I'm sure I've looked for this before now and failed to find it.
On a completely different subject, on the news yesterday they had some woman on complaining about IP addresses being used to track down naughty file sharers to throw the book at them. She came out with the line "IP addresses are a long series of numbers which means that it's easy to transpose digits when recording them and therefore throw the wrong person in jail". I can't see what's wrong with just Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V myself.
And on a second different subject, I've finally decided to put the hard roof on the car when I came out of work the other day at 5pm and had to scrape thick ice off the inside of the windscreen.
Yesterday people asked for proof of my new-found skill. It's not easy filming your left hand with your right, particularly when it's full of heavy earthenware, but here is my attempt to do so. Repent all you unbelievers:
The school will only let Sam learn one instrument at a time so he's gone for violin, which means he will have to learn to play drums at home. Clearly I need to learn to play them first.
So we took the plunge and bought a fairly cheap electronic kit last week and I've been learning from a book for the last 4 days. I have to say, I'm actually not at all shabby at it. It's a lot easier than learning to play a proper instrument.
The choice has been made - violin and drums.
Are there any other two instruments that could strike more fear into the hearts of the parents of a seven year old who wants to learn how to play something?
Headaches - we face you head on and embrace you.
| Day number | Overnight stay location | Country | Mileage for leg (approx) | Cumulative mileage |
| 0 | March House | UK | 0 | 0 |
| 1 | Bretagne, cabin 6307 | La Manche | 12 | 12 |
| 2 | Mimizan | France | 404 | 416 |
| 3 | Mimizan | France | 0 | 416 |
| 4 | Andorra La Vella | Andorra | 328 | 744 |
| 5 | Barcelona | Spain | 123 | 867 |
| 6 | Barcelona | Spain | 0 | 867 |
| 7 | Beziers | France | 176 | 1043 |
| 8 | Toulon | France | 180 | 1223 |
| 9 | Menton | France | 112 | 1335 |
| 10 | Aosta | Italy | 240 | 1575 |
| 11 | Lichtenstein | Lichtenstein | 260 | 1835 |
| 12 | Strasbourg | France | 204 | 2039 |
| 13 | Maastricht | Netherlands | 182 | 2221 |
| 14 | Den Haag | Netherlands | 143 | 2364 |
| 15 | Stutton | UK | 40 | 2404 |
| 16 | March House | UK | 172 | 2576 |
The car is cleaned. The headlight deflectors, red triangle, spare bulbs, GB sticker and high-viz jacket are armed and ready.
I think I'm the most apprehensive about the numbers in red. The first one is the second longest leg, and goes up through the Pyranees. It could take about 8 hours of concentrated driving. The second is similar, but up the Alps instead, and the third one involves a long journey travelling the length of Switzerland.
Given that we'll also be passing through countries not listed because we aren't having an overnight stay in them (Monaco, Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, and a quick foray into Austria) that's 13 countries - unlucky for some but hopefully not for us.
The total mileage is also a lower bound of my estimation. It doesn't include the distance the two ferries travel. Also it is based on most direct route from place to place, and therefore avoids all the detours we have planned (e.g. heading North a bit from the South coast of France to drive over the Millau Viaduct, going around the Monaco Grand Prix circuit a few times, or navigating the St Bernard Pass out of The Italian Job).
Watch this space.
I'm sure I've looked for this before now and failed to find it.
Today I heard about an organisation that asks potential employees to complete an aptitude test. The test consists of 20 multiple choice questions, each of which has four possible answers which the candidate must pick from. Apparently the test questions are supposed to be pretty difficult, which is why they set the pass mark to 4. Can anyone else see a problem with this? I'm not going to name the organisation.
On another issue, I'd like to publicly state that SimonG isn't as rubbish as people think - he's come up with something brilliant today, which for now must remain secret. Well done mate.
A bumper crop. Anyone got any custard?
Now that summer is here there's lots to do in the grounds of March House and Claire has been busy planting, transplanting and digging the estate so that we'll end up with a garden that looks rather nice.
In her toils today she dug up this curio. It's a small plane about 6cm long and its made out of lead, which is why it looks all floppy (easily soft enough to bend by hand) and is surprisingly heavy. Anyone have a clue as to what sort of plane it's meant to be?
More interesting things dug up to appear in the future, including a glass bloater paste bottle, part of a television, a vertebra and a golf ball.
The negative side:
This QVC item was just shown on the television so naturally, as part of being grumpy on a Saturday morning, I had to fire off an email complaining and demanding scientific evidence behind their claims. They are going to think I'm a right grumpy git.
Interestingly the customer service page of QVC where you can send a form email is titled "Customer Service" including the surrounding quotes. It's amazing how damaging quotation marks can be - they give off a lovely sarcastic message.
Oh, and in the last entry several of you were correct. It was the handwriting recognition software on my clipboard. I've now trained it and get much better results.