I Don't Normally...

...just republish other people's stuff. But today is different, this just made me laugh:

Astrophotography I

Had a go at photographing the moon last night. I think it turned out OK for a first try:

Lord of the Flies

If only. I had the distinctly unpleasant experience of being woken up at 5am by a mosquito dive-bombing my ear while staying at the supposedly-nice-but-actually-a-bit-dilapidated Bilderberg Parkhotel in Rotterdam. After 20 minutes of hunting, including going back to bed after convincing myself it was a dream only to be dive-bombed again, I eventually spotted and swatted the offending skeeter. I should have been a bit more suspicious after casually dispatching a one earlier on in the evening and given the room a more thorough search. But come on, it's November, all the skeeters should be... Well, wherever they go in the winter.

I was stunned therefore to find another four (at least, those are just the ones I saw) buzzing round when I got up and opened the curtain. Given all that I think I got away fairly lightly with only one bite, although oddly it didn't start itching until a full 36 hours after I left the hotel so might not have been anything to do with those ones at all. Needless to say, nobody else had any mosquitoes in their rooms, despite us all being on the same floor and within a few rooms of each other.

Naturally, I immediately suspected the people responsible for the plagues we suffered from a few years back but it's quite hard to pin anything definite on them. They're cunning that way.

The Dangerous Implications of a Smile

I was travelling on the Tube to City Airport, when I noticed the woman opposite me was smiling, as though, say, she'd just remembered a particularly amusing incident from a few years ago. I didn't think anything of it, in fact it was quite pleasant to see someone smiling on the tube for a change - after all, it's not somewhere that generally encourages happiness.

However, when I glanced back a few minutes later she was still smiling in exactly the same way. And again a few minutes after that. Now, as any fule kno, persistent and willful smiling in the face of a lengthy Tube journey is Not Right. The carriage was quite empty (most people had got off at Canary Wharf) and I started to feel more than a little paranoid. Was she laughing at me? Was she a complete nutter just waiting to launch a savage spoon and fork attack on me for looking at her in the wrong way*? Worse, was she a complete nutter waiting to catch my eye and then launch into a rambling exposition of her theory that the government was run by giant lizards?

It was completely unsettling, she smiled to herself in a completely suspicious way for three stops and then I got out. She could be smiling still for all I know.

Eventually it dawned on me, she was probably a tourist.

*This actually happened to a friend of mine, fortunately the mad person tried to stab him in the leg with a table fork rather than the carving knife she had in the other hand.

Art Imitates Life

I've been reading the fairly decent Rogue Angel series by Alex Archer lately. The main character is a bit like a female version of Indiana Jones although intriguingly she quite regularly doesn't win out in the end.

Anyway, in Book 9 the heroine of the story is in Tokyo. She's already established an expertise and interest in marial arts throughout the course of the series so accepts an offer to train at the dojo of a guy who is interesting in hiring her. It seems the dojo is a little outside of Tokyo. That's funny I thought, just like the Hombu Dojo where I trained and took my Godan test. A little later she arrives at the town and immediately notices the smell of soy sauce in the air, due to the presence of a large soy factory in the town. That's funny I thought, just like the soy factory in Noda near the Hombu... Hang on a minute! As I read on it became increasingly apparent that this fictional character was training in my real dojo. Nobody was named, but it was all there:

• Out of Tokyo location in a town with a giant soy sauce factory - check!
• Tiny dojo with more students (mainly foreign) than floor space - check!
• No changing facilities apart from a toilet - check!
• Shrine on the back wall of the dojo - check!
• Racks full of obscure training weapons on the wall - check!

Now, those things could apply to almost any dojo, but there was much more as I read on:

• Diminutive but smiley grandmaster who only says one English word: "Play!" - check!
• Strange bowing in process involving nine Japanese syllables, claps and double claps - check!
  
• Techniques never demonstrated the same way twice - check!
• Pinning people to the ground with arm locks rather than letting them get up - check!
• An Australian in the corner translating into English for everyone (Ed Lomax?) - check!

Again, this is all fairly circumstantial, except for maybe the first two, but then:

• Grandmaster administering Godan tests with a golden shinai - check!

Yup, no doubt at all, that's the Hombu in Noda all right. It was very weird to read about it in a fiction book. It also made me wonder if the author had actually been there, or just read about it. Not that it really matters much but it was very strange, a bit like when you see somewhere you know on TV.

The Only Lamp In the Village

A few days back there was a power cut across a large swath of Woking. But not in our house, oh no, because I have a UPS under the study desk. When it became apparent that the power wasn't coming on again any time soon (it was off for two hours altogether) I switched off the NAS and then started to think. I had a large battery attached to a bunch of sockets under the desk, which was just sitting there. It seemed a shame to waste it; so I went upstairs, grabbed a table lamp and plugged it in. And there was light.

It was a very strange feeling to look out of my bright study window and see no other lights shining back at me.

I wonder if I could set up a generator in the garage...