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We’re growing a lot of tomatoes at the moment. We both love tomatoes and can’t get enough of them, but last year our crop was a dismal failure (grand total of fruits: 1¹ ). So this year, we decided to hedge our bets. We grew half of our plants indoors in our unheated conservatory, and half outside on the allotment. Looking at them now, you’d find it hard to believe that they were the same varieties, let alone the same varieties planted at about the same time.

The indoor tomatoes are like supermodels. Incredibly tall (2 metres or more), leggy and skinny, they continually flop melodramatically all over the place despite being well supported with canes. Every day I come in to water them to find that another branch has buckled and is trailing on the ground having a crisis, or threatening to bring down another plant. They are healthy enough, but I think that the higher temperature and humidity in the conservatory has made the new growth very sappy and soft. They have flowers and a few tiny fruits, but I can’t imagine how they’ll stand up when they have a full crop of fruits weighing them down.

In contrast, the allotment tomatoes are like sturdy hill tribespeople: short with strong stems, tough, leathery leaves and very bushy. They’ve been exposed to the colder temperatures and the vicious winds that whip over our allotment site, and they almost look as if they’d be able to stand up on their own. They are a bit further behind, fruiting-wise, but I think they’ll probably produce a decent crop if we can keep the slugs and pigeons away from them.

¹ Which we cut in half and shared, determined to enjoy our one and only tomato. ↑

When I started using Tinderbox again for planning various work projects, I noticed that a lot of people were using it for a simple daybook or journal. I’ve tinkered with various ways of keeping a record of the various things I do, people I talk to or ideas I have throughout the day, including a simple little plugin I wrote for Textmate to keep a journal in a plain text file. That worked quite well, but it wasn’t as easy as it might have been to find things again when I needed them because it was one big flat file.

So I started playing around with keeping my journal in Tinderbox, and I’ve been using it for a couple of months now. It’s deliberately very simple: I have a container called Daybook, in which all my snippets of text are kept. That container has an OnAdd action which sets the prototype as daybook (setting the colour and a few other attributes), and also sets the title with a datetime stamp of the creation date. That means I can just hit return to create a new note, hit return again to dismiss the dialogue setting the title (because it will be set automatically), then start typing in the window which appears. These daybook entries are sorted in reverse chronological order, and automatically collected by ‘Today’ and ‘Past 7 days’ agents, which do just what you’d expect. I also have another container for completed tasks, where I have one note for each day (again, auto-titled on creation with the date and ‘tasks’) which contains all the completed tasks for that day.

One of the things I really like about Tinderbox is that the DIY ethos of it means that you can make something as simple or complex as you like, and — even more importantly — you don’t have to decide exactly how something should be set up from the start. Once I’d been using the setup I described above for a few days, I realised that it would be nice to collect my notes on articles I’d read in a separate place so that I could find them more easily. The infinitely flexible structure of notes meant that I didn’t have to create a different kind of note to do this, or even go back and edit my previous notes on reading. When I make notes on a paper I’ve read, I tend to first paste in the reference and the link to the entry from the Papers application, so that I can find the original article easily from my notes. So all I had to do was create another agent called ‘Reading’ which searched for notes with the string ‘papers://’ in them, which is the start of the Papers URI format. It would then assign ‘reading’ to the attribute ‘tags’ for that note. Also, by setting the tag manually to ‘reading’ I could get the Reading agent to find the note.

I set up something very similar for bookmarks, so that if I dragged a URL on to a note to remind myself of some online resource, it would be collected by the ‘Bookmarks’ agent. It’s important to note that these agents just store aliases of the original notes, so that all the originals are either in the Daybook container or the Completed tasks container. At any point, I could set up another agent or alter the existing ones, and view my notes in a different way.

Tinderbox has great text and HTML export capabilities, so I can export my journal for the day, week, month or whatever period I want, and it’s easy to view in other forms or reformat for other uses. And if I ever want to use something else, the file itself is XML, so I could still get my data out.

I’ve been having issues with comments on this blog for a little while. I love seeing people discuss things I’ve posted about and I think it adds immeasurable to the content of the blog. However, I’ve had a problem with spam comments for a little while. An Akismet plugin handled things well for a time, but recently I’ve been getting spam that seems to be manually entered, and superficially looks like a legitimate comment, so Akismet doesn’t catch it. This got so annoying that I turned on moderation, which has the dual drawback of making commenting much less immediate for legitimate commenters, and making it more of a hassle for me, because I have to regularly sort through the comments in the moderation queue. There has to be a better way.

I’ve been looking at third-party commenting systems, and came across Disqus. It basically handles comments for you instead of the built-in commenting system of your blogging software. I’m using the generic Javascript version because there isn’t a plugin for ExpressionEngine, and this has a few downsides in terms of how easy it is to integrate with old posts, but it seems to work OK. On older posts, you’ll see the previous comments left with the built in system, then the comment box provided by Disqus, with any new comments in a separate list. A little clunky, but I guess it will do until I work out how to make the appearance a bit more integrated. On new posts, you should just see the Disqus system.

There are some advantages for commenters: while you don’t have to sign up with Disqus to post comments (you can just fill in a name and email address — which will not be shown — as before), if you do sign up at some point, you can ‘claim’ all your comments. You can see all the comments you’ve made on all Disqus enabled sites in one place on your Disqus profile, and people can rate your comments so you gain ‘clout’. This blog also gains a Community Page here, where you can see all the recent comments on the site, subscribe to comments feeds and so forth, all from one place. From the point of view of me as an adminstrator, I just have one easy location to view all comments and moderate them, which might make things a bit easier.

I’m going to play it by ear for a few posts and see how it goes. Do play with the comments and let me know what you think of the system. I’m trying to strike a balance between an easy and transparent experience for legitimate commenters and making it harder for the spammers.

While listening to a Radio 4 documentary about The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain (TUOoGB), I remembered an article I wrote — wow — nearly four years ago about how cover versions of songs and remakes of films are very rarely as good as the original, and are frequently worse. It struck me that TUOoGB are pretty much a universal exception to that rule. They play a lot of cover versions, and by some kind of weird voodoo which breaks all known laws, they manage to make the songs you dislike great and the songs you like brilliant, but brilliant in a different way to the original.

For example, I can’t say that I’ve ever liked the theme to ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’, but when TUOoGB plays it, it’s a work of genius. I positively detest ‘Leaning on a Lampost’ in its original form by George Formby, but the Cossack version by TUOoGB is fantastic. Conversely, I love ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Kate Bush, but the Working Men’s Club Crooner version by TUOoGB is terrific. And if you haven’t heard their gentle, folk version of ‘Anarchy in the UK’, you haven’t lived. I don’t know how they do it, but I’m guessing that it involves sacrificing chickens somewhere along the line.

Do yourself a favour and check out their law-defying antics on BBC iPlayer before they take it down.

I attended the Baggs Memorial Lecture on Happiness at the University of Birmingham on Monday, which this year was given by the Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion. As memorial lectures go, the ‘Happiness Lecture’ is a quirky one. Thomas Baggs was born in Birmingham in 1889, and subsequently got a couple of degrees at the University. When he died, he left a bequest providing for an annual public lecture on happiness, specifically “Happiness — what it is and how it may be achieved by individuals as well as nations.” You could argue that a large sum of money would be better directed towards more directly practical purposes, but I love the fact that he left money for an academic lecture on happiness.

Andrew Motion started by saying that — while he was honoured to be asked to deliver the lecture — he did rather wonder whether someone on the committee had put his name forward for a dare. Poets are generally not renowned for their happiness, and he freely admitted that his own poems tended towards slight gloominess. Anyway, he did a great job, surveying the opinions of writers and philosophers throughout history about what makes people happy. He also — as you might expect given his profession — read a few poems illustrating his points. There were two in particular that I had never heard before and found completely ravishing. I love it when you hear or read a poem, and find some imagery that is totally unexpected and yet precisely captures the way you feel about something. I loved the following lines from ‘Postscript’ by Seamus Heaney and ‘Coming’ by Philip Larkin:

The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans

— Postscript by Seamus Heaney

A thrush sings,
Laurel-surrounded
In the deep bare garden,
Its fresh-peeled voice
Astonishing the brickwork.

— Coming by Phillip Larkin

Motion’s own opinion was that you find happiness through the fulfilment of other things like creativity. Thinking about it on the way home, I also think that you can’t find happiness directly. Like the pursuit of love, the pursuit of happiness is doomed to failure. Instead, (and like love) it tends to turn up when you are least expecting it, but you have to be open to its possibility and recognise it when it arrives.

I had a dream the other night in which Mr. Bsag and I had not long moved into a new house (in reality, the last house we lived in, not the present one). We were in bed, asleep, in the early hours of the morning, when we got a phone call. It was Ben and Mena Trott, of Movable Type fame, and Ben was crying. He told me that they were the previous occupants of the house, and — by some mischance — they had left the only remaining copy of the source code¹ of Movable Type on an old computer in the house. He pleaded with me to make a copy and send it to him, but I had to tell him that we had got rid of the computer when we moved into the house. He was inconsolable, and I felt really bad about it.

My subconscious is weird sometimes.

¹ Yes, I know that since everyone who uses Movable Type has the source code, this can’t possibly have been true, but it was a dream and therefore not big on logical consistency. ↑

I went to the zoo last week¹, and found that watching the humans watching the animals was almost as interesting (and upsetting) as watching the animals themselves. They have a snow leopard, and as I approached the enclosure, I noticed a young man in his late teens, with an emo-ish air about him. He was standing in front of the glass viewing window, palm pressed to the glass, intently watching the snow leopard following its endless track around the cage. He was looking at the cat with such deep sympathy and sorrow that my heart went out to them both. He saw me, gave me a brief, hunted look and went back to his vigil.

Passing the enclosure later in the day, I saw the same chap. He was now sitting on the ground, leaning against the cage — still looking in. In the week since going to the zoo, I’ve thought about Snow Leopard Man a few times, and hoped that he manages to work through his sadness somehow.

¹ For work purposes, actually, which made a nice change of pace and scenery. ↑

I’ve complained before about the poor quality of modern appliances, and the difficulty of getting them repaired, and on occasions I’ve deliberately chosen items because I know that spare parts were available. When I bought a Dyson vacuum cleaner several years ago, it was partly for the performance (which is great), and partly because they promised to be easy to repair.

We had to put that to the test recently, when our trusty Dyson cut out and failed to power on again. We investigated the many inspection hatches for any blockages, and washed the reusable filter, but it wouldn’t turn on again. Luckily, we have a vacuum repair centre fairly close to us, and they are authorised Dyson distributors. The guy in the shop asked what had happened, and was confident they’d be able to fix it. A day later, our purple and green friend had a new power cable (which had developed a break inside the body of the machine), a few other worn parts were replaced, and it had a general service. The result is that our Dyson is working again, and we only had to pay a reasonable charge for the repair, rather than the full cost of a new one. There’s also one less hunk of garish plastic in landfill.

I wish more manufacturers put thought in to making their products easy to repair, and provided a supply of easily obtainable spare parts.

This is something I meant to post about ages ago, but forgot about. Via Denyerec, I read an article which suggested that going barefoot is healthier for your feet. It’s a long article, but an interesting one, and confirms a suspicion I’ve had for a long time that shoes — even sensible ones — constrain your feet and make you walk in an unnatural way. The conclusion seemed to be that heavily padded shoes make people plant their heels down much harder than they would with bare feet, thus placing more stress on all the joints of the leg. With no heel or sole padding — after a period of adjustment — people walk in a more fluid, softer way, placing the heel gently and rolling smoothly from the heel to the forefoot. Walking without shoes can also improve stability by allowing you to sense the form of the substrate, adjusting your balance and grip with small changes in the shape of the foot and the force applied.

I enjoy going barefoot when I can, because I love the sensation of the variety of textures under my soles. However, the local pastime around our way seems to be smashing glass bottles, so I usually only go barefoot at home or in the garden. When I first went to Brazil, I was amazed by the guides going barefoot in the forest, given that there were so many thorny branches and spiky leaves on the ground. Most people in the rural areas go barefoot most of the time, and our guide said he preferred to do so in the forest because he could move quietly. He did indeed move silently, while the rest of us clumped and rustled along like a herd of heffalumps¹ in our heavy boots, despite trying to walk quietly. His soles were as tough as leather from all the barefoot walking.

Denyerec linked to some ‘barefoot’ shoes made by Vibram called FiveFingers, which have an extremely thin, unpadded sole (just a thin layer of rubber to keep your feet clean and protect you from sharp stuff), and allow you to move each toe independently. They look intriguing, and I’d love to try a pair. I think that your feet would probably hurt like mad for a couple of days as they got used to the lack of padding and you changed the way you walked, then they’d feel wonderful. Has anybody got a pair? If so, what are they like?

¹ I nearly wrote ‘elephants’, but elephants move almost silently, except when pushing trees over. ↑

My parents live in a very suburban part of Surrey¹, but they have always attracted a lot of wildlife to their garden. They have plenty of bird feeders and get a wide variety of avian visitors, and they’ve seen foxes regularly for a number of years. Recently, however, they’ve been getting species that you don’t usually associate with suburban gardens, like roe deer. The foxes have also been getting tamer (probably partly because my parents and some of their neighbours put out food for them), and they spend a lot of time relaxing in the garden during daylight hours, rather than visiting at night just to grab some food.

I visited at the weekend, and saw their latest wild/tame fox. It comes right down to the bottom of the garden, near the house, and lounges around on the lawn. You can go outside and stand a few metres away from it, and it just carries on with what it is doing. I went out and took some photographs here and here, and it more or less ignored me. I love watching wild animals, and it’s a real privilege when a wild animal carries on with its life while you watch from close quarters. It came over to collect some of the dog food, then went and buried a few pieces in a nearby flower bed. I don’t think it would be there when it went back for it later, because there were a couple of magpies nearby, carefully noting where the food was stored. Apparently, the magpies often try to steal its food, but it cleverly waits calmly until my Dad comes outside and scares the magpies off, then goes back to feeding. It’s certainly not malnourished and has the sleek, well-fed look of a pampered, Stockbroker Belt fox.

¹ Well, most of Surrey is very suburban, to be fair. ↑

I’ve just signed up to a new service (currently in beta, natch) called blippr. You’ve probably already guessed from the missing ‘e’ that blippr is a social web service. It offers ‘Radically Short Ratings and Reviews’ for books, films, games and music. The idea is that you ‘blip’ items, rating them on a four-point scale and writing a short review if you like. It’s a little like Twitter in that you only get 160 characters for your reviews, which is both a good and bad thing. If I really like something, I want more space than that to write about it, but on the other hand, I often put off writing about stuff I listened to, watched or read in my media section, because it will take too long to write a full review.

The real benefit is that — when a few more people have signed up — it should provide a great way for people with tastes you admire to recommend things you would probably enjoy. I’ve also started using it as a wishlist to note down things I’d like to get see, read or listen to. I tend to read reviews and get interested in something, then forget to note it down anywhere.

I’ve only just started using it, but it’s interesting so far. My profile is here, and if you’d like to try blippr for yourself, I have 3 invitations to give away.

I’m a bit of a pen fanatic. I love all kinds of pens and pencils, from gel pens to fountain pens and mechanical pencils. When I went to Japan (a wonderful country for pen fanatics) a couple of years ago, I bought a Zebra brilliant multi-pen, which had black, blue, red and green ballpoints in it. I’ve used it a lot, so the ink has almost run out, and I couldn’t find any suitable refills for it. Multi-pens are often a little more bulky than single colour ones, but I love the convenience of having multiple colours with only one pen to carry around. One thing the Japanese Zebra pen lacked, though, was a pencil.

I’ve just got another Zebra multipen — the Airfit 2+S pictured above — which has a black and red ballpoint and a mechanical pencil. It has seen heavy service recently with all the marking I’ve been doing. I like to write comments on the scripts in red (sometimes a lot of red), and comments on the mark sheet in black. I write the actual mark in pencil until I’ve had a chance to check all the scripts again and make sure that I haven’t had a moment of idiocy and misjudged a paper. The Airfit is great for this, because I can just use one pen and click between the functions. It makes me feel like some kind of marking superhero, which — half way through a stack of scripts of a certain height — is absolutely vital to my mental health.

The pen is a bit slimmer than my old Zebra because it has 3 functions rather than 4, and you rotate the barrel to select the function, which has a nice positive feel. Both the ballpoints and the mechanical pencil are of good quality, and I know I can get refills.

Recently, our cat Cleo has developed a couple of obsessions:

Obsession 1 - the airing cupboard: We have an airing cupboard on the upstairs landing, housing the hot water tank, clean towels and a variety of cat-trapping voids and spaces. She has never shown a lot of interest in the cupboard until now, but suddenly it seems to have become her aim in life to get in there against all odds. As soon as you open the door, she appears from nowhere, desperately trying to get into the cupboard. Unfortunately we have to open the door a few times a day, because the only way to turn off the hot water coming out of the shower is to use the stopcock in the airing cupboard (it’s a long story). Since we don’t want Cleo in the cupboard because of the aforementioned clean towels and cat-trapping voids, we regularly have a fun few minutes wrestling with a squirming cat while soaking wet from the shower and trying to preserve our dignity with a towel.

Obsession 2 - Springwatch: Yes, that Springwatch. Again, she’s never shown much interest in the TV before, but as soon as the birds turned up on Springwatch last night, she was stalking the TV, ending up sitting on the bench a few centimetres away from the screen, batting at the giant coal tit chicks on the webcam, and even — in one highly inappropriate moment — Bill Oddie’s crotch. We saw most of the programme obscured by a furry, feline outline, then when it ended she gave a brief chirrup and wandered off to sleep.

I’ve been getting a fair bit of spam slipping through Akismet’s fingers recently, so I’ve decided to turn comment moderation on and see how it goes. Please feel free to comment as usual, but remember that your comment won’t show up immediately. If you are a spammer, your comment won’t turn up at all!

I watched an interesting programme last night which found out what happened to people who had participated in some documentaries in the 1970s: “What Happened Next?” This episode caught up with a group of people who lived like Iron Age people for a whole year. They built their own roundhouse out of timber, thatch and wattle and daub, milked their own goats and ate gritty soaked wheat for breakfast. In contrast to modern reality shows, the focus of the original documentary seemed to be on exploring the processes involved rather than the personalities. It was more like a year-long experimental archeology experiment, rather than a reality show. There was a bit of conflict between one family and the rest of the participants, but other than that, they seemed to get on quietly with the required work without creating any fuss.

It was quite an impressive achievement, really. They did have some training from experts, but they turned their hands to house building, milking, blacksmithing, fishing, butchery and basket weaving, among other skills. They lived as comfortably as you can do as an Iron Age person, and they had enough to eat — if a rather boring diet. The participants went on to do a variety of things, from special needs teaching to software engineering, but all seemed to take away a certain confidence and competence from their experience. It must be quite comforting to know that — if the worse came to the worse — you have the skills to survive in quite a primitive environment. One of the participants said something to the effect that Iron Age people and modern people are the same: we all use our skills to the best of our abilities in the environment in which we live.

One thing that made me laugh was the obvious lack of Health and Safety involvement in the original documentary. People wobbled at the top of fragile looking ladders while handling huge logs, wood was trimmed with a billhook towards the person helping to hold the timber, and in a memorable scene which made me cringe every time I saw the trailer, a naked man used a chisel while propping one foot up on a bit of wood. I’m quite surprised that they still had all their bits attached at the end of the year.