...but I was put in mind of this by a comment earlier today, and egged on just now by an appalling pun by trixieleitz. I think I read the story about 20 years ago, and I've never seen the film concerned. So this is basically a work of complete fiction. Move along: there's nothing to see.

In The Greatest Story Ever Told, John Wayne plays a Roman centurion. He ( Read more... )

There's an old Flanders and Swann song about an enormous spider in the bath. Well, when I got up this morning, there it was. The spider, that is, not the song. Standing like a Wild West gunslinger, with its elbows up high, ready to draw. The first thing to do in such circumstances is, of course, to go and put on some slippers. This had the desired ( Read more... )

Went into town this morning for the usual shopping trip, but it was too warm for me to summon up much enthusiasm. This was only compounded by a visit to the Marks & Spencer sock department, a place guaranteed to rob anyone of the will to live. After I'd puzzled my way through the gamuts of materials, lengths and sizes (and avoided the rather scary- ( Read more... )

Well, the processing of exam marks seems to be going ok. Data entry was done smoothly by the admin people; examiners' ears have been boxed where necessary (and sent by post to their families); and much jiggerypokery has been employed to deal with all of the oddball situations that can occur. If ever there was an example of Pareto's Principle this ( Read more... )

I received a belated birthday present on Sunday (the mail order company had fouled up). It's a solar-powered rainbow maker. No, really. You stick it to the inside of a window, the sunlight drives a motor which rotates a crystal suspended below it, and the sunlight gets refracted by the crystal into a swirling pattern of small rainbows around the ( Read more... )

I haven't yet mentioned the new addition to the glitterboy household: a breadmaker! It moved in about a month ago, and jolly good it is, too. I'm not the world's greatest cook (in fact, if it weren't for their lack of opposable thumbs, the two cats would probably make better cooks than me). I generally convince myself that this is mainly for want ( Read more... )

Friday during the day was a nightmare: a 'client' for one of my projects panicking about completion, and two other projects trying to come back to haunt me ("how about this extra thing which I didn't think about at the time, but which I'd really like now?" No. Go away ( Read more... )

Sitting here waiting for a database job to finish running, so I can turn my machine off and go to the gym. I meant to do it earlier, but I forgot to press the Return key. Oops.

As seen chez altariel1


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Last night was the loudest thunderstorm I can remember for a long time. I don't know about the cats, but it certainly worried me.