After realising I had no contact lens fluid at my parents’, and being warned never ever to sleep in them by my optician, I risked the journey home. A kind RAC man turned me around before I hit the 0.7m of water at Henley-in-Arden, but the motorway was clear, albeit with a large number of breakdowns. The A46 into Stratford was a worry but turned out to be clear for the most part. It never fails to amaze me that, despite truly appalling weather conditions, people are still prepared to roar past me in the last metres before a blind corner. It’s mind-numbingly stupid on a clear day, but with that much water on the roads it’s pretty much criminal.

I didn’t get a good look at the Avon, but it was peeking over the edge of the manual river-boat crossing, which is certainly as high as I’ve seen it. Yikes. I also took a pass around the local Waterstone’s, just to see what was happening. Despite the rain there were plenty of people, some in costume, milling around and it all looked like good fun. I was jealous and half-considering joining them just for the atmosphere, when somebody shouted ‘HARRY POTTER’ from one end of the street. They could so easily have followed it with ‘lives’ or ‘dies’, and it’s not worth the risk.

I’m over in Solihull and, according to the radio, all roads into Stratford are flooded. I doubt I’ll get home this evening. I’m on a Potter-induced media blackout, so most of my regular websites are out-of-bounds. So, there is only one thing for it: dirty limericks! Most as recited by limerick connoisseur Christopher Hitchens on the Skeptics’ Guide Premium Content #2. And they are really quite dirty, so be warned…

(The entire old testament in 5 lines)
God’s plan made a sporting beginning,
till Eve spoilt his chances by sinning;
we trust that the story
will end with God’s glory
but at present the other side’s winning.

A vice both obscene and unsavory
holds the Bishop of London in slavery;
with lascivious howls
he deflowers young owls
that he lures to an underground aviary.

The Anglican Dean of Hong Kong
has a thing that is twelve inches long;
And he thinks that the waiters
are admiring his gaiters
when he goes to the loo. But he’s wrong.

The Bishop of central Japan
used to bugger himself with a fan.
And when taxed with these acts
he replied ‘it contracts
and expands rather more than a man’.

There was a young hooker from Crewe
who filled her vagina with glue;
Said she with a grin
“since they’ll pay to get in,
they can pay to get out of it too.” 

Charming, yes? He apparently knows more than 500.

I’ve been doing some freelance photoshopping work this week. Just your basic stuff - extracting objects from their backgrounds - but I always enjoy image editing and it’s been a good refresher course in various techniques. I learnt Photoshop years ago using a dodgy copy, but as I don’t use pirated software any more I’ve been trying The GIMP.

The GIMP is an open-source, freeware image-editing program that, while not as powerful as the newer versions of Photoshop, supports reasonably advanced features such as paths, channels etc.. It’s powerful, but the learning curve is steep. A major roadblock is the interface: designed for Linux and ported to Windows, every panel is a separate window, and it’s confusing as hell at first glance. A project called GIMPShop attempts to adapt the GIMP into the Photoshop interface, but it’s only partially successful and tends to lag behind the latest GIMP releases, so I prefer to stick with the ‘official’ release. The lack of native Windows integration means the dialogs and controls are unfamiliar, all of which takes time to pick up. But I’ve been meaning to learn The GIMP properly for ages, and this was a great opportunity to finally get to grips with it.

I generally find open-source software to be extremely impressive, but full of small bugs. The GIMP (on Windows) is the same. There are no show-stoppers, just things you have to work around. Tools such as the eraser would occasionally just stop working, and a reset of the ‘tool options’ would fix the problem, despite apparently not changing anything (I am aware that my understanding of the software is limited, though, and I could just be missing something). There were a couple of problems with the window system not re-drawing properly on zooms, or after switching to other programs, but, again, nothing that didn’t have a workaround, even if it was just restarting the program. I suspect these were to do with the linux windows-system port rather than the GIMP itself. Whether there are more or fewer bugs than commercial software I don’t know - my instinct says commercial software like Photoshop just has the edge, bug-wise - but at least open-source software can be patched daily, or a skilled programmer could even do it themselves.

Other than the tool-reset issue, image-editing was a breeze. I was processing a few hundred images, and was able to set keyboard shortcuts I could whip through with my left hand, keeping my right on the mouse at all times. This sped things up tremendously. The GIMP saved into native .psd format without issue (I downloaded the 30-day demo of Photoshop CS3 just to check). The image selection tools were effective, consistent and fast; paths as wonderful / irritating to configure as ever. It didn’t blink at importing twenty 2mb layers in one go, nor resizing all of them simultaneously.

The million-windows problem, by the way, is the first use I’ve found for Microsoft’s multiple desktop powertoy - switching between a GIMP and regular desktop was very convenient.

The best discovery came late in the process, when a startup tip informed me of the eraser’s un-delete function. Press Alt with the eraser and it’ll put back anything you erased, no matter when you erased it. So if you realise at the end of an edit that your first magic-wand selection accidentally removed more of the object than intended, you can put it back without having to go through 25 undo-levels and repeat all your work. Photoshop probably does this too, but it’s a feature I hadn’t seen before and was really, really helpful.

Broadly, I was impressed. There was nothing in my Photoshop skillset The GIMP couldn’t replicate, and I didn’t have any more problems than the average with any new program. When you consider the hundreds of pounds even older versions of Photoshop still cost, that’s remarkable. I’ll have to investigate the many online tutorials, as I’m sure there’s plenty left to learn.

I saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on Monday. It was great. I am now very, very excited about the book’s release this weekend.

I don’t know how Bloomsbury are threatening retailers, but I doubt they have the leverage to keep the book locked up until Saturday. It seems likely that the Daily Mail or some other cretinous organisation will decide it’s clever to run spoilers before release day, and that’ll be tough to avoid. It amazes me how many people find this funny - a couple of years ago BoingBoing ran video of ‘drive-by-spoilers’ of people standing in a bookshop queue, and seemed to think it was entertaining. There must be some interesting psychology behind the desire to spoil things for others, but it can probably be summed up with ‘being a jealous dick’.

The only way to hopefully avoid spoilers will be to go into full media blackout mode from Thursday onwards, then read very quickly as soon as it arrives on Saturday morning. Which sucks, because I don’t like to read that fast, but given that it’ll take two words to spoil the ending it seems necessary. Hopefully it’ll be possible…

C&P link to wonderful alternative dust-jackets, for people who ‘love Harry Potter’ but think they’re ‘too old and awesome to be seen reading the books’. Lots and lots and lots of bad language, if that kind of thing bothers you.

I like interesting street entertainers, and two years ago heard about these guys:

Now that is what you call entertainment! I’ve been wanting to see them ever since.

I have shown this image to many people as a clear example of high-level street entertainment savantage. Your I-can-stand-still-for-ages statues probably bow reflexively, if they know their place. Strangely, most recipients cannot fathom why I would possibly want to see a live performance of two upside-down men clenching sparklers between their buttocks. I don’t understand: why would anybody not want to see such a thing? It makes no sense.

They’re called Skate Naked, and perform in Stratford occasionally. On Saturday I missed them by minutes, only turning up as they were collecting money:

Dammit. One day.

The new series of Torchwood will star James Masters and Alan Dale. James Masters used to be in Buffy. But who is this Alan Dale, you ask?

Only the World’s Most Prolific Actor! The West Wing, 24, Star Trek, Lost, The X-Files, ER…The man turns up everywhere! And when he does, it’s Law to yell ‘it’s Jim from neighbours!’.

Jim from Neighbours deserves more recognition. I may start a fan club.

All the artwork in this exhibition is gorgeous, and I want it on my wall. If somebody could nip over to Los Angeles and buy me a few prints that’d be great. Thanks.

Regarding the Queen and complete bloody hysteria over what was probably an internal lark that went national, I would like to entirely agree with the words of Martin in The Margins. He also links to a fascinating discussion between David Thompson and Ophelia Benson over postmodernism, the state of the left, and Terry Eagleton.

Defunct Saturday morning show ‘Dick and Dom in da Bungalow’ contained a brilliant segment called ‘Bogies’. I am not ashamed to know this. The eponymous hosts would attend some busy place of calm, such as Warwick Castle while tours were in progress, and compete to say say the word ‘bogies’ progressively louder until somebody chickened out or failed to match the previous volume. It was goddamned funny. At Comic Relief they had ‘pro-celebrity bogies’, starring Rupert Grint, and I nearly died.

I have yet to find anybody willing to play it with me. Over the age of five, anyway. So here’s an idea: Webogies. The rules are simple:

• You must write the word ‘bogies’ in some public arena on the Internet, under your own name or a recognisable nickname.
• ‘Bogies’ doesn’t have to be permanent, but must remain long enough to be seen live by other competitors and the Public At Large. A screenshot will not suffice.
• ‘Bogies’ must be larger than the previous incarnation.
• ‘Bogies’ must not be in context - you can’t put ‘please ignore this’ before it - and must be in its own paragraph.
• You should, if possible, leave a comment underneath the previous bogeys, linking to your superior bogies.
• There is no limit to contestants, but new bogies must be posted within 48 hours. After such time has passed, the instigator of largest bogies will be declared Bogemeister.

Here’s how the real-world version works:

Come now, don’t pretend you didn’t smile.

Bogies

Warning: this is a bit gross. A lot gross, really.

My head has been full of blog posts for the last two days, but I haven’t been able to write due to my head being full of something else: my regular 9-monthly wax period. Regular readers will know, and probably wish they didn’t, that every nine to ten months my ears fill up with goo, and nothing short of a pick-axe will shift the blockage. This is incredibly annoying, prevents me from driving and eventually walking straight, and takes a minimum of 4 days / £65 to clear, via one of the following methods:

• Over-the-counter ear wax dissolving stuff: works, but takes four days of constant application.
• Ear syringing: works as long as there’ve been a few days of softening via drops. NHS doctors offer a clinic once a week, but the upcoming appointment is normally full, and I have to wait a week and a half. Private surgeries can do it same-day, but charge £65 (or £37.50 if you fix their computers at the same time ), which I can’t afford right now.
• Dubious self-inflicted medical techniques - work, but hurt, and are Probably Not a Good Idea.

For the first time ever, the problem has been solved in two days! I used a mixture of all three If you want to know the full details (and, let’s face it, why wouldn’t you), read on…

I really, really needed to be able to drive on Sunday, so I figured that nuking it with wax-dissolving solution might work. Seven hours of lying on the bed, listening to the radio or uncomfortably holding a book, got to the point where I’d have a couple of minutes of clarity before something slid back into place. So this morning I figured I was close. But another hour and a half this afternoon and there was none of the reassuring fizzing or popping that indicates things are happening. I decided more drastic action was required.

I brought out the artillery.

Ear-syringing is a misnomer. It’s just firing hot water into your ear. One can, in theory, achieve this at home with a Super Soaker. This is not as stupid as it sounds, and has been used by doctors. I’ve tried before with no success, but figured it was worth another attempt.

It worked! The extra softening, plus a more effective angle, resulted in Gross Glob of Splat falling into the bath. And now I can hear perfectly…

…from the one ear. It is clear from the difference in hearing quality that the other is far from perfect, but I don’t think it’ll b0rk for a while yet. Hopefully. I’ll plan around it. Last time I was told to drop olive oil into my ear once a week to soften and clear excess wax. I, of course, kept forgetting. This time it Shall Be Different.

Anyway: HOORAY! I can now go to plays / head to Nottingham / write my magnum opus / clean the bath etc. etc.

Result.

Quote of the day comes from Basra:

UK military spokesman Major Mike Shearer said: “We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area.”

Must be the CIA. He continued:

A snake! Oooohh, it’s a snake. 

He didn’t really. The military aren’t scared of snakes. Spiders, yes. Snakes, no.

I just saw a girl wearing an xkcd t-shirt. Good job it wasn’t Dinosaur Comics - I was staring at her chest for long enough anyway, trying to place the logo. A dropped jaw would only have added to the creepiness.

Via Lisa, fan-style comments on Doctor Who and their translations:

“Hollywood-style sentimentality.”
A positive portrayal of human nature. Please note that if everybody dies in a massive bloodbath, I shall not be complaining about “shallow Hollywood-style cynicism.”  

“Doctor Who used to be scary!”
I’m completely unable to assimilate the fact that the sort of reaction which led me to sleep with the lights on for a fortnight when I was five cannot possibly be replicated when I’m forty.

“Why does RTD have to put something camp in every episode?”
I am worried that people at work might think that because I am a Doctor Who fan, I am also gay. Which I’m not.

“Catherine Tate? I shall boycott Season Four.”
Catherine Tate? Excellent! I shall watch all of Season Four with preconceived ideas and then come onto Outpost Gallifrey each Saturday night during the Spring of 2008 and tell everybody who is interested - and anybody who isn’t, for that matter - how much I disliked it. How it was “wretched”, “childish”, “embarrassing”, “cringeworthy”, full of RTD’s “Gay Agenda” and how he and Catherine Tate have, personally, “raped my childhood”. And then I’ll feel much better.

Pretty accurate, I’d say