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

I found a good video. It's very

http://youtu.be/6czVKkIz3Us

Even if you don't care about sharpening knives, you might enjoy watching this video. I highly recommend turning on the Closed Captioning. It won't help you understand what he's saying. His Japanese accent completely confuses Google's babelfish ability. It's quite entertaining.



The main part I was interested in, the actual sharpening technique, doesn't start until about halfway through the video at 12:00. That's when it starts getting very .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6czVKkIz3Us#t=710
Before that he's mostly just talking about his particular knives, sheaths, and stones.

Used with the almost glassy facing steel of a Japanese Samurai sword, the uchiko ball, usually made with silk and powdered limestone, though cotton denim and portland cement piwder can be substituted, makes microscopic conchoidal fractures along the edge with consecutive overlapping taps from tip to hilt.

http://www.bushidojapaneseswords.com/uploads/3/0/1/5/3015097/9277962_orig.jpg?2749967?4887761

I never normally make New Year resolutions, but I'm going to make an exception this year. I resolve to always have some kind of whisk(e)y in the house at all times. Depending on my circumstances it could be anything from 12-year-old Talisker, to a nice bottle of Jamesons, to a bottle of good bourbon, to a bottle of rotgut, but whichever way it goes, there will always be whisk(e)y at Castle Gosho.

Tequilla for me.

I've had my one bad tequila experience, also my one bad rum experience and maybe one or two others I can't remember. As a result of which I can't drink those drinks any more.

The tequila one was particularly bad. So was the rum. I did once drink an entire bottle of Ouzo in the course of a few hours, was copiously sick and had a hangover the size of a small country, but I'm still quite partial to the stuff, and other similar drinks such as Pernod and Ricard.

And of course, I've had many, many bad beer experiences. Sometimes more than once a week, once or twice for a whole weekend, and yet I still love the stuff

I particularly like a lime or blueberry margarita, myself.

If whiskey, Old Bushmill's.

I noticed well after my trip to Manchester and, more importantly, Edinburgh, that the bottle of Highland Park is cask strength. I'll have that one for a very long time.

It's so strong it dissolved a portion of the sentence above.

The State Comptroller (not a typo - in fact the famously flaky Firefox spellchecker hasn't underlined it, yet it still puts those wavy red lines underneath both Firefox and spellchecker) of Texas has just announced how much money the legislature will have in its budget for the coming two years - $113 billion. Sounds like a lot of money doesn't it. Until you look at the Forbes Rich List and realise that it's less than twice the worth of each of the top three richest people in the world - Bill Gates ($81.2 billion), Warren Buffett ($74.4 billion) and Carlos Slim (($71.1 billion). And number four, Amancio Ortega, isn't far behind half the figure, with $61.5 billion.

I present these numbers without making comment. I don't really need to, do I.

I have a ferocious case of the munchies after drinking beer. I'm not quite at the point of throwing handfuls of flour into my mouth in the belief that it will magically turn into delicious bread... but not not far off.

A bottle of ANY whisky lasts only two weeks, at my place...
any way back to comptroller...
"""I present these numbers without making comment. I don't really need to, do I."""
yup think you do just to explain why revenue raised from oil production and regulation is half that of "Motor Vehicle Sales and Rental Taxes/Motor Fuels Taxes 1.7%""

Sales Taxes 55.5%
Motor Vehicle Sales and Rental Taxes 9.1%
Oil Production and Regulation Taxes 5.2%
Franchise Taxes 5.1%
Natural Gas Production Tax 2.9%
Motor Fuels Taxes 1.7%
All Other State Taxes 9.1%
Fees, Investments and Other Nontax Revenue 11.5%
* Totals do not sum due to rounding,

not a large amount for two years, say if you compare it with the UKs equivalent some interesting reading from them
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmpubacc/716/121105.htm

Something's going on.

I used to be able to time my trip to the kitchen to make a pot of tea to the second, in perfect time to pour some hot water from the nearly-boiling kettle into the pot to warm it, pour out said water (into my cup) and add two spoons full of tealeaves to the pot just as the kettle comes to a rolling boil, and all by the sound the kettle makes, which I can hear from my sofa.

But not any more. Now I go in there and the kettle still has another minute or so to go.

Either my ears are getting as bad as my eyes (an inconvenience), my kettle is on the blink (a catastrophe), or I'm simply losing my touch.

It's weather related. There must be a high pressure zone over Rancho Gosho which raises the boiling point.

Maybe the kettle needs descaling. Or just replacing.

I've finally discovered one use of a smartphone that could nudge me towards acquiring one.

It's noisy enough at work that you can listen to music, but not speech. If I had a phone I could put in some earbuds and use the work wi-fi to stream Up All Night with Rhod Sharp on 5Live with the BBC Listen Again feature, or Danny Baker's Saturday morning show as it's broadcast, if I'm working on a Friday night.

But don't hold your breath. It's a very small nudge.

My last teakettle, after 30 years of continuous use with my local water, which is simultaneously temporarily and permanently hard, after one mending with a dab of JB weld metal where it sprung a leak at the base of the spout, was actually translucent when it finally gave up the ghost, only a thin layer of the original stainless steel remaining over a nacreous shell.

"nacreous shell"...



Such a tinny phrase!