vicarage

I'm back from the London Marathon, after a day supporting t__m__i. Its jolly hard work even being a spectator, as John and I got dizzy scanning the hordes at Canada Water, missed her, went past a full tube station to get the Jubilee at a nearly as full Bermondsey to Canary Wharf, where we just spotted her a minute after arrival. A scurry across the North Dock caught her coming back, and a delighted expression to our screams of "Hampster!". DLR to Monument and a final sighting from a bridge before battling the Embankment crowds to the meeting point and relaxation in the park. I really don't like crowds, and was stressed towards the end, but it was lovely to see her run.

Well Done!

My train from Exeter arrives at Waterloo at 2100, and the fast to Orpington leaves from Waterloo East at 2103, about the tightest connection you can get. But yesterday, even with incoming train a minute late I went for it, hurtling up the escalators and along the walkways. Indeed the train was there, doors open, and I leapt for them as they closed on me. Damn powerful they are, and while I noticed the grazed wrist as I slumped inside, its only today I see the twisted metal of the watch strap. So I'll need a new watch, as I always find a metallic clasp strap always seems to cost more than the watch. So farewell faithful, inaccurate Caico (sic) knockoff from Peru.

I set out to fix mistakes in OpenStreetMap near Farnborough (surprisingly little has been added in the 14 months since I worked on the area), but ended up at High Elms Country Park, well into the countryside. 2 1/2 hour excursion, but that included a fair bit of mapping backtracking. I think I'll try catching buses to Downe or Biggin Hill and walking back. As I think they are in the travelcard zone (though I challenge you to find a map that shows the boundary for anything but railway stations), they could even make a nice warm-up to a trip to a London pub. I can see myself working on the magic laptop mornings and evenings, and walking in the afternoons, a very pleasant combination.

I took my birthday afternoon off (thanks all for the good wishes) to visit Decode, an exhibition of digital interactive art at the V&A. Its not a big exhibition, just one large room, and I spent perhaps 45 minutes there, but rather enjoyed my fiver. Its one of those 'wave your arms about and see what happens' exhibitions, which once you strip the pompous descriptions all modern art seems to have, was good fun.

A corridor of screen-savers, some of which respond to voice, leads to some data visualisation graphics which singularly fail to illuminate their data, the exception being the US flight pattern map across a day, where there is an explosion of little maggots from the East Coast at dawn spreading west, with spurs leaping the Pacific and the Pond, scurrying round the globe before midnight gives them limited repose.

A tree with fallen leaves singularly failed to allow you to kick their images on the floor, but with a hairdryer handset you could blow dandelion seeds on the big plasma screen. Nearby your image would only display if you sat dead still in front of a camera for several minutes, so with judicious semaphore you could become Kali.

A 50x50 analogue display apparently built of paper chain loops clattered into life when you hove in view, but the best fun was the virtual Pollock, where sweeps of the arm generated a paint spattered canvas.

Good fun, get there by 11th of April, probably needs a quiet time of day.

Nothing else in the V&A grabbed me, so I wandered to the Science Museum, whose 1001 Inventions exhibition was decent but perhaps over-praised Arab scholars, as its no good to say that so-and-so had the idea about the circulation of the blood centuries before Harvey if they didn't manage to convince others, as otherwise its a selection effect compared with the daft speculations his contemporaries had. Much more convincing were the inventions, but while the Elephant Clock was a superb replica, it looked static, with no indication the globes would drop or the figures revolve to actually tell the time. CGI on screens below is no substitute for a real mechanism.

I finished in the Natural History Museum, as the children have gone from the dinosaurs by closing time, and wended my way to a beery night down the pub.

Because I couldn't get the bike in the van I had to:

Take it to work,label it so it wasn't a security risk, tell security I was leaving it overnight for a week, get a bike reservation by phone, fail at Waterloo ticket office and travel centre to get a printout of the reservation, find out a central work fax number, get the train people to fax the reservation to it, confirm to the central people the fax was for me, download the emailed,scanned fax as Windows couldn't handle .tif files, use gimp to convert it to gif and Firefox to print it, stand for 20 minutes as some buggies had the bike spot on the train, endure smartarse comments from guards opening the barriers at Waterloo and hurtle through the station to catch my train at Waterloo East.

Perhaps I should have tried harder to get it in the van...

I've managed to nobble the apps messages thanks to Mo, but is it possible to filter a Facebook news feed to hide

1) Notification that my friends have commented on non-friends posting

2) So-and-so likes messages

3) Comments on friends messages. I'd like the default to be the message, with a button to reveal comments.

It does look like Facebook developers are leaving out filters to force higher levels of traffic, so you need to stay on the site for longer.

Also why are the chat windows so small and unexpandable?

(I'm posting all these things as a diversion from cleaning the flat, and because I'd much rather be at a post-Picocon meal than stuck on my todd in Exeter, but hey, I return to social contact in a week)

I've dabbled with Dark Roasted Blend with its photo-blogs of imaginary and unusal architecture, but Environmental Graffiti is really superb in showing off the full breadth of our wonderful world. Their Bridges of Death gave me the willies, and you can rely on them for footage of astonishing Russian technology, whether it be logging trunks or military hardware.

As Buzz is dead in my social circle I've decided to give Facebook another go (old profile never properly deleted, I just became George Bush for a few years)

Hopefully this time you can shut up all the applet updates and their crap about virtual flowers...

When holidaying in North Devon as a child we always regarded Barnstaple as a pain, and revisiting confirmed it, as its a town who's traffic problems have encouraged planners to invent a maze-like one way system that just cause you to drive round even further. Nothing to see, and the riverside isn't a patch on Bideford.

Croyde, surf mecca, had a good beach walk and a few brave souls in the water. I squeezed north to Mortehoe, who's jutting limestone headland was ringed with the slipperiest, muddiest paths of the winter. With a 2 hour parking ticket I pushed hard to reach the lighthouse and yomp back again. Must have a longer visit in summer, though you'd lose the views of the Brecon Beacons wreathed in snow far away.

I wanted to visit Ilfracombe to see the tunnel beaches featured in Coast, but the owners can't be bothered to open them in winter. The rest of the town has plenty of charm, nice to see the resort and harbour squeezed between rock outcrops, and I loved the flowerpot theatre.

Lots of snow on the high ridge to Porlock, very bleak in the low cloud. Another chance to "whee, whee" my way down the Hill, but this time I diverted into the wild, wild country of the Doones to see Oare church. I still find the steep-sided valleys there astonishing, truly a haunt of brigands. Pushing hard on a winding empty road home, one of the pleasures of Devon in winter.

Its impressive how much stuff you can squeeze in a Ka, as I started my move back to London. A rather roundabout route, as I drove along the South Coast, with near impeccable timing to see Watervole and marvel at her Odyssey programme, and eat myself silly while being rude about David Weber at the Jomsthing in Hove.

I started to plan how to optimise the dining room before visiting Paul and family and finished with a doubly diverted journey home. I have a paper tax return, and apparent permission to use it rather than the bloody online system, hurrah!