California Bound

This post is being written from the luxury of the Terminal 1 ServiceAir lounge at London's Heathrow airport via BT Openzone access point. I have just has a refreshing Bloody Mary to wake me up and before I chomp into a Cherry and Almond flapjacks I thought I ought to update you all on why I have been silent since Friday.

I am off to California for a few days business and sprinkling of leisure along the way. Or should that be the other way around?

As is my normal routine the last minute rush to finish all work projects and complete all those nagging little domestic tasks; pay all outstanding bills, water the plants, iron the clothes I will need, and finally, pack a case, started on Sunday afternoon and had me up until the early hours of this morning. The sun wasn't quite up, but there was a distinct hint of morning light in the sky by the time my head hit the pillow. I had just got to sleep when my 4:30am alarm went off giving me just 1 hour to shower, have breakfast and take the rubbish out to the bins before my taxi arrived. He arrived 3 minutes early and so I had to pour much of my hot mug of tea away.

Traffic was light bringing me to the airport at 6:45am. As a result I was the first to check in for my flight. Actually I had used online check in yesterday to secure my window seat, but I had to drop my bags off and I was told the clerk had to wait 2 minutes before the flight opened and my case could be sent down to the handling area.

Both security and passport control were quite painless to get through, and having exhausted all the possible retail therapy opportunities the Duty Free arcade had to offer I have sought refuge far from the madding crowd in this 'executive' lounge. There are only 5 other people in a vast room which could easily seat 100 and the quiet hum of the air conditioning is punctuated only by the chink of china cups and the tinkle of ice in a glass.

The 10 hour flight should deliver me to LAX just after lunchtime. If everything goes according to plan I should be picking up my car by 13:30(PST) and sunning myself by the pool of my Hollywood hotel by 15:00. Well, that is the plan. I will let you know how it turns out.

On the Pull

Hey, it’s Friday and with a weekend of hedonistic fun ahead maybe it is time to test those pulling skills?

I am stunned that this little test showed I have an 83% chance of bringing someone home for a night of passion. I suppose if I were ever to go out I might discover this is true.

Time to rummage for my pulling pants in the back of the drawer and think about heading out tonight!

Lat and Long

There is a great new facility on the web which should prove invaluable to terrorists wishing to pre-programme their gyroscopic guided missiles.

Using Geocoder you can enter any street address in the USA and it will return a map, and to longitude and latitude co-ordinates.

It really is quite cool! I typed in the addresses of a few friends and business locations and as well as being the very fast, the service is more accurate at creating the map than any of the commercial sites which fill my screen with popups.

I wonder if we will ever have this service extended to addresses in the UK?

Mirror Project Update

I have just had another three submissions accepted for the Mirror Project.

If you would like to see all my submitted photos, including the most recent, don't forget to click on the picture icon in my Projects section to the left.

Amusing British Place Names

This one should really be filed under "too much time on their hands". Some industrious person with the amusement level of a pubescent schoolboy has catalogued )almost) every slightly rude or suggestive place name in the United Kingdom.

If that wasn't a sufficiently pointless exercise, they have compounded their crime by cross indexing the place names by postcode, and then putting a lookup site on the internet so that easily amused folk can see what there is locally to snigger at.

According to a lookup on my postcode I have the following within 30 miles.

Herbert's Hole
Pishill
Golden Balls
Crotch Crescent
Tyttenhanger
Claggy Cott
Cock Pond

I know they have missed at least one "Hotley Bottom" which used to tickle me and my school chums every time our school bus turned up that particularly narrow lane.

If you must (oh go on then) you can find out what risible places are located near to you. Then you can go, take photographs, and add them to your blog.

Hey, that's a great idea for a blogging meme. To collect mini photographs of the signs for all these places. Anyone fancy that as a summer project?

New Whizzy Webcam

It has been annoying me for quite some time that something as simple as a little applet for capturing and publishing webcam images was defeating me. After loads of tests, re-installs and head scratching I decided to find a different problem to solve.

That problem was how to improve the webcam facility and not just replace it.

After quite a bit of hunting around the web I have found a java webcam applet that slips right into my existing setup.

From now on, whenever my PC is on, you should see a snapshot of whatever is visible from the office window at the time you requested the page. Refreshing the page will update the image. (Ultimately I hope to offer a live streaming picture, but I have problems with a firewall to overcome first.)

If the PC is not on you may get a graphic explaining the situation. If I plan to be away from the office for a couple of days, or the PC is going to be offline for an extended period, I will flip it back to the old, reliable BBC webcam of Oxford or a webcam located close to where I am at the point in time.

I hope you enjoy the new webcam.

Venus in Transit

Quite surprisingly for celestial events, the weather here in the UK has been spectacular for viewing the rarely seen transition of the planet Venus across the face of the sun.

Using a pair of those foil glasses which I purchased for the total eclipse (by the moon) in 1999 (I never throw anything away!) I was able to see the tiny dot in the bottom right hand quadrant of the big yellow disc.

I had a quick look at the BBC website which suggested two other methods of viewing the spectacle and I opted for the binocular option by projecting the view of the sun onto the patio.

If you happened to miss the phenomenon today, never mind, you well get another chance to see it in 2012, but you best hope it isn't cloudy on that day because the occurrence after that will be in 2117 and I for one don't expect to be around to bear witness!

They Work for You

With Euro and Local elections coming up on Thursday I have been hunting around for information on my putative local representatives, mainly because they have not exactly been forthcoming in sharing their thoughts and policies with me.

I stumbled across an interesting site which is very informative on my MP in Parliament Seems my man has a reasonably good attendance in the house, spoke 275 times in the last year, but has never asked a written question, has only voted on 64% of possible occasions, and never rebels against the party line.

You can check the performance of your MP just by entering your postcode. Once you have done this you can even send them a fax on any issue you feel requires political attention.

Still haven't found much about my Euro candidate though - and the commontators are surprised the voting turn-out is so low!

The Late Grate Communicator

In amongst all the eulogising which is going on right now for the Late President Reagan, I found this little article which also remembers some of the less flattering aspects of his presidency.

There are aspects of every man's life which grate with those of differing views but I cannot see what political or personal gain that the rehearsal of such matters can possibly serve at this time. This surely is a time for respect and rememberance of all the good things that were achieved in his life. History will be the judge of quite how the good and bad will balance in the long term.

Twitcher's Delight - a live nestwatch of rare birds.

A frequent appearance in the skies around here are Red Kites. Although they don't venture into the city of Oxford, the adults are frequent visitors to my parents garden in their Chiltern village.

These graceful birds of prey used to live around here in great numbers but were driven to extinction in England thanks to the Victorian fashion for egg collecting, but the red kite re-introduction programme has proved to be one of the greatest conservation success stories of the 20th century.

Between 1989 and 1994, kites from Spain were imported and released into the Chilterns by the RSPB and English Nature. Red kites started breeding in the Chilterns in 1992 and now there are over 130 breeding pairs in the area.

Once again this year there is the chance for even those who are not located in the Chilterns of the UK to watch the new born chicks develop, thanks to a live streaming "nestwatch" webcam.

When I looked today the chicks were being quite active and I even chanced to see one of the parents delivering food to the nest. Take a look, but do it quick. Like Cadbury's cream eggs, you need to see them before they are gone for another year!

Who's In the House? Who Cares?

The ten-week televisual yawnfest that is Big Brother leaves me cold. The thought of spending my valuable time (and remember time = life) watching 10 attention seekers compete for the longest stay in a lagged and monitored laboratory tank seems a totally pointless exercise.

However, even though I have no idea who is "in the house" or why, I do appreciate the efforts of whoever is behind this cynical little parody.

Only 9 weeks before normality and better quality programming returns to Channel 4.