St Anne's Masterclass

We had a bunch of students come to see us today from St. Anne's. They were great. As usual I took a picture of the audience at the start, while they were still smiling.......

Audience View

At the end of the talk I did a kind of Aibo vs. Pleo thing, where I turned Digby and Trevor loose together to see what would happen.

Will they fight?

They seemed to ignore each other most of the time, although Digby did keep trying to climb off the edge of the table.....

The FreeSat Plot Thickens

(I'm wondering why you should care about my satellite TV woes. But then again, it's my blog. So there.)

Anyhoo, yesterday left me with nothing working and a pile of broken bits on the floor underneath the dish. Today Dave from next door came round and, hearing of my plight, offered to go up his ladder and take a look for me. On the windiest day of the year. What a guy.

Actually, it wasn't that windy round the side of the house. And we were able to establish that actually the dish hardware looks fine. The bits I found on the ground must have been left by the Sky+ installer ages ago. That or we have a really clever prankster out there (I'm tempted to go round to the place where someone I really don't like lives, and leave a pile of slates on their front lawn in a similar kind of vein - but then again there's nobody out there I really don't like, and I'm very lazy - so it probably won't happen).

I wonder if my shiny new box is broken?

Update on Monday, June 23, 2008 at 01:12PM by Rob

After a chat with Ian it seems that the LNB things in the Sky dish don't like being left out in the cold with nothing to talk to. They show this by never working again. So now I've signed up for a man with a ladder to come round and put a shiny new dish up.

Fun with FreeSat

Every now and then I do something silly-ish. Just to remind myself that if I was constantly sensible life would be really boring. Today I bought a FreeSat box so I could ignore the European Cup in High Definition (not that keen on telly football to be honest). The internets had told me that it would work with my old Sky dish, which is presently rusting away gently on the side of the house. We did away with Sky last year, when I got a Media PC which does all the bits that Sky+ used to do, without costing me 36 quid a month.

Anyhoo, FreeSat is free, once you have bought the box. So I bought the box and plugged it in. And it doesn't work. I was kind of expecting this. After a particularly loud storm some time back I found some bits of satellite hardware on the ground underneath the dish, but I figured that since Sky+ uses two LNB receivers, and I'd only found one on the floor, I might be able to get away with it.

Note to self:  Every time I find myself thinking "You might be able to get away with this" I must remind myself (perhaps with a slap around the face to make the point properly) that I am Rob, and therefore not destined to get away with anything.

I went next door to borrow a ladder so I could go up and have a look, but then number one wife found out about this and banned me from climbing up there, what with my fear of heights and everything.

So at the moment I have a dish that doesn't work, a FreeSat box that doesn't work, or some wire that doesn't work.  Ho hum.

Hull in the Evening

Went up town this evening to fetch number one daughter. Took the little camera (of course) and the light was very kind to me.

New York has definitely seen better times

Fast Food

Cars that never made it

These names were not dreamed up in a Staff Meeting. Oh no. I spent the entire time paying careful attention and making copious notes.

The Ford Caveat: "The car with the hidden surprise"

The Fiat Scenario: "The car that sounds like a great idea"

The Renault Gravitas: "For the driver who wants to boost their presence"

The Seat Ulterior: "You'll never really know why it just did that"