This poster was on display last night outside one of the bars on campus:
Archive for February, 2006
Apostrophe Abuse
Thursday, February 23rd, 2006Pancake Day Looms Near!
Tuesday, February 21st, 2006(See my Pancake Day page for more information on Pancake Day or Shrove Tuesday.)
It’s nearly that time again when yet another Christian festival comes along and we get to eat stupid amounts of food!
Pancake Day (or Shrove Tuesday) seems to be a day to forget your moral standards and do mad things like eat 10 times your recommended daily allowance of saturated fat, run around in fancy dress tossing pancakes or kicking inflated animal bladders around a town centre.
I opt for the eating option - this year I will be having a few of my friends around to a bring-your-own-pancake-toppings party. Last year featured an experiment with E-numbers to produce luminous pink pancakes!
If you’re not coming along but want to throw your own party, here’s the ridiculously simple recipe to make your own pancakes:
8oz plain flour
2 large eggs
1 pint milk
pinch of saltMix everything together - it really doesn’t matter what order you add stuff, but adding a bit of the milk before the eggs and then adding the rest of the milk seems to be best. Make sure you whisk it well otherwise it goes all lumpy and that makes bad pancakes.
I like to let the batter rest for about 30 minutes in the fridge. However, when I’m making bulk quantities for the party, I often don’t get the chance to do that! It doesn’t make too much difference.
To cook, heat a frying pan over a moderate heat with a small bit of oil (olive oil is best!). Add enough batter to cover the base of the frying pan. When the batter has dried and started to brown on the bottom you can flip the pancake to cook the other side - this is normally the time when a large amount of mess is made by people failing to toss the pancake in the correct manner!
The pancake is ready when both sides have browned slightly.
The next most important thing is what you put on your pancakes. This is the age-old, tried-and-tested topping:
Lemon Juice
Sugar
But that’s quite boring, so there’s plenty of other stuff that you can use:
Fruit and berries
Jam
Marmalade
Honey
Maple syrup
Marmite (apparently!)
Peanut butter
Chocolate sauce
Cream
Ice cream
Lime juice
etc.
Hence the bring-your-own-toppings party - gives a good chance to try other people’s ideas of what makes a good topping!
England Smoking Ban: Democracy Does Work!
Tuesday, February 14th, 2006The Government have voted to bring into a place a ban on smoking in all pubs and clubs, hopefully coming into effect some time during the summer next year. The ban also extends to all enclosed public spaces. This couldn’t happen soon enough as far as I’m concerned - it is extremely frustrating going out to the pub for a nice drink only to come home later smelling of cigarettes. It will also be nice to get off the train at London stations and not have to inhale the smoke from people who are lighting up for the first time in hours as soon as they leave the train.
So there is a glimmer of hope that democracy does still work and that the Government does occasionally do things that they said they were going to do!
Update (1st December 2006): The Government has announced the start of the smoking ban in enclosed places. From 1st July 2007, smoking in England will be banned from nearly all offices, restaurants, pubs and bars. England will be the last part of the United Kingdom to introduce a ban. The Republic of Ireland’s ban started in March 2004; Scotland’s ban came into effect in March 2006; and the ban in Wales and Northern Ireland will come into effect from April 2007.
Dabs.com are evil
Tuesday, February 14th, 2006I recently placed an order with Dabs.com for some computer components. One of the items that I ordered was some memory. On receiving the order, I discovered that the memory was faulty, so I had to return it to Dabs for a replacement. Up to this point, the process was going swimmingly - the goods arrived when I asked them to and they sent everything that I asked for. Their returns process is also swift and they didn’t argue about whether the memory was faulty or not.
The gripe here is that you *only* get a refund and there’s no choice to have a repair or replacement sent. Indeed, the only way you can get a replacement item is to place another order and have to pay again for the postage charges (some £3.50). This strikes me as being a bit unfair.
However, they are not doing anything wrong - the law on this matter says that they have to give me a refund, repair or replacement for faulty items. I don’t have a right to choose which of these alternatives I get. The law in this matter is supposed to protect the consumer, but in this case I am out of pocket to the tune of £3.50 for a problem which wasn’t my fault. And there’s nothing I can do about it 
Another gripe with Dabs.com is that they do not have any way to talk to someone over the phone. I remember the fuss about ebuyer.com removing its telephone support a while ago to save on costs - perhaps the same will happen for Dabs. I’ve used them successfully ever since they started trading in the early 1990s, but now I might consider carefully whether I order from them again.
22° Lunar Halo
Sunday, February 12th, 2006Image of the 22° lunar halo from tonight:
The halo is caused by light reflecting from the moon being refracted by ice crystals in a thin layer of high cloud. The ice crystals are hexagonal causing the light to refract by 22 degrees.
This photo was taken with a Nikon D70 digital camera using a Sigma 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6 lens. Exposure was 20 seconds; aperture f/6.3 and focal length was 14mm.
Two Piers in Bournemouth?
Wednesday, February 8th, 2006Well, Google seem to think so!
Rain on the way?
Tuesday, February 7th, 2006The drought in the south-east of England is getting worse by the day, with reservoirs here less than one-third full. Southern Water was recently granted permission to draw more water from the River Medway to top up the levels in Bewl Water in a stop-gap measure to safeguard supplies. We have already seen months of bans on watering your garden with a sprinkler or hosepipe. I have only recorded 19.6mm of rain so far this year - January saw only a quarter of the rainfall that would be expected.
Hopefully that looks set to change - the weather over the next few days seems to be being influenced more by the Atlantic than of late, allowing low-pressure and fronts to cross the country bringing the inevitable rain. Hopefully they will bring rain to the south-east - similar Atlantic systems have petered out by the time they get to the south-east of England leading to only a couple of mm of rain.
Birmingham City Centre Photos
Monday, February 6th, 2006It’s been a month since I took them, but I’ve finally got a set of photographs processed from Birmingham City Centre. I have been meaning to go and take photos there for quite a long time as there has been an awful lot of development, including a completely new shopping centre (Bullring) and lots of redevelopment around Masshouse Circus.
You can view my collection of photos of Birmingham City Centre here. Here’s a small selection:
| From jstottphotography.com. | ||
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| Clockwise from top-left: Ferris wheel and Mausoleum in Centenary Square; Birmingham Central Library; Birmingham Council Houses and carousel in Victoria Square; Needless Alley; Selfridge’s; Martineau Place | ||
Java Oddity
Thursday, February 2nd, 2006Java has a set of reserved words that you can’t give to a variable name (such as int, class, static, etc.). But you can call a class the same name as the name of another class, like this:
String Integer = "42";
Which got me thinking - what happens if I try to access class or instance variables if the name of the class is slightly ambiguous?
I knocked up some code to find out:
public class Foo {
public static final int BAZ = 5;
}public class Bar {
public static final int BAZ = 10;
}public class Baz {
public static void main (String[] args) {
Foo Bar = new Foo();
Bar Foo = new Bar();
System.out.println(”Foo.BAZ = ” + Foo.BAZ);
System.out.println(”Bar.BAZ = ” + Bar.BAZ);
}
}
What gets printed out? Does it even compile?
Turns out it does compile. A clue as to what gets printed out is given by a warning from the compiler that the static fields should be accessed in a static way. This is the output:
Foo.BAZ = 10
Bar.BAZ = 5
So it prints out the instance variable rather than accessing Foo.BAZ and Bar.BAZ in a static context. In other words, Foo.BAZ returns Bar.BAZ and Bar.BAZ returns Foo.BAZ. Confusing, huh?
January 2006 in Canterbury
Wednesday, February 1st, 2006Here’s my short summary of the weather in Canterbury during January 2006:
January was rather dull and grey. Maxima were generally lower than average apart from a milder interlude around the middle of the month. Cloud cover ensured few frosts, but -6.4C on the 23rd is the coldest temperature that I’ve recorded since I started in September 2004. Again, hardly any rain this month - January was the driest month that I’ve recorded since before September 2004 with only 19.3mm (26%). Only 1 month in the last 17 (July 2005) has exceeded the local average for rainfall. There was light snowfall on the 27th producing a slight temporary cover. Traces of snowfall from the end of December also survived on the 1st of January.
