Just received a letter from my employers insisting that I get legal advice on my redundancy conditions. Seems like a good idea to me!

The most recent:

I’m on a bus whose seats are along the sides, so that the passengers face the central aisle. Cliff Richard gets on and starts singing Summer Holiday. The seats rotate into pairs so that we’re facing forwards to get the full ghastliness. I end up stuffing my ears with cyclamen (which look distressingly like banana skin that’s several days old.

A few days before that:

I’m in wood in a Terry-Pratchett-like world. On this world, there are talking elephants, some of whom can fly (just like Dumbo). The aviators look just like their non-flying siblings.

Driving along in a removals lorry (that can also fly) are two brothers elephants, one of whom is unable to fly. So his brother, chief of a family/group/herd of elephants who all can fly, is giving him the experience of flying for a treat. In the lorry, stretching from the storage area above the driver/passenger cab to the partially-closed tailgate, is some foliage.

The wood is partially on fire and the tips of the foliage sticking out of the tailgate catch fire. Unaware of this, but aware that the wood is on fire, the elephants fly their van away to escape. They notice that the foliage is burning, even though they’re above the arboral conflagration. So the non-flying brother elephant (who is chief of a family/group/herd of non-flyers) squirts his flying brother in the face with a trunk-load of water, apparently to put out the water.

Unfortunately the dream ended there as I farted myself awake.

The following was posted on a mac laptop discussion list:

Dear Listers,
Could someone tell me what is bad in broccoli for dogs?
Thanks,
Jocelyn

Of course the list nanny shut this thread down, saying

I cannot even hazard a guess as to why you would feel compelled to post this sort of question on the G-books list so I have to assume (and hope) that it is simply some sort of mistake.

Either way, I am asking that you find a more suitable forum to discuss the dietary limitations of animals from this point forward. You ask a seemingly genuine question but it simply doesn’t belong on this list.

Diplomatic in extremis, methinks!

The vegan society emailed its members, asking us to describe ourselves, to show that there is no such thing as a typical vegan.

Here’s my

Hi there

I’m a 39-year-old living in the wilds of St Andrews in Fife. I work as production manager for an educational publisher and in my spare time am a member of the local Community Council and Treasurer/Webweaver of the local Fairtrade Town Campaign.

What else: one of a vocal band of folk who think that the Mac is best. (However all OSes suck but this page is wrong about classic mac OS sucking that hard.)

Why am I vegan? When I was 17, I learnt that it’s far more efficient to feed people directly (by growing crops that humans eat) than to feed them indirectly (by growing crops to feed to animals which are then killed to feed humans). Efficiency was highly desirable to the fascist I was then.

Four years later, I had ceased being a Nazi and was talking with a friend who was high priestess of a Wiccan coven. She said that becoming vegan would give me a tremendous spiritual lift. I’m still waiting for that psychic orgasm but for around 20 years (admittedly with some non-vegan patches) I’ve had the quiet satisfaction of knowing that with every mouthful I’m doing the right thing without even having to try. After all, what’s more natural than eating good food?

Favourite food? So many! In no particular order

• Peanut butter sandwiches
• My mate Will’s curries
• My mate Adriani’s padang-style tofu and sambal
• My channah dahl
• Tacos (quick and simple!)
• chewing on the end of hand-rolled cigarettes
• my fingernails
• soya yoghurts
• beans on toast with ribena
• pizza with soya cheese melted all over it
• raw peanuts and pumpkin seeds
• hummus and salad sandwiches
• my mum’s rice concoctions
• baked potatoes with sweetcorn, baked beans and soya cheese
• sweetcorn cakes
• anything thai with tofu
• peanut butter and salad-cream toasties

More info my website and blog.

Grab any picture of me you like from these. Pics of other folk may not be used without their consent. I quite like
work christmas 2004 party
in a pub on Skye, headbanging away to Sweet Child O Mine

all the best

Bruce

Atypical enough for you?

First and foremost, I was visited by Craig, his wife Claudia and their 18-month-old son Dylan. Craig is a friend and former flatmate from when we were working on our PhDs. I think we’ve seen each other maybe twice since he moved on from St Andrews, but it’s the sort of friendship that can take pauses because we’ll know that it’s there, that we’ve done enough to rate each other highly from hereon in. I can still picture him sitting at the table in our flat trying to make sense of data from a dodgy spectrophotometer and then throwing his pencil over his hear, shouting ‘Aarrgghh! Nothing makes any frog!

Dylan was a bit cranky through teething and a disturbed sleep pattern but we all had a fun time on the Cockshaugh Park swings and slides, a good natter about our different plans and life-stages. It was lovely to see that Craig is still the same interesting, fun, irreverent person. I’m sorry I haven’t got to know Claudia so well … yet.

Oi you three, when you read this, send me a photo that you don’t mind being on this blog or my website!

Their visit also facilitated a few other good things:

• I was able to try out the hand-operated coffee-grinder I’ve been given.
• It made coffee that Craig and Claudia didn’t appear to dislike.
• Since Craig is interested in taking his digital photography further with some photoshop twiddling, I gave him one the the Macs that work wants rid of – and has been infesting my lounge – with a legit copy of photoshop 5.
• In return for the mac, Craig’s giving me his old (but far from shabby) digital camera – top timing because mine has just died. I’ll put its eBay value into the work office party fund, so all three parties will have benefitted.
• We ate lunch at the very child-friendly café on South Street that used to be called ‘The Ark’.
• The Fairtrade secretary has sent out a bunch of emails showing progress towards the declaration event

So all very satisfactory. I had been concerned that I wouldn’t get a chance to say goodbye properly to everyone. I’m sure that while I will meet some very interesting people out there, it’s lovely to know that folk from my past are still about and doing OK and thanks to today, Craig, Claudia and I were able to catch up before I leave.

At last Monday’s Community Council meeting, the convenor of the planning committee announced his resignation of this post. He’d held it for 12 years, I believe, during which this he and committee continually opposed Fife Council’s proposal to site a new hospital on the southern hillside. They feared that this proposal, if passed, would be a trigger for development on this hillside. This fear was recently accentuated by the current draft local plan: if passed, this plan will zone much of the hillside for development.

Of course, he and the committee produced detailed and (in my view) cogent arguments against this site – and for alternatives which would avoid such development and yet suit this town in other ways.

However, recently Fife Council granted planning permission for the southern hillside proposal. The convenor felt that this (and many other instances of FC deciding planning questions against the advice of CC*) showed that he was wastign his time and energy. Hence he announced his decision to resign the convenorship at the end of this evening’s planning committee meeting and invited all community councillors to attend this meeting to elect a successor. The committee is composed of any councillor who chooses to attend its meeting.

*Fife Council has a statutory duty to consult with Community Councils representing areas that will be affected by any planning application. However, it does not have to follow such CCs’ advice or objections.

So who turned up? The about-to-be-ex-convenor, I and four of the six committee stalwarts. (The other two sent apologies due to illness.) A further councillor was due to give birth yesterday and so has an excuse. Where were the rest of the councillors? I had said that I couldn’t take part in many planning committee events because of needing time to work on my impending move but I felt the election of a new convenor demanded attention from all councillors. I ended up taking minutes and writing a planning objection this evening.

No-one was elected as convenor, ostensibly to give the other two stalwarts a chance to volunteer.

I think you can tell I’m rather disappointed with around three-quarters of my fellow community councillors. Planning has to be just about our chief responsibility: trying to ensure that development is suitable for this town. After all, a new building might last 100 years, so it’s vital we at least try to say the right things to Fife Council. Encouraging pretty gardens, running bandstand concerts, ceilidhs and parties for senior citizens and organising grants for worthy causes are all worthwhile but I think they’re rather ephemeral compared to planning questions.

So I’d have hoped for a better turn-out and at least one volunteer to try his or her hand at convening. Oh well, my optimism and naïvity bit the dust – again!

A demo version of Retrospect Remote came with some software I bought ages ago. Finally got bored enough with manual backups using Silverkeeper to try it.

Pros

• It’s fully automatable…
• …so it can use just about any media.
• …and can be set to back up to differenct media sets on different days, so that I can avoid obliterating yesterday’s backup
• If I wanted, I could use System Preferences to power up the G4 in the middle of the night, then have Retrospect Remote run the backups, then use System Preferences to power off the mac. However System Preferences only offers one power-up/power down cycle per day, so I’d loose my get-to-work 8·55 am alarm.

Cons

• When it’s running, it slows the mac to a crawl – but I should I really be using the mac (and hence possibly altering data) when a backup is in progress? Er, no.

I’ll keep on with it unless anyone has a better – ideally free – solution.