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Went to Sinema last night intending an hour's stop, even drinking wine so as not to get in a pint-by-pint thing with one of the others. Unfortunately, I was lured into stopping by the promise of Dougal and the Blue Cat (blue is beautiful, blue is best), then a free bottle of Chardonnay. We ended up watching Valley of Gwangi instead, which is a classic of the cowboys vrs dinosaurs sub-genre. Although it had far too many cowboys and not nearly enough dinosaurs for my taste. The main t-rex was also worryingly purple, thus causing a certain amount of Barney-fear.

I thought I actually really needed a night relaxing and chilling but it turned out Chardonnay and me should not mingle as I got exceptionally miserable and grouchy when I got home. Thankfully, I sent my unhappy grouch to a friend and not here. The polite gist is that I have two very big jobs on at the day job, with deadlines over the next month, plus Warring States which has a deadline at the end of summer. And no-one who really gets things that amuse/entertain me in the way my Current Ex did. And I do truly miss writing without my darling moosifer sat on my lap and occassionally rolling over the keyboard: it's hard to get over twelve years of a work routine like that. I used to pause, when struggling, and rub him under the chin or give him a few strokes, or play rum-tum-tugger with him. Then I'd carry on writing. So, I just don't know what to do with myself now.

Naturally, I have assaged this grouchiness by buying:

  • a bigger mem card for the nikon
  • sunglasses which I think make me look suitably mod-like when in my black blazer jacket but may have been a mistake
  • a victorian style black bracelet (fake jet, obviously)
I'm planning to dig through some old drawers of stuff until I find a good badge for the blazer (I think, sadly, the prefect badge is missing).

I've also found that a good way to release the frustration over the amount of writing (day job and novel) is to beta-read friends' work, so a handful of people have been getting very thorough critiques. I think it's because I spend all day and night having to cross-check* my own work, so it's a blessed relief to just be checking someone else's and not having to come up with any more words.

Maybe I should use one of the toy Bagpi (the plural of Bagpuss) as an erzatz cat?



*what does "cabin crews to cross-check" mean, anyway? I realised I've been flying too much when I found myself using "cross-check" in a conversation about critiquing. I assume it's something involving checking the doors really are locked.

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Posted @ 8:55 pm on Wednesday, June 30, 2004
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Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn't it a pity
Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city

Click on a thumbnail to see the full photo:


large daisies 1 | large daisies 2 | large daisies 3
lavender with fuzzy silver plant | lavender close up | cherries ripening | cherry thief!


As you can see, this afternoon has gone exceptionally lovely. The cherry blossom from the spring is now fruiting, although I did catch this thief this afternoon.

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Posted @ 6:24 pm on Monday, June 28, 2004
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is Banksy on holiday in Devon?

This new stencil had appeared by Thursday morning in the underpass mentioned back in January. Now, normally, I'd just assume it was a good mimic of one of his, but it seems just too good...

cheese! click to see full image


As you can see, this is in the green arm of the underpass (city centre side), where some of the nausea-inducing green seaweed mural has fallen away so the pebbledash frames the rodent beautifully.

I got a funny look from the woman walking past me when I did a perfect double-take of it on Thursday morning. I even swore under my breath as I'd forgotten my camera.

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Posted @ 6:34 pm on Friday, June 25, 2004
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Portrait Illustration Maker - Let's make an original icon!! (sic)

I'd been wondering where Naomi got her icon from for an age and finally found a link to it. I know, I know, very self-indulgent but I couldn't resist. It's me! But all anime-ised!
OK, maybe I was a bit kind to my nose.

watched Nasicaa of the Valley of the Wind last night at the Sinema of the Strange. It was an old fan transfer of it, and the full uncut version. It had some good moments, but it's hard not to be distracted by the Battle of the Planets sound effects (ch-shing! etc) and the fact the plot is not very surprising in terms of revelations. Partially due to the Dune-like setting and doubtless partially due to the transfer, the colour palette was limited and the backgrounds - one of the enjoyable elements of Spirited Away - were excessively plain. I want Teto, the fox-squirrel, though.

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Posted @ 11:16 am on Wednesday, June 23, 2004
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Just watched a fantastic documentary on BBC4. That is dangerously close to a cliche, since almost every documentary I've seen on BBC4 has been fantastic.

Not Cricket tells the story of the Basil D'Oliveira conspiracy. This was the moment, in 1968, that the "cricket ignores politics" fallacy the MCC clutches close to its gold and red ties first cracked*. Check the links for full details but it was D'Oliveira's race which led to the multilateral twenty year sporting boycott of South Africa and a raised awareness of what apartheid actually meant. One member of the '68 selection committee had been a member of Mosley's fascists in the 1930s, another went on to lead the freedom pressure group, who Lefties with long memories will recall was a pro-apartheid group in the UK (and which I can't seem to google up). Curiously, the minutes of that selection meeting are missing.

The various cricket boards still try to claim that sport and politics don't mix, hence their refusal to boycott outright Zimbabwe from international cricket. Ironically, one reason Douglas Hume, chairman of the MCC in '68, went along with the exclusion of D'Oliveira from the English team was that he wanted Afrikaan PM Vorster to support the UK in not recognising Smith's white Rhodesian republic. This review also suggests the parallels between the situations whilst the Guardian's decision to start putting its archives online means this Arnott opinion piece written in '68 is available.

*they only finally broke down and let women join the club in 1998.

See? The BBC is educational. The documentary will be on again on 24th June and 29th June.

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Posted @ 11:45 pm on Sunday, June 20, 2004
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Warring States is starting to get somewhere at last. I thought I was not managing much, but each time I sit down to work it tends to come. This is, obviously, a Good Thing. And I've doubtless just jinxed it.

The preview went back to the editor recently, at version 2.01. This'll appear online at some point, and in the back of Lance's Warlords of Utopia, as a taster of the novel. And it had a strict word count of 850. I had an outline of everything it would cover, only to realise that if that were written out in full, it would be near to 3000 words. So it's now very reduced, although it still manages to cover the key elements: introducing two protagonists, the setting and hints of what their motivations are. Once it's online I'll link to it.

Friday? Must be pointless quiz results day!


Which Pirates of the Caribbean character are you?

You are Slackware Linux. You are the brightest among your peers, but are often mistaken as insane.  Your elegant solutions to problems often take a little longer, but require much less effort to complete.
Which OS are You?


You are a Goth!
Oh Woe is you! Your LJ is full of angsty poetry and every breath is PAINFUL for you. Remember, when you are playing with razor blades, it's down, not across! Make it count! (kidding!)
Which internet subculture do I belong to?


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Posted @ 10:11 am on Friday, June 18, 2004
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The Guardian have recently started to do decent photo articles in their Saturday magazine. As my experience of using the Grauniad online service is primarily limited to news articles which come without photos, I wasn't aware that they now put the photo articles up as well. My fads blog now has a long list of some of my favourites.

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Posted @ 12:47 pm on Thursday, June 17, 2004
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more flowers - the bubblegum pink rose:

rose in full bloom | bud almost open


this, btw, is my 100th grouch.

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Posted @ 1:21 pm on Saturday, June 12, 2004
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Votes for women! (if over 30, property-owning and not insane). Yes, another British blog post about voting. First, here is my asiatic lily:

lillies in full bloom 1 | lillies in full bloom 2, from a different angle in order to get the white flowers behind it


Everyone else seems to be blogging about voting yesterday: Jon at Rogue Semiotics was bright and early at 8am, whilst jag over on Route 79 was an 8pm type. I bucked the trend by voting at 9am, but that was due to oversleeping thanks to the Lurg. I'd really be struggling if I'd failed to spot the school right next to me had become a polling station overnight, but just in case I somehow missed the wonderfully bold Impact font reading POLLING STATION, the LibDem's managed to waste yet another piece of paper by shoving yet another leaflet through my letterbox informing me that it was the day to vote.

I don't have anything particular against the LibDems: in terms of the major parties in this country they are currently the least offensive. Unfortunately, my local party seems to think the best means of campaigning is to send out a two page newsletter every month, filled with photos of their local chaps pointing at uneven pavements, park gates and closed post offices. In the last fortnight, however, they have used several trees in attempting to secure my vote. My recyc bin is filled to overflowing with unwanted paper. So their ecological credentials are severely tested.

I'm still trying to decide if I'm an extra special target for them - I even got a photocopy of a handwritten letter from their candidate, stuffed in an addressed envelope - because one of their candidates lives over the road from me or because I have a small Labour party poster for the Save West Exe campaign in the window. And an anti-Son of Star Wars CND poster. So maybe even the LibDems have me flagged as a bit of a Leftie.

The real shock was inside however. The ancient metal ballot box had been replaced with a plastic bin. I was so startled I asked the officials who assured me that the metal boxes still exist. I want them back. Somehow putting your vote into a black plastic box feels worryingly like throwing it in the rubbish bin.

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Posted @ 12:10 am on Friday, June 11, 2004
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Advertising Ghosts is a new blog project I'm working on with a couple of other people. It's not dissimilar in content to the wonderful Satan's Laundromat, although with the emphasis on wall-painted advertisments of the 1950s/60s. At the moment the design needs some tweaks and nudges, I think - I may change the thumbnail size to 100 x 100 to suit LJers. If you're a photographer of ephemera and would be interested in signing up, let me know.

I have finally bought my own digital camera. It's just a little Nikon - the same model as the one I've been using here already. So expect an over-indulgence of photos of my garden posted here over the next few weeks. My neighbour has offered to help me pull down the garden shed (we even talked briefly of having a communal one in place of it) which is going to cause all kinds of chaos out there and upset the hedgehogs.

The Lurg continues, causing me to develop a lovely hacking cough whilst on a flight back from Belfast. It's not so much the cough that is so uncomfortable at those moments, as the awareness that half the plane is thinking "oh dear god, have we got this all the way?". I suspect the number of flights I've taken in the last fortnight is contributing to the 'ears full of cotton wool' feeling. I saw this flight calculator on Newsnight: you put in your flights and it tells you how many trees to plant to rebalance your carbon emissions. Unfortunately, it doesn't let you do it via UK internal flights. I eventually calculated my air miles and put them into this site. My air travel in the last fortnight is the same as 0.7 trees.

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Posted @ 9:54 am on Thursday, June 10, 2004
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Here comes the science! The reality of 'Nutrileum' (aka Nutrillium, aka Neutrillium aka Nutrilium aka...well, lots of other mis-spellings). OK, so I need to learn to spell "Nutrileum".

To recap, and correct my previous unchecked post, there is no single chemical called Nutrileum. L'Oreal (not Garnier as I suggested) claim that the Smooth Intense (aka Elvive) shampoo/conditioner range contains this wonder-chemical which will do all the usual things glossy shampoos promise to do for your hair. Mainly making it more glossy. At the American website, Nutrileum is described as "a complex of camelina seed micronutrients and smoothing agents" (sic).

The US patents database contains no patent for Nutrileum. It also returned no published applications containing the word. It did return it as a trademark - [read the result].
The UK patents database also returned no results under patents. It did produce a result under trademarks - [read the result].
So what we have so far is the trademarking of a term but no application for a patent for the complex's formula.

There are two things listed as part of Nutrileum: camelina seed micronutrients and smoothing agents:

  • 'smoothing agents' is a rather bland and meaningless term to hide a multitude of potential inorganic chemicals. The most commonly used one is propylene glycol. This chemical is also used in anti-freeze although it has been passed as safe for use in cosmetics. Here's an article from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry on its potential hazards. Obviously, that is in far larger doses than anyone is likely to expose themselves just by washing their hair.


  • 'camelina seed micronutrients' only pulls up a google of the L'Oreal site. 'Camelina seed', however, produced information about camelina seed oil, which is high in Omega-3 oils and is highly emollient. Also known as "the gold of pleasure oil", it may have been introduced in the UK by the Romans and is often used to improve tans.

So, as far as I can make out, L'Oreal have used an inorganic chemical compound found in almost all cosmetics and an ancient organic chemical and marketed this under the scientific-sounding (and trademarked) 'Nutrileum' (with all the suggestions of newness and/or nutrtiousness the word implies). I'm not going to draw any conclusions about the potential toxicity of propylene glycol - instead try WEN. Comments and feedback from scientists on this would be welcome, however, since this isn't really my field. I do think the advertising of 'Nutrileum' implied something more complex than the actual facts appear to amount to.

Here's comes the science, my arse.

--
Posted @ 12:34 am on Sunday, June 06, 2004
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I may have accidently started a biological class war last night. I went up to Exeter University's Lemon Grove to see Electric 6. As usual, as well as the usual black t-shirt types etc, there were the Oxbridge reject types. These are students who were too stupid to get to Oxford, Cambridge, Bath etc and had to come to Exeter. It's a pretty town, you see, and not too nastily urban for the Pony Club undergrads. These are the types of girls who clearly think they are in a L'Oreal ad all the time and you really do wonder what they are doing at a Detroit guitar band gig.I can live with their snobby little ways. Except when they are standing stock still at the edge of the mosh and give you a flithy look when you emerge and push sweatily past to get to the bar. You're at a rock gig, not Ascot, luv. Move yer bloomin' arse, as Eliza would have said. Had she been a rock type and not an Edwardian flower girl who looked like Audrey Hepburn. Hopefully my sweat has polluted the rarified air of the upper-middle classes and they will all get a good lower class dose of the Lurg.

For the convention throat of Monday mutated into a Mystery Virus aka The Lurg. There has been fever, there has been gunk, there has been an impressive cough which makes me sound like a blues diva who spent twenty years in smoky jazz clubs (prompting the odd singalong to Dusty Springfield). There has been very little work, which naturally makes me cross. So I've been cross, ill and disliking the beautiful sunny weather. Being ill is much more enjoyable in the winter when you can bundle up and justify not going outdoors for days. Somehow being ill in the summer feels like an affront.

Tangent (hey, I'm ill, I can be random): I'm not the only one to think the "ba-ba-baba" bit on God Only Knows by the Beach Boys sounds frighteningly like the Jim'll Fix It theme, am I?

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Posted @ 2:02 pm on Saturday, June 05, 2004
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