Author: richard

This is just my kind of thing: Cloud Dynamics: Perspectives from art and science, but I’m already busy so won’t be able to go.

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As far as I’m aware 100% of children want to be astronauts (and also, possibly, some slightly older people who should know better). Now they have a survival guide from Emma. As she says: “Whether you want to join the elite corps of highly trained astronauts, or hand over giant wads of cash to pay for a ticket on a spaceship, you’ll need to be prepared”.

The last seven days have seen: our first beach BBQ of the year (pictured); our first drift-down-to-the-beach-of-an-evening-for-a-beer night of the year; and our one and only Brighton Festival event of the year, which was to see Richard Dawkins and Lalla Ward.

I was amazed that I could get GPRS service on my phone while in Canada. GPRS meant I could send and receive email. Ok, it wasn’t terrible fast 5,760ft up in the middle of nowhere, but it worked, so naturally I bcc:ed a few people photos I’d taken with the phone. So much more personal than a default postcard, IMHO. And faster. Probably not cheaper.

Today I received the same back from a friend on holiday in Greece, so I can confirm that, on the receiving side, I prefer this to postcards.

So it looks like the West Pier (the remains, I mean) will be demolished. The Heritage Lottery Fund withdrew their £14m funds when the West Pier Trust asked for another £5m. After fires and weather damage, they couldn’t justify spending the money.

Who is going to pay for the demolition? I guess that I am, along with all the other council tax payers in the area. I was just trying to figure out what an estimated £2m demolition fee would cost me. It’s not easy to work out…

Brighton receives around £67m+ in council tax revenue (PDF report), from a population of 248,000. Guessing at four people per property, that makes 62,000 homes and an average council tax bill of £1,092. Seems a little high, but let’s run with it.

That means a demolition would add £32 to the average council tax bill. Or… how about considering the restoration as an investment? £19m contribution to a rebuild as a tax would add about £102 for three years (I’m assuming it’s going to take a while to rebuild the thing). Doesn’t sound so bad, but I’d need to see the guesstimates for the return on that investment to make sure the tax bill goes down in subsequent years.

I know all these calculations are naive, but it’d be interesting to see them run by someone who understood the politics, processes and accountancy.

If you need to take your car to France, seriously consider the Eurotunnel. You may have to try a few different departure times and dates to get a cheap price (we paid £34 for a day trip), but it’s worth it: 35 minutes from platform to platform, a very comfortable ride, and when you arrive you just drive off with no waiting (customs is all done at departure). I hope never to have to get on a channel ferry ever again.

Just a couple of things I saw in shop windows in Lewes last week…

1. A rather soothing poster:

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2. I had no idea anyone would even bother trying to convert arcade games into board games. The text reads: Centipede, the family version of the arcade game.

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Being a non-smoker I’m really interested in the news that Ireland stubs out smoking in pubs. Listening to the radio last night, someone from a UK pub chain was commenting that similar legislation in the UK was inevitable, probably in the next five years.

There’s much noise from pub and restaurant owners that this is going to kill off their business, but apparently there was also similar complaints when drink driving laws were enforced. Anyhow, it seems that almost everyone agrees that there will be some drop in trade, but in Ireland it seems that the your-health-comes-first argument has won out.

This is brilliant news, it’s just odd that it happened in Ireland first: I mean, when I was in Ireland the pubs I visited were probably the smokiest places I’ve ever been to in my life.

Short story: Putting together BoConcept flat-pack furniture is more involved that slapping together something from Ikea, but you end up with something far more sturdy. Their also have superior customer service.

Longer story: We were missing one part from our flat-pack order (don’t ya hate it when that happens). Or rather we weren’t because we never ordered it. But then again we didn’t go into the store saying we want one of these bits, and two of those bits (etc). Rather, we said “we want something that looks like this” and the guy in the store said “a-ha, then you’ll need one of these, two of those…yada yada”. So it was their design error that left us short one piece. That’s how we look at it, but you can imagine the sort of prolonged in-store argument this problem could lead to, no doubt with reference to small-print about checking the order. But 30 minutes after realizing there was something missing, I was walking home with the extra bit it in my hand… no arguments, no discussion, no 6 week shipping delays, no exchange of money. That’s good customer service.

So: BoConcept: stupid name, not cheap, not fast, but overall very much worth it.

Oh my, that was a dull blog.