Where I wait for the 302 bus is almost opposite a side turning and in clear view of a pelican crossing. It's a great opportunity to observe the raging stupidity of the car driving class.
It amazes me the number I see careering out of the side turning, one hand on the wheel, and the other with a mobile phone clamped to their ear; and, the astonishing number of motor vehicles that go through the traffic lights on red, not just changed, but clearly on red. But, explain to me, why so much huffing and puffing goes on about 'lycra louts' going through lights on bikes, when the dangerous stupidity of car drivers goes unnoticed, and unpunished? While the number of bike riders is much less, I rarely see them doing anything completely daft (or illegal) - maybe the lack of a cage makes them more safety concious - or conversely maybe a metal cage makes the car (or van) driver so removed from the environment, they just don't care!
Tuesday, 27 March 2007
Sunday, 25 March 2007
Food on the Move
Last night Mr & Mrs Grumpy went out. Due to a special promotion through her employer we got a dinner trip on the Great Central Railway.
First, let me say this was a thoroughly enjoyable evening - good, plain food, in amiable surroundings, at a pretty fair cost (remembering the special promotion).
I was rather castigated by Mrs Grumpy for trying too hard to analyse the evening though. It wasn't really about trains - even though there was a proper steam engine pulling the genuine BR coaches; it wasn't about 'fine dining' (whatever that is) - even though the food was very good (particularly the vegetables and the sweet). It wasn't a romantic meal, or an opportunity for dancing the night away.
If the trip had been in almost any of the 8 months that the trip had been in daylight then the experience might well have been different, as it was, we sat over the Kinchley Lane viaduct completely in the dark, unable to see the reservoir!
A major grump of mine with the GCR was the astonishingly poor range of non-alcoholic drinks on the train - they seriously need to get on to the LoNo drinks company to get a proper selection of drinks for those of us that can't or don't want to drink alcohol.
However, as I said, a good evening out, and to be recommended. We might even be persuaded to consider their Murder Mystery trains, or even the New Years Eve trip!
First, let me say this was a thoroughly enjoyable evening - good, plain food, in amiable surroundings, at a pretty fair cost (remembering the special promotion).
I was rather castigated by Mrs Grumpy for trying too hard to analyse the evening though. It wasn't really about trains - even though there was a proper steam engine pulling the genuine BR coaches; it wasn't about 'fine dining' (whatever that is) - even though the food was very good (particularly the vegetables and the sweet). It wasn't a romantic meal, or an opportunity for dancing the night away.
If the trip had been in almost any of the 8 months that the trip had been in daylight then the experience might well have been different, as it was, we sat over the Kinchley Lane viaduct completely in the dark, unable to see the reservoir!
A major grump of mine with the GCR was the astonishingly poor range of non-alcoholic drinks on the train - they seriously need to get on to the LoNo drinks company to get a proper selection of drinks for those of us that can't or don't want to drink alcohol.
However, as I said, a good evening out, and to be recommended. We might even be persuaded to consider their Murder Mystery trains, or even the New Years Eve trip!
Friday, 23 March 2007
Thoughts for the day
Standing at a bus-stop gives you a chance to observe life. I concluded, while waiting for the 302 yesterday morning, that parents who let their kids eat toffee crunch bars, crisps, and drink fizzy pop on the way to school are possibly stoopid, but who is saying to these people "feeding your kids this crap will mean their teeth will fall out, and they will grow up fat, and get diseases"?
I like Brando products. They do what they say they will do, they are reasonably priced, they last, and even though they are ordered direct from Hong Kong, they arrive quicker than a lot of stuff from Amazon that I've ordered recently. My latest Brando purchase was a hard-case for my Palm T|X. The leather flip-case was excellent, but when trying to use the Palm as an MP3 player (with Pocket Tunes) the case fired off the screen to create a bookmark, making the player skip. The hard case arrived today. It's a very nice, rattle free design , that closed with a good 'click', and there's cut-outs for all the important connectors (and the SD card strangely?). The case is nowhere near as nice from a tactile point of view as the leather one, which is silky smooth, but the payoff is that I've now got a reliable MP3 player for the bus and the bike.
My weather site using Weather Display is running well, and I've managed to customise the built-in site - so go look at it! My ISP is Metronet and uploads never fail and as far as I can tell I'm going to stay within my monthly upload / download allowance without incurring any extra PAYG costs. Metronet have been consistently reliable, although I did have a couple of issues with them not actually reading the support tickets I put in when my MaxADSL speeds started dropping. I think that the takeover by Plusnet has now bedded in, and some of the problems may have been resolved by now.
Final gripe for today - for the second year running the Institute of Biomedical Sciences have fouled up my direct debit, meaning that my subscription to this august body is overdue again. I think this is less of a criticism of the IBMS, and more a whine about the whole direct debit system, which leaves the paying customer out of control of their own money. Standing Orders - now there's a good idea......
I like Brando products. They do what they say they will do, they are reasonably priced, they last, and even though they are ordered direct from Hong Kong, they arrive quicker than a lot of stuff from Amazon that I've ordered recently. My latest Brando purchase was a hard-case for my Palm T|X. The leather flip-case was excellent, but when trying to use the Palm as an MP3 player (with Pocket Tunes) the case fired off the screen to create a bookmark, making the player skip. The hard case arrived today. It's a very nice, rattle free design , that closed with a good 'click', and there's cut-outs for all the important connectors (and the SD card strangely?). The case is nowhere near as nice from a tactile point of view as the leather one, which is silky smooth, but the payoff is that I've now got a reliable MP3 player for the bus and the bike.
My weather site using Weather Display is running well, and I've managed to customise the built-in site - so go look at it! My ISP is Metronet and uploads never fail and as far as I can tell I'm going to stay within my monthly upload / download allowance without incurring any extra PAYG costs. Metronet have been consistently reliable, although I did have a couple of issues with them not actually reading the support tickets I put in when my MaxADSL speeds started dropping. I think that the takeover by Plusnet has now bedded in, and some of the problems may have been resolved by now.
Final gripe for today - for the second year running the Institute of Biomedical Sciences have fouled up my direct debit, meaning that my subscription to this august body is overdue again. I think this is less of a criticism of the IBMS, and more a whine about the whole direct debit system, which leaves the paying customer out of control of their own money. Standing Orders - now there's a good idea......
Wednesday, 21 March 2007
On-Line Calendars - making me grumpy!
I like on-line calendars, they are convenient and simple to use.
I've got a Palm TX which I use to carry around my personal calendar (as well as it being a superb MP3 player).
Google-cal (GCal) is pretty and has useful public calendars, and has been well accepted by the rest of my family.
Airset allows integration between Palm Desktop the TX and GCal - in that direction only.
What's missing is integration between the Palm TX and GCal; that's direct two way communication between the palm (or Palm Desktop) and Google Calendar.
While Airset is useful as that bit of 'middleware' to allow some integration, and it's a nice clean application, I really see it as an unnecessary step - what would change this? Well, if Airset included an equivalent to GMail, I might be tempted to use it more.
I don't need integration with Outlook, and I appreciate that many others do. My employer makes me used Outlook with a Dell Axim at work. I don't use these for personal calendar items, and I don't try to synch them - but to be able to do so - while retaining categories - might be a plus for me.
Why is it so complicated?
I've got a Palm TX which I use to carry around my personal calendar (as well as it being a superb MP3 player).
Google-cal (GCal) is pretty and has useful public calendars, and has been well accepted by the rest of my family.
Airset allows integration between Palm Desktop the TX and GCal - in that direction only.
What's missing is integration between the Palm TX and GCal; that's direct two way communication between the palm (or Palm Desktop) and Google Calendar.
While Airset is useful as that bit of 'middleware' to allow some integration, and it's a nice clean application, I really see it as an unnecessary step - what would change this? Well, if Airset included an equivalent to GMail, I might be tempted to use it more.
I don't need integration with Outlook, and I appreciate that many others do. My employer makes me used Outlook with a Dell Axim at work. I don't use these for personal calendar items, and I don't try to synch them - but to be able to do so - while retaining categories - might be a plus for me.
Why is it so complicated?
Monday, 19 March 2007
The weather today in LFE...
I was bought a weather station at Christmas - a LaCrosse-2300 - and up until yesterday was using the supplied software to view, record and publish on the web, the weather from my back garden.
The software supplied with the 2300 is HeavyWeather, perfectly adequate on a basic sort of level, with export facilities to Excel to make pretty graphs.
Yesterday I downloaded Weather-Display from www.weather-display.com which is an alternative display and publisher - and more! It's not cheap at 70 usa dollars - which comes to about £37, but it has a lot of functionality including FTP and e-mail facilities, lots of calculators, and web page creators and editors. There's also facilities to upload data to sites such as wunderground and others. There's also the ability to set up a telephone weather station!
Very pretty, and plenty to keep you amused on a dull day (or month) - but there are downsides, apart from the cost. It's very processor hungry, and it can be slow. The interface was designed by an icon designer on speed - and too much time on his hands! It can be accessed through your home LAN with a free client viewer.
You can see my station using the inbuilt web page at my weather page. This was my second attempt at using weather-display to make a page to show the weather in LFE (that's Leicester Forest East to you).
The software supplied with the 2300 is HeavyWeather, perfectly adequate on a basic sort of level, with export facilities to Excel to make pretty graphs.
Yesterday I downloaded Weather-Display from www.weather-display.com which is an alternative display and publisher - and more! It's not cheap at 70 usa dollars - which comes to about £37, but it has a lot of functionality including FTP and e-mail facilities, lots of calculators, and web page creators and editors. There's also facilities to upload data to sites such as wunderground and others. There's also the ability to set up a telephone weather station!
Very pretty, and plenty to keep you amused on a dull day (or month) - but there are downsides, apart from the cost. It's very processor hungry, and it can be slow. The interface was designed by an icon designer on speed - and too much time on his hands! It can be accessed through your home LAN with a free client viewer.
You can see my station using the inbuilt web page at my weather page. This was my second attempt at using weather-display to make a page to show the weather in LFE (that's Leicester Forest East to you).
Wednesday, 14 March 2007
Dentists.....
Like everyone else, I don't like dentists - but having a dentist you can get on with makes a lot of difference. The demise of NHS dentistry means that going to the dentist is not cheap - but having a dentist you can trust not to rip you off also makes a big difference too.
I've had a LOT of dental work done in recent years, and yes, it's been bloomin' expensive and pretty unpleasant. I've had several crowns (all white ceramic) and two implants. The implants were a real challenge as they got infected and the front of my gum sloughed off (yuk!) - however the arrangement with my dentist was that the work for a fixed price, whereas, I'm aware, that other dentists charge by the hour (more likely the second!). This is an excellent reason to think twice about 'dental tourism' - heaven alone knows how I would have fared if this had happened to implants done in Outer Macedonia!
I'm not including a weblink or a phone number, because I don't want anyone to believe that this is in any way a solicited testimonial - if you want to find my dentist you can look him up in the phone book. I know that he does take patients from all over the country, and is developing an excellent reputation for his uncompromising attention to detail.
Dr Amit Kotecha of Warren Lane Dental Practice is the man - he has a real sense of both professionalism, and of community, and family. He is a really genuine man, and if you want professional dental treatment, possibly extending to cosmetic work then he's your man! But be warned, this sort of quality does not come cheap (but I can't compare with other dentists).
I believe that his surgery is happy to consider children as NHS dentistry patients.
I've had a LOT of dental work done in recent years, and yes, it's been bloomin' expensive and pretty unpleasant. I've had several crowns (all white ceramic) and two implants. The implants were a real challenge as they got infected and the front of my gum sloughed off (yuk!) - however the arrangement with my dentist was that the work for a fixed price, whereas, I'm aware, that other dentists charge by the hour (more likely the second!). This is an excellent reason to think twice about 'dental tourism' - heaven alone knows how I would have fared if this had happened to implants done in Outer Macedonia!
I'm not including a weblink or a phone number, because I don't want anyone to believe that this is in any way a solicited testimonial - if you want to find my dentist you can look him up in the phone book. I know that he does take patients from all over the country, and is developing an excellent reputation for his uncompromising attention to detail.
Dr Amit Kotecha of Warren Lane Dental Practice is the man - he has a real sense of both professionalism, and of community, and family. He is a really genuine man, and if you want professional dental treatment, possibly extending to cosmetic work then he's your man! But be warned, this sort of quality does not come cheap (but I can't compare with other dentists).
I believe that his surgery is happy to consider children as NHS dentistry patients.
Sunday, 4 March 2007
Moving on with Vista
Well I finally bought a new laptop, to partially replace my aging Toshiba. This is a Fujitsu-Seimens Amilo (don't ask the model number etc - all I know is its got a gig of memory and an 80gb hard drive).
I got it from Makro in Leicester - I know the people there are paid a pittance, and work hard for it, but why do they have to be so bloody rude to the paying customers?
Anyway, this thing has got Microsoft's Vista pre-installed (Home Basic) - I expected all manner of problems and a steeeep learning curve - but, as it happens, it's all been pretty plain sailing.
It's a nice clean interface, and while not everything's where you expect it - the interface is pretty intuitive.
As regards compability issues - well, to my surprise both Money 2004 and Railroad Tycoon 3 installed and ran without a hitch. What didn't - well my old faithful Bricks-2000 didn't (now replaced with a 'gadget'), the Solwise Homepower tool for monitoring the Homeplug network won't run once installed; I know that the Palm Installer will not run under Vista so I've not tried (that could be a real bummer!); and most seriously of all - MusicMatch JukeBox (is it 7 - the last decent stable version) is not compatable, because of IE7 issues.
To replace MMJB I've gone for MediaMonkey, which seems to have enough flexibility to do what I want - the main thing being the MMJB AutoDJ function - which MediaMonkey copes with using Smart Playlists - it does seem to have an issue picking up the MMJB rating tag - which MediaMonkey interpets as a Quality rating, but at least everything's there!
By the way - an update on the Dutch Flyer saga - the tickets never came, the payment wasn't on my credit card statement, so I re-ordered, but this time used Internet Explorer (rather than Firefox) and the order went through, and the tickets came in the post 3 days later. Great service - crap website!
I got it from Makro in Leicester - I know the people there are paid a pittance, and work hard for it, but why do they have to be so bloody rude to the paying customers?
Anyway, this thing has got Microsoft's Vista pre-installed (Home Basic) - I expected all manner of problems and a steeeep learning curve - but, as it happens, it's all been pretty plain sailing.
It's a nice clean interface, and while not everything's where you expect it - the interface is pretty intuitive.
As regards compability issues - well, to my surprise both Money 2004 and Railroad Tycoon 3 installed and ran without a hitch. What didn't - well my old faithful Bricks-2000 didn't (now replaced with a 'gadget'), the Solwise Homepower tool for monitoring the Homeplug network won't run once installed; I know that the Palm Installer will not run under Vista so I've not tried (that could be a real bummer!); and most seriously of all - MusicMatch JukeBox (is it 7 - the last decent stable version) is not compatable, because of IE7 issues.
To replace MMJB I've gone for MediaMonkey, which seems to have enough flexibility to do what I want - the main thing being the MMJB AutoDJ function - which MediaMonkey copes with using Smart Playlists - it does seem to have an issue picking up the MMJB rating tag - which MediaMonkey interpets as a Quality rating, but at least everything's there!
By the way - an update on the Dutch Flyer saga - the tickets never came, the payment wasn't on my credit card statement, so I re-ordered, but this time used Internet Explorer (rather than Firefox) and the order went through, and the tickets came in the post 3 days later. Great service - crap website!
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