life, liberty and the pursuit of geekiness

There are some plans to introduce X-ray scanning and searching at train stations. Commuters will be very frustrated. I'm wondering whether the lives saved by the prevention of a possible terrorist attack will be greater than the fraction of everone's life that's sliced off by being zapped with X-rays twice a day, five days a week throughout their working lives. Plus the increased road rage as people take the car instead.

I was pretty busy today. I had to saw up a strip board into five pieces to solder circiuts on to them. Estates finally moved the lights in my room; it's about three times brighter. I was walking around when I felt this great stab of pain in my toe. I took off my shoe and sock to see a piece of copper wire, the core of a cable, sticking into my toe. Ouch! I have no idea how it got through my shoe.

The Times commented yesterday that France had given the world a new element in rioting, to go with barricades and flung cobblestones: voitures bruleés. Actually, we got there first; a portion of the population of Northern Ireland semi-regularly gets disgruntled and starts lighting cars on fire. They then save effort by using the flaming cars as barricades. Oh, how I love my country.

I'm going to a wedding on Friday. It seems a little strange to wear a poppy to a wedding, but I wouldn't feel right not to wear it on that date. (The groom tells me he chose it because he wanted one that was easy to remember.)

I know there are several people on my flist who sail. I was reading the Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea, and I at last learned what the Surprise is doing when she's griping: turning up into the wind too much. So far so good, but it then went on to say that although this was usually due to poor hull design, it could be helped by reducing forward sail. Now perhaps this is me being stupid, but surely reducing the force of the headsails in relation to that of the mainsail is going to tend to turn the head of the boat into the wind, not away from it? Mind you, the typestting of the book was a bit hiccuppy in places; maybe there was a vital line of meaning missing.

Went hunting around the place for clothes. Everything is maroon. Why? Who suits maroon? Ron, I sympathise deeply.

Also:

Brainy Kid

In high school, you were acing AP classes or hanging out in the computer lab. You may have been a bit of a geek back then, but now you're a total success!

Not a surprise, really.

I was tagged by hymnia to do the "10 reasons why I like Harry/Ginny" meme, and I've finally got around to doing it. It's pretty pathetic compared to the ones other people have been doing, but here goes:

( Read more... )

Not tagging anyone, because 1) practically all the H/G people on my flist have done it and 2) I don't like to pressure anyone, but if anyone wants to do it, consider yourselves tagged.

Look at LiveJournal's front page. Not only is there a Hallowe'en themed banner, but Frank the goat has gone trick-or-treat-ing dressed in a sheet. Baah!

Happy Hallowe'en!

Romantic test-thingie. Gakked from sreya

( Cut for images )

When I was doing the test, the banner across the top featured three semi-clad girls and the slogan, "Find tons of sex partners in Bletchley". It also mentioned "millions" —stretches credibility a bit, for Bletchley, which must have the least sexy name in England. I speak under correction, of course.

Written for calapine for the Jack Harkness ficathon. She wanted Jack as a criminal and Cybermen, so here they are, for what it's worth. It seems to be massively longer than everyone else's. Woe.

Title: A Brief Experiment in the Life of Jack Harkness
Rating: PG-13 (for Jack being Jack and the general dystopia of the fic.)
Archive: Yes, ask please
Thanks to book_addict for beta-ing this!


( Fic here )

We've just got two kittens! Both boys, as far as we can make out; we think they're about 9 or 10 weeks old. One is black with white feet and bib and the other is a grey mackeral tabby. No names as yet, although I have heard Mithrandir or Fog, and Smudge suggested. And Schrödinger, of course. When I have a cat of my own, it'll be called Schrödinger. They're a bit wild at the minute, especially the tabby, so we've been taking it in turns to sit out in the porch (room in the house with least funiture) with them and talking to and stroking them. We've switched to using the kitchen door as our back door so they can't escape when someone comes in.

Also:

Guess that Friend! gakked from doyle_sb4

You have a total of 102 friends
You requested to guess 102 entries.
9 was skipped due to invalid content (surprising?).
You made 93 guesses.
You got 83 correct.
Doing the math for you, that means you got 89% correct

Yesterday the 1805 bus didn't arrive until 1835. Today I have a terrible cold in the head. thank you, Translink.

It's always a good thing to remember when you've pre-ordered books from amazon.co.uk.

Anyway, I now possess the paperback of Going Postal. ( Spoilers )