January Freeze

Some pictures from an early morning bike ride today

Most people seemed to belive we were taking our lives in our hands by walking on this pond. It seemed solid and a could have been 20cm thick so I think it was safe, anyway to quote a favourite saying "nothing ventured - stay safe and boring". 

The rest of the pictures can be found by clicking on the picture below.

I am not sure if I'll be able to get any aerial photography this afternoon - the camera battery doesn't cope well with temperatures this cold.

Fire, Fire! Laptop computer catches fire

Stephen unplugged his laptop charger to bring it down stairs for Annalise to use. When he returned to his room 20 seconds later he heard a pop and a fizzing sound. When he opened the door smoke was coming from the computer sitting on the corner of his bed and this had filled the room.

When I got there 5 seconds later it was well on fire and the flames were about 30cm high as was the bedding. I grabbed it by the corner and carried it outside to the driveway. There it burnt until we poured a bowl of water over it. The bed also required water thrown over it and then a wet towel thrown over the mattress. The smoke was horrible. One of the battery cells had fallen out of computer and we scraped this into a bowl of water before taking this outside.






I called PC World's The Tech Guys to report the fire, We have two other laptops of the same make. This is a E Systems 4213 laptop. All three were bought 8 Dec 2007 making them exactly one month out of their 12 month warranty period. They refused to cover it, assess the safety of the other two computers or have anything to do with the incident.



Shame on you PC World. It is one thing for a device to stop working outside of its warranty period but quite another for it to self destruct by bursting into flame. We are very lucky that we were not asleep or out at the time. Oddly while our smoke detectors go off frequently due to burning toast or bacon they were never triggered by the battery smoke.

A video collage of the last week

Places my camera has been over the last week.

Subway madness

I occasionally walk down the high street at lunch time from work to the Subway where I purchase a 6" veggie delight sub for £2.00. Today I was dismayed to discover I had left my wallet at home and was reduced to scraping change from the bottom of my bag.

They know me because I always ask for olives and jalapenos and jalapenos and jalapenos with a few extra jalapenos. Only I say "Halepenos" and they say "Jalapenos". It is a constant sparing struggle and neither I nor this otherwise fine institution are prepared to concede defeat.

Well today, being of limited means, after purchasing a 80p Guardian newspaper instead of a 90p Times I noticed a limited period "Meal Deal" at Subway. This is a 6" sub (the picture shows meat on it) with a cookie and drink for £2.49. This suits me as I only had £2.55 and could get a drink and cookie for only 49p more than I usually pay.

I order this deal but decline the ham and just have the cheese and olives and jalapenos and jalapenos and jalapenos with a few extra jalapenos, as is my want. But when I come to pay they don't want to give me the drink and cookie because I didn't order the ham. When I point out the I did NOT order my usual "Veggie Delight" but the "Special limited time only Meal Deal" and just declined the ham they were incredulous. It would have been no problem it they had put ham on my sandwich and I had scrapped it off and tossed it away but ......

I prevailed but "only this once because i am a regular customer". To bad that tomorrow I will be at my other office and won't be able to try this again - nothing like a crusade against stupidity!

Baño del Papa, El

We went to see a screening of Baño del Papa, El tonight.

This was a brilliant movie. It was beautifully set between Uruguay and Brazil and deals with the impact, or lack thereof, of the Pope's visit there in 1988.

I can recommend it.

Trailer here but without english subtitles.

Stephen's Birthday

The entire world always seems celebrate Stephen's birthday. I think it helps that it is on the 1st January.

This year we spent the day in London at the Foyles bookstore, lunch and then checking one of Stephen's university options - Kings College.

Foyles is, in their own modest words, "Europe’s largest bookshop* with 5 floors and more than 200,000 titles in stock plus a wide range of gifts and stationery, printed music and second-hand and rare books, as well Ray’s Jazz Music and Books, the Cafe and a Gallery and events space".



I think Stephen has been correcting a few things on the wikipedia page for Kings College London because he was able to quote the most arcane facts about the college. Ah well each to our own ....