If you could get someone in your life to start a blog, who would it be and why?
All three people I'd really like to get blogging are already signed up to Vox - they're just not using it yet:
My wife, Lorna, my Mum and a good mate, Andy.
Lorna has a lot of strong opinions that could do with an outlet elsewhere, I'd like to see more of my Mum's photography online and Andy's a great writer that needs to get the blogging habit…
If you could open any sort of restaurant, what would it be like?
I have a small, quiet desire to run a food-led country pub. My time on Publican nearly killed that desire, but not quite.
I'd like somewhere on the edge of a country village, with a nice mix of local trade and passing trade. Somewhere not unlike the Huntsman & Hounds, in fact.
Play any instrument or speak any language, which do you choose?
Question submitted by cruftbox.vox.com.
Honest answer: if I really wanted to learn a language or instrument, I would have done so. And I haven't.
Soda? Cola? Pop? What do you say? Any other regional words that set you apart?
Question submitted by Gladys.
"Coke" or "fizzy drinks" or, more recently, "that evil gut-rotting bilge which I can't drink because it inflicts evil bathroom torment on me".
TMI?
What's the most extreme weather you've been in? A memorable storm? Heat wave? Or something else?
Some years ago - maybe 18 - I was walking with schoolfriends in the Caingorms in Scotland. We were serveral miles out of Aviemore when we were caught in a whiteout while travelling over a mountain pass. We literally couldn't see our hands in front of our faces, the snow was so thick. We formed a train, with each of us holding the rucksack of the person in front, and moved in small circles until we found a bothy we knew was nearby to shelter in. We spent an hour or so there, waiting for the storm to pass.
A frightening, but exhilarating experience.
What's your favorite drink or cocktail? What's in it?
Question submitted by charm.vox.com
Whisky. With nothing in it.
Ok, I might be prepared to put it on ice when it's this hot.
Scottish whiskey for choice.
Irish whiskey for quantity drinking.
American whiskey for lighting the BBQ.
Other whiskies for stripping paint.
What's one thing that you hope to do or accomplish before the end of this year?
Finish redeveloping the flat, sell it and be living outside the M25 by Christmas.
And I don't just hope to do this; I need to do this.
Work is hell, sometimes.
I don't often blog about my faith any more, but with all the hoo-hah about Bush and stem cells, I would just like to repeat a quote I think is central to my world view as a Christian:
"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
Albert Einstein
As I was driving to Heathrow last night to pick up a couple of friends, my car indicated that the temperature had hit 36°C. Ouch. The Evening Standard confirmed it later: the hottest recorded day in London.
Luckily, perhaps, our friends live in Florida, and are used to far worse than the worst London offers us.
(I was going to post this last night, but Flickr was "having a massage". And we all know what that euphemism means…)
Who is your favorite Muppet? Why?
QotD submitted by knitwitology.vox.com.
It has to be Kermit the Frog. Waaaay back in the early 90s, when I was editing a student magazine, we had a chart on the wall comparing each member of staff to a muppet. I was, of course, Kermit: the good natured, but over-stressed guy at the heart of the production, trying to keep his eccentric team focused and directed.
And rarely succeeding.
The amusing thing is that the wonderful woman who is now my wife was nicknamed Miss Piggy by her family when she was much, much younger…
It's the little, subtle things that tell you that you've moved away from the centre of London. Today, for example, I popped to Sutton Post Office to post some eBay and Amazon sales to the their buyers.
When I arrived the queue was about 10 people long. "Phew," I thought. "Nice and quick."
That was Central London Adam talking. Maybe I was lulled into a delusion by the fact I'm still within the M25, but it caught me with surpirse when each of those 10 people was served with a leisurely care that would have done Suffolk proud.
I have a little adjusting still to do.
I've just received an invitation to join Vox.
It must be from when I signed up as "interested" months ago.
Heh.
What did you do this weekend?
That was one busy weekend. Friday night saw us doing some frantic flat-tidying, before we headed to Mum's place in Suffolk, arriving after midnight. As we were unloading the car, Jaspar, one of the neighbour's cats, came and inspected us. Turns out that the poor thing was lonely. His owners are away for a wee while. If I'd known, I'd have given him a stroke.
Saturday morning was frantic shopping, Saturday afternoon driving to Cley Next The Sea for a friend's wedding. The do itself was a lovely, relaxed affair, with an adult-grade bouncey castle and a very casual feel. We boogied until about 10.30, before setting out on the two-hour drive back to Mum's. Yes, I know, an early night, but at least we outstayed most of the people with kids.
Sunday was a rest and do chores day. I mowed the lawns and did some shopping, while Lorna scrubbed our car from top to bottom. We than had a BBQ in the back garden, and sat around trying to find an excuse not to head back to London. Having failed, we set out at around 9.40pm, finally getting home around midnight.
And that was the weekend that was,
The hand-painted place-setting at the wedding.
A brief bit of video from last night's wedding reception:
We're going meta today: What questions would you'd like to see become QoTDs?
This is slightly random, but I'd like to see more picture challenges, like the digital archive one from a few days ago. That was by far the most interesting QotD so far. Maybe you could have a Picture otD alongside the QotD, if that's not overkill.
Another busy day's desk clearing at EG today. One more day, and I should be free to take up residence at RBI central full time.
Spent a little chunk of the day fiddling around with Movable Type 3.3 on my own blog, trying to get a feel of how it operates, and how I'm going to set things up for our bloggers. The single feature I'm probably most excited by is the Widget Manager, although the activity feeds may well be invaluable, too. Exciting, exciting.
I'd have liked to have spent longer playing, but the sooner I clear my desk, the sooner I can go full time on the new project. Humbug.
I popped into Procter Street this afternoon to sort through some stuff, and found a letter from a firm called UBS.
My mind immediatly read that as UBRS.
It may be time for a WoW break...
What's the most recent vivid dream or nightmare that you remember?
Most of the most vivid dreams I've had have been, uh, rude. And I forget my nighmares.
I'm not being very helpful here, am I?
As my father might have said, tonight, I have wanker's cramp. Not, you understand, for the activities the name suggests. No, it's because I've spent around 8 hours decorating the internal and external halls and I'm tired.
Lorna and I are on our (hopefully) final push to get the flat finished and on the market by the autumn. We've been putting off doing the external hall because it's an awkaward, tall, Victorian space that's difficult to get to (we used a tall ladder and the pateted "roller on a stick" appraoch) and because it suffered some water damaged while the roof was being replaced.
After a hard weekend's work, it's all done bar a final coat and some carpeting. Very satisfied.
What's the oldest digital camera photo you have on your computer? When is it from? Let's see it!
I dug through iPhoto, and this is the oldest pic I have that was taken on a digital camera, rather than scanned from film. It's my mum, in her kitchen, taken a few hours after I bought my first digital camera in Halesworth in Suffolk, back in October 2001.
I've got a lovely set of photos taken of Lorna and Mum in Snape Maltings that weekend that were the first real trial of my digital camera. Four and a half years on, I can't image going back to film, especially since I bought a digital SLR 18 months ago.
