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May 21st, 2013
miss_s_b: (Default)

The Blood is The Life 21-05-2013

posted by [personal profile] miss_s_b at 10:00am on 21/05/2013 under , ,
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steepholm: (deadhead)

Living the Dream

posted by [personal profile] steepholm at 07:30am on 21/05/2013 under ,
That was weird. I dreamed I was shopping at my local Co-op, when a voice came over the store speaker asking everyone to bow their heads in an act of public prayer. As the speaker went on to address the Almighty in ingratiating terms people complied in a reluctant, embarrassed, English way - not wanting to be the one to cause offence by price-checking cornflakes in what had become, pro tem, a house of God. Afterwards, I was told that the Co-op had introduced the policy of occasional store-wide prayer after "wide consultation".

I woke some time later, relieved not to be living in a world like that, and turned on the radio, where the announcer was mentioning some of the things that had happened on this day in previous years (Lindbergh's transatlantic flight and the Treaty of Troyes were two - though bizarrely she referred to Lindbergh as French). After a couple of minutes, she piped up: "And now, Prayer for the Day".

My hand sprang to the Off switch quicker than a King Cobra with a sugar rush.
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May 20th, 2013
steepholm: (Default)

Soapy Sams

posted by [personal profile] steepholm at 08:26pm on 20/05/2013 under
"You should read The Werewolf Flesh," my mother said to me when I was a teenager; "It's just your sort of thing." I wasn't sure about that - horror has never been my bag. It wasn't until some while later that I realised she was actually talking about Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh. I read it then, though I still wasn't particularly struck. Today I remember the book mostly because of the mondegreen it gave rise to. But that name - Samuel Butler. He was a writer, he had a somewhat unconventional take on the world while still being very much "of his time". Could he be a relative? That would be kind of cool, I vaguely thought, but as I hadn't liked the book that much I didn't dwell on it. (I still haven't read Erewhon.)

I liked Hudibras and "The Elephant in the Moon", though, and at university I wondered much the same about the seventeenth-century Samuel Butler. He did seem tantalizingly close to being a relation. At the time he was born, my own branch of the Butlers was based in Claines near Worcester. They were solicitors, public notaries and things of that sort. Samuel Butler's family were just twenty miles away in Strensham, and he spent much of his life employed as a secretary. It all seems very comparable, and a bit of coincidence, but I found no genealogical smoking gun. Also, it turns out that the same possibility had occurred to others before me. Some two centuries ago George Butler (see below) had gone looking for the same connection and come up empty. Which isn't to say it doesn't exist. Old Samuel's brand of satire feels so simpatico.

Then, the other week I saw this at a May fete.

P200513_13.13

It was only £3.50 and full of interesting coloured maps, so I had to buy it, right? It turns out to be by Samuel Butler, the grandfather of the Erewhon guy. Now, I've no reason to suppose he's a relation, but when you set him next to my great*4 uncle George, their careers seem eerily similar:

Name:...............................George Butler.........................................Samuel Butler
Born:.................................July 1774...............................................Jan 1774
Education:..........................Sidney Sussex, Camb.............................St Johns, Camb
Elected Fellow:...................1794 (I think)........................................1797
Educational Career:.............Headmaster of Harrow (1805-29)............Headmaster of Shrewsbury (1798-1836)
Ecclesiastical highlight:.......Dean of Peterborough (1842)..................Bishop of Lichfield (1836)
Died:.................................1853.....................................................1839

Can they really not be related? It's like there's a shadow family of Butlers, all called Samuel, hovering just out of reach. Taunting me with their Sam-ness. And their diff-rence.

This must be resolved.
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rmc28: (charles2011)

Conversation with Charles

posted by [personal profile] rmc28 at 08:11pm on 20/05/2013 under
[C is waving a firefighter's helmet around]

Me: Do you want to be a firefighter when you grow up?

Charles: No, I want to be a dad. [pause] And one of those people, what are they called? Who give lifts?  Taxis?

Me: A taxi driver?

Charles: Yes.  A dad and a taxi driver.


.....

As [twitter.com profile] ghoti pointed out, taxi-driver is a job that can combine well with childcare duties.

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morwen: (Default)

The Name of the Doctor

posted by [personal profile] morwen at 11:08am on 20/05/2013
( The Name of the Doctor spoilers )
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miss_s_b: (Default)

The Blood is The Life 20-05-2013

posted by [personal profile] miss_s_b at 10:00am on 20/05/2013 under , , , , , , ,
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May 19th, 2013
tajasel: Photo of me pointing a camera outwards and grinning. (Default)

ERMAGHERD! IM A FLYINSKIRRUL!!

posted by [personal profile] tajasel at 08:35pm on 19/05/2013 under
In October last year, a skydiver called Felix Baumgartner leapt out of a helium ballon and did a 4 minute 20 second freefall through space, before parachuting to Earth. In a genius marketing ploy, indoor skydiving company Airkix offered the equivalent amount of time in one of their windtunnels for £42. (I don't recall seeing a reference to the life, the universe and everything in the publicity - either I missed it, or they missed a trick. Anyway.)

Yesterday, I finally got round to cashing in my voucher for some flight time, and it was truly amazing :D they broke my voucher down into two lots of 1'15" and one super long 1'50" flight (the third one being almost the equivalent to a tandem skydive) - and on the last one, I was given the chance to spiral to the top of the tunnel with the instructor, and then freefall to the bottom again. It was AMAZING.

Also, FLYINSKIRRUL!



[twitter.com profile] maznu is now talking about us doing a bungee jump over Salford Quays :)
location: Stockport
Mood:: happy
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steepholm: (Default)

Hyperbole and Three Quarters

posted by [personal profile] steepholm at 03:38pm on 19/05/2013 under
Okay, I'm probably the last person on the internet to notice this, but - well, yay! I've been checking in now and again for about two years, hoping Allie would follow up her hilarious-yet-devastating post on depression, and now she has - with another hilarious-yet-devastating post on depression.

Curiously, both this and "To Kill a King" (see my last post) are about severely depressed and blocked writers, and both were put on the net on 9th May, 2013. Can this possibly be a coincidence?

(Yes.)
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steepholm: (Default)

"To Kill a King" - Alan Garner

posted by [personal profile] steepholm at 02:53pm on 19/05/2013 under ,
There's some as likes to dig up dead kings in car parks; and then there's them as likes to dust them down in archives. Garner's episode of Leap in the Dark sees the light after 33 years:

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rmc28: Rachel with manic grin holding up wrist with new watch on (Default)

Friendbay

posted by [personal profile] rmc28 at 03:00pm on 19/05/2013 under , ,
I have the following baby-related things for sale, all currently located at my home in Cambridge. I'm happy to deliver within a few miles of home, and willing to come to some arrangement for family/friends living further afield.  If I don't sell things in the next week or so I shall brave eBay (and its weird policies on second-hand cloth nappies).

Changing table: Kub Eco Changer, White. Bought last June from John Lewis for £75 and still in very good condition. We are replacing it with a cot-top changer for space reasons. JL don't seem to do it any more, but it is available at other suppliers.
Asking £50.

Double breast-pump: Avent Isis iQ Duo pump: double pump, comes with carry/storage bag, 2 chill bags & 6 freezer packs. Costs about £260 new, I bought it second-hand on ebay for about £150. Since then it's been used daily for about 8 months with C, and as little as I could get away with two or three times a week for about 6 months with N. Everything still works well, but N is eating enough solids that I don't need to pump milk for him to cover my half-day absences, and so I won't.
Asking £100

Single manual breast-pump: Avent Isis, like this one, but I don't have the model number to be sure they are the same. Bought new for C, used only occasionally. Probably cost about £20 new.
Asking £10

Bottle/pump steriliser: Avent Express electric steam steriliser. Does not seem to be available any more - big enough to sterilise all pump parts and 2-3 bottles, or just 6-7 bottles. Takes about 10 minutes to sterilise. Probably cost about £50 new.
Asking £20.

Cloth nappies: Sized approx 0-6 months, they've had about 12 months total use, seem to be in good condition still.
18 Tots Bots Fluffle nappies, size 1, cost £8.75 new, no longer on sale. They are white, fluffy, and dry quickly when hung up.
Asking £75 for all 18.
4 Motherease Airflow wraps, size Medium, cost £8 each new.
Asking £15 for all four.

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miss_s_b: (Default)

The Blood is The Life 19-05-2013

posted by [personal profile] miss_s_b at 10:00am on 19/05/2013 under
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rmc28: Rachel with manic grin holding up wrist with new watch on (Default)

Change of address

posted by [personal profile] rmc28 at 09:33am on 19/05/2013 under
Now that Charles can reliably read and write, we decided it was time to get him an email account, and as part of this project, Tony sorted the family out with new email hosting and a domain name cb4.eu (this has the advantage being less confusing to people than dotat.at when spoken).

So I am now slowly rationalising my various email addresses accumulated over the years and moving everything over to using rmcf@cb4.eu.  My personal mail has been slightly randomly distributed between my work-provided email and Gmail, and while I still have access to both of those for the foreseeable, the family-mail project is as good a trigger as any to get independent of both and aim for a bit of consistency.

Speaking of Google, now that I'm phasing out my use of Gmail, and I'm using Feedly for RSS-reading, my remaining big dependence on them is for calendaring.  Does anyone have recommendations for a replacement? 

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May 18th, 2013
rmc28: Rachel with manic grin holding up wrist with new watch on (Default)

Watching

posted by [personal profile] rmc28 at 08:33pm on 18/05/2013 under , ,
I got a new watch today. I haven't had a working watch since December: I had one dead-battery rotary, and one working-but-back-falling off digital. I finally got enough grip to remember to take them both with me on an errand into town on Wednesday, and confirmed that it would basically cost as much to repair either of them as it would to get a new one.

Since December, I have found it really frustrating not being able to flick a quick glance at my wrist to tell the time, but having to drag out my phone from a pocket or bag. The ridiculous relief when I got my new! shiny! watch! on my wrist today was overwhelming - five months' pent-up frustration I think.

Anyway, I vented a bit of my excitement on twitter, and my friend asked for a "bad internet photo of it on your wrist" so I obliged, and decided it would do as a new icon too.

Today has also featured a family expedition into town:
  • Watching The Gruffalo's Child at Cambridge Arts Theatre.
  • Buying an Angry Birds hat on impulse for Charles
  • Lunch at Pizza Express for the four of us. We got two children's meals and Nico ate between a quarter and a third of his and then requested a feed.
  • Shopping for new shoes and new non-school clothes for Charles.
  • Shopping for shallow plates for Nicholas to eat from, as he'd done well with the shallow bowl in the restaurant.
Nico helpfully slept through all of the shopping in my sling, and woke up only when I sat down at home again. Since then he has been toddling industriously around the house, amicably torturing the cat (who is too old or too tolerant to run away) and repeatedly stealing my phone and/or the tv remote control. He's definitely a toddler now, not a baby.

Some phone-photos from today behind the cut:

( Grainy cuteness! )
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mark: Photo of Mark's face, taken in standard office fluorescent. (Default)

Downtime this morning

posted by [staff profile] mark in [site community profile] dw_maintenance at 07:51am on 18/05/2013

(For some California local definition of 'morning'!)

About 30 minutes ago one of our databases (sb-db03) locked up and stopped serving traffic. This was an active database, so the site quickly stopped when it could no longer serve requests. Alas.

I have failed us over to a backup database and now everything should be working again.

I'm not sure yet what happened to db03, but am currently investigating and will update this post if I come up with a root cause for the problem. Edit: It's back up and doesn't have any visible problems. Disks are fine, data's intact, etc. The graphs and logs show nothing. We'll have to keep an eye on it and see if it manifests further issues.

Sorry for the trouble, please let me know if you still see any problems!

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miss_s_b: (Default)

The Blood is The Life 18-05-2013

posted by [personal profile] miss_s_b at 10:00am on 18/05/2013 under
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May 17th, 2013
steepholm: (Default)

Victorian Heroics - plus a bit of maundering about records

posted by [personal profile] steepholm at 12:52pm on 17/05/2013 under
In this BBC report a man called Nick Hancock anticipates the difficulties of spending 60 days on Rockall - to which the obvious answer would seem to be: well, don't do it.

I've never been able to sympathize much with the urge to put oneself (and one's eventual rescuers) in danger just for the sake of it, though clearly it excites admiration in many. However, I was prompted by something the reporter said on this clip to wonder about the cultural history of this kind of exploit: "In Victorian times, just visiting Rockall was said to be the epitome of heroism." That sounded a false note to me - but should it have? I can imagine a Victorian calling a visit to Rockall brave, but "heroic"? The Victorian version of that word has an overtone of nobility and service to others, to my mind, distinct from because-it's-there adventuring.

I'm far from certain about this, though. I try out a few test cases in my mind, running them through my patented "Victorian Mindset Filter":

Grace Darling and her father. They are uncontroversially heroic, showing extreme bravery and saving lives in the process. If they had merely been trying to break the night-time rowing endurance record? Not so much.

Sir John Franklin. Doomed, of course - but still fairly heroic because doomed in an attempt to find the Northwest Passage - a solid geopolitical objective that would have benefited his country had he succeeded.

The Light Brigade. Not only doomed, but doomed in a futile action; but heroic nonetheless because they acted from devotion to duty rather than reckless bravado.


Refining this a bit: Victorian heroism should not be entirely selfish; but while altruism is no doubt the ideal it is acceptable to be motivated in part by a desire for fame and glory. Indeed, desire for fame is a legitimate incentive within the classical, Germanic and Celtic heroic traditions alike. It goes clean against the Sermon on the Mount, which is no doubt why Milton calls it "the last infirmity of noble mind" - but he is praising with faint damns, there. Still, fame mustn't be the only incentive for an act otherwise pointless or contemptible. Herostratus is not admired, and no more are famous-for-being-famous celebrities (a solidly mid-Victorian word, in that sense - not a twentieth-century one as one might imagine).

It's when we get to the twentieth century though that the concept of heroism gloops out into an untrammeled glory fest - a race to get to the ends of the earth or the top of Everest for no other reason than to say that you did it first, or quickest, or with the least equipment. Are such people more likely to be called heroic now than of yore? Such feats may wear the dress of patriotism, scientific research or charity fundraising, but to what degree are these the real motivations, and what effect do they have on our conception of them as heroic or otherwise? Scott, for example, was certainly seen in his own time as a hero, and still is by many. In what exactly did the estimate of heroism consist, either now or then?

It's in the twentieth century, as far as I can see, that people become obsessed with superlatives for their own sake: the fastest, longest, highest, first, and so on. The Guinness Book of Records is published first in 1951: how did previous generations get by without it? Perhaps they didn't find that sort of thing as fascinating, or perhaps they did but wrote about them piecemeal in publications such as almanacs? Here's where I hit the buffers of ignorance - but I'd be interested to know at what point Wisden, for example (first pub. 1864) started noting records in the Guinness sense rather than merely keeping records of individual matches; or when people started thinking of the World Record for running a certain distance rather than who won a particular race. That seems to me an interesting epistemic shift. It was facilitated no doubt by technology (accurate chronometers) and organization (the creation of events such as the Olympics with the authority to declare results and have them universally accepted), but were people just waiting for that kind of opportunity, or did its arrival signal the creation of a whole new way of thinking about achievement, in absolute rather than relative terms?
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rydra_wong: Lisa Rands' chalky hands on the sloper on the route Gaia (climbing -- hands)

Friday glee is pining for the fjords

posted by [personal profile] rydra_wong in [community profile] disobey_gravity at 02:13pm on 17/05/2013 under
The Friday post of glee is where you get to tell us about your climbing-related happiness this week.

It can be a new achievement or adventure, or just that you climbed and had fun; it can be that your favourite climbing wall is expanding or that you bought new rock shoes or that you found a cool ice-climbing vid on YouTube. No glee is too small -- or too big. Members are encouraged to cheer each other on and share the squee.

N.B. Please feel free to post your glee on any day of the week; the Friday glee is just to get the ball rolling.

To enhance this week's glee: Angie Payne in Greenland.
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miss_s_b: (Default)

The Blood is The Life 17-05-2013

posted by [personal profile] miss_s_b at 10:00am on 17/05/2013 under
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May 16th, 2013
sophie: A cartoon-like representation of a girl standing on a hill, with brown hair, blue eyes, a flowery top, and blue skirt. ☀ (Default)

Oh, Valve.

posted by [personal profile] sophie at 09:23pm on 16/05/2013 under , , ,
So, you may remember that two years ago, Valve transferred my games from an old Steam account to my current one, in what disappointingly appeared to be a one-off.

Just to make sure, however, four days ago I asked Steam Support for an update on what would happen nowadays for people that were in my position.

( These are my three contributions to the Support ticket. )The main question I asked in this ticket was this (emphasis added):
If someone else were in the same situation as I was two years ago, having had a legal name change (with evidence in the form of legally-recognised documentation such as a deed poll or statutory declaration), a username which was clearly based on their old name, and a clean VAC record, would Valve be willing to change the account name upon the submission of such evidence? (For the purposes of this question, 'change the account name' may also include creation of a new account and all licences registered on the old account transferred to the new one, as that was how my own ticket was resolved.)
Now, I realise that this is a pretty narrow field. This was intentional in order to increase the chances that they might be receptive. I do realise that there are trans* people out there who don't meet these criteria. Policy changes always have to start somewhere, though, and I understand the issues involved. I figured that if any policy change at all had been made, this narrow definition would fit inside it.

Today, they responded. (In fact, it was Walter who responded; the same person who replied in the other ticket to assist me with transferring the games.)

So, what was their answer?
4 Message by Support Tech Walter on Thu, 16th May 2013 8:26 pm

Hello Sophie,

We have not changed any policies regarding account names. As mentioned in your original ticket, this is for security reasons.

While we understand this is a frustration for you, we have this in place by design. There are no plans to change this at this time, however I have passed your comments on to the appropriate people.
Disappointing, to say the least. There is still no reasoning given for not being able to change account names, besides the very vague "this is for security reasons". (To be fair, I didn't actually ask for an explanation in this ticket, but still.)

I'm really disappointed by Valve right now. :(
Mood:: 'disappointed' disappointed
xpost: http://soph.livejournal.com/235230.html
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kerrypolka: Contemporary Lois Lane with cellphone (Default)

Star Trek: Adventures in the Incompetent Public Sector

posted by [personal profile] kerrypolka at 10:40am on 16/05/2013 under
I think my favourite thing about the new Star Trek movies is how canonically shit Starfleet is.

( Spoilers for Star Trek: INTO DORKNESS )
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