Yak & Natter

“Ladbrokes, the bookmaker, has cut its odds of finding life on Mars from 33-1 to 25-1″. Good luck Beagle 2! It seems that getting to Mars successfully is, historically, a 50:50 chance. We’ll know if Beagle 2 made it to the surface when we wake up on Christmas day.

The Guardian has announced it’s Best Blogs for 2003, and the photography based ones are very strong, I can see me adding the winner, nyclondon.com, to my favourites.

“Black and white also featured in the winner of the best use of photography category. This went to Rob Gardiner and nyclondon.com for the stunning quality of his photography. We also commended two others in this category: Camerantics, which also featured among the judges’ selections in the best design category, and Apparently Nothing – both full of arresting images and enough to make the average aspirant snapper (like me) sick with envy.”

Well it took a while, but finally the photos are up from the Lewes Bonfire Night festivities this year.

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I was walking back from a meeting the other day, possibly along St Nicholas Road in Brighton, and
a fair number of the houses had gone to the trouble to turn their front windows
into a Christmas scene. No idea if it’s organized or spontaneous, a one-off or annual, but it
a fun to stumble upon these things. Hmm… St Nicholas Rd/Saint Nicholas… it all makes sense, assuming
I’ve got the street name right.

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So snow is nothing more than rain in a winter playsuit.

Well, most presents are bought, and most cards are written. The food shopping is being ordered tonight, so we’re almost ready! I finish at work on Thursday evening, and am off until the 2nd January so get a lovely long time off.

It was the company Christmas meal, at the Middle House in Mayfield, on Friday evening, which was really pleasant – quite sensible (i.e. not on a sinking boat like Aspect’s Christmas party of 1999!!!), good food, lots of booze (although I was driving) and a good mixture of people.

Too many “you may have won a luxury fitted kitchen” calls. We’ve signed up with TPS, and I hope it works…

On Friday we visited Rachel, Steve, Thomas and James in Kettering. The journey up was the first time we used traffic-i — and it certainly made motorway driving on a Friday night much more predictable. An added bonus: my phone is backlit, making traffic-i usable as a map, without the hassle of rummaging around for a map light.

We ended up at a park on Saturday with Rachel and Thomas and found a cool combined swing, seesaw and roundabout….

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I’d estimate that so far Skype has saved me about £100 in call costs this month. That’s not quite true: I probably wouldn’t have made the calls, if I had to continue to pay BTs rates for calls to Australia. Skype just works and right now is free, but (there’s always a downside) it’s Windows only.