.. but if you get a chance, check out the hilariously crap computer generated graphic that appears in The Sun today – it's supposed to illustrate a jailhouse shooting, but instead it looks like the victim is about to burst into the showstopping final number of a musical theatre production about mannequins. Online here.
Hunter takes off – in HD from Tom Royal on Vimeo.
Hunter does his bit for science, helping me test the EX-F1's 60fps mode. This was shot as 60 6mp JPEGs in a one second burst and then smooshed onto the interweb, hence the dubious image quality (technical smooshing details: JPEG images resized to 960×1,280px in Photoshop, stitched into an AVI with JPEGVideo, converted to H.264 in Quicktime Pro then uploaded).
(NB – he did actually land safely about a second later. And he caught the snake, too.)
As per Si's note, the video below is very flickery so anyone with epilepsy, or who simply dislikes flickery things, should probably beware.
A test taken with the Casio EX-F1, which shoots video at 300fps or full-resolution photos at 60fps. The plan now is to film Hunter or Ralph jumping – it needs lots of light at this speed, though.
These are the Merchant Taylors' Almshouses. They are in Lewisham, and normally strictly closed to the public, but this weekend you can visit them as part of the London Open House initiative. Just off the A20 behind the (also open) Boone's Chapel.
With the US election looming there's been much debate about how far the government should interfere in the day to day lives of its citizens. One key area that's been overlooked, however, is this: people should have to pass some sort of basic intelligence test before being allowed to undertake any kind of DIY.
Witness, for example, our flat, or rather the previous owners thereof. These are people who should not be allowed near a rubber mallet, let alone anything metal with a pointy end. In fact, they should be fitted with state-supplied idiot mittens. Let me explain.
We first encountered our predecessors' amazing DIY skills the day after moving into the flat. They had fitted a kitchen, complete with a kitchen sink. We used said sink on the first day, then on the second noticed an unusual smell – one quick look in the cupboard revealed that the waste water pipes hadn't been fitted together properly, and were leaking. One trip to B&Q and three hours under the sink later we had new, leak-free pipes – here they are, all shiny and white:
.. but apparently rather than doing this the previous owner had been living with a leaking sink for who knows how long, smelling the water as it dripped into the floorboards, without bothering to do anything. Nice. Oh, and a bonus sink-related anecdote: the drainer next to our sink doesn't actually drain. Because they fucked that up too. But that's only a minor inconvenience.
But onto the electrics. A while later I was commissioned to write an article about home automation, so I spent a day replacing the light-switches with new, remote controlled ones. This is really pretty simple, as you simply wire a new switch onto the existing location, which looks like this:
.. or at least, that's the theory. On fitting the last switch, half the house went dark. I panicked – evidently I'd overreached my limited abilities and done something catastrophically stupid, condemning us to a life of darkness and horror. Four hours of crawling around the loft with a torch later, though, and I found the culprit: rather than linking the two circuits with a proper junction box, our predecessors had simply twisted the two wires together and placed them lovingly in an upended margarine tub – my handling the other end of one wire had merely dislodged this elegant but fragile arrangement. Ten minutes later, and at a cost of less than £2, I fixed it properly – something they evidently were not able, or could not be bothered, to do.
Incidentally, as well as electric junction boxes, the previous owners had evidently never heard of rawl-plugs. This did not prevent them from putting screws into brick walls, hence the shower falling off the wall a few months ago. Oh, and also: when we came here, the oven hood fan blew all exhaust air straight into the brick wall behind it. Duh. I suppose it looked as if it were working.
And the reason for today's rant? On Monday builders will be coming to fix the windows (that's another sad story), and I'll need to lock Hunter and Ralph, with all their bedding, food and assorted home comforts, into the front of the house. This requires finally working out why the front room door doesn't stay shut. A quick examination reveals that the hole in the doorframe isn't in line with the bolt that's supposed to fit into it. And not just a little out of line, either – I could understand messing it up and placing the hole a few millimetres out – but so far out that the bolt and its associated hole must have never even made one another's acquaintance these past few years. And the hole wasn't made large enough, so it wouldn't have worked even if it was in the right place. And the screws were put in at almost a 45-degree angle because nobody bothered to drill a hole for them. At what point did this particular gobshite not realise that, maybe, it was time to give up and call in a handyman?
Oh, and so far I haven't even mentioned what repairmen found in the roof when we moved in:
Yes, that's a Def Jam 7" single – something by LL Cool J – rather than a slate. What the fuck?
So, there you go. Memo to Gordon Brown: in this time of economic crisis, nothing you can do or say about the economy will appease the readers of the Daily Mail. So, why not spend some time doing something simple and beneficial to the country as a whole: introduce some sort of simple driving test for DIY. Nothing fancy – just a quick quiz to be completed online, perhaps. The nation will, eventually, thank you for it.
Spotted this when flicking through the cable listings:
I could have made that documentary, and I bet my version would have been better. It would have consisted of the opening title, on black, followed by a second title card that read "No. For fuck's sake." Short, accurate, to the point.
Ralph, to camera: "So, this is the dining room. We don't actually eat here, much – I can't cook – but my interior designer picked out this furniture for me. It's Italian. You know, when I was growing up on the mean streets of Bexley, I had to share a box with all my brothers so, you know, I feel blessed to have this one to myself…"
I have a mental blind-spot when it comes to geography. Hence this conversation, from Monday:
Tom: I have to go to Bletchley Park tomorrow. Does anyone have any idea where it is?
Anthony: It's near Milton Keynes, I think.
Tom: Oh, right – near Bletchley, then?
Entire office: (general sounds of entirely justified mockery and abuse)
So, armed with this important information, off I went. And very depressing it was too.
I'm not a history buff, I haven't seen the film Enigma nor have I read the book of the same name, but even so I'm aware of the role Bletchley Park played during the Second World War. Take, for example, Hut Six, where staff worked on decoding Enigma-encrypted messages. Behold this historic building as it stands today (well, yesterday):
Hut three isn't much better, and the main mansion building itself also needs significant restoration work. In fact, despite the good news from yesterday's press conference – IBM and PGP are donating $100,000 – Bletchley Park and the National Museum of Computing require, together, around £17 million.
When writing up a news article on Bletchley Park a week or two ago I contacted a handful of notables asking them to endorse the campaign to save the site. One, Stephen Fry, replied promptly with this perfectly quotable quote:
It seems astounding that the place behind one of Britain's greatest ever achievements cannot be saved and memorialised. To me it is equivalent to letting Nelson's Column fall down or Wellington's victory arch crumble to dust. An outrage to think we have not the will nor the historical understanding to save it.
Which, I thought, was very well put, and quite correct. For what it's worth there's a petition here, and the Bletchley Park Trust accepts donations here.
For the record, I spent pretty much all of Saturday doing that washing. Thanks, Ralph.
If you have half an hour to spare, I'd recommend listening to this morning's edition of Beyond Westminster – here's an iPlayer Link – which was on (the not at all contentious topic of) religion and politics.
The main body of the programme is fairly interesting – who knew that the press are excluded from the prayers that take place every morning in the House of Commons? – but the discussion at the end is more so. I was particularly interested by the views of A C Grayling – as an atheist I often find my side of any religious discussion represented in a vaguely hysterical manner that strikes me as counterproductive and rude even if well intentioned, so it was nice to hear the whole debate completed in a measured way. Have made a mental note to seek out some of his books.
(As an aside, Richard Dawkins seems to be selling atheism T-shirts. This is bizarre. Also, it appears that theists have all the good typography.)