The fish move in (with video!)

As I'm sure you remember, our ocellated barbs were in the vanguard of fishy occupancy in the new tank having moved in last month. Apologies in advance for the photo quality. They only sit still for about one shot in twenty. On a good day.

It took about three weeks for the biological filter to establish, so the weekend before last I mastered my trepidations (a process not too dissimilar from mustering up my equipage) and reached once again for the net to capture the cherry barbs.

We thought there were ten of these. You might imagine in a tank as small as a BiUbe it would be easy to count fish, but the cherries move around very quickly. They're also past masters at finding hiding spots. They rarely all shoal together and even then they're gone again before you can start on the fingers of your second hand.

So as not to distress them TOO much, I transferred them in two groups of five with a short rest between, having previously removed all the vegetation and the central volcano from the BiUbe's bubble tube so I had a better chance of snaffling the little buggers. All in all it went pretty well. "No fish were harmed in the making of this transition." They were soon exploring their new home, getting very excited at the vastly increased space and the downward bubbles from the filter inlet. A new experience, since in their world bubbles had previously only travelled up.

I'd already decided to leave the BiUbe running for a week or two. Recently the cherries have been breeding actively. I was concerned that eggs on the verge of hatching would be left behind and it seemed a shame to lose them. This proved to be a lucky decision, because our count was off by one. On the Sunday morning, while eating breakfast, I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. A lone cherry had spent the night in the rather apocalyptic-looking tank, now totally without decoration, and also without any company for the poor chap. Or chapette, actually, since it was a female.

Reaching once more for my trusty net I soon had the straggler in hand (well, jug) and poured her in to join the rest of her family. And then, for once, I *didn't* ignore my little voice. Check that old tank again, it said. So I did. I stared for several minutes into the supposedly empty tank. My patience was rewarded with a swim-past by the smallest cherry barb fry I've ever seen. Barely half the size of the first one we saw in the tank almost three years ago this little guy/gal, immediately christened Tiny Kev, was no longer than 3-4mm. Dilemma! I was not at all sure I could retrieve such a small fish undamaged with the net, but it would be weeks before he/she (let's say she) grew large enough to net. Weeks alone in a tank that resembled an aquatic prison cell. Only one thing for it: I had to drain the tank to the point where I could dip Tiny Kev out with a small plastic beaker. And that meant removing all the ceramic substrate so there was no danger of squashing her.

It took more than an hour to remove the noodles (no really, that's what they're called) one at a time with a set of kitchen tongs. Going very slowly to avoid squishing TK in the event she couldn't swim away fast enough, or panicked and swam the wrong way. Once most of the noodles were out I started sucking out the water gradually, with a turkey baster (I'm very well equipped, aquatically speaking. Can't say the same for the kitchen. Any more), into my all-purpose fish-transfer device (3 litre plastic measuring jug) and carrying it through to the kitchen where I let the muck settle to give me chance to check for Tiny Kev before pouring it down the sink and returning for another few litres.

On the third such trip, TK emerged from the muck like Voyager traversing the intergalactic dust cloud. She had inadvertently been sucked into the turkey baster and survived not only that, but also being squirted out again into the jug. Not apparently any the worse for the experience I'd soon poured her into the main tank where we lost sight of her for a worrying couple of days. But it's OK! We spotted her again eventually, eagerly chasing a small flake of food and managing to avoid being eaten herself.

So here they all are, twelve cherries and five ocellated barbs, happily enjoying their new home. It takes a minute or so to get going, but if I stand very still they think I've gone and come out of hiding...

Barring the code

I bought some printer ink yesterday. I know - rock and roll, eh? I had an urgent letter to print. Naturally the printer, which had been showing "zero ink" (a friendly black cross in an empty cylinder) for weeks, chose that particular day to start printing things as if intended for the spirit world (i.e. ghostly).

Nowhere nearby sells Lexmark cartridges, so I planned to drop by the PC World in Stockport on my way to pick Nikki up from work. During the journey I remembered that the evil Excel parking shysters had taken over at the Peel Centre (which used to be free for parking of less than an hour), and I'd come out without any coinage. Maybe I should risk dropping in at Staples, even though for the last couple of years they've never stocked the particular black ink cartridge I need?

Staples didn't have the particular black ink cartridge I need.

Off to Peel then. Risk another few months of illegal threats from Excel that they'll take me to court for the heinous crime of depriving them of their £1 for five minutes' parking, or pop along the road and pretend to be a customer of Dunelm Mill? The latter was the better option on this particular occasion, requiring a couple of minutes' extra walking in each direction. With the previous detour to Staples I was already running late and on arrival I discovered that this particular branch of PC World has had a complete refurb since my last visit and is now more of a Curry's - majoring in domestic appliances rather than computer frippery and having moved the ink to a completely different part of the shop. By the time I found it I was definitely late. I grabbed a couple of cartridge packets and headed for the till, but was beaten to it by a gentleman who would easily qualify for an ESOL course, with his undecipherable query about why he couldn't pay with the credit card he repeatedly waved under the nose of the till guy.

Was it my hopping from foot to foot, or my thunderous countenance that gave the till guy the clue I was in a hurry? Who can tell, but full marks to him for calling over an interpreter another operative to deal with ESOL so that he could attend to me. Only for some reason he found it impossible to scan my items.

Yes, well done Lexmark! A masterpiece of packaging design. Your plastic blister is smooth on five of its six surfaces, but inexplicably ridged on the side beneath which the ink cartridge packet has its bar code. The ridges diffuse, refract and reflect the scanner's laser light, rendering it completely incapable of actually reading the code. Till guy had to type it in. More delay.

He didn't spot that I had two of the same item either. So rather than entering "2x" of "this", we had to go through the rigmarole again: scan; fail; retry; fail; examine packet; retry with scanner at a different angle; fail; type the code in again.

I wasn't late, but it was close.

The letter didn't need printing in the end.

Reaching the plot spot

It's about six weeks since I wrote that I'd completed Snowflake Stage 3, and now I've moved on past stages 4 & 5. That's taken a little longer than the method itself estimates, but it's still phenomenal progress in my world. To reach this point in developing a novel took me well over a year the first time round.

Now, it gets harder. Stage 6 requires the expansion of the 1-page synopsis from Stage 4 into a 4-page synopsis that contains all the story elements. As the method puts it: "Figure out the high-level logic of the story & make strategic decisions". So here is where I have to knuckle down and work out exactly what I want to say through these ten characters that populate the worlds I have in my head.

As you might imagine, I'm pretty much down with the main events. The start. The end. What the major "disasters" are, even if their details are a bit vague right now. Each of these ten people has a story too, that needs to be woven in among the main plot, stitched together in the rich tapestry of the story, hopefully in non-obvious and utterly compelling ways (*vbg*). But the main difference between this and War of Nutrition  is in its depth. I want to put more into this story than just the story.

Yes, WoN had a message - messing with yer food: A Bad Thing - but it was an overt, slap-you-round-the-head-with-a-wet-fish kind of message. I'd like my second novel (working title "Touchwood") to have a bit more about it. A little bit allegorical. More thought-provoking. A dollop of "what is he really trying to say here?" And that, I strongly suspect, is going to prove a whole heap harder than last time.

The crux of the matter

Here we are at a nexus...

Literally. A Nexus 7. Following the rapid and unexpected demise* of my iPad on Tuesday last, I was faced with a dilemma. Stand and fight (aka get it mended) or run (to Android, or away from Apple).

A friend of mine has previously been heard to say "I haven't picked up my iPad since I got the Nexus." Well… I've now had mine for almost a week. Long enough to get over both my initial flush of enthusiasm and the almost immediate early disappointment at the reality of its limitations.

There's no doubt that once you're used to the differences, the Nexus is a lovely device. With my limited experience with this month's book club book, I'd have to say the reading experience is better. The Kindle app is identical on Android, but the Nexus is more book-sized, easier to hold, and altogether more comfortable. And it has auto-brightness, so you don't need to keep adjusting it to read in bed vs daylight. It's also (hardly surprising) beautifully integrated with Google. Google Now and Google Play, to name only two, are really cool.

Much of the other stuff that I did regularly on the iPad is pretty similar. With dedicated apps for sites like eBay and Facebook - their image is *almost* identical. The few games I play (Sudoku, Spider Solitaire) are available on both platforms (same app in each case) and perform pretty much the same if they're not hampered by the smaller screen size. For sudoku, particularly, the smaller screen isn't really an issue and I'm even beginning to get used to the small cards on Spider, although it IS easier to play on the iPad. And I'm loving the Android 8-ball pool game that lets you play in real time against a real human opponent selected from those who happen to be online at the same time. That was quite a find.

The major drawback I've found is with browsing. Much of the time, Chrome on the Nexus delivers you to the "mobile" version of a website owing to the smaller form factor. I've always utterly hated this image and find it next to unusable in the majority of cases (especially Facebook, eBay, Amazon, searching, etc). The iPad gives a more "regular" browsing image, much more acceptable for me. I discovered today (thanks Annie!) that there's a setting to force Chrome to serve up the desktop image of a website rather than the mobile version, so I'll be trying this out later.

The only other slight niggle is with the Metro. I got into the habit of reading the daily Metro via the iPad app rather than the printed version, and it is a REALLY good app. It exists for Android, but has a number of limitations including being stuck in portrait format, and displaying one article per page. So LOTS of scrolling on the Nexus. iPad better. I hope the developers will sort out the portrait/landscape issue soon. I'm sure it would be more readable/usable the other way round. But for now, not so good.

So in summary, I'm currently leaning towards keeping both devices. Horses for courses. If I'm reading, or out and about, the Nexus is the stronger candidate. If I'm browsing, at home, or playing games with fiddly pieces, the iPad wins out. I don't think I want to adopt my mate John's "Nexus for everything" approach, especially if I can wangle a cheap fix for the iPad (thanks AGAIN Annie! :o))

Cucking Fookies

Been on the Internet for years, me. I can't claim to have been "one of the first" to hit the wires, but I wasn't far behind. About twenty years ago I think it was when I first read a newsgroup. Roughly 18 months later when I became a permanent rider of the electric surf.

So I know about cookies. I know what they are, and what they aren't, and what they can and can't do. And I appreciate the fact that they get on with what it is they do quietly, in the background, with a minimum of fuss. Hardly any fuss, in fact, beyond having to clear them out occasionally when things get in a bit of a tangle. Or should I say I appreciated that fact. Because recently, it stopped being true.

Recently, legislators got involved and decided that our human rights were being infringed or something by these quiet, unassuming little blobs of text. Our personal data was being kept!! OH NOES!! Without our knowledge!! Well, without our knowledge if we were the kind of surfer who didn't bother to learn how things work. So, 98% of surfers then.

So now every time I visit a new site I get some sort of annoying little pop-up.

	Our site uses cookies! Please do not continue unless you agree to our use of cookies! By continuing you are confirming that you understand you will probably not die as a direct or indirect result of our use of COOKIES!	x

Jeez. What I really need now is a browser with a "silently accept all cookie prompts" option!

But it's worse than that. The commercial use of cookies is becoming even more annoying than the warnings. I sell stuff on eBay, so I regularly search for that stuff to see if it's saleable, and for how much. And then, every bloody site I visit for the next month is plastered with adverts for whatever I'm trying to sell. Even something as innocuous as the Hunger Site (which even after 12 years I still click on every day) - and, you know, fair enough, they want to raise as much money as they can for their good causes - but crikey I went there the other day and TWO of its panels AND the top banner were all offering me the same aerial signal booster that I've got listed on eBay right now. Gimme a break!

(I've sold it, by the way)