Yesterday it rained. Nothing unusual about that in itself, England generally has a lot of rain, but Colchester usually manages to avoid it. Yesterday, however, I saw plenty of the wet stuff. After an early start I met up with the Colchester Mini Club and drove up to Fakenham racecourse for the Norfolk Mini Day, which was not so much flooded with Minis as rainwater. It was fun driving along in convoy, and I bought a few odds and ends at the trade stands, but generally it was a bit of a wash-out. Still, the day was made up for by a cup of tea and a trip to the cinema – I’m easily pleased.

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For some time now Neddy’s engine has been moving about a bit, rocking on its mountings due to worn stabaliser bushes.  A while ago I fitted new bushes to the top stabaliser, which vastly improved matters, but since then it seems to have returned to its old unstable self, probably more the fault of the bottom bushes than the top ones.  I shall hopefully be buying new bushes at the Norfolk Mini Day this Sunday, but in the meantime I thought I would fit the extra bottom engine steady bar I bought at the Riviera Run.

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As those of you on Facebook may have noticed, I have been putting a series of comic strips up on the web just recently, making use of the new scanner I bought the other week.  I’ve been collecting material on and off for a while, and I have plans to use some of the quotes from the Campus Crew too, in some form or other (all anonymous of course).  Today I put another cartoon strip up, and I’m copying it up here too, so that my blog readers feel included.

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Today my scanner arrived, a Packard Bell Diamond 1200 Plus, bought for £7.50 on eBay – bargain!  Unfortunately, despite much searching on the web, I was unable to find a Mac driver for it, which means I can only use it with my PC.  Grr.  Not a huge problem though, after all I do have a PC that doesn’t do anything most of the time, just a little frustrating that it’ll require a few extra steps to scan something – booting up my PC, scanning, then copying across to my Mac for editing and stuff.

The Diamond 1200 Plus turns out to be a rebranded Mustek BearPaw 1200CU Plus, but there don’t seem to be any Mac OS X drivers for that either.  So, a word of advice when buying second-hand peripherals for use with a Mac – check beforehand that the drivers exist!

Some of you may know that I have been reading my way through the Bible, reading a few chapters each day.  This was originally inspired by my little cousin Jacob who had read the whole Bible in a year, and I thought “well if he can do it, I should be able to!”  So I signed myself up to www.bibleinayear.org and got daily readings by e-mail, and got into the routine of reading over breakfast.  Today, a year and a half after starting, I finally read the final chapter in Revelation.  What an amazing journey!

I was actually reading everything in chronological order, rather than in the order it appears in the Bible, which made for interesting reading.  In some places there are two accounts of the same event, like in much of the beginning of the old testament, and of course the four gospels, so those were read in parallel.  It was an interesting approach, allowing me to get a good historical overview of what actually happens in the Bible in what order.  It was interesting seeing how different people recorded events in different ways depending on who they were and why they were writing it – I guess that’s my GCSE History coming back to haunt me!

The one thing I have missed, however, is spending time digging deep into God’s word.  This challenge has been more historical than spiritual, finding out what happens rather than searching for meaning and understanding in each passage.  I feel I know the Bible better now, but I still feel I have a lot more to re-read.  I love Revelation, for instance, with all the imagery and symbolism and awe and wonder, but reading it so fast didn’t really lend itself to spending time working out what it all means.  I shall now have to start re-reading various bits of the Bible, studying it properly, searching for understanding rather than knowledge.

After reading this post by Phill, last night I started reading my way (in reverse order) through the comic strips on XKCD.  Absolutely hilarious!!  Ok, I didn’t understand every single one of them – some were a little abstract, some were referencing technical geeky things that even I don’t know about, but the vast majority were brilliant!  I found myself hooked, unable to tear myself away from the seemingly endless supply of these nuggets of humour.  So I read them all, every single one, all 260 of them.  That’s really sad.

On the up-side, it did prompt me to dig out some of my doodlings from previous years, odd little sketches I’ve done in moments of boredom, lectures that could have been a lot more interesting, classes that just weren’t inspiring.  Here, then, is my contribution, in tribute to the legend that is Randall Munroe.

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As a stalwart Devonshire lad, I’ve never had any particular association with Cornwall. Indeed, if Devon and Cornwall were suddenly and irreversibly separated by earthquake or act of God, I doubt many people would complain (on either side of the border). That said, I thoroughly enjoyed my long weekend in Newquay, soaking in the sunshine, admiring the ruggedly beautiful landscape, and drooling at all the Minis in the vicinity. Yes, I’m talking about the MiniWorld Riviera Run, an annual meeting of Minis (and their owners) from around the country, officially starting by driving in convoy from Reading services all the way down to the Trevelgue holiday park in Newquay.

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Just a quick note to say that I shall be away this weekend, joining hundreds of other Mini owners for the MiniWorld Riviera Run!  I’ve been wanting to go to this for years, and this is my first opportunity, so I’m really looking forward to it.  I shall be travelling down to my parents’ house this afternoon, then meeting up with fellow Colchester Mini Club people on their way down on Friday, and we’ll all drive in convoy to Newquay in Cornwall.  Accommodation is camping (not sure yet what I’ll be doing for food…), and there will be entertainment, Show & Shine, an organised ‘cruise’ (an enormous convoy of Minis), swimming pool, traders’ stalls, and lots and lots and lots of Minis!  It’s gonna be so much fun!  I’ll do a full report when I get back, with pictures of course!

Earlier this month Mozilla released the long-awaited version 2 of their Thunderbird e-mail client, and today I downloaded it to take a look for myself.  So far I have been using the default Mail program that comes with Mac OS X Tiger, which has been superb, so Thunderbird 2 had stiff competition from the outset.  I had used Thunderbird 1.5 on the PC before, which was certainly a vast improvement over Outlook Express, but for the Mac it seemed somewhat ugly and bodged.

So, how does Thunderbird 2 measure up?

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On Sunday afternoon I was a mobile recording studio, recording the drum parts for the Rooted album I’ve been working on.  This evening I was a photographer, taking photos of a dance / movement performance for one of Ellie’s friends.  It was a challenge, simply because there was so much movement – no one stayed still for very long, there was no script to work from, no guarantee of where anyone would be at any given time, and the lighting was very unusual.  But it was a fantastic experience, and once I got into it I just couldn’t stop taking pictures!

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