Saturday, June 3, 2006 at 05:06PM 
Went up town today (no surprises there). But the weather was great and the place had been grassed over. Which is a bit more surprising. It was a BBC thing to do with the start of spring. Which is only a few months late I suppose.
Travel Friday, June 2, 2006 at 10:11AM Just found this joke in my old blog. So good that I want to share it with you all again:
Q: What does a magician say when he makes a corpse appear out of nowhere?
A: Abracadaver
no category Thursday, June 1, 2006 at 09:41PM I'm in the process of adding a links part to this site. This will include all my writings, going back deep into the past. I've even found some of my very old blog posts (as far back as 2003). No, they aren't very funny either.
Life Wednesday, May 31, 2006 at 10:26PM Went to see "The DaVinci Code" tonight. I'm the one person left who hasn't read the book, (I did this specially so I could approach the film with an open mind). It is an OK film staring Tom Hanks, his hair (which I think deserves special billing) and Audrey Tatou (who seems to have attended the "Allo Allo" school of acting specially for her part). It was directed by that red headed kid from Happy Days.
I knew something was up when one of the dodgy cardinals turned out to be Dr. Octopus from Spiderman. OK, so he had dropped down to the normal number of limbs but there was no mistaking that leer and wonky accent. Things got even stranger when the symbol of one of the mysterious sects turned out to be the same as is used by the Boy Scouts in the UK. In fact I remember having a woggle with the same emblem on when I was a kid. If only I'd known what I was getting into....
Then we were into a maelstrom of double dealing detectives, secret banks, image processed artworks, strange codes, flights across europe and lots of other staples of the adventure movie. The killer albino monk with a penchant for Mr. Whippy added a certain extra something to the proceedings, although I've been wondering how you fight against someone who enjoys pain as much as he seemed to. Give him a cushion? Perhaps a nice cup of tea? Tricky.
Everything moved at breakneck speed, almost in real time. Nobody paused for breath. I only saw them actually eat once, and that was interrupted by a raid by the french police. These people had the stamina of true academics. Normally there is a lull in the action when you get to know the characters a bit. Not in this film. I don't think that Audrey got to take her coat off at any point.
Even with my lack of foreknowledge spotting the baddie turned out to be even easier than usual. A clue: It isn't Tom. Or Audrey.
There has been a lot of talk in the press about how the underlying tenet of the movie strikes at the very heart of the christian religion. Well, all I can say is that any church that feels under threat from a very implausible story with holes in it through which you could drive a double decker bus with an oil tanker on its roof rack is indeed in trouble.
If you sit through it to the end (and everybody in the packed cinema seemed to manage this) you will find a rather uplifting message concerning the importance of faith above all else. Which only added value to the experience.
Tuesday, May 30, 2006 at 07:40PM I've added a new article to the .NET Micro Framework area of the site. It has a sample program which flashes an LED. On Saturday I bought some switches, so the next step is to write a program which uses a switch to control a light........
