Granite City Rally 2008

Was at the rally last saturday near aberdeen.
Phil got a bunch of photos on his blog

ON THE PAMPAS OR THE YOUNG SETTLERS BY G. A. HENTY

This is a tale of a family of 6, (2 boys and 2 girls) who decide to
emmigrate to the Argentine Republic.
Obviously this is written in the old fiction style of the time.
A good opening chapter detailing their preperations into their leaving home.
A second chapter tells of the sea crossing.  As was the style, much is given over to descriptions of the scenario, which is certainly educating!
The book includes detailed instruction in telling  how to grow, harvest and dry tobacco, and to make sugar from sugar cane.
It also contains a very good ministory about an american ranger, as told by one of the characters in the story.

Interesting read, and shows the thoughts of those in the past as regards south american indians and the landscape being very similar to those in the north.

Ma peculiar day.

I’m currently perched on ma chair, with a freshly made hot cup of tea and a mars bar having just put on some washing and intending to have some food after I’ve written this.

In order to explain ma day fully, I suppose I should start at zero-hundred hours.  I was busy preparing a solution to a lab exam I had today, where I had to come in and in 1 hour and 50 minutes, type a program that was essentially a predictive texting system similar to phones.  The problem itself was quite badly expressed, but nonetheless, I perservered, as one does when one will be graded on such work.  But in ma haste to do the job, I was too blind to see… (some might recognise the lyrics ) That I managed to miss out a bit in the spec that was worth 4 of the 20 marks in the exam.  I tried a simpler alternative for some of the marks in the exam but didn’t get it, so simply left it knowing I got most of the other marks.

Being up rather late with said work, I opted to stay in bed with a cup of tea rather than get up for my mathematics tutorial at 11 o’clock.  Annoyingly, I went in for my Systems lecture at 12, only to discover the lecture theatre shrouded in darkness.  walking home it occured to me last friday the lecturer was going over stuff to study for the exam, and we had reached the end of our book of notes!  If only I’d opened the notes at home this morning !  It wasn’t a completely fruitless expedition, I picked up a french bread 12″ baton for lunch.

I spied with my little eye, a car going past advertising 1 lesson free while I was having lunch, so I found the website and got in touch hoping to resume my driving lessons as soon as possible.

Going in for my exam, the weather was rather nice.  T’was a bonnie sun and the odd cloud in the sky as you’d expect for a marvellous summers day in Scotland.  The weather kind of changed in my exam.  As I coded away, I suddenly saw the frosted/steamed up window in front of me light up.  This was followed by a pure awesome rolling boom seconds later, and that carried on for probs half an hour or so, with the light beating the sound by anywhere between 5 and 15 seconds or so.  Being 6 floors above ground level, and the roof being another 5 or so above me, I didn’t hear the rain until I left ma exam.

I was glad that despite the weather being awesome, I always take ma big coat with a hood (primarily for rain and the zip-up pockets).  When we got out, ma spanish mate with a pure massive afro had to walk through pure torrential rain without anything to cover his expansive hair-do!

It was quite enjoyable, even if waders would have been required to splash around properly in the puddles.  The rolling booms of the thunder were totally awesome, and as it was so grey, the lightening wasn’t visible, but rather there was a totally huge flash from the sky.

Thanks to Irene/Kerry for mentioning that a wee shop on byres road has a downstairs which would sell piping bags.  They didn’t have really small nossels, but bigger ones and a piping bag were purchased cheaply.  They also had cheese slices of the dutch variety, but sadly with some stupid twist.  They were plastic!!  How do you suppose a plastic blade is gonna cut through ma chedder?!  Glad at least to see them in this country, even if that one wasn’t purchasable.  £5 for supposedly indestrucable plastic which could stand up on its handle and claimed to be able to cut through cheese!

Dinner soon.  It will probably be chicken breast wrapped in foil with herbs/pepper/butter and shoved in the oven.  Not something I’ve made myself before, but thats how nathan does his, and its easy and edible at least.

Homo antecessor, or “Pioneer Man”, is a women

The latest?

A Jawbone dated at 1.3 million years old.  Stone tools in the area date to 300 000 years older.

Because of its size, the human jaw is thought to belong to a female aged between 30 and 40 years old. The cave dwellers were likely about 1.7 metres tall (5-foot-7), say the researchers, with relatively small brains, three-quarters the size of modern humans.

http://www.thestar.com/News/Ideas/article/410660

I can understand getting approximate height from the size of a jaw, but how exactly do they get brain size?  Just more reinforcing of us being ‘higher intelligence’ than our forebears.

Though our ancestors began their trek out of Africa and into the world some 2 million years ago, until recently there was no solid evidence that they were anywhere near western Europe before 500,000 years ago.

I also had to laugh at this, so there is solid evidence now? !!

An Amazing View!

Inverness, the Capital City of the Highlands of Scotland. A few years ago, the fastest growing city in Europe. Pop ~ 70,000.
It attracts a lot of loaded Londoners and Edinburgers who are retiring and selling up their one bedroom flats for half a million pounds, which up here will get them a 3 bed house with a phenomenal view over the Moray Firth, with a 10 minute drive taking you to the centre of Inverness. Similarly, a 10 minute drive from the centre of Inverness and you are in the middle of the countryside. Loch Ness, a popular tourist destination due to the resident monster and the fabulous Urquhart Castle on its north-west side, is similarly a 5 minute drive out the other side of Inverness from the centre.

Panorama of Inverness

An absolutely phenomenal view which we get every time we come back home to Inverness, as we take a back road in which is the more direct route to our home on this side of Inverness. Will need to capture this one time I’m home with a proper Digital SLR and a tripod, with the sun high in the sky rather than low here (5pm Feb 08) which sadly means I can’t show any of the open space to the left of this panorama.