Michael's Meanderings

My Kobo eReader had it's ups and downs this month. The operating system / interface was upgraded to make it work more like the iOS app. Unfortunately the micro USB, used to recharge and copy files to it, got damaged do it's now unusable. In addition it appears Kobo have decided not to continue making it so a replacement is not available.
Dancing with C & J on Tuesday of every week and the social dance on the last Saturday. J arrived early but in general the number of attendees was low. Gave J a copy of Firefly (the series) for her birthday. Also booked to see the HP Experience next month with her. Paid £5 deposit for New Years party.
Weather has been warm and sunny for most of the month, so I have been wearing short sleeve shirts to work. Dress code requires a collar so T-shirts are out.
I got a discount ticket (from work) to see Billy Smart's Circus at Lancing. The seat and program together only cost £5, this may have been the first time I've seen this particular circus.
Went to see my chiropractor, and he also tried my first acupuncture on my left leg. not sure if it made any difference, did feel odd though!
Renovating my garage and back garden. CS has emptied it of his stuff and installed a back door leading to a new path in the garden. He has also installed a hefty new gate and new fencing (on the right side looking from my back door). Attempted to buy replacement front garage door but no luck.
D took me in "his" taxi to the post office to collect a package from amazon. First time he's taken me anywhere!
Bought a new watch strap, to replace the broken original one, and saw "How to Train Your Dragon 2 - 3D"
Mowed the front and back lawns (in different days).
First Monday in the month I was at the Earth and Stars in Brighton for our Science Fiction Discussion Group to talk about Device Endurance. We were relegated to a table in the main back as the upper room had been book by another function.
Had to visit the dentist to get a filling in my upper left. I arrived much too early but is was raining and I didn't want to get wet wandering around town.
Mum phoned to say that she kept getting popup adverts on her laptop, so I went to visit and sorted it out. Had to de-install a load of Adware, and a couple of apparent trojans. Started accessing pottermore.com site - eats time! but fun.
Had a cough for the end of the month, finished bottle of cough mixture.
Walk to the Post Office Delivery Office, took just over an hour and a half there and back! Collected amazon package.
Saw Monty Python Live (Mostly): One Down, Five to Go [Live at the O2] on the Gold TV channel. It was of more interest as a event than the content.
Renewed my train season ticket. Got my London hotel booking extended to a day before and after Loncon3, Mobile version of program now live.
Bought 2 pairs of shorts and 2 short sleeved shirts. Returned 2 audible books for credit.
Have had blisters on right toes, but as the first two weeks in August dancing is off, I should recover.
Last Monday of the month had a major thunderstorm. Lightning strike on electric substation at Hove station; meant no trains on South West line from Brighton. So couldn't get in to work (did get to Brighton) so went home for the day.
Sent in my Hugo and Retro Hugo votes online. Alarm clock batteries expired.
Started setup for LFS101x - Introduction to Linux at courses.edx.org/courses/LinuxFoundationX/LFS101x. Created Ubuntu 14.04.1 install on USB Disc
Also started editing my electronic diary for last year prior to printing it out.

Last post was about Filkcon, this will end with Picocon.

Patches of snow stayed around for about a week, an things have generally been frozen. I got my first book from Amazon in a while. I used to get 2-4 books a week, now it's that number per month!

When I imported my ebooks from Stanza to ShuBook I chose the wrong switch and all the books were imported with the title in the Author field and vice versa. I have just finished changing the last of these around! A long winded process but now all the books by a particular author are together.

I did a bit more training/mentoring at work and entered the first data into the live system. So far so good but it's taken over a week and it hasn't moved to the next step yet! Fingers cross this will happen soon as I'm the guinea pig of the session!

Last Saturday I was at Picocon 29 and next week is my Dad's birthday so I haven't been able to do any weekend shopping. I have had to stop over on my jurney home so get a few bits and bobs that had run out (and other stuff too).

Picocon 29 "Apocalypses" had all the bits a Picocon has had for low these last many years. Unfortunately I couldn't enjoy it as much as I might as I had a cold! Anyway the guests were Adrian Czajkowski/Tchaikovsky was enthusiastic and entertaining (I need to look for his work) Justina Robson was more introspective and Tricia Sullivan was also new to me, but hopefully a new read at some point.

During lunch I dashed off to Forbidden Planet for old times sake and bought 4 books, though when I'll read them I don't know. Since I started listening to podcasts as I walk around, and my train journey is ony 20 minutes I don't have long periods where I'm static and can't do anything but read!

I left Imperial just after 4:00pm and made my way home in the rain!

I had to get up early on Saturday as I had to stay in in the afternoon so my sister's car keys could be collected to get her car MOTed

So first off to the chemist in Haywards Heath to collect my asthma inhalers. (Which required a short train journey) then back home and walked into town to do my shopping.

In the afternoon continued cataloguing, had the TV on in the background. Also did a little bit of reading.

Stan Lee's Who Want's to be a Super Hero started this weekend and I saw the first two episodes. On the one hand it is a bit cheesy on the other I continued watching.

Sunday didn't get up quite so early but watched last nights Doctor Who, and Dr Who Confidential, most upset that the Eurovision Song Contest will mean that I'll have to wait 2 weeks till the next episode.

Went to the local cinema, the Orion, to see "A Bridge to Terabithia", first movie I've seen at the cinema in a while, less fantasy then I thought there would be, still pretty good though.

Saw the next two episodes of Who Wants to be a Super Hero.

Also re-watched the first 4 episodes of A Town Called Eureka (which is being re-shown), it's just as good as I remembered, a check of Wikipedia determines that a second series will be shown later this year, before retiring to bed.

So on Friday night, with 3 new books from Forbidden Planet, I continued to add to my LibraryThing catalogue. I stopped at 450 which I thought was a fairly impressive number, before retiring to bed.

Saturday was bright and sunny, so a spent most of the day reading, apart from when I went shopping, which was a pleasant walk.

On my return I saw the next episode of Doctor Who, which was an excellent conclusion to the Dalek 2 parter

I was able to borrow my sisters scanner and scanned 27 covers and uploaded them to LibraryThing. These were books where the cover art on MY books didn't match any of the artwork held at LT.
It was fun doing the scanning, cropping and uploading and I've now got it down pat.

I then backed up the folder My Documents on my laptop to network storage and managed to delete 14 GB of data prior to a bittorent download of the next 3 episodes of Blood Ties. And so to bed.

Today I added another 14 covers to LT and currently have catalogued 530 books, which is a little below my earlier average, but I think 41 book covers has to balance that out.