The New Year is about to kick off. I feel strangely ambivalent about it. There’s nothing I plan to do in particular next year, there are no great goals I intend to accomplish or work towards, and there’s nowt in particular that I look forward to. I’ve been a grumpy bugger this Christmas, and it looks set to continue into the New Year. Is grumpiness an emotion? If so, what triggers this emotion?
I can’t say in particular why I’ve been acting (feeling?) grumpy. It’s probably something in part to do with staying with my mum and dad for a week, but that’s not to say that it hasn’t been a good Christmas, because it has, and I’ve really enjoyed being back in Cheltenham. Maybe it’s just an age or stage-in-my-life thing. Maybe Swansea really is the graveyard of ambition. Likely, I need a task of which to be enthusiastic, as obsession and competition are stout parts of my disposition. Hurrumph.
No, I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. I make decisions when they’re needed, and stick to them (as best I can). Happy New Year to all you humbugs.
See what I mean about grumpy? None of that was meant to come out that way. Oh well.
Drums
With friends that buy your kids drum kits, who needs enemies?
Some Recent Photos
A building in Park Place, Cardiff, in the run up to Christmas.
Some Recent Photos
Some Recent Photos
My view each morning, as I reach the bay at the end of the Clyne Valley cycle path.
In reverse
Well this is different. I’m on the train at Swansea, but I’m not sweaty & I don’t have my bike. It feels strange.
I’m travelling to Cardiff for the day to meet up with the guys from the old lab for food & a few beers. Let’s hope I get the right train home & don’t end up back at my old house.
Party
Now that I’m on broadband at home, I can post these photos of Jack from the weekend. He’s at his mate Antoine’s 3rd birthday party. It was general fancy dress, but most of them went as fairies and coppers, so it looked like a midget’s hen night in Edinburgh.
Cooling
I finally got round to replacing the cracked water cooling unit on my graphics card. The nice guys at Asetek just sent me out a new one FOC, after I emailed them a photo of the cracks.
Look at the state of the tubes I took out – these are supposed to be clear. The colour is partly from the crap washing off the copper blocks, crap in the water, and colourant I used to yellow the water. I’ll replace all these with new tubes.
Old cooler off…
New cooler on. These 10mm push-fit connections are a doddle to use. Quick and leak-free.
Fill the reservoir with you coolant of choice, power up the pump, rock the radiator to wash out all the air bubbles, and leave to run for half an hour.
No drips! Leak test, and switch the PC on. Fingers crossed. Water cooling your PC these days is very easy. If you use fluorocarbons instead of water it’s safer too. I just need to tidy up all my cables now.
Readers take snapshot of history
OK, so here’s another link today: a BBC news article reporting on the way in which digital images are easily captured and passed around the globe, and how this is affecting modern media. Many people took striking photos of the huge fire at the Buncefield fuel depot and shared them freely, in a case of wanting to share experiences rather than glamourising disaster. Blogging beats press news.
The body snatchers’ legacy to medicine
“The body snatchers’ legacy to medicine” is a BBC article looking at anatomy in the 18th Century, specifically body snatching and the advances anatomical studies gave to medicine at the time.