Macclesfield Team - Vision and Strategy

A copy of the draft - for comment and discussion is now available - I pdf'ed it, any errors in the conversion are all mine! My first impressions are very positive - and it should provoke discussion!

All Saints' Summer walk

Last night the Thursday evening walk took place on Tuesday(!) so as not to clash with the Ascension day service (on Thursday) - as Thursday evenings are out for me as I work until 8:30 that night I was keen to go and we enjoyed a walk despite the torrential downpour. Went along Macclesfield canal - and saw a number of geese and a heron looking rather damp - and then through Lyme Park, unfortunately we were too early in the year for the rhododendrons. No view of the house from the route of the walk and with the conditions only one of us braved an extension of the walk up a hill to see if the house was visible. Then back to drinks and chips and the Miners Arms Adlington.
Looks like being the only one of these walks for me this summer unless my working hours change... full photo album of the evening om my web site - though with the rain there weren't many photos taken!

Saying farewell..

to Ron Clarke. Just returned from Ron's funeral - he was head of history at my school and a lay preacher at the church I now attend. There were various reminiscences where his impish humour shone through,

Stop doing that boy, don't you realise that (some English king or other) died whilst doing something very similar - Ron's son put it far better

I still haven't forgotten a wonderful King's magazine cartoon in the early 1970's depicting Ron's struggles to balance the class's school dinner money.
On the darker side was his war experiences, he was a captain and was one of the first offices into Belsen and spent 5 weeks after that helping to run the camps converting gun covers into babies cradles.

26 links - again

Back 18 months ago I tried this meme, go up to the address bar in your browser and type in a letter. What link does it suggest? I've used the first one that is fairly generic and excluded web email accounts. I've got a new machine since then so there isn't as much browser history, hence some gaps. Still in there from last time are a,c,f,g,j,p,r and t.

• Astronomy picture of the day
  
• This is broken
  
• Jane's world
  
• my del.icio.us bookmarks
  
• Webcam tricks - video site doesn't work for me so as an addition an emacs demo
  
• ship of fools
  
• Google
  
• Robin Walker's broadband speed test
  
• A recent Boondocks ucomics now doesn't work well with Linux as Macromedia haven't released a version 8 for Linux
  
• J-Walk
  
• k - a dead link (well two dead links and nothing else!)
  
• localhost/~robert
  
• Mad musings of me - Music and the Home Office (and Domingo)
  
• A deeply broken UK government website
  
• Opensource.org
  
• Piled higher and deeper
  
• q - nothing
  
• Here!
  
• Geoff Coupe's weblog
  
• The Register
  
• Dilbert
  
• The Easter Bunny hates you video
  
• Java applet collecting weblog emotions (should have been Web gallery of art Caravaggio but that site wasn't working until just now!)
  
• x - nothing
  
• Right wingnut rumour jumping on the lests spread a rumour about Iran campaign.
  
• z - nothing
  

Ah well

Came in a resounding third in Alderley Edge this morning. Probably partly due to a fight with the sustaining pedal- a resounding clang every time I changed pedal and it took me two lines to (I think) get it under control! Still it's good practice and I did get the sostenuto pedal to work and enhance the final line.

Thames water under fire

From news in brief on the Guardian's website - well I enjoyed the image.

Climbing Expeditions

Todd Skinner Climbing Expeditions These galleries represent a photographic documentary of the climbing life of Todd Skinner. Found this via the Mali gallery having found a single picture in a newspaper I was clearing out.

Wish me luck!

I'm busy geting ready to perform the Menuet movement of Ravel's Sonatine at the Alderley Edge Music Festival on the morning of 20th May. Physical support welcome! I'm guaranteed at least third place!

I'm still getting my head around some of the nuances of pedalling and the relation of the themes - I've found some internet articles useful here - see recent additions to my del.icio.us bookmarks.

Tales from the Checkout - 3

Last couple of weeks have seen a number of meetings where I've served people I haven't met for a very long time. Week before last it was two people from school - though one I did meet once later as we were at the same University.
Then last week it was Dave Sellars with whom I went to Euro-VHDL back in 1991 where I was presenting a paper when it was in Marseille. I didn't recognise him - he no longer works for Fujitsu - and I'd nearly forgotten the event.

SPCK

From Dave Walker's cartoonchurch.com:


Save the SPCK!
Unfortunately the Manchester one has long gone and Chester is a place I visit infrequently.

Eagle Cam

This Eagle Cam probably doesn't need any extra publicity - 10 million hits a day at the moment...

Film meme

Here's a list of 102 films that people who are supposed to be literate about film really ought to have seen. I've highlighted those that I've seen in bold. Only 33 of them..

“2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968) Stanley Kubrick
“The 400 Blows” (1959) Francois Truffaut
“8 1/2" (1963) Federico Fellini
“Aguirre, the Wrath of God” (1972) Werner Herzog
“Alien” (1979) Ridley Scott
“All About Eve” (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz
“Annie Hall” (1977) Woody Allen
“Apocalypse Now” (1979) Francis Ford Coppola
“Bambi” (1942) Disney
“The Battleship Potemkin” (1925) Sergei Eisenstein
“The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946) William Wyler
“The Big Red One” (1980) Samuel Fuller
“The Bicycle Thief” (1949) Vittorio De Sica
“The Big Sleep” (1946) Howard Hawks
“Blade Runner” (1982) Ridley Scott
“Blowup” (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni
“Blue Velvet” (1986) David Lynch
“Bonnie and Clyde” (1967) Arthur Penn
“Breathless” (1959 Jean-Luc Godard
“Bringing Up Baby” (1938) Howard Hawks
“Carrie” (1975) Brian DePalma
“Casablanca” (1942) Michael Curtiz
“Un Chien Andalou” (1928) Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali
“Children of Paradise” / “Les Enfants du Paradis” (1945) Marcel Carne
“Chinatown” (1974) Roman Polanski
“Citizen Kane” (1941) Orson Welles
“A Clockwork Orange” (1971) Stanley Kubrick
“The Crying Game” (1992) Neil Jordan
“The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951) Robert Wise
“Days of Heaven” (1978) Terence Malick
“Dirty Harry” (1971) Don Siegel
“The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” (1972) Luis Bunuel
“Do the Right Thing” (1989 Spike Lee
“La Dolce Vita” (1960) Federico Fellini
“Double Indemnity” (1944) Billy Wilder
“Dr. Strangelove” (1964) Stanley Kubrick
“Duck Soup” (1933) Leo McCarey
“E.T. — The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982) Steven Spielberg
“Easy Rider” (1969) Dennis Hopper
“The Empire Strikes Back” (1980) Irvin Kershner
“The Exorcist” (1973) William Friedkin
“Fargo” (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen
“Fight Club” (1999) David Fincher
“Frankenstein” (1931) James Whale
“The General” (1927) Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman
“The Godfather,” “The Godfather, Part II” (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola
“Gone With the Wind” (1939) Victor Fleming
“GoodFellas” (1990) Martin Scorsese
“The Graduate” (1967) Mike Nichols
“Halloween” (1978) John Carpenter
“A Hard Day’s Night” (1964) Richard Lester
“Intolerance” (1916) D.W. Griffith
“It’s a Gift” (1934) Norman Z. McLeod
“It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946) Frank Capra
“Jaws” (1975) Steven Spielberg
“The Lady Eve” (1941) Preston Sturges
“Lawrence of Arabia” (1962) David Lean
“M” (1931) Fritz Lang
“Mad Max 2" / “The Road Warrior” (1981) George Miller
“The Maltese Falcon” (1941) John Huston
“The Manchurian Candidate” (1962) John Frankenheimer
“Metropolis” (1926) Fritz Lang
“Modern Times” (1936) Charles Chaplin
“Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975) Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam
“Nashville” (1975) Robert Altman
“The Night of the Hunter” (1955) Charles Laughton
“Night of the Living Dead” (1968) George Romero
“North by Northwest” (1959) Alfred Hitchcock
“Nosferatu” (1922) F.W. Murnau
“On the Waterfront” (1954) Elia Kazan
“Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968) Sergio Leone
“Out of the Past” (1947) Jacques Tournier
“Persona” (1966) Ingmar Bergman
“Pink Flamingos” (1972) John Waters
“Psycho” (1960) Alfred Hitchcock
“Pulp Fiction” (1994) Quentin Tarantino
“Rashomon” (1950) Akira Kurosawa
“Rear Window” (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
“Rebel Without a Cause” (1955) Nicholas Ray
“Red River” (1948) Howard Hawks
“Repulsion” (1965) Roman Polanski
“The Rules of the Game” (1939) Jean Renoir
“Scarface” (1932) Howard Hawks
“The Scarlet Empress” (1934) Josef von Sternberg
“Schindler’s List” (1993) Steven Spielberg
“The Searchers” (1956) John Ford
“The Seven Samurai” (1954) Akira Kurosawa
“Singin’ in the Rain” (1952) Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
“Some Like It Hot” (1959) Billy Wilder
“A Star Is Born” (1954) George Cukor
“A Streetcar Named Desire” (1951) Elia Kazan
“Sunset Boulevard” (1950) Billy Wilder
“Taxi Driver” (1976) Martin Scorsese
“The Third Man” (1949) Carol Reed
“Tokyo Story” (1953) Yasujiro Ozu
“Touch of Evil” (1958) Orson Welles
“The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948) John Huston
“Trouble in Paradise” (1932) Ernst Lubitsch
“Vertigo” (1958) Alfred Hitchcock
“West Side Story” (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise
“The Wild Bunch” (1969) Sam Peckinpah
“The Wizard of Oz” (1939) Victor Fleming

Hat tip to Geoff Coupe - original list is with Roger Ebert which has reviews.

Blog upgrading

I currently have two MovableType powered blogs on my home webserver and I have just set up a 3.2 installation on my new webserver and ported the data from the old webserver to the new. Bug reports (fairly) welcome!

• Links and Things in some ways a forerunner of this blog.
  
• Books and Things - the Book reading club of which I'm a member.
  

I need to set up the templates - at the moment the side bars are pretty empty!