Aquarionics

Let them eat cake

An eventful day. Well, comparatively. Nobody has phoned me telling me I've won a million on the lottery, which would surprise me. On the other hand, no people demanding five grand in unpaid tax. On the third hand, a lack of cheese engineered from Brussels sprouts seeking my destruction with the aid of exploding smiley faces.

Swings and roundabouts, then.

Yesterday Pol brought my camera back, which is very good. Today LoneCat finished making a birthday cake for me. It's very, very nice, and looks like an Aquarium :-)

Photos of said cake are in the gallery. Oh, yes, and I've gotten around to recoding the Gallery for Epistula. Go Me. On top of this, I've put the new design onto the Forever continuous story system, and done some behind the scenes tweaking to make bits slightly easier. Part of this new stuff includes the separating the Forever user system from the prospective AqCom one, which has the side-benefit that for the first time since November, new people can get Forever accounts. What? You don't know what Forever is? go have a look. It's very odd.

The two main topics in blogdom at the moment seem to be the Columbia incident and the war. My position on the Columbia thing is an unpopular one. I believe that seven astronauts perishing whilst doing something they enjoyed is less tragic than most of the rest of the deaths in this sad world. I've killfiled all the threads in the newsgroups I read on the subject because I find the arguments tedious, and I've given up arguing with those who keep telling me how tragic it is. Yes, it's unfortunate. Yes, it's sad. Move on. It may be simply that at my age (Younger than the ship) I don't understand what it means for those who saw the first time. They died in service of their country. I fear, to paraphrase Terry Pratchett, that they are merely leaving early to avoid the rush.

Down by the canal

It’s a nice day. The sun is shining in the sky, said sky is as blue as the glasses that gaze upon you from the top left of this page. I decided upon this Sunny Friday afternoon that it I should go and do some writing beside the riverbank. This was deemed Good, and so I packed up my notepad, camera and pens and wandered though Reading Town Centre to the lock, where I sat on a handy wall and gazed across the river, and the occasional barge that drifted lazily by. After a while, I withdrew the notebook, found a new page, and drew a box in the top left hand corner, and wrote something in it. Then I draw a similar box in the bottom right, and wrote something else in it. (Which was, in fact “ATLHEA”, as the first box was “OUAT” standing for, in reverse order, “Once Upon A Time” and “And They Lived Happily Ever After”, for this was a flow-chart of the plot of The Novel) then I thought for a bit, and drew a third box below the first, and labeled it “Lamp-post” before crossing it out and writing “Awake” instead. These things mean things in my mind. As I was drawing the forth box, my pen ran out. Cursing slightly (For I was obviously on a role here, and could have kept going all day) I attempted to withdraw a replacement pen from my bag, (For the price I paid for this box of fifty pens, I would be surprised to see them draw three whole boxes, so I had plenty) but was thwarted by the pens not being there. As I carefully unpacked the bag of reference stuff (Containing, in order, a dictionary, an atlas, a book of Greek mythology, and the camera. My work-centre at home adds the complete works of Shakespeare, a dictionary of Idioms, and an artist’s mannequin to that library) I noticed that there were little red spots moving around the wall I was sitting upon.

For all my resolution to work in harmony with nature and in the piece and quiet by the riverbank, it doesn’t extend to being eaten alive by red ants, so I moved.

I moved, in fact, all the way to Café Italia in the shopping centre where they serve tea and really nice toasted sandwiches, reasoning that since the café was beside the river (Which is actually a canal, but I’m not fussy), then so was I. I drank my tea, ate my sandwich (Toasted baguette style, chicken and avocado) and boxblocked the first chapter or so of The Novel, then wrote a page or so. I resisted the urge to get another cup of tea, and wandered out. I wandered out, in fact, roughly as far as the Kitten Tree.

The Kitten Tree is a pub. In fact, it’s called “The Litten Tree” but will always now and forever not be known as such. It seduced me with a cup of tea when I got a flash of inspiration as I was passing it, which I then wrote while eating croissant and drinking tea.

So, generally a good day then.

On a related note, If I was to suggest that on the 28th June, at about seven-ish, I was going to suggest a Gathering, what would people’s reaction be?

Guaranteed

Desk Photo

This is a test of the emergancy flickr photoposting system. This is not a drill, it's a photo. if it were a drill, there'd be holes.

Duh.

The externalness of data

I have previously been accused of “NIH” syndrome.

“Not Invented Here”, a state whereby you refuse do something one way because it’s someone elses.

And to some extent that’s true. I don’t use Blogger anymore because Aquarionics grew beyond it, and the custom system allows for more fun things than the old system did.

However, the more recent additions to the site – the linklog subsystem, the moblog subsystem (Which is, in fact, merely the webcam subsystem with a new name) have never had the time and effort spent on them that they deseve. Besides which, Del.icio.us and Flickr both do the jobs better and are much nicer in a sort of “All together” type social structure.

Plus, tagging is neat.

The Linklog has been Delicious for a while now, and now the Moblog has Flickrd into existance, plus – as you may have noticed – I can post to the journal directly from my Futurephone

Woo.

Questionable Pooh

I’m ninty-nine point nine percent sure this is supposed to be snow.

Cambridge

Puppies

In the long-held traditions of bloggery, I cannot compete in the realm of cat pictures. Instead, dog pictures: