h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm now up to 98 pages drawn and 89 polished – I think I'll just about be able to cram in an ending in the next two pages, but there's no room for set-up for the next book. Which is just as well as I've no idea whether I delayed or abandoned the pedestrianisation of the high street idea or jumping straight into my idea for a story set in the hospital.
The big question I have going forward is, as the hardest part of polishing the books is ensuring the letters in the speech bubbles are legible after being rotated, would it be better to just retype the speeches? It would be quicker and clearer, but is reading the handwritten dialogue part of the charm?

Mind you, after I've finished this I might concentrate on restoring h2g2 for a bit and possibly getting a of comics I drew in the 90s ready for Lulu. I might see if I can type the dialogue for that as my handwriting wasn't as clear then, particularly as it is all written in pencil which is faint.

I think I saw a picture on of the wall And I'm glad you had a good Mothering Sunday and enjoyed a family lunch, not too bittersweet without your dad I hope?

This week there's been lots of sudden personnel changes at work...

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Glad things are just about working out for the ending to your book I think I do find the handwritten text to be part of the charm, yes. I did a similar experiment with Career Curiosities A87934044 versus Horror at HQ A88022658 - the latter is perhaps lacking in personality in comparison, but it is definitely clearer. I guess I could have used different fonts for different people, but that would create a different effect in another way... Good idea to type the dialogue in the juvenilia, given that the pencil is faint and it is a self-contained project separate from Eve Eel etc.

Glad showed you the Crinkle Crankle Wall I got rather wet that day, and I got rather wet again today as we had quite heavy rain - I went between buildings on campus via a covered walkway, but there was a split in the walkway roof just at the point where I had to swipe my access pass! It was like doing a quest in a computer game, as I had to go through the waterfall to get to the door The other surprise today was that I usually navigate to the lift in the main building by passing the room with the hatch, but the hatch and the entire wall has now gone Very disorientating... Sorry to hear there are more surprise staffing issues happening at your place... Good luck with it all

I did think of dad on Sunday, as we went to a restaurant we often went to - not as bittersweet as it could have been, though, as the manager who used to look after us wasn't on duty, so the lunch was more businesslike (when the manager heard the news on our first depleted family visit after lockdown, he was nearly in tears himself, which was very sweet...).

Thanks for sorting out your cat toy and Ripping Yarns in Peer Review - the restoration went well Now I've put my books in Lulu, I could concentrate more on restoring h2g2, too, so we can see how we get on

The ending is definitely rushed, with more of an abrupt halt than a natural descending curve - and I also had intended the action in the last scene (as the theatrical sense of place action takes place, not the sense of last drawing) to feature 5 characters but could only fit 4 in each frame, so the vicar sort of turns up abruptly halfway through the action, which could do with being smoothed out to establish she's there earlier. I did think about using different fonts for different characters - or different coloured fonts too, though only dark colours would work.

I think I've got at least 30 entries needing restoration on h2g2, so that'll bombard Peer Review, plus the updates I did. I hope that lessons are learnt and that should this happen again h2g2 is in a better position to not lose more than a month or two?

That sounds like a challenging way to get around your campus And not helpful if they're 'redecorating'. I told you I believe that our uni decided to relocate staff and remove all the hatches that students used to submit work and collect certificates... Not always thought through. Though most of the campus is a giant interconnected maze where it is about possible to go to most buildings inside, although I'm not sure how much of the campus is being used. The staff car park was sold off.
In other news Tribal are in a bit of trouble with Singapore's NTU - the rumours I've heard, though I've no idea if it is true - is that they tried to sell NTU a version of the Blueprints eVision like we have and they found it to be completely unreliable .

Do you have plans for the weekend? None here other than continuing the work on emptying the storage unit and parkrun.

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Yes I hope lessons have been learned by the Tech Team as well... We'll believe it when we see it... Anyway, I was productive 'chunking up the ' at the weekend, investigating what we have and what we can do, so that is hopefully helpful

Yes, I remember your uni removed its hatches. Our hatch hadn't been in use since March 2020 because the staff were relocated to another building with a front desk rather than a hatch, but it was still a surprise to see the hatch gone... I think the plan is to make a hotdesking suite instead, so we shall see...

That would be 'amusing' if another uni had thoroughly tested the new software and found it to be useless

I hope you had a productive weekend with the storage, and a good parkrun. I had 'fun' with dogs when I went for my Friday evening run - one owner just managed to reel in the long lead before their dog reached my wheels, another owner sat on her dog so it couldn't bite me (it just growled while I ran past), and one dog was off lead, ran across the road towards me and was deflected by a car (luckily at low speed so it wasn't badly hurt, but luckily a neighbour was able to sort it out while I ran away). Scary stuff, but shouldn't be as bad this evening now the clocks have changed so people can stay out for longer before sunset...

Birdwatching was much more productive I added another bird to my overall list - Golden Plover - so I'm now up to 138 species in total. I was also fortunate to have captured a photo of a Long-Billed Dowitcher - it posed perfectly to the left of a group while I was photographing the birds in the middle of the group! I couldn't have done that if I tried A Cetti's Warbler came out to say hello as well - don't usually see them in the open, and not just a couple of metres away from me, either! 71 species for the year and counting

My books arrived today, and I'm very glad you didn't buy them this month after all - more work is needed... Not sure I can do much about the problem with the blues, which is very evident on some pages, but I can certainly fix the cover images that were spellchecked by mistake The first volume is fine, but when I was doing the covers for the other volumes I noticed something was different, but I couldn't work out what - I see it now

with everything!

We still have worries about HESA and Data Futures and Ellucian being unable to cope with it all, so no change there…

I did indeed have a good, productive weekend, thanks. With I have finished drawing it all and have polished 96 pages, so just 4 to go and then it'll be ready to put on Lulu. Still think the previous one, 'Fete of Eve Eel', was better but there are still plenty of good bits. parkrun was a squelch after all the rain of the last week making it difficult to stay upright in places, but I made it round in a very slow time that's ten minutes slower than I'd've liked. I finished 90th, which is disappointing as I only have 87 left to complete my position bingo (finishing in every place between 1-100, with 101 counting as 1 &c).

We also successfully put more stuff in the loft, so that's a task that's very nearly finished. Only a couple of trips to go, plus we've identified a lot more things that can go to charity. We still need a lot more plastic boxes, though. There's a lot of cardboard ones left, and they still get damp and disintegrate over time, and aren't as stackable as the plastic ones. So I think that the way forward to maximise storage space and keep everything safe is to keep things in small, plastic boxes (the big ones are too heavy and are too cumbersome).

Sorry to hear about your experiences, they can be quite frightening and shocking at times. I was knocked over by a last year and broke my watch as a result. Sometimes in the park I encounter s that love chasing the bike, one even kept trying to bite my tyres.

Recently there's antisocial behaviour in our own lane - someone who lives around number 70 has all their rubbish strewn across the lane behind the houses, with the rubbish stretching along the backs of a few houses, with dirty nappies, all sorts of rubbish. It's been left there for about 2 weeks now. Not nice trying to cycle round it all, not knowing whether I may shred my tyres. I would report them but I don't know exactly which house the rubbish is from.

You're on tip top form with the birdwatching already, and still only March.

with polishing the - let me know when they're finalised.

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Glad your book is progressing well Mine are coming along quite well, so I'm hopeful of being able to publish the revised editions next week

Glad you managed to get round parkrun OK with the squelching. Position Bingo is a fascinating challenge! My bird list challenge is pleasing so far indeed

Yes, can be frightening, especially as they can knock people over and things even if they aren't biting. I'm disappointed that my upstairs neighbour hardly speaks to me these days because I said I'm not keen on dogs when his dog was off lead and ran up to me one day, but he doesn't have wheels to worry about... Sorry you've got a problem with rubbish in your area - very strange, and I hope it can be sorted somehow - yes, not nice indeed, and worrying that there could be sharp things that could catch your tyres...

I contacted the council about bins recently, but only to get new stickers for our bins to tell us which recycling goes in which receptacle as the old ones have peeled off. I also contacted them about the bollards blocking car access to the venue I went to the other week, but I got through to an apprentice who had a nice chat with me but ultimately didn't have any idea about how to help! Our March meeting at that venue has been cancelled anyway, so I will try again next month!

I'll look forward to the revised editions of - and talking of I keep meaning to ask how much of your current story is new, as a lot of the scenes look quite familiar... Will that end up as a , do you think?

I've just two pages left to polish, then a front cover to design.

I'll definitely be keeping an eye out on what is happening with the rubbish down the road. Amusingly there is a rubber duck in the lane too, which I must admit puts a smile on my face when I pass it in exactly the way that the dirty nappies don't.

How many recycling receptacles do you have? We have the giant green bins, plus a separate black box for glass bottles (which may double as a flight recorder in case the house crashes mid-flight).

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Horror at HQ is based on the Tale of the Three Envelopes A87946672 yes - I used photoshop to expand the story into 30 episodes rather than 4 I think the plan might be to make books from all the crime novellas, yes, like we did for Twice Told Tales http://www.lulu.com/shop/dmitri-gheorgheni/twice-told-tales/paperback/product-v5m57g.html

Glad you're nearly there with your book. Hope the cover designing goes well. Today I managed to produce a cover that is what I was looking for (exporting text as an image via pdf) so I'm making much better progress than last time, when I was taking screenshots from Word with spellcheck turned on...

"Amusingly there is a rubber duck in the lane too, which I must admit puts a smile on my face when I pass it in exactly the way that the dirty nappies don't." - I can imagine!

"(which may double as a flight recorder in case the house crashes mid-flight)" - We have black bins for non-recyclable stuff, then one blue bin each for paper, plastic and metal, cardboard, and glass. We also have a brown bin for food waste and a green bin for garden waste.

Can be complicated with all the different systems - last month our gardeners visited and very meticulously placed all the garden waste in the food bin, because they had just been doing a job in Wales and the Welsh garden waste bins are brown... Our neighbours who live in houses have the same black bin and green bin, but the food waste goes in a small brown caddy, paper and cardboard go into a black bin with blue lid, and plastic, metal and glass go in a black bin with red lid.

(wow, that was close - I got a 'gateway time out' message, but just managed to copy the text before the post disappeared... )

It is a very creative use of your images - I particularly enjoy the rotated people, that's an effective way to make them look like they're facing.

I've now polished 99¼ pages so very soon I'll be working on designing a cover. There'll definitely be an appearance from the Pope on it, I think. Not sure how many other people to include, I guess I'll see how crowded it looks if I add a crowd.

You definitely have more bins than us - as I said we have the big black bin, the green recycling bin and a glass box. We can request a food waste and garden waste additionally, though - but as we don't have any plants in the garden and it is all paved there doesn't seem to be a benefit to it.

We're doing a puppet show at an Easter family fun day on late Saturday morning, so we've a puppet stage taking up the car, which means we won't be able to do any more loft trips this weekend.

In other news, I've cycled 9,999 miles to work since 2018. I spotted it as I signed up to a love to ride work cycle challenge thingy.

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Thank you Yes, it was interesting using Photoshop's 'perspective' functions to enable two characters to look like they're facing each other

"I guess I'll see how crowded it looks if I add a crowd" - Good luck with finalising your book I managed to finalise my book today so I've ordered a proof copy. I will see what it looks like first before recommending it to you - it might be just what I had in mind, or it might be terrible, and I'm not sure which yet... I found Fete of Eve Eel while I was in there - Lulu didn't show it to me last year, because the author name is slightly different so it went to the bottom of the list instead of the top...

It does seem more sensible to have one bin for recyclables and one bin for non-recyclables, but hopefully there is some benefit to the council for us to have all these bins...

I hope you all have a good puppet session

Congratulations on 9,999 miles - that is an impressive number I'm enjoying my app as they have introduced new step challenges - at the moment I am working on walking the equivalent length of the Great Wall of China, and I have already 'walked' along the Grand Canyon Good fun

Hope you had a good weekend - it was raining non-stop here and Eastleigh's parkrun was cancelled, so I did a very squelchy Itchen Valley - it's just as muddy but flat.
That's weird that you didn't find 'Fete of Eve Eel before - I've used my full name, middle and all, frequently before. I don't think anything different had happened? Still, I hope you enjoy it - it probably has my best artwork in and unusually for me, no deaths or violence. Someone does mention being stung to the first aiders, but that's about it. And one of the characters is over 30-years-old! Musician Punk was created for stories 'Rival Rockers', which will be in the of a seclection of the shorter cartoons I drew as a child.

I'll look forward to hearing how your is and whether it is ready. 'After That Pope!' is waiting for the draft to be approved, but otherwise all done.

I've currently got 'Ride of the Valkyries' playing and outside there's a lad from the rail depot riding round and round the car park on an e-scooter.

Saturday's puppet show went well - as it started at 11:30am it did mean that I couldn't take advantage of Eastleigh's closure by going further afield and tick off somewhere I've not done, but we seem to have entertained a small number of people, with some children repeating what we'd done during the show as we were packing up after, so that's a good sign that they enjoyed it.

Hope you had a great weekend.

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That is unusual for 'down south' to get more rain than 'up north'. Glad you managed to get round a parkrun OK. We had quite good weather, so I enjoyed some birdwatching - no new species for my list, but some pleasing photos as the lighting was good Glad the puppet show went well and the audience found it memorable

It was my sister's birthday, but her car failed its MOT and she had a cold, so we did videoconferencing for an hour instead and look forward to meeting at another time

Fete of Eve Eel doesn't have your middle name, so it went to the bottom of the list - very strange. I look forward to reading when it arrives

The weekend was quite productive h2g2-wise, too - we're making good progress at the Extra thanks for finding another of my Entries - well timed, as I had the spring blues in the morning (annoyances at work plus sunshine inspiring happysad memories of times past) so that gave me a boost in the afternoon

Since the weekend it has been sunny and dry, so if the weather holds we may be able to have Eastleigh parkrun this weekend, but if it rains we won't be able to. I'm down to be shadow Run Director this Saturday, though afterwards we'll be dashing off to my inlaws. I've not been Run Director before – that's the person in charge of each event, so a bit of responsibility there, though I'll just be assisting the actual Run Director.

That's funny that my middle name is missing – it definitely is on the cover so I assumed my full name was on it I guess it just goes to show that you shouldn't judge a by the cover – although as I drew the cover and drew the interior too, perhaps you can?

Glad you enjoyed good weather for bird watching and got some good photos. Yesterday evening I went for my first running club run since January – as I'm not as fit as I used to be and I was down to be on the run leading schedule, I said that I would offer a run halfway between two groups to encourage those in the slower group to take a step towards the faster one – which proved surprisingly popular. Especially as the real reason was because I'm not quite able to run at my normal pace again. There was a bit of a conversation about what the group I was offering was called – which I'll share next time. But the reason I went on this tangent was to say on my way there I saw two deer in the near meadow behind our garden, our side of the River Barton. One was really close until I cycled by and made it jump, but I managed to get a couple of pictures on my phone despite it instantly leaping to the other side of the meadow furthest from me.

So are all your recoverable entries back in <./>Peerreview</.> now?

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I hope all is well at parkrun so you get to do a new volunteer role

Yes, Lulu seems a bit weird with the cover and other text these days... I had the opposite problem with my Miscellany - I added a subtitle to the cover and it changed the title of the whole project

Glad you were appreciated at the run by being in the middle Impressive that you took a photo of deer, too - I can imagine "instantly leaping to the other side of the meadow"

I put Divine back in Peer Review yesterday, so that's everything I have, yes The only thing I wondered was if you happen to have a version of Loving Vincent? You're doing sterling work reuploading images, too

Sadly I won't be credited with a new volunteer role as I'm not qualified as a Run Director, so I'll be counted as 'other' again - I've had an 'other' for drawings.

I'll have to sort out the photos soon - that's another thing on the to do list, as well as doodles and now lots of h2g2 I'm halfway through writing a entry and a Kevin Smith one, but finally finished the thing about seeing in Southampton two months ago.

We've now got everything out of storage! So my task for today is to finish putting things in the loft. We definitely don't have as big a loft as our maisonette, so it is more important to be able to have stackable boxes which we still don't have.

Do you have plans for the weekend? Family get togethers for Easter ?

I sent 'Loving Vincent' on now - didn't do a very good job of finding all your entries, did I?

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At least the volunteer role is new to you - I hope it all goes well - your parkrun experience would enable you to be a good run director in due course, I'm sure, and a new badge would be pleasing

I look forward to seeing photos and Thanks for finding another Entry for me - that's everything I'm aware of according to my records, and that's better than I dared hope for

Glad you've managed to shift everything from storage. Yes, I can imagine the loft is much different compared to a maisonette, but careful stacking will help indeed I hope that all goes well when you get suitable boxes

I don't have plans for the weekend yet, really - maybe see how my sister is, and hopefully see some birds as well I hope you all have a good Easter break

Unfortunately we did a course inspection on Wednesday evening and had to make the decision to cancel again due to the amount of mud and water still pouring down the hill. I did wonder whether I'd be able to go to a new parkrun tomorrow, but frustratingly there's engineering works at Basingstoke, affecting both the mainline to London and north to Reading with rail replacement , so they're out of the question. Theoretically there will be a train to Bournemouth, but last time I tried to catch that and it was cancelled, so not hopeful. I may see if it exists.

After that we'll be heading up to the inlaw's, possibly for the last time to this particular house as he is thinking of moving home now. I'm hoping the weather stays good enough for day trips - we have a ticket to the zoo that's due to expire.

I'm aiming to restore an entry a day, so with about 37 subbed entries and 35 of my own to go, that'll keep me busy for a couple of months.

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Ah, that is a shame Eastleigh is still a mudbath... I hope you managed to find another one

I hope you have a good journey up north, and a good time at the zoo etc I have been very lucky with the weather so far this weekend - not too hot and not too cold, so just right for extended birdwatching sessions

We've got a good system going with the restoration of Entries It was straightforward sorting out the Roald Dahl and Python Precursors projects

I managed to catch the 6:50am train to Bournemouth and so ticked that one off, thanks. Hopefully I'll be at a new one in Yorkshire this Saturday too. As soon as I got back we went up to Yorkshire, the journey was fine.

The weather here since we arrived has been wet and disappointing, so who knows what we'll get up to or go to if our plans for predominantly outdoor venues may end up changing.

I had been doing the entry restorations one at a time, but yesterday I thought that as I was doing none-stop find-and-replace to convert the HTML to GuideML, it would make sense to combine entries into one document and so tackle numerous entries at once. So I did all the Roald Dahl ones in one hit, and then the same with the Python ones. So I'm now attempting to restore all my remaining entries in one hit. We'll see how that goes! It won't be surprising for you to learn I've felt a whole range of emotions from frustration, disappointment, mourning etc over the whole process, as I'm sure everyone has. Hope it is discussed in detail at the next meeting.

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