SlantyNet Welcome Guest | Login or Register

Last year we headed to the Henley show.  It was our favourite show of the year.  For me this was because they have a giant vegetable competition!  Again I was keen to checkout the large marrow, pumpkin and carrots.  I wasn’t disappointed!

The chickens were also interesting, especially the one that was about twice the size of Kate’s head! (he was after all “Buff”)

Plenty more photos here

We recently made a trip down the Portsmouth to visit the historic dockyards.  The absolute highlight for me was the ruins of the Tudor warship the Mary Rose – Henry VIII’s favourite ship – or so they say.   The Mary Rose was sunk just out of the harbour of Portsmouth in 1545.  In the 1970’s it was found, and in 1982 it was raised.  They have been impregnating it with a synthetic polymer to stabilise the timber against decay, so you can view it in it’s “shower” of preserving fluids.  It is amazing to think that you are looking at a ship that is almost 500 years old.  Another bonus was that when it sunk, it was covered in silt and preserved.  So many objects were recovered along with the ship.  Even some of the cannons, dated from their manufacture at around 1535.

These cannons were all individually cast, which meant no two were the same.  That provided the problem of different size cannon balls.

Other ships that were at the historic dockyard included the HMS Victory (Lord Nelson’s ship and the oldest commissioned ship).  There were also a fair contingent of the British Navy as Portsmouth is the main base for the Navy.  We were lucky to see all three of their air craft carriers.

We ended our sightseeing day with fish and chips on the beach.

The rest of the photos are here

While we were in the Peaks District, we did a cycle from Asbourne up to Hume End then back again. It was a 58.1 km ride which was supposed to take about 3-4 hours. Given that we didn’t leave until just before midday, we thought we’d be back in time for dinner. We were, of course, wrong. About as far from home as possible, Roger’s chain broke. Luckily, he, I and a rock from a dry stone wall managed to fix it. The downside was we were then coming home in the darker part of the evening. The upside was our attempt at bike maintenance on the go seemed to work, Roger’s chain survived the trip home.
The scenery on the trip was amazing. We were following a rail trail, that is a bike path made on top of a former rail line, which gave us a traffic free route.

Some highlights: the tunnels, a cave and some scenery

Some photos here

After our day of cycling, we took the next couple of days for some sightseeing around Buxton (the home of Buxton Water) and Bakewell (the home of Bakewell tart).

I ask, what do you have to do to become 9th author (out of 13) on a Nature paper?

Stand in the lab and scratch your self?

A-Team filming in Vancouver?

Rampage Jackson to play BA Baracus

I’m not expecting it to be good or anything, but it could worth watching with a suitable amount of beer.

From my office:

From: John Doe
Sent: Wednesday, September 02, 2009 9:04 AM
To: … All Staff
Subject: 40th Birthday Announcement

The Internet is 40 years old, happy birthday news article

my reply

Cake will be served in the lounge.

The Internet itself will be in attendance and will cut the cake.

Being incorporal, the attempt shall end in a horrible, yet amusing failure.  The video will be posted to YouTube, and the Internet will be mocked mercilessly.  Parody websites like “TheInternetCantDoThisHaHa.com” and “InternetGotNoHands.com” and “InternetFAIL.com” will be set up so the shame can live on forever.

It will also be pointed out that in “Internet Years”, the Internet is a wheezing centenarian already.

Parody websites aside, everybody will forget about it in about seven minutes — that being what our attention span has been reduced to by YouTube, Facebook and Twi….uh… What was I talking about again?