![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
digitig's journalLog in Create a LiveJournal Account Learn more
| You are viewing digitig's journal Log in Create a LiveJournal Account Learn more | Explore LJ: Life Entertainment Music Culture News & Politics Technology |
 | |
|
Hurrah! We are back to having a poet laureate whose work I like. I loved Ted Hughes' poetry, but could never find anything to like in Andrew Motion's. |
|
| |
| |||||
|
Well, Bob the Rescue Rabbit came to live with us just over a week ago. We put him in the run, right up against Jessica's hutch. They sniffed at each other through the bars, then Bob went on to explore the rest of the run. Jess, though, did a perfect reproduction of the mirror scene from the Marx Brothers' "Duck Soup", running up and down the hutch keeping exactly in line with Bob (even when Jess went into the closed-off part of the hutch). Jess has never been entirely comfortable around humans, although she's getting better. Bob, on the other hand, seems to have been a house-rabbit (he's a rescued stray). He's toilet-trained and more than happy to be picked up and fussed. He turns out to be a very licky rabbit, licking our hands and feet whenever he gets the chance. We've given him a mineral lick in the hutch, but he prefers our hands and feet. For a week we swapped them around between the run, the indoor hutch and the outdoor hutch, so they got used to each others' smell, then introduced them to each other in our lounge. Bob Then, disaster. Yesterday evening, Jane went to bring them in from the run, and found that she'd left the latch open on the door, and they'd both escaped. Jess was found quickly enough, but no sign of Bob. After an age of hunting around the garden with flashlights and going around all our neighbours, we eventually gave Bob up for lost and came in. I left the garden light on, in the hope of deterring the many cats and foxes we have here. This morning I was up at first light to start the search, only to find that Jane had already been searching before dawn, and had come in and fallen asleep on the sofa. But when I went out to the back of the house, there was Bob, trying to work out how to open the French windows to get back into the indoor hutch! When we opened the windows he ran away, but only to the outdoor hutch, which he happily hopped into. So the rabbit family is complete again. I suspect Jess thinks we're daft, though. Earlier today we saw him trying to bully Bob, but when Eva went out with some food he switched instantly to grooming. Not that Jess completely gets away with the bullying. Jess used to push Thumper off the water bottle when she wanted a drink, and Thumper would put up with it. Bob doesn't: he pushes back. Proper hard case is our Bob, when he needs to be!
|
|||||
| |
|
Well, that's the E303 exam out of the way. Three parts with roughly equal weighting. Part A easier than I expected, part B as I expected and part C harder than I expected, so it looks as if I'll be getting the grade I deserve, although that's probably not the grade I would like. On the way home I started reading Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" because I wanted to, not because it was set as part of a course! Meanwhile, what am I to do with all this beer? The CAMRA beer club sent me two beers -- eight bottles -- in the last batch that it turns out don't meet the club's strict criteria, so they've sent me another eight bottles than do meet the criteria plus two more as an apology, and I get to keep the original eight. And I've still got a few cans of ordinary stuff left over from a party ages ago. At the moment it's hard to get into the kitchen for beer. Anybody fancy popping over for a drink? |
|
| |
|
I found another box of vinyl albums in a seldom-visited cupboard in the lumber room last night, so I've got them ripping in the background whilst I work. I'd forgotten just how Pink-Floyd-esque Wally's "Valley Gardens" was. Sadly, one of our rabbits -- Thumper -- died last night. He was obviously unwell when we were moving him from the run to the hutch last night, so we brought him into the house. He seemed to liven up a little bit, but died in the night. |
|
| |
|
Whenever I do an air traffic safety case or plan, I always have to include a list of abbreviations, and have to say (again!) that "TMA" stands for "Terminal Manoevering Area". One day (probably just before I retire) I swear I'm going to put "Tycho Magnetic Anomaly" in the abbreviations list, and see whether anybody notices... |
|
| |
|
Like this I'm posting this from my new Eee PC, which has turned up earlier than I expected, so I now have a real Linux PC, albeit in miniature. All of the publicity material only mentioned the office and internet appications, but I'm pleased that GCC, Python, Perl and Ruby come pre-installed, as does Vim but not emacs or the Gimp. Nothing I couldn't add, of course, but I need to be picky with only a total of 4Gb disk space (ok, now it's 6Gb because I've added an SD card). It was also really easy to integrate it with the Windows XP wifi network at home, and to connect to network printers, which was a pleasant surprise -- my past experience of Linux and wifi has not been good. It does seem to worthwhile activating the undocumented "advanced mode" which gives a standard KDE desktop. The keyboard needs a very positive push on the keys, so I'm tending to miss some letters, and I have to do a lot of scrolling on the 7" screen, but as I see it as positioned as an overgrown PDA rather than a cut-down computer it's all looking good. |
|
| |
|
I see my E301 result is on my OU Student Home page -- distinction. Yay! Now, what to do next... |
|
| |
|
Prompted by tamnonlinear mentioning it, I revisited Questionable Content and spent the weekend reading the strip from beginning to end, over 1000 strips. Huge fun, though a bit worrying because no matter how cruel Jeph is to his characters they still seem to be having a better sex life than me. But then, Jeph draws that unusual world in which everybody is young and hot and there are no middle-aged or elderly people (even the characters' parents are as young and hot as their offspring -- what's the matter, Jeph? Wrinkles use too much ink?) Tweep, now sadly dormant, did that side of things so much better. And hey, how come the girls always have their panties on for the post-coital cuddle? Do they all do it with their panties on? Or do they slip them back on as soon as they finish? Is this an American thing? Or is it just that Jeph likes to draw hot chicks as close to naked as he can get away with? Well, I suppose I would too if I could draw. Still lots of good laughs in there. |
|
| |
|
More calculated that it looks. For work I have to wear a jacket and tie, but if I'm too smart then people will not expect me to know about technical subjects -- I'd look too much like an admin type angling for promotion. So the tie has to be just a /bit/ faded, the jacket just a /bit/ crumpled; not so much that I look scruffy, but enough to look as if I'm not really trying, as if I'm not really that bothered. Casual is more difficult, because I don't know what I am trying to achieve. I can be so many different people that the attempt to project all of them probably ends up rather confused. Probably the most obvious thing about my clothes is that I've lost weight so most of them are baggy on me. Am I too old to pull off a hip-hop style? |
|
| |||
|
Just been listening again to "Hocus Pocus" by Focus. Has anybody else noticed the similarity between Thijs val Leer's middle vocal break and the Crazy Frog?
|
|||
| |
| |||||
|
Well, I've got my result back for my latest college assignment (a close reading of a text of my choice; I chose the first paragraph of "Lake Wobegon Days") -- 96%. And it counts as two assignments in my overall grade. "Awesome research" according to my tutor. By my calculations that means I don't need to submit my final assignment (though I expect will anyway) and my final grade will be what I get on the end of course assessment (a project that replaces the exam). Woot!
|
|||||
| |||||
|
I thought I'd updated my journal, but it seems I hadn't. Well, I'm back at home, although usually one or other of us is sleeping on the sofa. At least I've worked out what the problem is -- antitig had 3 periods in 6 weeks, and now switches wildly between complaining about the heat and the cold. She's in denial, but I figure if I can keep her tanked up with slow-release carbohydrates it should all blow over in a couple of years.
|
|||||
| |||
|
It hasn't really sunk in yet, but at the moment I suppose I'm homeless. One night sleeping rough, and tonight will be my second in a hostel. It's surreal, sitting in my office in a suit and tie (actually, I've taken my tie off) but knowing that when I leave the office I'll be going to a battered bunk in an institutionalised dorm, but I can't afford a London hotel with all my money going on the house that my wife is still in. I suppose I'll spend the weekend redoubling my efforts to get a bedsit. At least tonight's hostel doesn't smell as bad as last night's.
|
|||
| |||||
|
Yay! Finally managed to get a Nintendo Wii -- by staking out a local store when the delivery was due. But I'll probably have to hide it for a couple of weeks, because microtig has exams and I don't want her to be distracted.
|
|||||
| |||||
|
Well, I got 89% on that tricky Bakhtin essay -- I'd have got more if I'd given more examples. Still, if I can average over 85% it's a distinction, so that will do! "You show an excellent grasp of the ideas under discussion and are not afraid to engage critically with them". I'm rather pleased with that.
|
|||||
| |
| |||||
|
Just submitted my latest university assignment, on Bakhtin's concept of dialogality. One girl in my tutorial is Russian, and she tried reading Bakhtin in the original -- it seems he's just as unintelligible there, it's not the translators' fault. Still, I've managed to submit something, I just wish I understood it!
|
|||||
| |
Blogged with Flock |
|
amused
tired
jubilant
determined
gloomy