Words of the Day: it must be love, love, love...
Pigeons courting is a somewhat amusing and yet rather heartwarming sight. A pair have been going through the motions on a rooftop in my line of sight for a few days now. From what I know, the feral pigeon (aka the rock dove) pairs up year in, year out, so why they have to go through so much effort to come to an accord is rather beyond me. Surely a sensible creature would say "ah, it's you again, ok, let's do this thing" and just spend all their energy breeding and raising their young. I don't know, really. Perhaps it's something to do with them having to reaffirm that both birds in the relationship are up to the task. Either way you look at it, though, pigeons are clearly doing something right, because there are a LOT of them. More than 200,000 breeding pairs in the UK alone (stats from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds website). That's more than 400,000 birds. Now consider all the other bird species they are in competition with, and that's some feat. You may not like them very much, but you have to admire the effort.
It's a bit snowy here right now. Not a lot, but a bit. Enough to make the walk into the department this morning quite interesting. And not only in a 'falling over on the ice' sense, but also aesthetically. My morning detour through a local park turned into a sejourn through a winter wonderland of crunchy, untouched snow, past an iced over pond where the ducks did their slapstick routine just for me and a foreign student eagerly snapping away with a digital camera. It always makes me happy to go through the park, as I may well have mentioned before, but today's journey made me that little bit happier than normal. There were even people making a snowman, which is cool, even if it did bear an uncanny resemblance to the MSN Messenger logo.

Words of the Day: Feeling like there's a hedgehog in my throat.
For anyone not familiar with the creatures, hedgehogs are small spiny things much loved in the UK by old people and me. Not happy that my throat feels that way, but there you go - if you're going to live in a place like England, you have to expect to get ill once in a while. It's all par for the course.
I know it's been ages since I blogged, but I've been rather busy, so there. Taking the opportunity today though, since I decided that I was ill enough to take the day off. Not that I have a great deal to be doing right now. I did make some piss-coloured polymer gel the other day. it was meant to be fluorescent, and though I haven't tested it under excitation yet, I have a feeling that the heating process which makes it a gel as denatured the fluorophores. I don't think that'll make a lot of sense unless you know about polymers and fluorescence, but this is my blog, dammt, and I'll make it as scientific as I like!! AAAARRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Words of the Day: shut the hell up!
GM protestors. Never before have so many, with so few informed opinions, done so much to damage so little. Idiots.

voodooshoes.com - buy shoes online, designer footwear
Shoe Company of the Day: Voodoo Shoes
Sold me the Vans I was after for a great deal less than Schuh, whose website failed to work. Otherwise, I would have been paying a premium. A lesson to look around the net a bit before you buy, I would say. Jen does it all the time, and always saves money, but then she's always been a bit sharper than me... only problem I can see with the Voodoo website is that when you're filling in forms, you can't see what you're typing, unless you highlight it afterwards, because the form field is cream, and the text on the pages is white. Not great, but also not enough to dissuade me from buying my shoes there. Go register, people, it's good and you get something free when you do (I have no idea what, but it's free!).
In other news, EJ (here) has been trying to convince me that using the Firefox browser from Mozilla (here) is a good idea. I'm almost tempted, because it's quite different. Problem is, I'm totally used to Explorer, and I'm also intrinsically lazy, so I probably wouldn't take the time to learn something new, no matter how basically similar it is. We'll see. If you're unhappy with Mr Gates and his software, you might wish to check it out.

Note to self: use the f***ing spellchecker, that's what it's there for

I've spoken of it before, but the sheer brilliance of the Air album Talkie Walkie stills blows my mind. It's made me not care that the rain is falling outside. I don't mind that my artwork is not what it used to be. I'm not bored when it's playing, I'm relaxing in a decadent world of samples and beats, and Gallic charm. It's no secret that there are plenty of things about France as a country that I dislike, but it's hard to write the place off when music this beuatiful is being pumped directly into your head. It's the kind of album which makes me want to hide myself in a room with some big speakers and no lights, and listen very, very loudly. It's summer days, it's futuristic anime, it's long days working in the garden, painting the boat we're going to have lifted in (it's a thing thing thing thing). I want to draw towering cities, flying creatures, rolling hills of grass. I almost want to be sitting at my desk, staring at the rain falling and writing lovely things. Oh well, two out of three isn't too bad...

I have no idea how it works

now I can't get the italics syntax right...

BBC - Nature Wildfacts - House mouse
Words of the Day: Pest control...
...or a lack of it. Our resident woke me up at a little past six this morning by chewing on something under my chair, or just generally rustling about, I couldn't decide which. I saw a flash of it as it disappeared under the drawers, but that was it really. Not much of a mouse experience, but I am a bit of a fan of wildlife, so I enjoyed it. Most people wouldn't, but I have a thing about being close to nature. I touch trees in the park on my way in to work. It makes me feel better. And they inspire me at times. Yes, I am a little strange.
I'm bored. Very bored.

D'oh, still haven't got that link syntax sorted...