Run Rabbit Run

Posted on September 17, 2006 by Ponder

Misty found a gap in the fence the other day. We were all sarching the hidden nooks and crannies out our garden when Ceri, from the upstairs window, spotted her in next door’s garden.

Anyway, we called in and got to their garden, followed the rabbit through the back gate into another garden and as I tried to “cut her off at the pass” Haryy decided to make a grab for her and she shot off into the street!

5 minutes of heckiticty (is that a word?) later and a neighbour is the one to be closest to her when she realises she’s trapped.

Gap since patched 😉

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Phew, That Was Close!

Posted on September 13, 2006 by Ponder

My mother-in-law has trouble walking any distance so when her local Post Office closed she was unable to get to the next nearest so I get her weekly pension for her and take it to her house.

Yesterday I had 3 hours in Crewe so I thought it’d be a good idea to get her money, and electric meter tokens from the Post Office near the station; big mistake, BIG mistake!

The money was no problem of course, but the tokens were a different matter entirely. “WRONG AREA CODE” – Bollocks! I called Swalec and was told I could either post the tokens to them and wait for valid ones to be sent back or go to the office for a swap. Well as she only had 91p left I decided to visit in person.

Now my mother-in-law lives about 1 mile West of where I start work, I live about 6 miles East and the Swalec office is about 4 miles North of me and 8 miles from my MiL. Lots of hills in between too, it certainly built up a sweat cycling those 12 miles I can tell you.

Today I took the tokens to her and when I checked the meter there was only 3p left! Ok, there’s emergency credit but that can’t be activated until the power actually gets cut off. I don’t think I could have timed that closer if I tried 😉

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Cardiff – City of Lights?

Posted on September 13, 2006 by Ponder

I’ve often wondered why the traffic lights in Cardiff are so poorly synchronised that more time is spent at a stand than on the move but I think I now know the reason: there’re so many of the damned things!
On my regular route into work there are 20 sets (including 3 pedestrian crossings) in the last 3 miles, 8 of those in the last mile. Are they satisfied with that? Are they hell! Another 2 sets in the last half mile are ready to be commissioned.
From sighting the first set there’s only one short section, where there’s a bend immediately after one set, where I can’t see any. Am I alone in thinking this is a bit excessive?
I’m also sure some of them are set to deliberately annoy road users. You can be approaching some on green which will change just in time so you cannot get through before they’re red with nothing else around, then they’ll change back just as something approaches from the other direction and just it time to stop that poor sod. This situation, I’m sure, can and should be improved.
It’s these observations that lead me to conclude that Cardiff should be nominated as “The City of Lights”.

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Cycling on Pavements

Posted on September 11, 2006 by Ponder

It’s not a habit of mine, in fact about the only thing that’ll get me to ride on the pavement is when some ignorant Newport Bus driver decides to pull past me and pull as close to the kerb as possible (at a safe distance ahead, I’ll give him that much) so I can’t pass. Well HA to you sucker, I’m not that easily stopped! 😉
For the record, it’s ok for a cycle or motorcycle to overtake on the inside provided it’s safe to do so in a queue of traffic, and as traffic is supposed to keep 3′ from the kerb if possible (and it was) he was just being an arrogant arsehole 😉

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Wronglish

Posted on September 10, 2006 by Ponder

Well from some word that just occurred to me while I was driving a train a couple of weeks ago, to a conversation on IRC during my break to lots of work by Shell and wronglish.com has been launched. I hope you all enjoy it 🙂

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Thumbnails

Posted on September 10, 2006 by Ponder

I saw thumbnails in action on another WordPress based site I now help to admin and wondered why mine didn’t have the option. A bit of digging and I found out it was all to do with libgd, so I installed the libraries and enabled them and now I have thumbnail support. See my previous post titled Mud for an example. Future images will be larger via the linked thumbnails now I no longer have to miniaturise them 🙂

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Roll of Tosserdom – Part 1

Posted on September 10, 2006 by Ponder

Although there have been a few previous, this is the first since I started this blog so the driver of a silver Ford Focus, registration number FY06 ZSG gets the dubious ‘honour’ of being the first recorded tosser on my list.

This idiot decided he needed to get as close to the kerb as he could possibly get while negotiating the roundabout at the bottom of Rumney Hill as I was cycling into work today; the trouble being the twat hadn’t yet passed me, and only stopped getting closer (about 2 inches from my pedals) as the loud “OI!” permeated his tiny brain.

This is a thankfully rare occurrence so my reactions were more instinct than thought but in future I hope to be able to keep some presense of mind enough to kick the bastard’s door or, when I get even more malicious and confident, to put a few nice circle marks on his/her paintwork via my pedals. That’d certainly make twats like that think twice before cutting up a cyclist in future!

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Covers Finally Complete!

Posted on September 8, 2006 by Ponder

A project I started working on last year is finally complete! The description is on my main site so I won’t duplicate it all here, just go there, download it and enjoy… though I apologise in advance for my voice but it’s the only one I have 😉

Follow the bear this link to the page

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Cordless Drills and Broken Fences

Posted on September 7, 2006 by Ponder

I don’t use it much but by Dog is it useful when I need it!

It was a Chrismas present from the dragon mother-in-law and it’s proven its worth many times now.

Last night some twat (apologies for the language but it needs saying) broke our front fence. Well it’s a good job I bought one too many pieces of 4×2 when I first built it because one of these was snapped off at ground level. Now I know the fence was loose but it’d take more than the kids who play around here to snap through that!

Anyway, I unscrewed the old one and screwed in the new piece in seconds. If I had to use a screwdriver I’d probably have been out there all morning!

All fixed now and not so loose any more. I packed the loose earth up with the broken 4×2 so it’s firmer than it has been for a while 🙂

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Back To School part 1

Posted on September 5, 2006 by Ponder

The two youngest went back to school this morning, surprisingly without rushing or stress 🙂

Tomorrow is part 2, when my eldest is disposed of 😉

Back to normality (whatever that happens to be) on Thursday when #1 troublemaker goes back too.  Bliss!

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