Cricalix.Net

The Internet is a wonderful thing, even if some people do think it’s made of tubes. When I lived in Pennsylvania, MJ had mentioned how she used to work at a florist, and I’ve managed to use them ever since then for her birthday and Christmas. They’re a friendly company, and I’ve been talking to the same pair of women there for several years now - I wonder if they remember me from year to year. Moving certainly throws their automated system off :)

Today, I needed to order a bouquet of flowers - and the name of the florist escaped me :( Searched Google high and low, and didn’t have any luck at all. Tried calling a contact at the college I used to work at - voicemail. Then Kevin suggested I use Google Maps.. doh! Google Maps, florists near 17701. Presto, Nevill’s. I had been searching for Neville’s. Go me. Two phone calls later, and my order is placed, and delivery is set for Monday. MJ, if you read this before then, you better be in on Monday!

The old fashioned way of finding it would have involved long distance phone calls via BT, which would have been a small fortune in calls to directory assistance for Williamsport. New fangled way? Google + VoIP.

In a comment on my last book review, Dave suggested that I might like Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon The Deep.  I finally got around to logging in to the Staffordshire Library system, and put in an inter-library loan request for it.  About a week later, I receive a letter from the library system - the book was waiting for me at my local library.  40 pence later (a trivial fee really), I had Fire in my hands.  Two days later, somewhat slow for my normal reading appetite, I had finished it.  Dave was right, I do like it :)

Fire introduces the reader to our own galaxy, with Pham Nuwen of the Qeng Ho showing up in the most unlikely of manners, many thousands of years after Deepness.  A tale is deftly woven of a galaxy split into three zones, the release of an ancient Blight, the destruction and subversion of numerous races (including transcended Powers), and a race against time to reach a medieval society to save the day. The opening pages of the book lay out the general premise - ‘humanity’ sticks its nose into an ancient archive and unleashes an Evil, and also unleashes the weapon to defeat the Evil.  The first chapter introduces the primary ‘alien’ race in such detail that you almost think they’re human, and the story is off to a racing start.
There are no major twists like the ones that feature in Deepness, but the story is well paced, and the fleshing out of the major and minor characters is impressive.  Well worth picking up and reading - ISBN 1-85798-127-8.

Last weekend was the Royal International Air Tattoo for 2006 (read, great big military airshow), and courtesy of my parents, I attended. Things I forgot to bring: spare camera battery, wide-brimmed hat. Things I remembered to bring: KM 5D, 3.5 GB of memory cards, myself. We arrived just before 9 AM, and found ourselves a spot just west of the grandstand area, which is where we usually end up. The wind was out of the East at about 12 knots, so the aircraft would be going left-right across the runway in front of us for takeoff and landing (other than helicopters and one mad Russian pilot).

The show kicked off at 10 A.M. with a display from a Pilatus PC-7 training craft demonstrating how agile a turbo-prop craft can be. The show then rolled steadily onwards, with appearances of a Canberra PR-9, F/A-18C Hornet, BAe Harrier GR7A (a staple of UK airshows I think), Mi-24V Hind, F-16AM Falcon, two Westland Lynxes, B-1B Lancer, B52-H Stratofortress, MV-22B Osprey, MiG-29M OVT, F/A-18F Super Hornet, F-15C Eagle, P-51C Mustang, Hawker Hurricane, Supermarine Spitfire and much more. Yes, that list was only about half of the flying craft. There was also the static display, with approximately 100 fighters, tankers, helicopters and support craft on display.

(That image plays with Lightbox 2, just to see if I like the effect in the blog.)
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While I wait for Zooomr to work for me again (my OpenID [TypeKey in reality, with an OpenID export] login keeps coming back as verification failed), I decided to play with one of the features of Zooomr on my own gallery - Lightbox.  With some grunting, application of large hammers and persistence, I’ve managed to hack Gallery (version 1) to support a lightboxified link for the resized images.  It isn’t something I can turn on and off per album yet, and I’m not sure if I’ll bother.

The only pain about Lightbox is that you have to let the page load completely before the Lightbox links work.  I might take a crowbar to Lightbox’s Javascript and Gallery’s PHP to make the Lightbox links unavailable until the page has finished loading.  Oh, and I deliberately avoided Lightbox 2, as it loads a 100 KB JS library for the fancy animations, and I wanted a nifty display method with minimal overhead :)

Every day, on my way to and from work, I pass a rather long set of rambling bushes, complete with blackberries.  I normally pay them no attention, as they hold nothing of interest.  Today, however, has changed all that.  The first berries of the season have started to ripen, and the bushes are sparsely dotted with ripening red berries and ripe black berries.  I believe I shall have to start carrying a plastic container with me to pick them in the morning and afternoon.

Even better, just 100 feet off of my usual path is an untouched ramble of blackberries about 200 feet long.  It’s filled with nettles as well, but I shall brave it nonetheless to acquire some fresh blackberries.

All I need now are some fresh UK apples and I shall be making blackberry and apple crumble!

Sometime last year, MrSmith posted on ArsTechnica about gNumber and a service that would become UnWired Buyer - access your eBay bidding from your mobile phone (the service calls you, you don’t have to call it).  I fiddled with gNumber briefly, but it didn’t work so well for me - transatlantic distances can do that to you.  Turns out UWB have now managed to score a pile of venture capital (and get write-ups in quite a few places), so congrats to MrSmith :)

Mum muttered that I didn’t have enough green in my last dinner. Therefore, I present exhibit 42, last nights dinner:

Noodles, bean sprouts, red pepper, peas, red onion, turkey, sweet chili sauce.