We were burgled on Friday evening. We were in the living room watching TV (Randall & Hopkirk on DVD) and around 10:15 we heard a thump. The cats did their usual **ALERT** behaviour, but we assumed it came from next door - they're a noisy bunch, and we often hear doors slamming and so on. At 11:30 I went downstairs to feed the cats, (our living room is on the first floor - USian: second floor) and noticed that the front room door was open. I assumed that Tracy has left it open after her work-out session, but then I saw that the kitchen window had been broken. Glass everywhere, drawers open, TV missing. I phoned the police and they arrived within ten minutes. Nothing else had been taken. Brief statements, crime number, pretty much a sleepless night.

Saturday morning the SOCO guy turned up, covered everywhere with powder and lifted a few useful shoe prints, and a couple of fingerprints, probably ours. He took reference prints from us, then left. Then a guy came to board up the window.

Insurance covers most of it, but even so; bastard.

These probably don't merit individual link posts, but they're worth a look:

Am I in pi?: enter your date of birth and it tells you where (if at all) the digits appear in pi. Mine starts at the 72,408th digit.

The Plus Deck Cassette Converter is a cassette deck that fits in a spare 5.25" bay in your PC. Edit tapes, convert to MP3.

Things my boyfriend says is quite amusing. "You shouldn't buy me things. Save your money for unicorn rides or whatever it is girls spend money on."

The web site of the Fertnel Snak Food Corporation. As well as browsing the site, read the page source code.

I'm not entirely sure about PETSorFOOD.com. I bet PETA hate it, which is almost enough recommendation, but the humour is a bit too blunt instrument for me.

This one is definitely good. The Dyson (yes, the vacuum cleaner people) Telescope Game. Because we all have time to waste.

As previously revealed, we took our usual jaunt to Cornwall, via the Tamar Bridge. Brunel's Royal Albert Bridge, looking like the Loch Ness Monster, can be seen to the left. It was built in 1859 to carry the Great Western Railway, and was Brunel's last project. The road bridge was added in 1961 and originally led into Saltash, but now it goes through a tunnel under the town.

We managed to catch up with most of our friends on the first evening; we had a pretty good idea where they would be (the Red Lion or the Blue Anchor, not necessarily in that order), then on Monday we went to Trengwainton, a National Trust garden.

Well, we went to Shropshire for a few days. My wife's grandmother was born in Sheriffhales so we started there; her parents were in domestic service, probably at the Manor.

We stayed in Bridgnorth which has a rather strange market hall.

Coalbrookdale is worth a visit; the world's first iron bridge,

the world's first railway locomotive, built by Richard Trevithick (there's a model in one of the museums)

and a tremendous museum, Blist's Hill Victorian Town, which includes re-assembled shops such as this pharmacy

and a printer's where the attendant explained, among other things, how several expressions in common use now derive from the printing profession.

We called at Shrewsbury Castle

which houses the Regimental Museum of the King's Shropshire Light Infantry, hoping to discover something about my wife's great uncle who was in the regiment.

We went to Attingham Park, a National Trust property,

and Stokesay Castle which is owned by English Heritage. (They don't restore things, they just prop them up.)

Great views from the top:

Finally, we went back to Coalbrookdale to see the Tar Tunnel. While digging a railway tunnel, workers noticed tar seeping through the walls; it was a valuable resource at the time, and it still drips out now.

 After that, we headed for Cornwall; details in part 2.

Goodbye, 1992 Vauxhall Carlton.

Hello, 2002 Vauxhall Omega.

I came across this and wondered; why does such a thing exist? Why does the State of Michigan need an asparagus advisory board? We don't have one here in UK. Neither does anywhere else, except California, but they have one of everything. OK, asparagus is good and tasty, but even so. Then I got to wondering how it's funded. Wherever there's an advisory board, there's always a pork barrel. It turns out that the State of Michigan Department of Agriculture paid the Asparagus Advisory Board $52,500 of your money (assuming you're a Michigan taxpayer) to "develop an asparagus salsa product, produce fresh asparagus packaging and to develop a higher quality pickled asparagus product" (PDF file). (Quite apart from anything else, pickled asparagus?) That document shows that the S of M D of A also paid the Michigan Potato Industry Commission $239,400 to "research cultural practices of growing new Michigan potato varieties and the storability of new varieties, and to promote new processing varieties and the new Michigan Purple variety." A quarter of a million dollars? It's small beer in the grand scheme of things, but if no-one looks after the pennies, you'll have a budget deficit before you know it. Trust me, I know about these things; Britain's in the EU.

I wanted the title to be:

All the Young Dudes Old Farts

I tend to keep out of music discussions here because I've never heard of most of the artists mentioned; they're either too recent or not in my chosen genres. I suspect also that my own collection is sufficiently esoteric that the vice versa applies.

As confirmation of this, I've put together a list of all my recordings (excluding the countless illegally taped records and pirated CDs), and I have a challenge; I would wager a large amount of money - say, one virtual dollar - that no single person here has more than twenty of the recordings in my list, that collectively you own less than fifty of them, and that no-one else here has even heard of more than half of the artists on my list, and or has recordings by more than a fifth of them.

I've not distinguished between 'classical' and 'popular' because there are too many borderline cases.

Any takers?

The list is here

I've just got these weird new contact lenses. I'm short sighted, quite majorly, and since my previous check-up I've got significantly worse, so my lenses need to be a lot stronger. At the same time, my own (internal) lenses have hardened, as they do with age. As a result, if my contact lenses are sufficiently strong to resolve at distance, they're too strong to allow my internal lenses to resolve at short-range. I get regular glasses as well as contacts, and have opted for vari-focals this time. But what to do regarding contacts? (Dramatic pause.)

One option would be to get contacts made for distance and use reading glasses, another would be vari-focal contacts (bizarrely, these do exist). My choice was a concept called 'monovision'. My right eye is dominant so the right lens is optimized for distance and the left for close-up. When viewing at distance, the right eye dominates and the left effectively switches off. At close-range, the left eye is able to focus so the right eye switches off.

It's odd, but it works.

Inspired by [wagster], I have uploaded some music to my website at http://IanB.nomutantenemy.co.uk/music

Bear in mind that it's several years old.