Who wants to live in a barn?
Housemate Anne and I have decided city living is too cramped and what we really want is a houseshare in the country (well, almost the country).
We found this just outside Cambridge:
It’s a £2.5m designer barn conversion with a heated swimming pool, 14 acres, underfloor heating, roof-top champagne terrace… and it’s ours to fill!
We’ve got two rooms to fill (out of five) and we’re looking for awesome, energetic housemates!
The rooms are both spacious doubles with en-suites with walk-in showers at around £700/month each excluding bills.
The house has its own geothermal power plant so bills are comparitively low. (We’ve calculated about £200/month each for all bills.)
You’ll need to arrange a car (second-hand cars are cheap in the UK) or have a decent road bike (~30mins to the centre of Cambridge). Rush-hour trains from Royston take 39mins to reach Kings Cross.
We’re moving mid- to late- January, in time for my birthday party I hope.
Serious once in a lifetime stuff, so join us!
@gnomeza on Twitter. Or mail us at incrediblehome1@gmail.com.
Also check out the Estate Agent’s Brochure.
I shot some (pretty bad) video on a cold windy day in late September.
Don’t rush the Digital Economy Bill
Dear David Howarth,
I’m very concerned about the attempt to rush the passage of the Digital Economy Bill through the Commons.
I run a public wifi network for our crescent of shared houses. It’s my contribution from my own time and technical expertise.
In a time when thrift is essential, it saves us all money.
I also run a business providing software services both locally and internationally. I carry out much of my work over my internet connection at home.
But should even an accusation be raised that my network is being misused, the Digital Economy Bill means I risk disconnection and places upon me the considerable monetary cost of defending such accusations in court.
Filtering is not feasible in any meaningful sense. It’s impossible for me to distinguish between legal and illegal file-sharing traffic.
The Digital Economy Bill puts at risk the good I do for my community as well as my livelihood and deserves proper scrutiny.
As a constituent, I implore you to do all you can to ensure the Government does not rush the bill through, denying us our democratic right to scrutiny and debate.
Yours sincerely,
Mark Ferry
Poulenc Gloria Choral Training Tracks
A set of choral training mp3s for Francis Poulenc’s Gloria grouped by main voice part.
Sorry:I’ve removed the audio from the server. I needed the space.
The files were synthesized from these MIDI files with TiMidity and then encoded with lame.
Hildersham and Balsham Cross-country 2009
Did the Hildersham and Balsham cross-country ride last Sunday. This is a 24km ride through South Cambridgeshire including a section along Via Devana, the old Roman road that ran from Colchester to Chester.
They had 180 riders this year (down from 250 last year – the recession I guess) though you didn’t get the sense that there were very many as starting times were staggered throughout the day. (I can just imagine trying to squeeze 180 giddy horses through the horseshoe fence by the start).
Weather held out on the day being mostly overcast with only very slight spitting, and it brightened up in patches during the ride.
Anne and I arrived at Rectory Farm in Hildersham with just enough time to get tea before the Lovely View trucks arrived and started at just after 10 am.
I attempted the first couple of fences, none of which I succeeded in coaxing Tango over. For later fences I learned to made my intentions clearer, kept my pace steadier, gave Tango a little more encouragement the stride before and we jumped a number of them – some less elegantly than others.
Some of the horses were clearly rather excited with all the activity, one man performing a decent saddle bronc on his bucking horse before executing a graceful, though unintentional, dismount.
The first half of the route continued with great long stretches across stubbly fields peppered with fences, past the water tower on Rivey Hill through Borley Wood (along otherwise private avenues past camouflaged huts apparently used for deer hunting) and along sections of Via Devana. The drink stop at the half way point was most welcome.
The second half took us to Dungate Farm on the edge of Fleam Dyke and, by a more direct route, back to Hildersham.
A great thankyou to all who helped organise and marshall a wonderful event!
Other maps: large, speed, elevation.
Official photos: Aurar Photographic.
Raw GPS data: gpx
<a href=”http://markferry.net/gps/hildersham_and_balsham_2009.html”>Large route map</a>
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Ski insurance wasted
Went snowboarding in Verbier over Christmas. Returned without any broken bones this time. I feel like I didn’t try hard enough.
Photos on Flickr.
An apology
I wrote this as an RSVP to an event I couldn’t attend:
Doh.
My calendar
like a desert.
I'm a
tumbleweed
'snagged
on the solitary
cactus
on the 14th of June.
Sorry I can't make it.
These are fleeting moments of creativity
V for Vomitus
I’ve freakin’ had it with comic book movies.
132 minutes of film of which 112 were time wasted.
A bowel-voiding vile vomit-inducing video.
Also: happy valentines day.
flash
Why is it so goddamn hard to remove flash from this PoS browser on this PoS system? Right now I need to flip out and kill stuff.
HD-DVD Processing Key
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0