Warning: These are old.
On with the diary.
Alan returned, a mere hour late. Thank you, trains.
Junk After the Expo..
post (through the letterbox, not via
email) which I strongly suspect is as a result of giving my address
out in order to get my tickets sent for the Linux Expo in London
last month. Not impressed, because I always tick the No, I do
not wish to receive marketing
boxes.
I celebrated his absence with garlic bread, because he always complains if I make it with him in the house.
Sweltered until about 10pm when it occurred to me that we actually
have a fan, and went to lie underneath it for a bit. This is, after all,
a country where house-housing details include does it have central
heating?
, not does it have air conditioning?
As a result,
every summer, all the shops sell out of fans over the space of one
weekend.
Perhaps it was the still air or the clear sky, but the moon was amazingly bright tonight. Lovely.
Stopped on the way to peer at the estate agents, who are selling the house next door. They have obviously taken one of their more artistic photos, because someone knocked on the door of our house thinking it was the one next door.
Visited by Justin.
Alan then stayed up very late indeed. I put the light out at 3.30am and he still hadn't appeared. And he had been so good these last few weeks! I hadn't realised how much I had come to appreciate that.
Much noise from down the road where there is some kind of party in
the park. It's billed as Escape in the Park
, but we think
from
is more appropriate.
Still hot weather, and I have a stripe across my foot where I got burned. How silly.
Then out to Gower and Rhossili on the bus. We managed to arrive an hour before low water (the tides around Swansea are quite impressive in their range) so it was possible to get over the exposed rocks to Worm's Head and back. I've never seen the route exposed before, but I had slip-on shoes with no grips on, so left Alan and George to that and wandered around peering down vertiginous cliff faces at lichens and sheep grazing in the most peculiar places. George took many photos but since he hasn't developed his photos from Guadec (from April) yet, this isn't too useful. For interested people, Google's images search gives some pictures which are mostly relevant.
I was entertained to hear that apparently, if you have a hunk of
rock accessible only for two hours either side of low tide, in some
places, you would not find signs telling people when it's safe to
try but instead a Do not do this
sign. Here, you go down the path
to the edge and there's a big sign telling you that you might get cut
off, and if you do, where to stand and wave and hope someone spots
you...
Dodgy pub lunch and then back on a double-decker bus which meant many alarming cracks as all the trees and hedges whacked the top of the bus, but great views. George and Alan returned to hacking and I lazed about.
Dick came round and we all went first for ice-cream and a wander by the
beach and then to another pub in quest of food and decent beer. Every
beer I wanted was off and they have stopped doing one brand altogether
and stopped doing my preferred variety of another brand. However, Alan
spotted a Czech beer and George seized on it, (Wow! This is a
Prague beer!
) and was then mortally disappointed that it came in
bottles. It is named after goats (and specifically, male goats, which
was important for some reason). We are wondering if this holds the
explanation for the GEGL image (a five-legged goat that lurks in
in Gnome easter eggs) but George is not forthcoming on this matter.
Back to the house for drinking and investigating Alan's collection of alcohols from different countries. I didn't realise we had some of those left. Apparently he has been hiding them from me. Waah!
I am wary of going to the US nowemail, and I have way too much email again. None of it is rude this time. but I do appear to be in the address book of people running whatever Windows program has the latest virus which sends out random files from the hard drive. I think I am going to encrypt /home just in case this kind of thing visits Linux one day. (Don't laugh. There was a day when we all routinely replied to scare stories with
You cannot get a virus just by reading your email. Things change.) And in the meantime I am cheerfully deleting a ton of 500-line emails and being thankful I am no longer on a modem. I would not like to be downloading all this rubbish on 28.8.
Subjected George to fish and chips with gravy and mushy peas. It's his fault. He wanted to try the local food. Perhaps we should get some laverbread in, but then I shall have to remember how to cook it.
Great Big Sea were playing that night, which was the entire reason for going to Trowbridge, and they were great, even if the sound was awful. I am amazed Alan recalls any of the set, since he drank so much cider that George was speculating on names to call the next gdm release. Also encountered Kíla, who are worth seeing (even if their website isn't if you're using Lynx. What is it with folk bands and websites?)
Can we visit? We can bring a Gnome hacker and he can fix everything for you... They live conveniently near to Trowbridge, which has a folk festival, and what a surprise, it was this weekend. After Conrad managed to make Gnome do something none of us had ever seen before (
What the..?) we headed off for a happy evening quaffing beer in a sunny field to music.
Weather was -- naturally -- foul. It took half a car journey before
we realised we didn't know where the festival was, and half of the
remainder before we thought to look at the tickets for the location.
Skipped much of the early music, bumped into more friends, then exposed
George (favourite band: the Clash) to English folk and watched him try
to find something polite to say about both the beer (he went down the
bar list and it took three different pints before he found one he liked)
and the music (Actually, it was okay
). We thought
Little Johnny England
were a bit better than just okay
, but we've heard them before :)
For our final trick, we tried to get the car out of the quagmire that
had once been a happy green field.
Get back to Windows(I've never been there) and
You...[fill in the blanks]are not the best way to induce a frame of mind where their points will be considered carefully. Ho hum.
Organised meeting up later in the evening, and Alan, George and I headed off into Dublin and found a pub where the tables were made out of sewing machines. Evening with friends, first at a meal and then at, um, a pub..
Plane was late to arrive, and then late to take off, and then the luggage was even later. We had planned to avoid this with judicious cramming of all things into cabin luggage, but alas, they weighed one of the bags. Drat. Into the hold with it.
Attempted to ring Glynn to say we'd be late, but discovered he'd
given us his phone number but no area code. Nice one. Abandoned the
idea of getting a bus and got a great taxi ride in, complete with
How I fleece tourists who ask me about leprachauns
tales.
Arrived at the pub we were due to meet in, and found Glynn waiting
outside, although Calum and Sander were quick to point out that he'd
been there for about a minute before we arrived, and not the entire
hour.
Guinness, and then to Glynn's where we talked for hours with him and George, who was also staying there.
the Lions came second.
Wandered out into the sun down to town and got Alan into the bookshop. I was very impressed with him. He only moaned a little bit. Then came back without going near computer shops. I do hope he's not ill.
He was not pleased to discover the weather is still hot. Ah well.
Alan due back tonight, but apparently the plane was delayed so he's due back tomorrow. I can't wait to see what he makes of the latest post. I opened one of the parcels because it looked like a book, but it's all about this boring kernel rubbish. I left the bills for him.
Visited by Leila, friend with small child. Deposited small child in the largest room thinking he was out of reach of all things, retreated to watch developments, and discovered he has learned to toddle. He is not at all sure what to make of the Furby that reigns from a situation on high (perched on the mantlepiece) and hasn't yet worked out how to make the penguin squeak. I should probably be relieved on that last one.
Too late nowand deleting them. Alan headed off to the station shortly after blithely announcing that he had rung the plumber. We have been watching the damp retreat and become dubious that it can account for the damp in the downstairs toilet.
The plumber duly arrived and confirmed it was not damp, and demonstrated further mind-boggling evidence of the activities of prior owners or builders. (Not sure whether something will hold in place? Slap a wodge of concrete on it. Sorted!) Now fixed.
Usual Alan-not-here-haha!
rearrangement of the house contents
occurred.
I think Alan pretended to pack and I broke things whilst staring dourly at the shower, which displays evidence of too little grout now that someone went and scraped half of it off.
So we went shopping and returned with the alleged right stuff and correct tools, and after Alan had removed his earlier handiwork, I had a go. It was a lot of fun, but Alan thinks I am over-cavalier with the quantities, and half an hour later I caught him removing large amounts of it. With his hair dangling perilously close to it. Argh.
Reminded Alan that I needed to get my pictures of Boston, of before
and after
of various rooms of the house, and so on off the digital
camera and onto the computer and that he had promised to show me how to.
S he showed me how to. You put the card into the computer, mount it, do
ls on it, and discover fifty files called variations on DSC????.?PG
and ?????8.JP?. Then you realise something has gone horribly wrong.
So now I have no photos. I am not delighted about this, but what can you do? I can't even enter a bug report against something because I don't know what happened.
Alan spent about two hours trying to work out what had happened so he
could at least prevent it from happening again. I thought I would get
the blame (because I always do) but in the end he settled on Dunno
in a most aggrieved tone. He can make it happen again, but he can't
work out why.
The Expo account, such as it is, is written up elsewhere because it is too long for here.
Spent the rest of the day breaking Gnome, nagging Alan about his diary, organising departure to London Linux Expo thing, gloating about arrival of Trowbridge tickets, sulking about the heat, cooking, and boggling as the cork got stuck in the wine bottle. And this was Alan, not I! (Last week, I got it stuck and Alan lectured on how I had it wrong, so I got him to pull the cork this time, and it was worse.)
At final hour before midnight, discovered Alan didn't want to go to London. Neither do I -- it's London, and bakingly hot according to the weather forecasts -- but hmph.
For reasons unknown to me, Alan has decided to "test my phone" by ringing it when I do not expect it. He's obviously in that kind of mood: over the past few days I have found my Ximian monkeys:
The Mummy
They were grooming each other, really!)
I'm fairly sure building stuff was supposed to have happened by now, but it hasn't. Oh well.
Booked for Trowbridge Festival after bizarre discussion about the booking agency's website on the phone. Ho hum. Noted that tickets for London's Linux Expo had not yet arrived.
www.linux.org.uk also decided to have a day of rest. Accounts vary, but magic smoke was involved, and either the power supply or a capacitor. Lovely. It's back up now. Well, either that, or you are reading this on the wrong site which is going away soon (see note at top of page).
I don't think Alan is going to like Aussie rules football. I found
the rules on the web, and there is no off-side law. Whatever do they
argue about after the game then? Oh wait, I found a rule about You
do not quarrel with decisions in public afterwards either
, but
this spoils all the fun.
Friend brought her brother and a computer in need of rescuing. I had
begun to forget quite how bizarre the machine room looks until the
comments from her brother on the matter of the temperature of the
room (which reminded me that the spider plants need watering) and
What's all that shelving?
Ah, yes. Um. That'd be the rack
.
I do not think I should be quite so blasé about a rackful of computers.
I confess to astonishment when the Lions went ahead first, and then
stayed there (such belief in the side, I know..), but it was great
fun to watch. I gather a friend was at the match. I am jealous. Normally
I rationalise it with You get a better view on the telly
but
Sky in their wisdom decided to draw graphics of angles and apparent
goal widths instead of showing the conversion attempt and managed to
focus only on the parts of the crowd dressed in red, giving the impression
that no-one from Australia showed up to watch it at all. Then the
commentators -- from Britain -- referred to Dafydd James as Daffid
every time they mentioned him. A friend complains that the commentators
on BBC Wales are biased: but at least they get the names right.
Oh yes, the Lions won.
Picked up by friend who was moving at short notice to help clean new house and move things. The rest of the cleaning squad failed to appear: the pubs had opened by now, so they were too busy celebrating the rugby. Hmph. Got rid of the last of the boxes we'd used to move house, moved lots of black bin liners, summoned Alan to evict many spiders, discovered friend's small child was scared of the vacuum cleaner (tricky when you're trying to watch child and clean a house...), regaled friends with rugby highlights, was dragged into earnest discussion of whether small child should play cricket (says mum) or rugby (says dad) for Wales (apparently it is never too early to plan these things), shampoo'd carpet (well no. Friend did that. We watched..), and eventually departed.
Loaded dyson into car for them and then retired to recover. Alan did not go to stare at the computer. On hunting for him, discovered him watching the sports channel, which had run out of rugby.
Alan has discovered Australian rules football now. Oh dear...
I've been asked for a more obvious feedback route. So there you are! But please note: This should be clear from the above, but: I am not a kernel hacker. I am not an anything hacker. "Is this diary true?" will get answered. (It is.) "I have a problem compiling the brainsplat module under the pre-sliced option terminator; I am using the mutability framewedger on the standard infernalisation build" will not. (Well, it might be answered in a similar vein, but for a real answer, look elsewhere. It's much safer.)