The Mortal Wombat

• Options for A14 upgrade unveiled
  There are two proposals for the stretch between Ellington and Fen Ditton to improve safety and cut journey times.
  (tags: news cambridge driving)
• Destroy the Web!
  Choose a webpage, select the type of destruction you'd like to see, and Bob's your Auntie.
  (tags: comedy internet)

• Weirdness in A&E admissions stats
  The Dept of Health has released statistics on A&E admissions during 2004. I'm intrigued by the 37 who were victims of 'volcanic eruption'...
  (tags: forteana medical uk)
• Have you seen this man?
  Another idiot burglar caught on camera...
  (tags: crime burglary cambridge)
• Jamie gets healthier school meals
  Jamie Oliver's campaign for better school dinners seems to have worked. The Government has announced that it'll increase funding—and it was planning to do so all along. Yeah, right...
  (tags: news schools food jamie_oliver)

• Three new kakapos have been born!
  The world population of the critically endangered birds is now 86.
  (tags: animals birds kakapo)

• Firefox 1.02 is out
  A minor update
  (categories: firefox)

This anecdote c/o my step-father:
Richard Burton was once buttonholed in a hotel lobby by an American who claimed intimacy on the strength of also having Welsh forebears. 'You and I ought to get on well, Mr Burton.' he said. 'We're both selts.' 'No,' Burton replied. 'I am a selt. You are a sunt.'

• Mystery illness kills Angolan children
  An unidentified haemorrhagic fever in Angola has killed more than 90 people in the past 5 months. The WHO is perplexed by the outbreak, which particularly affects children under 5 years old. Tests have ruled out several illnesses, though not yet Ebola.
  (categories: medical disease africa angola)
• Cambridge - Oxford flights for 49 quid
  An 18-year-old from Oxford has set up a commerical airline flying daily between Cambridge and Oxford.
  (categories: travel flying cambridge oxford)
• It's a Multi Language World
  James Duncan Davidson on why linguistic variety in the world of programming is no bad thing.
  (categories: language programming)

Never thought I'd be saying this, but: Hurrah for MSN Search! Their spider has indexed my new website before Google and Yahoo [and, look, I get my revenge on them by not making them into links here...]. A search for "jon coe" even gets me the top two positions. I probably ought to start giving it some content other than just my family tree! (And, yes, I know that the Google search bar on the index page is really ugly, but I'm leaving it there till Google actually indexes the site...)

Hmm. What else? The weekend was totally mad with maths stuff for my OU course. We did get out on Saturday evening to see Tom and Kate, but even then I found myself staring it the parabolæ formed by the shadow of a lampshade on the wall, and working out likely equations for them... Cosy the hamster has been very well trained by L, so we can let her out for supervised run arounds (with the cats safely locked away of course!). The ginger plant is doing very well now— growing a good few millimetres a day. Went to eat pizza and watch Finding Nemo chez Adrian last night. Good film—in the same league as The Incredibles, but a few places below it (outpaced, I think, by its snappier wit).

• ABC in South-East London
  A man has been attacked by a cat 'about the size of a Labrador' in the back garden of his house in Sydenham Park. People often over-estimate the size of animals in cases such as this, but a lynx was caught in London 4 years ago, so maybe...
  (categories: forteana cryptozoology animals cats uk london)
• Thunderbird 1.02 is out
  Sounds like a fairly minor update, though.
  (categories: email thunderbird)

• The Family Records Centre
  The FRC website, with details of what records they hold, and how to get there.
  (categories: genealogy)

• G33k of the day
  See the geek of the day. Rate his geekiness. Register yourself (maybe).
  (categories: comedy geeks)

• A428 expansion
  The A428 between Hardwick and Caxton is to be expanded later this year with 4.8 miles of dual carriageway and a major junction at Hardwick.
  (categories: news cambridge driving)
• MMORPGers banned for 'gold farming'
  Blizzard has banned more than 1000 World of Warcraft accounts for 'gold farming' — where players farm items for gold, then sell the gold for real-world money.
  (categories: mmorpgs gold_farming)
• Latest research on human sex chromosomes
  Very interesting article, explaining the rôle of the X/Y chromosomes in the differences between the sexes. Explains why women tend to fall more into the middle range statistically, where men tend to the extremes.
  (categories: genetics humans sex_chromosomes)
• Firefox countdown clock extension
  Umm... like the description says...
  (categories: firefox)

• Malawi leader now not scared of ghosts
  'I have not met any ghosts yet, I have never in my life been afraid of them,' the Malawian president has told journalists. But it seems he is scared of people saying that he's scared...
  (categories: forteana africa malawi ghosts)
• Cancer cells put into deep sleep
  The Marie Curie Research Institute has found a way to block the development of cancer by reactivating a natural self-defence mechanism which blocks cells carrying potentially dangerous mutations from dividing.
  (categories: health cancer medical genetics)
• Vatican fights Da Vinci Code novel
  The Vatican has spoken out against what it says are 'shameful and unfounded lies' in the best-selling but highly controversial novel The Da Vinci Code.
  (categories: forteana da_vinci_code vatican)

• Harmonia axyridis information page
  Cambridge Genetics Dept. has been monitoring the spread of an Asian ladybird, which, it is feared, could do great harm to the native ladybird population.
  (categories: animals insects ladybirds species_introduction)
• Survey to track 'alien' ladybird
  More on Harmonia axyridis, including the address of the survey website.
  (categories: animals insects ladybirds species_introduction)
• Biodiesel in the USA
  The problems faced by biodiesel enthusiasts in their efforts to legalise prodiction and distribution.
  (categories: driving fuel biodiesel usa)
• Pharming
  Wired report on the latest Web scams, which exploit vulnerabilities in the DNS system.
  (categories: internet dns pharming phishing domain_names)
• Need a Building? Just Add Water
  A pair of engineers in London have come up with a 'building in a bag'—a sack of cement-impregnated fabric. To erect the structure, all you have to do is add water to the bag and inflate it with air.
  (categories: construction tent cement)

• 'Ghosts' scare off Malawi leader
  Bingu wa Mutharika, the president of Malawi, is too scared to spend the night in his mansion, because he claims that he is visited by ghosts, some in the form of rodents.
  (categories: forteana africa malawi ghosts)
• Argentina expels Chile cult head
  Old Nazi, Paul Schäfer, leader of a German commune in Chile, has been arrested.
  (categories: forteana cults south_america chile nazis)

• Pigs domesticated 'many times'
  Pigs were domesticated independently at least seven times around the globe, a new study has found. This contradicts the previous assumption that domestication occurred in only two locations, and that those pigs were transported around the word.
  (categories: animals pigs genetics domestication)

• Piss off, and good riddance!
  US troops based at Mildenhall will probably be moved to a location in southern Europe.
  (categories: news usa military mildenhall)
• Blair still being a twat over Error Bill
  Apparently if the police approve of it, it must be right. Well, I'd approve of having my taxes cut in half, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing.
  (categories: news uk errorism parliament)

We have a piece of root ginger that started sprouting about a month ago. At the moment it's just sitting in a little pot with no soil, sprouting for all it's worth, poor little thing. I feel guilty every time I see it, but have kept forgetting to find out what kind of growing conditions it likes. Well now I've finally got round to it. From these websites (1, 2, 3, 4) I gather the following:

• plant in a 15–20cm pot
• in light, sandy soil (preferably phosphorus rich)
• plant shallowly
• keep moist
• either in shade or in a warm, sunny window (the main point is probably not too much strong sunlight)

L's new car arrived on Tuesday. Shiny, sparkly and black. It has working heating and a CD player. And it's brand new (05 reg)—she got to drive it out of the showroom!

We also have a hamster, Cosy, who's very cute. L's teaching her not to worry about being picked up (she has to be thoroughly tamed since she'll be at school most of the time, and you can't really rely on 5 year olds to be quite as calm and gentle as a hamster would like).

• Review: juvenile Felis Catus
  While domestic cats are a common feature of many computing environments, IT review sites have proven oddly unwilling to investigate this popular computer room accessory.
  (categories: animals cats comedy reviews)
• Cricket on Parker's Piece saved
  Cambridge City Council had decided to stop cricket being played on the Parker's Piece site due to under use and a budget shortfall of £11 500. Cambridge-based Intergence Systems is offering to sponsor the ground and pavilion for £3 000 to help.
  (categories: cambridge parkers_piece cricket)
• Ofsted stupidity
  Ofsted now plan to write to pupils, explaing the outcome of inspections...
  (categories: education schools ofsted)
• Vicipædia Latina
  Latin Wikipedia. Super duo milia articulorum!
  (categories: wikipedia language latin)

• NASA's new robots
  NASA has been working on some new designs for robots. The snake one sounds pretty cool to me.
  (categories: robots NASA space_exploration)

• Use your computer to help find new planets
  The PlanetQuest Collaboratory will be asking people to help find new extra-solar planets. The reward? If your computer finds one, you get to pick its name!
  (categories: distributed_computing astronomy planetquest)
• The 1861 census is (sort of) online!
  The genealogy site 1837online is starting to make 1861 census records available. At the moment only the south eastern counties are available (where none of my family originate...), but they will be expanding their coverage
  (categories: genealogy census 1861)
• The latest in toilet technology
  All you'd ever want to know about the technology of toilet design, and what the toilets of tomorrow will look like. Hmm. We're planning on getting a new bathroom suite soon anyway...
  (categories: plumbing toilets)

• Boy dies under giant snowball
  A 10-year-old boy has been crushed to death by a giant snowball in Torphins, Aberdeenshire. Awful, but so strange that I want to record it. I love that area of the North East
  (categories: forteana childhood snow)
• Redefinition of the kilo?
  Since 1889 the definition of the kilo has been based on the weight of acylinder of a platinum-iridium alloy kept in Paris. Is it time to change the definition to one based on a universal constant?
  (categories: measures weight kilogram constant)
• Let Thunderbird read your webmail
  The Web-Mail extension to Thunderbird allows you to read your Hotmail or Yahoo mail on Thunderbird
  (categories: email webmail thunderbird hotmail)

All sorts of stuff that I could blog about, but I'm bound to forget half of it...

First of all, I'd like to say thanks very much to Adrian for letting me have a copy of his delicious2blogger script, which is now up and running in my own webspace.

What else? It was my first driving lesson in nearly three months yesterday. I felt very nervous about it, not having been behind the wheel for so long, but it all came back to me very quickly, and I actually had a pretty good drive.

The genealogy part of my new website is coming along nicely. At the moment it's all done with PHP and MySQL, but I'll be aiming to introduce some JavaScript widgetry for the navigation once I've found a suitable library. As for the family tree itself, that too has been coming along, though I got a bit of a shock when I received a copy of my great-grandfather William Coe's birth certificate and saw that it has no father's name. The odd thing is that his father is given as 'Robert Coe (deceased)' on his marriage certificate, and on his birth certificate, his mother is 'Hannah Coe, formerly Clark'. The most likely explanation seems to be that William was illegitimate, but that Hannah married Robert while she was pregnant. If he is illegitimate, then I can't take that part of the tree back further. I might well take the tree back further along Robert's line, though, even if he isn't a blood relative, just because I'm interested in the origins of the surname.

It's proving to be quite hard to keep both OU courses going simultaneously, but I'm keeping my head above water.

Leila's into healthy recipes (but very tasty—salmon and leeks with ginger and garlic yesterday), so I'll be down to my target weight of 63kg before long (currently 64.5). And the leeks remind me that it's a special day today, so cyfarchion i bob Gymro a Chymraes sy'n darllen hyn!