August 2003 Archives

Lovely, relaxing, sunny!! We lazed on sun loungers on the sea front, ate nik naks, were foiled by the microwave and read and slept lots. Photos here.

Here are the maps and scribbles from dinner with Stef 'n' Kay, Nico and Lara.
- Santiago to Puerto Montt
- Chilo

mmmm, Monday lethargy after a lovely, lazy weekend, mainly spent reading and vegging. Just what the doctor ordered after a busy, and relatively stressful week at work

Yesterday was more relaxing than Saturday. We went to the Ritzy in Brixton to watch "Roger Dodger", which I thoroughly enjoyed. Earlier, after browsing papers on the balcony over breakfast, I'd gone to Battersea library and got a stack of books out in readiness for the bank holiday weekend. Ended up devouring the trashy chick-lit novel in a day (One-hit Wonder, by Lisa Jewell).

Saturday wasn't quite to relaxing, featuring a futile hunt for curtain/roman blind fabric for Phil on Saturday afternoon. I ended up feeling shattered, which didn't really wear off until we got to Sue's birthday drinks up in Belsize Park. Really really didn't want to go, but felt I should make the effort, and I'm glad that I did, although I was a complete zombie on the way up there. Great pub - The Garden Gate - with beer garden, about 10 mins walk from Belsize Park tube.

Phil's sister, Sue, is off to the Falkland Islands for a year to work as a reporter/presenter on Falklands Radio - although I've googled for it and can't find the correct name..... the closest I get is the Falklands News portal.

How cool is that?

I got a subtle rebuke from the director of personnel about the length (or lack of!) of my skirt yesterday... which was rather bad timing as I was at Phil's overnight so had to wear it again on today.

And of course, she saw me, clattering down the stairs into the canteen at lunchtime. Sod's law!!! No fall out so far, aside form the stern glare I got during my none-too-subtle descent.

You would have thought that now I'm using Sparkly on an almost daily basis, for whittering on at the world and boring it with photos of my friends, family and social life, that'd I'd be ultra-diligent about making sure I kept my domain registration up-to-date.

Well, I was, and then again, I wasn't, and James came to the rescue, as he so often does, for so many people. For a moment on Tuesday, I thought that I'd lost Sparkly. It felt awful. I won't let happen again.

So, from now on, 12 August is not only "The Glorious 12th", it's also mine and Sparkly's wedding anniversary, to be celebrated every year with a renewal of vows and domain registrations, and a bottle of gin to JPC.

Matt emailed me yesterday for a bit of a nostalgia exchange, and mentioned that there had been an article on The Witch of Agnesi in New Scientist a few weeks back... My NS days being far behind me, I was all set to search the NS online for it, and failing that (or if it required a paid subscription), the magazine in Barbican or Battersea library.

Today, Matt sent me the link to the article, and I've made use of the free trial subscription to take a look at it.... why? just to see if it bore any passing similarities to my prize-winning degree project (no hiding my light under bushel here!). It does, but not more so than the University of St Andrews' / MacTutor History of Mathematics archive entries for the Witch of Agnesi and Maria Gaetana Agnesi. I've never found out whether that made use of my project or not. It certainly doesn't pre-date it.

For those still reading, the article details are as follows:
Magazine section: Grapevine
Title: The word the witch of agnesi
New Scientist vol 178 issue 2399 - 14 June 2003, page 51

And another thing Matt-the-microbiologist mentioned was that he is about to go on a Perl programming course.... this explains why.

Exactly as it sounds. Tom, Barney, Rosa, Phil and I have an fantastic weekend of fun and sun and swimming and splashing with the family Madgwick in their idyllic New Forest abode.

The photos don't really do it justice.

I picked up a broadcast email update from her today.

It reminded me that I need to scan in the Chile map notes I made at Stef and Kay's Chile planning dinner last week. Nico and Lara were a fount of useful information. I can't wait to go:

89 days and counting.....

There's a "Sold" sign outside No 71. I can't tell if it's Fiona's or Claire's, but it's a Haart sign, and I can't find it on the Haart website. Fiona had hers on the market though Woodland Payne... and according to their website it's Under Offer. So maybe it is hers.....

August is filling up, met Lindsey for a drink/dinner last night, and shared a lovely chilled bottle of Rosé provided by Glyn back at mine, saw Jess the night before, have a night off tonight (after TopShop skirt shopping), and tomorrow Phil and I are going to dinner with Stef 'n' Kay and Stef's chilean mate, Nico, for a Chile/South America planning and plotting evening.

Friday pitches me straight into a weekend with Tom, Barney and Rosa - Jo's escaping to Brussels for the weekend with Ali - and we're off to the Magic Madgwicks in the New Forest. Phil's coming too, which is *lovely*. Only fly in the ointment is Tom and Jo's car was stolen last night, as they slept....

I'm now the proud owner of a Nokia 6610. After much deliberation and prevarication and declaimings of the horror of learning the red/green phone interface (grrrr), CarphoneWarehouse persuaded me to trade in my trusty 3330 and to pay and extra £9.99 to get the 6610, which I've had since last Thursday. Call it my End of July Present).

But I'm smitten! Not by the polyphonic ring tones, nor by the colour screen. Not even by the FM radio... but by the fact it synchs with Outlook!! No more dual maintenance of phone numbers! Email addresses on my phone! The Revo's heading for eBay, and I've just rationalised my ancient collection of Contacts. The only tricky part if moving from the old familiar Phil G Mob to Phil Gyford's mobile number icon, which doesn't (yet) feel quite right.

And is dad "Dad", or "Geoff Loosemore"??

I've been without personal email for a week or so - just couldn't download any new mail from the end of last week onwards - it just stuck resolutely at downloading the first mail, but nothing ever came through. It dawned on me that that's a sign of a massive email, but emails to the usual helper-outers came to naught - everyone's on holiday!

Phil suggested I see if there was any way to limit the size of incoming mail, so that I only pick up emails less than 100 KB, and thankfully I did unearth that part of Outlook, and it worked! Still can't pick up via popmail/yahoo, which leaves me email-less at work (well, other than my Simmons' address) - agony!! Hopefully M/T will sort it out tonight. Not sure whether to scold the offending sender or not.

It's a pain that lots of my mail recently ahs been spam. Far, far more than I've ever received hitherto. Bummer - looks like I'm on the lists, from which there is No Real Escape. That's a real bummer.

Saw Myles on Friday - drank lots of beer and talked about his jacking in his job at 3 and heading to NZ to suss out work/life opportunities in September. Spent Sat a.m. gently working through a smallish hangover, courtesy of Friday night's Phuket/Fuckit beer and Deuchars IPA (how do you pronounce that??), until Rachel and Carl arrived at 6ish, at which point we started on the white wine and beers, soaking up the sun on the roof terrace. They stayed over, and after a lazy morning they headed home lunchtime-ish. I spent the afternoon recovering/sleeping on the roof terrace again, until Phil came round and we leapt into (in)action - more roof terrace reading, shorts hemming and TV watching (Big Brother Winner, One Week On followed by Six Feet Under).