Faulty train isn't making journey (2,7)

Just a little snapshot of my journey on Monday - what must be the steepest escalator in London at least, heading down to the Northern Line at London Bridge station.

I was making my way back up the country after a weekend (well, just Sunday, really) spent at home. This was pretty much the mid-way point of a horrible journey - we had crawled into London Bridge after being forced to change trains (actual announcement, "Ladies and gentlemen, we would like to apologise for the delay to this service due to the adverse weather conditions, unfortunately there will be a further delay due to the train in front hitting another tree...") at Sevenoaks. I managed to arrive in King's Cross less than 10 minutes late, which was surprising given the delays incurred, though missed my train to Leeds. GNER replaced my ticket, but some jobsworth inspector made me pay a supplement to my fare, as I'd forgotten to bring my railcard. All in all, very frustrating, but worth it for the lovely day we had on Sunday for mother's day (roast dinner - the full works - at my sister's house).

Can't really complain though, seems mum, Paul and Lucy had a near-death experience as a tree came crashing down in front of them on the way into Hastings - they managed to stop in time. Not so lucky was the man from the Highways Agency coming the other way in his truck, though I'm sure it helped in getting the road clear as quickly as possible!

(Un)Fortunately I am now on holiday, and (but) am struggling to motivate myself to get some work done - the Independent crosswords and Sudoku are much more interesting.

Spring is springing

Well, seems the snow has left us alone for a while, I noticed yesterday the crocuses had started to open on my way across the park, and today I saw the first open daffodil outside the university. Also (something worth catching the bus for, you can only really see from the top deck), the leaves on the trees are just budding. Funny, last year I sent a photo to my mum of a huge patch of daffodils - I've just checked and this was on the 1st of March! Seems spring is running late this year, something that is perhaps confirmed on the Springwatch site. You can see, for example, that the spread of frog spawn is slower this year than last - some scientific data to back up my somewhat unscientific impression of a long winter!

The presence of dead leaves on the ground (just discernible on the above photo) confirms that this winter has been quite dry - they haven't yet rotted away from Autumn... Get ready for the hosepipe ban.

Translators fear not!

Looking at the above text, seems us translators don't have to worry too much about there not being any work for us, or that computers are going to replace us just yet (although I'm told in my machine translation classes that that's not what the goal is!) if this is the quality of texts that commercial software produces.

Just for the sake of it, I've put the above text back into babelfish for this translation:

Software English writing

Advanced Tool for drafting To write text easily -
To obtain!

Interestingly, their program (according to their website) allows you to "Fix all Grammar Errors Immediately" - maybe only in English!

Strangely, no French language version of their site is available.

Google Mars

Something someone might be interested in - Google have started a service similar to that used for their mapping service, called Google Mars. It seems that only a small section is available to view, but I assume they're going to expand this and integrate it into Google Earth, where the lovely picture of my house at the top of this page comes from (note to self: copyright the term Google Solar System immediately!). There are links to features on the planet's surface, and links to cool stuff like flythrough videos of parts of Mars.
----------------------------------
added 17/03/06
You can also view the moon on the imaginatively-titled Google Moon. For fun, zoom all the way in to see what the moon is made of!

An alternative to XP!

At last! I've been using this for a few months now, and am pleased to report it's all going quite well.

Ubuntu is a serious alternative operating system to Windows. It's a distribution of Linux designed to work on your Windows or Mac machine in place of (or in my case alongside) your usual operating system. Best of all, it's free (and means that you can gain back all those karma points lost by using evil Microsoft products) and easy to download, or you can even order copies on cd or dvd. It includes as standard loads of useful programs (Firefox, Open Office - a worthy replacement for and fully compatible with MS Office, Gimp - like Adobe Photoshop, but free, games, multimedia players), and anything you don't have (like Skype and Realplayer) you can easily download and install. It does involve a little getting used to, and you may have to look up how to do things you take for granted under Windows or MacOS on th'interweb, but at least the answers are there, as there is a large (and still growing) community online.

If things carry on the way they are, I'll be switching to Ubuntu full time very soon (although I need someone to convert the WordFast macros to OpenOffice format to allow me to work on translations in Linux)...

Seems winter is the new spring!

I'm sure it's just a coincidence, but Anne-Charlotte was just saying yesterday how it never snows here in Leeds. When I pointed out that it does happen (once even in June), she said, "well, I'm sure it never lays." So the weather set out to prove her wrong today. We were sitting in Opposite, being blasted by the freezing cold air from the door (were all these students born in barns?!) when we looked out to see a veritable blizzard. Well, for March...

Disable Orange Home Screen (finally!)

Images courtesy of http://uk.geocities.com/ras1968uk/orange.htm

This probably won't mean a lot to most of you, but for anyone who's got a Nokia 6680 on Orange:

It is possible to get rid of the hideous Orange Home Screen by downloading a little application called HSkiller. You can download this from http://gegelambert.free.fr/ (it's in French, but just click on the link at the top and install the .sis file on your phone). This changes your

Orange have confirmed that they are going to put an option on new phones to allow you to disable the home screen (thank god), thus returning the Symbian phones to their initial glory (and hopefully a) getting rid of the Orange screen and b) reenabling active standby!).