This is a real dead end!

Here in Yorkshire when the road sign is "dead end" they aren't kidding! coastal erosion is terrible and as you can see from these pictures, quite a lot of land slides into the sea every winter.
This is as far as I can go on my scooter.







This is the end of the road and when I was young you could cycle a further mile and a half further out to sea, there was a church, several houses and even an amusement arcade, and of course the process continues.
The amount lost since last Christmas is the distance between the front and rear barriers, this is by no means an exceptional amount, some winters are far more destructive.

In at the Deep end

I went to "The Deep" yesterday, Hull's premier attraction, a superb aquarium, where you can easily imaging you are under a tropical sea.
This is one of the reef sharks, not something you would like to encounter while out for a paddle!
As usual the place was very busy, it attracts coach loads of Schoolchildren, and other groups from all over the region and beyond.

My wife and I have a season pass, and spend many a dull wet winter afternoon in there, ending the visit with a coffee in the cafe that overlooks the River Humber

This is the shallow pool that introduces you to the main aquarium, a junior school class are totally absorbed with the new experience, the looks on their faces and the general excitement makes us smile very time we visit.






As well as the enormous main tank there are set piece smaller aquariums set into the walls, they are absolutely superb!









Finally a view of one of the main windows to give you an idea of the scale of the main tank, it's abosolutely huge, about 20 metres deep!

Been a while, but..

After quite some time I remembered to blog, just got a new camera, so now taking lots of photos, trying the various settings.
First a closeup of my watch to show the image quality on the macro setting




Heres a composite of the kid next door:







Over the next few weeks I expect to add more photo's

In the budget

Listening to the chancellor this afternoon I was very alarmed at the notion that in the next couple of years there will be millions more high tech jobs, and millions less low tech ones.
Not to worry! says the chancellor, they will be re-trained! we are pouring huge reserves into education and training!
What utter rot!
There exists in this country, as in all others, a huge number of people who will never be trainable through no fault of their own, and therefore will become scrap, victims of a profit making machine.
This is criminally insane: all citizens regardless of their intellect deserve the opportunity to contribute to society and achieve self respect and happiness, otherwise why bother having a society at all? we may as well go back to being vikings!
The government should institute a program to provide an extension of provided social services to generate jobs for these people. The expense would be little different than having them live on handouts, and they would at least feel self respect as functional members of society.

Completed installing Suse 10.0

Today I managed to finish the addition of drivers to the software to permit the playing of DVD's and mp3 files, also additional updates to the internet browsers and Java.
The result is that Suse 10 can now cover more tasks than windows XP .

Nearly spring this weekend

We went for a pleasant drive through the countryside today, avoiding the main roads where possible, and saw the first daffodils out, and large numbers of spring lambs in the fields.
With the wind dropping, the temperature (7 Degrees Centigrade) felt very mild and springlike.
This is the last weekend before the caravanning season starts, so we've been round to check out the van in storage, and found it was all OK.
Roll on next weekend!

More on OpenSUSESLICK

"Strange name, 'innit" but excellent software for all that. This morning I succeeded at last in gettting the scroll wheel on the mouse to work, now all that remains is to get the system to recognize a USB floppy drive, then all operations are nominal.

Can spring start now please?

Went for a drive in the car through Holderness and ate lunch on the crumbling clay cliff top at Barmston, then during the afternoon went out on the Honda Dylan scooter, and for the second day running, ran into a blizzard (slight exaggeration as despite seeming to be heavy, it didn't lay.)
Still, it was bl***y cold!

Got the car back, and...

everything seems to be OK, so I shall be keeping an eye on it for the next few days!

OpenSUSE SLICK Linux is the Give-away on the front cover of the April issue of LINUX FORMAT

I installed it as an upgrade over Suse Linux 9.2, and apart from having no mouse when first installed (soon fixed) it is running very nice and very fast!
There is a new package manager called "SUPERAPT" and it is really first rate, in about three hours I had built a first rate system up will all the apps you could want.
What a freebie! it does everything that windows will do (with one exception, for legal reasons it won't play video DVD's)
It really is first rate, give it a try!

Call this service? I dont!

I took the car in for it's 90,000 miles service on March 9th 2006 at 8:30 A.M.at the Main dealer.
A telephone call from The main dealer at approximately 10:30 informed me it was ready for collection.
I arrived about 11:30 AM. paid and received the key.
On entering the car the engine started normally, first turn of the key, but I found to my surprise that I could not shift into any gear.
The clutch pedal felt normal under foot, and there was no sound involved, but the gear lever could not be moved forward or back into any gear position.
I stopped the engine, then attempted to restart it, but there was just a light spinning noise, as if the starter motor was spinning without engaging the flywheel (no grinding noises.)
At this point I went back into the showroom and reported that I had a problem.
A gentleman named Paul went out, and returned saying that the engine had started without a problem.
When I asked if he had tried the gears he replied that he hadn't, at which point we went out and Paul got into the car and started the engine without trouble, and selected the gears, again without trouble.
At this point I said thank you for your efforts, perhaps it was my imagination?
Paul went back inside and I started the engine and pulled out, but had to stop as there was a small lorry in the way.
At this point I shifted into neutral, and found I couldn't get back into gear again.
I spotted that Paul had come out and waved him over. He got into the car and at first was able to shift into gear, the stopped the engine and it wouldn't restart, just made the spinning noise as before.
On the next attempt the engine started, but then Paul had problem selecting gears, this did eventually clear, at this Point Paul said that he couldn't risk me driving the car in this state as it may break down, I would have to leave it.
Late afternoon I received a telephone call from the young lady in the office saying that the diagnostics had revealed that the A.G.R. valve had failed and this was why the engine wouldn't start: (This is a gas feedback valve from the exhaust to the Turbocharger.)I asked how could this have affected the gear change, and was told that the mechanics could find no fault with the clutch or gearbox.
I was informed that the part would have to be ordered and would cost about £195 including fitting, which I had no option but to agree to, and that they would ring me tomorrow when the work is completed.
I repeated that while I was perfectly happy to pay for replacement of the A.G.R valve I could not see how this would affect the gear change, and asked that the mechanics be requested to ensure that this was tested and rectified before the car is returned to me.
I find it very odd that it had never failed to either start or select gear until it was brought in for servicing this morning, and while I accept that things can go wrong without prior warning, the odds that two such unrelated things can fail between me handing it over and collecting it three hours later, and the gear selection fault being beyond the capability of the diagnostics or the mechanics to trace is very hard to accept as a reasonable explanation.
The odds against this happening must be astronomical!
I have been put to a great deal of inconvenience, not to mention expense over this matter, if the car is not correct when returned then I shall clearly have to seek a different source of servicing and or future vehicles.
Needless to say I shall create one hell of a fuss if it isn't fixed tomorrow!

First day of spring!

And what an odd combination! We drove through to visit my sister,who lives in the village of Strensall, just above York, and had sunshine all the way, even seeing the first open daffodils this year, yet a few miles to the north at Malton, and a few miles to the east at Scarborough (Whitby too) they had thick snow!
Admittedly the temperature where we were never rose to more than 2 Degrees centigrade, but at least it was sunny.

Am I alienated from Politics?

Yesterday BBC News online had an opinion poll (sort of) with how people relate to Politics.
Here's my posted comment:
"We don't have democratic political system, we have party politics instead.
Give us a pair of buttons on a voting terminal in each home, and a daily program reporting and debating outstanding matters in Parliament to vote on, again on a daily basis.
Our votes to be the ones that count!
Then we shall have democracy.
Till then we have infrequent elections followed by a one party state.
Why should we support it?"
Of course it was a moderated forum, I shall be interested to see how it fared (if at all.)

Winter is back!

Looking outside this morning, there's a thin layer of snow, and tomorrow is the first offical day of Spring!
Ah well, we have got off lightly ths year despite the long range weather forecast being for a long hard winter!

Dog end days

This week has been "half term" for the local schools, but for once the kids have been surprisingly quiet: normally it's pandemonium in the street (and why not!) but whether it's the cold wind, or just end of winter depression that has quieted them down, I'm not sure, but the kid next door actually said the local youth are actually looking forward to going back to school!
And I thought only greybeards like me got cheesed off towards the end of winter..
We went out for a drive today,as it started off sunny, naturally it wasn't long before the clouds appeared and it started with light snow and hail.
Ah well! it was still nice to get out of the house and into the country for a little while.
The countryside is very wet at the moment, with many flooded fields, which rather makes us surprised to see the headlines of a "Hosepipe Ban" in the South East of the country due to a water shortage..
We could sure spare them some!

Here we go again

The news today is that Ken Livingstone has been suspended for four weeks for telling an annoying reporter (who happened to be Jewish) that he was acting like a concentration camp guard.
Somehow this ends up being a "racist" comment that according to the chief Rabbi "Has upset Holocaust Survivors."
Why? how on earth does telling a Jewish report that his actions are not typically Jewish, but rather those of the despised enemy of the Jews (and ourselves!) affect in any way Holocaust Survivors?
Why should it bother them one bit?
Where for goodness sake is the connection?
Are we to assume that if you upset one man you upset an entire nation?
This is clearly a case of the press manufacturing a mountain out of a molehill.

Ken, old fruit, next time he annoys you,please just take a leaf out of my local politician's book
(No names given, so you'll have to guess.)and smack him in the mouth.

A nice clear message, not racist, Politically Correct and equal opportunity,it made our local MP into a sort of anti hero, really....

We now call him Thumper.

Another sketch of Whitby

Here is the second image from the sketchbook, this time looking north from the Abbey steps.
Once again this sketch if from 1987, and the image can be zoomed by clicking it

From an old sketchbook

I found one of my old sketchbooks today, dating back to the summer of 1987.
So here's the first of the sketches, it is drawn from the north side of the river Esk, looking across the harbour (to the south)
As I recall the beached boat in the foreground was being painted, a sight not often seen in those days, as usually this was done on trestles further down the river.
With fishing quota restrictions, profits are limited,so it's likely that we will see more Do it Yourself ship maintenance like this is the future, (and in fact since this was painted that's what has happened.)
Digital cameras have come in since then, I've gotten lazy and tend not to sketch as much as I used to, finding this old sketchbook sarted me thinking that perhaps I ought to make an effort this year.
Roll on the summer days when I can get out sketching again!
By the way, clicking on the picture will show it full size

Spring is on the way

Sunday at lunchtime and the mild weather has tempted the local fishing addicts to the shore of the Humber at Paull.
Despite the chill wind a small knot of cars are parked near the old gun battery,as we stop to eat our packed lunch.
As usual the Humber is empty of shipping, only a lonely curlew wheels by on the westerly wind.
A thin mist hides distant Goole and the Immingham oil terminals on the Lincolnshire side of the river in this photo,and a weak winter sun gleams through the overcast.
At this time of year we inhabit an almost monochrome world!

What, another Muslim protest?

I see with dismay that there has been another protest meeting in Trafalgar Square over the Muhammad cartoons controversy.
For crying out loud, it's time to put an end to this farce!
Is this going to continue until there is a violent reaction from hotheads?
For goodness sake no more of these ridiculous displays please, the risk of a counter-reaction grows greater every time, people are getting sick of it, for the sake of peace stop it now before things get violent.
The Muslims have pushed this well past any reasonable level. They have had their chance to protest, let that be the end of the matter.

Lovely weather for February!

In the garden this afternoon I was amazed to find 9 ladybirds clustered together in our little pine tree.
This is about six weeks earlier than ever before, I was astonished!
Earlier today we had driven to Scarborough (A seaside resort 48 miles north of our home) and found it extremely busy for the time of year, despite the temperature being 6 degrees centigrade there were still the usual nutty surfers in the sea.

What they get out of it is hard to say, as the waves were only about a foot high!
No doubt they were living out a dream....

We often go there to eat a packed lunch on the Marine Drive that joins the North and South Bays below the Norman Castle, until Easter, as parking is free during the winter, but after Easter you have to pay.

Still it goes on!

The news today is that demonstrations against the cartoons of the prophet Mohammed are going o for a fourth day in Pakistan.
The thought occurs: have these people actually SEEN the cartoons?
Surely they can't have done so, as most of them will certainly not have seen them in newspapers, and do they really have internet access?
Clearly they will riot to order when instructed, acting on hearsay, so why are we not putting an embargo "for the sake of sensitivity"
(in this case that of intelligent people who have regarded the whole episode as trivial.)
on reporting the antics of these poor people, who are not in a position ignore the promptings of fanatics who want to stir up hatred for the west?
This will be put to rest only when the western media call it a day on reporting the obiviously contrived riots.
After all, it's nothing to do with us anyway!