not a good place to break down (view larger image in Flickr).

Oh dear - I fear the driver of this bus stuck in the centre of Southall is not the most popular man here right now! Can't really ask for help to push it out of the way, either!

Very quiet at work today as you might imagine, but one email did turn up. It was an invitation to give a presentation at a business conference about intranets. Not particularly unusual given the work I do - I do quite a lot of talks and presentations at conferences. What is unusual about this invitation is that this particular conference will be taking place in Moscow, Russia! They have offered to pay all my travel and accommodation expenses. Even if the decision at work is that there is no real reason for me to do this from an RNIB point of view, I rather think I will be quite happy to take a few days annual leave and do this one in my own time, if it means I get a couple of days to visit Moscow! And if we can find cheap enough flights, it might even be possible for Chris to come with me. That would be a lovely, and unexpected, spring break for us both.

Technorati: Moscow

Fantastic news! Just checked Henny's fundraising page, and discovered that the total raised is now £3,080.51 - which means that in just 15 days, Henny has achieved her fundraising target! And what's even better is that people are still pledging money, so goodness knows what the total will be by the time she sets off to the Arctic at the end of January.

Absolutely brilliant, Henny - well done!

Technorati: Sponsorship | Fundraising

I heard a snippet on BBC Breakfast this morning where they were asking people to write in if they work on Christmas Day, and one guy wrote in saying that "while his job wasn't important" he'd be working a shift on Christmas Day. He's a bus driver.

Well I'd just like to say to him and all the other public transport workers who work on public holidays that there are millions of people who, like me, don't have a car, and who therefore rely on public transport to go anywhere. And if you guys on the buses did the same as the train companies and shut down altogether on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, there are an awful lot of people out here who would be stuck and completely unable to get anywhere they couldn't walk to.

So please don't think your job isn't important. It might not be "high powered", but for an awful lot of people, it's very, very important indeed. You have our heartfelt thanks for being willing to keep the buses running on public holidays - we may not always say it, but we really do appreciate it.

www.noradsanta.org

How did I miss this all these years?! It seems that, since 1955, NORAD has been tracking Santa's progress around the world at Christmas. Wonderful!

Don't forget the flat-nosed

Excellent article about the inconsistencies in interpreting bits of the bible demonstrated by those bigots who were parading in Belfast the other day.

The total pledged towards the Bristol Royal Children's Hospital is now very close to Henny's £3,000 target - it now stands at £2,725, which is amazing!

If you haven't already donated, please do consider doing so and help her break through that £3,000 target before Christmas. For more information, see Henny's fundraising page on Just Giving.

Technorati: Sponsorship | Fundraising

Manor House Grounds, Southall - View 1 (view larger image in Flickr).

Thanks to the Southall-Norwood Trust making a complete pig's ear of my appointment (they had it in the system as being at 11am, but the letter I received said 11.30am - as a result, it has been rescheduled to January, a full TWO YEARS after I was first referred to the trust), I found myself at 11.40 this morning a) absolutely furious and flaming mad, and b) with some time to go for a walk to try to calm down.

So I decided to take a wander round the Manor House Grounds, just a hundred yards away from the Trust offices.

It's quite a small park, but it was a gorgeously clear, sunny day, and the park was deserted. I wandered round, taking photographs, and gradually calming down.

Had an interesting chat with a couple of the park staff - they were intrigued to see someone taking photographs, and we got on to talking about the history of the manor itself, and exchanging bits of information about it that we'd picked up.

That ordinary little chat helped me a lot too - it reminded me that not everyone is as incompetent and uncaring as the Southall-Norwood Trust staff seem to be, and brought me back to everyday normality.

And now I think about it, if the Trust hadn't messed up my appointment, I wouldn't have felt I had the time to wander round the park and take lots of beautiful photographs, so even that wasn't all bad.

Still feel angry about it though.

Shoes, shoes, shoes... (view larger image in Flickr).

Rather pleased with this picture. This is for all the shoe-lovers out there, of which there are many! :)

Oh dear. After suspecting for some time, I am now almost certain that our cat, Poppy, pictured here, has gone deaf.

She is now about 14 years old, and so it might simply be age related.

She certainly wasn't always deaf. I'm not sure when it started - a good while ago I suspect. But over the past few months, I've started to notice that, more than she used to, she'll turn round to check if I'm there when she's trying to lead me down the hallway to the kitchen (i.e. to feed her!), rather than simply relying on being able to hear if I'm there or not. But she has always done that to some extent, so it's not been something that was immediately obvious.

And then in the past few weeks, I now realise that she has stopped responding to sounds. I mentioned this to Chris yesterday while I was holding her, and he clapped his hands behind her head. Her ears didn't even twitch, which seems pretty conclusive.

The strange thing, though, is that over the past year, she's become much more vocal than she's ever been. Which hasn't been much - for the first few years of her life, she hardly ever made any sounds at all. There's probably a straightforward reason for it, but right now I can't figure out quite why she would start miaowing just when she started going deaf!

Thank you to everyone who has donated or pledged money for Henny's dog sledding challenge. And if you haven't yet, why not wander over to her fundraising page which explains what it's all about, and see if you can't spare a pound or two? It won't go to waste, I promise.

Technorati: Sponsorship | Fundraising

Kitten War! May The Cutest Kitten Win!

Oh dear... if you like cats, stay away from this website if you've got other things you meant to do today! Addictive...

Entrance to the Other World (view larger image in Flickr).

Just love this photo by hanni!

£1,778 and rising... (view larger image in Flickr).

Amazing! A huge thank you to everyone!

See http://www.justgiving.com/hennyswan/

Henny more than half way to fundraising target! (view larger image in Flickr).

Just a few days after sending out info about her forthcoming attempt to travel 250km by dog sledge inside the Arctic Circle to raise money for the Bristol Royal Children's Hospital, the total pledged on Henny's online fundraising page is already over £1,500 and rising! And that's thanks to all the friends and colleagues who have helped to spread the word in so many different ways. Thank you so much!

Dept Xmas lunch (view larger image in Flickr).

Had a lovely meal with the rest of the department yesterday. You wouldn't think so to look at it, but everyone had a great time!

I'm posting this on behalf of my friend and colleague, Henny Swan:

Hello,

In July 2005, the wife and young son of a friend and colleague were very seriously injured in a head-on road traffic collision.

It's now five months since the accident and while his wife is out of hospital, his son Sam is still critically ill with severe spinal injuries and remains in the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit in Bristol Royal Children's Hospital.

I'm hoping to raise £3000 for Sam's unit by dog sledding over 250km in the Arctic Circle in January 2006 and I need your sponsorship help! The cash will enable the hospital to purchase equipment that will be of direct benefit to Sam and other children receiving treatment there. The trip is going to test all my strength and stamina as conditions will be harsh.

I'm funding the trip myself so all sponsorship raised will go directly to Sam's unit. To find out more, and to sponsor me, please visit www.justgiving.com/hennyswan.

Any sponsorship would be fantastic, even a couple of quid will go a long way! Feel free to forward this to friends, family and colleagues, or to post this information on personal websites or blogs.

Thank you for your support - it will really help Sam and other children like him.

Henny Swan

w: www.justgiving.com/hennyswan | www.dotography.com/hennyswan
e: iheni@talk21.com

Technorati: Sponsorship | Fundraising

People have reported hearing and feeling this explosion over a very large area. Weather forecaster on BBC explaining that this was because of inversion layer in atmosphere (layer of warmer air sitting above colder air at ground level) preventing sound and blast wave from dissipating upwards and so focusing it horizontally instead, with the result that it travelled much further than it might otherwise have done.

Was dozing and woken up by a long loud sound of an explosion and the windows and house vibrating. Went outside to look but couldn't see anything.

Now hearing on BBC News 24 of a huge explosion and several secondary explosions at Buncefield (Bunsfield?) oil depot near Hemel Hempstead...

Birthday owl (view larger image in Flickr).

One of my friends gave me this for my birthday today - a lovely ceramic owl storage jar. Or, as another of my friends suggested, a lovely ceramic owl canopic jar. I guess that's me all set for the day I shuffle off this mortal coil!

The ultimate in Xmas chic? (view larger image in Flickr).

Oh my ... 'Santa Claus red' rubber gloves with a sparkly white faux fur and faux pearl trim! How could anyone resist?! :)

Waiting for a train to appear (view larger image in Flickr).

I love misty, foggy mornings. Sounds are muted, and there's a calm peacefulness about the world.

Southall Broadway - still asleep in a soft blanket of fog (view larger image in Flickr).

A quiet, mist-wrapped start to the day (view larger image in Flickr).

Alexandra Avenue, Southall

Small item in the 'News in Brief' column in tonight's Evening Standard reports allegations that some high speed train drivers are stripping off and flashing colleagues in oncoming trains, as a dare.

I'll be studying the fast trains as they speed through my local station with great interest from now on!

Origami box - a lovely birthday present! (view larger image in Flickr).

Having already had my main birthday present (a year's web hosting and domain name), I wasn't expecting anything this morning from Chris except perhaps a card. But when I came downstairs, there waiting for me was a beautiful origami box containing a lovely piece of cake.

Chris is so good at creating these origami boxes (I have neither the dexterity nor the patience I'm afraid!), and for special occasions, he uses genuine Japanese origami paper, which comes in many patterns and designs. That's what he's used here, and it looks really lovely.

Thank you my dear - it was a lovely surprise, and the box is quite beautiful.

Gordon over a barrel (view larger image in Flickr).

This newspaper headline conjured up a mental image I really could have done without!

I can't believe I just heard (on BBC Breakfast) a man argue that the best way to stop teenage girls getting pregnant is to stop teaching young people about sex and contraception.

Apparently, if they don't know about contraception, then the girls can use the "I don't want to get pregnant" argument to stop the boys from pestering them to have sex, and the boys won't know that it might be possible for girls to have sex without getting pregnant.

Presumably they should also all be kept in sealed boxes to prevent them accidentally learning something from television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, posters, billboards, friends, birds & bees, etc, etc, etc? Of course he is also arguing that all references to sex and contraception should be expunged from all public media, to ensure that young people won't be inadvertently let in on the secret.

Bloody hell...

Given the level of stupidity and ignorance shown by his arguments, I can only hope he never has any children of his own - god help them if he ever does.

Phew! When I first installed WordPress and looked at the templates, it looked incomprehensible. But I've spent this weekend wading through them slowly, and they're beginning to make some sense. Have actually customised them to the point that the test blog main page is beginning to look something like this one. Still got quite a few to work through, though, before all pages are in a presentable state.

Something that helped a lot was the first two tutorials on designing a WordPress template published by cavemonkey50:

• Designing a WordPress template: The Basics
• Designing a WordPress template: Sidebar and more

The info in these tutorials started to make sense of things, and even though he hasn't published the rest yet, they gave me enough to start working through the templates. Thanks cavemonkey50!

Once I've got the test blog looking the way I want it to (i.e. looking like this blog now does), I'll transfer everything over.

I've spent a lot of time over the past few days designing the look of our new website, The Penguin’s Egg, and then redesigning this blog to match.

Now I just (?!) need to start transferring all of existing websites into the new domain, and similarly redesigning them to fit in.

Fun, but it doesn't half use up the time!

It just occurred to me that, while there's now a lot of information provided on packaging about what is contained in the things we eat and drink, the amount of caffeine is missing from that info. If, like me, you want to be careful about how much caffeine you take in (without necessarily wanting to dispense with it completely!), then it would be invaluable to have some indication on the packaging.

Take, for example, all the "one cup" drink sachets - cappuccino, latte, mocha, etc - how much caffeine does each of these contain? I can estimate the amount of caffeine in a teaspoon of instant coffee, or in a cup of filter brewed coffee, but I have no idea how much actual coffee or caffeine is contained in any of these "just add water" drinks. Or consider drinking chocolate, or cocoa, or a bar of chocolate (I know that doesn't contain caffeine as such, but it does contain a chemical very similar to caffeine, which has a similar effect on the body).

Caffeine is as much a drug (and addictive at that!) as nicotine, and whenever it's present in a drink or food item, the amount should be shown.

Mutant plastic santa in hiding (view larger image in Flickr).

This one is at least making some attempt to hide itself in the midst of some rather pretty lights.

Invasion of mutant plastic santas gathers pace (view larger image in Flickr).

This morning, only one giant mutant plastic santa had attached itself to this house. Now look at it - there are two of them! And so blatant too - absolutely no attempt to hide themselves!

Christmas tree at Paddington Station (view larger image in Flickr).

And they get bigger every year! (view larger image in Flickr).

And so it begins - the annual invasion of the mutant plastic santas (view larger image in Flickr).

First day of December, and they suddenly start to appear...