Freesteel Blog » 2007 » July

Sunday, July 22nd, 2007 at 1:33 pm - - Machining, UN, Weekends

Two days before I head south, less than a week before I go to Austria. I’ll have to go caving once because the freezer is full of spit samples to form a base-line so when they measure the amount of hormones in my spit just before going down a big scary pitch, they scientifically prove I’m miserable.

Have written some tosh for the undemocracy site. Who knows who will read it. Maybe even the Sec. Gen. These guys at the top don’t want people to know if they’re checking stuff said down at the bottom. Or they prefer to live in their bubble.

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Sunday, July 22nd, 2007 at 12:26 pm - - Cave

There’s a caving club called UBSS who have the best caving library in the country. Unfortunately, none of their catalogue is on-line even slightly, because they have to wait till they have enough volunteer money and time to do it properly.

Might I suggest that a series of digital snapshots of the shelves taken with a good camera would provide an impression, which could perhaps raise some interest? Or would it look too cavalier to a grant awarding authority. Maybe they can’t find anyone who’s willing to take snapshots without sticking big fat copyright notices all over the print to protect the world from gaining any benefit from their creativity instant — pressing the button whilst holding the expensive box in the appropriate direction.

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Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 at 5:00 pm - - Weekends 1 Comment »


Lots of Germans came to stay in Liverpool. Not much work or blogging occurred.

Tuesday, July 10th, 2007 at 6:55 pm - - Kayak Dive, Weekends


No one to see in Edinburgh. But I did discover this fine pub called The Auld Hoose across the road with free WiFi, good beer and good food, and spent plenty of time there. I didn’t wake up in time to photograph Becka huddling across the road from it at 8am in the morning in the drizzle downloading her email from their router which was obviously left on.

Then after the conference we went to St Abbs with our kayaks and managed to do six dives in 24 hours, as well as stumbling across a famous caver while out on the sea. He had recently moved to Eyemouth and had found his kayaks in a dumpster, and had in fact tried our kayak-diving off an inflatable.

I have just wasted my time writing two new wikipedia articles: HMS Port Napier and Flame shell.

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 at 12:52 pm - - Weekends 1 Comment »


Quick stop-off in an internet cafe in Edinburgh before the batteries run out. It’s been quite a week. At last I’ve seen a flame shell. But then after a week of too much kayaking to dive sites I fell asleep in the rain on the park bench while Becka cycled off to fetch the car, come back, park it, and take the camera off my lap and photograph me. More write-ups to follow.