Something old into something new.

Quiet day today. Fixed(ish) the car's exhaust with the putty stuff I bought, only to find more rust! Urgh. I think that I am going to face up to the fact that I have to replace the car in the medium term, even though I love it so much.

Watched the Colditz Story (again but for a long while), good as I could not remember what happened, but the Jamaica joke is still going strong. I tell it to my students and they look confused.

Almost finished rebuilding my old PC so that I can give it to a mate's daughter, even though he does not know it yet - a surprise. The one she has at the moment is really pants, so this one should help with her school work. If only all students could have access to a computer, it would really help them to attain the skills for life.

Whilst doing this, recorded 'Up Periscope' off the telly to watch later - the old films are really good for a proper feel good feeling.

Flash book did not arrive, I hope it does tomorrow. Only six more weeks left of the holidays. One week down and still thinking about work. Lots of preparation to do between now and then. Lots of people think that working in a school with lots of holidays is a walk in the park. It is most definitely not - it has taken me the best part of a week to recover from my exhaustion - and this year I have not had a cold at the end of term (yet). I worked it out once, that with all the hours I work in term time and the holidays (yes, them too) - I get about four weeks off in total, and only 2 - 3 will actually be without doing anything work related at all. And even though at this point in time I have six'ish weeks to go, I still have that 'list' in my head of the things that need doing.

Another quiet night

As the immersion heater gurgles away and the road is quiet, I try to keep awake to write this. Not such an expensive day. Car exhaust repair kit £14.95ish, hair cut £8, PC Game £20 - cycled instead of taking the car, so saved on petrol and money. Book came on Alan Turing, hope Flash book arrives later this morning.

Zzzzzz.....

Ouch

Finally got the car in (Yesterday) as another early morning posting. Just heard one car go by, still nice and quiet though. A new catalitic converter - 225 quid, only to find that there is a small hole in the exhaust quoted at 190 quid. So down to Halfords to get some exhaust tape to seal it until its MOT, if really bad, then I will have to give it up and get something new - I cannot keep spending more and more money - I simply do not have it.

Still, I was able to read a Dreamweaver book I have bought whilst waiting - really good, so have ordered the Flash CS3 version too. Along with a book on Alan Turing, I have always wanted to know this initial foundation ever since understanding the Fetch, Decode, Execute, Store process of a CPU - from "The MOTOROLA MC68000. An Introduction to Processor Memory and Interfacing. Jean Bacon". The MC68000 has a really good instruction set that is easy to understand and an architecture that is simpler to address than the Intel 8086+ type series. In Uni, I once wrote a Fruit Machine program, but got called up for cheating when a friend at the time used the same 'mulu' operand (multiply unassigned) to solve a problem in the program - I had done the work and she had copied me. I am now writing this blog on an Intel Dual Core E4600 CPU - how things have moved on in fifteen years. The younger generation cannot seem to understand a World without Mobile Phones, CD's and the Internet. Still, it is the same for all generations as technology progresses, so do new sets of humans appear to embrace it.

Early Morning Posting

Its early in the morning and I am still online thinking. It is almost quiet outside, most of the road noise has gone, sometimes there is the odd vehicle.

I love this time of day. You can think to yourself. Contemplate the world and the life that you live in it. Wondering what is going to happen next. Life is so stressful - can I get my car fixed, will my boss ever know I really exist, will I ever get any answers to the questions I pose or will there just be unending silence because the answers do not want to be told to me. Will I ever find somebody who understands me? I keep searching - but it has been and continues to be a very long search. Sometimes I feel as if I am shouting but nobody can hear me, oblivious to the words spoken in frustration. The Sam Lowry in the film 'Brazil' had the same problem.

Time to redefine myself and look beyond the now. Time to put the past to bed and look to the future.

Would you have ever believed

When I was growing up as a Child (English is so silly as you would never grow up as an Adult) and spent many an afternoon pondering over all of the contraptions bought by Wile E. Coyote in order to catch the illusive Road Runner, I never would have imagined that you could sit at a computer and watch the same cartoon as I was on the Telly - see this YouTube search. In those days, I started of with a 16K ZX Spectrum with a Z80 8 bit microprocessor - the 48K was too expensive for my Mum to purchase.

Or indeed, I never imagined that I could write about it for anybody in the world to read and comment on.

Longbow Shoot

I performed the scoring at a Longbow Shoot yeasterday. As you can see, the arrows pack quite a punch. The ones shown were fired from a distance of 60 yards away. I normally shoot Recurve, but would like to try Longbow at some point in my life.

View from a window

A wonderful sky.

Superb Blog

Very good read.

That White Van Man

I drive a rather nippy car (red), and yet I am still amazed as I drive along minding my own business how fast that white brick appears in the rear view mirror.

So, after a bit of thinking, I have deduced that it is because of the colour of the van, based upon the following transport associations:

1. Space Shuttle, fastest aircraft - white.
2. Concorde, fastest passenger aircraft - white.
3. Saturn V moon rocket - white (with bits of additional black go faster stripes).
4. Bullet Train, Japan - white.
5. ICE 3 Train, Germany - white.
6. Eurostar, EU - mostly white.
7. Amtrak Acela - mostly white.
8. Ariane 5 rocket - white.
9. N1 Russian Moon Rocket (wikipedia) - white.

But like with everything, there are exceptions to the rule:

1. Thrust SSC - fastest land car - black.
2. Ice burg that sank the Titanic - very slow moving - white.
3. Cheetah - fastest land animal - yellow with black go faster spots - see 3 above.

Odd

Why are all pilots in War Films called 'Roger'?