New Triops and National Flour

Late Saturday evening, shining a light into the aquarium revealed a tiny motile organism, still less than 1mm long. Sunday morning found at least three of these small organisms in the tank. At present it is still impossible to establish whether these are truly Triops but my hopes have been raised.

Mrs Thomas has been busy baking oat biscuits today and as we perused the collection of wartime recipes, in "We'll eat again" compiled by Marguerite Patten (ISBN9780600325246), we came across mention of "National Flour". Intrigued, I was tempted into a serious online search to establish the exact nature of the flour.

Basically, National Flour was a less refined flour that still contained wheatgerm. It was promoted on health grounds by the then Ministry of Food in the UK, between the years of 1942 to 1956, when it was discontinued. 

During my search, I also found that the colonial government of Kenya had in turn promoted a National Flour, though this comprised a mixture of 70% wheat flour and 30% maize flour. Apparently this made baking bread much more difficult, until an enterprising baker found that adding some oil to the bread dough dramatically restored the quality of baked loaves. The story is recounted in Madatally Manji, “Memoirs of a biscuit baron”.

The gathered information has now been added under "National Flour" to the Wikipedia page on Wheat Flour.

Start of Working year and finishing game design

It was a slightly later start to the first working day of the year. It started well with a call from Mr Straus for design task. Starting to work back through the e-mails, there was an unusual one from Germany, responding to my Christmas greetings and asking for a meeting out of the blue.

Not being able to find out much from a quick internet search, I replied suggesting the individual call me for a chat for futher information. This they duly did and it turned out that we had met briefly back in 2006 at the BIK business exhibition in Germany, where I had assisted my sister.

I had stated at the time that I was happy to meet up with people for idea exchanges if my visit costs were covered. My caller was offering just that. There also appeared to be synergies with another of my contacts in NRW and I put them in touch with each other.

In the evening, I could not resist working to finish the flash game that I had begun to design. Completed as “Your Business Startup”, I eventually published it on the StencylWork site, see http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/10438 and have a play! What was most amazing was that within an hour there had been over 40 clicks onto the site.

Triops, sunspots, Snowdrops and Stencyl game design

A colder but sunny day led to the cheap refractor telescope being dusted off to project the sun onto the ceiling at around 11 am this morning. One bold and four fainter sunspots were clearly visible and Mrs Thomas attempted to photograph the image on my behalf – pictures still to be uploaded. Seeing the magnified solar globe at about 30cm diameter on the ceiling also brought home the Earth's rotation as the disc could be seen visibly creeping along at a couple of millimetres per second.

Hermione, the Triops seemed a bit slower today when she suddenly turned on her back and started twitching. I dashed to get a camera but by my return she had just moulted, leaving her ghost of a shell behind – collected for microscopic observation. Within an hour, Hermione was actively feeding again, now another millimetre or so larger.

It was such a lovely day and we were in dire need of exercise after all the Christmas feasting, that we drove to Anglesey Abbey for a walk. We took the longer path leading to the wildlife trail. As we were on the return part of the walk we came onto the open lawns where snowdrops were already emerging under the scattered trees. Diverting along the Winter Garden walk, we saw more snowdrops at various stages of emergence and flowering. They had been beaten to it by the dwarf blue Irises that were fully open. Winter cherries were in bloom and several other trees were also flowering.

Late afternoon and evening, I continued with the design of the flash based game that I had started using StencylWorks. I designed a few additional simple characters or actors and ascribed a variety of properties to them. I aimed to have some that would kill my main actor on contact, a number that my character could stomp on and also two items that could be “collected”. Wasted some time trying to get an active scoring system from the available StencylForge library but could not get them to work properly. The game will have to do without scores for the moment.. All characters and functions set, The remaining time was spent designing the maze and location of the different characters that would interact with my character. More work to be done yet.

First battles with Stencyl

The first day of the year was heralded in by firework displays occuring on the hour in a sweep from the first dateline in the Pacific until reaching us here in the UK. Judging from an earlier walk, many could not wait until the allotted hour of midnight, with fireworks going off sporadically in and around Milton and Cambridge. Still, not a patch yet on the explosive mayhem seen in Germany on “Sylvester”.

We took the day gently and I resumed battle with Stencyl – a freely available flash game design software I had heard about on the BBC's Click program. The demonstration/tutorial of designing a simple walking and jumping flash game seemed straightforward enough.

Encouraged, I designed some simple PNG versions of a walking and jumping figure plus an enemy in CorelDraw and then attempted to import them into a new program. What I had not realised, was that for each new game, you had to access a resource that gave you the basic functions. Also, whenever features were changed within the program you were designing, you needed to update the game regularly. My first over ambitious attempt therefore failed in a combination of malfunctioning downloaded elements and lack of regular updating.

Going back to using one of the “kits” with most functionality included finally lead to the first signs of success. By the end of the afternoon, I was more confident of beginning to start a simple game that worked.

This was only the start, and I have to see whether I want to persist.

My Triops is now about 4mm long at the carapace and because of the potential hermaphrodite or even parthenogenic nature has been named “Hermione”.

Triops, Solar activity and where to buy your meteorites

I've taken a break from work over the Christmas period and one of the fascinations that has gripped me is the living fossil Triops longicaudatus.

I set up a hatch of half a commercial packet of dried soil purporting to contain Triops eggs during the day of Christmas Eve. Whilst the suppliers advice is to use water above 20degC, preferably around 25degC, a trawl through Google Scholar found sufficient reference to Triops longicaudatus being able to hatch and grow at lower temperatures. We have a 20degC/18degC Day/night temperature cycle in the house this winter.

Late night on Christmas Day I thought I could see microscopic hatched life, though it was still too small to identify. By Wednesday it was clear that I had some small freshwater shrimps, a couple of daphnia and one possible Triops. By Thursday, the Triops was approximately 1mm long as measured by its carapace and swimming continuously around the tank.

Friday saw a distinct leap in size to about 2mm and a change in behaviour. For the first time the Triops stopped briefly when it encountered food particles and it also spent a much greater proportion of its time at the bottom of the small tank. Today, it had grown to 3mm carapace length, was highly active and continuing to display the stopping to feed for a couple of seconds behaviour that first occurred yesterday. Since Triops, like all arthropods, have a hard shell exterior, they have to moult to grow by expansion. The continued growth of my Triops indicates that so far these critical moults have not been a problem.

Whilst hidden behind rain clouds, the sun has also been demonstrating a more interesting active phase after an extended quiet period. Checking out the SOHO solar observation site revealed several sunspots again at last, so I may be out with the telescope to try a projection if the sky is clear in the coming days.

Solar activity has also been shown in a recent flare that not only interrupted radio signals but also led to the last Aurorae of the year 2011. Whilst hunting for the solar information, I came across a site offering fragments of meteorites from the asteroid Vest, the moon and Mars for sale – something to bear in mind for future Birthday/Christmas lists. (http://www.shopspaceweather.com/asteroid-vesta-meteorite.aspx).

Alternatively, I might try catching micrometeorites for free later in the year.

From international finance to repairing a webcam dropped in tea

I visited Mrs Hales-Tooke, who's two books I had published, after my brush painting class. Her son, photographer, artist and author Mr H Hales-Tooke was visiting from the US and I heard of his narrow escape during the floods in Spring. Our discussion also turned to the merits of printed versus digital books and the different strategies for marketing them.

Wednesday was a day trip to London for a talk on The Future of the international Monetary System, part of the OMFIF Golden Talks series. It was held in the Armourers' Hall, Coleman Street. The talk  was illuminating – concentrating on the longer term – there is a blog article on it now, “The International Monetary System is to local crises like the climate is to weather”. It provided a marked contrast to the immediate dramatic fluctuations and contagion in the Eurozone area.

The Armourers' hall itself was worthy of note and I spent some time photographing there (see article “the Armourers' Hall of the Worshipful Company of Armourers and Brasiers”) before taking a walk through London from Coleman St to Holborn Station. The route was a slight meander, taking in the stained glass in Wrens rebuilt church of St Lawrence Jewry and the Occupy London tent city still outside St Pauls.

Thursday I visited Mr Woolnough, author of the Understanding and Using the Stereomicroscope. We had worked together closely on the book as I edited the design, layout, redrew some of the illustrations, added extra photographs and the quick start guide. The book is published by the Quekett Microscopical Society.

We were working together on the start of a new exciting project and made a lot of progress on the initial planning.

This morning began with a telephone call to Mr Ebert of Feinkaeserei Zimmermann, a friend from his previous visit to the UK looking for potential distributors of the Product of Designated Origin, the Altenburger Ziegenkaese. Today's call was a social catchup on mutual news.

The annoying and yet amusing immediate aftermath of the conversation involved my accidentally knocking off the web-cam from my PC right into a full cup of tea. Quickly retrieved, I could see the milky tea sloshing behind the lens. A search online gave instructions on how to open up my particular model and I set to flushing out the tea with water and then placing the opened web-cam to dry in a warm place.

Then it was an HBN day where Mrs Burbidge was notable for ensuring that every guest arriving was welcomed to the event.

Returning late afternoon, I set about ensuring that the visible and accessible parts of the webcam were clean before reassembling it.

With great anticipation, I reconnected the webcam and started a video. All seemed to be working well until I saw the picture on screen – the image was as blurry as viewed through cold tea. I had to admit defeat and order a replacement!

DVD Spectrometer and waiting for EU to make a decision

Work on Mr James's book this morning, getting it print ready before passing it back to the author for a detailed word for word check. Then in the afternoon, start of planning for business presentation to Magdeburg delegation in London on Monday.

A brief but fascinating educational interlude via email from Mr Cooper, who had found a design for a spectrometer using a cardboard box and a DVD or CD (see http://www.scienceinschool.org/2007/issue4/spectrometer).

Rummaging in the kitchen non-food recycling bin, I recovered the tablet box from my antibiotics – a bit small but worth a try, I thought. Then took a DVD and followed the very simple instructions. Using a very thin slit, I could get an excellent spectrum from sunlight – with absorption lines! This is the first time that I've seen this phenomenon that I had only known from textbooks.

The different fluorescent bulbs in the house had their own unique spectra with clear peaks in intensity in the reds, greens and blues of the spectrum. Brilliant.

For once gripped by the news and following it during the day as EU leaders prepared to meet for a crucial meeting to dam the economic crisis. There are clear fracture lines between the Euro and non Euro members and also between the fiscally more prudent states, Germany, France and the UK and those suffering real problems – such as Greece and the threatened domino effect on Italy.

As usual such events bring along their own phrases and terminology. Writing off a proportion of Greece's debt has become “A Haircut”. The trillion is the new measure of financial backing required.

The currently accepted definition in the UK of a trillion is 1000 billion or 1 million Million. This is a considerable shift from the previous use of the word, because a British billion used to be a million million and a trillion was a million million million.

Phrase of the day came from one financial expert questioned about the summit “The EU has been kicking the can down the street for a while now, it's time for a decision.”

Useful photographic software and trepanning

I woke briefly with the aura of an impending migraine, took some tablets and slept again until the medication took hold.

Yesterdays photographs at Ely Cathedral included a range of images either taken at different focal depths, e.g. of carved figures around a column, or of a scene such as a stained glass window taken at a range of exposures so that the series would capture all the detail in both the darkest areas and lightest ones.

These two different series would be used to create composite images using some extremely useful software. However, I needed to transfer and activate licensed software from my old PC for these programs on my new PC and that was a key task undertaken today.

The most important software is Helicon Focus, used to create a focus stack. A problem commonly experienced with photography, especially macro-photography and microscopy, is that when areas in the foreground are in focus, the background is not and vice versa. Whilst this can be used to great effect to achieve an emphasis of one subject, by making sure it is the only one in focus, in other instances you actually want a whole area to be in focus.

When it is critical to have more of an object in focus than can be achieved with a single photo, I ensure that the camera is fixed and then take a series of photos, changing the focus from front to back in incremental steps. With Helicon focus I can then combine all the images together and create an final image where only the elements that are in focus are used from each serial image.

The second software is Photomatix. It can combine images of different contrast range to create a High Dynamic Range (HDR) photo which reveals all the detail.

Our eyes and brain are brilliant at looking at a scene where there are very bright and very dark areas. Imagine yourself on a path in a wood in bright sunlight – you can see detail in the shady areas AND the bright areas. Cameras have a much lower contrast range, meaning that if you expose to reveal the detail in the brightest area, the shadows are black without detail – and vice versa.

With Photomatix, I photograph a scene from a fixed position (tripod) over a range of bracketed exposures and then combine these in Photomatix to create an HDR image.

In the evening, during the judging of Strictly Come Dancing, I started reading Northern Lights by Philip Pullman. One of the curious minor story threads is the use of trepanning or trepanation – the drilling of holes in the skull and allowing them to heal – for spiritual or health reasons.

 I'd seen a skull displayed in the International Museum of Nubia in Aswan showing a skull with an accompanying X-ray where there was lesion that I thought was a trepanation that had healed over.

Trepanning or trepanation had been part of human culture for at least 7000 years, starting with a neolithic skull found in Ensisheim, France, and in Chinese, Ancient Egyptian, Greek, Arabic and European skulls. Approximately 6% of Inca and pre-inca skulls had been trepanned, with a suggested survival rate of over 60%.

There is a small group of individuals who actually self trepan to the present date.

Reasons for trepanning include the obvious medical – to repair skull damage or antique beliefs that it helped with curing migraines or epilepsy. However, there may also have been trepanning for spiritual reasons.

The current rationale for trepanning in the absence of medical necessity is to increase brain activity with the explanations that it might help by allowing the brain to expand or increasing oxygenation of the brain. No medical evidence for these exists to date.

Whilst I am a migraine sufferer, I will not be taking up trepanation!
Two interesting links : Wikipedia and An illustrated history of trepanation.

Ely parking, crop smudging and child trafficking

Off to Ely for the pre-breakfast event “Business Support is Changing”. Arriving for a 7:30am reception, this meant that the parking in the all day car park had not yet started; anyone arriving before 8:30 had to leave the car park after 90 minutes.

After the meeting there was a bacon butty breakfast, to be followed by a consultation between the county council and interested businesses. The start of the consultation was briefly interrupted as the realisation set in that our cars were at risk of exceeding the 90 minute parking time. Indeed, a car park attendant was counting down the minutes and gave us a good natured good morning as we all dashed out to move our cars to another car park before returning.

The main message of the meeting was that business support was being dramatically pared down by the UK, whilst there was still free support from EU programs promoting cross border partnering between businesses.

After lunch and catching up with mail, I photographed the watercolour paintings that author Alan James wished to use in his book. The images were optimised for contrast and then both colour and grayscale versions saved.

The afternoon passed quickly with other work interspersed with an uncharacteristic number of Skype calls.

My mind was slightly disconnected by the early start and so some of the messages that I received took on separate meanings. A tweet by London's Mayor, Boris Johnson, “Mayor secures more than £11m to boost homeless hostels in London...” raised the spectre of a fleet of hostels without a home. A friend attending a meeting “Inspiring Entrepreneurs” was equally ambiguous.

Later that evening, watching “Midsommer Murders”, one of the key items was protection of apple blossom from frost damage by “smudging” - creating a protective smoke blanket to keep frost at bay.

A search revealed that smudging was indeed a possible method for frost protection as listed in an Ontario Factsheet. However there more successful methods that could be used, including using the downdraft of a helicopter to displace the cold air boundary close to the ground. Spreading lots of small heating units through out an orchard would also work - more so than fewer large heaters which would create counterproductive convection, drawing in colder air from the surroundings.

The other reason that I would also have thought that smudging was less adviseable is that if the smoke is generated by combustion, it will invariably contain significant amounts of ethlylene, a gas known for its ability to induce senescence of leaves and flowers. Indeed this ethylene effect had beenfirst seen when the first gas street lights were installed – causing damage to nearby trees.

The most horrific news story of the day was of Ugandan children being trafficked into the UK (several hundred a year) for abuse in black magic blood rituals. Apparently the perceived value of blood in rituals is rising.

Battles with Wordfast and the importance of tattoo aftercare

The tribulations of modern technology came to the fore again as I tried to use the translation software Wordfast for the first time on the new computer with an existing file that I had started previously. All seemed to be progressing well until I tried to save the partially translated file back into the Word document as I had been able to before. - A dreaded error message appeared.

An internet search did not come up with a suitable answer, so it was back to the Wordfast site to use their help hotline – except that was not available unless an additional hefty fee of over £60 was paid. Well, it was either that or waste the equivalent in time, so I reluctantly paid. This was a software element I was paying for, so I was very surprised to find that it was not immediately available. Delivery time anywhere between 6h and two days!

Went back to basics and set up a fresh word file on the PC. I started a new Wordfast project with a new translation memory. This worked flawlessly. Eventually, by trial and error, I found that by creating a new project for the existing file and running it from a PC based folder, rather than a dropbox folder as I had done before, I could resume work without problems. Spent the remaining couple of hours working away on the translation.

A short afternoon walk was interrupted by an impromptu haircut at the local salon, which was empty when I passed by. The discussion centred around the cling-filmed arm of my hairdresser, covering a new tattoo to complement the already very aesthetic grayscale ones on his other arm. Apparently this was to ensure that the tattoo set. It turns out that having a tattoo is only half or even a tenth of the job as a good tattoo requires considerable after-care.

A tattoo is effectively a wound and therefore it is important to wear the dressing given to you for at least the time specified by your tattooist. This is followed by a gentle antibacterial wash, drying gently and then applying protective lotion or ointment very thinly.

Initially during the healing process, tattoos may appear cloudy as one develops “onion skin”. The trick is not to scratch or remove peeling skin during the subsequent weeks. Total water immersion such as in a bath or with swimming are also out of the frame for a couple of weeks as healing continues, though a shower can be taken as long as the tattoo does not become too wet.

Tattoos are also photosensitive, i.e. will fade in strong light. So to keep the tattoo pristine and dark as the day it was made, it should be covered up – or protected with factor 30 sunblock. Two excellent links are by Wiki How and About.com.

Early evening I drove to Soham for the first Cambridge Open Studios committee meeting looking towards the next year. Productive but long, I did not return home till just after 11pm.

Thu, 15th Sep.: Quick response to web site hijack Then off to New Wood Green Business Exhibition

The last leg to complete a vital project report on a year's work to help with the invoice submission in conjuction with my other collaborative partner. Not a day for interruptions really, so naturally a major one had to come my way.

Mr Heker, checking out my company website, queried the e-mail. I went to have a look and found that my site had been hacked – e-mail address and telephone number changed and a whole set of articles on tobacco and cigarettes added!

I was onto the telephone to Mr Beal like a shot; his company hosts my website. Fortunately, we had already been working on an upgrade to my site. This was the time to change the site username and password and replace the old with the new upgrade.

The new site is not perfect, but I now have the impetus to work on it. Returning to the report, I managed to finish by about 5pm.

A quick change into business dress and it was off to Wood Green to check out a new Business Exhibition, organised by Mr Cooney. The ambition was to be a new concept, not only having businesses networking and educational presentations but also including entertainment acts.

Whilst there were a number of familiar friends and faces, exhibiting and wandering around, there were also a number of companies who would not have been at other business exhibitions. Returning back home, I wrote a short blog article - New Business Exhibition at Wood Green - to go on the Miltoncontact blog.

Wed, 14th Sep.: Small businesses pull together to help a friend

Packed laptop and projector, then set off for Huntingdon to take part in Mr Wishart's social media event, arranged at a new venue at short notice.

The invitation had been sent out via different social media on Monday, by this morning we were expecting 27 attendees. Ms Ashton and Ms Ekblom were already there in support and Ms Hawkins arrived soon afterwards forming the team that Mr Wishart had asked to help in his hour of need.

By the time all the attendees had arrived, we had 32, with one coming from as afar as Colchester, attesting to the power of Linkedin.

I had to adapt my presentation quickly before the event began as we could not achieve an internet connection via the WiFi which we usually used, as is typical for any technology required when things are critical. However, this was not such a critical issue as the content and principles could be conveyed equally well with a flipchart and pen.

The event went well overall and there was positive feedback both at the meeting and later in the Twittersphere. On my return back home, close to five pm, I wrote a quick blog article - Making social media relevant to your business -summarising the key elements of the event and providing useful links and keywords relevant to the content.

Fri, 9th Sep.: Back to QR Codes

Braved the computer to check the accumulated e-mails of the past week, seeking out the most urgent to respond to.

Saved by driving to the Friday HBN meeting, dressed in my galabeya, but without the headdress. Good turnout. For the first time see the usually imperturbable Mr W quietly fuming at the way he had been treated by another business. Group very supportive.

Travelled back with Mr Wishart to view the banner which I had designed as there were anticipated problems with one of the QR codes, one combined with an image. The original design worked on screen and when printed on paper, however, when printed on the banner material, it worked with my QR code reader but was very erratic with Mr Wishart's. Based on the technology underlying the QR codes, we thought that perhaps the problem was due to the lower contrast at one of the three key squares used by the QR software to recognise the orientation of the two dimensional code. Experiments with small strips of white sticky paper found a solution that worked without impinging on the impact of the design.

Spent the evening editing the 1000+ photographs taken in Egypt.

Huntingdon meeting

Yesterday was spent doing as much of the VHP report as possible, so that Mr Dodsworth can complete it.

Today, I took the new car to Huntingdon. With a clear A14, this was a blissfully short trip of 35 minutes, compared to the long journeys by bus or by bicycle over the previous two weeks. Holding the Huntingdonshire business network meeting in the Huntingdon Library cafe, we had an interesting discussion on three main topics; Non paying or late paying clients; How the UK was exporting to the rest of Europe via manufacturing based in China; the use of Klout to measure social networking activity.

I wrote a short blog article on the hbn.org.uk website on the discussions.

Back home, the neighbour's Goats moth larva had bored its way into a Rosewood twig and spun a silk cocoon to pupate into.

Mrs T in Germany called with a small problem in trying to produce a passport sized printed photograph from a large one. By using the screen sharing function on Skype, I was able to guide her through the process of creating a sized image in OpenOffice Writer.

Out with the old car and in with the (relatively) new

Today was dominated by the exchange of our old car, a Renault Megane Scenic which we had had since 1998, for a newer one, a 2008 Honda Jazz.

The Renault's exhaust had finally broken away from its rubber holding rings and was rattling gently on the last journey to the Marshall's used car centre. The remaining two thirds of petrol in its tank reflected it's value almost exactly. It had been a true friend as the children grew up.

It was just in the past years that the leaky sunroof had to be sealed with old bicycle inner tubing . The flood of water gently sloshing between the passenger front seat on braking and and giggling passengers who lifted their feet to keep them dry as the wave crashed back to the back on acceleration was but a past memory of an inadvertent drive through an overdeep puddle after torrential rain. And at least the more recent loud clicking of the ventilation system could be silenced by setting the air circulation to internal. Yes, even we had come around to the fact that we did need a new car.

I left the Marshall's dealership with our 2008 Honda Jazz, currently a trouble free vehicle that should be more economical in these times of increasing fuel prices.

I came home to the imminent arrival of MJ Potts plumbers, who were coming to install new taps in the downstairs cloakroom washbasin. The cold water tap had started leaking profusely and a brief visit by the plumber yesterday was unable to dismantle the 50 year old taps to exchange a washer.

The plumber had started the previous day badly by falling out of a loft and found the rest of his day bedevilled, including the breakage of two screwdrivers in an attempt to remove a protective disk on the leaking tap to reveal an expected fixing screw. Once the disc was removed, he had instead found inaccessible clips that thwarted any attempts at extraction. He left after tightening the tap sufficiently to stop the leakage and with a promise to return for the tap replacement. With an apprentice in tow, this task at least progressed smoothly today. Within half an hour we had new clean and fully functional taps again.

After some work on the NRW report, it was off to see my first published author, Mrs H-T. In her mid eighties, it was lovely to see her again and hear of her newest plans to return to Cornwall for a painting break in the near future. We also made a short excursion to St Andrews, the Parish Church of Chesterton, once visited by Samuel Pepys. It is notable for being picturesquely illuminated at night and for the medieval doom painting that was hidden by a lime wash during the reformation and revealed again more recently.

Then it was back home in the new car, via a short shopping foray into Tesco's, to the curious eyes of the neighbours and the anticipation of Mrs T.

A visit to the dentist and purchasing Kevlar bicycle tyres

Staggered out of bed at 6:30am to get ready for a dental appointment. Mrs T and I caught the Number 9 bus at 8am, which actually arrived punctually. This being the summer school holidays, the traffic into the city was relatively quick. After a walk across Parker's Piece, I arrived half an hour early but fortunately had my Kindle with me.

The ever friendly Ms Kenny, gently anaesthetised my left inferior alveolar nerve in order to repair two fillings on the rear lower molars. Ironically, the drilling was painless, it was the clamp around the teeth prior to applying the filling that caused pain as it had to be pushed right down onto the gum. Fortunately, the trial was soon over and I departed with a numb lower jaw and lip.

I met up with Ms T. at the railway station and we then made our way into town to purchase some Egyptian Pounds from Marks & Spencer, the relevant office being situated just around the corner from the ladies lingerie. We then went our separate ways.

Having missed the next bus to Milton, I had time to spare and sought out some new outer tyres for my bicycle. In particular, I was looking for Schwalbe Kevlar tyres that are much more resistant to punctures. The stall at Cambridge Market had a pair at a cool £35 each, so I walked further up towards Hill's Road to Howe's Cycles, where the same tyres were only £22 each.

On the way back to the bus stop, I purchased a maple syrup and walnut icecream and felt my spirits lifted at last after the lingering effects of the dental treatment.

Returning home, I spent an hour before lunch replacing the tyres on my bicycle.

For the afternoon, I completed the proofreading of the scientific article begun yesterday, a task that took another 3 hours.

Testing out the guided bus

The challenge today was to travel to Huntingdon using the new guided busway that had been in operation since last Sunday.

I set of at about 09:50 to the Waggon & Horses Milton bus stop to catch the 10:01 No. 9 bus. It arrived 10 minutes late, though I had allowed for delays. Dropped off at the Milton Road bus stop opposite the Science Park, by Taylor Vinters. This meant a walk to the guided busway stop, five minuts away on foot. I saw one bus round the corner and disappear into the distance before I could reach the stop.

My bus arrived 6 minutes late but was soon racing along the track towards St Ives, travelling past lakes and rivers until arriving remarkably quickly at the St Ives Park and Ride. Here I had to wait for ten minutes or so for another guided bus that was travelling through to Huntingdon. Arriving at 11.21 it was a double decker, packed full with mainly elderly passengers. A whole crowd disembarked at the next stop, St Ives bus station. I used the opportunity to go upstairs for a better view as an equally long queue of passengers boarded.

In comparison to the first stretch, the journey from St Ives to Huntingdon along normal roads was painfully slow, exacerbated by the fact that the route in St Ives and through Huntingdon were both convoluted. We finally arrived at Huntingdon bus station at around 12:00.

I took a walk to the Huntingdon Indoor bowls club to put up a sign reminding people that this week, HBN was meeting informally in the library. Then it was a walk back to the centre to the library, where I arrived at 12:40.

In the end, there were six HBNers sitting around a table in the cafe in the library, engaged in conversation. Mr Wishart was amongst them and also asked for feedback on the design I had prepared for his banner.

I had to depart shortly after 14:00h with the aim of catching the 14:15 from Huntingdon to get to Swavesey. This bus was delayed a full 20 minutes, meaning that when I finally arrived at Swavesey guided bus station, at 15:30, I had missed the connecting bus that could have taken me to Over, for my meeting with Mr Beal and my Tutorcloud colleagues. The walk up the gentle hill and down into Over to Mr Beals office took 25 minutes.

By five, rain had arrived and so I gratefully accepted a lift from Mrs Farndale back to the Swavesey guided busway stop, aiming to catch the 17:43 bus back towards Cambridge. Buses were running in closely spaced groups of three in either direction at this time of the evening. Again, my bus was about 6 minutes late but speedily transported me to the Science Park bus stop. What I did miss were announcements of the next bus stop coming up as it was otherwise so easy to miss one's destination.

I walked to the conventional bus stop around the corner – which lacked a timetable so I was not sure when the next bus would come. Fortunately, the Park and Ride buses to Milton were still running and one arrived within 10 minutes. From the P&R it was then again a 10 minute walk to finally arrive home, about 75 minutes after setting off from Over.

It was an interesting day, where I spent at least four hours travelling plus another hour or so walking. My pedometer indicated an accumulation of 10,000 steps over the course of the day.

A mundane day and the despicable rioting

A working day on the computer, interrupted by a consultation with MS Lockyer of the Currency Exchange with regards to arranging suitable safe money for travel on an impending trip to Egypt.

At the end of the day, a short Skype call by another author trying to format his text for Kindle. The call extended as the apparently simple task proved ever more difficult – for trivial reasons. I played on with the book later whist watching television until finding a suitable solution after a couple of hours.

In the news, the lumbering giant of justice was finally gaining speed as Magistrate courts in London and elsewhere began to haul the offenders in. 805 arrests have been made in London alone. Three deaths of people trying to protect property by a hit and run driver have added a very serious note to the days events.

The sickening site of “assistance” being offered to an injured Malaysian student, which turned into blatant casual robbery, has made one YouTube video go viral as the scene is spread through Facebook to winkle out the culprits.

The streets of UK cities are calmer tonight, perhaps in part by the onset of wet weather as much as policing.

Battling with Kindle formatting

Sunday, 31st July: Having established yesterday that the formatting of my trial Kindle booklet using illuminated capitals was unsuccessful, I chose an alternative solution, where the illuminated letter and the title, available in the book designed originally in Scribus, was converted into an image that would span a kindle page width. Simple in concept but a time consuming process.

The stages were: exporting the Scribus pages individually as images; Editing these in the image processing software, GIMP - first cropping to the headings alone and then sizing the images to be 520 pixels wide. The images were then incorporated into Sigil as an e-pub format document with the correct text underneath.

The original cover that I had designed was a bit bland too. Since the title was to include the phrase twelve pillars, I set out to design an ionic column, following Greek proportions of column height being eight times column height nine times if including upper and lower units). This was achieved using the software Inkscape, whilst sitting on the garden bench.

Then it was back to editing and extending the text in Sigil that Mrs T kindly proof read for me.

The Gasometer and it's 616 stairs.

Saturday, 23rd July: Today we did successfully make the trip to the Gasometer, which is actually in Oberhausen, to see the exhibition “Magic Places - Natural and Cultural Monuments of the World” (http://www.gasometer.de/en_GB/index.php?pid=3_1).

The exhibition featured large panels of photographs of natural and geographic features, interspersed with mineral and fossil samples on the ground floow. On the next level, there were beautifully recreated cultural artifacts from the Gipsformerei der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin (Replica Workshop of the National Museums of Berlin). The low light was a challenge for photography, but I persevered in attempts to capture the bust of Nefertiti.

The centre of the hall was dominated by the giant sculpture of a rainforest tree that loomed up into the vast space and was illuminated by gradually changing lighting.

On the way in to the exhibition, I had noticed that the the outside stairs leading all the way from the bottom to the top of the 100m high gasometer were actually open to the public. After wandering around the exhibition, I moved outside to take up the challenge of making the ascent. An initial rush soon changed to a steady pace. I started counting steps but soon gave up as the stairwell had a varying number of steps around each quarter. I later established that there were 616 steps to a height of 115m (the total height of the Gasometer is 117.5m), making this one of the largest industrial stairs in the world.

At 30m, I was already looking down on a tree-top climbing activity. The view gradually expanded to take in the river, railway and related exhibition areas. The wind also picked up and my ears were beginning to freeze. It took me more than 20 minutes to make the ascent, breathless but with a feeling of achievement.