, "Congo Maisey", has the misfortune of containing the name of a country going through one of the world's bloodiest civil wars, with more people killed than in any conflict since WWII. Nice.

Of course, there may be some significance in my business being "officially" born when I started self-employment. In this case that would have been Cinco de Mayo, the anniversary of Mexican General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguin's defeat of the French in 1862 only to have the French send thousands more troops, effectively quashing much more in the way of revolution (for a while, at least).

Ho well, I'm a bit stuck for ideas now. Hence the trawling of movie databases, sayings, phrases and rhyming slang.

Otherwise, I'm chocka with work, having picked up a retainer contract with one client and having confirmed the go ahead for 3 more. I definitely need to get better at estimating though, as I've under-bid on a lot of projects, despite not having had to compete for any of them. I'm just rubbish, I am - as well as cheap.

Nah, not really. But the bunnycam's back.

Yay!

A pretty cool list of the meanings and origins of phrases, sayings, cliches and quotes.

And another one.

Another traditional (for me) pastime at the Strawberry Fair is the end of festival Chai tea. I fancied a cup just now and found this collection of recipes and other Chai information.

This Glossary of Colonial Terminology appears to be designed for developers of Victorian Colonial RPGs, but is an interesting look at the origins of some common slang and terminology in use in the UK. Most interesting to me was the British Military and Soldier Slang with the range of terms that originated in India and Asia, like "cheroot" (from Tamil), "cushy" (from the Hindi for pleasant) and "dekko" (from the Hindi "to look").

The Observer lists ten ways to tell if you're a Geezer.

Hmm, I thought they were known as Townies (or possibly the "P" word).

The first Saturday in June has seen the Strawberry Fair held on Midsummer Common for the last 30 years. It's one of my very favourite events and one I really look forward to each year.

I was convinced that it would be a wash-out this time - with barrels of rain falling yesterday morning - and I really felt for the attendees, all afloat on the green in their tents and makeshift dwellings. The festival is only one day long, supposedly to prevent overnight camping, however on this anniversary there was an ocean of tents down on the pointy end of the common.

Anyway, as it often happens with the fair, the sun came out and it was gloriously warm. Also, as is traditional, I missed the costumed procession through the city but it must have been a good one as there were plenty of fantastic costumes in attendance, along with a good selection of mohawks and some very lovely dreadlocks.

The fair is famous for its huge range of ethnic foods, goods and crafts as well as the lovely green (ahem) smell that permeates the place. Also, as is common, the police were hardly to be seen. While there is a range of fairly questionable produce being sold (specifically some interesting-looking purple mushrooms), the Bill take a very hands-off approach to Strawberry Fair. There is rarely any trouble and once finished, you'd be hard-pressed to know that only a day or two before, the common was a sea of rubbish - probably quite soggy rubbish as it chucked it down this morning as well.

This time I also had my daughter with me, and although there's loads for kids to do, she hates the heat and whinged rather a lot, so we weren't able to stay too long. Being digicamless, I bought a roll of very slow Velvia and another roll of FujiChrome. Not sure if anything will come out as there was a bit of a haze, keeping the light a bit too low in a lot of cases, but with luck I should get a couple of interesting shots out of it.

If only I didn't have to wait so long to get the film back... I really hate that.

This really sucks. According to the Guardian, Royal Mail is abandoning the trains, shifting the 14% of mail currently transported by rail to the roads.

That's 160,000 lorry journeys per year added to our already over-burdened highways. The government, on the other hand, has set a target of increased freight on the railways by 80% over 10 years. If the Royal Mail can't be persuaded, that (very fine) idea seems doomed.

Bastards.

A study of nature reserves in Ghana seems to imply that polygamous species are less likely to go extinct than those that are true to only one mate.

I wonder what that says about our rather extensive human population, hmm?

The article also closed with this rather stunning statement:

Conservationists are beginning to realize that a knowledge of behaviour is "fundamental to understanding the likelihood of extinction".

D'oh! Only just beginning to realise?! That explains a lot...

Sharia Law has been approved for Pakistan's northern border regions and while most of it is anathema to my way of life (I'm quite fond of nudity and vulgarity, thank you very much), one bit makes a helluva lot of sense to me.

Sharia law restricts the sorts of activities that banks can carry out, notably banning the payment or reciept of interest. When I think about the enormous fortunes that banks and insurance companies make whilst not actually making any product, I have to wonder why it's not more regulated than it is. Searching around for lending laws in the UK, I really only found self-regulatory codes and consumer protection agencies, but very little in the way of limits on interest payments. It's all a part of the ever-spiralling consumerist culture and seems certain to destroy lives when the bottom drops out (as it certainly will at some point - it always does).

I realise, however, that banks' huge fortunes fund other, very important activities in the wide world and that our whole economic system is based heavily on it, but in the case of mortgages and other consumer spending, I expect it serves more to destabilise in the long run. It's clearly way too late to change the underlying system without breaking it. Oh well.

I found an interesting short article on Islamic banking as well as a glossary of terms and a longer explanation straight from the horse's mouth (as it were).

It really is beyond a joke now. The Guardian reports that the war was about oil after all.

Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister [Paul Wolfowitz] said: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."

And George, Tony, et al will be swimming in a world of shit. And if they aren't then something is drastically wrong with the world.

(via the War in Context)

[Update: read the comments. It does indeed look as though the Guardian took the comment out of context...

Update to the update: the Gurdian has withdrawn the article and printed a retraction]

The BBC is so cool. Who else would use the term Schadenfreude in a ten-o-clock news bulletin?

It reminded me that I recently ran across this list of Foreign Words and Phrases. No SchadenFreude, however.

Ah well, c'est la vie... Oh, wait that one's not there either.

The Pew Oceans Commission in the US has presented a plan for protecting the oceans around the US. Their spokesman points out that recognition of the interdependance between sea and land has been slow to dawn.

One scary fact quoted in the BBC article about this paper never even occurred to me, but is pretty obvious when you think about it:

"Every eight months, nearly 11 million gallons of oil run off our streets and driveways into our waters - the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez oil spill."

As I was taking my morning walk around my blogroll, I happened upon this New York Times article via the War in Context. The author closed the article by stating,

Suppose that this administration did con us into war. And suppose that it is not held accountable for its deceptions, so Mr. Bush can fight what Mr. Hastings calls a "khaki election" next year. In that case, our political system has become utterly, and perhaps irrevocably, corrupted.

It got me thinking about what could have gone wrong with the American political system recently (which isn't to say that part of the problem doesn't exist here as well, of course). I had it in mind to write something longer, comparing the American system with the British system and what little I know about the Italian system (those three being the only ones I've actually experienced for myself).

Unfortunately duty calls, so I only got as far as this overview of the British system of government. Interesting stuff. I don't think they actually teach "civics" in the schools here.

OK, just one more and then I really have to get to work...

Hungarian researchers have tested the abilities of wolves and domestic dogs to determine if a dog's ability to follow a gaze is inate or a result of having lived for thousands of years with humans. Says the article, "it has been suggested that the ability to follow a gaze demonstrates an understanding of mental states, indicating a "higher mind".

The article described how hand-reared wolves would keep their head down to try and figure out a tricky problem, while dogs would look to their human masters for guidance and assistance.

This reminds me of a television programme I saw recently about autism and how a mother of two young boys, one normal and one highly autistic, described the most obvious differences between the two. The normal child, when faced with a problem (a broken toy perhaps), would seek out his mother to assist, while the autistic boy would not, the implication being that he had difficulty recognising the fact that his mother did not share his thoughts - he lacked a concept of "self" as opposed to "other".

I wouldn't suggest that these differences between wolf and dog behaviour are enough to determine whether one possesses a "higher" mind than the other, however, it's an interesting question with possibly far-reaching implications.

Keanu Reeves has given £50 million of his earnings from the Matrix sequels to the costume and special effects teams.

Says the star, "Money is the last thing I think about. I could live on what I have already made for the next few centuries."

Wouldn't it be nice if more of the world's wealthy individuals felt this way? Although he doesn't look it in the photos, I'll bet he's a happy man within himself.

(via All out of Angst)

Not too dissimilar to yesterday's news about the Indian villager who tracks water sources via computer, Tanzanian refugees are learning computer skills thanks to the Kasulu Internet Project. The really fab thing about this, however, is that they are using a generator run by cow manure.

Now, I like this idea a lot. I'm sure there are nasty by-products (as is the case with anything that's burnt), but for the most part, this seems like a brilliant solution to an almost intractable problem. In Tibet, native people have used yak patties as a source of fuel since time immemorial.

I wonder how many hours I could get out of rabbit pellets. Heaven knows I have plenty of the damn things...

Fantastic story about a 55-year-old Indian woman who has embraced computing technology and now maintains a database of wells, tube wells and ponds in 11 Rajasthan villages and is now passing on her computing knowledge to young village girls who generally leave school at the 5th or 6th standards (I'm guessing this means aged 11 or 12).

Sluice gate closes on 3 Gorges dam.