abraxas

test

2008-10-17T11:26:00.001+01:00

test

last minute stay

2006-08-16T21:38:00.000+01:00

i've been pondering what to do with abraxas for sometime, as i've not really been happening this year. after looking around i've been quite interested by word press, it having some nice features. then just when i thought i had almost made a call blogger goes all beta and unveils a whole raft of news toys. it's a shame they weren't able to roll them out direct to all users with the beta (i had to set up a new test blog to play with). so now i have a more difficult decision to make. don't expect changes any time soon. probably.

passion flower

2006-07-16T22:49:00.000+01:00

view from the garden.

abstract faces

2006-06-24T15:37:00.000+01:00

i was stood waiting for the dlr the other day and my eye caught on some of the railway lines that looked like faces. it was one of those days i wished i'd taken my camera with me. true to form there is a flickr group for just about anything you could possibly conjour up. the abstract faces group just makes me smile.

must keep my camera handy and see if i can add to it.

there seem to be a lot of entertaining instructional videos cropping up on youtube, including, how to refresh 5 hours old sour coffee and how to make your fleece like brand new, more here.

flaming sheep

2006-06-11T16:36:00.000+01:00

a rather menacing looking sheep shilouetted against the sunset on a welsh mountainside. haven't got round to albumising (?) our scottish photos yet and already have another holiday to document.

had a lovely time in wales. it was very hot. went walking and to portmeirion, amonst other things.

just a taster

2006-05-30T21:45:00.000+01:00

more to come, but here is a taster photo from our recent visit to the west coast of scotland. scotland was as ever, wonderful, beautiful and a little bit wet. the view is from the very well-preserved ruin, castle tioram.

this most recent visit north of the border was made particularly special as we travelled up there on the caledonian sleeper, the best train in the world.

another highlight was the pine marten that visited to rummage through the bin. it took a bit of debate to narrow it down to a pine marten, not surprising given they are one of the rarest mammals in the country.

>>update>> mandy got a good picture of the pine marten.

aww for the baby animals

2006-05-22T22:01:00.000+01:00

there's not many things get described as being as big (or as small) as a raspberry.

catch up

2006-05-18T19:01:00.000+01:00

been to the rather enchanting sheffield cemetery, where apparently 87,000 people are buried. there aren't that many gravestones but those that are there are wonderfully overgrown, ivy clad or just slightly askew.

simple pleasures on saturday

2006-04-08T22:48:00.000+01:00

- waking up and lying in bed with a cup of tea listening to radio 4 for an hour and a half. not normally one of my favourite programmes but excess baggage was good this morning, all about people going on pilgrimages of sorts, including the new long march 2; an incredible journey through china.
- eating a lovely meal that wasn't slaved over for hours, ta nigel.
- tidying up my bookmarks. a satisfying task.
- currently liking netvibes. started using it a couple of weeks ago and all of a sudden there is a bumper load of new things to fiddle with.

back

2006-03-02T22:52:00.000Z

from a lovely week in scotland, where the mountains were topped with snow.

angry wimmin

2006-02-16T23:05:00.000Z

caught bbc four's angry wimmin last night. it was a very watchable documentary about far left revolutionary feminism from the 70's/80's based around interviews with women who were very active in the area at the time. they were all, for the most part, still angry but looking back, sometimes with humour, at the political landscape they were a part of.

folk britannia

2006-02-11T08:34:00.000Z

caught some of bbc 4's wonderful folk britannia last night. over the years my consumption of home grown folk has, for the most part, been intermittent and confined to a few artists or groups recommended by people. last nights folk roots, new roots has given me some new directions to explore, namely davy graham and anne briggs.

pandora has been playing me some nice tunes this morning as a result.

reflected

2006-02-05T09:58:00.000Z

lucky numbers

2006-02-04T07:49:00.000Z

well, like most people in the country i got euro millions lottery tickets yesterday, not just for me, we had a syndicate at work and this morning, after blearily poring over a pile of tickets i'm quite sure that we've had a win. a grand total of £17.20, which will make us all 66p richer, or taking into account the pound fifty used to buy the ticket we are each only 84p worse off than we were before buying the tickets.

this is the biggest success i've had with the lottery. i'm overjoyed.

ffffing freezing

2006-01-30T15:07:00.000Z

with hindsight january may not have been the best month to get the boiler replaced. work has been going on all day to fit the new boiler, which means that since 8am this morning i've only had the kettle for warmth.

what makes it harder is that this is self inflicted. we've got a couple of things to do on the house but, as the old boiler, whilst working ok (albeit quite noisily), was nearing a quarter of a century old it was inevitable it would need replacing at some point soon. so rather than having a nasty shock at an inconvenient time we decided to get the new boiler put in first.

*note to self, next time you need a new boiler get it done in july.

blueness

2006-01-29T10:04:00.000Z

went to see the blue man group last night. they really are quite unlike anything else and trying to describe them would really spoil the fun of anyone planning to visit. suffice to say i laughed an awful lot and this morning i even made a picture on the blue man website.

happy new 10th january

2006-01-07T20:35:00.000Z

it's taken a while but here i am in 2006 (blimy this millennium seems to be going fast). the christmas break was good, including a whole two weeks off work. but christmas, and the whole lead up to it, took it's toll and after all the seasonal excess i'm currently enjoying a bit of comfortable normality.

so, back to basics, some lovely links from recent surfing;

- google video is worth a bit of time. just trawling through the random group has delivered some random treats, including very clever christmas lights, chinese tv adverts, russian free running and welcome to pittsfield
- drawing interface for flickr (spotted at boing boing) - searches for pictures similar to your drawing, seems to be mostly colour matches but pretty cool none the less
- celebrity chefs escape censure over animal slaughter - despite being a veggie i'm on the side of the chefs here. people are too used to knowing meat only as a plastic-wrapped ready-chopped food product. the more processed and packaged the food product is the more distant it is from ever having been an animal. good on the telly chefs for actually reminding people where their food comes from and showing how it is killed for them to eat. chances are the animals killed on both programmes were better reared and more humanely killed than the millions of animals processed through our factory slaughterhouses to fill the supermarket shelves
- what to call ming's backers - another year another leadership contest. trivial but amusing article on main contender menzies campbell and debate on the title for his band of followers; mongos or mingers?

seasonal

2005-12-18T00:23:00.000Z

well we moved. we unpacked fairly quickly and are now just enjoying living in the new house. i think ikea in croydon is still open, despite our best efforts to clear them out of stock. in a fit of domesticity i baked some christmas biscuits this evening, while listening to bbc radio bach (virtually non-stop bach until christmas - no bad thing at all).

finally

2005-11-20T22:13:00.000Z

finally the weather seems to have caught up with season. i got up this morning and saw a garden full of frost and fog, it was very peaceful and beautiful and a good start to our final day in the flat.

we move house tomorrow. we've lived on the edges of forest hill and sydenham since 2001. its one of those border streets where you can pick one place or the other when you're telling people where you live, although they are both quite evenly balenced.

we're only moving two and a half miles away, but it's still been a monumental excercise preparing for it. it's impossible to move for boxes so i'm currently sat on the floor in the spare room.

it is very strange preparing to leave a home. you invest time in making it yours, you make you memories there and then the whole process of packing depersonalises your home back into an empty shell. i'm now looking forward to the stage when the removals co have taken all the boxes and remnants out and i can actually see the space again.

very excited about the new place, but it will be another house full of boxes for quite a while. it's a house, with an upstairs and everything, which is quite a novelty after years of living in a flat.

to good memories and new beginnings. cheers.

going...going...

2005-11-20T22:12:00.000Z

reflection

2005-11-13T07:53:00.000Z

26 things

2005-11-12T07:05:00.000Z

i've not played 26 things since november 2003, but i've just discovered that a new one is one the go for november. the new list of things to photograph;

majestic
framed
headwear
wrinkled
pattern
in season
upside down
behind
not allowed
next to
emotion
almost empty
a fridge
left overs
numbered
stickers
up/down
today's paper
electrical
flaunt
underneath
understated
a portrait
shapes
out of place
let go

ready, steady, go.

what's round and orange?

2005-10-30T00:14:00.000+01:00

i've carved my pumpkin this evening. it's ended up looking a bit like a 70's lamp, albeit with a slightly vegetable aroma.

i've also discovered that growing giant pumpkins is something of a competitive sport in north america. the pumpkins look like the steriod induced muscle men of the vegetable patch.

animal magic

2005-10-23T09:40:00.000+01:00

we were out walking in hampshire yesterday (yet another walk from the wonderful book). the walk itself wasn't bad, but had a few less fun moments - like having to cross the A303 with traffic trundling past at 70mph. what was strange about the walk was the diverse collection of animals we came across on route;

blue tit, cats, chickens, coots, cows, deer, dogs, ducks, giant pumpkin (not an animal but something incredible to behold), goat, guinea pig, hare, horse, moorhen, mouse, pig, pheasant, pony, rabbits (wild, domestic and dead), racing pigeons, sheep, shirehorse and trout.

said fauna (along with various other birds that i was unable to name) were distributed fairly evenly throughout the walk. my particular highlight from the list was the hare, an animal i've only seen a handful of times before.

the other remarkable thing about the list is that we were only 1 hour by train from london.

fabulous knitting story

2005-10-22T07:46:00.000+01:00

the national trust's attempt to find tenants for two cottages on fair isle has led to entries from knitters all over the world - fair isle besieged in close-knit contest

update - another excellent knitting link - home-made lego yarn winder. via boing boing.