Went to the Earl of Beaconsfield last night for the session and had a good time. I took my pipes for the first time in ages - my fingers suffered rather from not playing whilst in Antarctica. It's taken me up to now to feel sufficiently confident that I can take them out without (a) embarassing myself and (b) getting on the wick of everyone else, ( Read more... )

Once again, life has been sufficiently busy for LiveJournal entries to become sparse. Posting here is something which is one of the first things to go when I'm busy; I'm not sure why that is but it's probably to do with the amount of time for mulling things over ( Read more... )

Things that have Cheered Me Up this week:

1. The session at the Beaconsfield last night. It was quite good - certainly in terms of atmosphere, if a little average musically. Had to change a string though, which naturally kept being as flat as a pancake subsequently. Have got someone's version of The Holly Bush going round my head at the moment, but ( Read more... )

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Anyone who gets Crypto-Gram will have already seen this, but Bruce Schneier[1] has an interesting piece in his blog on the security of the Vatican conclave. As you'd expect, he makes the point that you can afford to be reasonably lax about the mechanism of papal election, since there's a small group of cardinals who all know each other and, well, ( Read more... )

Yeah, I know, I haven't been updating. I did stuff, including a lovely weekend in Lausanne. Maybe updates soon.

If anyone's looking for summer work in Cambridge, BAS need a button pusher to load some of the data from tape that we collected at Pine Island. It's pretty good pay and a pleasant working environment (flexi-time, nice people, etc.); the ( Read more... )

Everyone seen http://www.google.com/googlegulp/?

Here, our intrepid hero is met with something of a dilemma. I'm meeting a friend tonight whose birthday approacheth and I have therefore cunningly decided to go to Borders en route and buy him a birthday present. The only problem with this plan is that Borders sell both (a) books and (b) CDs, both of which have been known to tempt Aidan into ( Read more... )

Today's little bit of nostalgia comes courtesy of redkeyreddoor.com, who have an interview with the guy who wrote Granny's Garden here. Was there anyone who didn't play that game at school?

You must have come across it: the silly game of counting Google hits. There used to be a page about Google competitions - so for example, Manchester United (scoring 10,700,000 hits) beats Arsenal (scoring 9,200,000) and so on. Maybe you participated in the "Harry is..." meme that did the rounds a while ago.

I was reading Macadamia recently and she ( Read more... )