Just when you thought it was safe..

after Christmas come these patisseries. Not found any prices yet - which is probably as well.

Christmas letter

If you've not been lucky enough(!) to get our semi-annual Christmas circular, I've put a pdf version on my home webserver. Made the photos b/w for printing maybe I should have replaced them with the originals for this version...

Congratulations!

Sylvia and Sigrid outside Macclesfield Register Office this morning following their civil partnership. 'The law has caught up with us at last'. More pictures on my home machine

Tales from the Checkout - 2

Following on from the first
Was reflecting in a talk recently about control in the various forms of employment I've had. The cartoon version is that in software development you're in control - any mistake is your fault - work at your pace. On the checkout there's continuous interaction, far shorter segments and then you start again - though there are knockons - people get aggravated if you make a mess of the preceding customer and take ages.
To some extent you are in control there's all kinds of things that you see that the customer doesn't know about, but it's far more of an alliance you can work together - or not!
Scanning rate still increasing monotonically and by (usually) more than 0.1 per week!

What are the churchwardens doing?

via Google Earth comes this satellite image of All Saint's car park (and Church). It must be Chris and Roger - the churchwardens - but what are they worrying about? Suggestions?

(Boringly I suspect it is really two cars)

Wrappp up your penguins

Australian news has a story with a knitting pattern and picture of penguins in wolly jumpers. They just need a hat and scarf!
I got it from Geoff Coupe who got it from Improbable Research. .. channeling Tom Lehrer ..
Especially for Sigrid!

Further local coverage

From Today's Macc Express, picture nicked in case the Macc Express page vanishes. Coverage in the paper has been uniformly positive so far.

It didn't even ask about my cookery skills...

Feminine You scored 46 masculinity and 73 femininity!

You scored high on femininity and low on masculinity. You have a traditionally feminine personality.

My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 16% on masculinity You scored higher than 74% on femininity

Link: The Bem Sex Role Inventory Test written by weirdscience on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test