How long have I been longing to use this heading? Well, my wait is over thanks to my hostess’ new 17″ PowerBook G4 (January 2005 stylee, aka ‘Burns’). You can see it hiding behind Pismo and keeping Windtunnel’s new monitor warm here and you can see the specs here.

Bah! Just realised the ‘pile of Mac’ photo is missing my hostess’ iPod.

Here’s a rough speed comparison: the seconds taken to boot MS Word and Excel (2004 and 2008 versions) on our macs:

This probably says more about caches, amount of RAM available and hard disk speeds than it does about number-crunching.

Today I went to Livingston to find out more about the job I mentioned in my last post. Livingston is worse than Glenrothes for roundabouts and numpties. After half an hour in the factory, I was in possession of two fascinating pieces of information:

• When I wear my glasses, my eyesight is perfect (according to the factory’s tests).
• The job is eight solid hours (no breaks at all, apparently), sitting at a machine, doing the following:
  1. holding a piece of sterile thread and a surgical needle together in a notch and pressing a pedal to make the machine join them
  2. move the joined needle-and-thread forward one notch, rotating it through 45° and pressing the pedal to make the match pinch the join to strengthen it
  3. rotating the joined needle-and-thread back through 90° and pressing the pedal so the machine stregthens the other side of the join
  4. moving the joined needle-and-thread to the front of the machine and pressing the pedal again to make the join curve like the rest of the needle already does.

I was told that skilled workers can turn out 300 units an hour – one unit every 30 seconds. I’m so looking forward to this job.

I won’t know whether or not I have the job until the end of this week – the factory is interviewing more potential staff. There are 36 vacancies to be filled. Please wish me luck.

I’ve been utterly shattered and full of headache for no good reason since Sunday morning. This rather dulled the pleasure of visiting various friends in Fife. I keep hoping it will go away but no matter how much I sleep, the tiredness and lethargy are still here.

Desparation
Assuming I can get to Livingston and pass manual dexterity and eye-sight tests, I have a good chance of being employed next year: working on a night-shift production line, assembling medical bits and pieces. This will be long-term temporary position, and I’m so looking forward to commuting to Livingston’s Kirkton Campus for 10pm each evening.

Pilgrim’s (lack of) Progress
I was looking forward to doing something constructive this afternoon before and after the interview for the above job. However I spent the time frantically searching for my passport to prove to the employers that I’m British enough to work in the UK. I’ve found my out-of date passports, including a UK one, and that seems to have been enough for this purpose. However, my passport with my lovely visa stamps for India, Singapore and Indonesia may well be gone forever.

Travelogue
I think I’ve at last caught up with scanning all of the souvenirs that I want to put on Random Bozo’s travelogue. The last piece to go on a page I’d already put up was an issue of an education journal on 6th June. Other scans will go up at the same time as I put up their days’ photos and text. I think I still have a chance of finishing it by the end of 2006.

I See You, You See Me – The magic numbers

My bladder won’t let me sleep yet so I’m idly surfing. This just had me in stitches.

After spending a fair proportion of the day tweaking Random Bozo’s travelogue (putting up scans of relevant maps and the beautiful wedding invitations he received), I’m rather upset to have found some technical issues.

I find that the file for the 28th of June can’t be uploaded and that the files for 29th June to 2nd July are misbehaving. Local copies render just fine and dandy but, when uploaded to my webspace, the descriptions of these days and these pages’ footers don’t appear.

I tried uploading the files into an alternative webspace: the file of the 28th still refuses to to upload and the rendering problems with the other days recurs. So it’s something I’ve done wrong here, rather than my main webhost misbehaving.

I’ll copy the content into fresh copies of the template and see if these behave. Meanwhile, I’m very relieved that only 5 days’ files are misbehaving but I’m a little sad that it’s not all going to plan and that you are currently denied the chance of seeing Random Bozo’s misadventures on these days.

I got some time with my host’s scanner last night and so am now uploading images of some bus, train and other tickets to relevant pages of Random Bozo’s travelogue. The enhanced pages are

• March 15, 17, 25
• April 04, 28, 30
• May 04, 05, 13, 15, 18, 19
• June 15, 17.

If you have a sudden urge to see Indian train tickets, etc, point your browser at

sites.ecosse.net/mycelium/142006/03_asia_2006/MONTH/DAY_NUMBER/DAY_NUMBER.html

where MONTH is 03March, 04April, etc, and DAY_NUMBER is 01, 02, etc.

Viewing of Random Bozo’s travelogue is, of course, not compulsory.

Photos of Random Bozo’s doings up to the end of June are currently uploading. I’m very pleased that he kept a diary and wrote it up in his blog quite often. The thought of producing all that prose, even at my low writing standards, is scary.

Less than two months to go…

Within a few minutes, photo 1500 from Random Bozo’s misadventures in Asia will be online. The travelogue now goes up to 9th June: Random Bozo was still in high-range Kerala and on this day he was walking in the mountains on the Kerala/Tamil Nadu. He hoped to see some elephants but the photos only show a strange monkey wearing a purple shirt.

Apparently I have. This comment in blog was not meant as an insult to him – or anyone else. It was an admission that I have been committing a grammatical error all through my career as a ‘publisher’s minion’. Ignorance is no defence – I should have read Fowler ages ago!

I apologise to if he has been upset by my comment. I’ve always enjoyed his blog entries – I find them entertaining, pithy, often thought-provoking and always much better than my deluges of uniformative, tedious drivel.

I had a job interview today. At the end of the interview, I was told that the potential employers would inform the successful candidate by phone this afternoon and write to the rest of us. They haven’t phoned and so I’ve not been very happy this evening.

As I type this, my beloved Pismo is also uploading my Indian travelogue up to the end of May. This is when I first arrived in Nedumkandam, the small village in Kerala where I spent over two months with an Indian family. Seeing these photos has added to the lump in my throat.

However, I received an email from Ajeesh on Friday. He seems fine and tells me that his and his friends’ social programmes are carrying on. The latest is Kurutholakalari and this event is to bring together 1000 students and 200 elders to pass on cultural knowledge. (kurutola means ‘the tender leaf of the coconut tree and kalari means ‘teaching place’.)

Doesn’t that just make you want to grab your lunghi or saree and head to Kerala?