MaW’s Blog

Blog: updated template for monthly archives. Needs a new CSS class to make it work really properly, but it’ll do for now. Next task is the rest of the templates, and wrenching Gallery into some semblance of blending in. I may just write my own photo gallery so I can get it perfect. We shall see. Time, as always, is marching onwards.

Germany: I know I haven’t blogged about what I got up to in Germany, and I also haven’t posted any photos (except for those of you who’ve seen the picture of me in the hat, that is). I am about to post some pictures in the photo gallery, so check it out in about half an hour and hopefully there’ll be some there. I’m not going to write an account of the trip because it’s not really interesting enough to anybody except me, and I’ve got my memories. Or at least, I think I have… now where did I put them?

Other things: gtkmm 2.4.0 came out, and I’m in the release notes as a person who helped make it happen. This pleases me greatly. Maybe in some future release I’ll actually feel like I really deserve to be there.

Towel 0.4.0 will be out soon, but we need tarballs for libsigc++ 2.0.0 and libxml++ 2.6.0 first, which shouldn’t be long, fingers crossed. Tomorrow evening should see them both available. It’ll be a bit longer before they’re in Portage, of course, but that’s not up to me.

Looking at this article from BBC News Online about a farm which dyes baby chicks different colours by injecting dye into their eggs before they hatch, I came across the following attempt to prove that the dye isn’t harmful to the chicks:

“The dye, which the farm insists does not contain chemicals”

So if it’s not got chemicals in it, what does it have in it, exactly? Good intentions? Quick science lesson people: every substance is a chemical or combination thereof. The stuff you extract from plants is no less a chemical than the stuff that comes out of enormous chemical plants — and that probably came out of a plant somewhere along the line as well.

People automatically think chemicals are bad, but where would they be without their sodium chloride, eh?

Tomorrow morning, in the early mists, my parents and I are going to Düsseldorf in Germany. Flying from Stansted (STN), shouldn’t take too long (fingers crossed). The reason? Well, we’re visiting Mum’s sister, her husband and kids (i.e. my Aunt, Uncle and cousins). Except on Saturday morning I’m getting on a train (a very fast one) and going to Freiburg to visit Christian, a member of PoliceSpecials.com and volunteer policeman in Baden-Wurtemburg. Since I don’t know hardly anything about the German police, it should be an extremely interesting couple of days.

Back to Düsseldorf late Sunday, flying back to England Monday evening, then back to work on Tuesday morning — with any luck to a new chair at the office! If it’s there, my back will love me forever.

Or at least until the next uncomfortable chair comes along.