Cotwolds

Not long been back from the Cotswolds where we went on holiday for a few days. We drove up via Oxford and had a quick wander round the town before we got to the hotel. Admittedly, it is a very nice town, but, in my highly biased opinion, it's not quite Cambridge. It's much more open, which in some ways is nice, but in other ways loses the close-knit feeling of Cambridge. It was also nowhere near as clean, and the buildings are built of an extremely crumbly stone (they look like Wensleydale cheese). That was very critical, and there's no reason why Oxford should be compared to Cambridge, but.. well. It was nice, but not NICE.

The hotel was amazing - amazing rooms, each with their own front door on to a little courtyard, and the food was incredible. Small portions, but they tasted amazing. Plus breakfast with Terry Wogan, an experience in itself.

The next day we drove to Bourton on the Water, a cute little village, but the journey to it turned out to be the most eventful thing to happen. We drove about 50miles to make to 25 mile journey.. I enclose a map of our journey - including phantom section. The bit of road we never went down.(NB: on the map it says "to bourton on the water" - the actuall village is further along the A40... if you care! Just didn't want the Bourton village council onto me for deformation of location :))

It was a very quaint village with a model village (including a model of the model village in the model village), loads of tea shops and gift shops, the cute little Windrush river. We spent ages just wandering around looking at stuff.

Unfortunately my Dad managed to break a tooth (he'd been to the dentist before we went away but he'd failed to spot it), and so we had to leave early the following day to get him to the dentist. He came home a little less wise than he did before!
map taken from www.streetmap.co.uk, edited by me

Scorchio!

Sorry! It's been a while - I blame the heat. It's been well over 30 degrees during the day (and 30 degrees in my room at night) every day since Monday. PAINY!

Today
Not done much today. Planned circuitboard diagrams (see below). Am off out to Ikea later on today to try again to get my chair.

Yesterday
Met up with the famous Jamie Frost yesterday in Kingston. We went to see Superman, and it was a pretty good film. I won't give it a mark (as Jamie will be doing that... see his site), but I thoroughly enjoyed it. The first half was pretty much devoted to Superman flying round doing cool stuff (which, to be fair, is what everyone will be going to see this film for), while the main plot development was in the second half, centred around Lex Luther's evil money-making scheme: "But millions of people will die!", "BILLIONS!". Excellent Stuff

The Last Week
In general I've been pretty lazy all round. I ordered some components for a little electrical project I've set myself... I shall have to wait and see if it'll all come off. It might turn out to be a shambles! The fact that the chip I wanted to use is now obselete is a bit of a pain, but I think I've found a pin-for-pin replacement.

b l a c k h o l e s a n d r e v e l a t i o n s

Currently Listening t0 - Muse - Black Holes and Revelations. It's actually pretty good - after hearing their single Supermassive Black Hole, which is a bit like jamiroquai I was worried, but it fits in pretty well with the album, even though the other tracks are much more muse like. Seems pretty angry though #you'll burn, yeah you'll burn for you sins, yeah you'll burn# ahem.

Cycling in the heatwave

I’ve taken to going for a cycle in the mornings. Only two days so far, and today’s was an afternoon cycle (despite it being 31.5 degrees), but it’s good fun. Yesterday morning I cycled past one of the ponds that was full of a load of red-deer cooling off. A great photo opportunity – if only I’d taken a camera. I did today, and tried vainly to photograph some jays I saw, but they were too quick for me. There were a few deer again, but none in the pond sadly!

Snooker 2

Rahul beat me 5-3 this time. Nearly got the 8^th frame, but he pipped me to the post with an amazing pink. Oh well, 8-8 is is. Think it’s gonna turn out to be a best of 25 three session marathon. Hehe.