Chip's Place

Yesterday's venture outside of Yorkshire was to Castleton. It's right on the border between the limestone of the White Peak and the gritstone of the Dark Peak, so there's an interesting changeover in the landscape on either side of the village.

We started off with a fairly steep climb up Cavedale, which is very well hidden - you're walking through the village, turn a corner and suddenly you're in a steep limestone gorge. That was quite a vigorous climb, interrupted by Dom ringing me to ask if I could pick up some shelves from Oxfam in York within the hour (sorry Dom!)

Then a long walk over high pastures and along drystone-walled lanes till we got to the base of Mam Tor. I would have liked to climb up to the top - not really sure why we didn't. There was a glider doing circles around the top of the hill for ages - it was a very windy day.

Next down in to Blue John Cavern. This was not the most impressive cave I've ever been into, but I remember having wanted to go since I was about 8, when I was given a piece of bluejohn by some friends we were caravanning with.

Finally a precipitous path through bursts of heavy precipitation back down to the village. Despite how dark and heavy the clouds looked for much of the day, we only had those 5 minutes or so of rain till we got back nearly to York.

Sadly, we didn't find time to visit The Devil's Arse - maybe next time.

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I'd planned to start this post with a comment on how, after winning the Ackhorne quiz on Sunday, we only seem to win quizzes once in a blue moon, but as you can see from the link, I was wrong. Doesn't change the fact quiz victory seems quite a rarity though. (And technically we didn't really win - the team doing our marking added us up wrongly, but we neglected to say anything because we didn't think it would matter!)

Last night's Old White Swan quiz, the more normal one, was back to our usual near-miss. We came 5th, but would have won with just one more right answer in round 2. Oh well. Wouldn't have had much use for the prize anyway - instead of the usual monetary rewards, it was 24 cans of lager last night. I suppose I could have sold them on ... if I could have found someone who likes Carling.

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Since iasonas had a go at the Harry Potter - Myers Briggs quiz, I thought I should too. And what a surprise...


You are a RAVENCLAW!

As a Ravenclaw and as an NTP, you are intellectual,
independent, and value excellence in yourself
and others. You are naturally curious, and can
usually see many sides to the same argument or
issue. You are driven to acquire knowledge and
set very high standards for yourself and
others. You enjoy being challenged, and can
accept constructive criticism without taking it
personally. You are probably at least somewhat
unconventional, and will not usually follow
authority for its own sake; instead, you will
consider the issue at hand and make a decision
for yourself.


Hogwarts Sorting Hat: Based on Myers-Briggs Personality Typing
brought to you by Quizilla

Not entirely sure of the merits or reasons behind having to answer the same answer several times. (I've got half an idea - reckon it's his own answers overlaid on someone else's quiz with the results being processed slightly differently from the original quiz.)

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Greeks are superstitious about Tuesdays. I'm not actually sure how we got on to the topic, but Iasonas wasn't far off ringing his aunt in Greece at midnight (Greek time) to find out why last night. Now he knows.

He is also surprisingly well-read in the area of sex in toilets. What positions to use, what to do if the toilet paper runs out, how to avoid being heard, even where to attach the handcuffs! (I never used to have conversations like this with people I worked with. Not sure if that's more of a reflection on me or where I work now!)

I'm nearly twice as good as Jimbobjo and Lint at estimating things (49%, 28% and 26% respectively). Steer clear of assumption-setting, guys :)

One final thing which I still don't know, after a whole month - LLTFOWLES. This is a cryptic crossword clue which neither I nor anyone I've asked can do. It's a bit out of the ordinary, in that I don't know number of letters, or whether it's just one word or more, but I should have been able to get it by now. Please help!

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Finally took one item off the blog to-do list. Look a little to the right and you'll see the spiffy new CNPS mini-league table. It should update itself daily in the wee small hours (provided I've got my laptop turned on, which I usually do). Now I just need to convince Bertie to keep his stats up to date.

Was fun re-learning Perl. It's a really easy language to pick up the basics of, but I'm sure I'm barely scratching the surface of it. Maybe next year...

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Blogger's just implemented a new feature - they've replaced the advert bar at the top (which I could never see because I use pretty aggressive advert-blocking settings in Mozilla) with a "blog-bar". This allows you to search the current blog, and to view a randomly-selected blog that's been updated recently.

I decided to go for a bit of a wander and see what I could see, what other people were writing about, and whether anyone had managed to come up with a better design than the standard templates. Here are a few of the blogs I found ...

A Tribute to my Penis (not actually mine, the one belonging to the guy who wrote the blog) - thankfully post-free as yet.

A list of Half-Life Counterstrike server commands and IP addresses.

What appeared to be a site posting pictures of nudists, written in Spanish.

A woman in Missouri selling "handmade crafts made from plastic canvas".

Several foreign-language sites - at least one in each of French, German, Russian, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Danish and Arabic, plus one or two I couldn't work out. One might have been Iraqi judging by some of the Anglicised words I could read. This one's even got a couple of posts in Latin!

Any number of people who can be adequately paraphrased as "First post! Hello. I've nothing to say yet. Check back later though!"

In 100 or so clicks, I got one repeat. If I could remember my stats a bit better, that would give me some idea of how many blogs are being frequently updated.

God I'm bored.

posted by Chip : 22:38

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Just watched it. Not quite sure what my thoughts are on it at the moment. No doubt I'll be posting again later in the week about it.

The section about the terror alert and the constant manipulations of people's feelings as a result definitely struck an immediate chord though - almost as if someone had been reading one of my favourite books (a prize to anyone who guesses it) :

"The rollercoaster was a microcosm of social reaction; the same emotions could be created throughout a society when the proper techniques were applied ... The terror would build gradually, deepening with time, yet cries of relief would be allowed.The summation of the rollercoaster crests would be directed, the proper social changes would occur, and then the final downhill run would take place and humanity would emerge from the train, shaken yet essentially unharmed. Most would never realise that they had been switched to another track until it was too late."

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...and my head is spinning, but I do know why. (And truncated respect to anyone who gets that reference - mine's a little more obvious than Lint's.)

7 times I've seen Puressence now, and this was definitely the best of them all. I was completely drenched in sweat (Fibbers - air-con soon - please!), very hungry and I've had a shit week (month!) at work but I don't mind now. My favourite band of all time were playing, not 5 yards from me (and not 2 yards when Neil and I moved up to the front for a bit of moshing during Sharpen Up The Knives). Fibbers feels a little more homely than anywhere else I've seen them, perhaps because I've been there so many times, but it definitely felt a much more friendly, "amongst friends" kind of atmosphere.

6 new songs tonight - a record! The best was one they didn't give a name to (updated : Clash of the Titans), but I also really liked Don't Forget To Remember. Roll on the new album.

Not heard them do Turn The Lights Out When I Die live before - brilliant. The new guitarist still has a bit to learn - noticeable in the lead-in to Standing In Your Shadow when he was all over the show with time-keeping - but he's improved a lot since I saw them last in December.

It's difficult to claim these as real downsides when the gig was so fantastic, but they didn't do All I Want or Mr Brown, and didn't finish with India - first time that's happened.

Apologies to Tom - sorry you didn't enjoy them, but then it's a fair exchange for having me come to see Bloc Party. (Actually, not totally fair - I did enjoy Bloc Party, but for all the wrong reasons!)

Someone said I sounded cheery on the phone just before the gig. Couldn't (and never have been able to) get the grin off my face during She's Gotten Over You. I bet I'd sound even more cheery now.

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Quite a strange thought, when I had it, but I know exactly what I did 5 years ago today. (Even stranger was when Helen guessed it right on only her third go in the pub this evening - for info, her wrong guesses were "in bed" and "Sri Lanka".) I was actually in Cornwall, narrowly failing to see a solar eclipse. It's on the to-do list to see one eventually - not sure when though.

Helen (and Tom) also had a 5th anniversary today - they first moved in together on this day in 1999. Quite funny that both Helen and I thought today was a significant anniversary, but Tom instead found the eternal puzzle of whether or not slugs have noses to be more pertinent.

In another 5 years' time, I hope still to be able to remember today as the day I went to a pub quiz where all 15 music intro questions were Status Quo tunes. Or perhaps I mean forget...

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Other parts of the country still exist!

It's been approximately 2 months since I last left the immediate environs of York (except for a fleeting day-trip to Norwich, but that was work-related so it doesn't count). This seems quite odd considering I'd usually list travel in my top 3 interests, and I'm not the kind of person to sit around the house if it's sunny outside.

So today, in the interests of checking the rest of the world hadn't been packed away because I wasn't using it, I and some others went to Sutton Bank and Helmsley. It has been a rather excellent day today - very warm, very sunny, but hazy enough that the sun wasn't blinding or burning.

And a very good walk too. Not too strenuous, except the short steep climb that we couldn't believe a man with a baby in a pushchair had just come down! Very good views over parts of the North Yorkshire Moors, an excellent Ploughman's lunch at the visitors' centre (new cheese - Dovedale Blue - runny), and a Jack Russell with a croupier's visor on. Lint, can you oblige with a picture of that last one?

Then on to Helmsley. This is a very picturesque little village on which approximately two-thirds of the population of Yorkshire descends on sunny Sunday afternoons. There's an excellent delicatessen - apple and chilli relish, snails in champagne, pork and honey sasuages, Dovedale Blue (who says you need the internet for instant gratification?!) - a cheap bookshop, and sundry pieces of a castle.

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York's a funny place - there are a lot of old traditions and events that I'm sure tourists must come to, stare at, photograph and then back away thinking "Huh?!"

The annual Assize of Ale is one such event. The website describes the history pretty well, but doesn't actually say what it involves! A large number of people get kitted out in medieval fancy dress, and walk through town from pub to pub, having a drink (for charity, allegedly) in each one. The site also doesn't explain how utterly ridiculous the people who take part look. Yesterday's temperatures were in the high 80s, at least....

Interlude

Hmmm...I can't find out how hot it was yesterday. While Google gives me several tens of thousands of results for weather forecasts, not a single one can I find to tell me how hot it actually was yesterday. One might suspect some form of conspiracy going on, to prevent people from shattering the illusions of weather forecaster accuracy. I did manage to find a newspaper report from the day after last year's Assize, when I dressed up as a jester (picture not provided because I can't find any). Perhaps I'll be able to update this post with yesterday's temperature in a year or so...

Interlude ends

This year, I chose not to dress up as anything medieval, which was a wise decision, given the heat. Nick and Tara (my ex-flatmate and his girlfriend) did, as Robin Hood and a wench respectively, and Nick (once again) nearly passed out from 7 pints and sunstroke. For me, it was an Assize of Fruit Juice.

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(Cheating a bit by rolling back the date a day, but watch what Lint's about to do with that!)

Had a fun night out in the Golden Ball last night. We played Bar Billiards, which is a game I'd never heard of before going there. It's a sort of cross between pool and pinball. There are 9 holes in the table (actually in the body of the table, rather than in the cushions like pool), each of which scores a differing number of points if a ball is potted there. There's one red ball and 7 whites, the red scoring double points if it's potted. Every time you pot a ball you have another go until either you miss or you foul, and in the latter case you score 0 for your current break - this also happens if you knock over any of the 3 skittles on the table.. There's a time limit on the game, and it's highest number of points wins. There are a few more rules, but they're fairly minor.

My main enjoyment (as with most things) came out of being quite good at it. I lost 2 games out of 7 or 8, and at one point if I'd not been so ambitious I'd have got 670 points off a single break, and would have cleared 2000 points for that game (to put this into perspective, I won another game with just 430 points).

Now that I've been bothered to go to Google, here's someone else's much better description of the game.

I also really like the pub itself. It's a bit of a pity I've only found that out now, because I used to live very close to it, and now I'm on the far side of town from it. There was a very cheery barman there who complimented me on my ability to order J20s correctly (by colour - take note Lint!), and we were still playing on the table after half eleven. I like the beer garden too.

Ooh, and Subway's finally open!

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29 days since my last post ... not good. As Jimbobjo suggested, interesting things have happened, but I've not quite had the desire or the energy to post about them. Here's a few of them that I can still remember :

Highlights

1. Getting completely soaked (and I do mean completely - a picture will appear as soon as Flic's camera is developed) after deciding running for shelter wasn't worth it in a gentle summer shower. At least I wasn't the only one - the birthday girl and I could have been adverts for a wet T-shirt competition.
2. Finally breaking my winning streak at the races. "Look Here's Carol", which is definitely comedy-friendly, came up with the goods as usual - £30 up, but sadly the system broke down later on, and I lost about £20 on the day. Ah well, can't win 'em all.
3. Eating ostrich for the first time. York has a great selection of foods available, and there's always something new that I haven't tried.
4. Finally obtaining a dining table, after just under 10 months of looking. Now I just need that sideboard...
5. Beating Mr Sterling 4-3 in possibly the best match of squash I've ever played.
6. Being called Nigel by one of the senior actuaries at work.
7. Fudge failure - why on earth are evaporated and condensed milk different from each other? Did no cook ever study physics before coming up with a naming convention!? At best it could be called toffee sauce. I've got condensed milk now - I'll try again.
8. Ross Noble - this comedian is very odd, but very funny. Anyone who can sustain a conversation for 10 minutes about Jesus jumping up and down on a trampoline while curing lepers deserves respect. On re-reading that last sentence, I now realise it can be parsed in a variety of interesting ways. I don't think I'll rewrite it though.

Lowlights

9. Starting to realise that I'll never be capable of managing people without putting in a whole lot more effort than I think I'm able to.
10. The leaving of Goodlife. Didn't really get to know her as well as I could have.
11. Feeling like I spend all the hours in work just for someone else's benefit, and all the hours out of it distracted by thoughts of the hours in it.
12. The 30 thing. As someone who's rarely thinking more than 5 minutes outside the current moment, I'm surprised it's bothering me, and I haven't worked out why it is either, which is even more irritating.
13. LLTFOWLES - a crossword clue I haven't got yet. No idea of number of letters (or words) in the answer. I hate it when I can't work these out.

13 seems an apposite number to leave things on. I'll try to post more often in August. July's been a funny month, hopefully one the like of which I won't see again for a while.

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