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I burned the roof of my mouth, just behind my teeth, on a hot potato at the weekend. AND, I keep agravating it when I brush my teeth. Not nice.
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MJ Hibbett has run his end of month email a bit early, dman him made me think it was pay day already. Here are two highlights from it, Jenny Lockyer is brilliant, and I'm sure this video is too though I am saving it to watch after work.
If you have kids and live in the Croydon area you might like to know that Ms Jenny Lockyer (aka WPC Jenny from the album) is doing two half-term Storytime Specials at The Green Dragon pub, based on Dinosaur Planet! They're on Friday 8th (8-13 year olds) and Saturday 9th (2-7 year olds) of June - if you're interested, pop into the pub for more info!
and also
THE BATTLE OF PETERBOROUGH
Today we release our new free download single, "The Battle Of Peterborough", which is accompanied by a TERRIFYINGLY REALISTIC VIDEO shot entirely on location on Google Street View. It's all HERE
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Here though obviously bidding ended now, it's sold. Wish mine would hurry up (no not just to sell it).
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My back is all better now, so I got up early and went to the boot fair in Hythe this morning. Have come back laden with crap, and none of it even for me. I bought Harry a Lazy Town get up and move dance mat, we'll see how he gets on with that. 50p though, not bad, only needed batteries. I expect I'll have thrown it out for being too annoying before too long. Also a humungous Early Learning Centre easel, like this one, but blue, four quid. And only the other day I could not think of anything we could get him for his birthday. I still can't think of anything, but now there are two less things we could get.
Man alive it's hot out there. It's a great boot fair but it was too big and too hot to drag Harry round all of it.
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Legal wrangles over the name The Assembly in Edinburgh this summer. We're off there this August.
We are going to see Richard Herring at The Stand (one of the venues in question), not sure if we have any other confusing issues on the way...
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I hurt my back in the garden last weekend lifting something, so taken a day lying down today. Have done some reading, learning more about infrared leds for remote control, and also some more of The Brutal Art, which I've had hanging around for ages.
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I have rewritten the web server on my arduino ethernet shield, to actually support different routes (pages) and respond differently to GET and POST requests. Previously I just had example code on there that did little more than the hello world example you get on nodejs.org that gives the same response no matter what request you send.
I only spent about an hour on this yesterday though, hard to find the time, I will try and do more in my next week off. Since my last update I have got the native android app actually sending the requests needed. It's such a tiny step to get it working now, I need an infrared led and a little more programming and I'll have a proper working demo turning the house lights on and off. This last tiny step is quite intimidating though.
This on the day the man who invented the remote control dies.
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var mocha = require('mocha');
var should = require('should');
describe( 'mocha', function( ) {
it( 'should not foul everything up', function( ) {
var foo = "test";
foo.should.eql( 'test' );
} );
} );
✖ 1 of 1 tests failed:
1) mocha should not foul everything up:
AssertionError: expected { '0': 't', '1': 'e', '2': 's', '3': 't' } to equal 'test'
WHAT is going on? Why does this test not pass?
pauly :: Comment / reply
Food was amazing on holiday. I can't over-emphasise how big and good the buffet was in the Hotel Turquoise. We had breakfast there every day and were faced a buffet inside that was the length of about forty work desks (I'm looking around the room now trying to work it out) covering things like fruit and cereals and bread and so on, plus odd things like olives and pickles and things, and hot buffet including ham, various types of eggs, sausage type things, some unusual foreign hot things that I didn't even investigate too closely, then my own favourites of tomatoes, onions, mushrooms and potatoes. NOT CHIPS, the trays did say "french fries" but they were fried potatoes, this is a perfectly normal thing to have for breakfast. Then outside in the "show" bit there were crepes and omelettes cooked to order, and a place where you could cook your own eggs the way you liked them. This was a big breakfast.
Lunch we mostly had in the "snack bar" which was a nice covered area outdoors, with a long bar offering kebab type treats. These were the same every day, various kebab meats, burgers, chips, pide (Turkish pizza) and so on, then a big salad bar too, then a baked potato bar on top of that. Not actually on top, but as well.
Dinner was equally massive, there was a theme each evening, but lots of standards. It's the same place as the breakfast buffet, but slightly bigger, more different things on in the show buffet. So not for me, but impressive looking, whole spit roast animals, bread and pizza ovens on the go, traditional Turkish bread making staks, grills, and various other food demonstrations.
As a vegan I was well served by there just being so much choice, I could have some of this veg, some of that salad and so on, I did well. Here is a sample plate, I probably had two of these per meal. That was from the only time I accidentally had a meat dish I think, I picked up some innocuous looking courgette fritters - shredded courgette shallow fried in batter. Actually shredded courgette wrapped around a meat patty... why would you do that?
There were masses of puddings too, but I don't eat puddings. They looked very impressive but mostly tasted the same apparently.
Man we ate a lot. I weighed myself at various times, I think I went up about three kilos but worked some of it of with walking and things. I have not come back too much fatter.
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I missed this while I was on holiday! Look out the wife, this is the future!
Did some more work on my robot house project on my day off yesterday. Just tried to demo it at work, FAIL! Back to the drawing board...
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The parents are in and out of the box constantly with food, and I'm sure I can hear tweeting from inside.
What a shame I feel like a tool for saying tweeting. Damn you internets!
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I just found a bit of paper left over from our holiday, in the bar one night we had to vote for our favourite songs or something. But you could only choose from this list of fourteen songs, and then you could somehow win something. Not sure what it was all about actually. This is the list anyway, it kind of makes it look like I'm lying when I say it was quite a classy place:
☠ Boney M - Rivers Of Babylon
☠ Maroon 5 - Moves Like Jagger (my holiday earworm)
☠ Don Omar - Danza Kuduro
☠ DJ Otzi - Hey Baby
☠ Los Del Rio - Macarena
☠ Vaya Con Dios - Nah Neh Nah
☠ Franz Bouwer - Heb Je Even Foor Mij
☠ Michel Telo - Aiseut Pego
☠ Kaoma - Lambada
☠ Lou Bega - Mambo Number 5
☠ Wolfgang Petry - Verlieben Verloren
☠ King of Africa - La Bomba
☠ REM - Losing My Religion
☠ Tarkan - Dudu
One of those songs stands out from the others for me as not being a chicken song holiday bonkers type number...
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Mum and Dad were in Boston yesterday, so they thought they'd pop in on their way home... Not that Boston, but Boston in Lincolnshire... hmm, still is not that local is it? Still very good to see them, a bonus visit for us and for Harry. So of course we put them to work! We were planning a trip to buy some plants anyway, so they helped choose and then did most of the planting when we got back. The garden is looking lovely:
Now I'm looking at micro+irrigation systems, maybe to control with an arduino... So I don't want the full kit that I know I can get from homebase etc, but thinking of buying the bits separately.
Bonus day off for me today too. No-one else to look after Harry so me and he are spending the day together.
pauly :: Comment / reply
Paul Clarke's blog - I live and work near Folkestone. Married to Clare and father to Harry, I am a web dev, and I like javascript, PHP, Folkestone Gerald, pubs, restaurants, history, genealogy, TV, music, popbitch, squirrels, pirates ☠, time travel, stained glass...
