Tooth Fairy - 4

Frodo's other front tooth was hanging on by a very strong gum-thread on Thursday night.
I got him to wobble it a lot until finally, as I was examining how he was doing, it pinged out and landed on his bed.

Popped it in an envelope with a note to the Tooth Fairy to come and get it.

This time she left a small Lightning McQueen car under his pillow.



Samwise has been observing this activity closely. We found out at a children's party on Saturday that he's been giving some small white nuts to the kids in his school class to try and "trick the tooth fairy" with. So far she hasn't been fooled :)

Tooth Fairy - 3

Frodo lost his third tooth on Saturday. One of his front teeth this time. Looks like the other one will be soon to follow.

The Tooth Fairy that visits our house tends to deliver small toys, rather than money, in exchange for children's milk teeth. Last time she left a small "bumblebee" transformer.

This time she left a tiny Optimus Prime.

Giant Spider Sighted in Liverpool 3

We all went out again to see the spider leave Liverpool.
Here's the last still pics that I took. Had to switch to the video camera, as the snap camera is useless outside after dark.

We knew that had returned to it's nest on the Concourse tower, and would probably move as dusk approached. We got there at 18:30 and stood on a traffic island between St John's shopping centre car park and St George's hall and waited.

Spotted a couple of friends who live on the Wirral waiting nearby, so we shouted them over and had a chat. The Penny Farthing pub was blasting out music. Every now and again the DJ played the spiderman theme from the 60's cartoon.

Around 19:30 the French chaps in the fancy fencing jackets - I've since learned that they are called "Les Manipulateurs" - abseiled down from the top of the building, and strapped themselves onto La Princesse, as the spider is known.

The monster then slowly descended, as musicians mounted on cherry-pickers arrived and played. Gradually the creature was lowered to the ground, then it slowly turned and began to move along William-Brown street.

We watched it go, with the musicians leading the way, at which point darkness had fallen, so I switched to my video camera. We decided to dodge around the back of St George's Hall and meet up with the creature on the other side. We lost our friends, but I think that they opted to follow the spider in the other direction, as they hadn't seen it yet.

We stood at the back of a line of people and watched the musicians go past, then saw the spider coming. This time a number of "Les Manipulateurs" were leaping onto it's legs and allowing themselves to be carried up into the air, and back down again.

The spider became interested in the people sitting on the walls of the hall for a bit, then came right past us.
There was enough of a gap at the back of the crowd to walk along, so we found ourselves once again walking with the spider. I walked along with a small boy on my shoulders and holding up the video camera, whilst keeping pace with the arachnid, which was putting on a spectacle as it hissed and sprayed the crowd.

Down towards the Queensway tunnel the crowd got a lot thicker. We managed to squeeze our way into a spot beside the roundabout where the final action took place. We had to alternately pick up Frodo and Samwise for short periods, to make sure that they got a view of the action.

We really felt the heat of the flames that frightened the creature into leaving, and were doused by the water cannons. There was a fusillade of fireworks, and then it began to snow. The spider squatted down, curled up and began to disappear into the tunnel.

Frodo and Samwise were waving goodbye frantically. Samwise was sobbing, and tears were rolling down down his cheeks because he "didn't want the spider to go". He kept on waving and crying as I held him up, right to the end - people were nudging each other around us and going "aahhh!" when they saw him.

Finally around 22:00 it was all over, the spider's snow was still falling, and the music still playing as we headed back to the bus station. Feeling a little guilty for letting the boys stay up so late, but really glad that we'd managed to go out as a family four times to see this marvellous creation, since it's unlikely to come here again.

I'll have to get the video off-tape and post some here sometime.
There's loads of good pictures on the La Machine website. I'm off to buy the poster and the T-shirt.

Giant Spider Sighted in Liverpool 2

I was on the early shift this morning. The spider had moved in the night and had settled down to "sleep" on the concourse outside the Echo Arena.
Got there at about 07:15 and took a few photos. There was just myself and a camera crew there. As I was leaving a man turned up dragging along a small boy wearing a coat over his pyjamas.






Took the boys back later at 18:00. We waited for about an hour in the pouring rain. Then some musicians appeared, pushing through the crowd and climbing into elevated platforms. They tuned up for a bit, then their platforms rose higher and they struck up a rhythmic tune.

Three scientists/operators/riders clad in what looked like white fencing jackets climbed into seats on top of the spider and the machine-beast began to wake...

Numerous eyes lit up. The legs opened and rose with a hiss to reveal a ring of scientists/operators/riders riding underneath the spider. The mandibles opened and steam/foam sprayed out. Jets of liquid squirted out of the abdomen.

One small girl freaked and ran off shrieking - her mother ran to catch her and calm her down.

The creature/mechanoid rose, turned and began to stride away.



We found ourselves following the spider, walking alongside the spider, climbing up steps to get level with it, going down another set of steps and ended up in front of it as it approached.

Everyone was grinning, laughing, staring and running along with delight. The musicians cacaphonic medley continued whilst the beasts limbs waved close above people's heads, bumped lamposts, stepped on walls and brushed the tops of trees.

We legged along just in front of the spider, pausing now and again to take many photos.







We realised that the rain had stopped when the spider began to move. It came back every now and again, but wasn't as bad as earlier. We watched the monster do a circuit of Salthouse Dock, walking out along The Strand, and then back in through the main gates that lead to the Albert Dock.
It's legs hovered just above the heads of the crowd. People were reaching out and touching the base of the feet.




Finally the spider was hoisted into the air and swung out over the waters of the dock. It dipped it's toes into the water and then was showered by a number of water cannons. It disappeared in a mist of spray for a short while, then, after returning the water cannon salute with a burst of spray from it's abdomen it swung back onto the land, and headed off for the Cunard Building.



By this time it was 21:00, so we called it a day and carried 2 tired, wet, happy boys onto a bus home. I think that we were really lucky to be in the right spot at the right time when it woke up for it's first major outing.

It's off for a walk around the city tomorrow. We're going to miss this, but hoping to see some more on Sunday, when the spider leaves the city.

New Swing Bridge

Liverpool get's a new swing bridge - however it's one time only.

This is the return leg of it's one and only swing. They're raising the footbridge at Princes dock to allow canal boats to pass underneath so that the Leeds-Liverpool canal extension can now take boats all the way to the Pier Head. It was swung out to a temporary resting point a few weeks ago. They've built supports to raise the bridge, and now they're swinging it back.

I've always liked this bridge, with it's whale-bone look, so I'm glad they're keeping it. I think that it cost a lot to build in the first place, which is why they're conducting this feat of engineering, rather than demolishing it and making a new one.

They just started to swing the bridge back in place at 15:00 today, as I was leaving work to go and pick up Frodo from school. I persuaded one of the builders/engineers to let me leg it across the temporary footway, moments before the bridge started swinging, otherwise I'd have been really late if I had to walk the long way round. (Hope he didn't notice me pausing to take the photo's).

Giant Spider Sighted in Liverpool

We've been looking forward to this one for a while. Picked Frodo from his first day back at school, then collected Samwise and Novelist Supermum and told the boys that we were going into town. Parked up and I asked them if they thought that we would see any giant spiders.

They just thought that Daddy was fibbing again. Then they saw this...



It's all part of the latest, and probably one of the best, Capital of Culture Events.
It's being staged by La Machine and Artichoke, who put on The Sultan's Elephant in London a couple of years ago.

There's more on BBC News - but their photos aren't as good as ours :P

The plot over the next few days is that scientists will experiment on the creature, which will then wake up and move around the city. It will then finish in a spectacular finale on Sunday night. Looks to us like the creature is going to exit via the old Mersey Tunnel.

Unfortunately we're commited to a family event on Saturday, so we'll miss what's going on that day, but we're hoping to see as much as we can with 2 excitable, and possibly very tired boys on Friday and Sunday.

Klimt at the Tate

Went to the Gustav Klimt exhibition at the Tate today.

Enjoyed the exhibition - although at times we felt that it should have been titled "Klimt and a bunch of other stuff by his best mates".

Although I'm familiar with some of his work, I didn't know much about the artist.

He appeared to live most of his life wearing a large, comfy blue smock. We could see that he had several of these, as the designs on the shoulders varied. There was even one on display at the exhibition.

There were a few photos of him in a suit - he looked extremely uncomfortable - probably couldn't wait to get the smock back on.

Pedal to the Metal

Resolution: - I must get back to blogging more often and not let life, the universe and everything hinder leisure activities. (Also I must make time for leisure activities other than falling asleep and snoring zzzZZZZ!)

Stuck in work most of this weekend doing various jobs. Not so bad yesterday as the weather was dismal. Typically I'm on a deadline to finish putting together the boys Stockade Playhouse and I'd planned to do some more work on it yesterday morning when the heavens opened! Today the weather has improved and I've been stuck here for the best part of the day waiting for hardware techies to do their stuff so I can stop and start system services.

The title of this post refers to the latest problem that we had with our vehicle, which is a about a month off being 1 year old. I'd loaded up 4 rather heavy rubble sacks to take to the tip, and had gone about quarter of a mile when an Engine Problem warning light lit up and "Go Straight to the Garage!" appeared on the on-board computer.

Hoping it might be something to do with the weight being pulled, I got to the tip, unloaded, started up again and the fault cleared. It came back again about a mile or so later. Car still going but in "limp home" mode.

Arrived at work and switched off. Later that evening I headed for home and found that I still had the fault, so I parked up and called the RAC, to check it before I did any more damage. The RAC man came and thrashed the accelerator for a bit. His diagnostic kit showed the fault had cleared. He advised me to take it to VW to be checked.

Got the car booked in a couple of days later, which steadily began to get worse - back to limp home mode on starting, with an exhaust problem warning lighting up alongside the first one.

Got the car back on Friday night. It turned out to be a problem with the accelerator pedal. They've fitted a shiny new one and the problem has gone. Apparently accelerator pedals no longer pull on a cable. Mine pushes on a potentiometer (variable resistor) that drives some electronics to tell the car how fast to go. The electronics had failed.

Oh well. At least they found and fixed the fault quickly this time.

Ouch! and Ouch! again.

A couple of weeks ago we woke up to find that our car had been vandalised, along with about 30 or so cars in the immediate area. Some idiot(s) had gone around in the late/early hours scoring a number deep scratches into every vehicle in the neigbourhood.

Yesterday I put our car in for repair. I was given a courtesy car which I had to reverse out of a tight car park. Unfortunately one of the managers of the repair shop had parked his long Silver Mercedes in one of the courtesy car parking bays. This being far too big for the bay resulted in a chicane to negotiate, and with me reversing a car I'm not used to I totally misjudged it and clipped the rear wing on my courtesy car, and his Merc.

Quote from the manager of the repair shop - "Let's just see which one you've hit. Oh No! It's mine!".

Ouch! Sorted it out with the insurance, so the excess payment is now twice what it was going to be. Ouch again!

Artist at Work

I love this picture. It's an artist friend of mine at work in his "studio". If ever a photo summed up what his work is all about, then this is the one.



More about him and his work here

Rain Gods?

A couple of weeks ago...

I bought a Stockade Playhouse that needs a level base preparing, painting and assembling outside in the garden.

Novelist Supermum bought a new clothes line/dryer.

And then the heavens opened... it's all our fault isn't it?

Crazy Nights

An old friend, who I haven't seen for a few years (but have known for about 26!) surprised me with an email today, just as I was about to leave work to fetch Frodo from school.

He's down from Glasgow to attend a conference tomorrow, so I managed to get a "pass out" from home to go out for a few beers with him at short notice tonight.

I'm really glad that I did, as it was truly great to see him again. Lots of catching up and reminiscing. Beer, burgers and chips at Blue in the Albert Dock.

(He went to see KISS in Mannheim last week - hence the title of this post).

Air Guitar that really works!

here and here

Invisible Guinea Pig

Samwise has invented himself a new pet - an invisible guinea pig. He takes it for walks on an imaginary lead. It sits on the spare seat in the car, and wears an invisible seat belt. It wears invisible pyjamas, and has pretend pizza for tea!

I'm going to have to make an imaginary hutch for it.

Guess who'll be left to feed it and change the invisible straw when his imagination gives up on it :)

Floating Hotel - Grand Princess

This monstrous vessel arrived early this morning and moored outside of the office.

It's a bit like having a block of flats suddenly appear overnight.

The extra bits of superstructure at each end make it look like it should be floating in outer space, rather than the high seas. Perhaps it's on it's way to Fhloston Paradise?

HMS Ark Royal

Another battleship anchored outside of work today. HMS Ark Royal visiting Liverpool

It was supposed to be here in September, however the Royal Navy was too afraid to dock at the new landing stage until it had passed a safety check!

It's no wonder that we don't "Rule the Waves" anymore...

Aaaarrrgh!

Finished work at 03:00 with a successful release in the bag, after resolving a few problems encountered during the implementation.

Got back home around 03:30 feeling a bit too wound up to go to bed immediately, so with the dawn breaking and the dawn chorus birdies tweeting I spent about half an hour reading the second of Charlie Higson's Young Bond books.

Went to sleep at 04:00 and was woken up at 10:30 by the phone ringing. A heads up warning that a development/test server had a fault, and could I go in to escort the engineer into the secure server room when he and the part arrived?

14:00 and I was back in work. 15:00 and the engineer arrived, but he only had 1 part and needed 2. 17:15 the part arrived. Installed, tested and server booted and at 18:00 he left. 18:10 and the server crashed again. We managed to get it back up by disabling a memory board. The Engineer will be back next week.

I managed to bring up all of the environments on the server and dashed back home to arrive at 20:10, having missed the first 10 minutes of the Dr Who repeat (the first showing of which I of course had completely missed last night).

Then I found this response to my complaint to Orange in my Inbox...

Customer Service wrote:
> Hello [DarkDwarf],
>
> Thank you for your email.
>
> We are sorry for the inconvenience caused to you.
>
> We request you to follow the steps given below in order to improve the
> slow connection speed:
>
> Check if the equipment is setup correctly and connected to the master BT
> socket. Follow the link below for help:
>
> http://help.orange.co.uk/sessionBegin.do?solutionId=kb327
>
> http://help.orange.co.uk/sessionBegin.do?solutionId=kb264
>
> Follow the link below to perform diagnostics:
>
> http://help.orange.co.uk/sessionBegin.do?solutionId=kb165
>
> Follow the link below to reset your Livebox:
>
> http://help.orange.co.uk/sessionBegin.do?solutionId=kb18901
>
> If the issue persists then swap the filters as is possible that the
> filters could be corrupt and provide us with the following information:
>
> * Status of @ light?
> * Status of ! light?
> * Status of >> light?
> * Status of telephone light?
> * Status of antenna light?
> * Do you have Wired or Wireless connection?
> * What is the make of the Wireless adapter (speedtouch 121g adapter,
> speedtouch 122g or inventel adapter)?
> * Brief description of when problem occurred and time it affects the
> most?
> * Have you made any recent changes on your computer or internal wiring
> of your house?
> * Do you have Antivirus/firewall installed on your computer?
> * How many BT sockets do you have in use?
> * Do you have a splitter or an extension cable(If yes, specify the
> length)?
> * Is the equipment connected to the main BT socket?
> * Are the device filtered?
> * Do you have additional telephony devices like sky tv, digital phone,
> fax machine, etc?
>
> As soon as we hear back from you we can sort the problem out.
>
> If you wish to make a complain, we request you to contact our Broadband
> Customer Support Team on the number 0844 873 8586(IVR options 1-4) (they
> are open 7am -11pm, 7 days a week, calls are charged at National rate.)
>
> If you have any further queries then please do not hesitate to get in
> contact with us again.
>
> Kind Regards,
> Shraddha
>
> Broadband Support
> REF:WOOBB

3 Haircuts

I'm in for a long night at work tonight watching and praying that a couple of database building processes run to completion...

I took Frodo and Samwise for a back-to-school half termly haircut this morning - and had mine chopped at the same time too. They really know the routine at the barbers, so aren't at all fazed by it, like other kids are that I've seen. I've always thought that it's a good exercise in social interaction, so I've been taking them since they were young. They also get a much better haircut than any that I could do, armed with a pudding basin and a pair of shears ;)

My brother popped in for a cup of tea, on his way back to Blackburn. His wife had entered some sort of cookery competition that was being judged at St Georges Hall this morning. Unfortunately the judging lasted longer than they anticipated, so I only got to see them for 5 minutes before I had to dash off to work.

Indiana Jones and the Lost Broadband Connection II

I've sent off a four page letter of complaint to Orange after being back online for 10 days, followed by another outage of 5 days before coming back online again, but at a much reduced download speed.

I've got a 12.5 hour or so release to do at work on Saturday afternoon/evening/Sunday morning. I reckon that I might find the time to do a "catch up" blog post on Sunday night - assuming that our internet connection stays for that long...

Meanwhile we went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull at the local fleapit yesterday afternoon.
From what I'd heard from the critics I wasn't expecting to enjoy it as much as I did. Not as good as Raiders, or Last Crusade, but probably better than Temple of Doom.

I know that there's no way the hero should survive most of the things that happen to him in a flick like this, but there was one scene in particular that I thought - absolutely no way!

Harrison Ford plays an ageing, but has-still-got-what-it-takes Indy, although he's got to be the most destructive archaeologist since Auguste Mariette used dynamite to help locate the Apis Bulls.

Back Online

3 Week Outage!

I've lost count of the daily phone calls to Orange with them saying that the line should be OK, but with no internet connection at our end.

Eventually they agreed to send an engineer round to our house. He was due this afternoon. Mysteriously at 6am our internet connection came back!

I called Tech Support around 9am and asked them to update the case with this information. They said that the engineer would call anyway.

I called again at 10am to check that the case had been updated. No it hadn't. The engineer is coming at no charge... I insisted that they still update the case (getting paranoid here, but I didn't trust them not to claim that the chap fixed it our end when he turns up).

The engineer came at 3 or 4pm. He told Novelist Supermum that our setup was perfectly OK and that somebody had definitely fixed something at the exchange - but he wasn't allowed to say who or what.

I'm now too busy composing my letter of complaint to Orange Customer Services to be able to blog further.