Return of the Grauniad

Regular readers, should there be any, of these musings will be aware that I often quote from The Guardian newspaper. This is because I subscribe to it. Consequently that august organ of the press knows my address.

Imagine my surprise then to receive an email from said paper apologising for sending me another email that, they say, was sent by mistake because it relates to a competition open only to UK residents. My surprise was compounded in that I never received the original email.

There may be something sinister going on here, though I cannot quite see what. Or we are back to the modern equivalent of the glorious days of Garudian misprints, a regular source of hilarity in other popular journals during the 1960s (and 70s and probably well into the 90s). They erred by not sending me the first email and erred again by telling me that I no longer appear in the very country to which they nonetheless faithfully mail my subscription vouchers each quarter.

I now eagerly await a third email apologising for the second and explaining that as I am indeed eligible to join the competition, that the closing date was last Friday, and that only non-subscribers resident in Antarctica are eligible to enter. 

Having The Builders In

Few structures on Earth have inspired as many, and as widely diverse, theories about their construction than the Pyramids of Egypt. Scientific interest in them dates back to the turn of the 19c with the French expedition under Napoleon and yet experts (and plenty of non-experts) continue to find new information and to promulgate their own ideas about how and why they were built. Today we have something tangible (or perhaps I should say non-tangible) to add to the story, for a huge space has been detected in the middle of the Great Pyramid.

For those of who believe in the scientific method, (as opposed to the "Aliens did it" school of nutters), it is very satisfying that this finding came about through the application of hard science - in this instance using detectors to measure the frequency of muons (high energy and highly unstable fundamental particles) as they tore through the Pyramid interacting with the stable atoms of which it is composed. More of them got through in one part than in the rest, the giveaway sign that there was far less solid matter for them to collide with.

Until cameras can be inserted into the void, which appears to be above the Great Gallery that leads to the King's Chamber in the very heart of the Pyramid, it is not possible to say much more about it but there is no reason why one should not speculate.  So purely in the interests of science here is the likely explanation.

Scene: The Giza plateau approx 4,500 years ago. The Pharoah Khufu reclines under a shade contemplating the empty sands of the desert. Before him kneels a man holding a papyrus inscribed with many geometrical symbols.
Pharoah:  How goes your work, oh Imhotep my architect? Have the gods inspired you? Can you truly construct the magnificent mausoleum that will house my immortal spirit and thus defend Egypt for ever?
Imhoteop: Pretty good, pretty good your highness. The lads have put in an extra shift, managed to get the plans finished. Here, take a shufti
Pharoah: I see you have allowed for the chamber leading to my tomb, even as we spoke.
Imhotep: Yeah, yeah, it's all there, bit tricky working out how to put a bloody great gallery right in the middle of the pyramid without the roof falling in but a few extra bits of four by two, bit of stone to cover up them and it should look fine.
Pharoah: You have accomplished much. However my priests assure me that there is much that must accompany me to the afterlife. Many chariots, statues, vases, fine clothes and jars of wine, and all the treasures of my many conquests.
Imhotep: Yes.... it's always the same when you're moving house, isn't it, so much gear you suddenly realise that you've got stashed away and there are never enough camels when it comes to it.
Pharoah:  Where then, oh servant of the gods, whose very life hangs upon the merest flick of my finger, shall I store for eternity the necessary objects for my sustenance?
Imhotep: Well, seeing as how you put it that way, highness, perhaps me and the lads could put in a sort of loft conversion for you, knock out a bit in the middle, make good, few quick hieroglyphics to make it look nice, say five bags of gold for the lot, VAT not included?
Pharoah: Four bags including VAT. Or shall I summon my executioner?
Imhotep: Alright blimey, Four bags then. I'd better be getting on with it
Pharoah: Let it be so. And now, as Memphis United are playing away to Thebes Academicals, we shall take our leave.







 

Tinkling in the Goal Mouth

One of the more bizarre moments from today's sporting fixtures was undeniably to be found in the National League North football match between Bradford Park Avenue and Salford City. There are various reasons for a referee to send a player off, including a deliberate foul on an opponent with a clear chance to score, dangerous play and showing flagrant disrespect to the officials. But what on earth was going on in the Salford goal area towards the end of this match?

Tweets posted on Twitter this afternoon - Image manipulated a bit in order to fit onto this web page

Possibilities include:

• Too freely imbibing of the half-time tea. They serve it pretty strong up north, I believe.
• The play was so exciting the goalie couldn't cope.
• There was a really dry bit of turf at the side of the goal line that was really distressing him.
• It was for a bet.
• He was marking his territory.
• There was some badinage with the Bradford supporters massed behind his goal and somehow the phrase 'taking the piss' got taken literally
• Upset by taunts about him leaking goals, he decided to show he could leak something else

And so on. If you have any further suggestions do please write in to the Editor. He has no interest in sport and it will really wind him up.

Windows 10 - The Curse of the Error Message

I switched my pc on this afternoon, knowing that when it shut down a couple of days ago there were updates being installed, so I expected to receive the message that duly appeared to inform me that the completion of the process was taking place. Alas, having whizzed through the last ten per cent of installs it then mournfully put up the banner of failure

We couldn't complete the updates. Undoing changes. Don't turn off your computer

I have never had this one before. I did not turn off the computer but waited for a few minutes until a reboot. Then it told me it was applying updates again, then once more that they had failed. And it rebooted again. But this time the system started up normally.

After some minutes the little box at the bottom that warns if there are system messages came to life (was it shy, or waiting for me to calm down?) to tell me that the updates had failed and I should click for further information. Well, you know me, I'm a sucker for this sort of thing. So I clicked, and waited, and eventually up came more info telling me about a raft of successful system updates made a few days ago. And not a word about a failure.

So now I am baffled. What was it that failed to update? Will I get this all over again the next time I reboot? Why does the system tell me there are problems but not what the problems were or what the updates were that it was trying to install? Is this a game devised by some cunning mastermind at Microsoft HQ to see how many abusive emails they can receive?

Whilst waiting for the reboot processes to complete I checked out the internet on another device to see what others thought about this warning message. Depressingly, most of the so-called Microsoft Professionals advised making changes in Windows. None of them seemed to realised that a PC that is rebooting itself does not load Windows in a form that the user can manipulate, or alternatively that if Windows does load then the reboot issue has gone away (albeit it may return).

I hope I will not have to return to this topic.

Gone Fishing

A hard couple of days doing essential maintenance on the aquatic part of the estate [pond out the back: Ed]. Twenty years ago we put in a couple of baskets of snakegrass and of irises. Since then they have grown and spread, creating huge rootballs and great dollops of smelly mud, each generation of plants dying back to form a new layer of mulch for the next. Almost imperceptibly the plants had taken over more than half of the surface area and their weight was such that it was impossible to shift them. It was time to act.

Yesterday we managed to cut through the soft mud and remove it, piece by piece, until with some careful levering of a spade the rootballs could be freed and lifted. To my surprise the baskets were still there - I had assumed they must have rotted away long ago. Today we finished the job of clearing up and tomorrow I aim to take all the debris to the dump.

The final job is to put the fish back. They are slippery little blighters. Once we began cutting into the vegetation, the pond rapidly filled with filthy water and it was necessary to remove the fish. But because they hide under the plants, these had to be cleared first. This meant the water was so full of mud that nothing could be seen and the only way to catch the fish was to trawl around with a net or a bucket then inspect the contents as they were emptied. One by one, as I poured water into the drains, a flopping little body would emerge for me to decant into a fresh holding tank. I think I got them all in the end but I won't know for sure until they go back in.

We have been very fortunate with the weather. Last week we holidayed in the Black Forest (and very beautiful it was too) with average temperatures in the low teens. This weekend in the UK we are in the high teens, it hasn't rained and a touch of the low twenties is promised for Monday.