Archives
June 30, 2004
Cairns Dive Centre
I just got an email from my sister Ele in Oz. Go take a look at where she's been working for the last 7 weeks:
Mud pt2
Ok, so there's a problem with new mudguards. Now that my bike doesn't sound like a baby's rattle any more pedestrians keep stepping out in front of me :-\
My legs did stay dry this morning though...
Mud
Hey, hey! I fitted some new mudguards from Wiggle last night. (I chose the free delivery option and got them the next day - impressive!) Anyway, I'm chuffed because I'm sat on the train and it's raining, contrary to yesterday's forecast.
I'm such a sad old man. I remember when I was a teenager I hated mudguards and would rather get wet than fit any. Only old men used mudguards....
June 29, 2004
Bounce
The boy had his first trip to casualty this morning.
Fer chrissake. He was tottering about at the top of the stairs, just stepping down to the first step. Kim was behind him, moving around him to get beneath him. As I've warned him a million times, he wasn't paying attention, didn't have both hands on the bannisters, and his foot slipped down the step. This must have pulled his hand off the rail, and he started to fall. Kim grabbed his arm but he was already going and he slipped and tumbled down the stairs. Bounce, thunk, bounce, thud, bounce, clump, bounce, crash, at the stairgate.
Kim was freaked out and had to get a friend to help her "get it together" and take Jack to casualty at the Heath Hospital (UWCM). Jack was OK, with minor bruises on his head and a carpet graze on his nose, and probably recovered and got over it before Kim had even calmed down. He showed me his head when I got home and put his hand on it and said, "bump!" so I guess he's not traumatised by the whole thing. Talk about getting back on the horse - he was trying to climb down the stairs again after I bathed him. He's a thrill seeker, I tell ya.
More like it
Yeah, that's more like it. This morning some idiot had packed the bike section of the train so full of stuff you could only ram one bike in. So I held the train up ramming mine in too.
June 28, 2004
Train Managers
I was in a period of never seeing the same train manager twice - they seemed to have such a strange shift pattern on the Paddington to Swansea line.
I now must have been commuting by bike and train long enough to be recognised (the yellow road bike stands out, I guess) as I got smiles, a welcoming greeting and even a thumbs up when I put my bike on the train this morning. Nice!
It probably helped that I noticed from the time board that the train was back to front this morning, with 1st class at the front and therefore bike storage would be at the rear. See? I've been doing this for a while now.
June 27, 2004
Park Pics
Time for my nap.
Seesaw fun.
On the seesaw with my Dad!
June 26, 2004
Out
Yeah, yeah, so we're out of Euro 2004. And yes, it's taken me 48 hours before I could comment on it. Ug.
We should be getting used to this, right? Disallowed goals, losing to penalties, hope and failure? Arse. I wonder if English football fans have more heart problems and higher stress levels than supporters of other nations. Probably. Penalties ain't good for you.
Germany next, 2006.
Hulk?
So it's started then. Genetic mutations are starting to give rise to superheros!
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/CalgarySun/News/2004/06/25/513220.html
June 24, 2004
Today
Today:
My brother's birthday
England play Portugal in the Euro2004 quarter finals
I give a presentation to the Clinical School
June 22, 2004
Gators
Jo and I are competing for the ugliest gift. Check out these alligators in their snowdome she brought me back from Miami. Nice.
June 21, 2004
England 4 : Croatia 2
England are through to the quarter finals - Portugal on Friday night.
The best part of this evening's match was Rooney's goal just before half-time. I was upstairs, running Jack's bath, and had left him sitting on the sofa with a book watching the football. As Rooney scored I heard Jack shouting "goal, goal!" I ran down the stairs, and yep, the crowd was cheering and England had scored again. Clever boy!
June 20, 2004
Cosmeston 2004
I had a busy Father's Day today. I was up at 6am to get over to Cosmeston Lakes for the tri club's Cosmeston Sprint Triathlon. Don't worry, I wasn't competing. I was helping support the race, and took a load of photos for the cardifftri.net website. Gumby gave me a lift around the course on his motorbike to get some good cycling shots (for a change). Bags of fun.
See some of the photos in the Cardiff Tri gallery.
Last few days
Here are some photos from the lat couple of days I didn't get round to blogging. I really, really don't want to go back to work tomorrow. Spending the week with Jack has been too much fun. Maybe I should start buying lottery tickets again.
My favourite thing. And yes, my hand really is blue. I've been colour waxing the car.
He loves his ducks.
Getting changed to go swimming.
June 18, 2004
Friday
Woohoo! It's Friday! What am I saying? I've been at home all week....
June 17, 2004
Playday
Do I have to go back to work?
Running to the slide.
The boy can downclimb better than his mother already!
Running around in a field, picking flowers for mum.
The weir.
Off out for a bike ride.
June 15, 2004
Another day with Jack
It's a shame you can't take photos in the swimming pool, because Jack and I went swimming first thing this morning. He's such a good swimmer - Kim's done a good job, taking him swimming regularly. The lessons are well constructed, teaching the kids useful things like swimming back to the side after jumping into the water and hanging on to the edge. Loads of fun. Jack and I'll have to go swimming again this week, on our own.
Photos in reverse order, like the rest of the blog:
Our first BBQ!
Getting tired (both of us).
Buying a table and parasol for the garden. Mum's buying the parasol. Thanks Mum!
Searching garden centres for a barbecue.
My mum's visiting this afternoon.
On the swings. Again.
Running to the shops.
Wrestling snakes.
Being nosey.
June 14, 2004
Phone Swap
Kim and I have swapped phones. She now has a photo phone, so maybe she'll start a moblog?
Here are a bunch of small videos from the Sony Ericsson K700i, of Jack. Some are from today, and some are older. If you don't have it already you'll need the latest version of the Apple Quicktime player, as it plays 3GP mobile videos.
Jack in the garden.
Jack in the paddling pool.
Jack sitting in the park.
Jack running off in the park.
PM
What did we do this afternoon? (In reverse order, like the rest of the blog, with the most recent photo at the top).
Bit tired after all that!
Climbing.
Playing on the swings.
Playing in the pool.
Me and Jack
It's just Jack and me today. Kim's been called to do jury duty, so for a week we're swapping roles (almost). So far, so good. Jack and I have been doing the usual stuff, plus out cycling this morning for a run around in a shady park and then to pop in to Tescos to pick up some shopping. Tescos is so much quieter in the weekday. Who knew?
June 13, 2004
Photos
Maybe some photos will cheer me up.
Jack's browsing the games on the Teletubbies website. They start young these days, eh?
Everybody nicks my iBook. Its wireless internet connection is very popular.
Jack's loving the new garden.
2-1 to France
What the fuck just happened? England hadn't been playing too badly, although midfield was looking a bit tired in the second half (by my uneducated vantage point). But we were 1-0 up against France. In the opening game for England in the European champs. And we'd survived 90 minutes. It actually looked as though England had learnt to win 1-0.
So how did we lose 2-1? Uuuuuuuuuuuuuugh. I hate watching England play football. It's not good for my health. And of course Kim only came in to watch the last 6 minutes of the game, so she felt vindicated in her opinion that England were "playing shit as usual". Bollocks.
Quiet please Ron
How the hell can you mute Ron Atkinson but keep the noise of the crowd? I'd pay money for that.
June 12, 2004
Online Community Tracks Down Hackers
From Halflife2.net:
June, 10 2004 - Arrests have been made in several countries related to the break-in to Valve's network, theft of the Half-Life 2 source code, and release of the source code on the Internet.
"Within a few days of the announcement of the break-in, the online gaming community had tracked down those involved," said Gabe Newell, Valve's CEO. "It was extraordinary to watch how quickly and how cleverly gamers were able to unravel what are traditionally unsolvable problems for law enforcement related to this kind of cyber-crime."
Thousands of tips were received related to the criminal activities, with a core group of people who were able to analyze and backtrack from these clues. Subsequent to these individuals being identified, Valve has been working with various national authorities to prepare cases against those involved, leading to these arrests.
"It was very uplifting to see how the community rallied and tracked these people down. Everyone here at Valve is once again reminded of how much we owe to the gaming community," added Mr. Newell.
June 11, 2004
Night Night
I just gave Jack his bottle and put him to bed. I laid him down, gave him a couple of stuffed toys (his cat: "purr purr", and his monkey: "ooh ooh"), and said, "night, night".
For the first time ever he said, "night, night" back. Superb.
June 10, 2004
Taff and Stadium
Another view from my route to/from work:
The Millenium Stadium beside the Taff.
June 09, 2004
Socks
Socks or chromosomes? I'm going to have to hunt for a copy of this poster.
Kim's Blog
As Kim will likely be getting one of my camera phones, I suggested that I could set up a weblog for her, separate to this one. If you're going to take pics with a camera phone, a moblog (a mobile weblog) is probably the best way to share them.
Comments? Is this something you'd like to see?
June 08, 2004
Hot
Woah! The sun hasn't been up long and it's over 20C in the shade already.
I like this, but I'm going to have to have another shower when I get into work.
June 07, 2004
Wkend Pics
We built chairs.
Building chairs.
Potting plants.
Tired boy.
Big dog!
Vanadalism
I'm doubly glad this train is air conditioned & that I've got my mobile office with me, as some idiot pulled the emergency stop cord as the train was pulling out of Bridgend station. So it stopped. And we're stuck.
What's worse is that some other idiots (or the same ones?) have vandalised some sort of safety comms kit. So we can't leave the station until it's fixed. The driver has to fix it track-side, and of course trains are coming in the opposite direction so this is taking a while.
Currently we have no ETD and I'm getting hungry.
Uh-oh.
Shit. I think I'm gonna get robbed. I'm a fucking target with all these toys.
Too much nu metal breeding paranoia?
A/C
Thank God for air-conditioned trains. I went running fartleks this afternoon, next to the sea, & then cycled to the train station, so on this is the coolest I've been for hours. Nice.
Now if only they handed out free, ice-cold coke...
June 06, 2004
Compare T630 with K700
I'm comparing the 2 latest Sony Ericsson phones I've got at the moment, the K700 (soon to be released) and the T630. I took a photo with each at the same time, indoors, with good light coming through a large window.
T630.
K700.
The camera in the K700 is remarakably better than the T630. The picture is sharper, focused, and with better light balance, and ideal for blogging at 320 x 240 pixels. Damn - because I really love the style of the black T630 :(
Mind you, I'm hoping to get a Sony Clie TH55 PDA soon, which is black and will beautifully complement the black T630 (I'm a posey bastard). That has a camera, which may do a better job. We'll see.
T630 pics
Here are some pics from my new T630 phone:
Spinning.
Feeding time at the zoo.
Born climber.
Drinking my milk, dad.
Grand Theft Auto III.
June 05, 2004
Pics
Nana!
New toys. I had to get a new mobile contract, and the best offer was this lot for 99p. The radios should get used walking and climbing.
Kim and my iBook.
Friday's lunchtime destination.
The view from the front of the clinical school. Lots of roses!
June 04, 2004
Seances Debunked
Derren Brown just knows far too much about how people's minds work. Genius.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/3773013.stm
Sheep
My train was delayed slightly this morning, because of sheep straying on to the track. I love living in Wales :)
June 03, 2004
Work links
Bored? Here are the links for today...
Where I used to work (within Cardiff University):
http://www.cf.ac.uk/biosi/research/connective/>
http://www.cf.ac.uk/biosi/research/connective/staff/archer.html
News articles about my current research project:
http://www.arc.org.uk/newsviews/press/W0625.htm
http://www.highbeam.com/library/doc0.asp?DOCID=1G1:99229663&refid=askj%5Fkey
http://www.cf.ac.uk/news/media_review/0303/media_reports.html
Charlie's Angels
The Charlie's Angels webcam in Cardiff has had its plug pulled. We may receive the odd image though, so I'll leave the most recent picture up (that's the pics in the right hand bar).
Everybody's doing it.
Wow. Everybody's cycling to work this morning. There are 5 bikes on the train. What's so special about today? It has been sunny for ages, so it can't be just the weather. Bizarre.
I don't think this will be a common problem, although it would be nice if it was.
June 01, 2004
Back to the office
Back in Swansea today. The train felt a lot smaller this morning after those Belgian jobs. Oh well. Train travel is more expensive over here too.
Look what I had to put together this morning:
Jo had left these goodies on my desk. This is a prototype of the PCs we're going to buy for the anatomy suite (probably 14 of them). It's a small footprint Dell, so of course Intel/WinXP because that's what everyone uses, and that's what the IT people support. However it was suggested to us that we buy quality monitors because of all the detailed images we're going to be using them for so I went for the Formacs. We wanted 17" but they've just stopped making them, so we got the 19" for the same price. Sweet, eh? I should be getting one of these for my main work computer (Powerbook?) eventually.