Thursday, Nov. 16, 2017 - 22:10

I slept OK, except for the odd dream where I was going camping with Dawid from SCD and he told me unnecessesarily that he has a 'no touching' rule, and we ended up staying at his friends house, who had a leaky washer/drier in his utility room.

Despite a long wait at the bus stop (I don't mind transport delays, but I find it difficult to tolorate the dumb fuck members of the public and their self-involved and dunderheaded mithering and moaning) I made it out to Bridgnorth for the day. It was in some ways a disappointment, but in many manners perfectly enjoyable. Wet weather, aimless wandering, five charity shop books, no inspiration to sketch by the castle or dry bits to sit on there, small chips and sausage with curry sauce for lunch, tum te tum te tum. At the supermarket there was a lad having a tantrum (probably autistic) and his parents being patient but powerless to do much but ride it out - he was twelve or more.. so too big to pick up and take away.

I'm two thirds of the way through my George Orwell, enjoying it despite it being well-described and anecdotal as opposed to having much of a plot to get proper drawn in to. On an unconnected note, I found out today that Daphne du Maurier wrote the short story 'Don't Look Now' that the Nicholas Roeg film is based on, AND the novelette 'The Birds' which the Alfred Hitchcock film is based on. Atop of 'Rebecca', pretty massively chilling, her oeuvre certainly demands respect. Badumpsh.

Luft, the German word for "air" (sometimes also "space" or "breath"), is used by some chess writers and commentators to denote a space or square left by a pawn move into which a castled king may move, especially such a space made with the intention of avoiding a back rank checkmate. A move leaving such a space is often said to "give the king some luft". A luft square can be "plugged up" by the opponent by placing the square under attack by a piece such as a bishop, queen, pawn, or possibly knight. Then, the king cannot move into the square, leaving it still vulnerable to a back-rank mate.

I liked the stat I read on twitter earlier - '2223 of the 2224 penalties in Premier League history have been taken by an adult'. The outlier being Michael Owen's spot kick against Wimbledon on 9th August 1997, three months before his eighteenth birthday.

Maggie Gyllenhaal is forty today, I thought she was older than that. The first name on Maggie's birth certificate is "Margalit", a Hebrew word meaning "pearl". She apparently did not discover this until 2013, when formally adopting her husband's surname.

This evening I started watching a documentary about the Kings Cross Fire in 1987, but after five or ten minutes gave up because it was clear that the format was going to to be far more 'human interest' and 'involved people speaking straight to camera and getting emotional' than it would be factual and educational. Not my kind of documentary, dumned down and lacking in real content. I gave up. I'm feeling a bit spiky recently - I seem to spend my time feeling tired or angry when I'm forced to interact etc. with things. It's sad that Lou Gish died, she was younger than I am now. There were some benches in the churchyard and castle gardens dedicated to folk who'd died in their thirties earlier too, I noticed, which is also sad.

An odalisque (Turkish: Odalık) was a chambermaid or a female attendant in a Turkish seraglio, particularly the court ladies in the household of the Ottoman sultan. The word "odalisque" is French in form and originates from the Turkish odalık, meaning "chambermaid", from oda, "chamber" or "room".

Today England's women's rugby league world cup campaign started n'that - a 36-8 win over Papa Don't Preach New Guinea. New Zealand beat Canada, Australia (Jilleroos) beat Cook Islands. Sarah Michelle Gellar released a cook book titled 'Stirring up Fun with Food' on April 18, 2017. The book was co-authored by Gia Russo, and features numerous food crafting ideas.

Enucleation is the removal of the eye that leaves the eye muscles and remaining orbital contents intact. This type of ocular surgery is indicated for a number of ocular tumors, in eyes that have suffered severe trauma, and in eyes that are otherwise blind and painful. Auto-enucleation (oedipism) and other forms of serious self-inflicted eye injury are an extremely rare form of severe self-harm that usually results from mental illnesses involving acute psychosis. The name comes from Oedipus of Greek mythology, who gouged out his own eyes.

The final World Cup 2018 place was claimed by Peru after a result of Peru 2-0 New Zealand in the second leg of the intercontinental play-off. Nice to see the South Americans back for the first time since 1982, and I hope they have a better tournament next year than they had when I was four. Good also to see Egypt back again, I guess, and see Panama and Iceland debutants. Groups are drawn in two or three weeks time.

A Whipple truss, named after its inventor Squire Whipple, is usually considered a subclass of the Pratt truss because the diagonal members are designed to work in tension. The main characteristic of a Whipple truss is that the tension members are elongated, usually thin, and at a shallow angle, and cross two or more bays (rectangular sections defined by the vertical members).

I think I'll read a while. Not really in the mood.