Lately, I have been spending my evenings lurking suspiciously in the back garden staring at the sky. Venus, Jupiter, Mars and Saturn have all been very visible this month. I can't claim to be especially knowledgeable about Astronomy but the planets have been unmissable lately so I thought I'd take a look at them and spend a bit of time seeing which constellations I could identify. Unfortunately there is a great deal of light pollution in my neighbourhood and this makes it hard to see the constellations properly. The brighter stars are visible but because the rest of the stars have been drowned out by the light pollution, I am only seeing parts of constellations. Some constellations are completely invisible to the naked eye. I can see Leo and (part of) Gemini but in between them where Cancer should be, there is an empty space. I am planning on spending a week in Devon in April. Hopefully, there will be less light pollution there and I will be able to get a better look at the stars.
Here's a useful little website which has a daily summary of interesting sights in the night sky.
Here's a link to a map of the Northern Sky at night.
So has anyone else been staring at the stars lately?
Meanwhile, here is a great song "We are all made of stars" by Moby
Unfortunately the sky is VERY cloudy tonight. Even the Moon is almost completely obscured by clouds.
On another note, The Pink Floyd's "Obscured by Clouds" is a seriously underrated album!!
Here's a useful little website which has a daily summary of interesting sights in the night sky.
Here's a link to a map of the Northern Sky at night.
So has anyone else been staring at the stars lately?
Meanwhile, here is a great song "We are all made of stars" by Moby
Unfortunately the sky is VERY cloudy tonight. Even the Moon is almost completely obscured by clouds.
On another note, The Pink Floyd's "Obscured by Clouds" is a seriously underrated album!!
So, that's my first working week of the New Year done and dusted!!
Now its time for some music... "Io Pan" by Inkubus Sukkubus
Now its time for some music... "Io Pan" by Inkubus Sukkubus
Great god of all mankind, of nature and of lust
Of the future yet untold and nations in the dust
From an age of wood and stone, through bronze, iron and steel
In the forests and in the trees and in both man and beast
For a hundred-thousand years and onto the future days
He's the earth, he's the sky and he's the solar blaze
Io Pan! God of death and all creation
Io Pan! God of lust and of nature
Great god of the internet, his web around the earth
In every city in every land, across the whole wide world
Pan, Herne, Cernunnos, Lord of the Sacred Flame
But to the Christian fools Satan is his name
Angel of the Seraphim, they dread him more than death
And they wait for apocalypse, they wait with bated breath
Io Pan! God of death and all creation
Io Pan! God of lust and of nature
Io Pan! God of all that stands before us
Io Pan! God of light and god of darkness
Great god of the wild hunt, speed us to the prey
To the game, to the stars, speed us all the way
Guide for me my axe of flint and let my aim be true
Lord of darkness, Lord of light, lead us to the truth
Great god of the Universe give me my hearts desire
Give to me the gift of flight and your eternal fire
Now I think I'd best be getting dressed and doing something constructive with the rest of the day.
Happy New Year one and all!!!
Meanwhile, I am back online again after an absence of approx two weeks on account of problems with my computer. I now have a new computer. Wahey!!!
I hope everyone had a brilliant Christmas. I spent mine visiting family and generally taking it easy. Santy Claws brought me some great books including "The Breakfast of Champions" by Kurt Vonnegut and volume one of the collected short stories of JG Ballard. I also received some microwavable slippers!!!
Has anyone made any New Year's resolutions? I think mine should be to eat less junk food and to catch up on my reading (ie spend less time looking at nekkid laydees and more time reading fiction and non-fiction). Also, going to bed earlier would be a good idea for the New Year, too!!!
Now, here's a funny little YouTube video in which Winnie the Pooh Worships Satan, apparently.
Meanwhile, I am back online again after an absence of approx two weeks on account of problems with my computer. I now have a new computer. Wahey!!!
I hope everyone had a brilliant Christmas. I spent mine visiting family and generally taking it easy. Santy Claws brought me some great books including "The Breakfast of Champions" by Kurt Vonnegut and volume one of the collected short stories of JG Ballard. I also received some microwavable slippers!!!
Has anyone made any New Year's resolutions? I think mine should be to eat less junk food and to catch up on my reading (ie spend less time looking at nekkid laydees and more time reading fiction and non-fiction). Also, going to bed earlier would be a good idea for the New Year, too!!!
Now, here's a funny little YouTube video in which Winnie the Pooh Worships Satan, apparently.
Greetings. My apologies for the lack of a recent update. I am afraid that I have been working 6 days per week most weeks lately and have NO energy.
As have to use up my annual leave by the end of the year (use it or lose it, baby), I have booked a few days off work and am sitting around reading and trying not to think about the piles of work that will await me when I return.
Today I had the annual boiler service. Unfortunately the system is very gunked up and one of the radiators is rather corroded so later this month I will be having a new radiator fitted and having the system flushed out. This is known as a "power flush and booster" and costs the princely sum of £600 (the radiator is free because it is covered by insurance but the insurance does not include flushing out the system). Apparently the system is very old and has a build up of magnetite. It needs to be flushed out using a special magnetic device to remove any magnetite from the radiators, pipes etc. Once the system has been de-gunked, a "booster" will be fitted to the system which is supposed to grab any gunk that happens to be floating around the system. Apparently this is an all day job and the booster alone costs a few hundred smackeroons. Hence, the rather splendid price!!! Once a "power flush" has been performed and a "booster" fitted, the system will be covered by some kind of lifetime guarantee. Hence it is worth the money in the long run.
A couple of weekends ago, my step-dad and I went on on a fungal foray by Tarr Steps in Exmoor.
Exmoor is a national park / nature reserve and the rangers (or whatever the people who look after Exmoor are called) organise walks at different times of year so that people can appreciate the range of plant, fungal etc life to be found there.
Sadly we didn't find very many species of fungi this time. There were just a handful of species growing but the area was largely devoid of mushrooms and toadstools. This was probably because of the fairly small area we were covering. The walk was restricted to the valley around the river Barle.
At the start of the walk, the ranger showed us some mushrooms and toadstools which he had collected in other areas round Exmoor the day before and he had quite a selection with him. This suggests that there were plenty of fungi around Exmoor. Hence, the paucity of specimens found during our walk was probably due to the choice of location (maybe mushroom spores dont get blown down into river valleys very often).
Tarr Steps is a stone bridge across the river Barle. It is made from long flat slabs of stone laid over stone stacks and is not very high (it is situated at point in the river which is shallow enough at times to walk across or drive a car across suggesting that the area was used as a crossing point long before the bridge was built.
Many people think that Tarr Steps is a prehistoric structure but this theory has recently been challenged. The problem is that from time to time the river floods and when it does so, it washes away the stones from the bridge. Because of this some people have questioned how a structure which is washed away every few decades could have lasted for three thousand years. One theory is that Tarr Steps is a recent structure built in Victorian times by people working for a nearby hotel.
WTF?! Built by hotel you might ask. However, this is not as crazy as it sounds.
Fake 'ancient' monuments and ruins were quite trendy in the 1800s and a number of fake grottoes, quarries, etc exist. You may have heard of The White Horse. There is an well-known ancient chalk hillside carving of a horse in Wiltshire but there are also several that are more recent dating only to the 1800s. Other structures in the vicinity of Tarr Steps, such as a 'leat' in the hillside above the river (a channel carved into the hillside which carries water, a kind of aqueduct) which was used to carry water to an artificial waterfall suggest that the Victorian hotel management had landscaped parts of the surrounding area to create a pleasure garden for their guests.
Meanwhile, its time for some music...
"I Know What Boys Like" by The Waitresses from way back in 1980...
Also, here we have "Killing In The Name" by Rage Against The Machine performed by what appears to be a school band using mainly brass instruments. Believe it or not it actually sounds quite cool once it gets going!!!
Finally, today's book recommendation is "The Gambler" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
As have to use up my annual leave by the end of the year (use it or lose it, baby), I have booked a few days off work and am sitting around reading and trying not to think about the piles of work that will await me when I return.
Today I had the annual boiler service. Unfortunately the system is very gunked up and one of the radiators is rather corroded so later this month I will be having a new radiator fitted and having the system flushed out. This is known as a "power flush and booster" and costs the princely sum of £600 (the radiator is free because it is covered by insurance but the insurance does not include flushing out the system). Apparently the system is very old and has a build up of magnetite. It needs to be flushed out using a special magnetic device to remove any magnetite from the radiators, pipes etc. Once the system has been de-gunked, a "booster" will be fitted to the system which is supposed to grab any gunk that happens to be floating around the system. Apparently this is an all day job and the booster alone costs a few hundred smackeroons. Hence, the rather splendid price!!! Once a "power flush" has been performed and a "booster" fitted, the system will be covered by some kind of lifetime guarantee. Hence it is worth the money in the long run.
A couple of weekends ago, my step-dad and I went on on a fungal foray by Tarr Steps in Exmoor.
Exmoor is a national park / nature reserve and the rangers (or whatever the people who look after Exmoor are called) organise walks at different times of year so that people can appreciate the range of plant, fungal etc life to be found there.
Sadly we didn't find very many species of fungi this time. There were just a handful of species growing but the area was largely devoid of mushrooms and toadstools. This was probably because of the fairly small area we were covering. The walk was restricted to the valley around the river Barle.
At the start of the walk, the ranger showed us some mushrooms and toadstools which he had collected in other areas round Exmoor the day before and he had quite a selection with him. This suggests that there were plenty of fungi around Exmoor. Hence, the paucity of specimens found during our walk was probably due to the choice of location (maybe mushroom spores dont get blown down into river valleys very often).
Tarr Steps is a stone bridge across the river Barle. It is made from long flat slabs of stone laid over stone stacks and is not very high (it is situated at point in the river which is shallow enough at times to walk across or drive a car across suggesting that the area was used as a crossing point long before the bridge was built.
Many people think that Tarr Steps is a prehistoric structure but this theory has recently been challenged. The problem is that from time to time the river floods and when it does so, it washes away the stones from the bridge. Because of this some people have questioned how a structure which is washed away every few decades could have lasted for three thousand years. One theory is that Tarr Steps is a recent structure built in Victorian times by people working for a nearby hotel.
WTF?! Built by hotel you might ask. However, this is not as crazy as it sounds.
Fake 'ancient' monuments and ruins were quite trendy in the 1800s and a number of fake grottoes, quarries, etc exist. You may have heard of The White Horse. There is an well-known ancient chalk hillside carving of a horse in Wiltshire but there are also several that are more recent dating only to the 1800s. Other structures in the vicinity of Tarr Steps, such as a 'leat' in the hillside above the river (a channel carved into the hillside which carries water, a kind of aqueduct) which was used to carry water to an artificial waterfall suggest that the Victorian hotel management had landscaped parts of the surrounding area to create a pleasure garden for their guests.
Meanwhile, its time for some music...
"I Know What Boys Like" by The Waitresses from way back in 1980...
Also, here we have "Killing In The Name" by Rage Against The Machine performed by what appears to be a school band using mainly brass instruments. Believe it or not it actually sounds quite cool once it gets going!!!
Finally, today's book recommendation is "The Gambler" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
I recently spent a week in North Devon in a caravan near Woolacombe. The plan was to spend a lot of time walking around the Devon countryside and also to get on a boat for a day trip to the island of Lundy. So from the time I got there it rained and rained, the roof of the caravan leaked and the wind was so strong that the boat trip to Lundy was cancelled. Despite this I did manage to do a bit of walking and at one point discovered that the Parasol Mushroom (Macrolepiota procera) was fairly abundant in the area (had one for dinner, yum).
Much of my time was spent reading and it was here that I made a bit of a breakthrough. I have tried several times to read the writings of Jane Austin but I have never got very far and I have always found her writings to be thoroughly boring. However, prior to my week in Devon, I had been considering facing up to the challenge of trying one last time to read a book by Jane Austin just in case, if I were to actually stick with it, I might somehow enjoy it. Anyway, I took Jane Austin with me to Devon (well her writings anyway, not Jane Austin herself) and this time I actually found myself enjoying her style of writing. Yes! I kid you not!! I read "Sense and Sensibility" and I actually enjoyed it! Previously, I have found Jane Austin's writings to be boring but this time it was like a veil had fallen from my eyes and this time I saw a whole new Jane Austin. This time I realised that Jane Austin is actually quite a sarcastic author. She seems to be taking the piss out of the characters in her novels and she seemed to be doing this in order to mock the 'polite society' to which she belonged.
While in Devon, I also had a nice bottle of Rhubarb and Ginger Wine and a very scrumptious bottle of Damson Wine.
Since coming back from Devon I have been insanely busy at work and working 6 days per week and have had very little energy for anything else.
The other day, courtesy of the cheap, second-hand shop CEX I picked up a copy of "Big Trouble In Little China", an awesome from the 1980s.
Autumn is here and different species of mushrooms are beginning to appear. I was briefly in the Forest of Dean a couple of weeks ago and there were already several species around. Hopefully as we move into October I wont be so busy at work as I would like to spend a bit of time getting out and about in the woods and fields hunting for fungi.
In the meantime, here's a little music...
The Undertones - My Perfect Cousin
Much of my time was spent reading and it was here that I made a bit of a breakthrough. I have tried several times to read the writings of Jane Austin but I have never got very far and I have always found her writings to be thoroughly boring. However, prior to my week in Devon, I had been considering facing up to the challenge of trying one last time to read a book by Jane Austin just in case, if I were to actually stick with it, I might somehow enjoy it. Anyway, I took Jane Austin with me to Devon (well her writings anyway, not Jane Austin herself) and this time I actually found myself enjoying her style of writing. Yes! I kid you not!! I read "Sense and Sensibility" and I actually enjoyed it! Previously, I have found Jane Austin's writings to be boring but this time it was like a veil had fallen from my eyes and this time I saw a whole new Jane Austin. This time I realised that Jane Austin is actually quite a sarcastic author. She seems to be taking the piss out of the characters in her novels and she seemed to be doing this in order to mock the 'polite society' to which she belonged.
While in Devon, I also had a nice bottle of Rhubarb and Ginger Wine and a very scrumptious bottle of Damson Wine.
Since coming back from Devon I have been insanely busy at work and working 6 days per week and have had very little energy for anything else.
The other day, courtesy of the cheap, second-hand shop CEX I picked up a copy of "Big Trouble In Little China", an awesome from the 1980s.
Autumn is here and different species of mushrooms are beginning to appear. I was briefly in the Forest of Dean a couple of weeks ago and there were already several species around. Hopefully as we move into October I wont be so busy at work as I would like to spend a bit of time getting out and about in the woods and fields hunting for fungi.
In the meantime, here's a little music...
The Undertones - My Perfect Cousin
Has anyone ever tried dandelion wine? Yesterday I had a smalll bottle of dandelion wine and it was exceedingly scrumptious. As I noted in my previous entry, I have started drinking alcohol again after seven years of abstinence and I am experimenting a bit. I recently discovered that the Lyme Bay Winery produces all kinds of weird and wonderful wines such as dandelion wine, birch wine, nettle wine, cowslip wine, damson wine etc.
Meanwhile, here's some music "Waking The Witch" by Kate Bush
Meanwhile, here's some music "Waking The Witch" by Kate Bush
Seven years ago I decided to not drink alcohol. Now, having abstained for seven years, I have decided to drink alcohol again. Yay!
This isn't the first time I have spent several years abstaining from alcohol and, who knows, it may not be the last.
However, for now I am enjoying the pleasure of sampling a variety of ales (such as the scrumptious Old Tom and Poacher's Choice).
Now it is time for some music...
First off, "LaLaLa" by Nouvelle Vague featuring Julie Delpy
I'd like to dance like we used to before the New World Order ruled.
Dont wanna do what others do, let's pretend there's no rules.
I wanna dance like we used to, we're so lucky and so spoiled...
Next up, "I Was A Teenage Werewolf" by The Cramps
I was a teenage werewolf
Braces on my fangs
I was a teenage werewolf
And no one even said, "Thanks"
And no one made me stoooop...
This isn't the first time I have spent several years abstaining from alcohol and, who knows, it may not be the last.
However, for now I am enjoying the pleasure of sampling a variety of ales (such as the scrumptious Old Tom and Poacher's Choice).
Now it is time for some music...
First off, "LaLaLa" by Nouvelle Vague featuring Julie Delpy
I'd like to dance like we used to before the New World Order ruled.
Dont wanna do what others do, let's pretend there's no rules.
I wanna dance like we used to, we're so lucky and so spoiled...
Next up, "I Was A Teenage Werewolf" by The Cramps
I was a teenage werewolf
Braces on my fangs
I was a teenage werewolf
And no one even said, "Thanks"
And no one made me stoooop...
Big black boots,
Long brown hair,
She's so sweet with her,
Get back stare!
Jet - Are You Gonna Be My Girl?
Long brown hair,
She's so sweet with her,
Get back stare!
Jet - Are You Gonna Be My Girl?
JUNE 2012
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MAY 2012
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APRIL 2012
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MARCH 2012