When I was little, I used to fence foil. I recently returned to my old club where I was warmly welcomed back - and beaten resolutely by everybody; mostly due to my complete lack of fitness, but also (I say) due to the rules having changed. Indeed, everyone said that the timings are now different, with a longer contact time required and a shorter cut-off from the first hit registering, such that stop hits in foil now make the sport resemble epee. However, I just tonight discovered another difference that I've pondered about over the last few months and now discovered to be true: the lights have also been swapped over. See Laurent Harper's video of the 1993 British Championships (beating Nick Bell - another old name who I hear is still around) for verification that I'm not mad.

And as to everything, all good things, people and chickens come to an end.... I just checked my email to discover that, unfortunately, Mr Fox wins today:

Today at midday, the black chicken was killed by a fox. I had let them out and was sitting in the kitchen when the speckled one burst into the kitchen and jumped onto my computer.
I rushed out to discover some feathers by the trampoline and the body under the big tree. The orange chicken was nowhere to be found. Eventually, maybe two hours later the orange chicken re-emerged.
The upshot of all this is that I am cooking roast chicken tonight if you wish to join me.

House-sitting a flat in the city, large garden with grass and trees and railway at the end, it's a good place to sit and work during the day. Added bonus are the 3 eggs daily provided by my companions, the chickens. Well, was meant to be: was shown how to retrieve the eggs from within the "egg-loo" - essentially a chicken coop, allegedly designed and marketed by a company called OmLet who come and install it for you - on the first day by my friend (a relative of the owner)... returned into the apartment and back to the light (it was night outside) to discover his arm was alive with crawling things: very small, who knows what? Well, we figured that out quickly when we found a tube of "Red mite powder" on a shelf . Red mites? They're only little, but vicious, apparently - google returns a very informative pdf which explains that they are also known as Dermanyssus gallinae, a renowned chicken parasite that is seemingly impossible to eradicate and infects chicken farms (and other birds) throughout the country.

A friend gave me a really cool yerba mate cuia (Pt) and bomba (Pt, I believe: bombilla in Spanish) over the holidays last winter.

Today, I spent some time trying to figure out where to replenish my supply, and came across several useful references, beyond wikipedia.

Wow! So it's been about 6 weeks since I wrote anything on here - note: on here - mainly due to a profound lack of connectivity (and the need to prioritise other tasks) and writing offline and never getting around to posting... If I have a chance, I might post some stuff up retrospectively, but don't hold your breath.

And I've discovered how rubbish this site looks to some users: those who use micro$oft Internet Evil (TM) versions 5 or 6 - or probably any others as well. Well, tough, I'm afraid: there are no plans at the moment to fix this, although maybe in the longer term... Meanwhile, I suuggest you use firefox which suffers none of the same problems and is an infinitely more elegant browser.

I was asked at work today about my views regarding Abu Hamza al-Masri's imprisonment for 7 years this week. To be honest, I didn't have much of a viewpoint, I'd just heard about it earlier on by overhearing a conversation on the wardround between two nurses. But that said, I did have an immediate opinion - that there was no doubt some justice, some injustice, and definitely inequality (I remembering mentioning the invasion of the Mosque in passing). Anyway, I tried to find out a little more tonight - incidentally discovering the differences in spin portrayed by the BBC international and BBC national pages (try it!) - and ended up on the comments page. This one particularly resonated with me: