Furthermore: December 2006

December 30, 2006

More about Today

I wibbled on so much about running and coughing that I forgot to mention that after yesterday’s rather disastrous trip out, and with today being such fine weather, we thought we would go out into town today.

So we had a good lunch at Teri-Aki. L protested, but then she did try a few things - she liked tempura, and she even tried one of the fish eggs from the sushi, but decided that was nasty. That’s the sushi that is marked “challenging” in some restaurants I’ve been to, so I don’t think she did to badly.

While we were there, we saw Prof Hawking - nice to see that he’s still able to get out and about. After lunch we walked up Castle Hill - none of the family but me has been up there before for one reason or another. When we reached the top, the rain immediately began to fall, so we quickly descended again. The rain then stopped, so we walked back into town through Trinity College, and stopped for coffee and cake at Michaelhouse.

Back at home, Mrs F found that her new OU course material had arrived, so she was pleased, having started the day a bit down after a bad dream and a poor night’s sleep (see below about coughing).

It was a really nice day out, and it’s so nice to be able to relax with my family and not feel the need to be constantly doing things. I want to have more of that kind of fun in the coming year.

Post Yule

Haven’t updated for a bit as I’ve been feeling pretty ropey since before Christmas. I’ve had a mix of cold and cough, but it’s mainly the cough that’s been bugging me - it’s very dry and it just seems to have been going on forever. It was keeping me awake for several nights, but I’ve now discovered the wonders of Cough Nurse (ie like Night Nurse but for coughs) which seems to have just taken the edge off it.

So apart from sickliness, what else:

• Christmas itself was good - we had duck for lunch, with a bottle of Chateau Musar (my favourite wine). Lots of presents were exchanged, with Mrs F particularly pleased with my getting her the DVD of Miyazaki’s animated film of Howl’s Moving Castle.


• Then the 28th was E’s birthday, so we had a few people over (there would have been more, but it seems we’re not the only ones who are ill) but it was really nice to see Jay, and Guy + Susie and family again - Ella loves playing with their older boy Gabriel. I don’t think E could claim to have been hard done by for presents, given the proximity of her birthday to Christmas.


• Yesterday we tried to go out - we thought to go to St Ives, but the weather and traffic were against us, so we ended up having a rather disappointing lunch at Bella Italia (which has previously been quite good).


• Today I managed to go for a run for the first time in over a week. Possibly I could have gone before - it’s hard to judge when running will make you feel better rather than worse when you feel a bit off colour. Anyway, I did about 6 miles, so I shall treat that as the run I should have done last Saturday, and treat myself as just a week behind on my schedule. Of course I didn’t think about losing time in the training schedule when I started running, so I haven’t left any spare weeks to catch up the time I’ve lost. Hopefully I can make up the distance on some of the later long runs, but I think there’s a lesson there for another year.

That’ll do for now. I want to do some end of the year personal round up type stuff, but I need to think about that a bit more.

December 20, 2006

Up and Running

The new site is now officially up and running, if incredibly hideous at the moment. Hopefully that will spur me to actually do something about it.

Quick list of what needs doing:

• fix problem with delicious sidebar being indented so far. Some kind of stylesheet madness I assume?


• make the header links work, particularly the archives.


• change the style of the left sidebar - I don’t like the boxes.


• turn the colour scheme into something more palatable. Probably different than the old Furthermore, but with a hint of how it used to be.


• either work out how to redirect URLs, or redo a bunch of links (eg in the booklist)


• restyle the booklist and CV to the new site style.


• rewrite the main Furthermore page to say what’s happened.



• uninstall Movable Type.


• add a link to Amnesty International in the worthy causes section.

Update 22/12/06

• fixed the archives and the header links (mixture of removal and moving to sidebar).

December 19, 2006

Nothing to see here

I’m just fiddling with WP with a view to converting from MT. There’s quite a bit more to do yet.

Well, I’ve got all my posts migrated. I’ve got a three column layout. Now I just have to turn it into something less hideous.

Harmonica

L got a toy harmonica on the cover of one of her magazines. Turns out to be a swizz, as it only has two notes - the others are intentionally non-functional. This means you can’t get any kind of tune out of it, and the notes that do work produce only a kind of plaintive squeaking - the sound you imagine a gerbil might make if it were pulled slowly into a mincer.

December 18, 2006

The Big Opt Out

I just sent off my opt-out letter to my GP, asking them not to upload a summary care record for me to the NHS data spine. I’ve thought quite hard about this - I don’t have any medical data that I’m actually that bothered about keeping strictly private - but the government’s implementation of central NHS records seems likely to undermine doctor-patient confidentiality, and is yet another facet of the database state (see past rants about ID Cards, the ridiculous children’s database etc).

You can read more at The Big Opt Out. There’s a form letter you can use to send to your GP.

December 13, 2006

As of yesterday

I don’t seem to be doing much blogging lately. Maybe it’s the running using up my time. Saturday I did a ten mile circuit of Cambridge - knees felt fine, but it was very cold, and I foolishly didn’t take my gloves, so my hands got absolutely freezing. I thought they’d warm up after I’d been out for a while, but no such luck. Then in the afternoon Mrs F’s sister came to visit, which was nice - she brought up some presents for the girls, and they like playing with her. Unfortunately Mrs F started to come down with a bug as the afternoon wore on, and ended up having to go back to bed. So that meant I had to cancel my night out at the BBC Backstage party at very short notice (sorry, Ursula). One of those things I guess, but I was pretty pissed off at the time.

Sunday Mrs F was somewhat better. I took the girls up to Histon playground (L likes the little helter-skelter there). It was a bit cold though, so we went back quite early, except that I left a bag behind with all the changing stuff (+ drinks, snacks etc) behind. I had to go back after lunch to look for it - fortunately it was still there. As I was still in quite a bad mood about the previous evening, I thought I’d take a bit of a drive round. I ended up at Upware, so I had a quick pint at the Five Miles, then negotiated the tiny back roads back to Cambridge - I love the sensation of being in the middle of nowhere, and the fen landscape is great when you just want to be on your own for a bit.

I took Monday off as Mrs F had been planning to go to London to meet a friend and see the Holbein exhibition at Tate Britain. Unfortunately her friend had to cancel, and she was still feeling a bit off-colour, but she decided she’d go anyway, and just not stay out too late. I took E into town (had to wait ages for the bus in the rain) and managed to get Christmas cards + various other things I’ve needed for a while. Since Mrs F was back early I was able to go out and see (at Jay’s suggestion) The Scissors at The Cellar Bar. It was pretty good - Jay has blogged it more amusingly than I could. You may have to be one of Jay’s imaginary friends to read that though.

December 3, 2006

Sickly

Ah, it’s all been sickness in the Furthermore house this week. Wednesday night L woke up very poorly, and Mrs F had to stay up with her, with me doing backup vomit-cleaning duties.

Then Friday I came down with the same thing (although not so badly) so I had to leave work early. Saturday was a complete write-off, and today I merely felt grim. Actually I’m starting to feel a little better now, which is good, as tomorrow is Mrs F’s birthday, and I booked it off work so we could go out together.