Radio Times

Over the past few days I have been tinkering with an old 40s radio. I was mostly soldering in new wires where the old rubber ones had crumbled, and replacing the foil-and-paper capacitors (which are susceptible to moisture). Tonight I finally got to a stage where I could plug it in and try it:



The controls light up, which looks cool, but I'm only getting faint static at the moment. I'm very pleased that it actually turns on - that means the transformer is ok. Tomorrow I shall rig up an improvised aerial.

Ideas

Here is an interesting list of things to do with the "economic stimulus" money. My favorite is of course the Open Source software grants; and, as one of the comments says, this should be combined with a policy of a full adoption of open software for anything that is publicly funded - it's cheaper and historically more accessible. Plus more paid holiday time can't be bad.

Mmmmm

Today we tried out the Raj Mahal Indian Restaurant, which is apparently the only curry house in town at the moment. It was lunchtime so the buffet was in operation; an unusual (to me) "all-you-can-eat" arrangement. The food was lovely - a fair choice of beef, chicken and veg curries with rice and naan. For afters we had some aromatic Indian rice pudding and some of those sugar-coated fennel seeds. The guy we went with said it was unusually busy, but we didn't mind as that means business is good, and they will certainly get more business from us.

NaN

While decorating the tree the other day, I was reminded of a 60s tv program, The Prisoner. I was hanging a bauble with a penny-farthing on it, one of the many icons used in the show's distinctive style. The main character is a spy who resigns, but is drugged and abducted before he can put his feet up. He wakes up in a strange village; he has been provided with a cottage, and the villagers are friendly enough, but there is a sinister undertone. There is constant surveillance, the "villagers" are only referred to by numbers and there is an impenetrable perimeter – it is in fact a prison. Some of the older inmates have accepted their fate, but not our man – he causes trouble every week by trying to escape or embarrassing the "governor", who is using increasingly bizarre methods of interrogation. Now this situation could be in any prison drama except there is an extra dimension this time; his captors may not be "the Enemy" but could actually be his former employers who have decided he knows too many of their secrets. This is one of those tv programs that makes you think – how much privacy should be sacrificed for security? Can information be extracted humanely? How can we guarantee lives that are free? And most importantly it teaches us to question the motives of the people who tell us to do things... even if they appear to be on our side.

Chart

Just a quick (non-Excel!) comedy chart, which was particularly well done I thought, and not from the usual source. And it made me hungry.

Pandora

Have just been using this internet-based music radio in the past few days, and I like it. It's like a radio station that only plays stuff you like. Just give it a favourite band and set it going, playing that and similar things. You can indicate anything you don't like with the thumbs down button (though I have only had to use this once as yet). It will be hard to go back to normal radio...

T-Day

So I've just been to not one but two Thanksgiving parties, and I am full of turkey, ham, stuffing, sweetcorn and gravy. Also brownies and pumpkin pie. All very tasty, and just what you need when there's snow and icicles outside. After helping to fix a printer, we played a game of Apples to Apples which was noisy and hilarious, as usual. Big thank-yous to Nojim and his family for inviting us!