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Showing posts from May, 2014
This morning there was a thump and rustling on the balcony and I wondered what our cat was up to. He came into the house and hid under the stairs with something small and black in his mouth. It was a tiny bird. I shooed him back out onto the balcony, He was anxious that I did not get hold of his prey and went out pretty easily. I think the bird was already dead by then. I shut the door of the kitchen and he settled down outside to eat what he'd caught. I went out later and all that was left was a tiny puddle of liquid and a feather or two. A few hours later the cat walked in and did not appear to notice a small black and white bird standing near the remains of the other bird. The live bird had thumped into the window half an hour previously, but luckily had recovered itself enough to fly away. Anyway, I thought that maybe the eaten bird was this tiny live bird's mate, and for a quarter of a second I just wanted to give up and die.
- I know that two bars of chocolate eaten together with a pot of yoghurt can solve all my problems. - You know that, like, scientifically? - I'm sure of it. - Has it worked yet? In the past I mean? - Not yet. - What do you attribute that too? The fact that it hasn't worked yet? - I didn't eat enough .
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It's nice driving to work, that last part among the trees. But it is even nicer, after 4 or 5 hours programming to drive away from work, out from under the trees... (Sometimes, on really clear days, you can see the alps behind the houses)

How to use the wonderful Veho microscope

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Though the film "Le Meraviglie" (see previous post) is anything but a wonder the Veho 200x microcsope is a wonder in itself and shows you even more wonders. The Veho USB 200x Discovery VMS-001 Microscope (and how to use it) I'm writing this because I'm a bit annoyed at the documentation of what is really a pretty good instrument for the price (about 40 Euros). I hesitated before buying because of some of the Amazon UK bad reviews. Most of the 1 star reviews were from people having problems with Windows-XP or the Mac. So avoid it if you have one of those old operating systems. I installed it on Windows 7 32 bit and Windows 7 64 bit with no problems (though one 2 star reviews said it was not compatible with these systems). Plug in the microscope to your USB port, some software will automatically run to install some low level drivers, wait till that finishes. Put in the mini-CD in your CD slot. You'll be asked if you want to execute Menu.Exe, click on that opt
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Here's a film to forget: Le Meraviglie (The Wonders): I should have followed my instincts. If a film is appearing at Venice or Cannes and may win something there it is probably not worth seeing. So I wasted 7 Euros and 2 hours of my life watching this boring boring clunky pointless film. It won at Cannes! The critics will probably say it was meant to be clunky and pointless. Ah, we're all too stupid to see the genius of the director no doubt...