Matlock Bath
Back from our short jaunt to Yorkshire and much photo uploading, deleting, and basic processing is taking place, as one might expect. Our first stop – unless you count the service station when I needed to pee, and I'm not so you shouldn't (and, besides, there are no photos of the service station or of anything that occurred in the toilets (you'll be immensely pleased to hear (really should stop nesting comments inside parentheses now))) – was in the Peak District, so called on account of its peaks and it being a district if I were to hazard a guess. We parked up in a lovely little place called Matlock Bath and had a wander up and down its main, winding road, checking out the shops selling interesting touristy tat (the missus bought a rather lovely, textured hoodie that looked like it could have been designed by Giger) and enjoying the views of the hills and houses, the river, and the people. Very nice place indeed. For #MonochromeMonday curated by +Bill Wood, +Charles Lupica, +Jerry Johnson, and +Hans Berendsen. Google+: View post on...
Murder At Metathesis Mansion
Well, this is luxury. I’m in the back seat of a car appreciating the fine stitching on the initials “H.W.” emboridered into the leather, and I’m taking in a view of the countryside just outside the city. It’s raining, but then it’s always raining. Still, trees make a nice change from grey buildings and flickering lights even though I’m not sure I could stand it for long. “Penny for your thoughts, Mister Rake?” asks Joseph. Joseph’s my driver; not long-term, of course. I haven’t suddenly come into a fortune while I’ve been away, no. Joseph was sent to fetch me at the request of his employer who right now and for a tidy little daily retainer also happens to be my employer. “Just admiring nature, Joseph,” I tell him. “I had a potted plant once but this is quite different.” I can tell from his eyes in the rear view mirror that he’s smiling at that but he doesn’t say anything. We’ve already had a short chat on the drive out from the city so there’s not a lot else to say. Joseph’s young and friendly and has told me bits and pieces about life working up at the mansion but I figure it’s easier to not press him too hard and conduct my full investigation when I get there. And if that means the case takes a little longer, well, my wallet certainly won’t complain. * The mansion’s a little smaller and a little more rundown than I was expecting but Mrs Warmer is just the same as when she surprised me in the office five days earlier. “Joseph!” she addresses the driver in her nasally voice. “Take Mister Rake’s bag to the guest room in the west wing after you’ve parked the car. Mister Rake,” she says to me, slipping a hand around the crook of my arm, “let me give you a quick tour and then you’ll want to freshen up I have no doubt.” I hope she’s not making some comment about my suit because it’s the only one I’ve got so I just smile and nod and let her take me for a quick wander through the house. It’s your standard mansion layout with a large entrance hall and its obligatory black-and-white tiles and required-by-law impressively wide staircase. Doors to the left and right at the front of the building lead to drawing rooms and dining rooms while there’s a gentlemen’s room to the rear and the servants’ quarters along with kitchen and pantry too. Upstairs it’s bedrooms, a cloak room, and a small library with some nice views to the tree-lined drive we...
Nadine Dorries: Woman Out Of Time
If you’ve heard anything about the Member of Parliament for Mid Bedfordshire on those there internets you might conclude that Nadine Dorries is a lying lunatic completely detached from reality and desperate to push forward the views of a small group of sub-moronic religious nutjobs still clinging to the hope of a return to the good old days of the Middle Ages using the only means they know how – lying, manipulating, ignoring, lying (again), bullying, distorting, and lying (they really like lying) – but it might surprise you to learn that she hasn’t always been a figure of deserved ridicule by anyone on the planet with four or more working brain cells: for seven minutes in 2007 Nadine Dorries did nothing too annoying! Happy times! Other than that, though, it’s widely known that when it comes to batshit crazy levels of insanity in the Conservative Party there’s an exponential curve that includes the Boris Johnson Zone of Hilarity at around the 80% mark and the Nadine Dorries Termination Point as the line bends around and approaches infinity. Some people might wonder how someone who’s just about smart enough to persuade people in whichever constituency she’s claiming she lives in these days to vote for her can also be so out of touch with how the world operates but the answer, if you do a little research, is quite straightforward; just as a blind person becomes more attuned to hearing when the sense of sight is deprived, so Dorries has become attuned to living for hundreds of years thanks to a massive deficiency in the sense of common. History throws up some interesting facts about the life of the surprisingly long-lived Nadine Dorries: From 1882 to 1887 Nadine Dorries was a member of the Amazing Twunts acrobatic troupe, touring Europe with the famous Dingbats Circus. It was during this period that Nadine met Hernando Nando (not related to the restaurant chain), the resident strong man. His resemblance to a fat Jesus was all the proof she needed that the end of the world was imminent and so she married him, hoping to curry favour during the end times she hoped were only a few weeks away. Nadine and Hernando had a child, Maria, and four years later Nadine caught up to the fact that her husband – now a professional wrestler who fought in Honduras under the name El Miraculo – was probably not about to lead a select few to heaven while the rest of the world burned. Nadine filed for divorce from Hernando, citing irreconcilable stalking as the grounds. Of Maria, from 1889 there was no record...
Mountains, North of Beijing
It's the weekend so it must be time for me to look back through photos from yesteryear (anything I took before last year) and see if I can re-process them or, in some cases, process them for the first time. This is a shot of some of the mountains to the north of Beijing (in case you missed the title) with a road winding its way between them as shot from a vantage point on the Great Wall of China (as opposed to another Great Wall that may have been passing by). Google+: View post on...
Dear Sex Spambot
Dear Sex Spambot, Regarding your recent post on FriendFeed: There are two sexes: males and females. Males are one sex. Females are another sex. Male is a sex. Female is also a sex. I’m explaining all this because when you say you want to meet someone who is game for a really awesome, passionate sex you are effectively asking for a person who is game for a male, or game for a female. Arguably, it’s a valid sentence but I suspect that wasn’t your intention. The use of the indefinite article immediately limits your opportunities for sex spamming as Grammar Nazis will be put off by the assumed lack of intellectual stimulation that any encounter will provide. The verb “to have” is one of the most commonly used in the English language and, subsequently, conjugation of it is fairly well understood by every English speaker. In your second sentence you express a preference for guys (a plural form, you’ll note) but then use the third person singular conjugation of the verb (“has”); this mix of singular and plural terms has the effect of making you appear imbecilic. Sentences typically require a verb to make the most sense and your final one lacks this feature. “Checkout” is a noun; “check out” is what you really needed there. You’re really not doing the sex spambot business any favours with this basic grammatical error. You have a lovely...
My Computers
For no other reason than spotting that it was the 31st anniversary of the launch of the ZX81 recently I decided to take a trip down memory lane at the computers I’ve owned, loved, and not-quite-loved and how I became the rich, world-famous web developer still waiting to become famous or earn any riches that I am today. Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K Oh, how I loved this small, warm computer with its rubber keyboard! This computer taught me to program and, since I’m a web developer these days, that means I owe it and Sir Clive Sinclair a great deal of thanks. But not money because, if you’ll remember, I don’t have any. In fact, since I knew I was getting this computer months in advance I started teaching myself how to program before I even had it, writing lines of pseudo-code guessed from program listings in magazines down in little orange notebooks, waiting for the day to arrive when I could finally realise I was way off thinking that’s how software worked. It had some issues, of course, but only if you compared it to the big rival of the times: the Commodore 64. But why would you? Sure, the Speccy’s sound wasn’t that great (single channel, BEEP heaven!) and the 8×8 sprites were limited to a single background and foreground colour which often meant blocks of colours changing as characters in games passed in front of the scenery, but even still, it was a wonderful machine. I wrote a text adventure game engine in my teens on this thing, capable of parsing input into verbs and nouns and working out valid or invalid responses; just thinking about it makes me want to do the same thing now! Note to self: do that. And speaking of games… this here is nostalgia overload, my friends: I moved from the BASIC I’d already learnt to Z80 assembly language coding, directly PEEKing and POKEing parts of the memory to do things you couldn’t otherwise do in an effort to reproduce some of the things I enjoyed playing so much but, eventually, something interesting popped up on the market and I was able to persuade my parents that it would make a lovely birthday present and Christmas present rolled into one. Amstrad CPC 6128 Gone (well, not really, but almost) were the tape cassettes of the Spectrum era as the Amstrad came complete with a built-in floppy disk drive. And not just any floppy disk drive! A three-inch floppy disk drive! None of your three-point-five inch or five-and-a-quarter inch nonsense for Amstrad users! I almost loved this computer with its Locomotive BASIC...
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