Monthly archive: November 2007

To beg or get by begging.

Read more about cadge at Answers.com

Brit. a collection of unimportant objects.

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To disturb by repeated attacks. To trouble persistently from or as if from all sides. To make a surprise attack on: maraud, raid.

Read more about harry at Answers.com

A valve that regulates the flow of fluid through a pipe; a faucet.

Read more about stopcock at Answers.com

A walk taken regularly for one's health.

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Here are the websites I bookmarked into my del.icio.us account last week:

• Gtd Bingo [Random!]
  'Check off each block when you hear these words during a meeting, seminar, or phone call. When you get five blocks horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, stand up and shout BULLSHIT!!'
• Add Wi-Fi to any Camera with the Eye-Fi Wireless SD Memory Card
  The Eye-Fi Wireless memory card adds Wi-Fi to any camera that uses SD memory. It looks like a SD camera memory card. It holds 2 GB of photos. And it wirelessly uploads your photos to your computer and to Flickr or one of 16 other photo sharing sites.
• DorS DIMMING from Megaman
  According to an article in the guardian, this is the only energy-saving lightbulb that can be dimmed. It works with ordinary switches, every on/off click dims it 1 step
• Google’s Response to Facebook: 'Maka-Maka'
  OpenSocial is just the first stage of 'Maka-Maka', a larger project to combine all of Google's apps and services. Google already has so much data on you, it now wants to bring it all together.

(used with singular count nouns) colloquial for 'not a' or 'not one' or 'never a'.

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Wide-hipped riding pants of heavy cloth, fitting tightly from knee to ankle.

Read more about jodhpurs at Answers.com

1. William Fortnum ('Fortnum & Mason') started business re-selling Queen Anne's discarded candles (she wanted fresh ones every night).
2. Isla Guy Fawkes is one the Galápagos Islands (Ecuador) named after the Briton who attempted to carry out the Gunpowder Plot.
3. The O2 has a hole to let the Blackwall tunnel ventilation towers through.
4. Belfast City Airport is named after George Best. As my plane approached the landing strip on Wednesday night, my mind was concentrating more on Best's regular displays of public drunkenness than his extraordinary career as a footballer.
5. The X Factor's Andy Williams is a member of my gym (the Newport branch, I suppose).
6. Blackout, Britney's new album is dreadful. I forced myself to listen to it all, cannot stand the over-processed vocals and self-referencing on every single bloody song ('It's Britney, bitch' – uhm yes, it's written on the cover too). I wish it to do well though, it sounds like she needs it.
7. Florence Nightingale was a keen statistician and made extensive use of charts and diagrams to present reports on medical care.

Nocturnal, solitary, tree-dwelling mammal (family Bradypodidae), found in South and Central America.

Read more about sloth at Answers.com

So tonight I was coming home from work, totally absorbed by the book I'm reading (A Spot of Bother), I got off the train and walked along the platform to the exit, instinctively. A gesture you don't think about because you repeat it every day.

Most people were walking the opposite direction, so I realised I was walking away from the exit. My mind must have thought I was in a different carriage. It happens.

I took the exit and turned left towards the three escalators. Two were going up (as is the case in the evening). Only this time it was the two on the right instead of the usual ones on the left. They must be working on something, I thought.

Once up in the ticket hall, I noticed that the tills were on the left instead of on the right. Hang on, they can't have moved them since this morning.

I got off one stop too early. Trivial, I know, but it was absolutely wonderful to feel the mind tingling because of this tiny variation on a trite pattern.

Air France, said the reservation. And the check-in counter, and the boarding pass.

And the crew's uniforms at the gate. One of them looked at my boarding pass, then projected "Le six" across the queue to her colleague entering boarding pass numbers into a machine.

So imagine my surprise when the terminal bus delivered me in front of a Dornier 328-100 by Scot Airlines – operated by Air France (or was that Air France – operated by Scot Airlines, I never know which one is which).

31 seats. 11 passengers. One cabin crew. One pilot. No make it two – it had to be two, as mid-flight the pilot crossed the aisle to go to the toilet at the back).

Somebody had thrown up tartan everywhere. The seat and the crew were upholstered with the same material. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what I call classy.

I was sitting right next to the propeller. I feared the worst. But as the plane flew right over the O2, so low I could make out what was on the circular screens around it, and then over fireworks, and pitch after pitch of little men playing football, I was giddy with excitement.

Our lovely Michelle (both on the way there and back, probably sleeps on the plane in tartan PJs under a tartan duvet) was charming. She offered me a free newspaper (choice of four), and drinks. Being a Ryanair boy, I almost cried for being showered with such luxuries.

I think I might treasure the Air France cocktail napkin forever.

To approve, encourage, and support (an action or a plan of action); urge and help on. To urge, encourage, or help (a person).

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A heavy, stale atmosphere, especially the musty air of an overcrowded or poorly ventilated room.

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I owe you an explanation, don't I?

Weeks without a proper post on these pages, apart from Word of the Day, My Week on the Web and sometimes 7 Things I Did Not Know Last Week.

Not a lack of time per se, but rather a shift in priorities.

A new position at work that's briliant and absorbs me so much I've been enjoying working through lunch almost every day for over a month now.

And when I am not working, I am likely to be playing with the Tytn2 a.k.a. HTC Kaiser a.k.a. T-Mobile MDA Vario III. It's so good it turns heads. One fellow passengerand the cabin crew on the flight tonight asked me where they could get one.

Speaking of the flight, I thought I made a mistake when, after booking, checking in and boarding at gate all with Air France, the airport bus left me in front of a minivan with wings emblazoned with Scot Airways and a lot of tartan everywhere.

Flight surprisingly smooth, and leaving from London City Airport is a treat. We flew very low over the O2 and I can't wait to fly back tomorrow night and peek into the top floors windows of Canary Wharf.

And in between, lots of work meetings.