I was pleased to read this morning that it’s going to be recommended that musical copyright terms aren’t extended from their current 50 years. And I particularly enjoyed this quote from a music journalist:
“You can make a record in 1955 and have been getting royalties. Suddenly they’re gone.”
Suddenly? Since when has a fifty year warning counted as sudden?!
We completed on our new house yesterday and we’ve got the keys. There were no suprises when we had a look round for the first time in three months (except nice ones, like a bottle of wine and two pints of milk).
We want to decorate one room and our tenancy at Midland Cottages doesn’t finish until the end of the month, so we won’t be moving for a couple of weeks. But if anyone wants the new address then let us know.
When I left home yesterday morning there was a McDonald’s balloon wedged in the fence outside our house. It made me think that increased environmental awareness does have a downside. When I was a kid you could guarantee that at least one Blue Peter programme a month would involve launching thousands of balloons for kids across the country to try and find. There’d be a prize for the person who found a balloon furthest away from the launch site. Normally the winner would be some rich kid whose parents went on foreign holidays and could take a found balloon on the plane with them. I never got one of the balloons, but I always hoped I would, although the fact that I was the sort of child who didn’t really like going outside was probably a bit of a problem.
So could someone invent biodegradable balloons please.
Time passes…
Turns out they already have. And you can buy everything you need for a balloon race for a few hundred quid. So how come I’ve still never found one?
It turns out the house we had an offer accepted on last month needs a bit more work than we expected (not least a new roof). But the good news (for us anyway – not so good for the owner of the other house) is that we’ve found somewhere else. We had an offer accepted today. This one isn’t so close to the station, but it has the advantage of having an extra bedroom and not needing any work doing whatsoever. So Louise will just have to emulate Sarah Beeny in some other way.
It’s seven years since I left science and five years since I last had my name on a scientific paper, but, despite my best efforts, it’s happened again. I’m sure you’re all avid readers of Nucleic Acids Research, but if not then have a look at the Ensembl 2006 paper.
Last night I had a dream. I dreamt that I was at work and, as usual, was listening to music on headphones plugged into my laptop. Except that I hadn’t plugged the headphones in properly and everyone in my large open-plan office could hear what I was listening to, but nobody told me for three hours.
I think the interpretation of this dream is pretty clear. I’m a very, very boring person.
Who probably shouldn’t listen to Dire Straits at work anymore.
Louise and I had an offer on a house accepted today. It’s in Hitchin near the station. We won’t be moving in very soon though, because it needs a lot of work. It needs rewiring, central heating installing, maybe a couple of chimney breasts removing, dry sealing of the cellar, a new kitchen, a new bathroom, a door moving, one or two sheds dismantling, etc…
Anyone know a builder?!
Sorry about the recent lack of posts. Louise and I have had a bit of a holiday. Taking advantage of the lovely weather at this time of year, we headed up north to Yorkshire and Lancashire to visit friends. We also managed to fit in a bit of touristy stuff and went to a couple of towns made famous by their links to important artistic works. We went to Haworth, where the Brontes lived, and to Holmfirth, where Last of the Summer Wine is filmed. Don’t bother going to Holmfirth.
I only got 7 / 12 on the BBC News site Biology quiz. How embarrassing!
Update: Louise got 10 / 12. I feel stupid.
On our way back from Bristol this evening, Louise and I spontaneously decided to take a detour and drop in and visit A-M and check for ourselves that her belly button has indeed disappeared. It has.
Here’s something that might be helpful to people with friends in the John Radcliffe Hospital. It’s not the same hospital as the Radcliffe Infirmary. In fact, they’re three or four miles apart. And it’s quite difficult to park around the Radcliffe Infirmary, which is particularly annoying when you find out you didn’t actually have to. Apparently the Radcliffe Infirmary is being closed down. Presumably to stop other people getting confused.