Thursday, January 19, 2006

Who Do You Think You Are?

Watched Sheila Hancock tracing some of her ancestry on Who Do You Think You Are? on BBC2. Interesting to see how she learnt about the person in the photo she had which had been passed down the generations. Of course, her research was done by other people on her behalf. In reality, tracing such things is very time consuming and even more frustrating!

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Crosswords and word invention

As usual, the battle to complete The Times cryptic crossword came down to working out how a word is built but not actually knowing that the resulting word is an actual word. Had 3 "guessed" words today, and had a 100% hit rate.

Hereros - a member of a Bantu people of central Namibia
protasis - Etymology: Late Latin, from Greek, premise of a syllogism, conditional clause
outwash - detritus chiefly consisting of gravel and sand carried by running water from the melting ice of a glacier and laid down in stratified deposits

Ah, the joys of cryptic crosswords!

Monday, January 16, 2006

Exterminate! Exterminate!



Went to see the Doctor Who "Up Close" exhibition in Cardiff Bay.
Pretty good set-up on the whole. Some of the older monsters needed to be 'revealed'. They were hidden behind info screens but could be seen when you pressed a button to change the lighting. This was a nice effect but it unfortunately meant that you couldn't get photos of them (well, I couldn't anyway). The Daleks were displayed very well though!

Let's hope the new series is as good as the last.

Friday, January 13, 2006

The start of the blog

Well, after seeing numerous people starting blogs I thought I'd give it a go. How long it will be kept up-to-date is anyone's guess (although probably mainly mine....)