north5

I should update this more often.

So, what've I been doing since October? Er, you don't want to know all that. Ask questions if you want specifics. In general: still alive.

More recently, the three of us had an excellent holiday in the North East, up in Seahouses. Beaches, bracing sea air - we showed Owain the sea for the first time, he was very impressed. The holiday had a theme of National Trust properties being closed, so we _saw_ a number of places without actually going in many.

On Friday we went up to my mums in Dumfries for a flying visit - then on Saturday drove over to Durham for the banquet, leaving O with my mum for the first time! Something of a nerve-wracking experience, but we had a fantastic banquet and didn't want to leave at midnight (unfortunately we had to or O would have turned into a pumpkin. Or something.) To those we saw there, I wish we'd been able to hang around for longer and talk bollocks into the early hours as we normally do. Alas, Dumfries and my first born son beckoned instead.

After those mammoth treks across the A69 we drove home on Sunday, clocking up 960 miles in under a week.

Owain's been a bit poorly, he's had a cough and a wheeze for over a week now. He was sleeping badly when we were on holiday but he had a good night last night, so hopefully he's on the mend. Other than that he's still fantastic - everyone should have one.

I've discovered MJ Hibbet, thanks to a link from b3ta. His latest album is excellent and surprisingly uplifting and I encourage you all to watch the vid and buy the album (it's on iTunes). It's cheered me up driving home from work.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that one of Owain's ultrasound scans was turning up on the second page of Google Images if you type in "baby". One quick flirt with Google Ads later and I am now earning an average of over a dollar a day from random visitors. Woohoo! Who said having a baby costs money?

In other news, the Viper Faction website is now a wiki.

More Blu-Ray vs HD DVD ramblings on the radio this morning, with an inevitable comparison with VHS vs Betamax in the 80s. But isn't all this a bit of a nonsense? Blu-Ray will never dominate the market as VHS did - surely in three years time we'll be downloading all our films, and storing them on hard drives in whichever format we fancy.

In other news, now is a great time to order your white poppies. Turnaround is very quick at the moment, ours arrived within three days.

Gosh, it's been a while since I updated this.

In short: Still a dad, still surprised to find a baby in my bedroom each morning, still finding the whole experience fantastic and delightful.

In slightly longer, we've been on holiday in the Lake District, to show Owain some real hills. We went on some walks with the sling, had several al-fresco nappy changes, and got rained on a bit. And I found a little man in a nappy.

There's probably more - well, of course there is, it's been two thirds of Owain's life since I updated last. But it's mostly about babies.
If you'd like to know more questions are invited from the audience.

Last night a bolt of lightning landed spectacularly close to our house. I don't think it was a direct hit but it was very close. It didn't give us super powers (that we've noticed, anyway) but it does seem to have screwed a few things up.

For one, the magnets on our telly have become misaligned. As of last night there was a green swath across one corner, and a red blob beside it. It took me a while to realise as the big brother contestants have been looking a bit ill lately anyway.

Then I noticed that Hampton53 wasn't working - I couldn't access it via wap from my phone. It was still on, and I feared that it'd been completely wiped. Also our wireless connection dropped like a dead horse. H53 wouldn't reboot at first, but when it finally booted up it was intact.

However, it appears my wireless router has not been so lucky. Wireless connectivity is working, but ethernet connectivity is patchy and unreliable. Most importantly, however, DSL just isn't working at all. I have no idea why, the lights are blinking and nobody's home.

I dug out my old broadband USB modem, only to find that H53's USB ports weren't working either. *sigh*

Still, it's quite cool to be able to say that my websites are down because of a lightning strike. Maybe Zeus disapproves of cotton nappies.

Anyone think my router is salvageable? Any ideas? And can lightning really do that to a telly?

I found it something of a liberating experience, going to a supermarket with only £1.11 in my pocket. Admittedly I didn't need anything - other than maybe a little extra lunch - this wasn't a weekly shop for a family of six. I mused idly on how much a quid can buy you in Tescos.

A four-pack of doughnuts or chocolate cornflake cups would have nearly wiped me out. An impulse packet of peanuts or carton of smoothie was denied me. I went for a punnet of cherry tomatoes, for 79p. Next I weighed a single pear, wondering if I could afford two. At £1.29 / kg, I guessed one would cost between 20p and 30p, so one was in, but not a pair. I briefly wondered if I could find something for 5p which would be worth the risk, but despite a plethora of offers and bogofs, there was little to tempt me.

At the checkout the pear weighed 160g, and cost 21p. A neat pound. This left me with 11p which I dropped into a charity box.

It's a good pear.

Say hello to Owain James MacLeod!

http://www.north5.org.uk/photos/060713-owain1/dscn0413.jpg
http://www.north5.org.uk/photos/060713-owain1/dscn0415.jpg

(Officially more photogenic than his dad when sleeping)

All still doing well, thank you so very much for all your congratulations and good wishes. I hope you'll all get a chance to meet him soon.

In other news, Muconium may sound like a transformer but is actually something quite different.

So, at 7.15 yesterday morning Cathryn's waters broke ... exactly three weeks early.

To cut a short story short, at 7.03 this morning she delivered a healthy baby boy, weighing in at 6lb 5oz. Cathryn was an absolute star during the labour and is now in hospital with our son while I dash off to pick up the car seat we didn't think we'd need for a while yet.

The three of us are all tired, but very, very happy. More will follow, watch this space.

:)

I was genuinely shocked, scared and delighted when that void ship opened. The series has been patchy but that one was grand. The best ones have been the serious 2-parters. We should have more of them, and even some longer plotlines. If we get a new series.

On Saturday we spent a very pleasant hour and a half lounging in the paddling pool in the garden, which was just slightly spoiled when I found my phone in my pocket. Amazingly it's nearly working, except that the battery is completely dead and it doesn't stay on long enough to connect to the network or anything.

Carpet fitters are in my house right now laying carpet. I hope it's nice.

And we bought nappies! Made of, bizarrely, bamboo. I think this makes them kind of like samurai armour.

I've always assumed that if I was actively involved in the process of squeezing out another human being from inside myself, having slightly smoother legs would be among the last of my concerns. But mavistroll and I were the only ones in the class to laugh when she suggested we keep a packet of Veet in the birthing bag, because "an epidural is an excellent opportunity for a pain-free waxing".

Feel free to tell me I'm badly wrong, of course.

One of the many funny things about Big Brother is reading those middle-class commentators who really, really want to talk about it - but can't admit to lowering themselves to watching it, and have to conjure convoluted explanations for having seen it (presumably while channel-flicking between BBC 4 documentaries or something). Embrace the house, secret watchers!

I am half asleep. Lunchbreaks should be spent lying on the grass in the sun reading ancient epics and slowly dozing off to the sound of distant thunder.

No, let me revise that - the whole day should be spent like that. Lunchbreaks should be spent snacking on fresh-fallen fruit before getting back to some serious Virgil-inspired napping.

For now I shall have to content myself with the former.

In other news, I know significantly more about laying laminate flooring than I did at the start of the weekend. But still not very much at all.

... to the Face of Baby.

Yesterday I realised that we are now due next month which was a shock.

Our first anti-natal class last night was a bit rubbish, she rambled on somewhat about drugs and that was mainly it. We were also told that epidurals were only for the weak, bad mums and unproven chinese herbal medicines are big and clever. Nice unbiased teaching there.

We were the sniggering naughty kids at the back of the class comparing the effects and administration of gas-and-air to that of ganja.

( Bah, my server got h4xx0red. )

Lots of other things have happened recently that I started to write up but only got half way through before posting:
- I yam a plumb0r and have fitted a new central heating pump, which was more complicated than it could have been. I successfully siphoned something! Yay 3500 year old technology.
- Central heating water tastes bad.
- Josh Ritter live in London was absolutely excellent. Really, really good.
- His support was a bit rubbish.
- Croquet in the rain is big and clever. It was great to see people in London.
- The last episode of Green Wing was brilliant.
- Big Brother is excellent as always.

Today's Order of the Stick: I've updated my Hayley spoiler page at http://www.north5.org.uk/al/oots.txt . What should complete the last sentence? Answers on a postcard.

I wish the Viper plot team used cyphers that were that easy. Bastards.

We've got shiny new windows, and big new patio doors! We can now get into our garden! Yay for a lawn in the summer. However they're directly underneath the hot water tank's overflow pipe which is now almost constantly leaking. The ballcock switch is firmly corroded on and I may to need to replace the entire tank. Is this as difficult as it sounds?

I'm jealous of mavistroll who keeps feeling the baby moving. We should come to some sort of timeshare arrangement.

Aaah, the close bonding and camaraderie between gamers on this little internet of ours.

http://www.stynet.co.uk/blog/archives/20

(Edit: if you get bored of the comments at the start skip to the fun bit at 2 mins in)

Lunchtime trip to Cannon Park Shopping Centre.

- 6 packets of dog chews (with added flouride)
- 1 half-pint clay goblet (with handle)
- 2 tester pots of Wilkos' own brand paint ("Happy Yellow"; 2 for a quid)
- 1 piece of psuedo-incan tat (with lid)
- 6 gold bangles (second hand, naff)
- 1 punnet of baby plum tomatoes (for lunch)

In my "top twenty reasons to be a larper" the shopping lists would be pretty high.

Maelstrom is now only a week and a half away. Time to hit the sewing machine.

I normally don't post memes, but the answer to number 7 made me laugh.

( Number 18 is quite good too. )

I may have overdosed on peanuts this afternoon.

I spent this weekend mainly moving rubble.

( Delta vee )

So much for our game of Thirty Years War which was "going to end in a draw".

Suffice to say the Swedish invasion of the Spanish Netherlands wasn't quite the Protestant nuke that I hoped it was going to be. Al is, in all probability, los0r.