29th September 2011: to infinity and a tree!

Buzz?

 

He looks a bit like a source of cryptic wisdom, sitting up there (this is slightly higher than head height, for reference). Quoth the plastic head, and so forth… To Infinity And A Tree!

28th September 2011: Doppler kitty

What’s black and white and red all over?

This cat, making a bid for freedom, thanks to the Doppler shift.*

After carrying around a large, uncomfortable looking lump over her right eye for several months, she does seem to have perked up a lot now that it’s been removed.  Unfortunately, all that newfound energy is directed towards the single goal of getting out of the house.  The vet instructed us to keep her indoors for ten days.  She actually got out of the door yesterday, despite everyone being extra careful, and had to be hunted up and down the neighbours back gardens.  At least she’s doing her bit to build up the local community, I suppose?

* She also approaches infinite mass as she skates out the door, but given her existing density that doesn’t make as much of a difference as you might think.

27th September 2011: out of time

This archway has lost itself a bit in time.  It is surrounded by modern high rise office buildings, and you can only get to it by going down fairly well hidden side paths.  Someone has put in all sorts of silvery swish modern furnishings around – but added flowerbeds full of lavender just out of shot.  It’s an odd mixture of old and new.

I wonder what the architect of the old building would think of the modern ones?

26th September 2011: skyfish

While my boyfriend is having boring, humdrum sort of experiences like visiting Bangkok for work, I have on the other hand been fortunate enough to be sent to an exotic and entrancing place – Reading!  And in Reading I found these skyfish.  They might not be quite a good as the skyfish from Doctor Who, but they are making the effort and I feel it should be recognised.

25th September 2011: ninja!

Ninjas rock.  Yes.  Yes they do.

24th September 2011: paint your own

It’s a bit sloppy, since I was making it up as I went along, but I’m glad to have finally painted the mug and bowl that have been sitting around in a box for yonks. Now I can fret endlessly over whether someone is going to accidentally scrub the paint off!

The mug is supposed to have a sailing ship and a space ship, but since I didn’t have any black pain the space ship has proven generally unidentifiable to third parties.

23rd September 2011: contemplation

This is how I spent my Friday off (no, I didn’t turn into a cat, I just lazed about all day). There is something rather delicious about doing nothing, especially when you haven’t for a while.

22nd September 2011: treacle lady

Did you know it’s hard to draw with treacle dribbles on flour?  Well, it’s hard to draw with treacle dribbles on flour.  This was a sketchy picture of a woman, but in the time it took me to grab my camera, she started losing consistency and slipping away into the melted butter underneath.

The chocolate cake came out well, though.

21st September 2011: Turing and a new toy

I was chatting to this mystery girl last night about her new toy, which is deeply thrilling to her, and this photo captured that little smirk of ownership so well that I got her permission to share it with the interwebs.

Looking at it this morning, however, it’s not her face that jumps out at me.  It’s the apple logo – and the story behind it.

Most people who are techy or historical minded have probably heard of Alan Turing. For those who haven’t, his impressive biography is on Wikipedia here. He was instrumental both in the British WWII code-cracking efforts at Bletchley Park and, beyond that, in the development of computer science and the modern computer.  If it weren’t for Turing, I wouldn’t be here writing this blog and you wouldn’t be here reading it.  And, not incidentally, we might both be not-here in German.

This is where the tragedy comes in. Alan Turing was a brilliant scientist and highly respected, but he also had a boyfriend.  Guess which personal detail weighed more heavily with the police in the 1950s? When the situation was drawn to the attention of the authorities (because Turing himself had to mention it to report a break-in at his house to the police) he was charged with ‘gross indecency’, lost his security clearance and lost his job. Rather than go to prison, he agreed to a course of hormone treatment. And then one June morning in 1954 he was found dead, with a half eaten apple beside him.  The cause of death was cyanide poisoning.

Apparently nobody ever tested the apple, but the idea that Turing deliberately laced it with cyanide has a strong mythic echo and – who knows – might be true. At any rate, there is another popular myth (which Wikipedia has just told me is untrue) that the apple logo was designed to honour Alan Turing. It seems puzzling that any company making computers could accidentally pick a rainbow-striped half-eaten apple as a logo, but apparently that is what happened (link to Wikipedia again).

It always matter, I suppose, what original intentions were. I always think of Alan Turing when I see the apple logo – and now, I hope, you will too.

20th September 2011: audit crackernuts

Once upon a time, there was an auditor who had always worked for a kind and understanding manager.  The time came, however, when the office reorganised its staff and a new manager joined the team, bringing with her another auditor who was her favourite protege.

It soon became clear that the new manager, despite working well with the rest of the team, was terribly jealous of her pet auditor’s reputation. Before long, she realised that the first auditor was serious competition, and she hatched a plot to bring her down.

This manager had been in the office for many years, and she had made many contacts. She now visited ITRC and pulled in some favours to have evil programs downloaded on the first auditor’s computer, so that whatever happened it would show nothing but a rather unsavoury picture of a sheep’s head. The auditor could in no way get rid of the sheep’s head, and she was unable to leave the office or go to the client, and was distressed.

Now the new manager’s pet auditor was not in fact a bootlicking toady but a bright young woman who worked well with the whole team.  She loved eating nuts, and would bring bags of hazelnuts to work and crack them on the table whereever she went, so she was soon affectionately known to all as Audit Crackernuts. When she realised that her colleague’s computer had been struck down, she was suspicious of the manager who had pulled similar tricks before.  So she went to her colleague and said “stick with me, and if you can, use my computer.  I don’t think the same thing will happen to it.” She also asked around and managed to get both of them assigned to a different team with a new client.

Now this client was an extremely rich and powerful business with a troubling problem: the star of the accounting team had recently fallen ill and was acting oddly. At the first meeting the director explained that it should be possible to peform a minimum defensible audit without worrying about this.  Audit Crackernuts was not satisfied, and asked if there was any way she could help resolve the situation. The director harrumphed, and said that he didn’t mind her trying. “However,” he added, “you aren’t the first and I doubt you’ll be the last.  If you can help the poor lad by all means do, but be aware that if you waste time over this we will have to make a negative report back to your office, which could have consequences for your career.”

Audit Crackernuts was not daunted, and if I had time this morning I would explain exactly how she rescued the star accountant from the grips of that time sink, HR. However, you will have to take it from me that he was rescued and that Crackernuts found a way of removing the sheep’s head from her colleague’s computer at the same time.  And all the while she was casually cracking nuts on the desk, and sharing them with her friends.