May reading

Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut, one of the best sci-fi novels I've ever read. 5/5.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Lost takes a lot of plot themes from this book. A Plane crash, a beast, two leader like figures going head to head. Quite a dark story. 4/5.

I've been trying to write lately and failing. I've started reading Vonnegut short stories and have Gulliver's travels to start,

New Greenhouse

Everything went in today. Only the door needs attention.

Check out my raised bed I built from the wood that came as packaging with the greenhouse. I filled it with gherkins and a few yellow courgettes. We have sixteen grow bags in there.

Two steps from hell

I have discovered epic orchestral trailer music.

Two Steps From Hell - Am I Not Human? Somewhat featured in the new tron trailer.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MRdSAU7gbc?wmode=transparent]

Two Steps From Hell - Freedom Fighters. Star Trek Trailer.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHnlZFy2smQ?wmode=transparent]

Two Steps From Hell- Heart Of Courage. From I am Legend movie I think. Very epic towards end.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXGtKx2IIp4?wmode=transparent]

Park

More black & whiteness.??

River

Sunny day

Took a few photos and made some pancakes outside with family. Ate them with ice cream.

Also started digging for an old buried well.

Courgettes planted

Spent all day on the allotment. Planted out courgettes, and a few pumpkins and marrows.

Hop yard

Three hop bines are now over 6ft.

Second picture shows the amount of string that is running everywhere.

Planted runner beans outdoors

Greenhouse is full, so I'm kicking a few beans out. See how they go.

Marks has got a new greenhouse coming in two weeks. 8 by 12ft. Big.

Ying Yang Beans

Sowed these today.

burn burn burn

They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"

Pumpkin bed prepared

Weed??barrier and some wood chip. I want a??giant??this year using "hundredweight" variety pumpkin seeds.??

Ubuntu Desktop

Bottom app is docky.

What's in my (messy and ancient) greenhouse

[wpvideo xyGxSKuI]

Second attempt at uploading a video to posterous.

Installed Ubuntu Lucid Lynx

Took me awhile to get it working due to a newer version of GRUB -which I took for granted as always working.

My reason for going through boot loader hell was to look at Ubuntu's new 'me menu' and look at Gnome improvements.
The me menu is just a front end to empathy and gwibber. Ubuntu's Gnome is slower than I remember, way more sluggish and unresponsive than Debian Lenny Gnome environment. All that said, the colour scheme is nice -no more brown.

I think this is the first big distribution I've installed where gimp isn't installed by default. Which is odd and not helpful.

Nvidia Video drivers installed with ease.

Wanting a faster environment I set up lxde and compiz. Geekness.

Installed Ubuntu Lucid Lynx

Took me awhile to get it working due to a newer version of GRUB -which I took for granted as always working.

My reason for going through boot loader hell was to look at Ubuntu's new 'me menu' and look at Gnome improvements.
The me menu is just a front end to empathy and gwibber. Ubuntu's Gnome is slower than I remember, way more sluggish and unresponsive than Debian Lenny Gnome environment. All that said, the colour scheme is nice -no more brown.

I think this is the first big distribution I've installed where gimp isn't installed by default. Which is odd and not helpful.

Nvidia Video drivers installed with ease.

Wanting a faster environment I set up lxde and compiz. Geekness.

Start of may on the allotment

Spent the day on the allotment working in between showers with family. Helped clear an area of weeds and showed my little cousin how to do a proper bonfire -probably, next time, a little further away from the shed.

The apple trees have blossom now. The pumpkins are starting. The corn is about 12 cm's high and so too are the tomatoes and the weeds.

If anyone has an eye for fungi or magic mushrooms, what is the fungi growing in my corn toilet roll pots?

Sirens of Titan

Where has this book been all my life? Satire existentialism in space -where would Douglas Adams be without this book! Can't stress how awesome it is.

Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules ??? and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress.

A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.

??

This seems relevant today:

The state of mind on Earth with regard to space exploration was much like the state of mind in Europe with regard to exploration of the Atlantic before Christopher Columbus set out. There were these important differences, however: the monsters between space explorers and their goals were not imaginary, but numerous, hideous, various, and uniformly cataclysmic; the cost of even a small expedition was enough to ruin most nations; and it was a virtual certainty that no expedition could increase the wealth of its sponsors. In short, on the basis of horse sense and the best scientific information, there was nothing good to be said for the exploration of space.