Caboose

“I’ve been places you can’t imagine.” turned up in my website stats recently, as a referrer. Very strange.

In fact there were 8 hits with that referrer. Is this somebody just having a laugh with their referrer strings in their browser?

A quick Google found somebody else who had been visited.

Makes a nice change from all the usual “http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search” stuff.

I decided this that my old HP laptop has become too slow and full of junk, it was time to nuke it and start again.

The slight problem is that it seems the HP recovery CDs don’t work. They create a ‘hibernate’ partition, write the special diagnostics software and then just flash a cursor at you. Not very helpful at all.

Looks like it’s going to be Linux getting installed, I just hope I can find a driver for the wacky built-in modem.

Feeling grottier today, achy and bunged up. Still went to work, in order to spread the bugs further.

Interesting year-end stats from Google: Zeitgeist

Went through to a skidpan near Fakenham yesterday for a bit of sliding around in cars, organised by the IAM (website).

After that we set off for a few beers, then a few more, some food at Yippee Noodles on King Street, another couple of beers and then back to the house for whisky.

Today after a bit of a lie-in it was breakfast at CB2. Didn’t enjoy it all that much as my sense of taste isn’t quite right, I’ve finally caught the cold that my housemates have been suffering from. Time to stock up on Lemsip and soup.

This is actually quite old news, but it was only yesterday that somebody told me it had appeared on the BAS website.

My friend Andy, currently working down at King Edward Point, South Georgia, has got engaged. Here’s the photo from BAS:

That’s taken from the King Edward Point diary.

I’ve been looking through my site stats again, most of the visitors are search engines. Which means my site must be indexed all over the place, but few people are actually looking.

If you’re a real person feel free to leave a comment, or use the email form to let me know you’ve been.

I’ve added a page with my GnuPG public key. So if anyone feels like sending me encrypted emails, give it a go.

After dropping off my bike at my Grandparents’ in Norfolk this weekend I had to make my way back to Cambridge by public transport. Even if you don’t share Mrs Thatcher’s hatred of sharing a vehicle with other people this tends to be an experience that just gradually grinds you down.

I got to the bus stop in Wroxham at 1630, five minutes before the bus was due to start its run outside Roys just up the road.

By five past five I was about to start walking back to the house when I saw the bus going past in the opposite direction. It then took twenty minutes to go a mile up the road and turn round. No apology from the driver, no explanation of why he was almost an hour late.

So I missed my train and had to hang around Norwich station for three quarters of an hour. The Anglia Railways service through to Cambridge was good though, the train was clean and on time. It was also mostly empty so I could stretch out and read (Rick Moody’s The Ice Storm).

In fact it was so quiet the guy sitting on the other side of the train seemed to feel quite happy to finish doing his homework (or whatever it was), pull out his packet of king-size Rizlas and sit producing one joint after another for the next ten minutes or so. He got off at Ely, he probably needed some chemical assistance with facing the flat, desolate horrors of The Fens.

Tomorrow I really should do some Christmas shopping. Need to buy cards and some presents as I probably won’t get the opportunity in the next few weeekends.

The other thing to do tomorrow is to take my bike through to my Grandparent’s in Norfolk. It’s going to be spending the winter in their garage away from salt and similar nasty things.