didn't someone think to tell Cher  and David Bowie this had gone a little too far.
Never mind gives us all hope that when we go too far.
Enjoy it its weirdness it truly gets worse as they go on and on and on



from bnl blog

After taking part in 2 MoonWalks you would have thought that I would know better.

So did I, but then Neil's mother said she needed an incentive to get back into walking after having skin cancer removed from her leg and a skin graft so we thought a short walk round Edinburgh was the perfect way to celebrate.... why not , how hard can it be.

What does it involve
 26 miles round the Scottish capital in the middle of the night .....in your bra ... with 6, 000 other women in aid of breast cancer charities, now how hard can that be.

Well we have done the hard bit we can both walk over 20 miles.

Annoyingly Gill can do it faster than me nothing new there then, our flights are booked, Neil's on the support bike , now only one thing missing .....
argh yes  I need some  sponsors .

So as they say "hoots mon the noo... can you spare something for breast cancer charities"

heres the link

https://www.bmycharity.com/littlejen


or you can just give me a little something when you see me ........oh er misses


so when your snug and warm in your beds think of us

well its been a while since I wrote anything here, just took a bit of a holiday from LJ and went out into the real world, to get a life.

Its been fun we've been going out to see live music and other stuff. amongst other things

We saw the comedian Boothby Graffoe and friends in Bighton then the haunting and rather shy singer Ray LaMontagne in Hammersmith,  he was just fabulous. Then we went back a to Hammersmith the next week to see Boothby Graffoe support the Canadian band the Barenaked Ladies when they came to London. They were great fun,  and its good when they came on and sang with Boothby ias part of the warm up.

So now I've got a problem which festival  we go to  this summer , glastonbury  was out as Neil is away that week then  we thought about going to  guildfest as its close and a real mix of accoustic , comedy but  it costs £300  to go and take the camper van yikes is that a lot or am I just being mean.

I  think I need suggestions for other alternatives

Saw this clip on Youtube today and it didn't exactly make me laugh. it looks very muddy and painful. It was taken at the cyclocross circuit at Hoogerheide in the Netherlands




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXQMw4n29qU

Tags: cyclocross, youtube

Well it came out alright, Neil's comment was, "well it tastes like Marmalade."

This is from the National Trust Recipe book

900g of Seville oranges
1 lemon and 1 sweet orange
2.4 litres water
1.8 kg sugar
knob of butter (preferably unsalted but salted ok)


Cut the fruit in half and remove the pips, putting them in a bowl with about 600ml of water.

Shred the fruit, the size of your chunks should depend on how fine you like your final marmalade, Then put all the rind in a large bowl and leave overnight in the rest of water, covered with a cloth.

Next day, the rind will have softened significantly so you can re-chop the rind more finely if required and retrieve any pips you missed the day before.

Place the fruit and juice in a large pan and bring to the boil.
Boil for between 1.5 and 2 hrs until the peel is soft and easy to cut.

Put some plates in the fridge for later and thoroughly wash your jars. Keep them warm in the oven until needed

The pips that were retained the day before, will now have formed a jelly like solution, which I guess is pectin and helps the jam to set, add the solution to the pan and put the pips in a muslin bag and add them as well.

Warm the sugar gently in the oven (to make it easier to dissolve), and add to the pan, stirring and heating gently. Make sure the sugar has all dissolved (if it hasn't it may crystallise out in the final jam when it cools). Then bring the pan to the boil and boil rapidly for 15 minutes.

Spoon a small amount of the jam onto a chilled plate and leave to cool. When you can make wrinkles in the jam with your finger then it will set and you can take the jam off the heat.

Add a knob of unsalted butter to remove the scum on the top of the jam. Leave the jam to stand for 10minutes, this helps to stop the peel from floating to the top and then fill the jars using a ladle.

Put a wax disc on the top of each jar and leave to cool before putting on the jam-pot label.

Then make your toast and enjoy the leftovers with a cup of tea..

you know that you have descended into a monotonous period of your life when you wake up in the middle of the night worrying ....that you have made the pieces of peel in your marmalade too big.

I ask you, how can that be what is keeping me awake, guess it was just what my brain came up with when it woke up. 

This morning having soaked the peel overnight, I spent an hour cutting the peel into smaller chunks. I am not really sure why I am making marmalade, must be habit , Seville oranges are only available for a few weeks and my mum always rings me to remind me that they are in the shops. Somehow, I feel the need to follow the family tradition and make some more marmalade. Why I don't know as we still have 4jars left from previous years and I am not sure Neil really likes it.



MM note to self.  Get a life, anyone's life will do.

Finally got round to uploading a couple of photos to show that I can smile whilst skating. Not that you can tell I am skating.

I haven't been since last year but I was OK and didn't fall over. It is fun but the temporary rinks in London are so small that it is a bit limited . An hour is quite enough. I did say to Neil that we should go to the rink in Bracknell but whether we will get round to it I don't know.


The only difficult bit came when I tried to stand still on the ice and take a photo of Neil.
it just wasn't going to happen, without me falling, so he had to stop for a more sedate pose

 

Some days I just feel so stupid.
I started my TMA dtermined to get it finished before the end of the week and now I am stuck in the maths section.

We have to draw a graph showing how a photograph file size changes at different compression rates. Easy I can do that, then you have to change the y axis of the chart into a logarithmic scale, ok excel has a button to press for that, so that's fine but then you have to comment on whether any of the graph represents exponential growth Doh.

 I keep looking at my graph and going well that's quite straight but is it straight enough and all my notes say are "that exponetial growth is when the value increases by a given factor with respect to something else"

Now my data values are 16,28,43,58,74,92,120,165,275,868 or absolute differences of 12,15,15,16,18,28,45,110,593. What I'm stuggling to work is does the given factor have to be a % as any time Ive heard of it growth is given a %, which would mean mine chart looks exponential but isnt, which doesnt make sense as it looks straight.

Oh I am so confused, if anyone knows any easy online maths sites I could look up Id be grateful.

Tags: t175

Its the last day of skating at Somerset house so we have finally got our asses in gera and are just about to leave for the last session at 9.15.
Now where exactly are my wrist gaurds.

Neil is taking it very seriously, I can smell the Molton Brown shower gel from here... does that mean he will shave as well???? wow wonder if it will make him skate better. Now just to pick up the cushions and we are off.

busy busy busy
cant believe we are already at the end of January and about 1/2 way through my technology course, but then I have just done my tax return so we must be.
I have been trying to keep up with my course and do the next TMA and CMA  early, they are due in at the end February.
In December I got a bit behind and handed it in at the last minute (my usual situation). Still I got 76% which wasn't too bad. My earlier scores were in the 90's so I was relieved but disappointed in myself if that makes sense.
I really am trying to keep ahead with TMA number 3, but it's hard when your brain says you have another 3 weeks to go.

I bit the bullet last week and signed up for the 2nd year psychology course Exploring the Brain which starts this week its a mix of psychology and Biology , neither of which I know that much about. It looks really fascinating and I have started reading already, I keep getting dragged in deeper and deeper. Guess that's why I decided to go for it even though I haven't quite finished my T 175, technology course.  I have promised myself I will not open my new course books again until I have drafted my TMA for T175. Hence why I am here at my desk trying to work out why logarithms are important. My school maths has come in useful but I don't think I every really understood logs and now I need to use them, I am hoping Neil might know more than me and can give me a quick  explanation otherwise I will have to phone my tutor.  Unless one of you is a bit of a wiz with them.

So Sorry caffcaff the digital photography course will have to wait until after I have Explored my brain.

Tags: ou, sd226, t175
Current Location: study