frying tonight

We had a power outage at home yesterday and a resultant selection of devices that don't have battery backup have subtly revealed themselves over the last few hours.

Today I spotted a little box flashing an orange light as a sign that all was not well. Indeed the box and its twin were attached to a now dormant grey box that used to have pretty green and yellow lights flashing.

The power cut also shut down the home disk server and although it restarted itself, it decided to be a little secretive and not re-announce itself to the network.

I restarted it all in a couple of minutes, but it did remind me of the olden days of mystery device drivers and numerous reboots required to fix anything.

Normal service is now resumed albeit with one less grey box of now fried electronics. I'm not quite sure what it did anyway.

vacuum packed

Flying around this week, with some early starts and late nights.

Along the way a languid evening meeting in a castle and a successful negotiation of the Brussels bus system. Then staying in a posh hotel that transformed itself overnight into a conference centre exhibiting bright orange tractor-sized cleaning systems for public spaces.

The hotel was very clean.

And the memorable and entirely genuine question from an over-travelled American colleague, who asked me which country we were in.

I had a chance to say, "It's Thursday, so it must be Belgium".

favicon in blogger

A reminder about how to set a 16x16 favicon to appear in Blogger:

<link rel='shortcut icon' href="http://myfaviconaddress.ico" type='image/x-icon'></link>

The insert goes after the <Title> in the HTML.

I just had to reset it because I changed templates.

bubble

What a difference a day makes.

The signs of last week's London festivities have rapidly moved, as have the Press who have moved to the next paper filling story.

Truly a Shakespearean weekend of world events but strange to have been in a separate bubble whilst much of it was unfolding.

situation

any port would do

Well, we were on a boat when the wedding was about to happen, but actually pulled into port in time to get to a pub just as Kate was leaving the hotel to head for the church.

The flat screen telly was surrounded by well wishing spectators and apart from a passing spaniel and a single bemused looking tourist, the whole area was watching television.

So we had the 'aahs' for the dress and later the stifled laughter as the ring needed to be slightly screwed on. And next day the communal table was groaning from the weight of newspaper supplements.

Royal Wedding bunting for Kate and Wills

There will be plenty like this along the route.

I am not sure why they have to call her Princess William instead of Princess Catherine. It's an ugly anachronism.

crowing

I'm pretty sure this is a crow.

It's not big enough to be a raven and you only get rooks in groups. "A rook alone is a crow, crows in a group are rooks", being the obvious reminder.

It's still hard to take a picture of one in flight though.

A bit like the Royals.

In London it's not that difficult to spot various members of the Royal family from time to time. I'll include William as an example, but like the flying crow it's still difficult to get a good picture. I suppose mine, like the bird picture, are simply opportunist and unpremeditated.

So here's one of William with some of his gang and Harry with Chelsy.

See, I managed to miss completely whoever was accompanying William.

And here's one of another occasion when they two boys were out with their dad. Interesting to note that everyone is watching them.

I guess more than a few eyes will be on at least one of them tomorrow.

Not mine though because we'll be on a boat*.

*UPDATE: I am told the boat has a television.

television selection

I drove to the office this morning, expecting the roads to be clear with everyone taking extra days by way of an extended break between Easter, the Royal Wedding and then Spring Bank Holiday.

But I was wrong about the traffic, with what looked to me to be above average amounts for most of the journey.

Those not at work can play the television game of trying to work out a way to link programmes together to get almost continuous coverage of the upcoming event. Riffling through tonight's television as a quick example, theres:

1800: 178 : London ITV News - including Wedding Coverage preparations
1830: 101 : BBC London News - with Wedding coverage
1900: 109 : Watch : William and Kate Plus 8 Royal
2000: 105 : C5 : William and Kate - The Story So Far
2100: 103 : ITV1: When William met Kate
2100: 116 : BBC4 : Royal Wedding
2220: 116 : BBC4 : The Great British Wedding
2300: 363 : Magic : Royal Wedding Fever - 3 days to go

I haven't checked all of the news channels and quiz shows, nor the plus one channels. And Dave (111) is still playing Top Gear repeats.

Swarms of bibio marci (St Mark’s fly)

I was out cycling around a few of the lanes today and I couldn't help notice the swarms of 2 centimetre jet black dangly legged insects flying and hovering around everywhere. At first I somewhat bizarrely thought they were flying upside down, because the legs looked almost as big as their bodies.

As I adjusted my speed a few landed on me so I could look at them more closely. There seemed to be two types. A longer thinner one and a more 'fly-shaped' one about the size of a two-pence piece. Both distinctly bigger than any housefly but not something I recognised particularly in what amounted to Everglades-mosquito-like density in a far from swampy English setting.

Back at base I tried Google and after a few false starts in horse-fly territory (I'd have known that) I eventually stumbled onto the Bibio Marci. And the description went on to say that they are particularly prevalent on St Mark's Day, which is also the origin of their name.

I knew that it was St George's Day a couple of days ago, but had no idea when St Mark's day occurs...

Why, today, as it happens.

I suspect I've correctly identified this insect phenomenon.

Cycling the Royal Wedding Route

We'll be away whilst the Royal Wedding is taking place.

We're joining some friends on a boat which will mean we are in a minority by not being glued to the television on Friday.

To get a sense of the occasion, I took the bicycle around the Royal Wedding route today, which is already in advanced stages of preparation. In some areas around the Palace there's already flags flying, but further out its still flagpoles and some rather impressive looking bright yellow rope.

The Mall is closed to traffic (my bicycle was still alright), the area outside Buckingham Palace has been rigged with a huge number of commentary boxes and many of the television cameras are already in place.

There were random film crews with big camera and cat on a stick microphones wandering around looking for people to interview. All of them dangling many badges and identity.

Slightly funnier was the big press boxes at Westminster Abbey.

They face the main entrance but behind them was a gas-man scene where the road was being dug up and a slight whiff of gas, like there was an urgent need to mend a gas main more or less underneath the main stand. A sort of James Bond/Jason Bourne moment.

Today's weather was idyllic.

Let's hope Friday is as Landau fine.

kissing

And one seasonal picture. The cross originally marked the four quarters of the moon, before it got converted sometime in the 700s.

We'll probably be doing some more hot cross bun eating later. You know you are supposed to kiss them?

I expect we'll be looking for the Easter bunny too, although I always suspect its a hare really - another part of the seasonal makeover.

And next weekend we'll be heading to the Isle of Wight. "Wight" means supernatural being, so the Island of the Supernatural Beings seems to tie in with the island being the last part of the UK to be de-paganised.