Blueberry Hill

Yesterday we went up to Pentland Hills to collect wild blueberries. After a couple of hours we managed to collect about 800 grams of suberb blueberries. 200 of them went straight into the best tasting blueberry muffins when we came home.

Here we are

The fantastic 4 plus visitors S and L, after a couple of great days in E.

Weird Tales

When I was about 10 years old, or perhaps one or two years older, I loved to read Conan comics, especially those illustrated by the British artist Barry W. Smith. The hero Conan was created by Robert Ervin Howard, a Texan born in 1906 in the small town of Peaster, and he more or less invented the heroic fantasy genre we know as Pulp Fantasy.
Howard wrote hard-boiled short stories for Weird Tales Magazine in the 1930s, at a time when other pulp writers, like Lovecraft and Cain, wrote horror or crime stories.
Howard was sort of discovered in the 1960s and 1970s, where other writers tried to copy his dark style, but nobody really succeeded. The original Howard stories outshine their copycats by far.
Like Tolkien, Howard was inspired of ancient European history and myth, especially Celtic and Irish culture.
Unfortunately Howard died far too early when he killed himself in 1936, apparently because of his mother's terminal illness. The story goes like this: Howard typed a small poem on his trusted Underwood typewriter, then got into his Chevy and shot himself in the head. He survived the wound for nearly eight hours, but died 11 June 1936. The four final lines he wrote were:

All fled, all done

So lift me on the pyre

The feast is over

And the lamps expire

Visitors

Yesterday S and L came to visit us from London. L is looking for somewhere to stay the next couple of years, as she is starting a BA in Architecture at the art college.
Having been in a similar position ourselves, we are glad to help and offer advice regarding where to stay in Edinburgh, and where not, and what it might cost you.
L is from the Czech Republic, and it was nice to relive our trip to Prague in 1989, and talk about how things are in the country after the last turbulent decade.
We, on the other hand, have decided to go to London next week to visit the guys down there, and to give Sofie and Matthias a good thorough tour de London. We don't have any money, so it's going to be the free offers we are looking for, like walking along the Themes, looking at Tate Modern from the outside, St Pauls, all that stuff.

Matthias 12 years old

Happy birthday, Matthias.
We did our usual birthday morning routine with breakfast and presents. Matthias got a lot of clothes, t-shirts mainly, a new cap, a Harry Potter book and a bunch of other stuff. We also gave him a compilation of face-melting rock tracks from Deep Purple to Yes, ZZ Top, Pink Floyd to Tenacious D.
Later this morning we are going to see Spiderman 2, and tonight the menu is pork loin.
The Sun is shining and the day looks gorgeous.

Stick it to the man!

Last Monday the DVD version of The School of Rock was released in the UK, and guess who bought a copy? Our very own Matthias, saved from his hard-earned pocket money, and we all watched it again to great rejoicing with our friend R.
Afterwards we all listened to classic rock tracks featured in the movie on full blast in the living room, most notably ACDC's Back in Black and Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song. Mmmmmmm.
My old electric guitar has been pulled from its deep hiding in a closet and now resides in Sofie's room where it is being played regularly. Life is definitely good.

Book Festival 2004

My press card to this year's Book Festival arrived today, or "Media Accreditation" as it's also known. I am covering the festival again this year for edinburghguide.com.
I am not sure who I am going to see this year, but I have booked all the crime writers I could find in the programme, and the playwright Simon Gray as well, and of course Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.
The festival runs from 14 to 30 August, and this year's top names are probably JK Rowling, Doris Lessing, war reporter Michael Buerk, Toni Morrison, Alex Garland and Louis de Bernieres.
Ian Rankin, Iain Banks and Irvine Welsh will be there as well, as usual.

Outstanding

We went to Napier University's graduation ceremony today, a marathon event that seemed to transport us all back to the Middle Ages.
I was awarded the BA Journalism Medal for "outstanding achievements on your individual Programme of study", which is a great honour I believe.
After the ceremony there was tiny canapees and free champagne at the university reception.

Bachelor of Arts with Distinction

The letter with my exam results came today. I've done pretty well I think. My overall mark from the whole degree is 65.86%. When I look down over all the modules from the past two years, there is only one mark below 60%, and that is 59% in Radio Journalism. Two of the hardest modules, Media Law 1 and 2, have been marked 60.9 and 67.9. I am very pleased with that.
The letter says:

The programme board have awarded you the exit award shown below.

Bachelor of Arts with Distinction in Journalism.

The awards ceremony is Friday next week. I will report from that later.

Explorer faulty

If you have been a hardcore web user for a while, chance is that you have thrown Internet Explorer away years ago. It's crap, unreliable and generally a security risk to your computer, at least if you are running a Windows product.
But many, many people use IE by default. It was there when they bought their computer. It's Microsoft, they are world famous, must be the best then, eh?
Wrong.
It's easy to prevent IE trouble. Just download one of the other brilliant products and use them instead. If you want to be completely safe, and have the money, use another operating system. Buy a Macintosh computer. You'll love yourself ever after.
The truth about IE's ridiculousness has finally arrived in the general media. below is a link from today's Independent describing the problems and the solutions.
Microsoft's browser dominance at risk as experts warn of security holes

Wet, wet , wet

I can't stand the rain against my window
bringing back sweet memories
Hey, when it rains
Do you remember
How sweet it used to be
When we was together
Everything was so grand
So grand
But now that we parted
There's just one sound
That I just can't stand
I can't stand the rain
Against my window

(I Can't Stand the Rain, from Aint No Doubt About It, by Graham Central Station)

Car trouble

Our Kia Sportage was having its yearly MOT and half-yearly service yesterday, and everything went smoothly. The tyres will have to be replaced soon, though and so will the brake pads, but so far it's OK.
When we came home the fuel gauge was suddenly below Empty. Did they empty the fuel tank at the garage? Hardly, so it had to be something with the gauge. We went by the garage today, and the mechanic had a quick look at it, came back, looked serious, and told us the sender thing inside the fuel tank had stopped working. He kindly asked us if the car was still on warranty, and when we checked it turned out the warranty expires 3 July 2004. How lucky is that?
I found a picture of a Sportage same age and same colour as ours.

Comments

OK, now you can post comments without having to make a Blogger account. Let's see how long it takes before I start to get spam comments about medicine and worse things.

June 2004 was the wettest June in Scotland as long as anybody can remember, which is 1953 when they began to write down wetness of months in the UK. Let's hope it's all over now. Tomorrow is the kids' last day at school before the summer holidays, and they want sunshine.

No plans for the summer yet. R is coming to visit us next week, and L is coming early August, but that's all we know. We had plans for France, but it's too expensive. Then Finland. Even worse. UK then.