Maintain Radio SIlence

I’ve been trying to write an entry all week and never managed more than about a paragraph a day. Tomorrow we fly to Hong Kong and then Taipei for the family visit thing, so I won’t get another opportunity to write a proper entry for a week or so. Below are the disconnected paragraphs that emerged throughout the week.

I just paid my TV licence. I hate doing that. It’s £145 a year now. You can pay quarterly, but then you have to submit to direct debit and the bastards automatically renew your licence every year. I personally like to wait until they threaten me with court action before I renew it. Another thing that annoyed me this week was the clocks going forward. I like the fact that we are now on British Summer time, because it means we are officially out of Winter, but I hate changing the clocks. I still haven’t changed the kitchen clock, or the one on the oven. I think those are the only ones left.

Last night I repaired a fan heater that was being thrown out by work. They said I could have it. I love repairing things. The motor was seized up. I lubricated it and brought it back to life. In an ironic twist, our freezer died the same day. I don’t think I have the spares to repair that, so I’ll get another one. It’s quite old. It was a cheap one bought while the house was rented out to our tenants. It must be the best part of ten years old. I just looked at the price of a new one. They’re actually not so expensive. I may drop into Curry’s on the way home.

People are already panic buying petrol in anticipation of a tanker drivers’ strike. I don’t know why. The strike date hasn’t even been mentioned yet, but people were filling up cans and queueing to get into the garage last night. I rather enjoyed the last tanker drivers’ strike in 2000. That time they were protesting about the cost of fuel. Everyone was on their side and the volume of traffic dropped to almost nothing for two weeks or something. I can’t seem to work out what the drivers are threatening to strike about this time. The government is looking to use the military to drive tankers if the regular drivers go on strike. I can’t see that it will work though. Last time the drivers went on strike they blocked the entrances to the fuel depots with their lorries.

Here’s an interesting story about robots. I like robots. There isn’t very much technical information, but it’s impressive. I want to know how it jumps. It weighs 5kg apparently. That’s quite a bit of mass to chuck 10m in the air. It’s been commissioned by the US military. I want to know how autonomous it is.