April 2004 Archives

Two Men, Two Bikes, Six Islands

Just wrote a fantastic piece about the islands we visited on our second day’s cycling only to have this shitty device eat it. So here’s a summarry:

Barra – small. Cycled over mountain, took ferry North.
Eriskay – tiny fishing community.
South Uist – long, flat, full of highland cattle and sheep. Heavily Catholic.
Benbecula – picturesque.
North Uist – hillier, wetter. Protestant.
Berneray – tiniest of all. We stayed with a sheep farmer and his wife, and ate fantastic home-grown food from their croft.

Girl, 15, Charged With Child Porn Offences And Sexual Abuse Of Childen

Not the usual kind of story I link from my ‘blog, but this particular case is of interest because the girl in question is both the perpetrator and the victim, so to speak: she posted pictures of herself online, performing sexual acts. From what we can gather, she did this of her own free will and consent.

Read more on The Register. No word from the BBC yet.

Two Men, Two Bikes, One Mission

The keyboard on this tacky little GPRS device is crap, and I just lost this entire entry to bad user interface design (if you press the biggest button on the device, it throws it all away):

My dad and I drove to Glasgow, arriving this morning at about 2am. Then, up at 8am for the first leg of our bike ride around Scotland. Train to Crainlarich, then cycled the 42 miles or so to Obar.

Good bits: downhilling, meeting some highland cattle, eating lots of Dextrose.

Bad bits: getting really, really wet, using this shitty thing, shoelaces caught in pedals, twice, not being fit enough.

Now we’re on the ferry from Oban to Barra. Look it up yourself, I’m not posting a link. We’ve just waved to Mull. Can’t believe this is a five-hour ferry journey. Don’t think I’ve ever spent so long on a ferry and not had to wind my watch back or forward an hour.

Oh, and have met other cyclists on the ferry. But that’s not terribly interesting.

And I’m Off

[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]

[additional fragments were recovered on 13 October 2018]

Off to Scotland, that is, where I’ll be spending a long weekend cycling and island-hopping. I’ve got a brief stop in Preston for tea with my folks before I catch the train up to Scotland… but for now, I need to do some laundry, get a train ticket, and get out of Aber.

I’ll be back on Tuesday night, if anybody’s interested. My mobile’s not making outgoing calls at the moment (forgot to pay my bill, now can’t afford to – at least until my paycheque comes in), so if you call and you can’t get through (not unlikely: I’ll be hitting some low-signal areas) try my dad’s mobile number (Claire has it) or drop me a text – not an answerphone message.

Odds are very high that I won’t be anywhere near an internet connection, so don’t expect ‘blog updates or participation in the usual forums, either.

It’s a shame I won’t be here to see Kit off as he moves to Scotland (coincidence?) this weekend. But hey, at least I don’t have to help him pack and/or carry boxes around.

Oh; and I think you should all…

Chicken-Heated Atomic Weapons, And Quake [TM] For Those Who Miss Text-Based Adventures

[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]

[further fragments were recovered on 13 October 2018]

Two fantastic bits of funny news for you this April Fool’s morning:

1. A seven-ton atomic landmine, designed to prevent Soviet advance through West Germany, would have been kept warm while underground by being filled with live chickens (with enough food to keep them alive for a week). This (not an April Fool’s – really!) report brought to you by the BBC. Weird.

2. Do you remember a couple of years ago when somebody wrote ttyQuake, a front-end for iD‘s groundbreaking game, Quake, which replaced the graphics with live-generated ASCII-art [screenshot]? Well; somebody’s gone one step further: IF Quake. IF Quake is an Inform program that acts an an interface between your Z-Machine Interpreter and the Quake data files. What does this mean? It means that it’s a text-based-adventure version of Quake. So instead of wiggling your mouse and…

Operation: Anticipated Container

To those who remain in Aber:

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to acquire as many cardboard boxes as possible in anticipation of Kit’s upcoming mission in Stirling. Boxes selected are to be at the operatives’ discretion, and from targets of oppertunity. Suggested primary targets include Somerfield, Safeway, Lidl, and Kwik Save. Suggested secondary targets include Global Video and Charlie’s Stores.

Once acquired, boxes should be stored safely in The Flat, Cambrian Place. This may involve flat-packing them. Operatives are free to use whatever means at their disposal, but it is imperative that the boxes are able to be re-assembled during a subsequent mission.

The use of lethal force, while necessarily unlikely, is permitted.

This blog will self destruct.