Dan Q – Page 323

River Bugging

On Thursday afternoon, Claire and I went river bugging in Scotland. I can’t even find a Wikipedia article on it, it’s so little-known as an activity, but apparently it’s gaining popularity in New Zealand (presumably a direct result of access to white water rapids and a suitable level of insanity amongst the general population).

The activity first appeared, I’m told, when somebody using a floating “fishing chair” was whipped away by the current in his unanchored personal boat. The bugs we were using didn’t look far from this – inflatable armchairs that left your feet dangling in the water and let you either sit upright or lie right back (in the traditional lazy angler position – although I was distressed by the lack of a beer holder integrated into the chair). The river had only just defrosted the previous week from a particularly long winter, so we put on two wetsuits each (ever tried to squeeze into a wetsuit when you’re already wearing one?), and activity which, for my sister, Becky, seemed to take up most of the day. We wore wetsuit gloves with webbed fingers to act as “paddles”, and propelled ourselves through the water (whether aboard our bug or not) by paddling and kicking furiously against the clinging of our double-wetsuit constriction.

The photogapher managed to take some fantastic pictures, some of which I’ll share with you here (you can see the rest too, if you like). Just click on a picture to see a larger version.

As you can see, it’s a particularly wild ride. Despite Claire’s difficulties with some of the other activities (descriptions to follow!), she excelled at river bugging, even managing to stay upright after going over the largest of the waterfalls we paddled over, a feat nobody else managed. That said, she was too small to carry her bug up a hill. Bless.

It’s worth a go. The number of places you can do it in the UK can be counted on one hand, and if you enjoy it, two hours isn’t really long enough to do it justice (on the other hand, if you decide that you don’t, it’s perhaps a bit long for a taster session).

In other news, the script that’s being used to provide the funky image slideshow effects if you click on one of the images, above, on my blog, is Lightbox, and it is pretty cool, isn’t it? If you’re reading my blog through a newsreader, Abnib or, worse yet, Livejournal, you won’t see any of the effects. Try reading in the original context.

Another Troma Night At Adam’s, Perhaps?

Looks like those folks in Aber will have to have this week’s Troma Night at Adam‘s place again: Claire and I won’t be back at The Place in time for it. In other news: we’re back in England from our trip to Scotland, but not in Wales yet. Updates (and piccies) to follow. You have been warned.

Le Grande Tour

Firstly; thanks to everybody who tested my kitten-based authentication system yesterday. It seems to be working quite well.

Claire and I are undergoing a grand tour of the United Kingdom this coming week, as follows:

This afternoon, we’re driving (in Claire’s car) to Cardiff. Coincidentally, Gareth, who was visiting us this weekend to help me with a programming project we’ve been working on quite a lot this month, is also travelling from Aberystwyth to Cardiff today. In Cardiff, Claire and I will be meeting up with my mum, her boyfriend, and my sisters, to see the War Of The Worlds Musical. My mum and I have had tickets for this every year since Red Planet Productions – who were trying to get it started back then – announced it, but this is the first year that they’ve actually performed it. It could be good, or it could be disasterous. We’ll see.
After the show, we’ll either be (a) retiring to Gareth’s parents’ house for a few hours sleep; or (b) driving straight on to Preston: this mostly depends on how tired Claire, who has to do the driving, is. My personal preference would be to drive right on up to Preston – the night-time traffic will be far better than the morning’s traffic (even on a bank-holiday weekend), and there’s a bed, rather than a couch, waiting for us at my dad’s house. In either case, we’ll be in Preston either very early in the morning or very early in the afternoon.
Next stop: Scotland – in Preston, we transfer into my dad’s car, and we’re joined by his colleague and family, by my sisters (who are staying overnight in Cardiff and travelling North in the morning), and burn our way up the country to Aviemore. For those not familiar with Scotland, this is a Long Way North… so; yeah… more travelling.
Tuesday morning – snow permitting, we’re skiing in the Cairngorm mountains, near Aviemore. Wednesday, more of the same. Claire’s never been skiing before, and people have been, in a curiously counterproductive way, trying to reassure her that it is both safe and fun by recounting their horrific skiing injuries to her. Yeah; thanks guys.
On Wednesday night we’re driving South to Stirling, and, at this point, Claire and I will make our way three miles East to visit Kit and Fi. It seems silly to travel the first 600 miles of the journey to their house up there and not the last three.
On Thursday and Friday(?) we’re going to Nae Limits, an adventure sports activity centre thing. Zorbing is off, so we’ve cast votes on the activities to take part in, and I’m not yet sure what won. Claire and I voted for river bugging (in which participants are strapped into what are basically inflatable armchairs and pushed over waterfalls) and canyoning (in which we’ll probably be climbing back up those same waterfalls). Having watched The Descent last night at a special Troma Night at Adam‘s house, canyoning doesn’t feel like such a good idea any more! They don’t have subterranean flesh-eating monsters in Scotland, right?
Immediately after this, on Friday afternoon, we’re travelling back to Preston… via Gateshead. My dad’s got his new business to run over there, and has set himself up a flat in which to live the weeks he’s working on that side of the country. Guess who needs his ADSL set up?
Back in Preston, we’re off to The Comedy Store in Manchester.
And then, finally, on Saturday, we’re travelling back down to Aberystwyth… just in time for Troma Night!

Additional missions we’re on include:

In accordance with tradition, if we visit anywhere with a Tesco, we’ll bring back cookies and doughnuts, although we anticipate you’ll all be full of chocolate this week anyway.
Paul‘s asked if we can get him some shortbread while we’re up in Scotland. I’m sure we can manage that.

Any other missions you’d like to assign to us while we’re out? No, Matt, you can’t have a cornetto. You’ve got perhaps a few minutes to tell us before we go.

I’ll be trying to keep online with e-mail access and perhaps even a blogpost or two while I’m away, but I can’t promise anything about my connectivity. Phone signal should be okay if I’m needed in an emergency, though.

Good Friday

Yes, I’m at work. On Good Friday. People keep asking me why I’m here, despite the fact that I don’t have to be, so I thought I’d try to explain myself:

It doesn’t really matter whether I have to be here or not; I’m here by choice anyway. I’m off next week to do various sports in Scotland with my dad, Claire, and my sisters, so anything that needs to be done before the 24th has to be done this week.

And I promised a client that I’d get his site launched by this weekend, so that he can spent the long weekend playing with it and setting it up before he starts his advertising campaign next week. The guy who’s paying the bill for this project is giving up his weekend to get his new business off the ground – I don’t think it’s the end of the world that I lose a bank holiday (when I’m getting a whole week off next week anyway).

But there seem to be some folks who can’t understand this mentality: as if Good Friday is some god-given holiday (ahem) that must be respected above all else. Or are they just so desperate for whatever days off they can get that they pounce on every single bank holiday like it’s their birthday… I don’t know. The point is, it’s no big deal: I enjoy my job, and I want to get this particular project finished and mark up another satisfied customer, and I volunteered without provokation to do this. In the end, a promise is a promise.

[begin plug] If you like this kind of mentality from your software developers: SmartData [end plug]

In other news, you might have noticed the change in layout to my blog. That’s not all that’s changed – I also replaced the buggy “type the number to prove you’re human” test on placing comments, and replaced it with something far cooler (and cuter!). Leave a comment if you want to see it: I’m sure you can think of something to say about my masochistic tendancy to work on public holidays.

An Update From Gareth

We’ve not seen so much of Not-Gay Gareth of late. He’s sent me an e-mail to let me know why this is, and he’s allowed me to share it with you all, so anybody who cares can see quite how busy he is:

AAAARGH!!!! I feel I should owe everyone an email to explain exactly why no-one’s heard from me in ages. So firstly, i want to apologize and say how much I am missing everyone, which is absolutely true! It pains me when i grab a peak at the various weblogs people write and see what i’m missing out on. But nonetheless, finding time is a hideous nightmare! As you’re aware, I’m doing a fulltime Masters degree at the moment with 4 essays and a dissertation all requiring attention.. on top of that I have my job in the cinema and the film programming, which takes a lot of time, my job in the gallery 2 days a week, and my job as Front of House Manager…..which all take all my time up to the point of exhaustion. If you’ve not heard, the other projectionist has just quit, leaving me with even MORE hours to work in the cinema, (possibly 7 days a week until i’ve managed to find and train a new projectionist) which will literally take forever, all the while I have these essay deadlines looming on the 27th April…….. which again means that every second away from the 4 jobs I’m doing, i have to work on my essay until i fall asleep from stress and exhaunstion. It’s basically not going to get any easier until my classes (if i don’t quit my MA, which i’m thinking about) finish……. So in other words, i want to apologize toooo strongly for my absence lately but i hope this small email goes some way to make you realise that I am in no way ignoring or avoiding you all, just that I am extremely sad that i’m not spending as much time with my very close friends as i would like to. So please forgive me, and hopefully understand that it’s not by choice, just that once my classes are over and essays written (if i get the extensions that i’m going to have to ask for) then i really do hope that I can have even the smallest bit of social life again!

So there you have it.

Sundeep Versus Blogging

By the way: everybody did notice that Sundeep deleted her blog, right?

I mean, deleted it entirely. Not just made the whole thing “private” (so much as such a thing exists) or even, presumabley, backed it up (although I can’t confirm that for sure) : actually just wiped the whole thing.

Funny girl.

Murder Mystery Night 2

Last night, Ruth ran the second of her murder mystery nights, which was cool. It didn’t work as fluidly as the first – partially owing to, in my opinion, a less well-conceived pack, and partially because it turned out that Paul‘s character, who’s gender Ruth had changed to facilitate the number of people available, was intended to be not only a murdress and an adultress, but also a wife and a mother, which made the plot somewhat confusing as we tried to patch the holes with convenient “spot fiction”.

Nonetheless, Ruth and JTA put on a great night of food and fun; everybody’s costumes were great (I’ll try to ensure that some make it online soon), and the evening wore on and folks trickled away home (or staggered away, in Paul’s case) and those that remained drunk themselves philosophical and all was well with the world.

There’s nothing quite as funny as Paul in a drunken fight with a cigarette holder.

Of Unusual Troma Nights

Well, Paul‘s mid-Troma Night fire was still on, so after watching The Wicker Man we all raided the nature reserve for wood, raided the filling station for petrol (mmm… accelerant) and went and set up on the beach.

Hollywood Pizza were good enough to bring us our pizza on the beach, which was awfully nice of them, but the damp conditions made lighting the fire hard. It’d just started to char the wood when it went out, and, too impatient to wait for somebody competent to go and help him, Paul decided that he’d have a go at putting a little more petrol onto it.

He doesn’t seem to have the knack of it. Here’s a visual guide.

Experts at “pouring petrol onto fires” (e.g. Jimmy or me) will immediately see Paul’s mistake in the first frame. Not only is he badly-drawn, but he’s holding the jerry can upside down over the naked flames. The correct approach is to swing the can in order to “throw” petrol onto it, and even that is assuming that you rule out the *real* correct approaches of never putting petrol on a lit fire or never trying to use petrol as an accelerant to a bonfire in the first place.

The inevitable occured, and the petrol can caught fire in Paul’s hands. It took him some time to realise this, however, despite everybody else standing and shouting at him. He calmly and carefully put the can down on a rock before looking down and seeing that it was ablaze.

At this point, the correct course of action would be to attempt to extinguish the flaming can of fuel before it got out of control: perhaps by throwing something over it or by moving it into the sea. But what Paul did was…

…screamed like a girl. Many of the spectators ran for cover (many of them under the delusion that an open plastic petrol can with a flame burning the gas above it [like a wick] was in some great risk of exploding): Alec hid behind some rocks further down the beach while Paul was still trying to work out what he should do.

Paul’s master plan was to run blindly towards a number of sharp, knee-high, wet, slippery rocks. This had two effects. Firstly, it put a significant distance between himself and the petrol can which he should have been extinguishing, as the time in which it was safe to do so was growing short. Secondly, it caused him to fall badly onto his leg and injure it, tearing a reasonable-sided chunk of flesh away from him.

Meanwhile, I started to walk towards the can to try to get it moved into the sea and thereby put out the fire – the plan being that I might be able to salvage some of the petrol and make our bonfire more sustainable with it.

That’s me, wearing the cape like the superhero I am. I wasn’t actually wearing a cape, but I probably should have been. As I approached the can I saw that it was already too late to pick it up – the petrol vapours were being heated by the flame and were escaping the neck of the container and licking around the handle, so I opted to kick it as hard as I could towards the awaiting ocean.

It was at about this point that Alec popped his head out from behind the rock to see if the coast was clear. The petrol can narrowly missed his head as it flew past him – by this point, just a ball of fire. It fell short of the sea, and it took until a few waves had broken over it a couple of minutes later before it was extinguished, but it was too late: the petrol had already burned it’s way out through the bottom of the can, and our fuel was gone.

If you have photos from the night, please upload them to The Wicker Man gallery on Abnib Gallery. Paul’s particularly interested in getting hold of the photos that were taken of his injured leg.

Fun And Games With Google Suggest

Ah, the fun that’s to be had with Google Suggest:

Some interesting facts we’ve learned:

“Gay people are gay” results in more hits than “Microsoft is bad”.
The only things people seem to say about Wikipedia is that it’s slow and that it’s down.
The only people who don’t distrust or hate eBay aren’t sure whether or not it’s safe.
Christians are one of the few things in the world that people don’t seem to think are gay. However, they still hate them more than pretty much anything else, even “gay people”, who are at least “cool.”
Blogs are only slightly more gay than they are stupid.
George Bush is a gay, evil, stupid moronic idiot. And, presumably, a Christian.

Have a play with Google Suggest yourself.

Lightbox JS v2.0

This is a repost promoting content originally bookmarked via del.icio.us. See more del.icio.us imports or more things Dan's reposted.

Bookmarked via del.icio.us: Lightbox JS v2.0.

JavaScript image popups which look great, resize gracefully, and support slideshows. Requires prototype and scriptaculous.

Fire Has Moved!

Fire is now at the far South beach, through Trefhacan (or however it’s spelt). See you there soon!

Fire At Will!

Okay, the aforementioned fire is on! It’ll be windy, but it shouldn’t be wet, so we’re gathering anybody who’s game (and any dry wood we can find) for a small fire and barbeque on North Beach. Wood-scavenging begins at 7pm at The Place, ignition at 8pm. Bring your own food if you want it burned.

Fire!

Hmm.

I’m promised folks (like Statto, who’s visiting) a fire on the beach this week, but the weather’s conspiring against me. Watch this space for updates.

Reb Is Still Alive

Curious. I haven’t really heard from her since July 2004 but it turns out that she’s still alive and on the internet – I just received the following e-mail from my girlfriend of 1999-2001ish, Reb:

From: Rebecca ******** [*********@hotmail.com]
To: ***@sc*tmania.org
Date: Mar 24, 2006 3:10 PM
Subject: Hey you!

long time no hear, hows life?
Wanna talk?

xxxxx

Well, that’s interesting.

I wonder what made her e-mail me out of the blue after over a year of silence.

I wonder what made her choose to use the e-mail address she chose to mail me on. Either it’s a guess, or she read it from one of the few (I can count them on one hand) places it’s publicised, because it looks as if it wasn’t picked from a Hotmail address book. Hmm: looks like somebody using Internet Explorer from a British IP address looked at my recent Friends Reunited profile, which has that e-mail address, only an hour or so ago. That’s a maybe.

I wonder what she’s expecting by way of a response.

I wonder if I’ll respond.

Ah well. For now, time to get on with some work. It’s been an afternoon of deliberately breaking the company network in order to test it’s recoverability – a bit of disaster planning – which, while fun, isn’t terribly productive.

Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, here’s a picture I found on the web: Psycho Ex

A Winemaking Idea

For centuries – and particularly in Wales – people have made silver birch wine from the sap of the silver birch tree. We have loads of them around here, and this is apparently the perfect time of year to collect their sap. If enough people feel like helping me harvest sap and making wine, we’ll go for it. I’ll need a handful of volunteers who are willing to go out for a few hours on some weekend – hey; we’ll take a picnic and make an event of it – and tap into birch trees.

This isn’t an entirely hairbrained idea – a few people even make birch wine commercially.

The recipe I’ve seen, which I’ve copied below, is from an article on making things from birch trees in general, and the page also includes tips on tapping into trees without killing them and on how to avoid poisoning yourself with nasty varieties of bracket fungus. It goes as follows:

Birch Sap Wine

8 pints sap

¹/₂ lb chopped raisins

2lb sugar

juice of 2 lemons

general purpose yeast

Collect the sap from a number of trees so as not to overtap an individual tree, which could kill it. The sap should be collected in early March whilst it is still rising. Select larger trees, bore a hole about 1″-2″ deep, around 4ft off the ground, place a tube or something similar in the hole and allow the sap to run down. Then put a suitable container underneath and allow to fill. The hole will heal naturally, but it wouldn’t hurt to wedge a piece of birch bark over the hole to aid it. Boil the sap as soon as collected, add the sugar and simmer for 10 minutes. Place the raisins in a suitable bucket, pour in the boiling liquid and add the yeast and lemon juice when it has cooled to blood temperature. Cover the bucket and leave to ferment for three days before straining off into a demi-john and sealing with an air lock. Let stand until fermentation finishes, then rack off into a clean jar and let the sediment settle. Bottle the wine and store in a cool place for at least a month.

So, who’s with me?