Month: May 2002

Accidents 3 – Jane 0

What a bad cycling week. What with a small graze on my leg on Sunday when we were out cycling in the downs, and then Tuesday’s incident – the result of which was a nasty bruise, I should have known this was all leading up to something worse. This morning, I was cycling in the cycle lane down Preston Street (for those who don’t know Preston Street is a one way street going up, with a cycle lane going down) on a beautiful sunny morning, when a bloke appears from behind his van with a piece of aluminium sheeting which he slams into my hand. Fortunately, it was a glancing blow and I’ve only ended up with a small cut on my hand. Could have been a lot worse. Again, he didn’t seem too concerned about hitting me. I stopped my bike as soon as I could, and found myself being looked after by a lovely crew of builders who found me some plasters and took down the license plate of the van (just in case). Just as I was getting ready to leave, he reappeared with his boss and they both loitered around their van (about 20 metres further up the road) but didn’t bother to come and check if I was ok.

I pedalled on to work, and then went hunting antiseptics etc at our local Boots. Paul (guy in the next office) suggested I get some Hydrogen Peroxide as it cleans wounds up well, and it fizzes which is an added bonus, oh and it can fuel rockets…. I did, it worked lovely (on the wound, haven’t tried a rocket yet), and I’m now sitting having a nice cup of tea (hey, I’m english, what can I say :-)) and a yummy Chocolate Brownie.

know we go on

I know we go on a lot about TiVo, but this impressed me…

We’d notice a problem where TiVo had confused a bunch of channels: what it thought
was BBC4 (say) was actually something like the Parliament channel. This is bad, because when TiVo spots
something good to record, it changes to the wrong channel and records something else. Bah.

On Monday I put a call into TiVO to see what was happening, and they said they’d look into and probably
update our TiVo.
Today, they call back.
The problem, they’d figured out, was actually with our set-top box. TiVo was right, the set-top
box had the channels confused. Now, I’d have expected most companies to say “we’re right, it’s
somebody else’s problem, give them (your now out-of-business set-top box manufacturer) a call”, but the TiVo folk knew what set-top box we have, and gave me the
detailed instructions on what to do to fix it.

TiVo: expensive, but in the end, good value.

Mini Motty

There I was reading the BBC sports pages this morning to check what Jeremy had just told me (about Gerrard definitely not going to the World Cup) and I stumbled across Mini Motty. Now if you’re not British, chances are you haven’t heard of Motty – John Motson – but Motty is a famous football commentator for the BBC for television and radio, and seems to have been around for ever. He is most often thought of as being somewhere cold wearing a sheepskin coat (which are the clothes Mini Motty wears). Mini Motty can be downloaded from the site and allows you to select up to 5 teams to hear news about. When new news is posted to the BBC site, Motty will let you know. And in the meantime, he’ll entertain you by dancing, kicking a ball, sending you off, having a walk around your screen and any number of other things. What a really entertaining concept. Well done BBC.

Nearly an accident…

There I was cycling, or more accurately being blown, home this evening along the cycle lane which leads from Hove Lagoon all the way along the sea front. Just after I passed the King Alfred Leisure Centre there are 2 people on rollerblades hogging the cycle lane. I try to swerve off the lane to avoid hitting the girl (the guy had already moved off) and she stumbles (she wasn’t very confident on her skates) right into my path. I pull my brakes as hard as I can to avoid running into her, they screech loudly, and I feel my bike balance precariously onto the front wheel, I let go of the brakes to get the bike back onto the level, and then immediately have to pull them again to keep from running into her. Again my rear wheel left the ground and slammed my saddle into my leg. Nice. So, they skate off and I stop and assess my damage – just a sore leg, nothing serious. The guy shouts to see if I’m ok, the girl says nothing.

I cycled on, rubbing my sore leg, and speak to them as I go past them saying “I suggest you keep out of the cycle lane if you can”. When I look back a couple of hundred metres further along they’re both skating in the cycle lane. Fools!

So, this leads me to wonder what the rules about cycle lanes are. I mean, I know that generally they’re a lot smoother than the normal footpaths, and so they would appeal to rollerbladers and skateboarders, but are they allowed to use them. If I hadn’t manage to stop, would it have been my fault or hers?

On Saturday night we

On Saturday night we cycled down to Preston Park to catch
Groupe F’s A Little More Light firework show. These are the people who did the fireworks around the Eiffel Tower for New Year’s eve 2000. It was impressive (but short) and I’ve not seen so many people for a long, long time. 15,000? No idea.

Actually, going cycling on a Saturday night felt like one of the nerdiest thing I’ve done for ages. But it was top fun.. especially having to twist and turn through so many cars and people on foot on their way to/from the fireworks.

This was at the end of the day, after having been caught up in the events of the North Laine. Jane’s put together the pictures.

Susie went to London

Susie went to London on Saturday to do a few more touristy things, see a show and have dinner with her brother. Whilst she was there she popped into Fortnum and Mason‘s. Being the sweetie that she is, she bought me a tin of Fortnum and Mason’s Drinking Chocolate Flakes. So, this afternoon, an afternoon when it’s wet and miserable outside, we’ve just been drinking some. And it’s lovely. It’s actually flakes of chocolate, not a powder as they usually are, and unusually it’s dark chocolate rather than milk chocolate – it’s just a shame that we’re only going to get 4 or 5 cups out of the 125g can. Yummmmm!

Other people’s blogs

For one reason or another I’ve read a few other people’s blogs recently, and I thought it was only fair to give them a mention.

  • BostonBlueEyes tells about the exploits of Colin and the lovely D. It’s well written and quite interesting, and he was kind enough to publish a blog entry especially for us the other week.
  • I followed a link from BostonBlueEyes to Amethyst and found it quite interesting reading about Karen’s trip to the UK. Sounds like she had a great time.
  • As mentioned before [1][2][3], I still read Neil Gaiman‘s blog. I still find him amusing, and Richard bought me the book “American Gods” for my birthday so I’m looking forward to reading that – the last Neil Gaiman book I read was “Good Omens” – a joint effort between Neil and Terry Pratchett.
  • I stumbled across Winter Wonderland when I searched google for wedding related blogs and check back every now and again to see what they’re up to. They get married very soon indeed so Good Luck Michele and Allen.
  • I used to read a GadgetGirl blog, by Suey but she seems to have fallen off the edge of the internet.
  • And not forgetting SpunkyTheMonkey and the infrequently updated Jocke – both of whom I used to work with at Aspect, and of course Daisy whose Mummy I worked with there as well.