rebooting a car, with modest sparks

I had to take the car for its annual inspection today.

After the one hour series of tests, the car passed. The dealer gave me a discount on the normal price of the test too, which was a pleasant surprise. I waited in a plush area with complementary coffee, wifi and iMac internet access. I took a conference call meeting and it really didn't interfere with my day.

So far so good.

Then I drove home uneventfully, until I switched off the engine and noticed that the radio/satnav stayed on. Usually it switches off. I pressed the button and sure enough, it switched off. I idly pressed it again. Nothing. The system refused to restart. I had lost the satnav, CD player, the phone and it was stuck on a single radio station.

I pressed the off button, twiddled the car ignition, pressed all the adjacent buttons but to no avail. Stuck in startup, a little like a frozen computer. The dealer is closed by this time and its getting dark.

I try the internet to find out how to reset the console. There's various earnest experts describing the system and the general opinion seems to be to take it to a dealer who can use a special diagnostic device to reset everything. Apparently the car has a fibre optic ring main with these components on it.

I discover the car has two cunningly concealed fuse boxes, one in the front and another in the rear, I trace the circuits which don't really describe the main console, but have baffling names like "Audio Gateway". The spot designated for a radio fuse is ominously empty.

I decide to remove the two or three fuses (from about 50) that I think are associated with the sound, phone and satnav. I leave them disconnected for a few minutes to give everything a chance to reset. I noticed a slight sparking sound when I removed the 45amp one in the back of the car.

The I put it all back together and press the on button for the radio. A flash on the console screen. The warning message about driving carefully. Hooray. Its working again.

I feel both pleased and relieved that I've managed to re-boot my car's operating system.

the purple haze was all around

We didn't just make one track of "music" on Sunday. We made three, in between much general messing around. It seems to be my job to unload them from the recording device.

Of course, it all started innocently enough.

A casual comment along the lines of "I wonder if they make a 4 track recorder for the iPhone?"

Five pounds ninety nine later we were in business, with a hastily assembled band using an acoustic guitar, an old roland effects unit, a banjo, a yamaha piano and an electric guitar, plus a few percussive substances. We even figured out the optimum placement for the the improvised microphone.

And don't get me started about the 49 key roll-up keyboard piano with drum machine we bought at the Texaco. Jimi's place of honour on the wall was under no threat.

bed feet
half a side of vinyl progressive rock 8:11

remember that other time when I would only read the backs of cereal boxes

Even Squeaker was tired by Sunday evening.

We'd started today with a hastily improvised progressive rock jam session that only the very hardy could listen to in playback, using one microphone, with the players moving nearer or further away in an analogue semblance of mixing the sound.



Then an extended French breakfast with milky coffee, croissant and fromage.

I think it may have already been early afternoon.

Later we travelled onward to an impromptu wine tasting and then eventually to The Duchess for some pub food, where we chatted in the assembling shadows from the adjacent Battersea Power Station.

no trade marks hurt in the process

I'll admit to goofing off from blogging for a few days this week. A combination of extra events meant I was invariably back late most evenings, with the record probably being Friday evening after the pub lock-in.

That's not to say there hasn't been quite a lot happening. I was with Ed the Synth on Tuesday evening, then by almost complete chance with two friends from different parts of America, who both coincidentally happened to be in London Wednesday evening. Thursday featured a very late Japanese dinner which brings me back to Friday locked in pub.

I also recollect that Thursday featured the draft construction at 1 a.m. of a test logo for an upcoming Devoted and Disgruntled event. We created the logo and then tried it out on some New York scenes in preparation for the marketing of the event.

lightning fast mortal combat

I just noticed the movement at the edge of the window.

Mortal combat.

Roughly even sized adversaries each with different and distinct advantages. Fighting so fast that it couldn't register with the human eye. The fly had managed to keep a wing free and was twirling so fast that there was a simple blur of legs and bodies.

It would stop for a moment and then resume, without obvious advantage to victim or pursuer.

Then, suddenly, in the midst of a black blur, the web's strong thread snapped and they were whisked into the air.

As I type this, the spider has returned.

Seemingly alone.

don't panic

I know there's more important things to shout from the rooftops, but one is also reminded not to panic on days like today. Depending how it is measured, today is the 30th anniversary of the Hitch Hikers' Guide to the Galaxy (h2g2).

Douglas Adams helped create a very British version of Life in Space adding much to everyones' knowledge of all things intergalactic with gargleblasters, paranoid androids and, of course, the very important number 42.

I have the Guide installed on my phone, for moments when I need smile.

An example entry poses that whilst Earth generates lots of noisy radio signals now, they could all suddenly stop as a result of moving to lower powered satellite reflected digital signals. This relatively sudden cessation will alert our near neighbours of our planet and its changing conditions.

So will the Futurama prophesy come true? We'd see space folk from Omicron Persei 8 arrive demanding to see the final episode of Single Female Lawyer (Ally McBeal) no longer viewable at a long distance since digital cutover?

It will still take a long time to find out.

If Gliese 581c is one of our neighbouring galaxies nearest "earth like" planets, it is still around 20 light years or 120 trillion (trillian?) miles so right now if they watched earth telly they would be watching the Berlin Wall coming down. It'll be another 8 years before the first episode of Ally McBeal even reaches them.

And pity the poor folk on 47 Ursa Majoris. Not only has it been sent two customised Cosmic Call 2 messages to decode, but they were also broadcast the first interstellar advertisement from a radar array at the EISCAT European space station.

Advertising what? Why Doritos tortilla chips, of course.

how could I refuse a favour or two?

When I was still weak from the Moscow tryst a couple of years ago, I made a comment that sometimes things can start all over again.

Now I sense the progression. No bagman's gambit, each time the motorcade looks different and I see other ways for Декабристы to take the Senate.

That's how it is with the NaNoWriMo.

Still three weeks away, but around the right time to decide whether or not to try to clear an hour a day to write 1,666 words.

I've got mixed feelings but I suspect the tattooed Miranda will persuade me.

bagman's gambit - decemberists

in a surprise result, Saturday ran to plan

Unlike Friday, Saturday ran to plan, except that I hadn't really been told all of it until part way through. Suffice to say that we linked together a series of events pretty seamlessly, which started at around 10:30 in the morning and probably finished somewhere around 2 a.m. on Sunday, by which time much tea had been consumed.

A principle objective was to shower Katherine with cupcakes, which we did pretty comprehensively and I think I'm personally still on a sugar rush as I back-post this on Sunday morning. Along the way there was fairly comprehensive central London navigation, much chatter and some midnight bike riding.

Not to mention the "blogger's moment" where people referenced things I'd done that I'm sure I haven't told them about - but of course they'd read here on rashbre central. Copies of 'The Triangle' were also dispensed.

Antidote upon application.

caged in or caged out?

Today didn't go quite to plan.

It started routinely enough with some phone meetings and general email finagling.

Then, at around eleven o'clock, everything quietly derailed and I found myself in an altogether different situation.

Its nothing to worry about, but its as if a few of the little cages that hide in trees had jumped out to capture my day and its plans.

I know the secret though, sometimes you have to look down in order to go up.

diagonalism

It's National Poetry Day today, so here's my three minute muse on this year's theme of Heroes and Heroines.

I never learned how to exist;
I used to obtain everything I wanted from inside of me.
My twilights reached to another galaxy;
Surface affections wouldn't betray the actor.
Elaborate misperceptions defying the analysis
whilst fleeting dreams of sky and pebbles
hid the serpent.

Then you came along and horizons tilted.
Yin became yang and the elementals realigned.
I wasn't a hero but you made me one.
My heroine.

soggy blackberry city blur

A smiling moment last weekend whilst cycling. Sunday sunshine country lanes and people picking blackberries close to the road. I hold that thought because:

Travelling to a meeting this morning for 10:00. The snag was it had been cancelled. But only at 09:32. By email. I picked it up on my blackberry from within the cab on the last part of the journey. Sometimes a Plan B is just not enough.

Oh.

And then it rained.

Copiously.

a quiet Tuesday evening

The evening started sedately enough.

A quiet drink standing outside a pub by the river. Even a brief stroll along a short part of the tow-path. Of course, later there were the suggestions to move along to a nearby curry house, which was within sight, but on the other side of the river.

Rain and the full descent of darkness, to a point where I couldn't quite remember if we'd arrived at the pub in daylight. I do remember a skiff being rowed with small headlights on each end of it though.

We made our way through the rain in a slightly disorderly fashion across the bridge, around a corner, down some stairs, past a couple of arches and into the restaurant.

A default 'Menu for 12' or however many we had in the group. "Will the complementary wines be red or white?" came the waiter's question and we settled for some of both.

Now I was being good and sipped my still water, whilst others quaffed robust quantities of whatever was on offer. The poppadoms arrived and we fiddled with the chutneys and yoghurt whilst engrossed in animated debate. As the evening moved along, I noticed some of those about me beginning to fragment and lose their full sentence structures.

I also discovered that several had booked to stay in an adjacent hotel, so I was one of the few with plans to head home afterwards. At about 'very late' a small group of us "homeward bound" left together, leaving the hotel gang to further wine and discussion. I also rescued a coat and umbrella left behind by an earlier tired and emotional departure.

Tomorrow there will be fragility and headaches for some.