Stacking books and stacking bikes since ’78
Quick creation for my bike. Light tube from Poundland, and a torch mount for rifle barrels from eBay.
I am really impressed by what a great bike light it makes. Cost around £3.50, and much brighter than most LED rear lights.
I keep a small Knog light on my bike however, just in case. It was from Poundland after all!
Stafford as a town may sometimes get a bit of a bad reputation, mainly due to the bulldozing of all the pretty listed buildings in the late 60’s, and a lack of any distinguishing features. Yes it’s got an unimpressive castle, a windmill without sails and a ‘High House’, but so far the most distinguishing feature I have noticed is that the town exudes a sort of blandness that it is quite tricky to describe. The only growth market locally seems to be in charity shops and despair, and a lot of the locals here joke that the sign coming into town should read “Stafford, great connections to other more interesting locations”.
I once met a rather comical chap in a pub who told me that the town survives almost entirely on money generated by tourists who misread the sign as ‘Stratford’ and come here looking for Anne Hathaways Cottage. He claims that he diverts them to Izaac Waltons Cottage, and they don’t notice the difference. I am somewhat skeptical.
Still, everywhere has its special little gems, and I was thinking of the actual good things about Stafford, and one of those is “Staffordshire Library and Information Service”. I have only been working here in Stafford for little over a year, but I once studied engineering at Stafford College for a year at the tender age of 17, all full of vigor and vim. And probably Clearasil if I remember correctly. The course wasn’t for me and I eventually escaped a year later, but the town Library back then was a fantastic find, and in many ways I probably neglected my studies in favour of hiding in the stacks, reading books selected from the excellent science fiction collection.
From the ever brilliant local newspapers, came a front page I just had to share. All the local newspapers in Stafford are a great read, especially as they focus mainly on bin related news and spinechilling tales of ’young people seen hanging around at the park’ (The park that has a modus operandi of ‘place where young people of the local area can hang out’). Never a dull moment!
But getting a whole two cat related articles on the front page of the newspaper is in my opinion a work of art, especially as one article should actually read ’Cat may have been put in skip, or then maybe not, or perhaps it was?’ ! Sherlock Holmes would be shocked.
And its not like there isn’t any other News Going On At The Moment.
Note: To the people who lost cats, sorry to hear about that. I am fond of the furry things myself (comes with the Librarian badge I suppose), so I hope they catch the awful people responsible for killing your cats.
Yesterday I managed to knock 20 minutes off a 1.5 hour bike route I ride regularly on Cannock Chase.
The only difference was the new Track listing on my MP3 player, mainly very loud music that I wouldn’t listen to in polite company.
So in the spirit of sharing, I list the music that should now be banned, along with cheese and crisp sandwiches and hobnobs as my own personal performance enhancing drug.
I have sitting in my computer something old enough in computer terms to be regarded as a true survivor, an Nvidia Quadro NVS 280 graphics card. It is sitting there in a rather unassuming (although slightly coquettish) manner, but I thought it really needed a bit of recognition. Read the rest of this entry »
My bi-yearly blog entry is as ever random, however I have been working on something longer. All about my experiences using Calibre, Linux and a Kindle for all my e-book reader needs. Spoiler, its pretty awesome.
In the interim, here’s a picture of the top tube of my single-speed road bike.
A candle outside my tent on the banks of Loch Lomond. The weather was uncharacteristically excellent, although the midges were swarming with a furious vengeance.
My herb and salad garden seems to be going great. Without any pesticides and only organic fertiliser. It is strange to think only a few months ago this was nothing but an overgrown pile of broken glass and numerous large unidentifiable metal objects.
The wooden stakes? They are a frame for a DIY cloche I made to speed up the growth of the seedlings with sheets of recycled plastic painting sheets. It worked a treat!
Could this be the best/worst greetings card in the world? If it fails to tickle the ‘kittens and flowers’ part of the brain, then sadly you are either asleep, or too manly to admit it.
It also found that it’s excellent for testing the functionality of the printer/scanner at work, as its has everything you need (Bright colours, images, text and a reflective surface!)
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