Brace yourselves for a nice long blog.

Picking up from where I left off on Friday ... I left work at 3:00pm and started the drive to Liz's. Everything seemed ok - reasonable road conditions and everything until I hit fog in South Wales. Nothing too drastic. Of course it meant there were the usual collection of morons who had their fog-lights on, despite the highway code and therefore UK law specifying that fog lights should not be used unless visibility is reduced to 100m or less. I chose not to slow down as I conisdered conditions to be safe. My thinking was this: "I can see to the next corner. Even if the roads were completely clear I wouldn't be able to see beyond the next corner." If you can stop within the distance that you can see then you're not overdoing it on the speed in my opinion. Well, you need to be able to take the corners too, of course :)

Things got a little worse when I hit the M4. The speed limit was lowered to 50mph for the first stretch of motorway because the rain was so heavy. On various occasions I tried to knock my wipers up another notch (BAM! *) and was shocked to find they were already ON the top setting. The road spray was the worst thing - especially passing lorries. Often I was having to guess where there were cars by the road spray they were kicking up, beause the cars themselves were lost in the rain. Driving in the dark and in rain so heavy that your wipers can't clear it fast enough with road spray rendering everyone invisible is quite a test of one's driving skills. Anyway I got there without incident.

On Saturday we got up fairly early in order to walk to Hungerford which turned out to be only approx. 8 miles rather than the 10-12 we had originally thought.

When we got back we got tarted up and went to the pub to start piling the calories back on. Well, I did. Liz was very well behaved. We were having a nice relaxing drink when, as Liz reports in her blog, two policemen walked in. Seeing as they were wearing uniform I knew they weren't there for a drink, and considering everything was quiet (no fights or the such) I knew they weren't there for an arrest. So that left one possibility - ID checks. Well after my past experiences with ID I make sure I always carry it. However they also chose to check Liz's ID - which was a problem. Having not been asked for a while she doesn't carry it anymore. Ah. Luckily they decided to let her get away with it. It'd have been interesting to see what they did if neither of us had ID on us. We are both of legal drinking age, and as of yet there are no laws requiring us to carry ID. They could hardly remove us from the pub - imagine the FUSS we could cause if they did. But then could they leave us there? What if we were actually underage, they couldn't just leave us in there. If they'd dragged me out there'd have been one hell of a fuss :)

On Sunday I took Liz shopping and then I left for Aber. Road conditions were better, except for road spray with the sun refracting in it. I was somewhat pleased to get all the way home without so much as one incident. Normally coming back on the A44 I get caught out by at least one ridiculously sharp bend hidden behind a dip, but I'm getting to know where they are now and also learning how to spot them.

Today I went to Brynamlwg for a pint of coke at lunch and to stare at my colleagues while they ate their lunches. This is the only down-side to having a packed lunch. Still it's a nice place and it was nice to be away from the radiation-emitting beast that rules my life. Yes that is the computer I am referring to.

On returning home I made a fairly nice but VERY hot chilli which I enjoyed but I suspect it may return to haunt me. Now I'm going to get a beer and start work on some CGI for Liz. She wants a web page that shows how far she has walked during the week, so should be a good opportunity for me to stretch my CGI muscles again.

No time for a proper blog right now, but I saw this and simply had to mention it.

Sweet sweet justice.

Wow, I am currently 3 days ahead of schedule on my website. I'm not going to start on the next task as it is something that isn't worth starting on unless you've got a full day to work on it. I'm off to Newbury in half an hour having packed last night and checked the car over.

Checking the car was great fun. It was so cold that I was frozen to the bone within seconds of stepping outside and by the time I reached the car I was shivering so much I had great difficulty getting the key in the lock. I had to go back inside at one point to get some things, so I took the opportunity to put on an extra jumper, a warm hat, and a pair of shorts under my jeans.

I was somewhat glad I made those checks though as I found that the front tyres were both low: One was 5 psi too low and the other was 10 psi too low! That explains why it has been handling a little oddly at times recently. I also checked the lights, which I don't normally do and was annoyed to find one of my sidelights had died. All well, at least they're not too expensive to replace and I can do it myself.

When I get to Newbury my DIY services will be employed in helping Liz to fix her burst outdoor tap. That should prove to be good fun in my opinion! Sing with me...

Lowey the Plumber,

Can we fix it?

Lowey the Plumber,

YES WE CAN...!

You may have noticed I am in a somewhat bubbly mood. I'm normally in a bubbly mood when I'm about to go see Liz, but then coupled with the fact I am also well ahead of schedule at work...

Anyway I'm going to go and get a glass of water - I don't seem to be able to quench my thirst today.

California suspends gay marriages

I don't think I will ever get used to seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger's name in that context.

Erk, crazy weather! Gale force winds rattling the flat, freezing me to death and generally causing havoc. I shall be off to Newbury in this lovely weather tomorrow - fun. Still it's worth embracing the crap weather to see Liz. I hope to leave work nice and early so I can see Liz at a semi-reasonable time. Of course, that means packing now rather than tomorrow morning when I will have less than 30 seconds to spare.

Anyway I had better get packed and ready to go, and I suppose I had better check the car over today rather than doing it tomorrow when I know I won't have time.

Tonight I think I will sleep in shorts and T-shirt inside my sleeping bag under my 15 tog duvet in a desperate bid to keep warm. I love being paid a pittance.

Snow :(

The weather seems determined to annoy me at the moment, with threats of snow and even the possibility of a Blizzard if you believe the Met. Office.

The RSS feed still seems to be working. \o/

English Language Versus Slang

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3501356.stm

I couldn't help but offer my opinion on this subject after Stuii blogged his views.

Yes there are problems with the way people speak. Yes it may prevent some people from getting jobs. But what I find surprising is that people are behaving as if this is some sort of national crisis. I am somewhat dumbstruck that it is assumed that everybody in the country has to be in a high paid desk job. That simply isn't the case. In fact it is an impossible scenario.

If people choose to use such ridiculous language as

in a job interview situation then they get everything that is coming to them. These people clearly should not be applying for jobs that require them to speak if they can not make the effort to speak normally for one half hour interview. Let's be honest here, the people that say these things could speak correctly - or at least a lot better - if they tried, but they choose to talk like that and therefore they don't deserve to get the jobs.

Personally I couldn't agree more. From what I've seen of the system it is failing in many ways. The reason why...? Because the system has become so polluted with red tape that teachers have less rights than the kids. If a kid doesn't want to learn then the kid won't learn no matter what. And of course the government feel that this is the correct approach, and are planning to impose the same restrictions on parents too.

When I was a kid I was lactose intolerant, so the obvious solution is to feed me Soya milk right? Wrong. I was also allergic to Soya. So I wasn't getting my calcium intake, which meant that from the ages of about 5 until 10 I was forced to drink the nastiest tasting soluable calcium tablets. If I'd had my way I wouldn't have drank the stuff. But I didn't have my way.

My point is that these kids are being given freedom by the government far too early and therefore they are taking control of their lives at an age where they are unable to sensibly control it. That is the reason that the system is failing.

Anyway, rant over. I'm off to get a drink and then a haircut.

Real Simple Syndication

Today sees the addition of a new feature to my humble little blog - RSS. So for those of you who use RSS feed readers, it is now easier for you to read my blog. But in all honesty I built the RSS feed system mainly for the hell of it. So there.

It's still highly experimental, so I can accept no responsibility for things exploding if you use it ;-) My quick tests suggest it works reasonably well - despite it being one big hack. My CGI script was never designed to have an RSS feed bunged in on top of it, but I've taken the brut-force approach and inserted it with a hammer.

While researching RSS I stumbled across a rather handy website that allows you to subscribe to lots of RSS feeds and manage them all, so I now use that to manage all the various blogs I read. It makes my life considerably easier - I've been wanting to do something like this for a while now.

I am beginning to think I should get my eyes checked. I've been having headaches on and off for months now, but they've been bad this week. With the pain being behind my eyes I suspect it may mean I need some glasses. Plus my eyes seem to constantly feel tired these days.

On the right is an artists impression of how I might look. Ok it's actually just something I cobbled together very quickly in Paint Shop Pro. This is what Lowey Potter might look like.

And for all those of you who know very little about me, I did actually used to wear glasses. I stopped wearing them eventually though as they seemed to be making no difference what-so-ever and I convinced my optician that I didn't need to wear them. Now I think I'd rather I was wearing them as my head has been hurting so much.

I've been listening to lots of episodes of the X-Fools. This was a show broadcast live every morning on my local radio station (just like all the other local radio stations in the UK). It was a very silly show which I used to follow religiously, and it probably had a huge impact on my sense of humour in the long run. After they stopped running the show it would seem I promptly forgot about it, until last night.

Someone posted the link http://www.xfools.co.uk/ into the channel along with a load of other links to comics and stuff. I pasted the URL into a browser tab and then forgot about it while I read some comic. 10 minutes later I nearly had a heart attack when the intro sound played... but my shock soon turned to surprise as I recognised the tune and began to recall the whole thing.

So I am now being very nostalgic and listening to the episodes as they slowly but surely download. It's at times like this I wish I had broadband.