not so wordless wednesday

altitude check

Up before dawn so that I could travel to Germany. The BBC World Service was telling of the new smoke from the Icelandic volcano, so as I chipped the frost from my car before heading for the airport I wondered if I'd be stuck somewhere random in Europe by the end of the day.

Taxis, meeting people in lobbies, conference rooms until I was swept back to the airport to return at a similar time to the setting sun.

"There'll be some bumpiness for the first 20 minutes" explained the pilot. We were in one of those smaller planes that is only three seats across. The type where they worry about the load profile to ensure that the plane flies level.

Up through the clouds and I could see the distant sun setting slowly as we travelled towards it at 450mph and below it a notable orange haze. I know there's often something like this, but with the volcano stories I felt compelled to watch and wonder if it was the usual thing or something special created by the ash. There were certainly magical swirls as we approached the UK again.

Amusingly, I did at one point check whether the rather small plane flew at a normal cruising "above ash" altitude or would for some reason be lower. Sure enough, 37,000 feet, it said on the specification.

I'm back in England now and when I looked up, the night sky was clear and I could start to count the stars.

blue eyed boy bait

I try to work out if the Vodka Girls are on a different tier from the Beer Ladies. Their attire seems about the same, although I'm not wearing sun-shades this time. I can hear Jeff Mangum's voice and the chair scrape that is really a guitar being unplugged. Yusef may think his map covers my whole mind, but I know India's eye-needle forcefulness can control the sun.

Maybe the tight bassline trails the backbeat in the Lucky Strike smoke, but I'm remembering that thigh squeak on the car bonnet whilst she was telling me about the shotgun. It's magnet abuse whilst they teach me to palm the apricots and avocados, but I'll use the beer can ice fragments to cool me in this desert.

This may not be exactly the blue eyed boy bait, but it's close enough without advertising.

counting the political boundaries

I've been looking at a few of the analyses of the polls and thought I'd spend five minutes doing my own. In many scenarios the numbers yield an interesting skew to the outcome.

Because of the adjustments to political boundaries and the non-proportional voting system, there are all kinds of unexpected splits that occur if there isn't an outright winner with half the seats and an outright majority.

Before the election, Labour has 345 seats, which is a proper majority of the 646 available. With the varied swings predicted, this could drop by 75-90 seats, spread between Conservatives (mainly) and Liberal Democrat (some).

Its interesting, because with the lowest percentage of the overall votes (27%), the Labour party could still finish with the most total seats of the three parties (259).

With a more evenly balanced split with the most votes going to a mobilised Conservative party (34%) then the next to the Lib Dems (30%) and the lowest to Labour (28%), we'd still see the most seats go to Labour at 267, then Conservative at 255.

And supposing the Lib Dems managed to get the most overall votes (33%), with Conservative at 32% and Labour at 27%, then we's still see Labour with the highest number of seats at 259, and Lib Dems with around 128.

Some of this doesn't seem quite right to me.

pollen overload but cowboy bebop remix marathon

Well, the pollen has got me today but I've been watching some more Cowboy Bebop Remix Anime Sci-fi through the tears. It's a new form of red-eye, but the drugs will help, despite my cooking with onions.

Oops.

Here's a couple of trailers from the series.

Second UK election in November?

I decided not to let Sunday escape in the same way as Saturday, so started the day somewhat earlier. I could feel smug that by the time most people were starting their day I'd already been out for a bike ride, done some modest shopping, watched a short video (I'm re-watching the whole Cowboy Bebop Sci-fi series in sequence at the moment) and caught up with the news.

The main story this morning is about that Nissan car full of explosives found in Times Square. Worrisome that a few tanks of propane and some domestic fireworks can be rigged up so easily.

The Times Square story pushed the UK electioneering from top story, but I've decided its time to start speculating about the post election actions of the 'winning' parties.

Intriguingly, if there's no proper majority, Mr Brown can attempt to stay on as acting PM and Whitehall could delay reconvening Parliament. Set the controls for the heart of the sun. Next Friday could be very interesting.

But assuming we reach a point where there's some kind of improbable coalition not involving Mr Brown, there needs to be a contingency plan about what next.

My speculation is an extra budget to look decisive to the money people, a boundary review of constituencies and then another election in November. Questions on these actions could have been good content for the recent debates, but it all seems to be embargoed by the spinners until the results are in.

in which my woolly thinking makes me listless

It's supposed to be a long weekend, but I had a rather late Saturday start. I suspect the efforts of the week had somehow piled up and forced me to take it easy.

That's good in some ways, but also means my 'down time' isn't being spent doing 'my' stuff.

In addition, there's an increasing pile of domestic paperwork to ripple through and sort out. Sometimes it's like there is a conspiracy around Bank Holiday weekends which become extended rainy domestic administration times instead of fun style decompression.

Well, I suppose I this afternoon managed to cycle over a few hills to look lambs frolicking in the fields in keeping with today's new report that says even five minutes of exercise in green spaces is beneficial. Part way along a mad rain soaked my underprepared clothing and I had to shelter under a tree until a big brown dog told me to move on.

It was the second tree that had a good view of the sheep, followed by the reappearance of the sun.

This could all have been a tick in the right box if I'd planned it; what's the old saying, "No lists make me listless"...?

pull the other one?

I wrote my last post before the debate aired on television and then amused myself watching the HDP (High Definition Perspiration) as our three heros scuffled it out against a swirling acid-hazed Parliamentary backdrop.

We were told that the politicos had not been given the questions in advance, but it was clear that they had been given the topics of the questions as 'one worders' like spending /taxes /bankers /reconstruction /real people /immigration /housing /benefits /children so they knew which groove to play for a particular theme.

Some will have spotted that responses were deflected in some areas where the briefing and the question didn't quite align.

It was also interesting to see the debate tactics in use. Marginalise Clegg by ignoring his responses. Cameron to challenge Brown on everything. Brown to say its dangerous to switch captains when we are in the middle of the icebergs (He didn't say that but you get my drift).

I'm annoying myself though that I'm deconstructing the debate rather than analysing the content. I suppose that because there's so much time in negativism. I know we have the populist worm thing, but it would be more interesting if we had something like they do in soccer, where there's something about minutes spent saying something constructive and explaining agenda vs minutes attacking each other.

Still, its all good material for caption competitions.

open mike night

I've been whizzing back and forth through Heathrow the last few days and not had much time for blogging activities although the little kerfuffle yesterday with unexpected open microphones reached my ears.

The "brown toast" headlines and similar are good at keeping the main agenda away from any proper debates and its almost as if the main parties have decided to stay away from anything too difficult or to brush it away in a non-auditable soundbite.

Is the economy is really all messed up? Is the public sector out of scale? Is the private sector struggling? Are the banks operating like pirates? Can the rich operate offshore for a modest payment to the political party of their choice? Could errant MPs retire with cash and free access to Parliament? Have house price changes created huge negative equity? Are there more people unemployed than at any time since 1994? Can new entrants to the job market get work?

We can all fill in our own answers to these kind of questions, but I'm not really seeing through the bickering to concrete examples of how anything is supposed to get fixed. It begs a question about who presided over us getting to the current position, but an equally important one about who could get us to a better place.

I'm out and about again tomorrow, so it will be a whole week since I've seen the rashbre duck house.

chipping in

Well, I said I'd use my novel royalties in a way that captured the spirit of the original writing experience. So I did decide to gamble the initial royalty cheque and to see what would happen.

I'm pleased to say I'm ahead at the moment. Let's say the original stake was extremely modest in any case and I've spread out its deployment over a number of weeks. The good, though hardly life changing, news is that I actually won some cash at the weekend.

It's a small amount, but still a three times multiple of the original royalty cheque. Thank you, lotto.

shoemending time

Time for some background computer tasks today. Hole prevention.

Its mainly my photo library which has become quite large so I've decided to split it into some smaller pieces. The simple reason is the manageability of it on computer disks. Modern cameras produce large images and my snapshot library is now about a third of a terabyte.

It still works but starts to make its management for backup and similar purposes rather lengthy. Making a full copy is about 4 hours and will only get longer. So its time to chop it into a few pieces. I think archival by year is the simplest and kind of operates at a human level.

Still, its turning sunny, so I can leave the computer to burble away whilst I head outdoors.

Melissa auf der Maur

Turns out there's been quite a few people stuck in the Ash Cloud over the last few days. I was a day ahead of the Ash in getting back to UK, although I did momentarily muse that the Norwegian skies were pretty with streaks of unaccountable grey across them.

Others ahead of the curve managed to get back with long distance taxis (Amsterdam to Calais for one friend, a hire van from Dusseldorf to LHR in another case).

And it disrupted the music we were seeing earlier this week, when half the act couldn't get to the venue. Ironically, the skies over London have been crystal clear and sunny for several days, so I guess the Icelandic stuff is hiding somewhere.

Anyway, one of the acts we saw was Melissa auf der Maur. Her original gigs were cancelled when she became stranded in Helsinki, but when she did get to London she ran a great set on borrowed equipment.

So that's my picture above, from the gig, but below is a short video from earlier, in Helsinki, when the Cloud had grounded Melissa's tour ahead of Oslo and Cargo in London. The hastily assembled video shoot has come out rather well. Whoever had the camera by the bass bin has some intriguingly wobbly shots. All good and check Melissa's website here for some fine wood chopping.

MAdM FINLAND from MAdM OOOM on Vimeo.