Month: July 2008

Categories
Music Gear

He brought his dog too

As I mentioned a while ago, I was considering selling my big bass stack. I decided to go ahead, and the buyer came to collect it this evening. He arrived just after 8pm, and I let him in to look at the rig. I plugged it in so that he could verify that it was all in working order, though obviously he couldn’t turn it up very loud because my son was being put to sleep upstairs. He gave me the money in £20 notes, which was perfect (one of my concerns had been that he’d try to pay me in mixed denominations).

“Might have to take it in two trips” he said.

“What kind of car have you brought?” I asked.

“Nissan Micra” he said.

“Ah” I replied.

Not only had he come round in a Nissan Micra, but he’d also brought his ladyfriend. I also discovered, as we took the first cab out to the street, that his chihuahua had come along too. He’d also brought his bass along, and the floor of his boot was scattered with cassette tapes and batteries (to which I remarked words to the effect of “uh, do you want to tidy this up, or should I just crush it with this 80lb cabinet?) The most startling thing of all was that it fit in the car. A snug fit, admittedly, but I was still impressed. The boot closed and everything.

I just hope that he drove home gently. A severe bump could have pushed one of those cabinets through his read windscreen.

An era ends.

Categories
Daily

Reflections: The Death of Gallium

  • I’ve often wondered whether technological progress will continue at the current rate, or if something will happen to plunge us back into the stone age. Looks like it might be the latter, and it might even happen within my lifetime.

Bike bags

I’ve finally managed to get round to doing something about storage on my bike (that’s *on* my bike, not *for* my bike). Here are the problems that I was facing:

1. I was arriving at work with a ferociously sweaty back. This is because I have to carry all my gear around in a rucksack. Fitting a pannier wasn’t an option, as it would get in the way of Bernard’s bike seat (unless I then purchased an additional pannier-mounted bike seat, or took the pannier off every time I wanted to attach the bike seat).
2. Slightly smaller gripe – I needed somewhere to keep my keys. Having to take off my rucksack and fish around in the small front pocket was getting tiring.

I now have solutions. The solution to problem #2 is quite simple – I’ve purchased a Topeak top tube bag ((J E James are now out of stock of these, but you can also get them here – there’s a better photo there too)). This has space in the main pocket for my wallet, keys and allen keys, and my phone fits in the side pocket. You can also get larger bags that go under the saddle, and in retrospect perhaps I should have bought one of those instead, as I would then have also had space in it for my diary. Maybe I’ll put that on my birthday list ((already on my birthday list – a decent battery charger. Life is too short for timer-based chargers)).

The solution to problem #1 is slightly more complex, and I’ve been mulling on it for a while. What I have done is to purchase a spare support bar for the child seat. This fits in the same mounting point as Bernard’s seat and provides me with a platform to strap the rucksack to. In the long run, I might replace the rucksack with a more suitable container.

Incidentally, you can consider this to be a endorsement of J E James. I ordered on Tuesday afternoon and the stuff arrived on Friday morning. Delivery was free (for all orders over £5), so the price on the site is what you pay (unlike the gits at X-Case who listed Karen’s new computer case at £32.50 on the site, but when it came to checkout they added £8.95 for P&P and then another £7.25 VAT, bringing the total to £48.70). I’ve done a bit of online inspectigation and found a forum thread where some people have been complainining about their tendency to misrepresent stock levels so that might be something to bear in mind.

Categories
Critters Top Photos

Sunny afternoon

This afternoon, Bernard and I went for a walk ((usually this is defined as “I walked while he sat in his orange pushchair and watched the world go by”, but on this occasion, I mean it in the more conventional sense)). We stood on the railway bridge and waited for trains to pass under us.

church

Then we went through the churchyard and on to the park, where we witnessed some life-affirming graffiti.

postitive graffiti

On the way back we shared a Mr Whippy. We saw a moth that seemed to still be just barely alive, but this minor fact was of no significance to the ants.

moth

Categories
Critters

Frog

In March, we had a lawn installed. One of the things that was removed as part of the transformation was a non-functional water feature. Once upon a time it had been home to a frog or two, but I don’t think that any had lived there for a while, probably because I kept lifting the stones to shout “Look! Frogs!”

Too late we realised that actually, there might be benefits to having frogs living in your garden, specifically slug control.

Meanwhile, our back yard is a mess of pots and things – it’s one of those things that needs sorting out one day, when all of the higher priority stuff has been done. The other day I noticed that a green plastic tray, which had collected a decent amount of rainwater, was now teeming with tadpoles.

frog

It is our project to protect these little punctuation marks, keeping their water topped up, and maybe even building some kind of special tank which will protect them from predators, and giving them the best start in life possible. I shall call it a *froggery*.