Sleep Interrupted

“Daddy… why are cats’ noses wet if they don’t like wet things?”

With the change in the clocks my drive home from work has coincided with sunset for the last few days. I love the palette of sunsets, starting at pale sky blue, running through that almost-green blue and on into the sort of orangey yellows generally only available by selecting something out of the E100 to E119 range. The tree-line is reduced to a black-green silhouette. Mushroom coloured clouds become edged with brilliant magenta and add a sense of scale to the scene.

Sunsets experienced while driving on the M4 are a mixed blessing. You get some spectacular views unfolding over the course of the journey but the road runs east-west on my homeward journey, so at sunset you often find yourself coming over the brow of a hill or a round a corner to find the orange ball of the sun sitting on the horizon. People naturally slow as their vision becomes impaired but I’m surprised there aren’t more accidents cause by this.

Of course, this experience is repeated for a spell in the mornings where sunrise hits you as you travel west-east. I really should take a camera with me one of these days…

It’s dark when I get up. The floors are cold. It’s raining outside. Everything is turned orange by the street lights. It’s autumn.

I have a large list of posts stuck in my head currently but first some breaking news!

Today saw an important victory in the War On Laundry. For the first time in this long campaign, which started some seven years ago, there is no ironing in the Ironing Basket and there is insufficient laundry across the region’s laundry baskets to justify a wash. Truly a momentous day!

The commanders of the Parental Coalition have been struggling to keep up in this unpleasant war of attrition, particularly since the disastrous Infant Offensives of 2003 and 2005. However, observers say that since the reclassification of certain items such as pyjamas as “non combatants” in 2006, the tide has turned in favour of the PC. Not since the successful “Pre-Holiday Blitz” earlier this year have the PC commanders sounded so confident.

So apparently Reading is the worst place in the country to bring up children. How was this conclusion drawn? They surveyed 1,162 parents across 408 areas. Yes, that’s an average of 2.8 parents per area. My, that’s pretty conclusive, isn’t it?!

What’s really wound me up is that something with less statistical relevance than the average claim made in a beauty product advert has made it onto the front page of the BBC news web site. It’s a shame because that’s a little bit of my trust in the BBC that’s never going to come back.

Yes, I disappeared down the Bloggers’ Black Hole. On returning from the BBH it is customary to come up with some excuses, so I’ll put the blame fairly on the New Job. Just too many new factlets to absorb has left me without enough whatever-it-is to write here. Also, having been away from the family for a straight ten days I’ve been playing catch up on all things familial, not least of which the DIY; the kitchen tiling is done so the to-do list there is starting to looking encouragingly short.

So what pushed me over the activation energy hump and restarted this blogging reaction? While driving home this evening I glanced down at the dash and there sat the figures 100000. You see, I know it’s just an entirely arbitrary number but I was very pleased not to miss the occasion, especially as I’d not been waiting for it (as I have with previous cars I’ve owned).

Not the most earth shattering news I’ll grant you but it’s got me started again.

Larry Wall is the creator of the Perl programming language but he’s also a linguist. This knowledge across disciplines has certainly influenced Perl and it also raises his writings above the usual, dry prose that litters the technical world. If you’ve ever read one of his State of the Onion addresses you’ll know what I mean. He is always a little… circuitous… but I always seem to come away having learnt something.

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across an article Larry wrote about open source software. What I learnt was why the Chinese writing system has so many symbols, what the advantage is over simple western alphabets. I’m not sure that this would ever have occurred to me. I love learning things like that!

I won’t spoil the article by telling you why, you’ll have to read it for yourself. Don’t worry, it’s entirely non-technical and the fun is in the journey, isn’t it?

When I was in my mid-teens nothing signified the coming of Christmas more than the arrival of the two-week Radio Times Christmas special. It was the only time of year when there was a TV guide in the house and I just loved pouring over the film listings to see what was coming up. Half a lifetime later I still observe this little seasonal ritual, even when I have little chance of actually catching any of the films.

Today I have watched no television whatsoever. Wednesday’s are generally pretty dead, but this is an exception for me, so I thought it worth noting. Maybe I should try it more often. Well, my MP3 player has finished uploading the latest Babylon Podcast, so I’m off to bed; analysis of this momentous occasion will have to wait for another day.

I was mildly phone scammed today.

My phone rings and I pick it up. “Hello, Andrew Smith.”

“Hi Andrew, this is [forgettable name] from HR. We’re going to be running a fire drill in about half an hour, could you tell me who’s in?”

So, after a little confusion I list off half a dozen names and then stumble on one of the contractor’s names.

“That’s okay, I can look up the contractors on my list here. Now I’m going to hang up and sell this list to some employment agency, suckah!”

Okay, the last bit was made up but I’m sure that’s what was going through his mind. Only after I put the phone down did it occur to me that we don’t have any men working in HR. I really don’t like being made a fool of; it cracks the thin veneer of competence.