I have been asked to pass on the following message to Three Bean Salad Podcast:

Esteemed Beans,

Your recent episode, “Elevators”, was so flagrant in its profligate use of jingles that I must break my silence and share my top secret research project.

Unlike many, I don’t use your podcast to go to sleep. But I do use it to wake up, and the jingles really get me out of bed. Knowing the exact timings of each episode is crucial for my scientific lifestyle. I have therefore scientifically catalogued every jingle and cross-referenced it against every episode.

Standards are high at the annual Christmas lights event. It’s important that every entry is a strong in order to outperform the competition.

New year reflection led me to the conclusion that perhaps having email, twitter, facebook and the Internet at large following me round in my pocket all the time wasn’t a great idea, so I thought I’d get a phone that wasn’t afraid to revisit issues of self-identity. The Nokia 105 makes phone calls, sends texts, has an FM radio and not much else. I’m very happy with it.

Last night I dealt with the heat the only way I know how.

With the help of @domeheid and @gasmanic. Try using this next time you’re spelling something out over the phone.

Aye

Bee

Cellar

Dvorak

Eye

Faroe

Gnat

Heir

Iain

Jalapeno

Knot

Llanfairpwllgwyngyll

Mnemonic

Not

Ouija

Pharaoh

Quay

Rote

Sea

Tchaikovsky

Umm

Vowel

Why

Xi

You

Zhivago

According to Ian Betteridge,

‘Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no’

But is this long-standing principle of journalism now dead?

A few shaky photos from a magnificent 18 hour birthday stint.

I picked up an outside light, the kind that you plug in and stick in your lawn, going cheap at B&Q. Although it said it had blue LEDs (I’ve never claimed to have much style but anything with blue LEDs in it is an unforgivable faux-pas) I had a roll of white LEDs at home. It was a nice sealed unit (no IP rating but it looked solid enough) which I thought would come in handy for stickig on the outside of my boat and shining at things.

One of the great things about my workplace is that

1. we have unlimited peacocks at our disposal
2. a number of my colleagues are qualified peacock-ologists

Here’s a short video of just one of the peacocks, along with some commentary about their feeding habits and behavioural characteristics (something about baked beans, pretending to be a bike and the thing from Jurassic Park, I don’t know it went over my head).

Don’t worry about the noise at the end, it’s just a peacock alarm (or indeed a peacock alarmed).

Respect the aeropress. If you don’t pay it enough respect it will explode, sending coffee EVERYWHERE.

STOP PRESS

Not wishing to be outdone, the Gaggia espresso machine had a go too. I should add that this happened to a colleague.