streams of unconsciousness

Jesus, what a night!

A certain Miss T Swift caught snogging a paparazzi behind the greenhouse.

Mr E John making off with 5l of engine lubricant and a child’s paddling pool.

Busted getting, er, busted by the rozzers for doing things with Rizlas.

Mr T Jones (no relation because that’s not his real name anyway) getting upset about the green green grass of home turning brown in the heat.

I could list all of the events of the night, but then I’d be here until next year…

And I have alternate plans.

Not least being catching up with my sleep after the very late/early morning finish to the festivities.

I hope the noise didn’t disturb the neighbours too much.

And I hope the sound of furious blogging didn’t disturb the neighbours too.

Let’s face it, the neighbours are disturbed enough already so…

Anyway.

I’d like to thank everyone for not complaining about the last 30 days’ of activity, and the noise, and the dust, and the smell.

Sorry about the smell in particular.

And I’d like to thank you for sticking with it.

The theme seemed fair at the start of the month, but by about day 15, when we were stuck in the high Andes, drawing lots on who we should eat next, the joke began to wear thinner than Donald Trump’s hairstyle.

But I’m glad we ate him first anyway.

So yeah, thank you for sticking with it, whether you were a blogger like Young Masher and Dangerous Dave, or whether you were an avid reader like, erm, an avid.

Let’s do it all again next year!

But with fewer penguins eh? Sorry Elt.

Concluding the everyday look at everyday objects through the camera lens…

This isn’t the post that I wanted to write, but the one I wanted to write was about a very small group of people. And that means photos and shyness and permissions and all that stuff, so instead of paying tribute to a small collective of awesome folk…

Despite it being waterproof, I only take it off when I’m swimming or in the shower.

I check it so many times a day I couldn’t count.

It measures the distance I walk (not far on a working day), the number of steps I take (as before), the number of stairways I walk up/down, and my heartrate.

It is, of course, my Fatbot Fitbit:

Fitbit

Continuing the everyday look at everyday objects through the camera lens…

Here’s an everyday object.

It’s an object I look at every day.

No idea what it is though.

Or what it does.

I’m open to suggestions.

No idea

Continuing the everyday look at everyday objects through the camera lens…

One thing I’ve noticed about my occasional canal walks is the lack of maintenance.

The Canal & River Trust (CART for short) get a significant amount of taxpayers’ funding for maintaining and developing the canal network.

But looking at the obvious signs of neglect along the Beeston canal, you would wonder where CART are spending their money.

The non-towpath side of the canal is massively overgrown with weeds.

And the depth of the canal is very reduced by watergrown weeds and mud.

It looks like maintenance of the canal is being done on the same basis as the maintenance of our roads.

Minimum effort for minimum money.

It is obvious that maintenance is being carried out, but it seems to be emergency-level maintenance.

Basic stuff isn’t getting done, but the obvious fixes are.

As evidenced by:

Waterbike (1)

Waterbike (2)

Continuing the everyday look at everyday objects through the camera lens…

Pets are lovely.

(insert joke about ‘yes, but I couldn’t eat a whole one’ here)

They make a house a home, as someone once said about something else.

Probably.

Pets are good for cuddles, when they’re in the mood.

Sometimes they’re good for entertainment value

But those nutcases over at PETA want to stop all pets. Domesticated animals are very bad, according to the PETA nutcases.

Here’s a screenshot from those nutcases over at PETA:

Nutcases @ PETA

Anyway.

Back to planet earth, not planet PETA.

We have four cats. And a horse. But this is all about the cats.

The cats occasionally bring some of their little friends home.

In recent weeks it’s been fleas.

But Sam’s all over that.

This morning, however, they brought another little friend home.

I wonder what those PETA nutcases would say about this sort of thing?

A friend of one of our kitties

Continuing the everyday look at everyday objects through the camera lens…

The temple of doom.

Everyone who knows me, and I mean ‘who really, really, really,. really knows me’, knows how much I love hate shopping.

Actually, to be fair and open and honest and stuff, I don’t really mind the whole shopping ‘experience’, as we call it these days.

In the right place, at the right time, and under the correct set of circumstances, I tolerate shopping reasonably well.

Some might even say that, under those somewhat unusual circumstances, I borderline enjoy shopping.

If it’s done my way.

Obv.

My way is simple.

A list.

A rough idea of the layout of the store.

No people a very small number of people.

Which is why I like to go shopping when there’s nobody else around.

This evening we visited the Associated Dairies ‘supercentre’ place in West Bridgford.

It is a massive temple to the dog of consumerism, spread over 43 2 floors of open-plan-football-fieldness.

And yet, instead of the scene resembling one of Dante’s lesser-frequented circles of hell, the ‘shopping experience’ was relatively painless.

Almost, but not quite, enjoyable.

But certainly tolerable.

Why?

Almost empty

Continuing the everyday look at everyday objects through the camera lens…

Walkies!

Because the weather is so awesomely wonderful.

Because it’s Monday.

Because I’m stuck inside working.

I sneaked outside at lunchtime.

I walked off campus and along the canal towpath.

It was a glorious lunchtime walk.

I met a few people; a couple on a narrowboat and then, a couple of minutes later, another couple on a different narrowboat.

I loved the name of the first narrowboat.

And I wondered if it really was

The Kids Inheritance

Continuing the everyday look at everyday objects through the camera lens…

Changing gear.

Two weeks ago my NAS started to die.

One of the two storage drives packed up, but because it’s RAIDed (RAID0, to be precise) all the data was still secure and intact.

My immediate course of action was to backup the data to am external 3Tb HDD, and then switch the NAS off, to save wear and tear.

This weekend the NAS replacement programme kicked off.

This baby arrived:

Synology DS418