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

Thursday 13th November

Because I worked an extra day last week, for which I don't get paid, I took an extra day off this week. So I was off work both yesterday and today.

I couldn't have picked a worse day for it. The rain fell non stop from before I awoke until about 3:30pm. The sun set at about 5pm so there was only 90 minutes of brightness.

Mrs G and I drove into town and had a lovely Italian meal, then met our daughters and went to see the Irish comedian Daire O'Briain. He lives in London but is originally from a small town just outside Dublin. He loves to come back to Dublin, and it particularly in tune with the audiences in Dublin.

He likes to talk to people in the front row and improvise based on what they tell him. Tonight, he started the show with a story of flying into Dublin Airport over the town of Ashbourne and some Americans in the row behind him being amazed at the castle there. The first person O'Briain spoke to in the audience was from Ashbourne and worked in Dublin Airport, so that was a great coincidence to start the night off.

When we came out of the show, it was raining again, bucketing down. There were big rivers of water flowing across the roads. Back home safely by about 11:20pm.

[Amy P]

I really like his style, mostly I have seen him on 'Mock the Week', but also some stand up shows (on TV). A very intelligent man, supports Arsenal FC

And is a physicist AFAIK

He studied physics in college, but is not a physicist. He's a comedian.

He does those shows with the divine Doctor Cox, doesn't he? He's funny, I've enjoyed him on QI.

Deb

Built like a wardrobe ... he's the Box of Box & Cox.

Friday 14th November. Today was a good day in work. One of our systems which collects information and e-mails it to a central location decided after 10 years of trouble-free operation that it didn't like one of the addresses. It dumped all the mails instead of delivering them. A good day because I spent the day investigating. By the end of the day I had a solution although not an explanation. I made an emergency change and the system is working again. Next week I'll see can I recover the dumped e-mails and resend them.

At home, I cleaned out the guinea pig box in the kitchen - we allowed them to stay in because their shed was flooded. Then I cleaned the fish tank remivibg 10% of the water and replacing it with clean water. Cooked dinner after that and am now enjoying an old Dermot Dunne CD.

[Amy P]

Saturday 15th November

A generally wet day, but we got a few hours of bright weather in the morning, although I wouldn't go so far as to say the sun actually shone.

Managed to do some tidying in the garden, making compost and clearing out the greenhouse. Mrs G planted some bulbs which will liven up the garden in the spring. I removed the automatic watering system we had used for the tomato plants in the greenhouse; the plants themselves were removed and composted about two months ago.

There's a leak in the greenhouse and I'm going to have to find it or wade through a centimetre of water after heavy rain. It doesn't build up to more than a centimetre because the builders put in drainage channels when they moved it to the end of the garden, but these aren't low enough so they don't drain the first centimetre. So I need to stop the water getting in, or divert it before it reaches the floor. That's a project for the next week or so.

Sorted out a printing problem on Iz's Windows 8 computer - jpg files were associated with Microsoft Paint so that when she printed them, it used the Paint print settings rather than routing her to the Windows Printing utility. I've got that sorted now.

Mrs G cooked a lovely pizza and we sat and ate pizza while we watched X-Factor. One of these days I must try making pizza dough. She says it is very easy.

All in all, a very relaxing day. Tomorrow we've a choir concert, so that will take a lot of time. I may not get a chance to post anything, but I'll fill you all in on it either late tomorrow or on Monday.

[Amy P]

Deb

Hullo Gnomon! Sounds like a great day's hiking, with added meal and pint.

You have a calorie counter on your phone??? I really must get a phone that does more things than make phone calls. I'm attached to my phone though. Someone called it a dinophone the other day, and I objected, because it does much less than a dinophone.

Laughing at dinophone..

Is it MyFitnessPal which is the calorie counting app?

My other half can make lovely pizza dough. I tried once, and ended up throwing the result in the bin (with not very good grace, I must confess)

So scary to hear of programs ditching emails. Is communication technology going to continue becoming more reliable, or has it passed a peak?

It was MapMyWalk that tracks the hike and measures the calories.

As for comms becoming more or less reliable, I don't know. The system concerned is using an out-of-date email program. It should probably be rewritten but as long as it keeps working, nobody is going to pay to do that. Now that I've fixed it, it will probably be ok until we have to upgrade to Windows 9 or its equivalent.

The concert last night went very well. We had a good big audience - 90 people or thereabouts.

The newly refurbished Lady Chapel in St Patrick's Cathedral is beautiful. It's much brighter than it used to be. They've also tidied it up - there used to be an assortment of stuff at the back, whereas its now clean and neat. Unfortunately, they removed the old organ and there is now nowhere to put it, which is a shame. For the organ pieces in the concert, the organist had to trudge up to the main organ which is quite a distance.

Everything we sang was more than 400 years old. The highlights were the "Euge Bone" Mass by Christopher Tye and the "Videte Miraculum". The former is a setting of the sung parts of the mass for six voices. This was mainly soprano, alto, two tenor parts and two bass parts. We had enough forces to have at least three people in each part which makes things a lot more reliable. There was only once when all three of the first basses (including myself) missed an entry, causing us to be silent for half a page. I doubt the audience noticed.

Pre-reformation English music had a few features which made it different from the music of other countries. Firstly, they were very enthusiastic about Mary, the Mother of Jesus and wrote lots of music about her. Secondly, they went in for really high treble lines, which nowadays stretch the sopranos to their limits in stratospheric singing. The Videte Miraculum was one such piece about Mary with very high soprano line. It is gorgeous and lasts about 10 minutes. I've been told we did it justice.

Daughter Iz arrived late because she missed two buses, was chased by dogs, fell in mud and dropped her chicken nuggets which were snapped up by the dogs. She was rather cross, understandably.

As usual, the concert was followed by a glass of wine for performers and audience, which is a good way to get everybody talking together about the concert.