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LiveJournal for Alison.
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| Thursday, July 9th, 2009 |
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I'm really angry about this story on BoingBoing, which takes an awful industrial accident and plays it for laughs. (Its antecedent is a BBC story which is very careful to keep on the right side of the line). For some reason I've got no comment link on the story, so I'm commenting here. One of the concerns of Rita Donaghy, whose report into fatalities in the construction industry was published yesterday, is that the public trivialises workplace injury and death. Normally my view is that this isn't generally so; but sometimes I wonder. |
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| Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 |
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| One and Other remains compelling, but I was delighted to discover that my personal plan for an hour on the plinth -- English traditional music played on the melodeon -- had been delivered in fine style by the bagman of Aldford Morris on the very first day. Patrick Purves is the chap's name. He is the brother of journalist Libby Purves, who wrote the whole thing up for the Times. One of the nicest and best articles in the national press about melodeon ever I think. "Can he keep it up for an hour?" "Only thing that stops him is closing time". | ||||
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| Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 |
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Thanks, belatedly, to everyone who wished me a happy birthday. I spent the evening in a rapturously enjoyable family activity; we downloaded last year's questions from the Junior Mathematical Olympiad and worked through the easy (short form) questions A1-10; M could do most of them (slowly) with either no hints or tiny hints, but is horrendously stuck on A9 and desperate to do it without being helped. I have told her to sleep on it and if she's still stuck today I'll give her a hint. J needed substantial help with all of them (but he's only 8 and this competition is up to Year 8, ie 13) but really seemed to enjoy solving the problems after being given Big Hints. This was triggered by M's silver in the Junior Maths Challenge; she'd need to pick up both her problem solving and her pace to get an Olympiad invite next year because the top silver score was 71 and the Olympiad cut-off was 100. None of the JMO questions is difficult; it appears to be primarily designed to ease children in gently to the idea of writing out problem solutions. And then, just as I was thinking of coming on and thanking everyone for my birthday, I was suddenly horribly ill. Very strange. So I'm taking today as sick leave (but BlackBerrying furiously as my work is insanely busy at present). |
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| Saturday, May 9th, 2009 |
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| Who out here has an academic gown they could bring to plokta.con? We need it by 11am Saturday. | ||||
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| Sunday, April 26th, 2009 |
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As drplokta says, please let us know if you're coming to <plokta.con> but haven't got round to joining us. We're also twittering; follow @ploktacon and tag #plokta to find out what we're up to. The con is 23-25 May in Sunningdale Park, Sunningdale, Berks (a train ride out of Waterloo, quite close to Heathrow), and our guests are Diana Wynne Jones on Saturday and Paul Cornell on Sunday. |
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| Monday, April 6th, 2009 |
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| The last locked apps have now been unlocked; so if you were waiting to get the bundle, it's probably worth getting it now. As well as the 14 apps for $39, you can spam all your friends on Twitter and thereby get two more apps free including the stonking Delicious Library 2. (There is of course nothing stopping you creating a special Twitter account just for this -- but I think MacHeist is such a good deal I actually want to make sure all my Mac-using friends have got it). There's only a bit over 24 hours to go. NB: their server is getting a mite hammered at the moment. | ||||
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| Thursday, March 26th, 2009 |
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I never, ever, do this. But elisem has a sort of project going, and I thought 'I can do that'. And just in case I'm wrong, I'm posting before reading any of the others. ( Nine Things About Oracles ) |
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| Thursday, March 5th, 2009 |
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That would talk about, oh, all sorts of things, and what it is we do when we write, and the various ways in which things can be interpreted, and how bad we tend to be at examining our various preconceptions and beliefs. And I concluded that it would do no good at all. But here's the thing. I'm clearly not reading enough excellent new sf and fantasy written by and about people whose cultural background is radically different from my own. (In case you don't know me, I am a white middle-class English mother who has unhealthy obsessions with traditional music and small shiny gadgets). Recommend me some. Encourage others to. |
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| Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 |
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OK chaps, we're all going to the Worldcon! Remind me what I should be nominating for the Hugos? Marianne has worked out she can nominate The Graveyard Book. And the latest Twilight novel. |
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We had a cool, overcast day with no rain, which is nice. To recapitulate, my targets were (a) to finish, and (b) to at least jog a little. My stretch goals were to (c) Not be Dead Flat Last and (d) to break 20 minutes. (This is for a single lap of the outside pavements of St James's Park; 1.1 miles in total. The more serious runners did two laps.) So, how did I do? I did quite a bit of jogging, and I was not last. My time was 18:08. It was good fun. We have a possible plan to do a 5k in the summer. Ish. First goal; to run for one more week (carrying on with my every-other-day training runs), and then buy running shoes. I raised £45 for OGRA through my lovely LJ friends; thank you very much indeed. The four of us running from this team also raised a similar amount in the office. The sponsorship link is still active if anyone meant to sponsor me but forgot or didn't see it earlier. |
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| Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 |
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| So, Marianne was discharged from hospital, and we've all just finished up our pancakes, it being Pancake Day. I heard Steve Roud lecture recently, and he mentioned that the English have amazingly few food traditions (pancakes and Easter eggs being the main two). But pancakes are properly ancient. | ||||
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She's currently holed up on the sofa watching The Complete Will O' Th' Wisp. She also has a question for you all -- Are there any other authors like Norman Hunter? |
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| Sunday, February 15th, 2009 |
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We went over to Evans Cycles at Spitalfields in search of a new bike for me (mine was stolen late last year). The shop purports to be the largest bike showroom in London. Today it had loads of bikes, nearly all on clearout, exactly one of which fitted me. I explained that I'd owned a small frame mountain bike to which we had added semi-slick tyres, and they happened to have exactly such a bike in stock. Completely rigid, which I like in principle and which keeps the weight and price down; it will obviously be harder off-road but by comparison felt absolutely fantastic on the test ride, even bearing in mind the pothole-encrusted nature of London streets. It's weird; it looks like a special order for someone that was returned, and then hung around the warehouse for a bit before being knocked down to an outrageously low price. GT Zum 4.0 (probably in fact a 4.0 R which is I think the model number for the rigid version, but it's hard to tell, because I can't find any description of this bike with these components online), in a metallic grey. And I paid, oh, less than half my planned budget for a new bike. I also needed a new helmet (they say you should change them every two years, and mine is about eight years old), so I celebrated the bargain bike by buying an insanely expensive helmet. By the time I got home it was cold, dark and wet. So I will have to wait for another day to take it out. No running today; rest day. Morris instead. |
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| Sunday, February 8th, 2009 |
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| Does anyone have an mp3 of the Kipper Family's Seven Deadly Sins (or even a 30 second sample of it) that they can send me sometime in the next 40 minutes? | ||||
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| Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 |
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I don't know if this is old news, but I haven't seen it anywhere else. We've just had an email from Philip Turner, Harry's son, to let us know that Harry died on Sunday 11 January. He was 88. Philip suggested that we -- and no doubt you -- would be interested to see the tribute page he is putting together. Harry was one of my very favourite fan artists. |
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| Monday, January 5th, 2009 |
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I thought it would be useful to let you all know that over on ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} fat_fangirls, we're girding our ample loins for another year of the 10 percent challenge. This is for people who think that it might be a good idea to, as the NHS suggests, lose 10% of their body weight in 2009. You do not have to be a girl; we have several blokes, and it's ok if you're trying to maintain, or lose less than 10%. Some of us post weekly weights on Mondays, but it's not remotely compulsory. From the group's profile: fat_fangirls is a community for like-minded people, not necessarily fat, not necessarily fan*girls*, to talk sensitively about the issues surrounding being overweight and supportively about healthy weight loss. It's a place that embraces healthy eating and so adverts for diet pills, or celebrations of unhealthy binge-eating, are not welcome here. To put it another way, membership is moderated to keep out spammers, trolls, sock-puppets and chubby chasers. |
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| Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008 |
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I hope you're all having a pleasant and peaceful time, and I wish you all good things for 2009. I might manage to post tomorrow but it doesn't seem terribly likely. So. ( behind the cut are the Christmas card, and today's happy things ) |
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Late again, but my happiness is pretty unbounded. So that's good. Things that make me happy: I realised that my brain had blocked out almost the entirety of the action of the first third of Return of the Jedi. With luck, it can do so again. Exception; the rancor monster's keepers being visibly upset when Luke killed it. Great Tidying Project: Marianne's room is now 'mostly ok', as is the spare bedroom. Another trip to the tip with an entirely full car; Steven's worry that our household junk would be destroyed by the rain proved unfounded as the chaps who run the tip made sure he had space to leave it undercover, saying 'the bric-a-brac people will come first thing tomorrow'. The cellar is a thing of beauty, it's amazing. A good thing too, because we have some dozens of boxes elsewhere in the house that really need to be in the cellar. Another trip to IKEA; perhaps I should just get my salary paid directly to IKEA. Some amazing work on our lighting by Steven, so we now have (we'll draw a veil over the IKEA lights not reliably including the *parts* they need to *work* with UK light fittings; didn't make me happy) lightshades on working lights in every room in the house. And a plan to transform the look of the kitchen with textiles. I know it can be done; I've watched the website. This morning! Watch this space. Tonight; the Food. |
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| Monday, December 22nd, 2008 |
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But I was just so tired last night. Things that Made Me Happy This Weekend: All of the cards have been sent. With a Christmas letter! Woo Hoo! I will post the card and letter here on Christmas Eve, or maybe late tomorrow. All the packages that had to be posted before Christmas have gone. Tony Hall did a great show at the folk club. All the presents that we mailordered that have to arrive here before Christmas have arrived, and there was *no queue* at all at the post office to pick up packages this morning. The black bean soup was universally acclaimed delicious, and has gone into my permanent store of cheap family recipes. Ingredients; 12 oz black beans, 1/2 pound expensive lentils (these are 'black beluga' but De Puy would be fine, as would Canadian-fake-depuy), 4oz shredded ham, and a pile of veg you have round the house anyway (carrots, celery, onion, green pepper), stock, various seasonings; precook the blackbeans for 10 minutes or so and then throw everything in a pot and stew for hours on end. Here's the big one: Incarcerating the children in the pre-Christmas labour camp has worked better than I could ever possibly imagine. We are now on day 3; the deal is that the children, in addition to their regular chores, have to help us with the pre-Christmas tidying/cleaning for two hours a day, and then the rest of the time is their own. Not only have they joined in without complaining, they've made it all much easier, and they're now at the stage where they're actively suggesting the next area we might work on. Partly as a consequence of this, the living room, dining room and cellar are tidier than they've been for years; the kitchen and study are well on their way, and we're just about to get started on the children's rooms. The great beneficiary is the 'reusables' heap at the local tip. What's more, Jonathan has been spotlessly well-behaved; he joined in with all the Morris dancing yesterday morning and demonstrated that he can actually do Black Rod and Green Willow sufficiently well that he should get to dance at least one of them out on Boxing Day. Woo Hoo! I actually feel Christmassy. |
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| Saturday, December 20th, 2008 |
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Thanks to Liam for inspiring the following ( edited to insert an LJ cut so it doesn't mess up people's friends pages ) |
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LiveJournal for Alison.
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