Vegetables growing


Vegetables
Originally uploaded by Jane Dallaway

I’ve done much more planting than usual this year. Here are the majority of my pots/containers growing wonderfully. The potatoes have been a bit mad.

Vegetables

The bottom right hand corner are my potatoes 9 days before this photo – the potatoes here are again the bottom right hand of the photo. I’m really not sure at what point they prevent me being able to see out of the kitchen window. I’ve marked up this photo with notes explaining what all of the vegetables are.

More Festival delights

It is still Festival time, and as Richard mentioned the other day, we’ve made a real effort to see some of the many fringe shows:

  • Open Wide – A comedy sketch show with 2 actors covering topics from Justin Timberlake appearing on a history program, to Hitler being investigated by Columbo and the Sweeney. Not the funniest show I’ve ever seen but had some good sketches
  • Final Cut: Lightning Documentary Challenge – showing short films (2 minutes each) produced by teams in 24 hours covering one of the fringe acts appearing on Saturday. Some great films and even better an opportunity to catch some more fringe acts – the Pet Sounds v Sgt Pepper show looked good, and we even had live music from The Top Bananas whilst the judging was going on. Some of the films are now available on youtube
  • Catchy! The Great plague musical – A cross between a Carry On film and a pantomime. Smutty, funny and with some great tunes to hum along to. And a bargain at £8 for a good 2 hours worth of entertainment. I’m still not sure if the guy sitting next to me sneezing during a musical about the plague was a good sign though.

The festival continues for another 10 days or so and we’ve got a couple more shows to attend.

Festival so far

It’s festival time, and although we’re not doing much in the Brighton Festival itself, we have a punishing schedule in the Brighton Festival Fringe—which, I’m told, is the “England’s largest arts event, and the 2008 Fringe is the second largest Fringe Festival in the world”. Citation needed, indeed.

So far we’ve been to…

  • X-Files Improv with Dean Haglund, who turns out to be the long haired blond geeky one in the X-Files. A small turn out (30 people?), but a huge amount of fun. Essentially, an X-Files episode is created using audience suggestions, and it worked really well. A top act.
  • We spent an hour or so of a boiling hot day in The Last South: Pursuit of the Pole. Yes, there were initial technical issues with the sound, and yes the venue suffered from being on a roundabout on bank holiday Monday with motorcycles roaring passed, but this didn’t distract from a great play. It was Scott and Amundsen on stage, writing their journals, in step with each other, but with very different experiences. Touching, funny, etc.
  • Up to the university we dropped in on a professorial lecture, namely “Alcohol: a simple molecule with complex consequences for emotion and behaviour“. We learned about the experiments on memory and behaviour under the effects of booze, and it was eye-opening. I didn’t know, for example, that drinking enhances your memory (but only for events before the drinking starts). Naturally, there was a wine reception after.
  • And tonight we went to see Mike Leigh in conversation with Amy Raphael, discussing his films and watching bits of some of them. We headed back home to sign up to LoveFilm to get his back catalog.

One negative: the £1 per ticket booking fees are evil, especially as the booking system isn’t finished and the web sites are frustrating to use. And on top of that “internet booking fees” should be made illegal. But, there’s no competition, so we pay. I’d rather have to pay than not have it at all, is what it comes down to.

Old Bailey

Transcripts from the Old Bailey (from 1674 to 1913) are now online, which has generated plenty of press.

As I suspect many others have, I went searching for references to my family name and I’ve found a few…

  • In 1796, a 19 year old George Dallaway wandered into a warehouse and told the clerk that he wanted “half a hundred weight of sheathing nails”, but didn’t have the paperwork. The clerk gave him the goods, and thus a fraud was committed. Geroge was “respited to go for a sailor or soldier” which we take to mean he was given the opportunity to fight, but a few months later he’s in the proceedings as having a year in jail and a public whipping.
  • Matthew Dallaway stole 12 spoons in 1769 and was transported. Nice touch in that he took them while the victim’s house was on fire. And he would have got away with it had it not been for the pesky pawnbroker grassing him up. His defense: “I was very much in liquor”, a phrase I plan to use whenever the situation merits it.

It’s worth having a dig around the site for some of the history to the publication. For example, the Proceedings were popular (“…in the opinion of many people one of the most diverting things a man can read in London”) until the rise of newspapers, and even carried advertising for a while.

Science ‘Open Notebook’

One to file under “wish I’d thought of that”, from Slashdot:

Under [the] radically transparent ‘open notebook’ approach, everything goes online: experimental protocols, successful outcomes, failed attempts, even discussions of papers being prepared for publication… The time stamps on every entry not only establish priority but allow anyone to track the contributions of every person, even in a large collaboration.

Glenn on the history of his company

Tuesday, at £5 App, Glenn gave his personal view of the history of his company: The idea, name, table football, money, cake and the culture. The most interesting parts for me were his description of using scale to escape the for hire rollercoster (if you’re working as an agency), the importance of having a shared set of values, and using money as a tool.

Interesting stuff. It’ll take a while for it to sink in for me, but as Ribot caught the talk on video (part 1) (and part 2) you can judge for yourself.

[Disclaimer: Glenn is Jane‘s employer]