Ah yes. After the horrendously grim weather had passed, the weather
improved and we headed for the beach. On the way down we commented on how
this was the classic British burning weather: bright sunshine, a strong
breeze, and occassional clouds combine to burn skin without even feeling
that hot. Of course knowing this meant nothing, we were too distracted
with purchasing pasties and drink to think about putting a decent amount
of sunblock on.
Obviously the main thing to do at the beach, after we'd sat down, not
applied sunblock, and scoffed a pasty, was to dig a hole. A huge hole.
Spades were purchased and we took turns to help Pete dig The Hole.
Astute readers will notice the inevitable outcome of saying this is burning weather, not putting enough sunblock on, and digging a hole (an activity that results in the back being exposed to the sun). Ouch. After the hole had been dug we had to full it in again to avoid trapping small childen in it. Obviously this led to a series of hilarious scenes involving burying Pete up to his chest, modelling breasts and a penis, and so on. Finally the hole was flat again, at which point an impromptu long jump sand pit was arranged. I came first in the long jump, and although failing miserably at triple jump although I swear my technique was best (it's all in the wrists).
Next was to explore the costal path in the opposite direction towards
Porthkidney beach. The beach is pretty huge by my standards, and due to
the lack of facilities (no close car park, shops, toilets, and so on) it's
almost deserted: there were a few other people there with dogs (the other
local beaches are dog-free in summer) and that's about it. Googling to
confirm the name of the beach reveals that there is a history of naturism
and "inappropriate gay activity", but we didn't encounter any of that. ;)
The costal path was great, far more rough than the walk to St Ives (often
just a foot wide cutting in the ground), steep in places, and generally
running very close to the cliff edge. The views were great, but I always
think what a horror paths like these would be in winter, with the full
force of the Atlantic winds pounding against the cliffs. As a finale it
turns out that the costal path follows the cliff all the way along the
back of the beach, which would easily be another twenty minutes of walking
to reach sand. There is a shortcut down some stone stairs to the beach,
but we arrived at high tide and the bottom of the stairs (well, rocks)
were a foot deep in water. Wading up to the beach was a fitting end to
the walk, and made the beach feel like our own little desert island!
I'll have to explain the expression on Vicky in the above photo. As a
child when Vicky went to visit her father in Devon they used to go to the
beach and spend the day annoying the wildlife: chasing crabs, kicking
limpets off rocks and so on. When Vicky noticed that the rocks at the
bottom of the cliff were covered in limpets, she shouted "limpets!" with a
manic expression and preceeded to prod them frantically.
After lots of sitting around and digging tunnels, we headed for the dunes
for a spot of dune diving. This involves running at top spead down the
dunes and throwing yourself into the sand at the bottom. Ah, the simple
pleasures in life!
After my dive I ran back up the hill in the manner of a mad man, arms
out-stretched to Vicky as I collapsed in front of her, gasping "It's".
"What?", was the confused reply. This is terrible, I really need to get
Vicky to watch the Best Of Monty Python DVD we have
somewhere...
Possibly more to write, but Lost is on, so I'm off for now.
The train reached 79 mph while testers watched streaming video, composed e-mail and completed a large file download at broadband speeds…The service apparently will be free. So when will Boston get a similar service for the subway or commuter rail? Given the MBTA’s dismal performance lately and inability to implement new technology (e.g. e.g. e.g.), I’m not going to hold my breath.
P.S. Regarding spelling - I have found that it is still more convenient to use gnome-blog package then to use the Wordpress on-line spelling plugins.
apollock@teevee:~$ df -Th
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/Debian-root
ext3 259M 156M 90M 64% /
tmpfs tmpfs 502M 0 502M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1 ext3 228M 25M 192M 12% /boot
/dev/mapper/Debian-home
ext3 63G 295M 59G 1% /home
/dev/mapper/Debian-tmp
ext3 368M 8.1M 340M 3% /tmp
/dev/mapper/Debian-usr
ext3 4.7G 1.7G 2.8G 38% /usr
/dev/mapper/Debian-var
ext3 2.9G 897M 1.8G 33% /var
tmpfs tmpfs 10M 124K 9.9M 2% /dev
/dev/etherd/e0.0
jfs 1.5T 2.2G 1.5T 1% /mnt
I've currently got bonnie++ hammering away at the "disk" to see what
sort of performance I'll get, and whether it'll be fast enough to record TV.
Now I just need the TV tuner card to turn up, and I can start fiddling in
earnest.
[notification] send_to_cia = true cia_project = YourCiaProjectName cia_server = http://cia.navi.cxThis patch tells trac to report all newly opened tickets to CIA, which will show up like this:
<CIA-13> wichert * r #5725 Issue tracker/: [Infrastructure] trac/cia testing ticket
Next.