Friday 10 Sep 2010 by Orphi the AweKid.

If you take a peek at my old website, you’ll see it proudly displaying a “Valid XHTML” badge. And that’s because, when I created the page, it passed the W3C validator with flying colours.

Today, it stops almost instantly with a fatal error: “missing xmlns attribute”.

Funny how a page that was 100% valid 5 years ago is no longer valid today, eh? Still, I guess that’s the idea behind standardisation; to keep things interoperable.

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Wednesday 08 Sep 2010 by Orphi the AweKid.

I’ve just given my mum a huge chunk of money. I am now stony broke. To celebrate, I’ve spent most of the afternoon looking at Jessop’s price list for Nikon DSLR cameras. Perhaps the most striking thing is that you have, say, the D5000 at £429, and the D3S at £3,589 (no, that’s not a typo; it’s a three grand camera), and buggered if I can find any difference in their specifications whatsoever! The only real difference I can see is that the latter goes up to an ISO speed of 102,400 (which is obviously absurd; you’ll never use it).

Everything up to and including the D300s has a 23mm sensor, while the D700 and above have a 36mm sensor. But they’re all 12 megapixel cameras, and there seems to be really very, very little to choose between them. This suggests that perhaps Jessops aren’t listing the technical parameters of interest, because that they are listing all looks fairly well identical, across a set of cameras ranging in price by several orders of magnitude.

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Tuesday 07 Sep 2010 by Orphi the AweKid.

Another week, and my first Monday class for a while. When I arrived everybody was crowded into the reception area. Lynn had apparently already told Pam how disappointing Towcester was. We all filed into the hall, and I wondered what had become of Lavinia. But while we were dancing the opening (2-wall) Stroll she appeared and joined the rest of us.

I was partnered with Lavainia for the evening. At some point in the proceedings Laura came out with “and I gather you three have been doing quite a bit of dancing while we’re away”. We agreed, and then realised that having thus raised expectations, we now ought to look good dancing. No pressure then.

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Monday 06 Sep 2010 by Orphi the AweKid.

As planned, on Saturday I drove down to Reading to hang out with the NERV clan. Or rather, a small handfull of them anyway. We gathered at OG’s house, and there was me, Scout, Pidgeon and later Silverwater. Scout also brought his girlfriend, and it turns out that they’re both circus freaks. Scout brought his diabolos in from the car, and we were all mesmerised by Scout and his lady twirling these things. In fact, Pidgeon and I spent most of the rest of the daylight trying to master them. They also had a devil’s stick, but that wasn’t nearly as interesting to watch.

I still remember us just standing there talking, and the next minute Scout’s girlfriend had climbed up onto his shoulders. That was pretty impressive to see!

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Monday 06 Sep 2010 by Orphi the AweKid.

Friday night saw me back in Ballroom & Latin again. I almost wondered whether I would even remember how to do this stuff. And yay, Lois is back! I’m not sure if she was quite as happy to see me as I was to see her, but we danced together all night. I was beginning to wonder if she’d given up on this dancing lark, but it seems she’s just been busy. Looks like her boyfriend is about to start a new job working sane hours too, so we might be seeing some more of him. (Actually Lois says they’ll probably go to a lower class. But it looks like she’s still doing Fridays as well.)

We also had Val, Mike & Teresa, the Dutch couple, and a few other familiar faces. As is traditional, Paul & Paula arrived a few minutes into the session. My dancing was fairly naff, but Lois was a little rusty too, so she didn’t complain. I quickly remembered why I enjoy dancing with her. Even if she isn’t the most brilliant dancer, she is a lot of fun.

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Friday 03 Sep 2010 by Orphi the AweKid.

My blog currently has 200+ user accounts registered, and hardly a day goes by when I don’t receive more registration notifications. (I can’t actually find a way to turn off the emails, but hey…) Most of these accounts have names like cheapusedcars and so on. Quite what the point of registering them is, I have no idea. I presume it’s scripted.

Anyway, I’m going to go delete all these ghost accounts. If I accidentally delete yours by mistake, just go re-register it. It won’t have been intensional.

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Thursday 02 Sep 2010 by Orphi the AweKid.

OK, so, last night I had my first dance class for what seems like 4 lifetimes. (Actually 2 weeks.) It’s Debbie’s Wednesday Intermediate (i.e., Advanced) class. I arrived slightly late because as I walked out of the front door I started chatting to the lady next door about my dance exploits. And then when I got there I was chatting to Julie on reception, boasting about how I’ve danced every single Saturday night for a month.

When I went inside, Debbie was like “ah, here he is! I thought it was a bit strange that you weren’t here.” How well they know me. I quickly got booted up and joined the others, dancing the panic routine with various extra bits tacked onto it. There were quite a few people there; we had Debbie of course, Laura and beanpole girl, Pam & Clive, Adelaide and her two girls, George, Donna, Pete & his partner, Elaine, and I see that Leanne is dancing again now. (You may remember she was supposed to partner me for my exam, but was involved in a car crash which put her back out.)

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Wednesday 01 Sep 2010 by Orphi the AweKid.

OK, so I had high hopes for Twinwood. After Friday night, Saturday morning saw me not actually wake up until about 11 or so. I wore just a random T-shirt and some trousers, and I used my old pair of office shoes, since I figured out in a grassy field they’d probably get trashed.

Finding Twinwood was more difficult than I imagined. I set off just following the road signs. I easily navigated to Bedford, but then got a little lost. Eventually I turned on my satnav device, which lead me back the way I came, and into Clapham. But there things went pear-shaped. TomTom had me driving round in circles round some people’s houses until I realised that when it said “turn right”, it actually meant to turn right and drive down that tiny little gated road between two of the houses. On the gate it says “Private Road, No Access to Twinwood Areana”.

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