Well I finally made the leap into true geekishness and got my own server to play with (actually its not my own it’s shared, but you get the idea). After much research (actually I just asked Mike which one he went with) I went with Memset, and for less than £30 p/m I get 15GB to play with on a Debain server.

It took me AGES to get it all set up, but now I think I am on top of it, I am running a couple of domains from it and think I know where everything is, so all is good. Ollyandbecca is now hosted on there, so, in theory, it should be more stable now and so all you lovely people can keep up with my endeveours easier. Enjoy 🙂

Our car got broken into last night, they had a go at the rear window and passenger window. Completely destroyed them and made a right mess. They didn’t even look for anything to steel though, the door was still locked and the glove box still closed. We got it fixed on our insurance, then when we tried to lock the boot and it wouldn’t go, sigh, so now we have to go get that replaced, all the way in Bedford of course. Our neighbours heard it at 4:30 last night and a couple saw a kid cycling away. Damn kids. On the plus side, it means we finally get rid of those horrible stickers we couldn’t get off the window 🙂

So yesterday Olly and I visited Bath, a day trip organised by the University. We left pretty early :s and our coach managed to make it to Bath [unlike the other OU coach that took a long detour round the outskirts of Oxford looking for one of its passengers!].

We managed to pack quite a lot in one day:

• First we went to the Roman Baths/Temple complex (I have visited the Baths once as a child but can’t remember too much and it was nice to visit after studying about it during Latin GCSE) . Olly learned about Aquae Sulis and the Goddess Minerva, Roman cleanliness and bath house etiquette. We touched the water it was nice and warm, and you can still see the hot springs flowing around the complex into the great bath and other smaller baths. We have some great pictures which we will upload to the phots section. You can also clearly see the Victorian/Georgian influence on the place where they built over and above the existing Roman baths.
• After the baths we managed to find ourselves in a quaint little tea shop enjoying cream teas.
• We meandered past Bath Abbey – magnificantly ornate for a relitavely tiny building!
• We meandered past losts of shops and things and made our way to the Jane Austen Centre, a privatley run museum. We listened to a fascinating talk about Jane Austen, her family and their connections to Bath – where they lived etc. The museum itself is very tiny and focuses on 3 aspects i) where Jane and her family lived in Bath [which are still standing so you can go and see them] ii) Aspects of Bath used in her various novels: which was absolutely fascinating! and finally there were some constumes from various TV drama adaptations of the novels. The museum is small but a must-see for any dedicated reader of Austens books, as i’m not sure Olly enjoyed it as much as me!
• We then took a meander through the streets of Bath and managed to find an antique map shop – we purchased a lovely antique map of Bucks to add to our collection, and got to look at some really old maps from 1600s which were ornately decorated with crests and things….unfortunately these were thousands of pounds outside our budget!!!
• Somehow we found ourselves in yet another tea shop enjoying cream teas (i know – very naughty of us!) before getting the coach back home.

All in all i had a lovely day – unfortunately we didn’t get to make it to the Herschel museum or the glass blowing place 🙁

I also got a great birthday present and am having much fun playing on it and it has distracted me from the crapness of B&Q! Cheers everyone!

So K-day arived and our kitchen started to invade our house. We are one day in to the fitting proess and we already have a catalogue of errors to report 🙁 So where to start, at the very beginning I suppose;

• Forgotten splash back – They completely forgot the stainless steel splash back, so Becca spent a long while on the phone getting them to sort it, in the end it took a several of attempts to sort it, and so the splash back had to be express deliveryed.
• Early delivery – Despite giving an 8 hour delivery window starting at midday they decided to deliver the tiles at 8:30, telling us they would come back later to give us the rest.
• Scratched splash back – The splash back turned up out of the blue with no warning from the delivery people after the origional delivery, we were of course at work, so they left it with a neighbour. On closer inspection it looked like it had been dragged across a concrete floor for several miles, the box was knackered and the steel very scratched. No chance of a new one being sent until June.
• Bent sink – The fitters turned up this morning and found the sink was as bent as a banana.
• Much longer fitting time – We were told it would take three days to do the whole thing, the first thing the fitters said was it would take over a week.
• Forgotten larder bit – Having made a lot of progress today the builder left this evening, when Becca saw the larder he had fitted we realised that he had put shelves in it instead of the magic pull out draw thing it is supposed to have.

And so that brings us to the end of day one, we have one partially fitted kitchen and a draft complaint letter. It currently looks like the timetable for completion is:
Units fitted by Friday,
Tiling done next week,
Splash back delivered and fitted in a couple of weeks,
Larder unit delivered and fitted sometime in the distant future.

Yes, that is, 3 days to over a month to fit our kitchen 🙁 The moral of this story is to never ever ever get anything from B&Q.

Well I have been incogneto for the last week, or is that incomunicardo, in Mallorca, teaching. We, as astrophysics Ph.D students, get to go and strut our stuff and exercise our brains by showing OU undergrads how to do space stuff, mostly telescope work, at the OAM for the SXR208 course we do. This was the first real time I had used a telescope like this (i.e. setting it up and moving it etc.), as the big installations tend to have all this done for you, so it was a very steep learning curve.

Me and Steve had a few hours to play around on the first night so we took a few pretty pictures, the moon and the sombrero galaxy, not too exciting, but not too bad for our first attempt.

Steve and I had the unfortunate problem of being our indecisive selves all week, not too much of a problem when our respective other halfs are around, but when they are not then it is an almost impossible chore to pick a place to eat! We did have one afternoon off, in which we went in the Med, well we couldn’t not.

All in all I had a great time, the nights were long, the students were really nice to me (thanks if any of you find this), and it was really rewarding. I think I just about managed to bluff my way to the students thinking I knew what I was doing 🙂 Just have to get back to work now 🙁

After much searching for recipes and experimenting by baking one pie a week i have discoverea very tasty savory pastry recipe. Of course olly and i were both getting fatter from eating all the pies i was making, so i have now had to limit pie making to just once a month 🙂

Ingredients:

75g rice flour

75g cornmeal

75g potato flour

~ 1tsp xanthan gum

1 pinch salt

150g soya butter

1 egg whisked

• Sift the rice flour, cornmeal, potato flour, salt and xanthan gum into a large bowl and mix well.
• Add chunks or cubes of the soya butter and rub into the flour (or use a pastry cutter) to make “breadcrumbs”.
• Add enough of the egg to bring the pastry together but make sure it isn’t too wet as it will shrink in the oven.
• On a lightly potato/rice floured board knead the dough. Roll into a ball slightly flatten it, wrap in cling film and chill in the fridge for a minimum of 30 mins but best left overnight.
• When chilled roll the pastry out between two baking sheets and use as required.

Tips

• I brush a bit of whisked egg over the top of the pastry after it is half cooked, it makes the pastry go golden.
• if cracks appear in the raw pie casing smooth pastry dough with a little water to fill in the gaps.
• Always use a pie funnel to stop pastry collapsing and filling from boiling over.

We are back from our epic journey to Portugal and a few days in London. All in all we had a nice time, (see the photo album if you are bored) and I shall be writing a page about what we did etc. when I get a chance.

London was fun, we got to see some old friends and Becca’s family. We also went to the Tower of London, it cost £45 for a family ticket! Far far far too expensive for what it was. The torture room was rather disapointing, it only had three implements of pain, no where near as good as the musuem in Prague. And the crown jewels had a queue that rivalled the one to get a Wii, I know I am English and all but even I don’t enjoy queueing that much!

Then we watched TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the uninitiated) (Tinja Ninja Turtles for the childlike), oh how it took me back to my youth.

My first paper has finally been submitted too, just have to rewrite the whole thing when the referee sends it back!

So Cat invited us to Lisbon to experience the way she lives, so off we trotted….

Day 1, 27th March

First things first, someone had to lose their luggage, that award went straight to pip. Luckily though his iPod made it off the plane.

We were stopping at Cat’s apartment in a suburb of Lisbon south of the river. By the time we got there it was late and we were all hungry, so Cat took us to a local restaurant, the food was ok (steak and chips), but we didn’t expect much that late at night, but the wine was very nice. I am not a red wine drinker, but since we were here I thought I would give it a go, and mmmmm, alentejo.

Then, when we got home, we made a wondrous discovery, Dan brought cards with him!

Quote of the day; Pip: Have I corrupted anyone?

Day 2, 28th March

Today began the big exploration of Lisbon, so after a bus and ferry we were in the centre of town. Luckily the ferry was relatively calm, so we didn’t have to put up with a pukey Becca, but we thoroughly expected to have to later in the week.

We wondered around the main square for a while, took a few pictures, and found an Irish pub, how English we are. We were all rather amuzed when we saw a car that had bumped into something and broken it’s headlight, not a great travesty, except it had stopped in the middle of the road and brought most of Lisbon to a halt!

We ate at a seafood restaurant close to Cats, not being a fan of sea food I ate steak, but the others assured me the fish was good. Then we retired to play some cards, who would have thought the game shit head could have so many different sets of rules.

Quote of the day; Pip: Patronize me more.

Day 3, 29th March

We called into the cathedral on our way to the castle, it lacked much of the grandeur you would expect from a cathedral, still I guess there is something to be said about understatement.

Cat used to be a tour guide at the main castle of Lisbon, so we used her super tour guide skills to get a tour (how cheap we are). The castle itself is rather dull, there are some nice views of the city, but no real museums or things to see, except the periscope that is. This was a mirror and lens system mounted in a tower which projects the city onto a large white thing. The guide there gave us a tour of the landmarks with this thing, it was very cool, and now I want one put on my house……..

Pip did his utmost to help the Lisbonese street economy by hanging his wallet out of his pocket for all and sundry to see. Luckily, just as the inevitable was happening (pick pocketing) a nice Portuguese lady saw the perpetrator and shouted at him so he ran off. Thank you lady. Pip’s luggage turned up too.

Cat took us to an Italian restaurant tonight, the trouble with this being that Italian food is probably the only cuisine Becca cannot eat anything of, ho hum. Then back for more cards.

Day 4, 30th March

Cat decided to go leave us to go see her friends a family today, time to see if we can survive by ourselves.

Apparently the Portuguese church elders said during the war that if they managed to escape unscathed then they would build a mini version of the big Jesus thing in Rio. They did, so they did, and so we went up it. It’s just up the road from Cat’s house so we walked there and took hundreds of pictures (reduced to just fifteen).

From here we went to the fado museum (it’s a type of local folk music), all spanishy guitary type stuff with a whiney singer, not really my cup of tea.
We also found a church with the word ‘testes’ on a display, amused us a bit. Even more cards was played.

Quote of the day 1; Pip: Something a bit ooh. (Pip’s interpretation of that wonderful Girls aloud classic).
Quote of the day 2; Pip: I’d rather be cold and frightened then warm and frightened.
Quote of the day 3; Dan: Cuck funt.

Day 5, 31st March

With less of us in the house we managed to get out of the house and down to the port by 10am!

Lisbon is rather hilly, so some bright spark built a lift in the centre of town near a big hill, nice. Some nice views, which of course means lots of pictures.

We were reliably informed that the Bario Alto is the place to go out in Lisbon, so we went for a wonder around during the day to see what it was like. Everything was closed, covered in graffiti, and smelt of urine. We decided that this wasn’t really the kind of place we wanted to be drinking in.

We had heard that there was a nice eatery and drinkery place by the docks in the general direction of the big bridge so off we went. We couldn’t find it, sigh.

We found the restaurant district and found somewhere that was selling kid, so we had some, it was nice, a little salty, but nice. Afterwards were very English and went to the Hard Rock cafe.

Quote of the day; Pip: Becca’s going to do a Marylin Manson. (This was in the context of Becca walking over a grill venting air from the subway while wearing a dress).

Day 6, 1st April

Woke up feeling rather dehydrated, all that salt I suspect.

We went to St. Vincent, some fantastic views. Got to climb all the way to the top.

Dan bustificated his travel card, again, like the retardo he is (hence danificardo). We traced the problem to his ass, bizarre!

We finally found the dock area with lots of restaurants, lots of different nationally places to eat in. We were bored of Portuguese food (too salty and bland) so we decided on Spanish, mmm it was good.

Now one of the odd things about the Portuguese is that they don’t seem to like using toilet seats; virtually all the places we went didn’t have a toilet seat at all, it was only the really touristy places that did. Just struck me as a little odd.

Quote of the day; Dan: Danificado.

Day 7, 2nd April

Pip and Dan went to an art museum in the morning so Bint and I went shopping, she bought a few things, but seemed to have trouble paying everywhere we went. We ate at the Hard Rock cafe, again trouble with her card. Then when we tried a cash machine all our cards failed, maestro, switch, mastercard, all danificardoed, hmmm. We tried different cash machines, all broken, the people in the bank said they were all broken to foreign transactions. We met up with the others who had had the same problem, looked like we were about to be stranded in a foreign country with no money, so we did the only thing we could do as English folk with our remaining 40 Euros, drink.

We went to the Port wine institute, it had a wealth of different ports. We were considering on trying them all, but after the first three we decided against it. We had Ruby, tawny, and white, it was a split opinion on what was best, the ruby or the tawny.

Quote of the day; Pip: Tawny is like a party in your mouth, Ruby is like your grandparents staying over.

Day 8, 3rd April

Sintra is a small town outside of Lisbon that is a must see, so Becca booked a tour for all of us. This did mean that we had to be at the Hard Rock cafe at 8:00 am, not a happy bunny. Still, we made it, and Cat and Russ made it too, albeit 30 seconds before 8:00!

We went to the most westerly part of continental Europe, it was westerly.

Went to a nearby beach, Dan and I stood and took pictures of a gheko while the others paddled and got wet.

We finished up in a small fishing village, Caiscais, rather a posh little place, still, I managed to buy a lot of Portuguese cocks for my sister.

Pip left his glasses on the bus, but managed to get them back, luckily. Then the others went to a classical concert while Becca and I ate and went back.

Day 9, 4th April

Belem is a small part of Lisbon with a lot of stuff hidden away. There is the coach museum full of pretty old school coaches. A really old fort used to defend the city back in the day. Of course back in the day they were a lot shorter, and so us modern men struggled inside a bit!

We decided to go back to the eatery place we found the other day, this time we picked a nice French restaurant. It was posh looking (so we stuck out) but the food wasn’t that great, which was a shame.

It was today that we discovered that testes is Portuguese for forehead, as you can imagine much merriment was had.

Quote of the day; All of us: Testes.

Day 10, 5th April

And so we come to the end of our holiday, a thorough tidy up of Cats apartment and we are good to go. We all made it back ok, Pip’s luggage even made to London and not Johannesburg.

We are off to Lisbon on tuesday 🙂 Trouble is I have to pack before hand 🙁 So many things to think about, so many things to wash, so little botheredness to do it. Ho hum, I guess I had better go look for my passport………..

Can you believe it? I was at work for a whole day and no one, absolutely no one, noticed my new hair! Pffffff last time I get becca to spend £12 on a haircut for me!