Archives

This is just a place for things that I think it might be useful to write down and put somewhere.

Wandered around M&S last night, really it is a very strange place now. They seem to be changing their displays of ladies wear every week - not just rearranging, but switching stock - and so the jumper I'd seen only a week ago no longer existed. Still, they did have some nice dresses, rather to my surprise. Sadly the shiny grey silk one with frills didn't quite fit right, so I ended up with a black one, but this did have £20 off, so doesn't count as a frivolous purchase, merely a wise one. :-) Still, it will hopefully be suitable for dancing in... I can't believe the Ball is in less than a week. I've never been to a winter ball before, so it should be rather fun.
8:48 AM
 
Isn't tea a strange drink? I think when I first read the HHGG Nutri-Matic's definition of tea, I wasn't a great drinker of the stuff. Now I practically subsist on its various forms, and just now slopping a bit of milk into my mug it struck me how absurd it seems. Without milk it's totally different, too, and yet you only need a little milk to convert flavoured water into English Tea. The taste of dried leaves boiled in water, with milk squirted out of a cow. That's Fridays for you.
3:09 PM
 
Happy weekend, everybody!
6:00 PM

Thursday, November 22, 2001  
Keeping up with the food theme, today I tried Jordan's Luxury Crunchy cereal - honey and nut variety - mmmm. I also ate the last of the teacakes (not really a traditional breakfast food), which is very sad.
9:40 AM

Wednesday, November 21, 2001  
I've been reading a lot of Wendy Cope lately, and am only being slightly hampered in this by the fact that two of her books are at home (the wrong home) and so I only have her latest with me. Very cheering stuff. :-)

Cycling home from dancing last night the Christmas lights were on in town, which was nice. They are suitably sparkley without being nasty colours, and without the dubious reindeer of previous years. Still, there aren't enough of them. Maybe I should get some little lights for around my monitor.
4:26 PM
 
Lately I keep getting vague thoughts that I should be filling in PhD application forms and so forth. I have a nice shiny prospectus at home, which won't get read, and a pile of paperwork - all untouched. Today's Thanksgiving Piled Higher and Deeper comic strip hasn't encouraged me, either, but then PhD never does. It might be based in Stanford, but it feels awfully close to home.
4:30 PM

Tuesday, November 20, 2001  
I think I am getting addicted to dark chocolate brazil nuts. :-) I wonder how many more people I can convert to them, before I move on to a new food phase?
9:02 AM
 
This seems like a good time to plug my chocolate provider (although to be strictly correct I don't buy all my chocolate from them, just the nice stuff) - Montezumas.net. Mmm.
5:25 PM

Monday, November 19, 2001  
So the below mess is the bits I've rescued from my Radio Userland attempt at a webloggy thing. Now I'm trying Blogger for a change, and also a warmer colour scheme to cheer me up in these cold winter months.

Winter has arrived - I wore gloves today.

Today there is a full moon; the second in the month, making it a blue moon. It was gorgeously bright and clear even last night.

Went to see a fascinating talk about fireworks yesterday at the Chemistry department. Highly amusing lecturer, and only one incident with a gas tap which had mysteriously been turned on and forgotten. It reminded me that pyrotechnics are good, and although I've never witnessed anything on the scale of SRL I would definitely like to.

A very Halloween-ish word (in the traditional sense, probably, or at least closer to it than the usual Americanised commercialism would suggest) is eldritch. Always sounds Lovecraftian to me.

It's been a delightfully sunny weekend, even managing to stay dry on Saturday night, allowing a group of rowdy students and non-students to celebrate a 24th birthday with the bumps in the traditional manner, whilst being outdoors to preserve the landlady's ceiling. On Sunday I took my first faltering steps of Argentine Tango (if you were there you would appreciate exactly how faltering - I was only marginally better with my eyes open...)

Today's word is arcanum, which I rather like, especially as you don't often see it in the singular. Yet another day when I get up, pootle about, and only notice it's raining when I walk out of the door. Luckily it wasn't actually torrential until I was nearly at the lab.

There was a programme on radio 4 last night about wearable computing, but I only heard the trailer. Time to go track it down.

From Dictionary.com, Redoubtable is today's word.

It's all change at work. My thoughts go out to those in the US, especially. Let's keep our fingers crossed for the next few months.

Ludic is today's Word of the Day from dictionary.com.

Word of the day seems like a cool thing to have. If I was selecting words myself there wouldn't be one a day - perhaps one a week - and half the time it would probably be a phrase rather than a single word.

I can't believe I forgot my camera today - will have to put it in my bag when I get home, so I can add to the stock of random flood photos doing the rounds. I've also just realised how American 'firefighters' sounds. I knew I'd collect words, even if I didn't pick up the accent.

Ah, so this is what it feels like to have a weblog-type-thing. Really it's just an excuse to play with this new toy...

Obligatory weather comment: After the excitingly heavy rain yesterday (still a novelty to me after California) it's not entirely unsurprising to find flooded bits of Cambridge on my way into town. No firefighters today, though, unlike last night.
11:50 AM
 
Blogger's main advantage would seem to be that I can edit this from any web browser, which is useful for when one is lacking a PC of one's own...
12:04 PM
 
I can also use BlogBuddy from Sourceforge to update this page. :-)
5:12 PM
 
It really is very depressing to find that it gets dark long before I could even contemplate leaving work. I definitely think that there should be more Christmas sparkley lights in November to brighten the place up. Even the sunsets are over before you have a chance to notice them. I might have to start taking late-afternoon walks to see them before coming back to work...
5:19 PM
 
New Nokia smartphone looks very cute - it's over at InfoSync - if it's as small as my current 8210, then I might be persuaded to upgrade - one day. Also today on the gadget front I have spent far too long looking at Casio watches, renamed with an e- to make them 21st century, I guess. Anyone who has seen either of the top two watches here and knows what the background LCD is doing (when it isn't displaying a world map, I can at least identify that) I would be intrigued to find out.

Right, that's it for Monday. I'm off to the shops (girly evening part) and then to a lecture about ThrustSSC (engineery part of evening).
5:36 PM