Too Young To Be Grumpy

It's been a few days since I last blogged, and I must apologise.

I've been busy at work building a general neural network, which has taken alot of my time. I don't, of course, blog during work hours *cough*. A neural network is used for recognising patterns in data, and it's based on the way the brain works, supposedly. It seems a fairly simple concept, although I have yet to find out whether my implementation (in Java) actually works.

I'm really happy that the pumpkins, that I "only" planted four weeks ago, have germinated and are growing - quite vigourously. I've repotted a number of the sunflowers that were also growing madly. My Wife's tomatos (no, not those) are growing well, and we've got some more grow bags to plant up the peppers and chillis. The vegetables in the veg patch aren't doing so well yet - I guess the slug nematodes we put in a week ago, aren't working well enough yet. It's all go in the garden.

This weekend we went back up to Monmouth to see Mother-in-law, with the difference that this time she came back with us. She hasn't learnt the 2 and a half hour journey well enough yet, so is relying on both a PDA with GPS navigation and my wife to ensure she doesn't go wrong. We got here with no hitches today.

While up there, Mother-in-law had kept back some articles from the newspapers in the week, as Mother-in-laws are so often prone to doing, and this time the articles are actually pretty amusing.

They are both adverts for books, basically. But they sound good books.

The first is a book by William Poundstone, called How Would You Move Mount Fuji?: Microsoft's Cult of the Puzzle which is basically a breakdown of the questions that Bill Gates allegedly asks people during their interviews for a position at Microsoft. They apparantly get over 12,000 applicants a month. The questions range from logic questions ("You have 8 billiard balls and one is defective by being too heavy. How do you find it, using a balance, in just two weighings?") to the bizarre ("How long would it take to move Mount Fuji?"). Here's a fuller example:

How would you design Bill Gates' bathroom?
There are two key points to make here: First, what Mr.Gates wants, Mr.Gates gets. Second, he cannot know exactly what he wants otherwise why would he hire a designer? You are supposed to say that you will discuss what he wants, adding in a few ideas of your own. You are supposed to appreciate the fact that this is a man who likes his gadgets: he famously owns a bathtub that can be filled with water of the desired temperature from a radio-controlled device in his car. You will be expected to know that. While money is not a huge issue, you do not get to be a billionaire by throwing the stuff away; so no gold taps!

The book is available at Amazon for £6.99.

The second book is another book of trivia, but it sounds quite amusing. It's by William Hartstone, and is called What's What - The Encyclopedia of Pointless Information. From the snippets in the paper, I find it irritating that there is no evidence or background associated with each entry - however, it may be different in the book (after all the Daily Mail isn't exactly the best for ensuring all their stories carry evidence!). Here's a couple of snippets:

• One ounce of cress contains enough cyanide to kill two mice.
  
• The dot over the letter i is called a tittle.
  
• There is enough energy in the daily flatulent output of a single sheep to power a small truck for 25 miles.
  
• Upto 58% of the London Underground is not underground.
  
• After dwarf-throwing was banned in France in 1995, 3'10" Manuel Wackenhelm objected on the grounds that he lost his livelihood. In 2002, the UN prounounced the ban was just.
  

...and so it goes on. The book is available from Amazon for £6.99.

Anyway, that's my update for today. Hopefully I'll not leave it so long next time, although there's the Mother-in-law to entertain this week!!

The other day, after work, I was padding around out in the garden with my wife when she noticed another bird had crashed into one of our windows. This time it was dead straight off, and the bugs were already having a go at it. It was a baby great tit. Such a shame for this little bird to have had such a short life.

In better news, however, there are two very healthy, very noisy, and indeed, very insistent baby great tits enjoying the patience of their parent outside in the tree.


Baby Great Tit

For the first time today, I saw one of them hop up onto the peanut feeder and have a go at getting some food of its own. However, as soon as its parent reappeared it was all too happy to let them do the work.


Still getting attention from its parents


Baby great tit being fed

Another long day at work, but when I got home I made the effort to go straight outside, as it was the right conditions to put the slug nematodes into the ground. The packet said to put them in only when it was overcast, as it was tonight.
They came as a powder, that I had to mix into 8 litres of water, and then mix that into 4 8-litre watering cans, and spread it onto the patch. It didn't take long. Then my wife and I set about planting some of the seedlings that were bursting forth in our cold-frame.

Here's the final vegetable patch, looking resplendent:


Vegetable Patch

Left to right, top to bottom, we have:

1. Brussel Sprouts,
   
2. Broccoli
   
3. Lettuce (only one survived the cold-frame and the snails)
   
4. Chinese Cabbage
   
5. Beetroot (foreground)
   

My fingers will be going green soon. I then came in and, with my wife, made a Weightwatchers turkey and ham pie from the Time to Eat book, which was absolutely delicious. Most recommended.

At 9pm on Channel Five tonight there was an amazing documentary about a savant who was able to do complicated mathematical sums in his head. This in itself is not impossible to learn, but he apparantly did this without having to think; images just appeared in front of him from which he could read-off the correct answer to the sum. What also struck me was how amenable he was to the scientists prodding him and poking him. This is great as he has an amazing skill, and it always annoyed me in that film, Flight of the Navigator, that the little kid wouldn't let the scientists find out about his brain full of star charts. Perhaps its because I'm a scientist at heart.

On Friday evening my wife and I went to our usual salsa class, except tonight we received our plaques and certificates saying that we were officially passed (with a highly-commended rating) our introduction salsa test. Ann and Pete presented our teachers, Linda and Barabara, with some flowers to say thanks for putting up with us.


Linda and Barbara, our salsa teachers with Pete, a fellow student

Early on Saturday morning, we went off up to Monmouth where my mother-in-law lives. I like going up to Monmouth most of the time, because it gets us away from the usual chores and lets us relax a bit.

It was mother-in-law's birthday in the week, so we were belatedly celebrating that with her with large amounts of food and even larger amounts of chocolate cake and ice-cream. My wife bought her a Viewsonic VE710 17" TFT monitor (in silver) for her computer, which was still using an old worn-out 14" CRT. TFT's are so cheap now, and I was pretty impressed with it, considering it's the very cheap end of Viewsonic's range.

We went to the Savoy Theatre in Monmouth on Saturday evening and saw the film The Interpreter. It was actually a pretty good film, although I did feel that the story played out rather too linearly; There just weren't enough twists. The theatre has supposedly been recently redone, and the seats were relatively comfortable, however, I wasn't happy with the quality of the theatre's cinema system - I've got a much better system at home. I've been to bad cinemas where the sound was tinny, or the picture small, but the Savoy's picture was small and the sound was muffled to the point of not being able to understand the speech. I certainly won't be going to a film there again.

On Sunday we got up late and lazed around. Just what a weekend should be about. We left Monmouth at just gone 7, and have arrived back home and half-past nine.


Clouds near Bath

Despite the relaxing weekend, it's great to be home again, although not so great that the weekend is at an end and work will re-commence tomorrow.

Playing Music

After the sadness earlier today, I think it's about time for some happy bouncy stuffage, and that stuffage is music. I wrote this tune about a week ago. It's called '30 miles' and is supposed to evoke the happy bouncy bike ride that we went on; the fact that the 30 mile bike ride made us suffer is entirely engulfed in the artist's licence used for this tune.

Download the mp3 here:

30_miles.mp3 (2Mb)



PS. When I went back to see if the little greenfinch was still there it was gone - so either it recovered and flew away, or was taken away by a kitty kat.

I'm feeling very sad at this moment. I work from home now and again, and I sit here all day in front of my computer. Behind me, outside, is our garden and the bird feeding 'station'. I heard a slight kerfuffle. I turned around and a few birds flew out of the tree. BANG! One slammed into the window and disappeared, leaving just a single feather floating to the ground.

I got up and looked to see if I could see if it was ok. I couldn't see it. I thought I'd go check from the other window in the kitchen.

When I got there I could see a small greenfinch writhing around on its back on the floor. It was tweating like a very quiet seagull. Poor fellow obviously hurt himself - alot. He was looking at me in terror. I turned him over, so he was upright, but he vibrated his wing and ended up back on his back. His neck was turned at a slightly funny angle so I think he must have broken it.

I wasn't sure what to do. The humane thing to do would have been to put him out of his misery, but I am a soppy git and couldn't do it, and besides I'm not sure how to do it. I felt so helpless. I picked him up and put him in the dark under a tree. I will check on him later, and bury him if he's not made it.

I'm very sad. I really don't like windows.

I've been working at home again today, hacking around a paper I've been working on. It's all pretty dull, so in my lunch-hour I went for a wander around our small garden and took a few photographs. It's a lovely day again, and the Osteospurmums were looking radiant, reaching for their Sun God.


Shiny Happy Faces


Reach for the Sun

In our remaining flower patch the cornflowers are coming out into their strange prickly-looking flower. I caught this bee feasting his face.


Bee on Cornflower

But best of all, was I spotted some damselflies mating. They were flitting around the place and it was hard to get a photo, but I eventually got a couple. Here's the best one:


Mating Damselflies

The male is the bright blue damselfly on the left, and the female is held at the neck by the male's bottom, effectively. This tandem position is used both before and after copulation, which occurs by the female swinging up to form a heart shape with the male and take the sperm that he offers at the base of his tail. It's thought the male may keep hold of the female for a while after the act so that she can't go off and be promiscuous with another male damselfly. Apparantly, damselflies have a lifespan of something like a week, so I better keep and eye open.

I don't know what Google/Picasa are thinking. Hello and Picasa really look the part, but there's some serious flaws with them. One of these is the posting of images into Blogger using Hello. It works well, but there are some things that are terribly unintuitive. One of these is the ability to post multiple images into a single post.

The way you do it is this:

• Select the images you want and send them to Hello (easiest to do with Picasa)
  
• Enter a caption for a picture but add "||" to the end. This queues the picture to be put into a multiple-picture post. (e.g. "My Picture ||")
  
• Do the same for all the pictures you want in the same post, except leave the "||" off the last one.
  

Da, daaa! How ridiculous is that? What's all this "||" stuff? [Incidentally, that's the bar symbol - the vertical line on the back-slash (at least on my UK keyboard)]. Why didn't Picasa just put a checkbox "Part of Multiple Post", or something? Pfft...

Oh, and incidentally, there is no way to post as a draft from Hello - it has to go live straight away (at least, I don't think there is - if you know different do let me know). That's a bit crap too. It means I have to go in and put edits in on a live post, should I wish to change it.

Anyway, thought it may be of interest to someone who, like me, has been posting a single picture, going into Blogger, copying and pasting the link into a different post, and all that rubbish.

Tonight we made another of our regulars. As part of the WeightWatchers diet we're on, we have to count points that are based on the calorific and fat content of a dish. [As an aside, they have recently changed their "Points" system for another, but we have all the books for the old system, so we're sticking to that] Weightwatchers publish some good recipe books with low fat recipes in them. We often make the open crust chicken and mushroom pie, as we did this evening. We have made a few small changes to the published recipe. Perhaps you'd like to make it?

First you have to make a pastry. It's pretty easy. You need:

• 110g plain flour
  
• pinch of salt
  
• 60g of margarine
  

Sift the flour and salt into a bowl, and rub in the margarine until the usual breadcrumbs thing happens. Add some water, stirring it in, until a dough forms that's not too sticky. Stick it in a bag, and bung it in the fridge for 30 minutes.

While that's chilling, prepare the vegetables:

• 1 onion, chopped
  
• 1 garlic clove, crushed
  
• 110g closed cup mushrooms, sliced
  
• Half a leek, sliced
  

Perfectly cut vegetables, by The Wife.

Seal the chicken along with the onions and garlic in a large frying pan (about 5 minutes). Add the mushrooms and leek along with the following:

• 1 tin of chopped tomatoes with herbs
  
• 2 tablespoons of tomato purée
  
• 1 tablespoon of rosemary
  
• Salt & pepper seasoning
  

Cover the pan, and simmer all these ingredients for 15 minutes.

Now is a good time to put the oven on to preheat to about 200 degrees centigrade.

Now, just before the filling is ready, get the pastry from the fridge and roll it out, on a floured surface, to about a 10 inch (26cm) round. This is about the width of one of our baking sheets.


Rolled pastry, with filling simmering in background.

Grease and flour a baking sheet and transfer the pastry to it. Brush some milk over the base, and sprinkle semolina over the milk. This helps to keep the base crisper when the filling is placed on top, although it doesn't always work.

Now spoon the filling into the pastry leaving a 4cm (2inch) gap around the edges which will be folded up.


Spooning the Filling onto the Pastry

Fold up the edges of the pastry around the filling, and brush the outer edges with milk to allow it to brown off. Bung it in the oven for 30-35 minutes.

When it comes out it will look like this:


The Final Pie!

Although the Weightwatchers book says this serves 6, I think it serves 4 and the points for a quarter of this pie is 6. With a 100g portion of chips (3 points) this makes a 9 point dinner. [For comparison, my wife's daily allowance of points is 20, and mine is 28].

It really is a lovely taste, with the tomatoes and rosemary setting off the chicken wonderfully. Do let me know if you make one, and how it turns out!

Just found (well, my wife did) a new cooking blog that looks really good, with great photos and nice sounding recipes. It's called Esurientes, which seems to be a latin term for "those that hunger", so there you go. I mean, you can help but start to salivate at the thought of getting your chops around one of these.

In the evenings this week I've been busy digging over an old flower bed that had been taken back by Mrs. Nature. Before I started it looked like this:


Before any work was done - a right mess

Today I managed to get the last of the weeds and grass up, and we moved some plants that we wanted to keep that were still managing to survive the onslaught of weeds. It now looks like a big patch of dirt, much better:


Completed Vegetable Patch

Soon I'll sprinkle over the organic slug nematodes that I bought from the Green Gardener to avoid our crops getting eaten before we get a chance to. Then it'll be time to design the crop rotation system, and plant the vegetables.

In other news, my giant sunflowers have begun to grow. They're only about 12 days old now:


Sunflower Seedlings

Also, the tomato seedlings, which are few days older, are coming along really well:


Tomato Seedlings

That empty pot in the background is (hopefully) going to be a pumpkin, but none of them have done anything yet and it's way past the duration that the seed packet said they should germinate within. I hope at least one will work!

I noticed this pretty flower in the flower bed next to the vegetable patch, so I took a photo. I'm reliably informed it's an aquilegia
or 'Granny's Bonnet'.


Aquilegia

I know this blog seems very garden oriented at the moment, but I promise it won't always be like this - it's just that I'm doing alot of gardening at the moment! :o)

Tonight we made one of our usual pizza extraveganzas. They taste wonderful - much better than shop bought pizzas - and are much cheaper than shop bought pizzas too.

We have a bread machine, and make the pizza base ourselves. Basically you bung the following ingredients into the bread pan and mix it on dough mode (which takes an hour and a half on our machine):

• 1 cup of water
  
• 1 tablespoon of melted butter
  
• 1 teaspoon of salt
  
• 2 tablespoons of sugar
  
• 2.75 cups of strong white breadflour
  
• 1 teaspoon of yeast
  

Tonight I also put in 1 tablespoon of rosemary. When it's ready, roll it out on a floured surface and transfer to a greased and floured baking tray. Let it rise for 20 minutes. This is when you can prepare the vegetables and part-cook the sausages. Also put the oven on to pre-heat at 200 degrees C.


Pizza base rising.

We usually use the following selection of vegetables, along with some sausages.

• One pepper, deseeded and chopped
  
• One sweet pepper, deseeded and chopped,
  
• One chilli, deseeded and chopped
  
• One onion, chopped
  
• 150g of mushrooms, sliced
  

Pizza Ingredients


Ingredients Prepared

Once the base has risen for about 20 minutes, tomato passata (we use Tesco's Finest Passata with Garlic) is spread about on top. You can also sprinkle the top with oregano, to give is a nice herby flavour, and/or sprinkle some cajun spice over the top to give it a bit of a kick.


Base Prepared

Then, the ingredients are liberally and evenly sprinkled all over the top. Usually in the order of onions, peppers & chilli, then mushrooms. If you want you could grate some cheese all over the top, although we don't always do this, and, to be honest, don't miss it.


Ingredients on Base

Bung it all in the oven for 20 minutes, and you should end up with this:


Cooked Pizza

Here's a closeup of the layers of topping on the pizza:


Pizza Layers

This pizza is large, and will easily serve 6, or 4 very hungry people. Best of all, it isn't that high in calories. The base is the worst for dieters because of the flour (and of course the sausages), but all the vegetables are good for you. It's also LOTS cheaper to make one that buy one. One this size would cost nigh on £13 from Dominos, and wouldn't have as much topping. A rough guess, but I don't think this costs more than about £4 to make.

Do let me know if you make one. Personally, I think they're great and one of the most fun bread machine meals to make.

On the first of May I proposed a little teaser and you've had two weeks to guess. So, what was this a photo of?


What is it?

I only had two guesses unfortunately - unpopular as my blog is - so I might as well list them:

• Biscuits - A lampshade
  
• TheWife - Looking down 'something'
  

My wife was actually closest. I would have let you have looking down a ridged, chrome mirrored tube, as that's exactly what it was. The tube is actually a rung on a new silver ladder we bought.

My Mimosa Pudica sensitive plant, that I planted in April, has started to grow!! Here's the evidence:


Mimosa Pudica

There's a great video of a grown plant retracting (apparently called thigmonasty) when a flame comes near here.

In other growth, 13 of my giant sunflowers have germinated and spurting forth. My pumpkins are still completely lifeless yet though, and being impatient, I've changed the environment of a couple of them to see if it makes a difference. It's only supposed to take 12 days for them to germinate but they still haven't yet. Our venus flytrap also seems to be growing a new mouth after lots of the little ones went black and fell off. The big ones seem to be doing well though.

Today is Friday the 13th of May. Friday the 13ths are generally considered very unlucky by superstitious people, and I realised I had absolutely no idea why. So I looked it up, and it turns out, that nobody really knows. There's various stories and legends associated with Friday being unlucky, or 13 being unlucky but no-one knows why together they're particularly unlucky.

It's considered very unlucky for 13 people to congregate for a dinner, and it is said that if they do, they will all die within the year. It seems possible that this myth came from the legend of Valhalla, where 12 gods were invited to a dinner, but Loki (the evil one) wasn't invited. He turned up anyway, and caused havoc by inciting the blind god to attack the favourite god Balder with some mistletoe (as you do). Balder died and it has since been unlucky to have 13 people to dinner. Interestingly, the bible picks up on this by having 13 disciples to the last supper, and the crucifixion taking place on a Friday.

Friday was probably considered unlucky as in pagan Rome executions used to be carried out. Also a post-pagan legend says that the witches of the north used to meet in cemetries when it was a new (or dark) moon, and for one meeting Freya, the Friday godess, came down from the mountains and gave the witches one of her cats, making their numbers up to 13 - the proper size of a witch's coven ever since.

The DaVinci Code puts forward an idea that Friday the 13th became unlucky due to the warrior monk arrests in 1307 (October 13th). But the problem is that there is no evidence that Friday the 13th was ever perceived as unlucky prior to the 19th century.

It seems that in all probability it came about simply because 13 is unlucky and Friday is unlucky, so Friday 13th is simply a particularly unlucky Friday.

As it goes, I don't believe in superstitions like this, so I'm probably going to get run over later.

As part of the "customer loyalty" thing, our ADSL supplier, Pipex, are upgrading our 512kbps lines to 1Mbps for no extra cost, and today ours happened! (May have actually been yesterday as my router crashed unexpectedly yesterday). However, they seem to have accidentally upgraded us to 2Mbps. I'm not complaining of course, and I do hope you won't tell them. I did a test, and at 512Kbps the maximum download speed would be about 60K/s, so 1Mbps would be about 120K/s. As a test I downloaded the 55Mb Java SDK from java.sun.com and got a sustained rate of about 230K/s. I downloaded 55Mb in about 3 minutes. Blogger is screaming along :o) Hurray for broadband.

Our garden comes to life at various different times of the year. The previous owner planted well, and throughout the year there's usually something nice to look at. I took this photo last year of the pink flowers (Osteospermum Jucundum) that spring into life around this time. They always brighten up the garden and flower throughout most of the summer. I think they're gorgeous, and such a deep colour that in the Sun they seem to shine from within.


Garden Flowers

It's that time of year again when hundreds of university students begin to panic as their final courseworks and final exams are due. As a mentor to a panicy undergraduate student I am in the unfortunate position of having to now read chapters of badly written engrish before Thursday, of the deadline. Admittedly, she's very grateful, and I should think so too, but why do they always leave it so late.

As a computer science coursework, it's worth 30% of the final be-all-end-all grade of her degree. If she flunked every exam, but shone in her coursework, it's possible she could pass her degree. So, why-oh-why, leave it so late? Her computer program doesn't work; the report is 5,000 words of not well written engrish, with no testing, and no details in the part of the report which is actually the interesting part of the project. I'm not mad, I'm just aghast.

However, I was once a lowly undergraduate, and I, also, remember leaving all courseworks to the last minute, which was NEVER a good idea. Often the deadline got extended to the end-of-the-weekend, or something, but it didn't stop the piles of zombies, who'd been up all night, arriving in the morning all attempt to print 50 pages of report all at the same time.

Perhaps I should have faith in my mentee. She says she wants to get it all in on Wednesday so she isn't part of that rush. Wise, indeed, however, the current state of the report doesn't fill me with confidence.

We were up early today to get ready to take part in the British Heart Foundation Dorset bike ride. We left the house on our bikes at 9:10, and were up at the school where the event started by 9:30.


9:30am: Riders gather at QE School in Wimborne

The route took us away from QE in a northerly direction and across country. There was only one small spot of gravel track before, which was lucky for all the professional looking blokes in their slim-wheeled racing machines.


10:15am: Rushing down country lanes.

The ride continued mainly through countryside down to a small village called Witchampton. This was around the 8 mile mark. Here the local church hall had provided the rest stop, where you could buy chocolate, and drinks. Squash was provided gratis. We scoffed a 4-bar kitkat, and set off again.


11:15am: The rest stop at Witchampton

It was a beautiful morning cycling through the countryside, although the wind was getting up, making some sections quite difficult. The 50-milers rejoined the 25 mile track at Witchampton so we were often getting overtaken by streaks of bright colours.


11:42am: Travelling towards Tarrent Rushton, there was many bright yellow fields full of rape.

There's a very steep hill near Tarrant Rushton that heads into the Tarrant valley. This is known locally as "The Cliff", which gives you an idea of its steepness. We flew down here (me taking photos), but the fast guys were almost airborn. My Dad and I cycled down here on the tandem once and the speedometer we had was marked to 40mph, but had a bit extra past that mark, and we easily hit the top-speed stopper, so we reckon we were doing nigh on 50mph. We didn't go quite so fast today, although I'm sure some did.


12:08pm: Screaming down 'The Cliff'

A short cycle through the Tarrant valley along the tiny River Tarrant, and we arrived at our second rest stop at Tarrant Keyneston village hall. We couldn't resist another kit-kat but headed on our way again soon before we stiffened up.


12:35pm: The rest stop at Tarrant Keyneston


12:35pm: Leaving the second rest stop

A short sharp hill greeted us poor cyclists at the exit of Tarrant Keyneston, and another as we approached Shapwick, alongside the River Stour. Some riders stopped at the pub there and had lunch, but we continued on. I'm very glad we did to as it began to rain as we reached the end, and was certainly colder than it had been all day.


1:40pm: The End...

We then cycled home and had a big lunch, and stiff legs. In total, including the ride to and from our house, we did an impressive 30.3miles - the furthest I've ridden in a long time, maybe ever.

Today I've been busy. Once I got up and showered, I spent an hour and a half in the garden digging over the patch we want to turn into a vegetable patch. I'm about halfway there, but it's pretty hard work because the grass has taken over. I also spent some time working on building a cupboard (cutting the holes for the recessed lights) and then went back to gardening later. I'm doing the Weightwatchers diet at the moment, and, for those of you in the know, I worked back 18 points today in exercise. Pretty good.

Now, firstly, the title of this post is "Tomorrow is it!" not "Tomorrow, is it?" like a person doing a bad impersonation of a welsh person might say. Tomorrow my wife and I both get up early and cycle into Wimborne where we will embark on a 25 mile ride in aid of the British Heart Foundation. The outlook for the weather is good, although the outlook for our legs isn't so rosey. I will put my PDA on to track our progress, and I'll also have to make sure the camera's charged for some photos. If only I could charge my body.

So, it's early to bed and... er. oh, it's already nearly 11pm. No early bed then. But early rise, never-the-less. Wish us luck.

Oh, and because I really quite hate politics, and politicians I am refusing to write anything about the general election, voting or whatever.....

...

DANG!

After my wife and I went upto Colehill Church Hall to vote, we went out in the garden. At the weekend my wife suggested a pact that after work we don't sit in front of the computer vegging out, as we normally do, but we go out in the garden and enjoy it, making it look nice. So, as last night, we went out and carried on digging over the bed which we're wanting to turn into a vegetable patch (a different kind of vegging out!). It's really hard work because it's been taken over by grass, whose roots all intermingle with each other making each stab of the fork very difficult to remove from the ground. We've managed to cover about one third of the bed in two nights.


Before any work was done - a right mess


Look at all the crap in the wheelbarrow that I dug out of the bed!

I'm finding it quite liberating. Being a weakling, pale, insignificant computer programmer, it's good to be able to get out and be one with nature.. er.. kinda.. well, for me, digging over a veg patch really feels like that. The quietness of the garden, the fresh air... the exercise! What with the salsa, the gardening and my 25 mile bike ride at the weekend, I might actually get fit.

I realised that I set up this blog to really talk about how I'm attempting to setup my own business, yet I hadn't actually talked about it at all. That's partly because I haven't actually done much; I've just been researching.

My plan is to carry on working and, in the meantime, get an internet business ("e-business") going so that when my contract runs out come October 2006, I can quit and run it full time. It's something I've always wanted to do (when I was little I said that when I grew up I wanted to be a "till man" [cashier] - but only for the money). Hence I'm going to start small, using some savings, and sell some instrument bits and bobs, before moving up to selling instruments and music itself.

My research so far has detemined that to setup such a business is quite a complicated task. Being a computer programmer I thought it would be as simple as writing a bit of code and off we go. Of course, I knew that if I wanted to take credit card payments I'd have to deal with some gateway, but I didn't realise that would be quite so complicated either - particularly if you want to get a good deal.

I first investigated WorldPay and their WorldDirect package which really is almost as simple as writing a bit of code. They take your customer's money and then sometime in the future give you the money back. Apparently that "sometime in the future" can be nearly 2 months, which is a big dent in the cashflow. They also charge a large amount. I did a quick estimated growth plan and worked out that after 2 years I might have paid WorldPay nearly £2000.

I investigated NetBanx and found almost the same situation.

There is another way, and that's to get what's known as an internet merchant account. This is basically a bank account which accepts payments from credit cards - but doesn't actually do the making of the payments; that is, you still need a payment gateway. This can work out alot cheaper and also means your (rather than WorldPay's) credit rating is made good the more you use it.

So, this is what I've decided to do. I'm almost certainly going to go with the payment gateway (the people who actually take the money and send it to your internet merchant account) called Velocity Pay who have a good website describing all this stuff, and whose costs are low and get lower the more you use them. I haven't yet decided on an internet merchant account yet - although Velocity Pay recommended Barclays or Bank of Scotland.

However, I'm almost certain that I'll go with Alliance + Leicester for the business account (which allows me to pay wholesalers for goods) because it's free for 18 months, and after that it's also pretty much free (barre paying in cheques). So, I've started filling out the application form today. It's only then that I realised my business doesn't yet have its own phone number. I figured it would be pretty annoying to have people ringing my phone number for something for the business, so I've setup a call signing system on our home phone line. This means that business calls, although they'll come through to the home phone, will ring differently so I'll know how to answer, what to expect, or possibly ignore it. You can even get gadgets that will make different phones rings depending on the call sign.

Anyway, that's the background of where I'm upto. It's not far, yet, but I'm on my way now. Once I've signed up for this business account, there's not really any going back. So far, I'm still in the backing-out zone. The sooner I'm out of that zone I expect I'll feel better, as the ball that is the dream of quitting come October 2006 has started to roll, albeit very slowly.

Having just got back from the opticians where I received my newly updated spectacles, I am over the moon to be able to see once more. It's wonderful to look out of the window and see the birds nibbling at the seeds, as opposed to looking out of the window and simple seeing a brown blob bobbing up and down.

It turns out my eyes are unusual; I guess that suits the rest of me. I was told that, as one gets older ones eyes tend to diverge to parallel vision, however, my eyes seemed to be getting more cross-eyed as I got older, hence the head-aches I were getting were due to my eyes straining when looking into the distance (where parallel vision is needed). Anyway, new specs, and I can see again. I ordered an updated pair for my backup too (seeing my current backup are next to useless), hence today was expensive. Worse is that my car insurance is due next week :o(

Here's a pretty flower I took a photo of that's in our garden. I thought I'd share it with you. It's called a Snakes head fritillary.


Pretty flower in our garden

What is this strange photo I took of? Guesses on a postcard.. or in the comments section if you prefer.


What is it?

Never understood why we still call it a bank holiday when the banks don't shut, and neither does anything else. In fact, most shops probably make their most money on these "holidays".

Anyway, my wife and I have been upto Reading this weekend to see a production of Sweeney Todd at the Hexagon, as one of the ensemble is a friend of ours. It was a brilliant production for an amateur dramatics society and was nigh on west-end quality.


Driving back from Reading

Since we got back today, we've both been enjoying the lovely weather and doing some gardedning - of which there is much to be done. I finally planted my giant sunflowers (31 of them!) and giant pumpkins (11 of those).


All planted up

We're off up my parents tonight for a curry from our local curry house - there goes the diet for tonight!