From bias free of every kind

Went to see Rock Trial last night. It's a rewrite of Gilbert & Sullivan's Trial by Jury with (can you guess?) rock music. Same words & harmonies, but in a very different style. Probably the most enjoyable thing I've seen on stage. The whole thing was helped by a pretty amazing audience: it was in a small theatre in the RNCM, so most people at the Saturday night show were ex (or present) MUGSS people. Before the show even started, there was a mexican wave, and chants of "Rock Trial!, *clap, clap, clap*, Rock Trial!, *clap, clap, clap*, etc...". Much of this was led by Al, the director, who was sat just behind Emma & meself.
Another reason for going was that Pete was playing guitar. It sold out fairly quickly; we only got tickets for that night because Alison kept a couple aside for us. Thanks Alison!
I liked the G&S version anyway (I was in it last year before doing La Cage!), but this was really well done. The leads were all very good and while the clever lyrical humour was intact, a lot of updated gags had gone in on top of those. As well as the leads, there was a huge chorus consisting of nerds, hippies, old people, groupies (of Edwin, the defendant), punks & such.

Brilliant night out.

I went to Bristol yesterday, the nightmarish traffic was just as bad as I remember, started with the Zoo, unsurprisingly it's changed a bit since I was last there. The penguin and seal enclosures have underwater viewing tunnels so you can see them swimming. I really liked watching the penguins and the seals appeared to be showing off to me and the wide-eyed toddlers. I decided to walk back towards the City Centre, stopping off at where we used to live, it's certainly changed, the exterior's been sandblasted, but I didn't have too many happy memories of Bristol to be spoiled by any changes. I also stopped off at a toolshop for some tools for work and the geology section of a museum.

It took ages for me to find anywhere I wanted to eat, half-two is very late for me. I only found one thing I wanted to buy, a PC game, but a previous mix-up of CDs in the part-exchange shop meant I didn't get it. The wind really started to get going, so I headed back to the station, and ended up waiting nearly an hour for a train running 40min late, and already rather full before 40+ people got on at Bristol. It's nice to know that Virgin Trains has improved its reliability.

Despite being rather tired when I got home, I quite enjoyed myself and the snow this morning has left me in a good mood, despite most of the snow melting.

As the "festival we shouldn't even be thinking about until mid-December", is approaching could you e-mail me some suggestions for presents for Monica, Nan and the Parents.

I been in a bit of a slump at recently, but things seem to be improving, several clock haven't been working properly with no apparent cause, with help I've been able to work out what I was not doing, and feel rather silly for not doing it in the first place. I suspect the combination of the clocks changing and a change in my working week threw me a bit out of step.

I've made a start on a craft project to make a couple of "pin pictures", with nails on a cloth-covered MDF board . This sort of thing http://www.mmwindowtoart.com/drawing/para1a.html Hopefully, tomorrow I'll draw out the designs on paper, then use the paper to guide where I hammer the nails in.

Apologies in advance

What's black and white and conquered most of the civilised world?

Alex Panda the Great.

I'm really, really sorry.

Slugs Ate My Parents

'Tis a band consisting of Dan from choir. He's got a few gigs lined up in Manchester (see website),
and you can listen to some Mp3s elsewhere on the site. I particularly liked "It is Wise to Fear the Mega-Spider".

The BBC said:

"Odd doesn't really do Slugs Ate My Parents justice. This is music from the insides of an asylum, where deeply frightening basslines back lyrics like 'Would you like a drink of water?/I’ve put poison in your water' and 'His name is Mr Jesus/And he don’t know if he exists'. It's a case of experience at your peril, but you really must experience..."

It's that time of year again

I can't think what I'd like for Christmas. This won't be a suprise to anyone who's asked me for the last 10 years or so, since I've tended to look confused, and then ask for money. Inspired by their campaign last year, I'd like to direct shoppers to Oxfam's website where they've got some rather cool things (donkeys, trees & such) which go to people who need them. You also get a card for the person you'd normally get a present for, telling them that you've spent the money usefully. Seems much more Christmassy that getting people stuff they don't need.

Actually, I'd also like Ziggy Stardust & Hunky Dory (Bowie), but other than that I'm out of ideas, so get a goat for someone who needs it.

Book Club seems to be working out at last, I talked about a duology of books in Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series, (Dragonsong and Dragonsinger: Harper of Pern). One person talked about a biographical book on an aircraft test pilot \ engineer who started during WW2. The other person talked about another Dragonriders of Pern book (Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern).
Quite enjoyable, I lent one of my Asperger books and Shatterglass (Tamora Pierce) to a chap who seemed interested in both.

Work seems to be improving a little, there's a bit of "edutainment" with a BHI-trained part-time repairer, him getting the education, us getting the entertainment from some of the inefficient practices such as thoroughly cleaning the movement in the cleaning fluids before and after doing the actual repair work. He's even keeping a work diary, which just seems a waste of time. Hopefully we can teach him some more time-efficient work habits.

My boss decided that he wanted a "robo-raptor", having seen this year's candidate for "the toy that all kids will be wanting for Christmas"in Debenhams. On Friday he was worrying that he would be unable to get there after work, so I offered to get it for him and wait for him in the car park behind Debenhams. He gave me £100 to pay for it, it turned out to cost only £90, so he very generously gave let me keep the change. His partner, a teacher was horrified that he'd bought it, and his cat was rather freaked out by the plastic dinosaur.

I've not done this much lathe work and soldering in a long time, the mainspring barrel for a fusee clock (the biggest, most powerful range of mainspring) was rather poorly assembled, it split apart when Trevor tried to improve the lousy joins! I've had to make a bush for the first time in ages for the same clock. Another chiming clock needed 35 holes bushes, including 6 (mainspring) barrels, and 15 of then required me to use two bushes because the last repairer had used a weird set of bushes. I normally don't need to spend over a week on just two clock, but these two defied belief.

I got a bit of a surprise when David told me someone would be coming in on Friday morning who would start working with us on Thursdays, then a second surprise when David asked me to consolidate my half-days and take Thursday off to give the new chap, called Chris, a bit more working room. I didn't mind too much, but a little more warning would be nice. Chris is a temporary worker, helping to reduce our ever-growing backlog of work, (now if we could only get our customers to deal with the backlog of stuff to be collected and paid for.) Chris has been working from home and wants to get a bit more experience from the variety of clocks we service.

It's been an unusual few weeks for me, with the DLA, Housing and Council Tax benefits in place and Working Tax Credit applied for. It seems very strange to finally get the support that I should have been getting since my condition was finally diagnosed. I was almost angry when I asked my colleague, Matt who gets a free "Motability" car rather than DLA, wasn't getting Council Tax or Housing Benefit, it seems no one told him he'd probably still be eligible for those benefits when he changed from receiving DLA to having a car. I've given him the phone number for the woman at the CAB, who has been helping me with my benefits, after asking her if Matt could probably get those benefits.
I feel rather drained after putting all that effort into getting the benefits, it's been hard to apply myself fully at work, not through laziness but from exhaustion. I'm considering taking a few days off work just to de-stress.

It's also been a busy period, I go out to see "Howl's Moving Castle" at the PictureHouse Cinema, turning my phone off shortly before Dad attempted to contact me, just a bit of bad timing. Dad visited me on his way back to Camberley, with a damp, non-functional mobile phone. Unfortunately, this is the same day as my first Resident's Meeting with an agenda point I've raised. It was about the status of the Book Club I attempted to get involved with, only giving up after four weeks of no one turning up. I turns out that it had shrunk to only two active members shortly before I attempted to join and petered out. It's been revived, and hopefully will give me an opportunity to socialise in the evening. I fed Dad after the meeting, his sabbatical seems to be doing him some real good, although he was tired, it didn't seem to be as deep rooted as it had been.

I had signed up for the Belmont Church event, "Feed a Fresher", however on the day there were far more providers than mouths to feed, It ended up with me being invited to Mark's house by one of his housemates for a roast chicken Sunday Lunch, very nice. I left a little earlier than I'd wanted to because I needed a break if I wanted to be able to attend the talk that evening at Belmont, about the book "The Da Vinci Code". The talk was quite interesting mostly because I'd only heard bits and pieces about the content and implications. The talk pointed out that The Da Vinci Code was very similar in content to another book based on an publicly admitted hoax, and the so-called accuracy of the "facts" was rather questionable. Despite the general Christian view that the book is nonsense, the talk tried to be fair and was well presented.

Today I went to the cinema with Mark and Monica, to see the "Wallace and Gromit" film, it was good, but I felt a little disappointed that the density of puns was a lower than I'd hoped for.

Quite a busy couple of days, went to Belmont Church with the parents and Nan, they seemed to approve, went for a walk and then had lunch with all the family in Exeter. It would be nice to see a bit more of Tamsin and Martyn, but between their busy lives and the distance between us it will take a bit more planning than seeing Mark and Monica.

Today was I worked on four different jobs, reworking one, disabling the strike on another, replacing the quartz movement on yet another and lastly servicing a timepiece. It's been a while since I've been able to work on so many clocks in one day. Quite satisifying.

Monkey see, monkey do

Having not played chess in a little while, and noticing Rosy had an account, I'm now playing chess on Gameknot. So, if you fancy a game, search for Adriand. That's me that is.

It's not like I do anything intellectual with the rest of my life, is it?

I'm back

We've regained internet access at home since moving about four weeks ago. That was in Emma's summer holiday, since when she's gone back to school to teach (avoid murdering whilst hoping they pick up some maths) the kids.

We've moved to South East Manchester (just past a "Welcome to Stockport" sign), which means the car insurance got cheaper, it's easier for Emma to get to work (round the M60), and I've got a five mile cycle to get into uni. Nice house with two bedrooms, one of which is Emma's study, and a garden with a shed. My shiny new bike lives in the shed. I treated myself to a new one, as I don't think it'll get nicked from here, and I'm cycling over 50 miles a week. My last bike was stolen from outside the old flat while I was on Skye at a maths conference. Slightly irritating as I'd only had it for 3 weeks. We've got a groovy metal staircase arrangement which someone with a spanner could easily booby-trap.

I'm writing up my thesis, which is painfully slow, to submit in January. Got 60 pages done so far, most of which will need some rewriting, and it'll probably be about 100 pages when it's done. It's currently sporting the catchy title "Real K-theory of Thom complexes".

Emma's (as I said) back at school, and seems to be managing very well with workload, and difficult children. I'm slightly worried about the increasingly sneaky methods of class control she's employing - it's contributing heavily to the "all Emmas are evil" hypothesis.

Hmm. That'll do for a general catch up. For more detail, however:
Thanks are due to Nick for helping with the move.
For details of (the end of the) housewarming party, try here.
Went to see the Sheffield Wednesday vs West Ham game with Pete. I feel I should point out that David Graham (not Brunt) hit the crossbar from 6 yards out, a strike which would have leveled the game to 3-3.
Watched the Luton vs Wednesday game round at Pete & Rosy's and then watched the Goonies.
That's covered up to Friday night nicely.

Saturday:
For her first day off in two weeks (yes, that includes weekends!) she headed off to Taekwondo, while I met up with Jon, a friend from school & university who I've not seen for a couple of years. Unfortunately I seem to have reached the time of life when some work is required to keep in touch with people. Otherwise I only see them at weddings. Humph.
Met Jon in town; his wife Liz had a GP training/conference thingy in Manchester, hence the visit, and we got some lunch & played some pool. Nice to catch up. Jon headed off a bit earlier than planned (conf. finishing early to avoid traffic from the Man Utd *spit* game), which meant Emma wasn't able to see him.
Instead, myself & Emma headed into town for an evening of food & film. More precisely; Pizza Hut and Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. I'll have to admit to being a fan of both Roald Dahl and Tim Burton, and I loved the film. Emma's decided (as she does regularly) that I'm weird. I was particularly impressed with the Oompah Loompahs' song/dance routines following the dismissal of one of the vile children. Having re-read that, I think Emma may be onto something.