Conflicted

At home I'm all environmentally responsible with my detergents, largely I'll admit because I like the smell of the ecover stuff most. There is also that warm fuzzy feeling you get from making a small change that might help slow the damage we're doing to the world around us though. Anyway on the side of the washing up liquid bottle is this little drawing:



...and it bothers me. At work we have standard Fairy for washing up and (because I'm still 5 on some levels) it pleases me when I put the bottle down, accidentally-on-purpose squeezing it and a little cloud of bubbles fill the tiny office kitchen. I restrain myself from giggling but I will stand and watch them for a moment and it makes me happy. So I have a hard time reconciling this simple joy with the evil little cartoons on the side of my washing up bottle at home. How can bubbles ever be bad?

Japan 3

I know I said I wasn't going to announce each album, but I'm announcing this one. Partly that's because Dad mentioned he mostly only checks my blog and doesn't often look at the rest of the site (which is probably true for several people). Mostly though I'm announcing it because I took what I think were some of the best photos of the whole trip on the two days covered by this album, and because I took lots of multiple photo panorama shots which I've spent a sizeable chunk of today merging (easier than it used to be but still takes work)

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In truth one particular merge (the front of the Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima) took most of the time, for some reason the top right corner just wouldn't behave itself. Anyway it's done now and I'm really happy with it. Let me know what you think?

That's what it was!

Saturday lunchtime I thought a plane was going to crash on my house. We're nowhere near the flight path for Edinburgh airport, but the sound of a jet engine roar filled the house at around half one and grew steadily until eventually I hopped up onto the sofa to peer out of the velux... right into the undercarriage of this!

At the time I thought it must be a smaller aircraft, just implausibly low (Edinburgh doesn't get many long haul landings) but asking at the office over my morning coffee (it turns out I wasn't the only one spooked by it) I find out it was an "approach and go" fly past of Edinburgh by one of the first of these behemoths to enter service. Knowing that, I was able to turn up all kinds of coverage, but none of it quite captures the mix of fascination and mild terror I felt watching it out of the window on Saturday afternoon.

Don't get me wrong: Big machines are cool! I like them. I'm not sure I want them unexpectedly visiting my house though...

Japan pics

OK. It only took me a little under four months, but I've finally started posting photos from my visit to Japan earlier this year. I'm not going to announce every update I make to the [tiny fanfare] newly revamped pictures section, you can check in periodically yourselves and see when I upload albums. if they're related to current blog posts I might mention them but otherwise just occasionally looking at the grid will tell you if there's anything new to see. However since I've been being nagged (quite justifiably) to post these for months (and since it's the last noteworthy stage of the "grand version 4 overhaul") I figured a post was in order.

So. Japan Album 1. There you go. :)

*For anyone who's interested, I'm still troubleshooting a minor bug in the iPhoto plug-in that builds the smart bit of the albums, it's breaking on certain descriptions which took me ages to work out (it doesn't tell you that's what happening, it just fails to write the code) but new albums should be a relatively quick (and therefore more regular) process once I get that licked.

splateagle.com v4.0.1

Right. Everything except the new photos section is now up. Yes I realise the photos section is the one you've all been patiently waiting for me to update since May, but it's not ready yet so there. The new links page is up though so when my attention drifts again* you'll all be able to find other things to go and look at - isn't that lovely?

There are still some jumpy page-width issues happening between the different sections which bothers me... but otherwise I'm happy with how smoothly things have gone considering I rebuilt every page using a totally different (and new to me) markup. Of course now one of you Windows users will email and tell me you can't see the site at all anymore or some such...

OK. Lunch. Then, lightbox album time! woo yeah!

*not before I've fixed the photos page, I promise!

*takes deep breath, crosses fingers*

I just wiped my entire site and uploaded a shiny sleek new version... the easy bits at least, I'm still grappling with Javascript and CSS for a couple of the sections but I've (hopefully) managed to wrestle the blogger code into the new page template (still a few rough edges but I think it should work.

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so here goes

Someone else's wise words

Depending how clued in you are, you may have read this years ago when it was written, but I hadn't until today. The great information stream deposited me in that particular stored eddy of Adams' (sadly lost) consciousness just now while I was (uncharacteristically) lunching at my desk* and it swirled around me in that magical way that something obvious articulated clearly for the first time does.

So I thought I'd share it in case anyone else had missed out too.

*Because it's tipping down and I had stuff to do in town, but still it's an activity that makes me more-than-usually wilful about not doing any work for the hour I'm allocated as my own time each workday