A public thank-you to pointing out that my scanner would work under OSX. (I found a few drivers had gone astray in my ‘classic’ install of OS9·1.)

This blog is proud to present some snippets from Private Eye:

1. Why I’m proud to be Australian

Gotta hand it to those Tassies: first splitting the beer atom, now this!

‘We came up with the idea after reading about how elephant dung paper has become a huge tourist product in Africa and Asia,’ Joanna Gair of the Creative Paper Tasmania company told a product pre-launch in Hobart. ‘Then I discovered that in Scandinavia, elk poo paper is the stationery of choice in most offices, and that got me thinking that we should create a uniquely Tasmanian paper. And what better raw material could we use than kangaroo dung?’

Gair was speaking ahead of the full launch later this spring of a full range of handmade “Roo Poo” paper products, all created from wallaby and kangaroo dung. ‘Roo Poo paper is the ultimate in recycling, and it reinforces the ecological message of our company. Half the fibre pulping has already taken place inside the animal, which means that the bulk of our work has already been done. Our only problem is that we’re having difficulty in getting the quantity of dung we need. We need about 25kg of kangaroo manure to produce 400 sheets of A4 paper, so well need several tons of it before we can launch our full range of products, including cards and paper. And that’s a lot of plop. We’re hoping that the community will help us by collecting kangaroo and wallaby dung for us wherever they see it, and dropping it off in plastic bags. Recycled bags of course. New or old (poo), we’ll take it all.’

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2. Snafu what a scorcher

They might be flying multi-billion dollar state-of-the-art military aircraft, but if flight crews don’t know right from left or metres from feet, pity the people on the ground.

Two crew members flying a B2 stealth aircraft returned to the US from a bombing exercise in the UK last month having to explain how they missed their static target by nearly 1,000ft.

‘Fury l’ had flown to Holbeach bombing range non-stop from Whiteman air force base in Missouri as part of a training mission and was supposed to have destroyed an orange boat moored on mud flats at the Lincolnshire range. Before take-off, however, the crew were instructed to offset their targeting by 300ft to the right into some mud flats as a direct hit would apparently have resulted in a huge and potentially dangerous fragmentation area.

Instead, the crew entered an offset of some 300 metres to the left and dropped two bombs on land well offtarget.

An MoD spokesman confirmed that the B2s were using the range for target practice but said he could not comment on the success or otherwise of the mission. ‘But that is the whole point of training and practice. You learn the lessons and get it nght.’

As one crew member of ‘Fury l’ was recorded saying to the RAF traffic controller: ‘Sir we got a long trip to get our story straight on that one.’

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

No use trying to fight it, you’re an eight-sided die, a d8. A fine example of simple elegance, the d8 is one of the least appreciated types of dice, and is often neglected. You are known to be quiet and shy, outward traits that conceal viscous sarcasm and mean wit. You are very smart, yet wise enough to hide your intelligence the quicker they found out how smart you are, the sooner they’ll put you to work, which is something you can do without. People call you dark and pessimistic, or moody and cynical. You find little point in arguing.

I won’t argue with ‘pessimistic’ and ‘cynical’. Choices are always between more or less undesirable courses of actions.

WOAD (traditional/anonymous)

[To the tune of Men of Harlech]

What’s the use of wearing braces
Hats and spats and shoes with laces
Vests and coats you buy in places
Down on Brompton Road

What’s the use of shirts of cotton
Studs that always get forgotten
Such affairs are simply rotten
Better far is Woad

Woad’s the stuff to show men
Woad to scare your foemen
Boil it to a brilliant blue
And rub it on your legs and your abdomen

Ancient Britons never hit on
Anything as good as Woad to fit on
Neck and knees and where you sit on
Tailors, you be blowed

Romans came across the channel
All dressed up in tin and flannel
Half a pint of Woad per man’ll
Clothe us more than these

Saxons, ye may save your stitches
Building beds for bugs in britches
We have Woad to clothe us, which is
Not a nest for fleas

Romans, save your armor
Saxons, your pajamas
Hairy coats were made for goats
Gorillas, yaks, retriever dogs, and llamas

So march on Snowdon with your Woad on
Never mind if you get rained or snowed on
Never need a button sewed on
Woad for us today

The boiler woes continue: I was due to receive an estimate on Saturday morning. It will now apparently reach me tomorrow morning. (OK, nothing has got worse but the chasing up pisses me off.)

I’ve had to grovel at my dad to buy mum’s birthday present cos I can&’t afford it this month and it needs booked now.

It also appears that my CD player has died – it doesn’t recognise home-birn or commercial CDs. Add that to the moribund amplifier and I have a musical financial lacuna too!

More stupidity at work: some things have arrived prematurely from suppliers. Also I’ve discovered that three more books have been printed incorrectly.

• Two are fairly trivial: either the repro-house supplied to the printers a very old version of an advert for the inside-front covers or the printer ignored the new version and printed the oldest one.
• One is more serious: this book used to be called Higher Biology Course Notes. However, it fitted better in our Revision Notes range and so we had a lovely new cover designed, and a new title page made up. Somewhere in the chain from repro-house to printer, the new title page was ignored and the old one printed. So the cover says Revision Notes and the title page says Course Notes.

Finally, the designer of most of our recent covers has pointed out that his basic files haven’t been properly handled in cover designs that were produced by a different designer. Whether this is due to lack of briefing by the major designer, mistakes by the minor designer or a stuff-up somewhere else is yet to be determined. Also, the mishandling is not immediately noticeable: you’d have to compare the affected covers with the unaffected ones to see there was a difference. However, it’s not perfection. it looks sloppy if you see it and so will need changed at the next reprint.

Finally, CC: uurrgghh, too much to do, all at once. No thanks to Fife Council’s asking for responses to 6 pieces of planning documentation all at once!

Got the quote – more than I was expecting and more than I can afford without borrowing money. So going to look at bank loans and at alternative quotes.

Our repro house excelled themselves today. Their server died over the weekend – and their backups later than Wednesday are useless, so they’re having to repeat the work they’ve done since then. To make matters worse, I’ve signed off on 6 books since Wednesday and so they’ve kept no record of the changes from the previous proofs of these books to the signed-off proofs.

All is not lost however: the files for most of these books will have been sent to the printer, so can be retrieved.* Also, while I didn’t keep records of what the changes were either, I do know which pages changed and photocopies of each signed-off proof. So I can send these copies to the repro-house and tell them ‘make page XYZ look like this’. I can also recall all but three of the changes on these pages and so I can even tell them how to ‘make page XYZ look like this’.

So all is not lost and I have had a reminder about the implications of the termination of corpulent females vocal performances.

Does anyone want my life?

… I looked on the BBC’s funky map for the 30 constituencies won by the non-main parties. They are:

So around 5% of the UK Parliament is not Labour, Conservative or Liberal-Democrat.

and apart from a slight feeling of sadness that most of my income is spoken for until I’m over 41 (unless you count the mortgage – in which case I’m stuffed even more) I don’t really mind.

Well my 13-year-old boiler appears to be destined for that great sauna in the sky. The following bits need replaced:

• fan
• circuit board
• pump
• transformer.

Replacement pumps and a fan that could fit in the relevant place are available but the boiler is so old that spare parts for this model are no longer available. Probably over £600 for a new one.

Bugger. So much for getting the Pismo repaired this month.

It appears the strain of producing 70 books in three months and the Jack Nicklaus issue have got me. I woke up about every hour last night, the last time being after a dreadful nightmare.

I was Winston Smith, watching the evening’s two-minute hate on the telescreen. An enemy of the people had been discovered and was crawling away from police beating him in the studio. The commentator capped his peroration of hate by kicking the EOTP in his bruised and bleeding backside … it gets worse but I’ll stop there because I don’t want to think about it any more.

Or maybe it’s just because I’m a smelly old fart!

• our warehouse is playing silly buggers
• I’ve had to check proofs until my eyes bleed
• a printer told us they would deliver books on the 16th. They delivered today – the 4th
• my hot-water boiler died – it will probably cost over £600 to resurrect or replace it
• my InDesign course next week has been cancelled
• CC makes it to the national press cos we didn’t award Honorary Citizenship to Jack Nicklaus
• I have shitloads to do for normal CC duties

On the good side, my dad has an interview for a victim-support role tomorrow. He has skills and a lifetime of experience of working with people as a production engineer (half of which is setting up systems to be worked by people and seeing that they are safe and content with their roles).

Wishing him lots of luck.