Blog archive March 2005

<< February 2005 / April 2005 >>

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31.03.05 / 01 / photos of new flat

are in the photo lists to the left, in response to insistent requests from some quarters ;)
i had to tidy up first guys. clearly it's still missing an office chair and hopefully a bed sofa if i can afford it.

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29.03.05 / 02 / insecure

the flat below was burgled at the weekend, right under my nose. so now i'm doing some hasty d.i.y. to make the windows more secure. and i had no insurance yet [having no internet to arrange it] so i had to spend an hour online to get it this afternoon at work. i was just beginning to settle in, and now i'm unsettled.

the 19th century windows have very little security in themselves, but they have full-height folding wooden shutters inside. these are standard for 18th/19th century windows in england, but in most cases have been painted/screwed shut by uncomprehending 20th century owners. the shutters fasten with an iron bar across the back which locks into place by a simple mechanism. you can break the glass, but then you're faced with a wall of timber. it was originally designed as a proof against riot, where they will smash your windows without being nice about it, but you want to prevent physical entry. due to timber shrinkage the clasp on the bars wasn't locking properly - it's secure against all but determined burglars, but some adjustment tonight will make it as good as new.

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29.03.05 / 01 / no phone still

can't get an engineer to come and reconnect until april 12th! they can do all kinds of things online/on the phone, but if you want an actual human attendance...

so things will continue to be a little intermittent.

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14.03.05 / 01 / no phone

not only is there no broadband, there is no dial-up since the phone line is by an unknown provider that doesn't recognise my number and BT have no records. so i'll have to talk to the managing agent tomorrow and then to BT to get an engineer in. bummer. i feel cut off.

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11.03.05 / 01 / moved flat today

today i moved into a new flat. well the building itself dates from c. 1850, and my flat is carved out of one large room. The windows have working shutters instead of curtains - familiar to me from when i was a student in Bath. In fact the whole flat reminds me of the places i lived in then. My modernist furniture doesn't quite belong in the faded classical interior though.

atm there is no broadband, i am writing this back at jonny's where i'm picking up a few remaining items. i've still got dial-up so contact is not all lost, but it'll be slow for a while.

i'm exhausted. the priority is to get a workable environment from amid all the boxes. there was a frightening moment when it looked as though my stuff wouldn't all fit in, even though the flat is bigger than my room at jonny's. this was like the frightening moment in my room at jonny's when i had filled ten boxes with books and there still seemed like another twenty needed. but now it's all going back on the shelves it looks as small an amount as it did before.

i'm doing some worship and workshops at a diocesan conference tomorrow with other members of Grace, so unpacking will have to resume on sunday.

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07.03.05 / 01 / smallritual firefox fix

smallritual.org is now fixed for firefox. something i got done at kubik. the mainmenu stripes work the same, the section menu stripes don't. the problem is that in firefox each stripe requires its own javascript function - something i'm prepared to do for the limited number of stripes in the main menu, but not for the hundred or so stripes in the section menus. they work by dividing them into three classes and manipulating the a:hover attributes in the stylesheet.