John Allsopp

Professionally engineered Internet solutions for humans

Viruses: 29 March 2005: A photograph of a wooden model of a virus in the Observer a week ago with the Morris-esque caption "what a virus looks like" made me realise that as far as I was concerned a virus might as well be a wooden sphere with blue and red wooden pegs stuck in it. I know next to nothing about viruses, and with Avian Flu about to kill us all, I thought it might be nice to find out more.; For a start I remember from school that viruses aren't 'alive', in the sense that, we've made a list of 'alive' boxes to tick and viruses don't get to tick all of them.; As my partner started to develop a cold, I wondered what stopped her simply dissolving into a pool of mucus, besides obviously that if any virus tries anything fancy with my woman, I'll take it outside and give it a good slap. What's the limit to a virus's expansion within the body? In an environment that presents no limits, populations soon become vast. From 1 bacterium we get 2, from that 4, then 8, 16, 32 and so on. We reasoned that her cold had come on so suddenly because the viruses were reproducing in vast numbers, if you've 8 billion viruses in you now, in a minute or two it'll be 16 billion, then 32 billion .... Any normal organism will hit barriers such as a lack of food or water, the wrong temperature, or physical barriers, and that keeps their numbers down. According to Wikipedia, viruses may be selective about the type of cells they infect or they may infect them all. So what is their limit? Do they eat anything?; I didn't tell her about the pool of mucus thing, so she was still talking to me when she put forward the idea that perhaps our white blood cells eat them all up. I'm uncomfortable with that. In that scenario where I go from 16 billion viruses to 32 billion anon, I'm not sure that white blood cell reproduction could catch up. If that were it, we'd be at the whim of anything that could reproduce faster than our white blood cells. And anyway, it appears the point of a virus is to get into a cell so it can reproduce. Once it's inside a cell, a white blood cell can do nothing (barring eat the cell). Not only that, if a virus could, in theory at least, infect all cells, it can infect our white cells too. Anyway, white blood cells are in our blood. Aren't blood cells, like trains on rails, contained within our arteries and veins, with just chemicals flowing through the vessel walls, into intracellular lymph and onwards to do its osmotic best with the cell walls? White blood cells don't wander about between, say, liver cells or brain cells do they?; I smell oversimplification. I want the truth dammit!; I'll do a deal with you. If you provide decent information about viruses, I'll post that disgusting fellatio blog I'm humming and aaahing about.
Tits: 28 March 2005: These people have taken a joke and really run with it. They come fourth on a Google search for tit, which is really something considering the competition.; It's kinda admirable, I'm not sure even I would have had the guts to take it as far as they have.
Masterchef: 24 March 2005: Masterchef. Praise the Lord Lloyd Grossman's not in it. A big welcome back to Gregg Wallace .. we used to like him in Saturday kitchen and then they replaced him with the irritating Antony Worrall Thompson, how did they get him in that picture when there was so much smugness to fit in the frame too?; How is it even possible that there are people who have reached the semi finals of Masterchef who have never gutted a fish?
Lanzarote markets: 24 March 2005: Haria's small Saturday arts and crafts market in Lanzarote had a very pleasant atmosphere. Here, it seems, are where various arty crafty types gather, most of whom seem to have moved here for that no hassle artist-in-the-sun lifestyle that commuters dream of.; It's best summed up in the words of those friends we met, speaking about the market and the people of Lanzarote "well, they've got nothing to sell have they?" When compared to their world of Italian antiques, no, they're right, they haven't. So, you walk from one stand of things made from lava rock, to a candle stall, to things made slightly differently with lava rock, to things made with cacti, to things made differently again with lava rock, and so on. Pleasant and relaxing nevertheless.; The Teguise Sunday market is large but similarly disappointing .. leather goods, soaps, candles, cheap clothes, vocanic rock and cacti. It passes time, but doesn't inspire.
Software Patents and the Yorkshire MEPs 2: 24 March 2005: Further to the previous blog, I just had a response from the UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom. He says:; Thank you for your letter regarding the above, one of a considerable number we have received on this subject.; It appears that this legislation is being proposed for the benefit of large, often multi-national, companies and not for the benefit of smaller businesses or individuals.; I and my UKIP MEP colleagues will be opposing the legislation and I will make sure the Commissioner responsible is contacted with your concerns.; previous
Software Patents and the Yorkshire MEPs: 24 March 2005: On Monday I emailed our MEPs (from here) with a quick view on Software Patents.; I know my arguments are unformed, but there's an urgency about this. We can't wait to raise our voice until the arguments are fully formed. It'll be too late then.; I also wanted to talk about the things I think politicians are concerned with, so I thought about the possible effects on jobs and the economy.; Here's what I sent to each of our MEPs:; I just wanted to add my voice to those against the idea of software patents and I'd like to ask that you do what you can to ensure the current Software Patents legislation fails to become law.; I believe at least it would be prudent to wait until we see the effect on the American software industry. I believe it will clearly depress innovation there and if it does, that gives us an advantage.; Britain has long had a strong and innovative software industry.; I also believe that if American and European software developers are hamstrung by such impossibly difficult-to-live-with laws, software developers in India, China and elsewhere will continue to develop without such restrictions and will simply destroy any such industry here.; I am an Internet software developer. I work from home, for small clients, and that's the way I like it. That way I can create exceptional software. It's all about people, their livelihoods, and their freedom to invent, create, and make a life for themselves, not about companies. People vote.; If you're not sure what the issues are, here are some links (obviously biased to my point of view); No Software Patents
The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure
John Naughton in The Guardian; Yours faithfully, John Allsopp; Actually, I think I was wrong about India, hasn't it recently passed its own Software Patent laws?; To date, I've had several replies, but from only two parties. I should say before I start that I'm a floating voter and I don't have any allegiance to any party, so if you spot any bias, it's purely based on the MEPs response to this issue. The first thing they all wanted was my postal address, it appears they are either required to check that I'm one of their constituents, or they don't want to waste time with someone who isn't.; Labour replied first. Labours two MEPs handle initial contact based on where the enquirer lives. Richard Corbett takes those above the M62 and Humber estuary, and Linda McAvan takes those below, so we're in Richard Corbett's patch. Having established that, later that Monday his office wrote (summarised):; .. Richard has had a large number of emails and letters on this issue and his response is below.; Thank you for your email on the so-called Software Patents Directive.; This issue is far from settled as there is a considerable difference of views between the European Parliament's first reading position and the position reached in the Council (which has only just been formally adopted, but with growing reticence among some national governments). The text can only become law if it is approved in identical terms by both the Council (national ministers from each country) and the European Parliament, with up to three readings in each institution. My position is as follows:; * I am not in favour of patenting of software as in the US.; * Europe needs a uniform legal approach to stop the drift towards extending patentability to areas which would not have been traditionally allowed, and to stop patentability of pure business methods, algorithms or mathematical methods.; * Software products as such must not be patented.; * Opensource software must be allowed to flourish and this Directive must not have adverse effects on opensource software and small software developers.; * Patents and the threat of litigation must not be used as an anti-competitive weapon to squeeze out small companies.; Thank you for writing in on this important matter.; Best wishes,; Richard Corbett MEP - Yorkshire and the Humber; I don't know about you, but I'm happy with that. I also got a response from Linda McAvan's office, and Richard Corbett's office followed the above up with "If there are any developments, Richard has asked that all those who contacted him be kept up to date so you may get further emails in the future." Fantastic.; As an aside, our local MP Laurie Quinn, is his interest in "mowing the lawn" an attempt at humour? Or a euphemism possibly?; Anyway on Tuesday, the Conservative's Edward McMillan Scott responded.; Dear Mr. Allsopp; Thank you for your recent letter on the European Parliaments review of the very important Directive on Computer Implemented Inventions.; The Council Presidency has now formally adopted the Common position, which it was entitled to do under its rules of procedure. These rules are the responsibility of the Member States Governments, not the European Parliament.; The full co-decision process is being observed, in which Parliament has full rights to amend the proposal at both first and second reading. MEP's have been closely involved in the scrutiny of this proposal, and we can assure you that there has been no lack of public discussion, as you imply in your letter.; In judging any future amendments, it is essential to have a full understanding of the objectives of this proposal. It is intended to clarify existing patent law so that software is specifically excluded, whereas genuine inventions which may include digital technology (estimated to be around 60 - 70% of all patent applications) are allowed. There is absolutely no intention to apply patent law to "computer code" - this would, in any case, be impossible to achieve since patents cover technical concepts, not specific coded solutions.; We will now be evaluating the adopted text to see whether it achieves the desired objectives; to provide patent inspectors with a common framework within which to examine, and if appropriate, grant patents for innovations involving digital technology. We must ensure that computer software or business methods that do not involve new innovative concepts or make a technical contribution are excluded from patents. This will give the EU a distinctive and different position from the US and Japan.; We need to consider the potential effect of the Directive on software development. You indicated in your letter that this would have a disastrous effect on innovation and even affect open source software. We would be glad to have your evidence of this. We have consulted open source experts and there appears to be nothing in this Directive that will affect the expansion of open source solutions. There is little evidence from the USA that software development has been slowed down by the US patent regime. If the EU Directive is passed, it will be more restrictive than the current US patent environment. There is also little sign from the USA, of large companies pursuing small companies for patent enforcement -evidence suggests that the opposite is the case. Also, patent specialists consider that the passing of the EU Directive will exclude the attempted enforcement of existing US patents across the EU. We may need to tighten up the proposal to ensure that this happens.; We are also especially concerned to protect innovative companies, especially small firms, using digital technology to produce genuinely original technical solutions. We have been contacted by many of them and they are very concerned that they may be excluded form the patent regime by inappropriate amendments to the EU proposal. Patent royalty income is very important to these companies and is a major incentive to innovative research. If their needs are not taken into account, the impact on innovation could certainly be "disastrous."; In the end, the Parliament must balance all the arguments and reach a sensible solution that is right for everyone involved in the European economy. Conservative MEPs will be, as has been the case throughout, very much involved.; Yours sincerely,; Edward McMillan-Scott MEP, Vice-President; The phrase "very important" in the first paragraph set me on the wrong foot. Was I being patronised here? Then a lot of detail about the parliament which felt like obfuscation. It's just for "clarification" (he's trying to settle us down and have us not object), and there's "no attempt to patent code". Well, no, that's not it, it's the ideas that are patented, and if the ideas are patented, we won't be able to implement them in code. The code doesn't matter, that's copyrighted anyway.; "We must ensure that computer software or business methods that do not involve new innovative concepts or make a technical contribution are excluded from patents." I wonder what that means, exactly. Innovative = new and useful. Time is involved here. So what determines what's new? If we decide that everything that's available now is 'normal' and free for all and then someone develops something interesting, say, for smell-o-vision and they get the patent. No-one else would be able to develop smell-o-vision without their permission. Maybe that's OK. Smell-o-vision systems would be available to ordinary developers in a similar way to Macromedia Flash now, you have to pay the patent holder for the software to create it. The problem I think is that under the surface, computing has hippy roots. There's a lot of sharing, a lot of giving going on. The personal computer, the Internet, and the open source movement are based on this, and wouldn't have happened without it. I'm worried that will be greatly affected, to the detriment of the industry.; "You indicated in your letter that this would have a disastrous effect on innovation and even affect open source software. We would be glad to have your evidence of this." Damn, found out. I'm bullshitting. Well, not really. I've just not got my stuff together. I'll be back.; "We have consulted open source experts and there appears to be nothing in this Directive that will affect the expansion of open source solutions." That can't be right can it? If it is, why all the fuss?; "There is little evidence from the USA that software development has been slowed down by the US patent regime .. There is also little sign from the USA, of large companies pursuing small companies for patent enforcement -evidence suggests that the opposite is the case." Ah, my old friend "there is little evidence that". I've also campaigned against GM, and the big deal there was "there is little evidence that GM was harmful to us/harmful to the environment/ would result in increasing the power difference between the little farmer and Big Pharma". Little evidence, because science is paid for by companies, and no company would make money from stopping GM. The science was biased in favour of GM.; Granted, it's less clear in this case. I feel there's more chance academia will be able to spot any effects on software development. I just think it's too early to say. Currently, there are insufficient patent lawyers to handle what's happening. The salary of patent lawyers will grow, attracting more into the industry. When there are enough patent lawyers to handle the workload, they'll start looking for other ways to implement their skills. That's when they'll come for small companies, in ten or twenty years time. I wonder where all this 'evidence' is .. can anyone shed any light?; Anyway, isn't there something a bit weird about "There is also little sign .. of large companies pursuing small companies for patent enforcement". Either something will be against the law or not, it's not a case of getting away with it or not. It's the way it affects motivation that's the problem. What's the point in being a software entrepreneur if you're allowed to develop your software to the point where it looks like you might become wealthy, at which point you're no longer inconsequential and the patent lawyers arrive to take everything away? If you're an entrepreneur looking for ways to get wealthy, you'd be better off starting a chain of cafes or a magazine.; "Also, patent specialists consider that the passing of the EU Directive will exclude the attempted enforcement of existing US patents across the EU." Interesting. This is driven so clearly by the lawyers. They want the law, but they also want it so that American companies still have to apply for a patent here in the EU. They want their cake and to eat it too.; Overall, nothing like as re-assuring. From a marketing point of view, the Labour response was clear and addressed my concerns. The Conservative one, although it looks very much like a personal response which is very much appreciated (the Labour one was a pro-forma) it raises more questions than it answers and leaves me feeling put down.; I've heard not a peep from the Liberal Democrats or the UK Independence Party (so they don't deserve a link).; previous
Space: 22 March 2005: Actually that last blog does raise some issues. On a long term space mission, how would you manage morale? You can't fire anyone. There's no law and no police force to enforce anything. Was it Drucker who started to concentrate on management in voluntary organisations because that was where pure management happened .. people weren't there for money, they weren't getting paid. It was pure management. I think management during long term space missions is an even bigger problem.; Can you imagine the British in deep space? There would be no respect for those in command whatsoever beyond the self interest of avoiding the next meteorite. They'd be having sneaky cigarettes in the airlock and photocopying their arses, drawing on the picture to make it look like the boss, and sticking them on every noticeboard. There'd be a mutiny every week.; People would slope off to their cubicle as it got near to five o'clock on a Friday. Half the light bulbs would be missing. Automatic doors would open just enough to fool you into thinking they were going to open in time to let you through, then they'd jam.; Where's the litter in Star Trek. There's no-one picking it up, so where is it? Maybe as the ship sways from side to side it all gets collected and rolls to a central place thing that sorts it out thingy. British kebab wrappers are too sticky for that. Who does the dusting too?; Joking aside, I don't think it's manageable. I don't think humans could keep it together on a long term space mission.
Spock: 22 March 2005: I woke this morning thinking of a Star Trek episode where Spock was infected with some space demon which had infected other nameless crew members, one of whom was cured just before he crashed fatally into a sun, as all such nameless crew members who put their head above the parapet do.; They did various tests. Was it the radiation that killed the bug? The heat? Much head scratching. Then someone hit on the fact that it was the light.; So they got some tinfoil and sticky backed plastic they had lying around and built a room in which they could generate the required amount of light, and they were going to cure Spock by putting him in it. The problem is, it would blind him. He accepts the deal, goes in the room, they apply the light, and he's cured.; But what's this? Spock isn't blind! What could have happened? Spock says something like "apparently I have a third eyelid that closed and protected my eyes", then he shrugged, and resumed his duties.; Whoa. Hang on a minute. Where was the health and safety officer while this was going on? Did no-one think to give him some suntanning goggles at least?; Next week, the Enterprise's policy of kicking you in the shins to take your mind off your headache is changed when they find a big box of aspirin that's been lying around in the warehouse. A nameless crew member mumbles something about the crappy state of inventory control and in the next scene falls to his death down an unguarded lift shaft.
Software patents: 21 March 2005: Big business always wants more. Big software companies want to own ideas and before you know it, the Internet will be too expensive, and you'll be back to using Micro$oft. If you like what I do, do something, help me fight. (More links 1, 2, 3)
Further for the same effort: 21 March 2005: I've just confirmed the thought I had three weeks ago that training at the same heart rate means as my heart gets fitter, the distance I can cover in my thirty minutes will increase. I'll get faster, in other words. I just did .4 of a mile more than I did on day 1. If the pedometer is anything to go by, that's from 2.6 miles to 3 miles, so a 15% improvement in three weeks. Groovy.
Tom Waits: 21 March 2005: No-one seems terribly into this sort of thing nowadays, but when I grew up many of us fantasised about having a decent hi-fi. I remember going to a Hi Fi show in London, and we used to buy Hi Fi magazines every month and pore over the reviews. I suppose that was pre computer games, pre personal computers, pre Internet.; For me though, it's still a measure of whether I've arrived or not. I'll feel like I've finally become successful when I buy myself a decent hi-fi. It's because it's completely frivolous, yet expensive. It starts with the expense of a detached house .. it seems rather antisocial otherwise. It is about quality of life though. There's a richness out there that doesn't often get appreciated.; There was a time one drizzly night when I walked through one of Scarborough's many dark alleys where a house went overhead and I heard, pretty much as loud as an orchestra, an orchestra. I stopped and absorbed. That was a mighty hi-fi.; One time we were fortunate enough that my former employer paid for us to holiday in the Seychelles and I remember eating a banana fresh from the tree. This was no ordinary banana, it was delicately perfumed, deliciously wholesome, this was food.; Another time, we grew our own mushrooms. They too had oils and tastes we'd never tasted before. These things disappear with travel and storage, whereas we could just pick and eat.; Similarly, in a world of piped music, soundbytes and music videos, we mostly hear the melody and the main beat of a song. Delve deeper, and you get more. You hear the subtleties. My favourite sound ever in a song is in a song I don't particularly like, by an artist I don't particularly like, but it's just a perfectly placed rarity. In "Don't go breaking my heart" by Elton John and Kiki Dee, there's a little double stroke of high guitar a couple of times. I still love it even now.; Music contains those deeper layers. The more you give, the more you get, and with a decent hi fi you can immerse yourself in forty minutes of music as fulfilling as any film. Some music, just screams hi fi. It's almost a crime to listen to Bjork on anything else. Now I've bought Tom Wait's Real Gone, I've another reason to save my pennies. It's an amazing sound, completely as good as Beefheart. I can't wait to immerse.
Running & diet results: 21 March 2005: I'm now at the end of three weeks of running training and things couldn't have gone better. I've done everything, not missed a day, and I've enjoyed it all. Boredom's starting to kick in now, but we'll see how that goes as the times start to increase. Actually, there's another three weeks before that happens, but it'll be impressive to reach an hour of continuous running towards the end of May.; The other thing that's happened is I seem to be losing a pound a week in weight. On the 24 February I was 15st 3lb. A week later, I was 15st 5lb, which was clearly and visibly muscle. Having raised the number of times I was weight training at the gym, and having demanded more of my legs, more muscle was created. Now, if I don't increase those demands, I have the muscle I need so that won't increase. Last week I was 15st 4lb, and this week 15st 3lb. The same muscle must be there to do the same work so that must be lost fat. If you start an exercise/diet regime for the first time, be prepared for that initial weight increase, and take the peak as your starting point.; That's happening on just over 3,000 kcal per day. I'll work through the proper calculation at some point, but it makes sense that the bigger you are, the more calories you need to stay alive. I think that's how I get to eat so many calories without getting fatter, being 6'6" tall.; That's one of the interesting things that's come out of the week. I feel like I graze food all day, a packet of crisps here, some chocolate there. I eat twice the size of meal my partner eats, and have a breakfast that fills me up. The fact is though, I don't eat too much. 3,000 calories is only slightly more than I should be eating. It's easy to see how anorexia happens. If I feel, by some combination of societal pressures, like I pig-out every day, but don't, it's my intellectual self that's been warped. It's a small step to decide to eat less and override my body's messages.; Feedback is the other thing I've learned from this. On the first lunch I wanted to test the system so I ate that meal that felt so good at the time .. two thick slices of fresh bread with more butter than you can imagine, cheese, and marmalade. Afterwards though, my body felt oily, fatty, and I knew I'd overdone the butter. I couldn't face that meal again, and still don't fancy it now. That's my body telling me it was too much.; On a weekday I eat about 1.2Kg of food. On the day I ate just 1Kg of food, we came back from the pub feeling hungry (and fantasising about buying an Indian takeaway on impulse and just devouring it). That's my body again, telling me it needs more to stay on track.; My saving grace might be that I enjoy cooking and because we've decided not to have children and I work from home, I've the time to cook. Then again, not eating meat means generally things are cookable within about three quarters of an hour, so you can cook and eat in an hour if you want.; I get pretty much all my recipes from the now very sadly defunct BBC Good Food Vegetarian magazine which we subscribed to. If you want to do the same you'll have to do the recipe books or keep an eye out because BBC Good Food magazine occasionally does a vegetarian special. Just don't buy anything by Rose Elliot, for some reason I've never found her recipes work. Anyway, the BBC magazine has a section for quick recipes, and every recipe has a brief dietary analysis. I score the recipes and record my partners comments. I only cook recipes twice if I give them nine out of ten or higher the first time and my partner liked it too. In addition, for about six months or probably longer, I've only been cooking meals that have 10g of saturated fat or less. That cuts out more than half the recipes and is probably my saving grace, vegetarian food can try to compensate for a 'lack' of meat by doing creamy cheesy things to excess. By the time I get to the evening I probably have less than a thousand calories to spend, and we always have chocolate after unless we've had some sort of pudding.; There's that too .. I did cook a pudding. OK, so what do vegetarians eat? Well, they wouldn't eat the fish in the following list for a start, but here's what my week consisted of. Remember breakfast is always that home made muesli, except on Sunday I join my partner in some toast as well. I always take supplements in the evening. So evening meals were (all home made unless stated): lentil moussaka, mushroom cassoulet (mushrooms, beans, peppers in a tomatoey sauce on ciabatta garlic bread), cheesy croissants except we didn't have croissants so I used ciabatta, we didn't have emmental so I used cheddar, and we didn't have spinach so I used spring greens off the garden, cauliflower and mushroom biryani, fish, chips, onion rings and peas (all from the freezer), tomato and spiced aubergine salad with pine nuts followed by banana, passion fruit and cardamom meringue pie, and caramelised onion and feta baklava. I must admit that's probably more cooking than I would normally do, and we're pretty likely to eat out at least once, but it just fell that way this week.; Lunches were that bread and cheese debacle, a tin of pilchards with lettuce and a banana, a tuna mayo sandwich on ciabatta and a yorkshire curd tart (both from the bakery), and then leftover mushroom cassoulet, biryani, spiced tomato salad (with another tin of pilchards and a banana), and scrambled eggs on toast.; Just to answer the final curiosity questions, I buy as much organic as I can, mostly from The Organic Farm Shop in Pickering. I think there's about a 10-15% premium which I think is well worth it. They deliver, free of charge, to our neighbours who kindly provide a place where local people can pick up their order. Combining that with an occasional wander into town, we've managed to reduce supermarket shopping to a once every couple of months experience which turns it into a pleasurable curiosity (ooh look, big, shiny) rather than a grind.; This does need a bit of discipline though. On Wednesday I work out what recipes I'll cook during the week, make a list, check stock, and send off an email. Then I print the email out and get a blank cheque to the delivery point. Then I'll pick up my order on Thursday night.; So the habit of browsing around the supermarket picking things off the shelf that you fancy gets replaced by browsing recipe books. That's better. The supermarkets and the food companies employ professionals to get you to buy things as you wander. If you let them, they'll take over your mind, your wallet, and your life. In Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple, John Scully, former CEO of Apple Computer describes how he worked out that people bought Pepsi when they went shopping. If they bought a 1 litre bottle, they'd drink it, and buy more next time. If he didn't sell 1 litre bottles, but wrapped them into fours, they'd buy still buy them (because they wanted Pepsi), and they'd drink that too. By the next shop, they'd still need Pepsi, so they'd buy another four pack. Simply by increasing the pack sizes, he massively increased sales. Similarly, if you want a carrot for a recipe, Tesco's will tend to have them packed in big bags and you buy them because you think that'll encourage you to eat carrots, which are healthy after all. Tesco will defend itself by saying you can buy them loose too, but you feel a bit of a plonker going through the checkout with one carrot in a plastic bag. By contrast, if you want 125g of mushrooms and you order it from The Organic Farm Shop, that's exactly what you get. No waste. And it comes in a paper bag (which biodegrades).; Shopping in the supermarket (walking distance from us, but we drove anyway) used to take us just as long as driving (half an hour there, half an hour back, half an hour shopping) to The Organic Farm Shop, and particularly in the summer the environment around the shop is an absolute treat. Hedgerows (remember them), birds (remember them), butterflies (remember them), bees, flowers. Before we got into the delivery habit we used to go to the shop for a spiritual uplift. Supermarkets empty your soul. The Organic Farm Shop fills it.; The Organic Farm Shop also blows to pieces the idea that organic vegetables and fruit are mishapen, dirty, unappetising things. Theirs are majestic, multi-layered, buoyant delights. If you think you've done well buying a bag of mixed salad from the supermarket, buy a lettuce from the Organic Farm Shop. The last one I bought was bigger than my head. It had so much life it was like getting a new family member, I didn't know whether to eat it or invite it to pull up a chair at the table.; How much does all this cost? Including food, litter, etc. for two cats and some toiletries and so on you'd buy from a supermarket, we spent £1,669 in the last six months on 'groceries', so that's £278 a month or £64 a week between two of us, which I don't think's bad at all. I'd be interested to hear the budget from someone who buys and eats mostly processed food here in the UK (food costs differ between countries, so it wouldn't be a comparison from elsewhere).
UPSs parcel tracking facility: 19 March 2005: I'm not finding parcel tracking facilities particularly useful. Right now, I'm waiting from something to be delivered by UPS. The tracking facility says:- Status: In Transit, Shipped to: SCARBOROUGH, GB, Shipped or Billed on: 18 Mar 2005, Package Progress: 18 Mar 2005 18:12 DEWSBURY, GB, IMPORT SCAN, 10:20 GB BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED.; So my parcel is in transit (I kinda knew that), and it's been to Dewsbury. Fantastic. Ummm, is it in transit between your office in Dewsbury and some other office in Scarborough, or in transit between Dewsbury and me. In other words, where is it now ('in transit' isn't good enough), and when might it be delivered? Every time I deal with UPS it's unsatisfactory.
Tax: 19 March 2005: I had someone hassle me the other day, "you'll never make any money unless you can do cash in hand". In other words, unless you make money and don't tell the tax man. Unless you break the law.; Someone else I came across recently clearly wasn't declaring their income. That person is, I think, religious.; If I play a gig in my band and we get paid a tenner each, I fully intend to declare it. I don't want to live my life fearing a tax inspection. I want everything fully documented and true. That's not it though. It's simply the right thing to do.; My tax goes to pay for the society I live in. When my bin gets pinched and I call the council, I get a new one. When the drain outside my house is blocked, I call the highways department and within a day or so they arrive with a great big pumping lorry contraption and clear it out. When a personhole cover had become loose near where children play on the road, they arrived within hours and fixed it.; The traffic warden keeps people from parking on the double yellow lines outside our house. That helps stop lorries scraping our house as they squeeze past. When a young woman who lived nearby was being attacked by someone in her home who was threatening to kill her, the police came. They're stopping the unwanted advances of a guy against a woman on our street now. They worked with us on what to do when a car drive into our house. They and the NHS sorted the aftermath when an uninsured driver on the A64 hit a porsche containing a pregnant woman and her husband, pushed them into us, and then absconded. They were there to help stop a drug dealer that moved into our street.; I took the bus to Bridlington the other day. I was going to take that client to use the free Internet service in Bridlington library because she hasn't got a computer.; The children and youths who used to skateboard relentlessly past our house now use a purpose built facility on North Bay.; I had a podiatry appointment yesterday and received truly expert assessment and advice from both a specialist podiatrist and a physiotherapist about how my running ambitions might affect the problems with my feet, and about the best running shoes to buy and how to select them.; When a woman drove her car and kids into another on the coast road the other day, the fire, police and NHS were there to help everyone get their lives back together, and to clear the road and make it safe.; When the family were swept into the sea at the weekend, the coastguard helicopter was out, and on the next day police, fire and coastguard, with fire engines, dinghies and helicopters were out looking for the girl's body.; Without our tax there'd be no theatre, no art galleries, no parks and gardens, no beach rubbish collection, no public toilets.; I've chosen not to have children, but the schools I've been into have been really uplifting places dedicated to putting well rounded, educated, balanced individuals into society, sometimes despite the best efforts of parents .. "my daddy says I can't read that book any more because it's got niggers in it".; We even got a sizeable council grant for new sash windows last year. That's our money, coming right back at us.; None of this comes for free. We get a lot for our tax. Of course, we should feel confident that it's being spent on things we want, and spent efficiently, but I think we should feel good about all those things that happen because we pay our taxes, and we should be happy to pay them. It's not perfect, nothing is, but I am truly happy to pay my taxes, because I can see what a lot I get for it, when I need a service I get it, and because I want a society that's good to live in.; Moving on to my favourite subject, the immorality of many of the religious people I meet, here's yet another example .. someone who is religious, yet is trying to get away without paying their tax. Did I mention, it would have been ages ago, one day I walked past the catholic church at the top of our road and I could hear some major DIY going on .. sanding or similar coming from the back garden of the vicarage? Then I noticed an electric extension lead going from the back garden into the church. Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions, but doesn't that look like the vicar's using church electricity instead of his own, presumably because he'd have to pay for his own, while the church electricity would come from church funds?
Orzola, Lanzarote's northern tip: 19 March 2005: Lanzarote has an incredible amount of environmental variety for such a small island. Orzola is a fishing town at the Northern tip of the island. It's a great place to eat, especially if you're into fish. Restaurante Os Gallego was really good, well served, and reasonably priced and you can sit and watch the world go by.; The first picture shows the wild-west scenery we've been used to, looking West from Orzola's harbour. Those crags are the back of the same system you see in the Famara pics.; As we travelled South down the East coast along the Malpais de la Corona, the flora changed again. Although the weather had turned dull, the lichens and succulents provided a beautiful pallete of sage colours, light green lichens, black volcanic rock, purple and yellow flowers, and even without the sun, when each wave raised up you could see a beautiful, vivid flash of sea green. I sometimes take and use pictures like these to pick complex colours from for a web page colour scheme.; The island is very polarised. Famara for surfing. The South coast around Playa Blanca for sunbathers and nice villas. Timanfaya for its volcanic landscape. The centre for wine. The North for more nature. Puerto Calero for the yachting scene and some plush accommodation. Costa Teguise if you're fat, red faced, have an ugly mind and body, and want "good basic English food, like chips, burgers and kebabs and a full English breakfast for €2.50". Just think about the last bit for a second. The breakfast had everything, sausages, bacon, mushrooms, eggs .. for €2.50. Quality stuff.
Lanzarote weather: 19 March 2005: Global warming was on the agenda when we went to Lanzarote. People who live there were blaming it for the rain and cold they'd had the week before we arrived (at the end of January). People who had been there a week when we arrived said they got maybe a day of sun.; We stayed for ten days and had really pleasant sun every day. On the days we stayed local we played tennis in the morning in perfect weather, sunny but fresh. It was never warm enough for us to sunbathe, but a few people at the hotel did. I don't remember seeing anyone sunbathing on a beach.; Out of the sun, in the evening, or on a beach when the wind is blowing, then things got cold. On Famara beach when those photographs were taken, we'd zipped up our coats as far as they'd go and were still freezing.; On the final three days it turned wet and we had a downpour every couple of hours or so. So there you go. If you're off to Lanzarote in February you know what to expect.
Morning muesli: 18 March 2005: I did promise I'd share my muesli recipe with you. It came originally from a 72 weekly parts publication called Creative Cook, but I've adapted it since then.; I used to get bored of my breakfast. I'd spend a month or two on Shredded Wheat then move on to Weetabix, then toast, then something else. I've been eating this muesli now since I lived in Long Eaton, which is the early eighties, so something's right about it.; I put all this into a tupperware container, all organic of course: 800g large flake oats, 50g sunflower seeds, 30g hazelnuts, 125g brazil nuts, 100g each of pitted dates, apricots (I cut them into three with scissors), and sultanas, 75g wheatgerm, and 40g lecithin. You can add some oatbran if you like, too. I mix all that up, and have 120g each morning with fruit juice (but obviously you might prefer milk).; I've been a little bit quiet about the diet thing because actually I'm learning a lot and I'm finding I need time to assimilate and work out why things are the way they are. For instance, I'd have said my home-made muesli would be better for you than a commercial brand. However, if I tot it all up and compare it to what the book says about commercial muesli, it's a mixed picture. Mine provides half the sugar, less protein, half as much fat again, much less salt, a third of the calcium, more phosophorus, less iron and copper, more thiamin, less riboflavin, less nicotinic acid, less vitamin E, and more folic acid. Confused? Me too. I'm wondering if commercial mueslis add nutrients, like cornflake manufacturers and the like do.; One possibility is that the book I'm using to give me the breakdown doesn't have sunflower seeds in (so I've not counted those), and doesn't show selenium which is one of the groovy things about brazil nuts .. fights cancer, improves the immune system, and, if you're a man, makes your sperm swim faster (although it doesn't say whether that's away or towards). It doesn't show wheatgerm either, so I've had to get the figures for that off the net. Also lecithin is supposed to help you digest your fats rather than deposit them on your arterial walls. I use it to counteract my butter desires. Officially, my muesli gets no brownie points for any of those possibly unproven benefits.; Having said that, it's a good medium for providing yourself what you need. If you've identified you need more fruit, then mix in some fresh fruit each day. If protein's what you need, increase the nuts and wheatgerm. It's a flexible place to put some things you want to eat regularly.
My nutritional deficiencies: 17 March 2005: I received my copy of "Dietary Reference Values for Food Energy and Nutrients for the United Kingdom" today, which tells me the Dietary Reference Values for the various nutrients. In other words, it sets the standard for how much of each vitamin, mineral, and other dietary components we should eat each day to remain healthy.; It appears the only thing I'm deficient in is restraint. Mostly, I'm getting many times more of everything than I need, with the exception perhaps of calories which are pretty much on track. The only curiosity is potassium, where I appear to be getting about 80% of what I should. More fruit and veg for me.; Perhaps the biggest benefit for me of doing my diet diary will be that I'll save money by not buying as many supplements.
A computer analogy: 17 March 2005: I was talking to someone who knew nothing about computers at all the other day, and afterwards I wondered how I might explain the computer when she first sat at it. I came up with this analogy that seems to work.; Think of the computer as being like your body. The computer itself is like your torso. It's hardware, you can touch it, and it's central.; The computer has peripherals for input and output. For input, there's the keyboard, mouse, camera, scanner and so on. These are like our eyes, ears, nose, mouth and skin. There's output, printers, screen, plotter, 3d modeller, knitting machine, etc. These are like our limbs, our hands, and our voice.; The computer has an operating system, Windows usually, but possibly Mac OS, Linux, or maybe Palm OS. In the body, that's the part of the brain that does all the basic stuff you don't have to think about, like breathing, regulating your heart beat, digesting. It also covers all the dealings with the peripherals, so up to now we only had ears, now we can hear. Also, we can walk, pick things up, co-ordinate ourselves. This is like being able to print, to display things on screen, or recognise mouse movements and key presses.; The computer has application software. This is like training and education. I can build websites but can't do plumbing. My plumber can do plumbing but can't do websites. We can both walk and talk (even to each other), but we've specialised through training and education. That's like adding application software to a computer. One computer might have office applications like a word processor or a spreadsheet, another might have accounts software, another computer aided draughting software, and another music composition software.; If I wanted to become a plumber, I'd have to retrain, and that takes time. If I want my computer to do something different, I'll need new application software. That will take time to select, to install, and to learn.; Finally at the top level is the decision what to do with what we have. As I sit here, I might decide to get up and make a cup of tea, write a program, design a button, or work on search engine optimisation. It's up to me how I use my body and its unique capabilities. The computer doesn't have that level yet, it is also up to me what to ask the computer to do. Also, if I do decide to get up and make a cup of tea, I don't have to think about the myriad component parts of that task .. how to co-ordinate my body to get off the seat, how to sense where the door is, remembering what a door is and how to use it, walking downstairs, etc. I just think, "I'll make a drink" and off I go. At the level that you drive the computer, it's the same. You decide "I'll print that now", and the computer works out what you want to be printed, which lines of silicon to send each byte of the file along, how to translate the file into something the printer will understand, and the printer works out how to get what it receives onto paper.; It seems to work, so I just thought I'd share.
Random books: 17 March 2005: As I dropped off to sleep last night I came up with a couple of random book titles. There were vague dreamy thoughts of a system whereby everyone had to write a book sometime in their life on a random subject. It was something to do with encouraging people to have wider interests and to look outside their area and mix with different people.; Anyway, two random titles came to mind. Imagine having to write "The naturist's guide to lichens of Alsace", or "Mooning in the nineteen thirties".
LanzaroteFood: 15 March 2005: If you like good food, Lanzarote is very foodie so long as you have a car to get around. By contrast on previous holidays we struggled in Tossa De Mar after a while, every restaurant seemed to offer the same range of pilchards, pizza .... anon. In Lindos even in the good restaurants every vegetable seemed to come from a brine filled tin.; There comes a point in a holiday when you want, not the garbage full English breakfast that you'd never eat at home, but a basic ordinary home-style meal with boiled potatoes, carrots, and something identifiable and protein providing. It's at that point that you realise, far from Britain being a culinary disaster zone, it's deeply good at doing things with root vegetables (roast potatoes) and green leaves and it has a huge range of vegetables to play with. There's fish and chips. Then there are the puddings. Sponge pudding with custard. My mum's lemon meringue pie. Bakewell tart. Cakes, scones with jam and cream. Trifle. Now I understand why my Italian friend (hi Valerio (again)) wanted a pudding every day and took a recipe book home with him.; Anyway, back to Lanzarote. La Era was a bit of a disappointment, otherwise Finca de las Salinas is good and we spent a very relaxing two or more hours in the restaurant (it is much more a restaurant than an art gallery) at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Arrecife watching through its panoramic floor to ceiling windows a cruise ship called Costa Fortuna. I mean, what do PR people do all day? A boat that big, with a budget that size, and you choose that name.; One curiosity about El Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Arrecife: all the waiters smelled of the same perfume. Gosh, I almost remembered it then. Something like crushed corander seeds. I wondered whether that was something that Manrique decided or just something that the sky-blue suit laundry used. An interesting idea though. Imagine if all Tesco employees smelled the same, a smell defined by their PR company to make us think good, money spending thoughts.; The people we met in Lanzarote who have a villa spend all their time in Ikarus in Teguise, but this leads me on to the delicate subject of Germans. For obvious reasons the British and the Germans have a strained relationship. Personally, I try not to enter into such things, taking each individual person, German or otherwise, as an individual and working from there. However as a nation we certainly have an expectation that Germans will play the towel game where they reserve the best sunloungers by placing their towel on them either at 4am or late the night before, and then take a leisurely breakfast, perhaps go out for a walk, and eventually deign to actually use the sunlounger they've attempted to prevent others using, just as the sun reaches the perfect height. I've seen it happen, so, no smoke without fire.; Lanzarote is the first place we've been where we've encountered lots of Germans, probably equal numbers of Germans and Brits. As an aside, Lanzarote also seems very popular with cyclists, perhaps the two are linked. I have three encounters to tell you about.; There is something about Germans that makes Brits uncomfortable, and I just couldn't work it out until later in the holiday, actually, when we were travelling back. In the newsagent in the airport, the magazines were sectioned into English, Spanish, and German. I was stood looking at the English magazines and a guy came up behind me. I knew instantly he was German. Sure enough, after a short time, he realised how things were organised and moved to the German section. How did I know? It's a body space thing. I think we like more personal space than the Germans are comfortable with. That guy stood too close behind me for my comfort. That must mean Germans think of the English as standoffish, always wanting more space, perhaps always attempting to distance ourselves, cool.; Then there was the approach to the hand-luggage x-ray machine. We were next to go through and were taking our coats and bags off to put them through when a tall German man in his sixties pushed past us and placed his bag on the machine. It doesn't sound a lot, but in context, it felt very rude indeed to us. We took great pleasure from the fact that the security people stopped him and did a very slow and painstaking check, pockets out, what's in your wallet, etc. while we were waved through. I don't know whether I can generalise anything from that, perhaps he was just a very rude man. Every nation has them. Or maybe he was a man in a hurry, we can all do that (but then, a 'sorry' would have helped). We Brits do love our queues.; Now, the thing that every Brit knows about every German woman is she doesn't shave her armpits (nor, by implication, anything else). I've no idea, I'm just stating our stereotypical view, and nor do I view that as bad .. but I think many Brits do. The one that got me, however, was snot snorting. It's a quite hideous habit of, rather than blowing your nose, repeatedly snorting it back into the nasal cavity where it collects and provides the basis for a particularly repellent snort, required every 30 seconds or so to stop the snot slipping around and starting its slide down the nostrils. Well exactly, but that's what you know, no matter how much you try to ignore it, when you hear that noise. My experience in Lanzarote tells me Germans do that more than Brits, and they are not averse to doing it at the dinner table.; I wondered whether it came down to the English class system. Did we, historically, have this concept of being ladylike? A lady would never snort snot, she's delicate, feminine, slight. She perspires rather than sweats and would never be seen engaged in any activity more energetic than carrying cucumber sandwiches and cake into the garden for afternoon tea.; I wonder if, historically, we've held on to those ladylike values and continue to consider them good. I've no idea about German history, but maybe they just didn't have the same class system. I was looking at this the other day (do what it says, drag the bottom right hand page corner). I'm guessing those pictures are from thirties to fifties America. Most of the models look like they regularly help out with the heifers on the farm, look at those thigh muscles. They look pretty good on it too. They're a far cry from todays waifs who haven't the strength to reach the dinner table. Perhaps Germans have a similar history that values hardiness, strength and clear purpose. Perhaps being ladylike just isn't on their radar.; In their defence, I didn't see any German spit. Maybe the Brits spit instead. Better out than in, as they say. Equally vile.; So anyway, we went to Ikarus, and it turns out, like many businesses in Lanzarote, it's owned and run by Germans. Which means two things. Firstly, there's little point in me trying to practice my Spanish. Secondly, it means it's popular with Germans. The consequence of that is we were placed between two tables of snot snorters. s'nuff said.
Butter: 14 March 2005: I may as well confess now. I've always had a thing about butter. I've always used too much. I've cut it out several times, but always come back to it.; So here we are, at the end of the first day of dietary analysis, and I've ingested through the day 2,850 kcal, and an impressive 143g fat, the biggest part of which came at lunchtime when I ate two doorstopper slices of home made bread (570kcal alone) spread thick with I dare not tell you how many grams of butter, a chunk of cheese, and some marmalade. Brilliant it was, but by the end of it a) I felt rather, err, oily, and b) I'd reached 1,800 kcal for the day so far.; Don't even mention the m word (margarine). It terrifies me to think what's in that stuff, I can't bear to think of what goes on in a margarine factory.; Tea was home made vegetarian lentil moussaka, which was very nice indeed.; Why (oh why oh why) do I take a kelp supplement? I take it because it's supposed to provide lots of trace minerals but all it says on the back of the pack is 1000mg Iodine. Iodine doesn't even feature in the book, it's that important. So if they can't be bothered to itemise their trace minerals, I can only conclude it's because they're not there.; Other than that, until the Dietary Reference Values arrive in the post, I can report that I seem to be getting something of everything. So that's alright then. I'm sure you'll sleep better knowing that.
Measuring: 14 March 2005: Stuck for a present for a bloke? Buy him something he can measure stuff with. I've decided, blokes love measuring things.; They time things like journeys and how long it takes to get ready in the morning. I've had loads of pleasure and useful information from my heart rate monitor and pedometer so far. Since I learned about max/min thermometers at school I've always wanted one. There's never a real need for one, unless you've got a greenhouse, so I've never bought one. How irritating .. I still want one, thirty years later.; There are laser measurers for room sizes, spirit levels, what about one of those walking distance rolling things on a stick so you can measure longer distances .. mind-you, you might get beaten up if you're seen with one of those.; I've a humidity meter in my office, and a thermometer. I've an oven thermometer, a jam thermometer and a meat thermometer (from a while ago). I've not got a barometer, but maybe I don't really want one of those. What about wind speed stuff, imagine knowing you had 100mph winds around your roof, that would be funky, but a pain to install I imagine. Another thing I really want but never got around to buying is an electronic multimeter .. actually I really must do that.; The world is full of things to measure, and blokes love it.
Diet: 14 March 2005: My partner, irritated at the fact that I can graze all day through packets of crisps and chocolate without putting on weight while she can't, suggested we both keep an honest food diary for a week. Honest means, it includes all the snaffling.; I've taken to that idea with unseemly enthusiasm. Despite my long term interest in nutrition, I'm not sure I've ever actually done it. I've a copy of The Composition Of Foods which enumerates more than thirty nutrients in about a thousand foods.; So far, breakfast was about 500 calories. So, is that good or bad? I went looking for the government Recommended Daily Allowances. They don't exist. They've been replaced by Dietary Reference Values. You'd have thought, given the government goals to get most government services online by, err, isn't it this year, that those DRVs would be published. I couldn't find them (I didn't look too hard though). I've had to order them from HMSO.; Expect shedloads of blogs on the relative merits of zinc, pantothenic acid and protein. Also, the answer to that perennial question, what do vegetarians eat? Not that I am one, but most days I am. I'll be sharing a recipe or two too, particularly my morning muesli once I've worked out what's in it.
Adding a bank account to Paypal: 13 March 2005: The form for adding a bank account to PayPal hasn't been properly tested. There's a field for "first name", and my last name is unalterable, together with a bold message to enter my name exactly as it appears on my statement, otherwise a payment might be rejected and the bank might charge me £14. Well, my bank account is in the name of Mr John Nicholas Allsopp. So I can't fulfil what they want according to their prompts. If I make my first name "John Nicholas", will Paypal forever greet me as "Welcome back John Nicholas"?; Then it wants my branch location. Location. Hmm. No dropdowns, no help. I toy with the idea of entering a grid reference or a set of GPS co-ordinates but I get confused over whether those should be for the front door, the service counter, or the managers office, and what if there are two or more entrances? The town or city? The postcode? The county? The country? In the end, I enter the full address.; It's rejected. That field, apparently, only accepts alphanumeric characters. O Kayyy. I try the address, but without commas. That's accepted. Apparently it accepts alphanumeric characters and spaces. So, at their end, they'll end up with a database containing the results of all sorts of different choices people made. Some will enter just the city. Some, the full address, without comma separations. It's a mess.; How big is PayPal? How central to its business is that form? Is it not too much to ask for them to test it? It's a bit like being a bank, and making the front doors difficult to use.
Plasma: 11 March 2005: These ppl are visually stunning, an inspiration. But if you follow through and look at the websites they've built .. actually load them up in a browser .. they fail equally creatively. That's the problem with almost all this type of site. They make the visual experience paramount and rarely do user testing.; If you're looking at them using Internet Explorer in Windows, they're probably fine. In Firefox on Red Hat 9, they are unusable. I'm sure they would retort that IE/Win is the dominant platform. It is. All the other users are disparate, Macintosh and Linux operating systems, Mozilla and Netscape variants, Opera, and Safari browsers, users of other devices such as Web TV, mobile devices and dumb terminals, and disabled users who use Lynx browser with a speech synthesiser to read the contents out, or people with motion difficulties who use the keyboard for navigation rather than the mouse, dyslexic people, colour blind people. Add them all up, and you have a pretty large minority.; Plasma would argue that they shouldn't be limited by those things. They are leaders in creative endeavour. Did Hendrix worry that deaf people wouldn't get the full experience of his music? How can we kiss the sky if we're always being held back by standards that are, by definition, unexciting?; It is said that a website should degrade gracefully, which means that people visiting your site using older browsers that don't support the latest capabilities should also see sensible pages, not just a "sorry, we don't deal with your sort" message or a page with completely broken layout. I don't want a bland world. I love, I really love, graphic design. To be truly great, such studios need to employ people who get turned on by making their creations degrade gracefully, which means as much of the site as possible should be available to anyone who wants it. They also need to employ great technical people, so that their visual creativity can be attached to sites that actually do something useful. My experience of such agencies is they value creativity and fitting in. They are no more likely to employ a suit or a geek than I am to get out of my seat on karaoke night.; I do love graphic design, but I love people more. In the end, graphic design is just pretty patterns. I know, I'm being deliberately provocative, but people are much more and no matter how inspirational a graphic design might be, including people is more. Websites should be inclusive. They should empower people. They should solve people's problems. Functional websites are truly beautiful. Form should follow function, á la Dyson. (Steve, you'll tell me if I got that accent wrong won't you?) In a website that has a function other than to entertain, graphic design is less important than function, and graphic design should take its inspiration from the things the website does.
Anti Terrorism bill: 11 March 2005: I'm willing to nail my wotsits to the mast at this stage and say that the government have got themselves into a bind over this. Charles Clarke, who along with John Reid always gave exceptional performances to the media en-route to their current positions, now seems to have moved too quickly, hasn't balanced the advice he's received from the security services (whose budget, after all, goes up when there's something to be frightened of), and misread parliament. With clear support from the PM, this looks like yet another "we're going to do this come what may", proof that Blair learned nothing from Iraq. What a position to be in just a few weeks before an election.; Almost no-one is happy. The Lords, however, seem to be doing a great job this time. They seem essential to democracy. Whereas with the foxhunting bill everyone saw them being biased towards the landed gentry, here, they're digging in for a good system that will work.; Those who watched the Channel 4 News interview with ex-Guantanamo Bay inmate Moazzam Begg must have felt doubts about what happened to him. Sure, we don't know the secret evidence, but he came across as a nice guy, someone who could certainly be your friend. He was reasonable, he was compassionate, he was imprisoned for three years without knowing why, seeing any evidence against him, trial, representation, or any idea that that might change in the future.; This can only be bad for the government. If they win, Blair will appear as if he forced this through against the will of parliament, the Lords, and the people. If they lose, it will seem like they really did try to force through bad legislation. Blair, in his "it's time to get serious" speech yesterday had the same stressed trill in his voice that we saw after the May Day 2000 protests when he said in his best impression of a schoolteacher telling off naughty boys "if people can't protest properly, they won't be allowed to protest at all". It's Blair believing he's right above all else. That's what brought down Thatcher in the end.; Labour can't even blame the timescale for its woes, since that was a consequence of their previous legislation falling foul of the European Human Rights legislation. Another example of bad Labour legislation, in other words.; Maybe the government knows more than we do. Maybe we are really at risk of a Madrid. But without knowing the 'secret' evidence which, conveniently, we can never know (because it's secret), how can we escape the conclusion that we are being ruled by fear? And surely if the evidence was there, but secret, the government would brief the opposition parties who would judge that the legislation is required and support it.; The Tories are outmanoeuvring the government in the run up to the election. This may turn out to be their strategic masterstroke.; Of course, if there is a terrorist attack pre-election, all that may change. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.
Fairy furniture: 10 March 2005: I think I've just designed a kind of protective fairy sofa. Imagine the little fairy with her cute fairy wings all shmuggled up inside with those big thorns to protect her from the ogres and, erm, bears. Next stop, fairy hammocks (if you don't get the joke, you can email me for an explanation).; I dunno, maybe it's more a nymph thing. Or an elf.; Anyone got the number for Ikea's design department?
Mars landing: 10 March 2005: In a room full of people I mumbled something about the original mars landing and their blank looks and tentative protestations made me question myself. Did I dream that we'd landed on Mars years ago, and received photographs from the surface?; Nope. But it was before (almost) everyone else in the room was born.
Smoking prisoners: 10 March 2005: For no reason at all, I suddenly wondered how prisoners get to light their cigarettes. If they have matches or cigarette lighters, I imagine they could wreak havoc, unless nothing in a prison is flammable. We don't hear about prison fires much, so they must be rare, so the authorities must have stopped arson somehow. What happens if there is a fire, and everyone's locked in their cells? You can't just gather everyone in the car park and then count heads, and who is going to walk around unlocking all the doors in a fire? If there's a central method of unlocking everything, that would provide a focus for many escape plans.
Bum: 10 March 2005: I keep feeling like I've left a sock or something down the back of my trousers when I sleepily put on my clothes in the morning. Then it dawned on me. That feeling is the feeling of my trousers fitting differently. My bum has changed shape because of my running. (If any Americans are reading, my bum isn't my favourite homeless person, it's my ass).
Low Battery: 9 March 2005: I keep getting a message from Low Battery on my new phone. My friends tell me they get messages from him too. Hasn't he got anything better to do?
Many ways to top yourself in Lanzarote: 9 March 2005: There are many ways to lose your marbles in Lanzarote. One way might be to invest in one of the thousands of new villas around Playa Blanca. Now which one is ours? That one looks like it. No, it isn't that. This one? No. Tha ... no. Actually, this looks like our street, but isn't. Maybe we live on that street over there? No. Well, which one of these god forsaken similar villas and streets is ours?; No shops. No 'centre'. No street names. No differences. No community. Mile after mile of antibacterial villas that doubtless look wonderful in a brochure, but that have the osmotic ability to turn any chipper blitz survivor into an alcoholic depressive by the end of the second morning. The friends we met in Lanzarote told of one of their friends who drank herself to death at 49 years old.; People need occupation. That's the whole point of Occupational Therapy (my g/f is an OT). Occupation gives us purpose, a role in society, something to show for what we are, a way to influence our world. Without it, we are nothing. Retiring to a faceless villa .. I'll have nightmares about that. Moving to work in a Spanish village where there's a welcoming community and Spanish life, now that's something else.; Another way would be to live in Famara. It's very much like a wild west town. There's no tarmacced (sp?) road between the buildings, no pavement. Just buildings, and sand. Maybe I'm being unfair, we were there in February after all, when the town seemed isolated and desolate. I kept imagining I'd find Dennis Hopper type characters around every corner. Perhaps that's what all beach towns are like in the winter.; Anyway, Famara is supposed to be a surfing beach. There are two schools there at least, and there were several people kite surfing (but my photographs of that didn't come out very well). The waves, each time we went, were nothing compared to what we get in Scarborough though.; Sorry about the quality of these photographs, btw. I managed to take them all with wrong exposure settings and have had to compensate with software. Technology eh? I used to be able to guess the exposure with a manual film camera and no meter. Now I have all these things to help me it get's the damn thing wrong.
César Manrique: 9 March 2005: César Manrique is the star of Lanzarote, the local artist who studied in New York and came back to turn Lanzarote into "one of the more beautiful places on the planet". Good for him. It's just, for me he's not as deep, not as life-changing as Dali or Gaudi. I've never been big on aesthetics or comfort. You can tell how my mind wandered a little by the photographs.
Results from first week of running: 7 March 2005: I've completed a week's training for long distance running. It's purposely easy. Thirty minutes of running at a level of effort in which I could still hold a conversation, twice. Two hour-long weight sessions at the gym, and a one mile run. The only difference this coming week, incidentally, is the final run increases to one and a half miles. That's the one that will gradually increase to become the long endurance run. It's more significant in the training for the marathon.; I didn't think I could jog for thirty minutes without stopping to walk every now and then, but using a heart rate monitor to keep my heart rate below 145bpm made me jog so slowly that actually, it was all rather pleasant. Without the heart rate monitor, the trick is never to go so fast that you lose the ability to comfortably hold a conversation.; I've much better shape, just after a week. I've muscles in my legs that I've not seen before. I'd almost say I've an athletic physique now. If you ignore that roll of chub around my middle, that is. I put on two pounds over the week. Coulda been the two chocolate bars I consumed just yesterday, but I prefer to think of it as muscle. If I lose weight, that's obviously fat.; Yesterday (and remember, this is just after a week of training), something extraordinary happened. We woke up, my partner said "the weather's nice, let's walk to that pretty bay" and I said "ok". That latter is the extraordinary bit. Usually, I'd say "maybe" and mean "no". The walk was three hours there and back, over the coast path. My legs just carried me there, I felt like I was riding a well oiled machine, sitting atop robot legs. They floated me there and floated me back. I was striding just as strongly after three hours as when I started. They didn't ache with the effort, all I felt was the occasional tweak from known problems such as my knees or my enormous glowing bunions. Now that's unusual. Normally, I'd be the one dragging my feet and moaning at the back. Something must be working right.; Looking back over the week, it was all rather beautiful. Every time I've run the environment has seemed somehow special. Running in the falling snow along North bay while the tide was up (safe, because no snow settled where the seawater had been) was really magical. Just feeling the wind and watching the sea is, well, it's better than sitting in the office all day. Jogging past a flock of Wigeon, feeding where the river poured in to the sea, seemed somehow intimate. They didn't fly off or get alarmed. I'm not sure I'd seen those before and almost certainly hadn't heard of them.; I'm enjoying going out whatever the weather. I'm thinking, if I'm put off by a little drizzle or cold, I'll be put off by 26.2 miles. And when I finally do run an event, the weather will be the weather, and I'll have to go out in it whatever it is. That's been part of it. Going out in the wind, for instance, means dramatic, crashing seas and saltwater in your face. As Billy Connolly said, there's no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes.; Overall, I'm enjoying this a great deal. In the book they claim that jogging in a city marathon is a great way to see a city. I didn't 'get' that when I read it, but now I see it absolutely.
Vera Drake: 7 March 2005: I can't start the morning without mentioning Vera Drake, but now I don't know how to put it into words. It's a Mike Leigh film, you can tell that from the first frame. It may be the best of his I've seen. That's good, he's not done yet.; For the first half of the film, I wondered how it was that Imelda Staunton had won such acclaim for the film. She only seemed to have one line "Fancy a cuppa, I'll put the kettle on". It's in those lines that Mike Leigh places his great warmth and humour. But then it unfolded, and she was supreme.; Just out of interest, the currency used in the film is obviously British pre-decimal, which had twelve pennies to the shilling, and twenty shillings to the pound. A thruppeny bit is three pennies. A halfpenny is self explanatory, a farthing is a quarter penny. A guinea is twenty one shillings, or one pound and one shilling. Two guineas in 1950 is worth about £130 in todays money depending how you work it out, but todays money is easy, it would have been a much greater sacrifice then. Am I right in remembering the desired fridge was £25? £1,500 + today.; I remember rooms and houses like the ordinary ones in the film, too. I've distant memories of old relatives sat around blacked stoves.; Anyway, it's one of those films that changes your mood, and is still with you when you wake up the next morning.
More Finca: 5 March 2005: I've just added some pics to the Finca review last month.
El Grifo: 5 March 2005: A vineyard, Lanzarote style. I'm guessing, but I think that's a vine at the bottom of each 'cone' of volcanic ash. Well, it was February when I took this photo so maybe the growing season hadn't started yet. Maybe the cone concentrates morning dew and protects the vines from the drying wind. Anyway, the wine, from the nearby El Grifo, is very nice indeed. Finca recommended Blanco Seco which worked for us. Those are the Timanfaya volcanos in the background.
Playa Quemada: 5 March 2005: When in Lanzarote, believe the guides when they say that a beach "contains lava rocks".
Island Bakery: 4 March 2005: Gosh, I seem to have been included in the Island Bakery's gallery of people with scant selt restraint (you have to click on the link in the January 2005 bit, then I'm about 2/3 of the way down, and purple). Actually, there are some very good laughs in there.; I do like the company's style :-); I wonder what might happen. What demographic is 'biccy eaters'? What type of people might start reading my craven rantings? What if I get a biccy eating client from it? I'll keep you posted.; (If the above link didn't work, try this).