On Sunday we went to drive to the shops to get some food when the unthinkable happened; that little red warning light came on on the dashboard. So around we turned and came home. The car was really starting to judder a lot by the time we got home. Now it isn’t the most useful of warning lights, the handbook said it is a generic warning light and we should contact our dealer as soon as possible.

We got the car to the garage today and they had a look at it. It turns out the onboard compter was having issues! There are many sensors in the car that monitor many things, this lets the onboard computer compensate for anything untoward as much as it can. So they think it got confused and then compensated in a stupid way, making the car judder. They did a restart (I’m going have to find the Ctrl-Alt-Del keys) and now it seems to be working.

As you would expect with these things, the automatic error logging that it should do failed, so the mechanics (we really should start calling them IT support soon) couldn’t tell what caused it. I blame cosmic rays, damn you cosmic rays……

So I have spent the best part of the last three days in one of our kitchen cupboards. I kid you not, you see when the builders put our kitchen in they took the covers off two vents and installed a cupboard in front of it, the upshot being freezing coldness in the kitchen. So to fix it all I had to do was to pop the back out of the cupboard, squirt some builders’ foam into the holes and put the back back in. Pfff why can’t life be as simple as Becca?

First up; the back of the cupboard fits EXACTLY in, so it can’t pop out, and there are wires behind, so I can’t jigsaw it. I ended up spending about three hours carefully breaking the back off enough so I could see where the wires were. THEN I went at it with a jigsaw, which is the scareiest powertool I have EVER used.

Then to fill the holes; well builders’ foam seemed the way to go, that stuff is wierd. It expands to twice its size overnight and it sets from the outside in. So when I went to cut it down to size the next day I ruptured the wet stuff inside and it slowly oozed out making lots of farting noises, it really was one of the strangest things I have ever seen.

Then to putting the back back, well the old one was distroyed in the great battle of jigsaw, so I had to fashion a new one. And to cheat to put it back I braced it with lots of long screws behind it.

All in all it was a pretty professional bodge up I think.

I also put a fancy pants new shower curtain up (that took me about a day too) which is so solid that it is probably considered load bearing now 🙂 Now just the kitchen flooring to see to.

So I have spent most of today tinkering with my server, it now runs php5 🙂 I had to do this as I am thinking about playing with the facebook API and that needs php5.

All the pages on this site are finally valid CSS (including the family tree page – screw you microsoft!). The question now arises of weather I have a go making the whole site xhtml strict instead of transitional.

And who said I don’t have a life?!

So, as some of you may know, I bought a swanky new bike last week, I picked it up from Halfords on Saturday. It’s more of a road bike than a mountain bike, which, I thought, would be a sensible idea given that I only go on redways and the road. I have been using it a lot recently to go to work and it’s been great, it’s much easier to ride than my mountain bike and it’s a lot lighter too. The addition of a mini computer geeked it up to a suitable level so I could see how fast/far/etc/etc I was going. I have so far reached 37km/h on it and gone over 30km, not bad for a slacker like me 🙂

But then it happened, I had an accident. Well more of a stupid moment, and I fell off. Rather badly. I was cycling along merrily when I had to go from the road to the pavement up a dropped kerb running parrallel to the road, something I have done on my mountain bike loads. It appears that road bikes can’t do this, sigh. So off I fell sliding along the ground, I cut my hand, knee, elbow and sholder, and really really hurt my sholder and wrist, so much so that I cannot reach to put my hair up properly now 🙁 I was all grown up and didn’t cry though. I hurt more this morning so I went to the hospital to see if anything was broken, luckily nothing is, just badly sprained/bruised.

So here I am, typing one handed, with no real way of getting to work tomorrow, wondering if it is worth cycling to get fit if it is going to mame me in the process.

I have been back from Chile for a while now and figured that I should really get on with the bragging about what I did 🙂

I went to go do some observing for a collegue at the La Silla observatory, we had two nights on the 3.6m behemoth with the EFOSC2 instument strapped on it, this meant we could look for circular polarization from our targets (SW Sex systems). The facility is awesome, its about two and half hours drive up a mountain (at 2,500 ish m above sea level), there are about ten telescopes up there and lots of stuff for all us astronomers to keep us busy. The views were awesome, particularly the sunsets.

I had a few days in Santiago to do my touristy thing before and after I went to the observatory so I went to a few things. The best thing was the Pre-Columbian history museum, it’s a rather small place but has loads of cool stuff dating back forever.

Sadly, the weather turned a bit crappy towards the end so I didn’t make the trip up to the big Jesus thing that looks over Santiago (sorry Dan). Maybe next time.

As you can imagine, I took lots of photos, all in the Chile section of the photos page.

Annoyingly some fat Chilean dude managed to knock my laptop out of the overhead compartment on the plane onto the floor. So I am having much fun playing with the inevitable insurance pleasantries.

O.K., gloating over.

Well I finally made the leap into true geekishness and got my own server to play with (actually its not my own it’s shared, but you get the idea). After much research (actually I just asked Mike which one he went with) I went with Memset, and for less than £30 p/m I get 15GB to play with on a Debain server.

It took me AGES to get it all set up, but now I think I am on top of it, I am running a couple of domains from it and think I know where everything is, so all is good. Ollyandbecca is now hosted on there, so, in theory, it should be more stable now and so all you lovely people can keep up with my endeveours easier. Enjoy 🙂

Our car got broken into last night, they had a go at the rear window and passenger window. Completely destroyed them and made a right mess. They didn’t even look for anything to steel though, the door was still locked and the glove box still closed. We got it fixed on our insurance, then when we tried to lock the boot and it wouldn’t go, sigh, so now we have to go get that replaced, all the way in Bedford of course. Our neighbours heard it at 4:30 last night and a couple saw a kid cycling away. Damn kids. On the plus side, it means we finally get rid of those horrible stickers we couldn’t get off the window 🙂

Well I have been incogneto for the last week, or is that incomunicardo, in Mallorca, teaching. We, as astrophysics Ph.D students, get to go and strut our stuff and exercise our brains by showing OU undergrads how to do space stuff, mostly telescope work, at the OAM for the SXR208 course we do. This was the first real time I had used a telescope like this (i.e. setting it up and moving it etc.), as the big installations tend to have all this done for you, so it was a very steep learning curve.

Me and Steve had a few hours to play around on the first night so we took a few pretty pictures, the moon and the sombrero galaxy, not too exciting, but not too bad for our first attempt.

Steve and I had the unfortunate problem of being our indecisive selves all week, not too much of a problem when our respective other halfs are around, but when they are not then it is an almost impossible chore to pick a place to eat! We did have one afternoon off, in which we went in the Med, well we couldn’t not.

All in all I had a great time, the nights were long, the students were really nice to me (thanks if any of you find this), and it was really rewarding. I think I just about managed to bluff my way to the students thinking I knew what I was doing 🙂 Just have to get back to work now 🙁

We are back from our epic journey to Portugal and a few days in London. All in all we had a nice time, (see the photo album if you are bored) and I shall be writing a page about what we did etc. when I get a chance.

London was fun, we got to see some old friends and Becca’s family. We also went to the Tower of London, it cost £45 for a family ticket! Far far far too expensive for what it was. The torture room was rather disapointing, it only had three implements of pain, no where near as good as the musuem in Prague. And the crown jewels had a queue that rivalled the one to get a Wii, I know I am English and all but even I don’t enjoy queueing that much!

Then we watched TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the uninitiated) (Tinja Ninja Turtles for the childlike), oh how it took me back to my youth.

My first paper has finally been submitted too, just have to rewrite the whole thing when the referee sends it back!

So Cat invited us to Lisbon to experience the way she lives, so off we trotted….

Day 1, 27th March

First things first, someone had to lose their luggage, that award went straight to pip. Luckily though his iPod made it off the plane.

We were stopping at Cat’s apartment in a suburb of Lisbon south of the river. By the time we got there it was late and we were all hungry, so Cat took us to a local restaurant, the food was ok (steak and chips), but we didn’t expect much that late at night, but the wine was very nice. I am not a red wine drinker, but since we were here I thought I would give it a go, and mmmmm, alentejo.

Then, when we got home, we made a wondrous discovery, Dan brought cards with him!

Quote of the day; Pip: Have I corrupted anyone?

Day 2, 28th March

Today began the big exploration of Lisbon, so after a bus and ferry we were in the centre of town. Luckily the ferry was relatively calm, so we didn’t have to put up with a pukey Becca, but we thoroughly expected to have to later in the week.

We wondered around the main square for a while, took a few pictures, and found an Irish pub, how English we are. We were all rather amuzed when we saw a car that had bumped into something and broken it’s headlight, not a great travesty, except it had stopped in the middle of the road and brought most of Lisbon to a halt!

We ate at a seafood restaurant close to Cats, not being a fan of sea food I ate steak, but the others assured me the fish was good. Then we retired to play some cards, who would have thought the game shit head could have so many different sets of rules.

Quote of the day; Pip: Patronize me more.

Day 3, 29th March

We called into the cathedral on our way to the castle, it lacked much of the grandeur you would expect from a cathedral, still I guess there is something to be said about understatement.

Cat used to be a tour guide at the main castle of Lisbon, so we used her super tour guide skills to get a tour (how cheap we are). The castle itself is rather dull, there are some nice views of the city, but no real museums or things to see, except the periscope that is. This was a mirror and lens system mounted in a tower which projects the city onto a large white thing. The guide there gave us a tour of the landmarks with this thing, it was very cool, and now I want one put on my house……..

Pip did his utmost to help the Lisbonese street economy by hanging his wallet out of his pocket for all and sundry to see. Luckily, just as the inevitable was happening (pick pocketing) a nice Portuguese lady saw the perpetrator and shouted at him so he ran off. Thank you lady. Pip’s luggage turned up too.

Cat took us to an Italian restaurant tonight, the trouble with this being that Italian food is probably the only cuisine Becca cannot eat anything of, ho hum. Then back for more cards.

Day 4, 30th March

Cat decided to go leave us to go see her friends a family today, time to see if we can survive by ourselves.

Apparently the Portuguese church elders said during the war that if they managed to escape unscathed then they would build a mini version of the big Jesus thing in Rio. They did, so they did, and so we went up it. It’s just up the road from Cat’s house so we walked there and took hundreds of pictures (reduced to just fifteen).

From here we went to the fado museum (it’s a type of local folk music), all spanishy guitary type stuff with a whiney singer, not really my cup of tea.
We also found a church with the word ‘testes’ on a display, amused us a bit. Even more cards was played.

Quote of the day 1; Pip: Something a bit ooh. (Pip’s interpretation of that wonderful Girls aloud classic).
Quote of the day 2; Pip: I’d rather be cold and frightened then warm and frightened.
Quote of the day 3; Dan: Cuck funt.

Day 5, 31st March

With less of us in the house we managed to get out of the house and down to the port by 10am!

Lisbon is rather hilly, so some bright spark built a lift in the centre of town near a big hill, nice. Some nice views, which of course means lots of pictures.

We were reliably informed that the Bario Alto is the place to go out in Lisbon, so we went for a wonder around during the day to see what it was like. Everything was closed, covered in graffiti, and smelt of urine. We decided that this wasn’t really the kind of place we wanted to be drinking in.

We had heard that there was a nice eatery and drinkery place by the docks in the general direction of the big bridge so off we went. We couldn’t find it, sigh.

We found the restaurant district and found somewhere that was selling kid, so we had some, it was nice, a little salty, but nice. Afterwards were very English and went to the Hard Rock cafe.

Quote of the day; Pip: Becca’s going to do a Marylin Manson. (This was in the context of Becca walking over a grill venting air from the subway while wearing a dress).

Day 6, 1st April

Woke up feeling rather dehydrated, all that salt I suspect.

We went to St. Vincent, some fantastic views. Got to climb all the way to the top.

Dan bustificated his travel card, again, like the retardo he is (hence danificardo). We traced the problem to his ass, bizarre!

We finally found the dock area with lots of restaurants, lots of different nationally places to eat in. We were bored of Portuguese food (too salty and bland) so we decided on Spanish, mmm it was good.

Now one of the odd things about the Portuguese is that they don’t seem to like using toilet seats; virtually all the places we went didn’t have a toilet seat at all, it was only the really touristy places that did. Just struck me as a little odd.

Quote of the day; Dan: Danificado.

Day 7, 2nd April

Pip and Dan went to an art museum in the morning so Bint and I went shopping, she bought a few things, but seemed to have trouble paying everywhere we went. We ate at the Hard Rock cafe, again trouble with her card. Then when we tried a cash machine all our cards failed, maestro, switch, mastercard, all danificardoed, hmmm. We tried different cash machines, all broken, the people in the bank said they were all broken to foreign transactions. We met up with the others who had had the same problem, looked like we were about to be stranded in a foreign country with no money, so we did the only thing we could do as English folk with our remaining 40 Euros, drink.

We went to the Port wine institute, it had a wealth of different ports. We were considering on trying them all, but after the first three we decided against it. We had Ruby, tawny, and white, it was a split opinion on what was best, the ruby or the tawny.

Quote of the day; Pip: Tawny is like a party in your mouth, Ruby is like your grandparents staying over.

Day 8, 3rd April

Sintra is a small town outside of Lisbon that is a must see, so Becca booked a tour for all of us. This did mean that we had to be at the Hard Rock cafe at 8:00 am, not a happy bunny. Still, we made it, and Cat and Russ made it too, albeit 30 seconds before 8:00!

We went to the most westerly part of continental Europe, it was westerly.

Went to a nearby beach, Dan and I stood and took pictures of a gheko while the others paddled and got wet.

We finished up in a small fishing village, Caiscais, rather a posh little place, still, I managed to buy a lot of Portuguese cocks for my sister.

Pip left his glasses on the bus, but managed to get them back, luckily. Then the others went to a classical concert while Becca and I ate and went back.

Day 9, 4th April

Belem is a small part of Lisbon with a lot of stuff hidden away. There is the coach museum full of pretty old school coaches. A really old fort used to defend the city back in the day. Of course back in the day they were a lot shorter, and so us modern men struggled inside a bit!

We decided to go back to the eatery place we found the other day, this time we picked a nice French restaurant. It was posh looking (so we stuck out) but the food wasn’t that great, which was a shame.

It was today that we discovered that testes is Portuguese for forehead, as you can imagine much merriment was had.

Quote of the day; All of us: Testes.

Day 10, 5th April

And so we come to the end of our holiday, a thorough tidy up of Cats apartment and we are good to go. We all made it back ok, Pip’s luggage even made to London and not Johannesburg.