Beneath the Pendulum

Burning bibles on Halloween

2009-10-18T16:06:43Z

It's what Jesus would have wanted!

Marc Grizzard, of Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, North Carolina, says that the first King James translation of the Bible is the only true declaration of God’s word, and that all others are “satanic”.

Pastor Grizzard and 14 other members of the church plan to burn copies of the other “perversions” of Scripture on Halloween, 31 October.

They're planning a barbecue as well. Presumably using the burning gospels to grill the sausages.

I'm not a Christian, but I'm pretty sure they're doing it wrong.

I can hear lots of fireworks.

2009-10-17T17:35:51Z

... oh, it's Diwali.

Happy Diwali!

Talk like a pirate day

2009-09-19T08:38:38Z

Maalin wanaagsan!

I'm afraid that's all the Somali I know.

The world is a noisy place

2009-09-16T11:51:02Z

Wow, it's noisy.
I had a few kilos of ear wax splurted out of my ears this morning after being almost deaf for 2 weeks. I can hear birds singing again.
And this keyboard sounds very loud.

My left ear is still a bit deaf, apparently it's water. Should be okay once it's dried out.

It's a thing, for your thumb!

2009-09-07T21:28:02Z

You know the way you hold open a book with your thumb?

Buy one of these and enter the world of 21st century efficient thumb-usage:

The ThumbThing!

Seen via http://unclutterer.com/

Honest, the moon's made out of wood!!

2009-08-28T17:37:18Z

A treasured piece at the Dutch national museum - a supposed moon rock from the first manned lunar landing - is nothing more than petrified wood, curators say.

It was given to former Prime Minister Willem Drees during a goodwill tour by the three Apollo-11 astronauts shortly after their moon mission in 1969.

Oops.

So either:
(a) the moon's made out of petrified wood, or
(b) the USA played a mean trick on the Dutch, or
(c) THE MOON LANDING WAS A HOAX!!!!!!!

or, I guess someone screwed up.

Currently reading...

2009-08-24T21:12:07Z

A History of Venice by John Julius Norwich.

Picked up second-hand a while ago, but just got round to reading it.
Awesome stuff.

Interestingly, Venice had a state provided health service by 1335.

Snail Apocalypse

2009-08-17T12:43:13Z

I cut the hedge in the back garden today for the first time since we moved in 3 years ago. I hacked it right back, hopefully it'll recover. It's rather brown and woody, since most of the leaves have be chopped off.

And it was FULL of snails. They ended up scattered over the lawn and patio. There's something a little tragic than the sound of snails getting squashed underfoot... I think I'll sweep the surviving ones back under the remaining hedge.

Wot I did on my hols

2009-08-16T10:00:00Z

I'm back from holiday.

It was very good despite some slightly dodgy weather. Considering the summer we've had it we were lucky not to get rained on every day, but we only had 1 or 2 soggy moments and I managed to get sunburned.

We spent a week in St Ives in Cornwall down in the far south west of Britain, about a 300 mile drive (which is nothing for USA people, but really quite a long way for us Brits). It was (as usual for us) a walking holiday with organised walks (so we didn't get lost, and so the kids had other kids to play with).

There were mostly cliff top coastal walks (lots of ups and downs) and some field & woods walks (lots of blackberries). Daniel did a fair bit of walking considering his age, but I carried him on my shoulders a bit more than I would have liked (he's heavy!). Thomas clocked up 25 miles over 5 walks, not particularly long for him, but then we did some really short ones because of Daniel.

We also did some beach stuff - Daniel got sand *everywhere* - and a visit to an animal park (mainly birds).

It simultaneously felt longer than a week and much much shorter, which I think is a sign of a good holiday.

Waistcoat

2009-08-06T08:48:54Z

I have a sudden hankering to wear a waistcoat. A big, bright, brocade waistcoat.

I fear that watching Desperate Romantics is affecting me...

VCR broke

2009-07-16T11:04:59Z

Our VHS player/recorder seems to have died. Or at least dying.

And we have lots of kids videos we can't play any more.
I wonder if they even sell VCRs nowadays...

Hmmm... maybe I'll check ebay.

Swim boy

2009-07-15T20:16:27Z

Thomas had his school swimming gala today. He was in two races and came 3rd and joint 2nd (out of 6).
His team came joint 1st!

He doesn't get it from me, I only drink like a fish. :D

My foot still hurts a bit. Maybe I broke something after all. It's a little late to bother going to the doctor though.

kid stuff

2009-07-14T22:23:42Z

Thomas had his school sports day today. Daniel and I went along to watch, cheer and get wet in the rain. Thomas was in the 'football slalom relay' and 'hockey slalom relay'. His team won the hockey relay and I think they came second in the football slalom (he wasn't sure either).

His team won the overall prize. :-)

Daniel has turned into Mr Grumpy-Bossy-Pants. I mentioned that the sky was blue and he started insisting that it was, in fact, green. He then got upset and outraged once he went outside and saw it was BLUE! It's like reality is conspiring against him!

Purple toze all in my .... sock.

2009-06-30T11:41:13Z

My little toe (the one I banged on Sunday) has turned purple. It's not very fetching.
It doesn't hurt much, but the rest of the foot has started to ache because I'm walking strangely to avoid putting pressure on the sore place.

Yum

2009-06-29T20:57:13Z

Fizzy red wine is rather good. And 14% ABV is quite strong.

Book Meme

2009-06-14T18:56:07Z

Don’t take too long to think about it.
Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you.
First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.
Copy the instructions into your own post.
nicked from donnickcottage amongst others...

Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
Use Of Weapons - Ian M. Banks
The C Programming Language - K&R
Winnie the Pooh - A. A. Milne
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S.Lewis
The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
Kalimantaan - C.S. Godshalk
Sandman (graphic novels) - Neil Gaiman
The Diskworld books by Terry Pratchett
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig (I don't recall finishing this, but the beginning & middle parts stick with me)
Flashman - George MacDonald Fraser
Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco
The Dungeon Master's Guide - E. Gary Gygax
Doctor Dolittle - Hugh Lofting
The Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula LeGuin

Most of these weren't exactly life-changing, but they're the ones I remember most strongly.

Swan-fu

2009-05-29T13:55:32Z

Man uses live swan to beat up victim

Obviously, purists prefer the twin mallard technique.

Playing with Javascript

2009-05-23T20:27:33Z

I've been trying out some JavaScript coding.
To my surprise it's actually a decent language with some very nifty features.

Anyway, here's a few things I've thrown together:
A bunch of very naughty, independent letters... you can change the text.
This uses the same principles but is a bit more basic...

Piggy Flu

2009-05-11T17:03:01Z

A local school (the posh private one) is closed for a week due to a suspected case of swine flu.

So the next door neighbour's kid has a week off.

He's in our front room at the moment, playing with Thomas. I can't hear any sneezing. :-)

Mutant Cakes

2009-05-03T19:17:08Z

Here's some of the cakes Daniel and I baked.

They tasted better than they looked.

Baking

2009-05-03T07:27:59Z

I helped Daniel make some fairy cakes yesterday. But since we don't have a muffin tin we just put the cake cases onto a flat baking tray. And we put too much mixture in some of the cases. And the cakes expanded in all weird directions.

So they're not fairy cakes, but deformed mutant monster cakes!

Still tasty though.

Dreamwidth

2009-05-01T20:40:08Z

If any cares, I've got some Dreamwidth invite codes...

tin

2009-04-11T19:51:10Z

I forgot to mention, it was our 10 year wedding anniversary on Thursday. 10 years is tin/aluminium and Kathy bought me a case of cider (it's in tins!). Am currently drinking a few cans.
I bought her choccies...

Greasing the Monkey

2009-04-11T16:45:08Z

Still no job. Not that I've applied for any yet.
I've been working through the career/personality assessments from the Outplacement company and perusing a lot of employment sites. There aren't many jobs for my skillset, most programming jobs seem to be for web programming positions. But there are a few, that I'll be applying for soon.

Meanwhile, I'm looking after the kids a lot. Or kid, at the moment, since Thomas is in Wales on a camping trip with the Scouts. Daniel and I baked some cheesy biscuits. He wanted to make fairy cakes, but we don't have any self-raising flour (or raising agents). I've told him that they're fairy cheesy biscuits.

To keep my programming muscles working, I've installed Greasemonkey, a Firefox add-on that lets you run your own Javascript scripts on web pages to alter them. I've never used Javascript before, but it seems pretty straightforward. I've written something to let me ljcut long entries on my LJ friends list. Mainly to ljcut Feeds from blogs that are interesting to read once, but are always very long...

Mother's Day

2009-03-22T14:47:26Z

Happy Mother's Day to all the Mums out there. Unless you're in the US in which case I guess you have to wait. :)
I let the kids choose presents for Kathy. Thomas got her some chocolates, but Daniel chose a fluffy toy duck which goes quack if you squeeze it. She nearly got some bunny ears and a Dora the Explorer balloon, so it was a lucky escape.