A Wash Out...

Interesting coverage of this year's OMM (Original Mountain Marathon) in the press, including the usual finger-pointing exercise to blame someone as the weather in Borrowdale turned truly atrocious.

But there have equally been some excellent retorts. The BBC 'everyone is a journalist so send us your stories' pages contain almost unanimous support of the organisers and and excellent article here argues eloquently that risk is the whole point of the sport. The best quote is this:

'I have yet to speak to a single competitor who felt that he or she had been the victim of an emergency. "You'd have loved it, Richard," one of them told me. "Incredibly violent conditions – but a true test of mountaincraft."'

Just Deserts...

I didn't get round to it at the time, but it was fantastic to see Elbow win the Mercury Music Prize. They are obviously a firm favourite of mine, and of course the jealous music snob wishes they would return to obscurity where I can claim to have known of them forever...

But it was fantastic to see them, drunk, absolutely over the moon and in complete disarray, amazed that they had won. They deserved it.  It is great to see such fantastic songwriting and musicianship rewarded and it is even better to see it appreciated by those it is awarded to. Long may they continue...

0.31831mm ...

Is the change in diameter of my Wedding Ring, which has gone from a 55mm inside circumference to 54mm: not a huge change, but one which has made it much more comfortable to wear. I missed it for three weeks, but it was worth the wait...

Back to the '80s...

Apparently Keane went to Berlin to record their new album, and it feels like they may have accidentally travelled through time to get there, as their new album feels stuck very definitely in the '80s.

But that said, it is growing on me, especially track 3 (which also has a nice hint of banjo unless I am very much mistaken). In the olden days I would have known the song name from the LP sleeve, but with the advent of the CD, I only know the track numbers...

Never Believe the Newspapers...

Doctor Who producer calls Prince of Wales a 'miserable swine'

I was there, and this is factually correct, he did. But in a humorous offhand way, not in a serious straightforward quotable way. In no way did we take him to mean it seriously as in the way it was reported.

It's funny, but when journalists report on something you know about, be it an event you were at, or something technical like engineering, they so often get it wrong that you have to wonder about everything else you read in the press...

What's in a Name...

Just been to en excellent talk with Russell T.Davies and John Barrowman as part of the Cheltenham Literature festival. An excellent and entertaining talk by two really engaging characters, which did get camp at some points (as it was bound to), prompting W to point out that there were going to be some interesting parental discussions going on tonight...

The last question was from a little girl who asked if we would ever get to know the real name of Dr. Who, to which Russell replied...

"Yes, It's Keith..."

Sound Investments (part 2)...

Well I wasn't the only one to be drawn in by good Icelandic savings rates: turns out that a lot of local councils were too. My measly amount doesn't sound too bad when you compare it to their £1billion+. Interesting times...

Sound Investments...

I am beginning to regret putting my cash into an ISA from a new Icelandic bank that offered a very good rate of interest...

"We are not currently processing any deposits or any withdrawal requests through our Icesave internet accounts. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause our customers. We hope to provide you with more information shortly."

Just a Ring...

I really miss my wedding ring! It's been gone 10 days n0w to be resized, as it felt too loose and uncomfortable. But now I'd rather have it uncomfortable than not at all: I've only been wearing it a couple of weeks, but I can really feel it missing at the moment. Hopefully, only a couple of days to go...

In praise of the Ekranoplan...

There has just been an article by James May on TV about the Ekranoplan, which as an engineer I find fascinating. The whole ground effect aerodynamics is interesting enough, but add to that the secrecy with which it was developed in the closed city of Nizhny Novgorod, and for how long the secrecy was maintained, and it is an amazing story.

This image is taken from Google Earth   just outside of Kaspiysk.

Linux Frustrations...

Now I like it, don't get me wrong, and I've used it quite a lot over the years. But configuring Linux can be a real nightmare. I have been trying for days to switch XDMCP on in Fedora 9. The most useful documentation I have found is the GNOME Display Manager Reference Manual because looking at the task list I can tell that it is GDM that is running by default, even when I try and switch to KDE.

But despite amending loads of files, trying various combinations of settings, switching firewalls on and off, that is it. I admit defeat! I just wanted a nice remote desktop to run my machine with. But I will have to make do with a Putty connection through Xming. Not as pretty, but at least it works reliably...!