Once upon a time, there lived a man who maintained a website known as grayblog. This site contained his ramblings and musings, a few links and (very infrequently) the odd item of interest to certain other sections of mankind.
I just wonder when I’m ever going to find time to get this site truly up-to-date. There seems to be a shedload of things to write about, but no time to do so. So apologies all round.

David Fawcett should really be a blogger - I think he’d be very good at it. His pictures are simple, low key and possibly even not that artistically accomplished. But the genius is in the titles and the spirit that they catch. We saw his work at an exhibition in Tunbridge Wells on Saturday - he was there, being immensely jovial and good-natured (and as tall as he depicts himself in his paintings). You can see his work here. I particularly like "Quiet Fart" - I think we’ve all been there.

Kung Fu fighting?

I reckon that last week’s Global House Connection show (dated 25 July 04) is one of the best that there has been, ever. Fact.

… it’s too hot to concentrate properly. Actually, I’m not sure it is the heat, per se, so much as the humidity. Anyway, recent weeks in bullet points, and in no particular order:

• Charlie and Pete’s wedding at Lancing College. Was fabulous. Involved very large quantities of food and even larger quantities of alcohol - two things essential for any successful wedding.
• Neil and Emma’s wedding at a hotel near Uckfield. Still more nosh and booze, plus funky music. And a rare opportunity for the Old Howardians to have a meeting - Sarah, David, Louise and Andy were present.
• A lengthy trip to the Netherlands and Belgium with PFE-supporter Mike, involving lots of visits and meetings (about 15, I think), driving for more than 1500 miles in six days, a particularly dodgy hotel in Lochristi and an impressive journey in a gathering storm across the Markerwaarddijk.
• A much shorter trip to the Irish Republic, mainly visiting a trade show at the Punchestown Racecourse. Note to travellers - BA are now just as cheap and often cheaper than easyjet or Ryanair, with the added advantages of more comfortable seats, free coffee or tea, a sandwich and an allocated seat.
• Hels has had a hearing test. She was forced to go private, as the NHS waiting list just for a test is two years. Well done Mr Blair. Anyway, the results were not overly encouraging, and more tests are planned, including an MRI scan. H is definitely nervous about this.
• Barbeque at Charlie and Pete’s - more food, more drink, good company.
• Flat sales update: with two agents now working on mine, there is plenty of interest, but still no offers. We are now in the summer holidays, which is the worst time of year to sell a flat, but we keep trying. H’s flat is back on the market, but is not fetching huge amounts of interest at the moment. We’re resigned to not having a home together by the wedding, but we’ve managed so far, so managing for a little longer will be an irritation, not a disaster. What’s more important is that we now need to borrow money for the wedding - thankfully, the Bank of Dad is offering good terms at the moment.

I’m sure that there is much more to tell you, but it’s too hot to type much, and I don’t really have the time either. So, to keep you all happy, here are some piccies:

The Maarkermeer with storm approaching.

The Boomkwekerijmuseum - a museum dedicated to nurseries growing woody plants, in Boskoop, Netherlands.

You know Peace lilies - Spathiphyllums - that they sell in Marks and Spencer? Here they are produced on factory scale, mostly mechanised, disappearing off as far as the eye can see.

More when I get round to it/feel like it.

Tesco plan to kit trolleys out with DVD players for kids according to this news article. The manufacturers, Wanzl, believe that this advance represents "a new dimension of creativity to an existing product". Hmm. I think it could be another good reason to add to my list of reasons for not visiting Tesco.

Personally, if you want innovation, then you need this:

Image shamelessly stolen from National Cart Company Inc..

Meanwhile, check out The Center For Prevention of Shopping Cart Abuse. Very worthy.

…Lord Percy, with sightings of Matt and Rachel.
BubbleFun - better in two player format, but worth playing against the server nonetheless.

I’ve just been looking at Eva Herzigova’s breasts in the "Bra Loggy" header of this site (click refresh until you see it if you are not familiar with it), and wondered if I should replace them with a photo of Hels’s cleavage.
If I did so, what would be my likely life expectancy?
(We do, of course, already have Hels’s eyes. But you knew that, didn’t you?)

Henri Cartier-Bresson, RIP.
Related: Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson.

No, I don’t know what that title means either.

Anyway, highlight of the day so far was receiving the Uborka Mix CD, a truly yayworthy event if ever there was one.
Lowlight of the week was reducing the flat price again. If it doesn’t sell by the end of the month, then young Dave will probably get a phone call (yes, I know I’ve said that before, but we kept hoping).
And this is bloody difficult.

My phone has died. Not my mobile, but my plain old landline receiver. I’ve had it for years too. The stories it could tell…

In other news, I’ve been working on an overhaul of my work website. Not a major design change (a couple of tweaks is all), but a major improvement to the content. Watch this space for a launch announcement.

Here’s one for Brian. I am no longer sure that it is my telephone that has died. The situation is as follows:

• current connection set-up - I have the BT home broadband thingy. My telephone (a BT-badged one) is plugged into the back of my answering machine (also by BT) which is then plugged into one of those mousetail adaptor thingies.
• the symptoms - when anyone dials in, I can barely hear them, and there is an incredibly large amount of noise. If I try to dial out, I can barely hear the dialtone, and there is the same noise. But if anyone dials in and gets my answering machine, they can leave a message without any problems. If I plug my telephone straight into the adaptor - i.e. not through the answering machine - I still get the same noise problems. The broadband connection works with no problems.
• the puzzle - to my mind, the above symptoms suggest that there is a problem with the telephone. However, being the clever chappy that I am, I thought it wise to check before buying a new one, and today I brought my telephone to the office and plugged it in here. It works fine. And, before you ask, I did try the connection at home with the broadband connection enabled and disabled, and that made no difference.

So is my phone faulty, or is it the line?

I think Brighton have a better-than-average chance of staying in Division 1 (or whatever it is called these days) this season, although yesterday’s match was not the best start we could have wished for. But, in spite of that, I think Brighton’s performance bodes well for the rest of the season.

Tanya, Jeremy (congratulations on both on engagement, and happy birthday to Jeremy), Ian, Sacha, Paul F, Lord Percy, Lady Bren, Kearn, DA, Sarah, Simon and Matt (plus H, of course).

…under offer? I got an offer on Friday, which I rejected as too low. A new offer is now in, and I’m trying to decide - stick it out and risk losing it, or accept it now and risk not getting a little bit more. The new offer is just £4000 short of the current asking price, but is £2000 short of my mental reserve price.
Decisions…

UPDATE: I’m going to tough it out and see if I can get a little bit more. Fingers crossed.

I’m currently reading Bill Bryson’s A Short History Of Nearly Everything. (I know it doesn’t say that in the sidebar. I know I’m bad at updating. Bear with me.)
Today, Scaryduck thoughtfully provides the missing chapter.

Sale agreed, with an additional £1000. Yay!

I meant to write here about a phone call I received recently (when at Hels’s home, as my phone still isn’t working and BT are not convinced that there is a problem). The call started something like this:

The question is, how many people are there called Nigel who have an accent from the Subcontinent?

Apparently, according to some people, I rant too much on this site. Well, today, you lucky people, I have a ranting triple bill.
Arrests for all offences proposed. This is a nonsense of an idea, another example of Blunkett’s rampant desire to create a totalitarian state. It will be used as an excuse to arrest all and sundry on the flimsiest of evidence, will lead to a dramatic increase in arrests based on racism and bigotry and will undoubtedly lead to a mass of claims for wrongful arrest. The minorities will feel even more persecuted than they are now. This is certainly not the way to deal with petty crime, not least because it will once again fundamentally increase the burden of administration on a police force that does not seem to be capable of dealing with its current workload. And whilst I’m on the subject, check out the rest of the HMG’s proposals - the arrest powers are getting the headlines, but there is a lot more, such as the increase of powers of Community Support Officers, that should be a matter for concern amongst those of a more centrist or libertarian bent.
Ministers "can not block" £7million win. Too bloody right! The man’s crime was, without doubt, terrible and beyond reason. However, he has been given a punishment by the courts, and should not have a new punishment handed down by politicians because it might be politically expedient to do so, pandering to the lowest common denominator of the baying of the tabloid headlines. If a millionaire businessman had committed a crime of rape, he would not be required to hand over his fortune to the state in addition to serving a jail term. Nor should this man. The lottery is based on luck, and sometimes, as in this case, luck can appear unjust. But justice has been served once already, and there is no need to try and serve a new popular justice now.
Meanwhile, positive ranting as EU’s Barroso strikes balance with Commission posts by involving the medium and small nations in the big decisions, thereby showing that Bertie Ahern knew precisely who was the best man for the job. Genius selections include putting a Dutch woman in charge of competition regulation (the Dutch have a fabulous "can-do" attitude to business that I hope will prevail), giving Irishman Charlie McCreevy charge of the internal market and (probably the best appointment of all) giving the excellent Margot Wallstrom a special mission to improve the EU’s communication with its own people. This last is incredibly important - as a recent newspaper article shows, the EU does actually do what we want - we just don’t notice it. A full list of Commission appointments can be found here.

The revised work website is now live. You can view it here. Bug reports welcome (kinda).

The work website seems to be running well, aside from the dysfunctional New Plant Variety Information Form. I’m currently working on replacing the CGI script that is (or rather, is not) driving that page with a PHP script - namely Phorm. Does anyone have any experience of that script at all?

…so no updates here for the moment.

Too busy still. Spent most of today driving. Now have long forms related to flat sale to complete. Most likely will go for beer shortly.
No drama to report, so move along.

…Lord Percy. W2 is a bit pants, in a dead kinda way.

Ever wondered where mannequins come from? No, nor had I, but now we all know.

Lightning Pool.

BorisWatch - all Boris Johnson, all the time.

A blog about allotment gardening. Good stuff.

I’ve signed up for the new spam and virus filtering service at 34sp, which has already nipped one virus in the bud. However, I’m having problems finding a suitable level of sensitivity for the Spam Guardian filtering engine. I tried 75 and that filtered nothing. I’ve now set it to 50 and will await results. Anyone else got experience with this? If so, what level have you set? I know that it will take a while to tweak, and I’ll need to set up a lengthy "white list" of safe addresses, but all advice is welcome.
If I get it working well on grayblog.co.uk, I’ll deploy it on plantsforeurope.com too.

For those sitting on the edge of their seats, waiting for exciting news about my software tribulations, I can now report that I have successfully solved all the problems with my form using Phorm, which I rate as excellent. I have also tweaked the settings on Spam Guardian so that it is now tagging about 80% of incoming spam with the filter set to "10". I’m going to alter it to "9" to see if we can increase its sensitivity.
More exciting news as reports come in!

Barry White first thing in the morning? My fiancée is very strange.

…why I haven’t written here about Brighton and Hove Albion in recent weeks, I think that getting one point from four games is fairly disastrous, and probably not the cause for any optimism. The team clearly needs to do something different to get some more positive results, and whilst I’m not yet calling for the manager’s scalp and still firmly believe that Mark McGhee is a good manager, I do think he needs to be a little less optimistic and a touch more realistic.

Yesterday, we had a potter about the Gallery Trail that forms part of the Arundel Festival Fringe. enjoying the opportunity to see some good art (and some less-good art) as well as the chance to poke about inside other people’s homes. There will be pictures soon.
This was followed by a rather good meal in the Fox Goes Free at Charlton, a haunt from long ago that I haven’t visited in a fair while. Ham, egg ‘n’ chips - mmmmmm.
Today we’re going to saunter around West Dean.

Goodbye to magnetic clouds, and all that. I think this is rather sad, as I’ve grown up with the familiar three-lobed cloud shapes. It’s possible to look at a BBC weather chart and instantly discern the prevailing conditions, without having to read the accompanying text or listen to the forecaster (although one should always listen to Rob McElwee as he is a minor deity after all - "There’s a deep depression moving in from the Atlantic, and we ALL know what that means, don’t we?"). I also wonder if this will mean the end of the traditional opening of the forecast (well, in days of old at least, and occasionally still today) with a North Atlantic synoptic chart - which, for anyone with even a basic A-level grounding in meteorology, provides enough information to get the general gist of how the weather will be.

…they get runny beaks. Fact.

PDF Toolkit - looks handy. via Gordon.

Hels has accepted an offer on her flat. We’re back on full time home-hunting again.
Unfortunate, then, that I’m going to be out of the country for four out of the next seven days.

New Weebl.

Now that I’ve nearly got the settings right for Spam Guardian, I’m really pleased with it. I’ve had the filter sensitivity set to "5", which has screened out around 80% of the spam mails. Some are still getting through, though, so I’ve increased the sensitivity to "strict", which has a scalar equivalence of "4". If this correctly tags all the unwanted mail, then I’ll get it to delete the mails at the server before they get sent to my inbox - but only after a trial period (perhaps a week) of simply tagging the offending mails, just to be sure that I’m not going to screen out anything that I actually want to receive.
Exciting, isn’t it?

I’m off to the Netherlands later today, and will be back on Friday evening. So expect some quiet in the meantime, although, if you’re lucky, you might get one of those rambling airport-based posts. I should also be able to connect from my hotel, so there is the prospect of some brief entries.
The reason for my trip this time is to attend the Plantarium trade event in Boskoop. I have three or four meetings lined up, all but one of which I am looking forward to (the one I am not looking forward to involves sorting out some political issues, something that I never enjoy doing), and one of my plants has been entered in the Best New Plant Competition, so fingers crossed for that.
We’ve got a packed weekend in store too. On Saturday morning, we plan to view three properties. In the afternoon, Hels has a medical appointment that she is not looking forward to. On Sunday we shall be with the in-laws-to-be. Monday will involve some time in the office and picking Mum up for Tuesday’s booze-cruise to Calais to get the wines for the wedding reception. Wednesday and Thursday features a trip to a trade show in Cheshire, Friday an overdue haircut, Saturday packing for a week-long trip to Germany and Sunday flying to Hamburg.
Actually, it may be quiet here for some time to come!

What a long day. I’m pooped, and still working now (remember that I’m an hour ahead of the UK, so it’s heading towards 8pm now). Thank goodness for Arrow Jazz which has provided top quality relief, free from ads and with only occasional news-based interruptions. Pity there is no web stream.

[written yesterday at the airport]

There’s something about being in airports, even the more cosmopolitan variants such as Schiphol, that makes you feel like you are suddenly a character in Rocko’s Modern Life. As I fought my way through the aisles of the shop in the departures lounge, surveying the endless rows of over-priced tat in a half-hearted and ultimately futile attempt to find a small gift for H (cow-shaped photo frame, anyone?), a clearly over-enthusiastic floor-sweeper operator patrolled across the store in an excessively frenetic and slightly crazed manner, literally sweeping all (including magazines, postcards, stray luggage and unattended children) before him. Meanwhile, a grotesquely overweight American, complete with shockingly pink navel glaring out through an opening in an over-stretched mid blue nylon shirt, ambles vacantly with an air of the lost (in every sense of the word). On the travelator, a tattooed Dutchman speaks rapidly to a girlfriend via his mobile phone whilst walking at full speed against the direction of the belt - perhaps some bizarre form of exercise for exhibitionists.
At gate D8, waiting for the flight to LGW, all one can hear is the monotonous, rapidly-repeated refrain of "Mind your step", delivered in a delicately accented female voice to travellers reaching the end of the moving walkway. A group of teenagers run for the end of the walkway, hoping to reach some sort of terminal velocity at the point where the walkway folds back under itself and they are catapulted onto the shiny tiled airport floor.

"Mr O’Toole, please report to airport information. Mr O’Toole, please report to airport information." Isn’t that one of those coded announcements, informing staff of a suspect package?

Evening sun is glowing across the aircraft on the apron as incredibly dark clouds loom over distant Amsterdam city centre. It’s been an incredibly foul day, with torrential rain, lots of standing water and slow-moving traffic on the A4. The sky promises a rough flight home. I ponder whether to go and get a copy of Wallpaper* Navigator, the new travel sub-brand of my favourite magazine that I’ve only just noticed (I tend not to browse magazine shelves at home, as the special subscriber edition of Wallpaper* is delivered to my home each month), but I feel that €10.99 is rather a lot for a magazine that costs £3.99 at home.

This has been a useful trip, with considerable amounts of knowledge gained, a few new contacts made and several old contacts refreshed. But I forget just how exhausting trade shows are to attend - an eight hour day yesterday of trudging the aisles, constant talking and vain attempts to absorb all of the information that is being presented to me; today, a 10am meeting (at least a civil hour at which to begin the day) followed by another four hours of aisle trudging, etc.

At the back of my mind are thoughts about our impending house-hunting and move. My travels here have been punctuated by several phone calls (including a very long one from the Gatwick departure lounge) to mortgage people, estate agents and Hels, all on that theme. Somehow, in spite of all the distractions around us, this weekend we must focus our attention on finding the right home in which to begin our married life - possibly the biggest decision we will make during our thirties (aside from the actual decision to marry, of course!). We have three candidate properties to view - two in need of significant refurbishment and one that has been recently refurbished but is in the middle of nowhere. The middle of nowhere option is the most appealing to us both at the moment - the property details are encouraging, the pictures of the property are encouraging, the location is encouraging and the price is encouraging. We have two properties sold. We have mortgage agreed. The pieces may, finally, be fitting together. But celebrations will be withheld until we have the keys in our hands.

Do Japanese tourists really shout a lot and take photographs of everything, or is it a popular myth? There is a group here that is doing nothing to dispel the untruth, if that is what it is. Oh oh, I’m getting grumpy.
Oh my god. There are dozens of them! Enough to half-fill the aircraft. Gah. AND I’ve run out of Maynards’ Wine Pastilles. This flight could last a lot longer than the scheduled hour. And nothing to read besides an EC Directive, as I arrived sufficiently early to demolish the entire Indy already.

And I’m sure I passed H’s local vicar by the tat shop.

House viewed in the middle of nowhere.
Offer tendered.
Offer rejected.
New offer tendered.
Offer accepted.
Celebrations.

Now for the hard work. Fingers crossed, eh?

See this? €
It’s a euro symbol.
If you’re reading this on Mozilla/FireFox, you’ll know that.
If you’re using Explorer, it may well look like a box.
Poxy Microsoft.

From this week’s Littlehampton Gazette, a headline on a story about a fire at a washeteria:

Arf!