Say it a bit louder.....

.... make you feel a little bit better.

What a hot day it's been.

I spent the morning practicing a few things that I've recently learned about my camera. Having spent a day on an "improver's" camera course, I've been inspired to point my camera in every direction at every opportunity. Lots of bad photos and a very few decent ones.

This all ties in with the fact that I didn't manage to win a spot on the Colne Valley calendar competition with any of the six shots I sent them!!!! (insert sad smiley here) There were 58 entrants, each submitting six photos and they only could pick thirteen of them, so I guess the odds were against me...... All entries will be exhibited though in September and October, so at least that's something.

I gave up walking and taking pictures when it got too hot. I retreated to the relative comfort of my local bowling club (see bowling cam) for refreshment, and indulged in a couple of handpulled Webster's Best Bitter.


Buzz buzz buzz buzz honey bee, honey bee, do what you like but don't sting me. A piece of clover with a waxy legged bumble bee near Ringstone Edge Reservoir. Just one of a series of shots taken using "manual" camera settings - I'm finally venturing away from the "auto" stuff and getting a bit more creative - twenty two quid well spent on the course then!!

Careful.

Spent the most part of the day trying to care about Big Brother. It's very difficult to get involved in it without the live feed. Come on Channel 4, bring it back.

Tried to watch Fistful of Dollars... fell asleep.

Ended up caring about my Pokemon far more than I ought to.

Let me just say.....

Be careful what you wish for!!

Too hot for me.

I actually got a chance to say, in live weather oriented conversation, to my neighbour and the free weekly paper delivery man.....

"Oh, it's too hot for my liking"

I nearly shouted "bingo" just after the words had left my mouth and jumped into passing conversation.

At least I have managed to solve the music playing, picture hosting and webcam issues that have been making a mockery of my blog. I nearly, and almost did, set up my own web server so I don't have to rely on them third party freebies to achieve the level of service you've all come to know and love.

I'm hungry and I need to get summat to eat..... and a cold beer!!

I'll be back to posting more pictures as soon as this hot weather subsides and I come back indoors.

By the light....

By the light of the silvery moon.

They don't half seem to come round fast, but it's full moon time again. I'm going to try and get out and do a bit of walking in the moonlight tonight, so if you're driving anywhere near Outlane, at about midnight, try not to run me over please.

Well, thanks to Tony... I've been tagged for a meme.... it's a nice easy one so bear with me.....

The Rules are such:

1) Put the link of the person who tagged you on your blog - Tony's blog - check!
2) Write the rules - you're already reading 'em - check!
3) Mention 6 things or habits of no real importance about you - see below - check!
4) Tag 6 persons adding their links directly - see below - check!
5) Alert the persons that you tagged them - check!

I laugh to myself as I nominate spice-the-cat; Rol; Worcester Dan; Maxxo; Yorkshire Pudding; Sophia

1= I often kiss or lick useful pieces of technology (cables; computers; phones; televisions; all fall under this heading).

2= I don't have a favourite colour or a lucky number.

3= I have no pets.

4= I love beer and I love cheese but I'm not that keen on tomatoes.

5= I watch too many "antiques" shows (Bargain Hunt; Dickinson's Real Deal; Antiques Roadshow; Cash in the Attic; all fall under this heading).

6= My eyes are a bit rubbish and I couldn't even tell you what colour they are.

Tada!!



I did promise to post my better snowdrop picture at some point.... and here it is!! I think this is a nice sense of spring.... Wish I'd tidied up the frame a bit.... picked up a bit of the dead twigs and stuff that are lying about in it. Oakwell Hall photography class on the 28th February.

My little stick....

With my little stick of Geekpool rock (to be sung in a George Formby stylee).

I am reassured this week that I am still (despite my attempts to become a tree hugging, earth mother) a confirmed geek, and the lettering runs through my core, so whichever way up you choose to view me, you should still be able to read it (although in theory from underneath it would say "keeg" but mirrored??).

I refer of course to my love of technology.

I found myself ordering, receiving and subsequently curled up on the settee hugging and kissing an RGBH/V Dsub to BNC/RCA cable. My only regret is that I wish it were slightly longer, but in the world of American cablery, beggars can't be choosers.... it's lovely and gold plated and that!!

I've order a 3.5mm to phono cable, and am actually excited about it arriving.

I've ordered a Wiikey V2 chip for my Nintendo Wii - Having finally managed to sort out the Nintendo DS, I now feel I have the courage to strip down the somewhat larger white games box and get my hands on some of that free game love.

My only bit of misguided tom-geekery this week was purchasing a database book which actually spends more time explaining how to open files in windows (Windows Vista I hasten to add, and I am still only on XP after my recent laptop disaster) than it does about how to construct a database.... Access databases are my weakest of the martial arts of Office-jitsu.

Mmmmm Marmite and cables everywhere......



A really great Ozzy Osbourne toy that I picked up for forty-nine pence.... includes remote control!! I can't find batteries small enough to fit the remote yet though!!

Depends.

It all depends on your perspective. Like Charlie Dickens once wrote - "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times".

And so it comes to pass that, what has been billed as the heaviest snowfall in nearly twenty years, has divided us into two distinct camps.....

For me, personally, I'm loving every minute of it - right up to the point where I am so run-down that my complexion has gone to pieces and I'm starting with a flu. I managed to walk six or seven miles today, and it was bloody hard, hot, sweaty, clammy work.

The other side of the coin is that I've never seen so many schools closed. I've never known anyone's work to be closed before (like Dawn's was today). It was good to see all the kids out sledging and enjoying themselves, but somewhere underneath it all, someone has claimed that the two days of disruption have cost the nation more than three and a half billion quid!!



The red ball rising over the Colne Valley - If you look real careful, you can just see Castle Hill on the extreme left horizon. A great walk and a lovely sunrise this morning.

Struggle.....

I ALWAYS say I should never drink and blog.....

I ALWAYS find material that I consider to be bloggable whilst drinking.......

Quandary.....

Is it the fact that I am drinking that makes life more bloggable, or is it that drinking makes me more perceptive to bloggable material..... or is it, as I suspect, that drinking simply makes me consider the mundane to be hilarious blog matter?

Cases in question.....

Drinking in the Jug and Bottle AKA "Drug and Brothel" with the rastas trying to sell me weed - I thought he said "do you want a wee?" to which I replied.... "No I'm off for a shit!!" - only joking!!

A young girl on the back seat of the bus, perturbed that I dare to sit there, moves her sprawled legs from the seat and proceeds to pretend that the bus is her office and her friends are her business clients on her mobile phone - "and if Jody asks, tell her I arranged it last Saturday and I didn't tell you 'til today!!" thereby incriminating her accomplices in the lie. I did particularly enjoy the ten minutes she spent pressing buttons and pretending to be texting or doing something with her phone when nobody was bothered about her.

Watching a young lady flicking through a book of guitar tabulations.... she was reading the classic Oasis hit - Don't look back in anger ..... she then flicked through to Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge over troubled waters - as she closed the book, I noticed, with immense kudos, that she was reading "Ukelele Chart Hits".........

Judge for yassen!!



Although this duck appeared outside the Riverhead in Marsden, my mum swears blind she saw it in Slawit..... I think it was a cuckoo!!!

C C C C Cold......

Apparently, and these are not my words, but apparently last night was the coldest night in Yorkshire.... ever, or at least since the recording of data was established, a trifling forty some years ago. Ironically, I couldn't tell you what that temperature was!!

Crisp day, crunchy, a bit frosty, a bit snowy, very icy.

Went for a walk down the canal from Slawit to Marsden.... Mum's just started walking as a new year resolution, so given the tricky conditions underfoot and inadequate walking equipment we did quite well to make it to the Riverhead public house for a stunning pint of American Pale Ale with its staggeringly good alcohol level - a fitting reward for the journey.

Spent the rest of the afternoon taking care of those twelfth night logistics.... ripping up christmas cards and burning down the christmas decorations..... saves on the loft space!!!



Self portrait at Scapegoat Hill!!

Jack Frost.

Man, it's officially VERY cold.

Update: Bath - fixed; Shower - new one installed; Boiler - waiting spare parts (possibly a week and I am not convinced that it will fix the problem when it arrives!!).

The gas fire is working overtime, and I am cuddled up with a quilt and a carbon monoxide alarm in case my quest to live in a draft free, superheated, micro-climate, should end anywhere near the wrong end of the disaster scale.

Snow came.... I got up for the customary post drinking, forgot to turn my electric blanket off, five AM whizz!! The ground outside was frosty.... the ground inside wasn't much better!! I went back to bed with a tshirt wrapped round my head like some sort of turban. Woke up at seven thirty.... lo and behold, it's been snowing.

I took an eight AM ride across town to get a new shower with my uncle.... the normally congested journey, was of course simply exacerbated by Joe Public's complete disregard of common sense and highway code.... when snow falls, it's motoring anarchy... It took a while!!

I'm not holding my breath that I'll have central heating again before Christmas now.



Quite literally - Up the garden path at seven thirty in the morning. A snowscape of small proportions. This here bunch of white stuff probably added thirty minutes onto our five mile trip this morning. Not the sort of thing you really want to wake up to when your central heating boiler's acting the lemon!!

Crud.

Well, my boiler has gone a bit screwy. It seems to be an annual occurrence and always seems to happen at roughly this time of year... i.e. when I might actually need it!! I called "the boiler man" and he came and took it apart, gave himself a full scale electric shock, told me it's knackered, and left it in a worse state than when he arrived.... charming.... the boiler now doesn't work at all!!

I now get to choose whether to pay for a new circuit board (about two hundred quid) or to replace the boiler (just over a grand!!).

I need a job!!

I am cuddled up on my sofa with a furry blanket and a bloody gas fire (which I hate). I have a carbon monoxide alarm on standby just in case the gas fire misbehaves - I've never trusted them.

Yesterday was cold, wet, foggy and miserable and full of boiler related unhappiness.

Today was so much better that I decided to go up to Norland Moor for a nice walk. I have only done this walk once before and it went a little bit wrong last time, so I was determined to do it right. It was muddier than anticipated, which I can only put down to yesterday's crappy weather.

The rest of the day was spent catching Pokemon... cooking.... taking Lemsip round to soothe Dawn's fevered brow.... watching "I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here" - which I'm finding strangely watchable this year, where three days into the show in previous years I had already lost interest.



I could've picked a dozen photos to commemorate my day, but I find this one equally pleasing and frustrating. This is one of many views across Norland Moor, looking directly North East and over the Calder Valley. You can just make out Wainhouse Tower poking above the horizon above Sowerby Bridge.

Gotta catch 'em all!

Hazy, lazy, Nintendo time days.

I keep meaning to get out on my bike or go out for a walk, but the weather..... oh the weather!! I wish it would make its mind up as to whether it's autumn or winter. Broadly speaking, we're supposed to have at least a couple more weeks of autumn left.... the hail storms and random storm force winds and fog and rain (torrential rain) are not really defining our season too well.

Some might say it's a typical Yorkshire autumn..... and even more so it's a typical Outlane autumn!! The wide main road here is a real open artery through which the weather truly gushes.
Roll on the winter beer festival season (There'll be loads of really strong dark beers)..... Of note:

The Star at Folly Hall - 26th November to 30th November 2008
Drop Inn at Elland - 4th December to 7th December 2008

So make sure you come and burgle my house over those dates - if I'm out then you'll have no worries otherwise I'll be the drunk one asleep on the sofa.... try not to wake me.



Be they alive or be they dead.... I'm just an old tree hugger at heart and I love this pair of dead trees in a field near the (very beautiful) village of Helme. A walk when the weather knew what it was doing.

Fogging hell.

I've (quite rightly) spent the day at home behind closed doors keeping out of the dank.

A day when the fog came down and it never went back up. A day when the bare branches of newly shorn trees dripped relentlessly. Muffled sights and deadened sounds sucked up into piles of leaves in the gutters.

Getting ready for the fire service's most busy night of the year!!



Landscape two - Looking into Llyn Llydaw - crystal clear, freezing cold, sunshine on water. Halfway up Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon to me and you!!)

Happy Diwali.

Regardless of the mythological explanation one prefers, what the festival of lights really stands for today is a reaffirmation of hope, a renewed commitment to friendship and goodwill, and a religiously sanctioned celebration of the simple - and some not so simple - joys of life. - Times of India editorial.

..... The festival of light is upon us. Lights, fireworks and sweets!! Every kids dream come true!! Forget your Halloween and your trick-or-treat nonsense.



Effing technology!! I tried to upload this very photograph a squillion and odd times, but for some bloody reason it kept rotating the image (anti-clockwise) by ninety degrees or 270 degrees (clockwise) whichever you prefer!!

Anyhow, this is an image I shot at the Huddersfield Festival of Lights last year during a performance by the Plasticiens Volants group. Catch a short video of it here (it's not my video).

Full moon.

Hurray..... I am unable to contain my excitement at the coming of the Harvest Moon of 2008 - At least that's what we call it here in England!!

It is, of course, too cloudy, too rainy, too blustery, too wet, too miserable to be able to SEE the moon, but trust me, it's up there somewhere. I saw it last night and it was already VERY bright.

Hello to my mum, who landed in Australia today - I got a text at about midday to say she'd arrived and all was well.

Been out walking in Beaumont Park today - never been there before but it's a nice enough place with scope for adventure. Two strange things that attracted my attention whilst there: A young lad walking across the park removing a pair of latex gloves and discarding them in a flower bed (Possible solvent abuser?) - Two young Asian lads watching each other's backs while one of them sauntered up to the main steps and jumped into a car (no doubt trading in some sort of substance or other) - I am such a sceptic!!

Walking in dogshit was the downside of my day.

Eating Dixons ice cream - the world's finest!!



Autumnal bounty - grid ref SE 11475 05025 - walking around Riding Wood and Ramsden reservoirs. A nice circular walk through the village of Holme. There's a bit of something for everyone on this ramble - woodlands, open moorland, streams, reservoirs, a great little village with a pub and a hobbit house underground with a round hobbit door.

An ill wind.

In a few weeks I will be forty. We are booked to go off to Wales for a few days to celebrate by walking up Mount Snowdon. I like to try some sort of active pursuit to celebrate my birthdays, and last year was a Lake District walk from Keswick to the top of Catbells. With this in mind, I thought I had better get back into my walking shoes and get some miles under my belt so I don't end up breaking myself over the course of the weekend that we are away. I found a book of local walks that was written by one of my old school teachers and decided to get out there and crack a few Colne Valley circular walks.... I managed a three mile ramble around Blackmoorfoot Reservoir and into the village of Helme and then I walked a four mile route around Deer Hill Reservoir. Today is the first time I've had to use my new waterproofs in anger!!

I had a great walk and the book that took me there was very good too.


Deer Hill End Road..... a self portrait that made me laugh. Wearing my VERY unfashionable walking hat under my hood, complete with waterproof pants..... you can see the rain clouds that passed overhead as they disappear into the distance behind me.

Turned out.....

... nice again.

A trip to Formby, a place I knew little about, yielded an empty, sandy, windswept day by the sea. Usual stuff.... eating sand with sandwiches, picking over the myriad of tide-strewn detritus, getting wet, windswept, and generally just plain old sandy.

I heartily recommend the beach at Formby (near Liverpool) for anyone looking for a quiet place for romantic walks..... dog walking...... shell scavenging..... and even (squirrel pox permitting) the spotting of red squirrels.


Just a sample of the seabirds that you can buy in Formby. This one comes with its on sand dunes and includes delivery anywhere within a ten miles radius.

Moving along....

.... at the pace of.... well, of course a picture speaks a thousand words, or so they say!!

I'm trying to write a "reading" for my cousin's wedding.... unsuccessfully, I hasten to add!! This is made doubly difficult by having submitted a first draft for approval and now completely changing my mind!!

A simple close-up of a snail in my garden that appeared in the middle of the lawn while I hacked a few trees to bits earlier this "summer".

Bam!!

Kicking it up a notch with the spice weazle.

What a crap day. Foggy, rainy, cold, miserable..... woke up to the distant sound of a recycling wagon making its way along my street. It's a long street and the house numbers go well over a thousand.

The fact that I could hear the wagon could mean any of the following:
a) I slept very late.
b) The wagon was early.
c) I had already missed it.
d) I had to get up and check which way it was going and whether I could get my bin out in time.
e) I would not be able to find anything to pull on to go out in the rain.

In golfing pants and flip flops I trundle out with my bin, relieved that I haven't missed another monthly collection.

I like recycling. I like the fact that my rubbish bin, which is collected weekly, rarely has enough in it to warrant collecting it more than monthly. I'm in the process of ordering a compost bin to further reduce my landfill footprint.

I DO have issues with the way our recycling is done......

a) We have co-mingled collection, which means that paper, cardboard, tin cans and plastic bottles are all mixed together in a big green bin.
b) We currently have no glass collection service.

The problems with co-mingled recyclables is that they are actually fairly worthless. Most local councils that opt for co-mingled are just embarking on a number crunching exercise to obtain the relevant targets with no regard for what happens to our rubbish, other than the fact that it's less in our conventional grey bins.

Take for example plastic bottles..... from co-mingled waste, it's not cost effective enough to get someone to sort it all out so we ship it out to china, and thirty miles away from the place that is shipping it out there, there's a place that's importing plastic bottles from Germany.

The councils that do collect glass and mix it all up are effectively destroying the value..... co-mingled glass is broken up and used for creating roads (i.e. another form of landfill) - Those glass bins at the supermarket are much better when you separate your own colours of glass.... one bin for green... one brown.... one white.... the value of glass collected in this manner is much higher and can be put to good use.

There is actually no substitute for finding a good recycler..... there's no real lazy solution.

What to do when you can't be arsed to blog?

4) Widget!!

Invest some time in a crappy widget that will inevitably slow down your page loading times..... I've got loads of 'em over there on the right hand side if you don't believe me.... one plays music.... one is my (sporadically updated) bowling cam..... one for the moon phase.... one for the weather.... an Iraqi civilian death counter..... and even a defunct polling booth.... and here's another for good measure!!

My blog is worth $6,774.48.
How much is your blog worth?

Making an example.

Sometimes I wonder how I can be so busy, when in reality I'm not actually, really, doing anything at all.

What have I been doing since Sunday?

Well, I resolved to NOT go out for a drink this week... It's only Tuesday and I am wondering whether I might have made a bad choice. May is a month of celebration of the humble pint of mild, and there's a couple of *mild and cider festivals cracking off this coming weekend, so I thought I might enjoy them more if I err on the side of sobriety this week.

* Three Pigeons mild festival Saturday and Sunday (10 milds) - Rat and Ratchet mild and cider festival Saturday and Sunday (15 milds and some cider).

So that's what I HAVEN'T been doing.

I've been glued to the snooker (an annual occurrence) at the Sheffield Crucible - Yes, we all know it's really boring, but like Big Brother, the more you watch it, the more you get sucked in and enjoy it.

Spent half a day today looking for:
a) Mario Kart Wii - with steering wheel - (found in the first shop I went to)
b) Wii Fit - (Gave up looking after the twelfth shop)
c) A **Rubik's Cube - (Gave up looking after the ninth shop)

** Apparently the Rubik's Cube is once again a "must have" toy for kids.... Some shops have not had any stock of them since December!! I am so out of touch with the youth of today!! Obviously I still have my original "cube" but I'm sure a birthday gift didn't ought to be so tatty!!

Obviously, after purchasing Mario Kart for my Wii.... I've invested a little bit of time and effort into doing some of that, and playing against Riv.

Spent a few hours yesterday evening servicing (well, helping Riv to service) a bike for the Turtle, which is now, once again, greasy and almost road worthy!!

Satnav... I've been trying to work out why the Nokia LD-3W is such a poor bluetooth GPS receiver. After quite a bit of digging, it turns out that it's because the unit operates in "static navigation" whereby your position data is averaged, and therefore it's more accurate when travelling at speed than it is for walking around some fields (or indeed being (mis)guided up and down the same street outside the Manchester Arms in Hull several times to the point of embarrassment). So.... after much digging and sniffing around the interweb, I've found a utility that lets me hack into the bluetooth GPS receiver and turn off the static navigation... I tried it out today and it does genuinely seem a bit better..... it needs a more exhaustive test, but that would involve me getting off the sofa!! Anyone interested in the Nokia LD-3W should look here, it's most useful.

I baked some bread... then ate it.

Caught up on my Sky+ recorded programmes (Heroes (season 2), Love Soup, Pushing Daisies (season 1), Dexter (season 1).

Hoovered around the house - a task LONG overdue. Bleached my dishcloths (I never know why I don't just throw them away!!). Unclogged the bathroom sink.

Hung a window mounted bird feeding station on my lounge window.

Listened to Terry Pratchett's - The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents - part of Mr. Pratchett's 60th birthday (28th April) celebrations on Radio 7.

Played endless hours of "brain training" type activities on my Nintendo DS, and an equal amount of time playing "brain numbing" type games too. Also played a fair amount of Pogo.

Drunk a lot of coffee!!

And so..... it would appear that there have not actually been enough hours in the couple of days since my last post to fit all of this nothingness into.... where did I get the extra day from?

Hell to pay.

Customer service. I bang on about it. I never stop being aware of it. I give credit where it's due, and I certainly don't hold back when I've been let down... and let down, I have been!!

Sky customer services.... waited in all day for the engineer to come to fix my unsightly satellite dish. I took great pains to explain that my house is three stories high, and beyond that the dish is attached to the chimney.... so imagine my chagrin when Conrad arrives and his opening gambit is:

"You've no chance mate!"

Mere fractions of an hour later and Sky customer services are on the phone to me telling me confidently that, not only will Conrad not fix my problem, but I am not a Sky customer, that they never installed the system, that I've never bought any equipment from them, and that I don't subscribe to their services.

"I do." I protest.

"You don't" comes the voice down the wire.....

Pantomime ensues for several minutes before I suggest she looks harder at the computer screen.... much harder!!

A twenty minute phone call establishes that I do indeed have Sky TV... that I am a paid up subscriber, that they fitted the equipment, that they supplied everything, and ..... Guess what??

We finally establish that I have a high roof, and that Conrad will not fix my problem.

Someone else is going to call on Thursday this week, and I fully expect round two of exactly the same thing.

I could go on and regale you with further tales of dissatisfaction, but then what will I moan about tomorrow?