Rory’s making some more of his delicious-looking all-steak burgers for tomorrow’s barbeque. If you want one (and are willing to pay for the mince!) drop him a comment on his blog.
This evening, I kicked off with a few hobbies I’ve neglected lately, starting brewing some wine and juggling some fire on the beach. It’s amazing how quickly you lose the fitness to juggle clubs effectively if you don’t do it for a year or two. Must get more practice.
Time for another episode of Dan’s bizarre dreams. Here’s last night’s:
At least to begin with, the whole dream was animated like an early 3D computer game - with a certain Castle Master feel to it - but became less and less like a game as the story went on. I was in some kind of tower in which some friends and I were trying to gain access to the room at the top, which was locked. The friends - who I hadn’t gone so far as to assign identities to at the time - stayed on the ground floor, while I ran around the upper floors trying to solve the puzzle that would open the door. They were generally useless, needing me to run ahead and sort out the route before they’d go anywhere. I needed to flip the correct combination of switches, hidden on different floors, to turn a set of red lights to green which would indicate that the door on the top floor could be opened. I was making good progress at working out what I needed to do, but was having some difficulty in finding all of the switches.
Having gotten all but one, I found myself in the (more realistic looking-and-feeling) ground floor again, and Helen G (turns out she was one of the folks I’d left at the bottom) indicated that the final switch would be on the roof, and pointed out a ladder that went through the ceiling, up the side of the tower, and onto a platform at the top. There was one of those silly ladder guards at the bottom in an attempt to make the ladder inaccessible, but I was able to climb up the adjacant wall in order to get above it, and began to climb.
Outside, it was very windy and beginning to rain, and it was difficult to keep hold of the ladder as I climbed up to the platform at the top. Struggling accross the platform, I discovered that to trigger the last switch, I had to fill a bucket with water that would pull against a pulley (perhaps I’ve been watching too much Crystal Maze?). In any case, I found a system of pipes and opened the appropriate valves. I turned a "wrong one" as well, it seems, because water started to pour from pipes above me, too. I huddled as best I could to avoid getting soaked and to cling on to the tower while I waited for the bucket to fill, and that’s when I woke up.
Pretty structured, as far as my dreams go.
Here’s a round-up of some of the things we expect to be doing (and we hope you’ll consider joining us for) in the near future. Yes, there’ll undoubtedly be extra stuff that isn’t mentioned here. You know what to do:
Wednesday, 7pm (tonight) - Jeramiah Night: post-apocalytpic fun. BYOB, although there’s still about half a bottle of Bryn’s abandoned vodka left if anybody wants some.
Friday, 6pm - weather-permitting, bonfire and barbeque on North Beach to welcome Ele, Penny, Sarah (and anybody else who’s getting back to Aber late this week after an Easter elsewhere) back into town. A chance to eat charcoal, drink warm beer, and catch-up on the events of Easter.
Saturday, 8pm - Troma Night CLXXIII - starting at the even-earlier-than-usual time (pay attention!) of 6:35pm, at The Cottage, for those who want to see Doctor Who, then kicking off with a couple more educational episodes of Look Around You before beginning our main features: Falling Down, Howl’s Moving Castle (especially for those of us who haven’t seen it), and - if people can stomach it - perhaps an MST3K. Open for debate.
Sunday, 7pm - Red Black Dwarf Adder Night - the first ever Red Black Dwarf Adder Night, which will consist of alternative episodes (or blocks of episodes) from both Red Dwarf and Blackadder, two stunning bits of British comedy. We’ll be having one or two Red Black Dwarf Adder Nights a week to ensure we get through all eight series (plus some extras) of Red Dwarf and all four series (plus some one-offs) of Blackadder before term ends, for those of you who are students and who won’t be around over summer. Should be a great night.
Saturday 28th, 8pm (a week on Saturday) - Troma Night CLXXIV - as usual. Added here for completeness because I’d feel wrong writing about something the day after without tipping my hat to Troma Night… even though there are no plans for what to watch yet.
That’s some of the upcoming events. Just because nothing’s listed for the intervening days doesn’t mean there’s nothing on - to the contrary, there’ll probably be another Red Black Dwarf Adder Night, a Stressed Eric Night, and maybe another Jeramiah Night stirred in there at some point. So you know.
Weather permitting, there’ll be a barbeque tonight.
That is all.
With impending rain, tonight’s BBQ and fire is cancelled.
In other news, apologies to anybody who got a garbled text message from me last night. Orange fucked up.
Now I’ve got you excited with an interesting title, I’ll make you wait until I actually tell you what it’s about with the following announcement: beach fire and barbeque tomorrow evening; usual affair. Right, next…
A little while back, several of us, inspired by an idea of Pauls, discussed a special outing this month. Later, Rory independently came up with a similar plan. So, now, for everybody’s comment, here’s the proposals as they stand so far:
Event: Crystal Maze Cyberdrome / Oakwood Theme Park / Rory’s Birthday Party
Date: Rory proposes Saturday 28th April. I can’t make that, so I propose Sunday 29th April. We’ll let the mob decide.
Plan: We leave Aber in as many cars as we can muster at about 7:30am, arriving at Oakwood at about 9am. We enter several teams into the last remaining Crystal Maze Cyberdrome (£4.75 / head) and run around like looneys shouting "get the crystal" at each other, and then go to Oakwood Theme Park, Wales’ only theme park (£14.75 / head, but if we plan it right and bulk-book online we can potentially get 15% off by booking online) - it’s right next door. We ride some silly rides and get very wet.
Other dates: Another option would be to go on a weekday. As the date it likely to be outside of school termtime, going on a weekday can be expected to dramatically reduce the queuing time for the theme park’s attractions.
Other activities: There’s a discount on bowling when you buy Cyberdrome tickets. Especially if we’re going on a weekday and queues in the theme park won’t be problematic (and it’s only quite a small theme park), we could do even more stuff with out day, if we so wished.
Discuss.
I’ve been playing with Facebook for the last 40 days or so, to see if it’s any good. Here’s some of the things I’ve observed that I like (and don’t like) about it, followed by my conclusions:
In no particular order.
Nice. It’s a good platform for keeping up-to-date with your friends for the "littler things" that don’t really warrant blog entries, for helping you remember your friends’ contact details, birthdays, etc., for quickly sharing photos without too much hoo-hah, and so on.
Nice. It imports XML feeds, so you can integrate your Facebook presence with your blog or whatever else.
Nasty. It doesn’t export XML feeds! What is this, the middle ages? There’s a slight risk that some users may begin to use Facebook "notes" as substitute for blogging, and I and others who depend on RSS/Atom will end up not reading what they write as a result of it, but the notes system is pretty simplistic (as it should be) so it’s not terribly likely, at least for the time being.
Nasty. Searching for people is a little clunky: it could at least allow me to filter by country, or intelligently suggest people from my own country before showing me people in other countries.
Nice. Easy bulk-addition of friends from your address book. I’m an untrusting bugger, so I wouldn’t give them my webmail passwords (but I know others who have), but the CSV import tool, combined with a little scripting, quickly achieved very similar results, plus more.
Nice. Unlike many other social networking sites (and particularly the ridiculously bad myspace), it doesn’t allow arbitary HTML to be splattered all over your profile page, so at least the user interface stays consistent and you’re not horribly vulnerable to cross-site scripting attacks every time you use it.
Nice. Good reciprocal "friends" system (including a wealth of FOAF-like "how do you know this person" links that make for interesting exploring when you start looking through your circle of friends) and well-designed privacy options so user have a great deal of control over who sees what.
Nasty. On the other hand, some people still seem to treat it like myspace: trying to join the most groups, have the most friends, or whatever, as if it were some kind of popularity contest. This probably also extends to people with silly names. Thankfully, they’re pretty few and far between, and - at least in my experience - they don’t harass you with endless messages a-la myspace.
Nice. The ads (it’s mostly an ad-supported service) are sparse and discreet. No big flashing animGIFs, flash, or banners.
Nasty. I can see why they’ve done the "networks" thing, but it can get on your tits until you get the hang of it. Why can’t I be in an alumni network for Aberystwyth? Because I didn’t have a Facebook account when I was at Aberystwyth, apparently. Why couldn’t Matt join the original Troma Night group? Because it, like me, was in the Wales regional network (because I hadn’t specified otherwise when I created it, and he’s not in Wales, is he!).
It’s a nice little social networking platform. It suffers from a lack of subscribable output feeds, a very slight "myspace factor" amongst some of it’s users, and weak search tools. However, it does a remarkably good job of providing a secure environment in which to publish your up-to-date ontact and other personal information to your friends, share photos, pass simple messages around, arrange events, and discover the links within your friendship groups. I’ve heard good things said about using it instead of Friends Reunited and similar services, for getting in touch with old friends, but I’m not interested in that - I just like to be able to keep in touch more easily with the friends I have.
I’m making the Facebook team aware of these comments (and gripes) and hopefully it’ll become even better. In the meantime: if you haven’t tried it, I’d recommend giving it a go: they’ve got a nice, ethical account closure policy if you decide it’s not for you. A 40-day test drive had me… not hooked like some people, but… contented and impressed nonetheless: something I genuinely didn’t expect.
You know that famous photo of Marilyn Monroe - iconic of the golden years of the silver screen - trying not-too-hard to hold down her dress against the wind effects of a subway train passing underneath? Well, apparently the film it’s from is a romantic comedy called The Seven Year Itch (1955), which is based on a 1952 play of the same name. I haven’t seen the film, but there’s plenty of fascinating trivia about it on the IMDb page if you’re interested. But I wasn’t planning on writing much about the film (or the play) anyway.
The story is about a man (played by Tom Ewell) who works as a publisher, in the process of publishing a book called The Seven Year Itch, which claims that a significant proportion of men have affairs after seven years of marriage. While his wife and son are out of town, he meets a young woman (played by Monroe). In the play, he has an affair with her, while the (in some ways cleverer) film adaptation sees him merely play out fantasies in his mind as he gets to know her: these fantasies are fleshed out with justifications for his infidelity - he imagines his wife cheating on him, too, and this makes him more comfortable doing the same.
It’s just a story, but it’s one with a grounding in statistics that were being observed even then: that many relationships go through a point at which break-ups and infidelity are more common after about 7 years. A more recent study, published in Development Psychology, indicated that there is another significant point - at least, in contemporary marriages - at which relationships are likely to fail, at about the four year mark. If you draw a graph of the length of time that broken marriages last, there are significant peaks at the four and seven year marks. Less widely-published studies exist (often for the purpose of testing if this phenomenon applies to relationships that do not involve marriage), and generally get similar results. I haven’t seen anything that looked at homosexual relationships, but I’d be interested in such a study if anyone’s seen one.
Several researchers have looked for biological explanations: four years is about the right amount of time (perhaps a little more) that, if a woman was impregnated at the beginning and was breast-feeding the child, she’d be fertile again and potentially looking for a more attractive mate. Conversely, it’s about the right amount of time that a male can be sure that a genetic rival isn’t going to kill his child (or impregnate his female), and can move on. All of these (and many more) theories draw on things we believe we’ve learned about the behaviour of early human societies, which sadly doesn’t amount to much. The seven-year mark is harder to explain.
It’s all quite believable, though, once you exclude the speculation about the reasons for it and look at the statistics. Better yet, find some friends who’ve been in stable relationships for a long while, or who were in long-term relationships but then broke up, and find out the points at which things have been most difficult.
From personal experience: there has only been one point, so far, at which I wasn’t sure if Claire and I were likely to be able to maintain our relationship - shortly after we moved into The Place… and almost exactly four years since our relationship began. We had a particularly rough time of things, which we mostly blamed on the stress of moving house (didn’t get the same thing during the move to The Cottage, though) and various other complications in our lives (none of which caused the same kind of tensions when they repeated themselves, though). Perhaps it was just a combination of factors that gave us that "rough patch," or perhaps it’s something biochemical like the "four-year itch." Perhaps it’s partially that, and partially other things. I’m pretty sure Claire would tell a similar story about these particular couple of emotional months.
Claire and I’s relationship is fabulous now, and we’re actually "better at it," in my mind, than ever before (over the year since that troublesome period, we’ve learned a handful of great relationship maintenance and communication skills we’d not quite got fully worked-out beforehand, perhaps). It’s interesting, though, to look at that "four year" mark (give or take nine months or so) in other people’s relationships. I’ve spoken to a few, and while the line of questioning I’ve been using could be construed as "leading" and certainly wouldn’t pass as scientifically valid, it’s yeilded some interesting stories: some people tell tales of partners or partners of friends who cheated (or whose cheating become obvious) after about four years, or who went through a tough spot characterised by arguments or - more difficult still to deal with - a lack of communication. Others talk about break-ups at about that time, or about starting to them and their partner beginning to drift apart, looking for different things in their relationships.
I just thought it was quite interesting, and I wanted to share that thought with you. But if you’ve got any similar stories from your life or stories you’ve heard from others: let me know.
Claire’s dad and his wife visited us this long Easter weekend, and we took advantage of the stunning weather to do some of the usual touristy things that you only bother to do when friends or family come by - the cliff railway, the camera obscura, etc. - and so we ended up at the nearby Centre for Alternative Technology. The CAT, as it’s better-known to anybody who’s had to say it’s name more than once, has improved over recent years (I last went in 2002 with Claire; the summer we became "a couple") and I was impressed to see many new exhibits.
Anyway, I’ve picked up a set of ecoballs (looking to buy? they’re cheaper elsewhere): they’re basically plastic balls with a spongey "ring", filled with pellets of various minerals and surfactants. The idea is that you chuck the three of these (reusable up to 750 times, then refillable) balls into your washing machine instead of detergent and fabric softener, and wash at under 60°C. They’re advertised as being more ecologically-friendly than conventional detergents, but what attracted me to them was that they’re potentially cheaper (about 3p/wash, plus savings on skipping rinse cycles) and non-biological (biological detergents, while wonderful, have a habit of bringing me out in a rash).
Obviously I’ll let you know how they go - whether they’re worth getting - in about 1000 laundry cycles or so, although the BBC correspondent who used them last year might be more use. As far as the "Do they get stuff clean?" question goes, though, the answer would seem to be: yes. We baptised them last night with our bedclothes, and they came out wonderfully clean, although notabley lacking that "clean clothes" smell we associate with the perfume of traditional detergents. If I can be bothered, I’ll do a couple of actual scientific tests, comparing washing a particular type of fabric with a selection of stains on it using normal detergents, ecoballs, and just water, and see how it goes. In the meantime, you’ll have to make do with blog-based reviews of individual washes.
This has to be the best conspiracy theory I’ve ever read: this guy believes that the Galileo space probe that NASA crashed into Jupiter in 2003 (to avoid it being left in an unstable orbit and potentially crashing into Europa, which could affect the scientific value of the moon) is starting a nuclear reaction that will eventually turn Jupiter into a second sun, and that the reason NASA are no longer doing much active research on the Shoemaker/Levy 9 "black spot" impact (widely understood to be a comet impact) on Jupiter is because they don’t want to attract attention to what is actually the end of the solar system (he believes it’s the beginnings of a nuclear explosion) as we know it, caused by them.
Personally, I find it hard to believe that humans are making a significant impact on climate change on Earth, but this guy thinks that a single plutonium-238 core (not even a reactor, and not even the same kind of plutonium as is used in atomic bombs) dropped into Jupiter could cause a chain reaction that would suddenly make this into a binary system.
It’s entertaining reading, though. I’m looking forward to Jimmy passing comment on it, soon.
Oh, and it’s Crystal Maze night tonight (The Cottage, 7pm) for anybody still around. We’ve only got two episodes of Series 2 left, so if we run out we may have to fall back on some Wiigaming or something.