a diary of me.
monthofsaturdays.net: defining good use of time when all else fails.
Find out more about me or this diary software.
10th Aug 2010
Twelve members of the Surfing Africa team met up in late July to spend a couple of days driving off road in the Scottish Highlands.
Lessens learnt:
Just because someone’s pointing a camera at you, doesn’t mean it’s ...
3rd Aug 2010
Last week we had a chance to take the Hilux to Scotland and meet up with the second vehicle for the first time, for a few of the Surfing Africa crowd to have a chance playing in a beautiful offroad setting around Fort William and the Ardnamurchan ...
17th Jul 2010
Sometimes, having a heavy camera with you, just in case, pays off. Just occasionally, it pays off enough to make it worth carrying it for all those days when you didn't even take it out of the bag.
6th Jul 2010
I love this time of year. And thanks to a certain thesis (44,528 words and counting), we're not taking a long holiday this summer, meaning we can make the most of it! Yay for looking on the positive ...
28th Jun 2010
"Hey! What are your travel plans for this weekend? Just firming up logistic details and working out whether to head off in boots/kayaks on friday/saturday. Weather forecast is brilliant."
I'm not one to balk at short notice, so a ...
22nd May 2010
I must have had a setting wrong on the camcorder to make everything so washed out, but I kind of like the effect. So really it was subconsciously deliberate.
10th Mar 2010
Here we witness the true power of modern technology being harnessed for truly pointless ends. It amused me for 20 minutes.
It goes like this:
Point camera at compressed compost pellets
Add water (that bit's quite low tech, ...
7th Mar 2010
We've been running a youth club at our local church for the last couple of years. Here's a wee short we put together this weekend:
Disclaimer: all images and audio blatantly ripped off from 'tinterwebs.
25th Feb 2010
What do you get when you combine the above three elements, several scripts found in the far corners of the internet, free location-aware image hosting from Picasa and a few hours of meddling?
Something like this.
var ...
22nd Feb 2010
Last week some time, the BBC news led with their usual story; a UK soldier had been killed in Afghanistan. The second story was that a strike in that country had "accidentally" killed 12 civilians.
Today it gets better. A strike ...
15th Feb 2010
Where to start?
I started by creating this figure, a simple chart to display the European regulations regarding emissions from diesel lorries and buses. The reduction in allowed emissions is striking, but crucially doesn't cover ...
9th Feb 2010
I've been doing a bit of work tidying up this site, as all but the diary had long been neglected. I've completely changed the photos section - have a look at it if you like.
While uploading some pictures of St Peter's Seminary, a modern ruin ...
25th Jan 2010
The stock headlights on the Surf are ok, but nothing special. We fancied something with a bit more, well, oomph.
The yellow Bosch fog lights seen on the front bumper of many Jap imports have been replaced by more powerful, rectangular, ...
10th Jan 2010
It's 10 years ago to the day that I first left home, and flew to Israel for a 9 month volunteer placement. It's also 7 years since I became a home-owner (again to the day), and exactly 1 year till we're expecting to land in Tunisia.
The tenth ...
14th Dec 2009
Nearly trod on the little fellow. Instead I stole his soul with my photo machine.
Do caterpillars have souls?
9th Dec 2009
Soon after moving into the new house, I began hearing noises, like people impersonating dogs barking, coming from the open area beyond the compound every night.
At first, I assumed they must be made by the same dogs that lay in the shade, ...
21st Nov 2009
Wasn't a particularly nice day here today. Combined with exceptionally high tides over the last week or so, it made for some dramatic waves hitting the castle and any passing cars.
Luckily our local petrol station is offering ...
20th Nov 2009
I climbed a hill at 1am, after everyone else was asleep, sat down at the base of an ancient oak tree and told God I wanted to hear from him.
What I eventually heard, although not audibly, wasn't quite what I was expecting, but was the ...
19th Nov 2009
There were no other passengers, so the pilot of the six seater let me take the controls while he used the flight back home to do the days paperwork.
The first couple of hours were pretty routine - following a road a couple of thousand ...
18th Nov 2009
Common advice dictates that, when bitten by a snake, the best course of action is to take said snake with yourself, in a hurry, to the nearest hospital.
Common sense dictates that, unlike the two boys of around 13 who arrived with a ...
16th Nov 2009
I was invited by a student at Queen's to go and visit the Railway Preservation Society's yard in Whitehead yesterday. Went there with Louise and a friend Adam and had a poke about the old engines and ...
10th Nov 2009
We had a nice little week off over Halloween, and headed across to Scotland to spend some time with my family. One highlight was a day visit, on an unusually sunny, warm Autumn day, to Bowden Doors, close to Coldingham where we were staying. ...
16th Oct 2009
Inspired by my old school friend Ninian receiving his (well deserved) 15 minutes on national radio today, I decided that I, too, should be a film director.
Behold and wonder.
8th Oct 2009
One of the members of staff at work asked me to bring a few things back from the US for his daughter. She ordered them off Amazon, and had them delivered to my hotel.
Somewhere in Wyoming, there's a certain Casey who's wondering why her ...
6th Oct 2009
What's the quickest way from A (the hotel) to B (the train station) on the map?
3rd Oct 2009
Since Facebook categorically failed to prove it's worth, I spent this evening wondering in a relaxed, ...
8th Aug 2009
Berlin has been the top of my "want to go" list of European cities for many years now. This summer presented the chance to go there, by road, as part of our (perhaps slightly tame) overland test journey. We weren't disappointed. It'll take a ...
7th Aug 2009
The time, sponsored by MOS, will be 12:34:56,7/8/9.
beep.
beep.
BEEP.
31st Jul 2009
After the last entry, we drove with Asheligh and Donald, two friends from home, to Dover, where we crossed to France and straight up to Brasschaat where my aunt's family (hello Margaret et al) was kind enough to put up with the four of us for a ...
13th Jul 2009
A few pictures of the start of our trip.
First few days were spent in Keswick, helping Russell, family and others set up the Action Partners campsite where about 300 of the Keswick Convention attendees will stay for the ...
6th Jul 2009
The parallels with the last graduatage post are striking, 4 years minus a day later. Only this time it's Louise not me:
Once again the degree was a 1st class honours (any less would be disappointing, right?), and once again ...
26th Jun 2009
What's this? A diary entry? Quick, turn it up, it's been a while!
About 3 years ago, Motorola announced the Motofone F3, an all-new, ground up design of a mobile phone specifically tailored for the second and third world ...
3rd Apr 2009
While 'Delicious' seems an odd way to describe Obama, it's nice to see students making serious political statements.
31st Mar 2009
Following the absolutely tragic news of Fred Goodwin's house being attacked last week, I've been thinking about how the bank (and us, since we now own it) can show our appreciation for his service to our country.
Since it seems ...
25th Mar 2009
Just back from a lecture by John Ging, the head of UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency) in Gaza. He's been highly critical of the response of Europe and the US to the lack of respect for law in both the ongoing tit-for-tat conflict of ...
11th Mar 2009
Been doing two sets of tests recently. I'm currently in Millbrook, one of the big proving grounds in England, staring through a window at a London double decker bus sitting on a proper big dynamometer (bit like a treadmill for exercising ...
27th Feb 2009
In mid January, Louise and I decided to stop using large supermarkets, initially for a one month period.
There are many reasons for this, but here's a few:
Food transport: Supermarkets source fresh produce from every ...
7th Feb 2009
I heard there'd been a bit of snow this week. Apparently.Not that I could see, though, until Thursday. When it spat a bit of half-frozen slush on Carrick.
So today we jumped in the Surf and headed to the hills with Andrew, who used to build ...
30th Jan 2009
Thanks to Russell, who pointed out the abuse address for the company hosting the racist abuse I posted about yesterday. The site seems to be registered by Fasthosts in the UK and hosted by Dreamhosts in the US. Both have email addresses to ...
29th Jan 2009
Luckily it was raining the night before, so it was easy enough to pull these off about a dozen lamp posts on my way through Carrickfergus the other day. The website they advertise (don't visit it) offers some fairly serious neo-nazi, KKK and ...
23rd Jan 2009
I was reading over some of the maintenance manuals for the Toyota today, and came across this beauty. I think I'm going to like this machine.
18th Jan 2009
Some of you may know what I think about the over use of 4x4s.
So it may come as a surprise that, as of this morning, we have this parked on our drive:
We've been throwing the idea of a long overland trip around for a while and have ...
6th Jan 2009
Veteran readers will remember the emails from Samsung nearly a year ago, after they deliberately broke the near universal Linux and Mac mp3 player support in favour of a Microsoft only driver, for "no reason", in the YP-U3 player. The ...
5th Jan 2009
What better way to start 2009 then a champaign round a bonfire, a quick dip in the sea at 5 past, a climb on a beautiful crag the next morning and an evening being cooked gently in the Abbey St Bathens hottub?
In other ...
12th Dec 2008
After yesterdays semi-successful lizard, I tweaked the code being used and came up with this (the original story of the picture is here and here).
Download the original un-youtubified video here
The program now draws a ...
11th Dec 2008
Inspired by the likes of the Evolving Mona Lisa, I had a quick hack around in Matlab yesterday and came up with this.
The program takes the image it's got, and adds a random semi-transparent triangle of random colour. It then compares to a ...
4th Dec 2008
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that keeping DNA fingerprints for innocent people is a "disproportionate interference with... [the] right to respect for private life and could not be regarded as necessary in a ...
23rd Nov 2008
Spent a lovely weekend in Cambridgeshire with Jo, Martin and Thomas. As Thomas' only uncle, I feel I have a special responsibility to ensure a rounded and stable upbringing. :)
23rd Oct 2008
A walk up Slieve Binnian with Adrian last week. High winds prevented much climbing, but it was a stunning day anyway.
13th Oct 2008
See my previous post about joys of DRM.
Other illegal activities: women trying to vote in 1918, harbouring Jews in 1939, invading Iraq in 2005 and parking on a double yellow line yesterday morning.
7th Oct 2008
Mural tribute to John Peel, author of the lyrics (click-to-bigify)
Just off Stranmillis Road.
Not quite as famous as Banksy?
3rd Oct 2008
Phorm, the new name of 121Media, is an internet success story. They made enough money creating spyware and viruses from their dubious Russian offices to recently start talks with several big UK internet service providers to get full, ...
1st Oct 2008
I'd previously seen graphs like this, which are good at making an impression on relative weights given to issues by a society. So to put the proposed US banking bailout into perspective with other large figures (solving world disease ...
25th Sep 2008
I see nobody wants a genuine London Olympics flag and medal set? Shame.
In the mean time, some fun. Linux (the open source alternative to Windows) and nearly all programs that run on it are supplied with all source code - exactly what the ...
23rd Sep 2008
L****n has been selected to hold the O*****c G***s in the s****r of T*o T******d A*d T****e. S******s of the G***s in T****y T****e will pick up g**d, s****r and b****e m****s with their lucrative contracts.
Or maybe it's just ...
16th Sep 2008
Blame it on the Troubles, the weather, the land-ownership rules (sadly not quite Scottish style) or any other factors, there's a distinct lack of anything to scramble on within a two-hour radius of my bed.
Now there's a little quarry ...
15th Sep 2008
The LORD is far from the wicked,
But He hears the prayer of the righteous.
Is it possible to be both "the wicked" and also have God hear your prayers? Does God's forgiveness make us righteous before Him? Does it remove the "wicked" ...
12th Sep 2008
While at Fairhead, as in my previous post, I had a chance to hang around on abseil, taking some pictures, for about an hour. I had my belay plate, and borrowed a couple of ascender devices, one from Pete and one from Dave. Combined with my 2 ...
9th Sep 2008
Spent a few days over the weekend back up at Fairhead, on the North East tip of Northern Ireland, climbing with Pete Hart, Dave Leonard and Louise at different times. Fairhead is a similar, although less defined, formation to Giant's ...
4th Sep 2008
If a man can build up an online fanclub to the extent that a blog post like this receives 963 comments (39 pages worth), he deserves a whole bit of respect. That man is Dave Walker:
Taking a plate to the kitchen
(dull, January ...
2nd Sep 2008
"Free Software" in its current form is 25 years old this month. Below is an excellent explanation of exactly what it is, by someone easier to listen to (and, arguably, even funnier) than myself. Enjoy!
Stephen Fry on plumbing, ...
31st Aug 2008
I've gone over our internet usage allowance this month, so we're throttled to 128k, about 2% of our normal maximum limit. Suddenly I remember the days of images loading a line at a time, jumping around the page as different bits load at ...
21st Aug 2008
We've been helping run an outreach week for local kids, at our Church, for the last week.
14th Aug 2008
I've never been a sports buff. But I do enjoy certain events, and happily follow medals at most Olympic games. This time it's a bit different.
From the International Olympic Committee's website:
According to the Olympic Charter, ...
8th Aug 2008
Valley NE out of Les Chapieux - the imposing French/Italian border
Harking to an age that I know nothing about but my grandparents knew too well, most bits of Europe no longer show any signs of the wars of the last century except for ...
28th Jul 2008
Congratulations to Jon, who won last week's MoS Premium competition. Jon, collect your prize by clicking on this link. Remember, only Jon is allowed to click that link now!
For the rest of you, here's some pictures of Brugge, a ...
22nd Jul 2008
Two very similar photos. One is an original shot, the other doctored. If anyone can say which is which, with justification, I'll give them a week's free access to Month of Saturdays Premium. For easier examining, clicking will Bigifyâ„¢ ...
22nd Jul 2008
Saw these in Paris. They appear to be by a guy called Jérôme Gulon (see the signature 'JG' tile in many of them). It took a while to really notice them but, once you do, hunting for them can become ...
20th Jul 2008
Italian troops moved around the mountains during WW2 using a system of cables and ladders anchored to the rocks; a combination of hard and dangerous walking and climbing was made much safer when they wore harnesses and clipped into the ...
17th Jul 2008
Well 5 days later, we've walked 50 odd miles over 6 cols, climbed and descended around 4000 metres and been rained on, snowed on, and roasted alive!
Col du Bonhomme - a welcome hut
Mont Blanc in sunnier times
12th Jul 2008
Louise and I are busy driving and hiking round Europe. We left Paris on Tuesday for 3 fantastic days playing in Fontainebleau, and are about to leave Chamonix for 5 (or so) days hiking on the Tour de Mont Blanc. If the torrential rain and ...
1st Jul 2008
A couple of forgotten pictures from a photos folder tidy-up. The second fourth is pretty obscure - prizes to anyone who knows what it's of.
Off to buy a couple of cans of spraypaint now. :)
13th Jun 2008
Living in the constituency of one of the nine DUP MPs who forced Brown's 42 day detention vote through parliament on Wednesday, I've written to let him know that, when the House of Lords return it, I'd greatly appreciate him having a little ...
13th Jun 2008
Apparently, Have Your Say has led to the Youtubeisation of the BBC.
Now, based on real HYS comments, I present* the Twat-O-Tron:
This tired old question again! all right-thnking people know that paedos are pandering to ...
10th Jun 2008
Which is safer in a head on collision? A four tonne Ford F150 4 wheel drive pickup or a Mini Cooper?
Last year, the most sold car vehicle in the world (for the 23rd year running in the USA) was the F150, of which over 1,000,000 were ...
6th Jun 2008
Last weekend, we were out at Fairhead with Pete, George and Henry, along with Kathie and Kirsty who watched from a safe distance. Fairhead is the longest climbable stretch of cliff in the British Isles - 4km of basalt, mostly 80-100m ...
18th May 2008
The Downshire Men's Group took a day trip away yesterday. In the gap between the tour of Bushmills Distillery and the River Bann Cruise (half the country was clogging up the roads with the North Western motorbike races, but the real ...
14th May 2008
No, it wasn't California. It was an unseasonably lovely day climbing with Dave Leonard on the Bernagh Slabs, in the Mournes, on bank holiday Monday last week.
Exactly a year before, Dave, Peter Hart and I had been on the same ...
10th May 2008
One shot can't do the hideous over-developed commercialisation of Times Square sufficient justice. Below is 24 individual images, stitched and then manually tweaked, covering about 120 degrees vertically and 360 horizontally (see ...
8th May 2008
Playing with Hugin panorama sticher again - here's one I snapped up in New York. When my computer grows a couple of new CPUs I'll try and get a Times Square one done too.
2nd May 2008
Dell's press release said:
We are workibg diligebtly to offer a solutiob to inpaxted xustoners abd corrext the error vefore aby additiobal ubits are shipped,,,
This issue is ubder ibcestigatiobm abd we will cone vaxk with ...
30th Apr 2008
Hardy Heron (officially known as Ubuntu 8.04) was released at the weekend.
I've been using Ubuntu on this laptop (the Toshiba Portege R500) since I got it - see my comments about installing it at the time. This post explains a few ...
25th Apr 2008
Updated - the location of the atom feed has changed.
As occasionally requested, I've used a couple of ill days (don't you just love recycled air on long flights?) to create an atom feed for this diary. This means you can now read it ...
19th Apr 2008
A Chinese ship carrying arms to Zimbabwe has left a South African port after workers would not unload it.
The An Yue Jiang was forced to move after a South African court refused to allow the weapons on board to be transported across the ...
16th Apr 2008
It wouldn't really be true to say Detroit is a city of contrasts. But the regularity that I've been given one bit of advice is really quite alarming. Don't go out after dark.
It's easy to see why. The previously bursting Downtown is full of ...
14th Apr 2008
I have a confession to make.
I nicked the Continental in-flight magazine. I thought maybe that sort of behaviour would mark me as a clear target for the TSA; an outcast, a social fringe case. But sadly I have nothing to complain ...
10th Apr 2008
I'm continuing to update this as replies arrive.
It's a lovely little player, it really is. So why the Microsoft only drivers? This is genuinely the first device I've not just been able to plug in and use in Linux for years.
The ...
1st Apr 2008
To be honest, I'm not 100% sure where the tradition of ritual humiliation of the soon-to-be-wed originated. But hey, it's fun!
Paul being Floured
Paul and Conor as all others wandered off
The irony is that, as Conor's ...
14th Mar 2008
"Republicans requested privacy for what they termed "an honest debate"... The closed-door debate was scheduled for late Thursday [13/3/08] night, after the House chamber could be cleared and swept by security personnel to make sure ...
13th Mar 2008
Apparently. Although you can't often see it.
5th Mar 2008
On Sunday, there was a Vauxhall Corsa up to its doors in the sea beside the pier, trying to pull a jetski out of the water, with a 4x4 trying to pull it out the water.
1st Mar 2008
Finally got enough time today to set up that old scanner that's been gathering dust at the back of my desk. And then spent most of my time writing a script to resize and create thumbs of the scanned photos. So now ...
15th Feb 2008
Found a new way to store my climbing hexes.
Slightly heavier to haul up a vertical face, but it follows you on the flat, so that's a benefit. And self sorting, which saves all those tedious arguments about what goes where after a climb. It ...
1st Feb 2008
Here, as promised, is a picture of the finished living/dining room.
There's a lot more to do in the house (the nursery still needs a lick of paint, for a start), but it feels like home now.
Actually, the biggest difference ...
22nd Jan 2008
The time leading up to Christmas saw a major redecoration spree in our house. That's one excuse for why this diary spent so long being sadly neglected. The other is cos I was being plain lazy :)
As our friends grew wise to ...
22nd Nov 2007
In penance for yesterday's geek-fest, here's two nice pictures from our honeymoon (click either to enlarge). Both of these are collages of 6 individual photos, not some fancy fish-eye lens (sadly!), stitched together using the ...
21st Nov 2007
Apologies to any of my usual readers who still exist - this probably won't be interesting. No photographs, no life updates or anything.
If you read this and find it useful/confusing/incomplete, please leave a comment ...
1st Aug 2007
The less words the better - the pictures should speak for themselves...
The groom's party: James (L's cousin), Adrian, Me, Henry (best man), Russell, Martin (L's brother in law)
Louise arriving with her ...
19th Dec 2006
Some photos from couple of months ago on a beautiful (if chilly) evening in the south west of NI, while out with Louise visiting her sister for a weekend in Enniskillen.
The paper is from a brand new, 30 year old ...
14th Dec 2006
Got to playing with my scanner the other day. Here's a nice picture I took on the Malambo trip back in March.
23rd Oct 2006
I've been playing with some new toys.
Welcome?
Turns out that while everyone's using all these so-last-year digital cameras, they're all busy selling all sorts of high tech, fancy equipment with moving ...
1st Sep 2006
After the fiasco with the broken site, and then the fiasco with moving continent, I'd promised myself I'd be a bit better at posting. But sadly, then I had the fiasco of moving to Belfast and persuading ntl to give me a ...
7th Jul 2006
After several weeks of funnyness, followed by Jon going nearly bald, my diary has been coaxed back to life.
Luckily, not much has happened in those weeks. Well except that I got engaged. Oh, and finished my work in Tanzania. And returned ...
4th Jun 2006
The road passes the end of the runway, and goes on indefinitely in both directions. To the north lies Kondoa, then Arusha before crossing to Kenya and on through Nairobi to Cairo. To the south lies Iringa and further Zimbabwe, Zambia, ...
31st May 2006
When I first arrived here, I spent the first week or so building a jig to repair a wing from a plane that hit a vulture.
To build the jig, we took a wing from another aeroplane which was just sitting around, and had been for a long time - N5329U, ...
22nd May 2006
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
Benjamin Franklin, 1759American journalist and writer
I am a strong supporter of civil liberties, but you have ...
19th May 2006
Last Monday week I went to Nairobi for an hour and a half. It's about a 2 day journey by road, jumping on the weekly MAF shuttle makes it easier.
Skyscrapers!!!!11! lol!1!!
Sadly, I didn't get a chance to leave the ...
3rd May 2006
After the quiet month that was April, here's a few updates.
On the aircraft front, it's been a 'challenging' period. We're waiting to hear whether ZBZ will be written off or repaired (written off would probably ...
17th Apr 2006
MAF Tanzania had a conference over the weekend, in a city called Moshe, in the north of the country. To transport all the staff there, our two Cessna Caravans were used to shuttle backwards and forwards from Dodoma on Thursday.
On ...
1st Apr 2006
Coffee roasting is a serious business. Let nobody fool you.
To keep track of my progress in the art, I've developed a tracking mechnaism. Now we can all learn from each other and improve our coffee-roasting knowledge.
Sadly, I ...
31st Mar 2006
A large portion of MAF Tanzania's work is Safaris - flying regular circuits from a base town or village to transport medical and church workers to remote areas.
On the three day Malambo safari, the Cessna 206 that Marcus was flying ...
29th Mar 2006
Man:You sit here, dear.
Wife:All right.
Man: Morning!
Waitress:Morning!
Man: Well, what've you got?
Waitress:Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage ...
25th Mar 2006
The nearest clinic is in a shack just at the end of the lane that leads to the compound, a hair dresser with strangely proportioned pictures of bleached RnB stars showing their bling painted on either side of the door to the left, a small ...
23rd Mar 2006
They're not as cute and innocent as they look. I reckon one of these blows could knock the wind out of any one of us...
Giraffes fighting
19th Mar 2006
Last week I was with my parents in Lushoto, a small, friendly town tucked away in the refreshinly cool tropical forests of the Usambara mountains. After a day's hike, my dad and I were carrying our bags while Mum was carrying some bread ...
14th Mar 2006
Some tips for the traveller in Tanzania.
Nice picture, huh?
When one will eat ones chicken on arrival, tie its legs together and use them as a handle. It can be slung in a bunch over your shoulder, or tucked under an arm when ...
4th Mar 2006
Thus spake Juuso after tonight's meal. Which bore a strong resemblance to a song we used to sing.
After a confused conversation which proved that I don't quite speak enough Swahili to catch the difference between "We have ...
1st Mar 2006
Here's a picture of Naomi, my new niece. Taken when she was still newborn 3 weeks ago, both Naomi and Jennie are now very well.
Russell and Jennie have now started a blog which will, hopefully, have some slightly more relaxed ...
27th Feb 2006
I fired up the kerosene lamp the other day and this little critter was up on the wall opposite!
The power cuts are now up to 18 hours a day. We have a generator on site, but at $30/hour it can't run all the time outside the working ...
23rd Feb 2006
Linux, in case it's slipped past anyone, is a free, open source operating system. Free as in speech and, normally, also as in beer. Most software running on Linux is GPL - the source code must be freely available, and the source of ...
19th Feb 2006
I've been following, with some interest, a law case just starting to unfold in the USA.
In 1998, the US government came up with some legislature that would make the internet a happier place for all, by protecting children from ...
16th Feb 2006
Since my website redesign wasn't met with earnest reception in all corners, thought I'd post a slightly more serious update.
I've been hinting to people that the situation with rain in the country is getting ...
14th Feb 2006
Here's a few nice pictures. The first one's of Mark, abseiling down a nice little face at Lion's Rock. The second and third are snapshots of how not to prepare your plane for flight. The first engine run of a plane we've been ...
8th Feb 2006
Congratulations to Russell (my brother) and, especially, Jennie (his wife) for surviving 36 hours of labour, 11 days late, to deliver a 9lb 4oz Naomi Jane Simpson early on Wednesday morning.
So now I'm an uncle. Which means, I ...
3rd Feb 2006
Coffee here in Dodoma is pretty hard to come by. Not that there's none in the country - it's got some of the biggest plantations around. But you just can't really buy it here.
But I'm not one to be deterred that easily from ...
27th Jan 2006
Last week we went climbing, but I didn't have a camera. This week we only went abseiling, down the same face as I climbed last week:
Frames from a video of my daring escapades.
A big thanks to everyone who made this possible by ...
23rd Jan 2006
Well, ladies and gentlemen, after about 2 months work for Jon and myself, photocomp.net is now up and running, although very much in beta mode.
So please, go there, register, submit pictures and leave comments. Most of ...
17th Jan 2006
Well it's been emotional, but after 2 1/2 weeks I'm back in Dodoma, no longer on either imodium or larium (oh, the dreams; how I miss them), and once again cooking gently each day in the hanger.
I've also had a serious internet ...
28th Dec 2005
Writing from an internet cafe in Morogoro (about half way between Dodoma and Dar), where we're spending a couple of days over Hogmanay. Stunning town, about the same size as Dodoma but vastly more developed, so there's actually ...
26th Dec 2005
Well tomorrow I'm a leaving. On holiday. For a while.
Going down through the country to Lake Nyasa (the section of Lake Malawi in Tanzania), then back up through various towns like Mbeya, Iringa and such. We'll be spending ...
24th Dec 2005
(stolen from my Aunt. Who can't access this site. So I'll get away with it.)
From me (hereinafter called the Wishor) to you (the Wishee):
Please accept without obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an ...
23rd Dec 2005
The advantage of working for a charity running light aircraft all over the place is you can charter a light aircraft and go interesting places. So since Mark's family are here, we ganged up with another family and took the Caravan for a ...
17th Dec 2005
The following is the first of a short series of rants I'm writing as I get used to life in Africa, this one particularly influenced by my recent visit to South Africa and reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography.
Please take time ...
15th Dec 2005
Just landed after a short, perfectly uneventful flight circling over Dodoma for 20 minutes.
The important thing is that this:
Pratt and Whitney PT6 power section (power turbine and gearbox)
was once again strapped to ...
12th Dec 2005
A slightly more in depth idea of my time in Johannesburg follows shortly after this rather fetching picture of Fabian, my housemate.
Captions on a postcard
About half my time in Joburg was spent on official business, so I ...
8th Dec 2005
Tried to write this from an internet cafe in the airport yesterday, but then it wouldn't work, and then I was going to miss my flight, so I didn't. I'm just back in Dodoma now, and can't really be bothered writing anything, ...
27th Nov 2005
As I hinted at in my last entry, I'm going to Johannesburg this week. Leaving tomorrow to Dar es Salaam, then flying down on Wednesday.
The reason? One of our caravans has a slight issue with the propeller rev counter. It's a ...
24th Nov 2005
The sunset last night
Last Sunday, we went to a choir concert in the football stadium. It wasn't first on my list of priorities for a Sunday afternoon, but then I thought something along the lines of "How many chances will I get ...
17th Nov 2005
I've been meaning to write a constantly updated page for a while now, which will contain things that you can pray about for me.
Why? Because prayer matters, and makes a difference. And as Christians, we're told to do it. And ...
15th Nov 2005
I know, I know, it's ages since I put anything here. Rest assured that it's not just my diary I've been neglecting, but any real tasks other than procrastinating.
After the safari last week, we celebrated Guy Fawkes night ...
5th Nov 2005
Yesterday I had a chance to go on the second day of the monthly Kilimatindi Safari. MAF run safaris to many remote corners of Africa - this comprises a large portion of the work they do. Not safaris as in animals, but the other type - taking ...
3rd Nov 2005
I've been suffering from the same problem as Pete ("I never seem to get around to cooking up the big blogposts I plan"), so I've not posted much in a while. Well until I manage to get round to writing a big long post about all sorts of ...
27th Oct 2005
Internal workings of a smacking big engine
Planes are cool + engines are cool = plane engines are very cool.
The plane that hit the zebra had an engine. But I took it out the day before yesterday. And since then, I've been ...
24th Oct 2005
My laptop's been running a bit hot over the last few months. Used to be I could hammer it with 3D games, with web browsers playing flash cartoon, with OpenOffice giving a slide show under a different user login on a remote machine, and ...
22nd Oct 2005
MAF Tanzania had a Fellowship Weekend this weekend. Involved some meetings, some prayer and worship time and lots of getting to know people. Everyone from the different areas came in - Dar es Salaam, Moshe (up north) and Kigoma (out West). ...
19th Oct 2005
Had some good banter today. I managed to spill a tin of paint. To put that in context, the paint comes from the USA (so there's several weeks lead time on it), it costs about $200 a tin, and we need it for a plane we're painting in a ...
16th Oct 2005
Most of the site should be working again now, please leave comments etc as though nothing had happened ;). Will tell you all about my exciting day when I'm actually awake, another time.
Been having serious issues with the ...
12th Oct 2005
The best bit about this is it counts as work. So 4 of us got 2 days, full board, at an extremely plush safari camp in order to dismantle and return to Dodoma a plane which had an unfortunate incident with a zebra. The zebra would, I ...
10th Oct 2005
I was a wee bit surprised that after my last post, all about social justice, poverty and employment in the third world, the only responses I got (even including Simon's insightful injection) were to do with me. Nice to know you all care so ...
7th Oct 2005
Well the internet's working again, so thought I'd rush to take the chance to let all youse know what's up in Area 51 Dodoma.
That's a picture of a Cessna 206. One of the 3 types of plane that MAF fly in Tanzania, the others being ...
2nd Oct 2005
Well, you've got me, I'm not really in Tanzania. So this next post comes from Area 51, where I've been sipping tea and nibbling scones with some most civilised aliens. Fortunately, they've got some rather nice hangers, and it's quite hot and ...
30th Sep 2005
The most interesting thing that happened on my journey revolved around a taxi ride to the airport. The driver, who certainly doesn't strike most people as local, says he's spent a lot of time in Ethiopia, riding bare-back, and got his ...
27th Sep 2005
As the time for me to depart draws close, Pete decided that the one thing I obviously really needed was a quick session of buildering (buildering = bouldering + buildings) with Neal and Darren Tim Pingu. Which is how it ended that at 3am on ...
23rd Sep 2005
I leave on Thursday. Things are slowly coming together, which is nice.
To celebrate me going away, feel free to drop in to my flat on Wednesday evening. Bring your own bottle (or carton, maybe) and snacks. It's not really a party, cos ...
22nd Sep 2005
I decided to visit Henry last week. After stealing some of Phil's pasta, I left at about 8:30. Officially, it's a 3 1/2 hour drive away. Unofficially, Henry reckons it takes about 3 hours. But Henry doesn't get lost.
Finding Henry's ...
17th Sep 2005
(Glasgow Uni)
Most of you will know I'm going to Tanzania soon. For those who don't, I'm going to Tanzania soon. I'll be working there for 9 months with an organisation called MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship), which operates light ...
10th Sep 2005
Warning - contains Geek-talk
I spent some of yesterday installing Wine, a sort of Windows emulator for Linux, onto my computer. This should allow me to run a fair amount of Windows software fairly well on my Debian laptop. The aim was to be ...
8th Sep 2005
Well the other day I was dragging Louise out and about with my camera, and managed to capture two more specimens of Rogue One graffiti in its natural habitat.
As mentioned before, Rogue One is a stenciller who's most impressive piece I ...
7th Sep 2005
But luckily you don't need to die for it, cos it's right here.
Here it is now.
Take 2 chicken breasts. Slice open like a baguette.
Take a couple of handfuls of chanterelle mushrooms. Fry them and slap them inside the ...
31st Aug 2005
Well, here I am, back in the city. And here's the promised few pictures of a grand time away.
So there you have it.
27th Aug 2005
Was going to post some inspirational pictures from life on the farm, where I've been staying for the last 10 days, further honing my sheep-chasing skills. But I've not taken any. And I forgot the cable for my camera. So even if I had, I ...
16th Aug 2005
The other day, I was on a routine patrol down a closed path with the aim of photographing Rogue One graffiti under Kelvin Bridge. That's Kelvin Bridge on the right. Just so you know.
Anyway I found an interesting thing. Scrambling ...
14th Aug 2005
"Unhappy with the old "off the shelf" look of the Wordpress blogging software that we at monthofsaturdays.net had previously been utilising, our labs have been hard at work developing a replacement..."
So ran the official ...
11th Aug 2005
It's been an interesting week so far. Monday saw Jonny and Lindsey tying the knot, and tomorrow will see Rachel Burger-Seed finally shedding that name. Not that I was actually invited, but I'm going to head along to cheer at all the right bits ...
5th Aug 2005
I had 5 injections this morning. It hurts. The Yellow Fever and Typhoid are both pretty bad ones, so I'm on paracetamol and orange juice for now.
Feel like I've been pretty busy recently, although that's maybe illusion ...
4th Aug 2005
Well, I spent all day putting up tiles in Fraser's bathroom today. It was worth it, cos I got dinner with the complete Henderson clan, including their Grandma from downstairs. Watch those rusty nails, dear...
So I got home at about 11 and ...
26th Jul 2005
...things just work. I just decided to put some internet radio on, so tuned into shoutcast, picked something called "Groove Salad," clicked to open the link in amarok, my favourite media player. And then, an amazing thing happened. Music ...
23rd Jul 2005
Well as you can see, I've finally hidden this embarrassingly "average" blog behind a more quirky front page. The idea eventually is that the entire site will be mine, with only this blog as a plugin.
More excitingly, I got my digital ...
22nd Jul 2005
Well here we go, a few pictures of my latest wanderings out and about in Glasgow. These were from a while back, before I was gallivanting all over Scotland. They are from the first roll of film I put through a cheap OM10 SLR that I bought off eBay ...
21st Jul 2005
1160 miles, 4 youth hostels including 1 castle, 6 beds, 4 35mm films (over 100 real pictures), 128MB of digital pictures (over 100 digital pictures), 1 ferry crossing, 13 nights, 4 bottles of wine, one trip to the airport and I'm home. ...
16th Jul 2005
Was just thinking it would be good to come on here, now that I'm on a real computer, and post a few pictures of stuff like Skye, Loch Ness, Carbisdale and stuff, but I left my camera in Huntly, and Sarah's threatening to sell it on eBay. ...
13th Jul 2005
Just a quick post to say things here are going well. Currently staying in the most grandest youth hostel I've ever come across, Carbisdale Castle. They've got these fancy card-operated locks on the doors, which don't have a ...
7th Jul 2005
Well, after 5 years, I finally got myself some graduatage yesterday. Look, it's right here!
I'm off on holiday with Louise now, so can't write any more, cos she's sitting watching me, getting bored, wondering why she's ...
4th Jul 2005
Well, that's a little better now. Not so painfully default. But still got a long way to go.
Anyway, Louise gets here this evening. I graduate on Thursday, then we're going on a trip around Scotland for about 10 days. We'll be ...
3rd Jul 2005
Ah ha yada ya! I have a blog.
Woo.
Actually, I don't like the way it looks. It looks like I've downloaded and extracted a whole lot of files, and not customised anything. And it looks like a blog, not a website. For some ...