Personal limerick

Back in 2002, on alt.fan.pratchett, Diane L. composed limericks dedicated to various denizens of the newsgroup. I’ve reproduced mine below (with slight modifications for reasons of personal taste):

A dragon who’s partial to flesh
Will eat pedants as long as they’re fresh.
But if he’s well-fed
He can just keep his head
And be trusted in charge of a creche.

Rather good, don’t you think? I don’t care about the fact that “creche” doesn’t rhyme with “flesh”. It’s way too funny to lose.

Actually, people tell me that I’m quite good at interacting with children, and I’ve never eaten any of them. (Yet.)

Pet pictures

This is a collection of photographs on the theme of pets. Not all of these photographs were taken by me, and not all the animals are still alive.

Ancestry

I took the following photograph in January 2000, using an old non-digital camera. It shows the village of Clunbury in Shropshire, where my ancestors on Dad’s side came from. Below the photograph are a few facts about my family’s ancestry.

Bathroom decorations

I’ve already shown you my bathroom. Now I would like to show you, up close, three ornaments that decorate it. One’s got a dragon on it, one’s a star, and the other’s a couple of fish. All of them are nice to look at.

Fractal archive update

Just to let you know that I have updated the fractal archive on my website. Go and enjoy - I hope you like them. (If any of the images particularly grab you, please feel free to say so.)

If you’d like to generate and explore such images for yourself, let me recommend Fractint. You may find it works best in conjunction with DOSBox (which I recommended only yesterday).

For people who hoard old games

Here are some add-ons that I created (in all cases more than a decade ago) for old DOS games. Feel free to do with them whatever you will.

• If anyone still has a copy of the original 1992 version of The Incredible Machine by Sierra, then Two Up, Two Down is a freeform machine I once designed for it. I don’t know whether old machines are compatible with more recent versions of the game, as I haven’t had any version of the game on my computer for years.
• If you’ve got Stunts by Broderbund, here’s a fast track (you’ll want to use the fastest car available, especially for the … uh … big jump) and a complete track (by which I mean every obstacle available in the game is represented).
• If you’ve got Doom II by ID Software, here is a seven-level WAD file designed in the nineties by a friend and me (see the end of this post for some playing tips).

Photo in the cemetery

When I was at my parents’ place over Christmas, I took several photographs in the town of Maitland. The following, of the cemetery, is my favourite.

Click thumbnail to view.

The thousand pictures of Pam Marlow

The Marlow family are close friends of ours. Pam and Phil are the same age as my parents, and friendships began long before I was born. Their children are Rob and Suzanne. When I was young, we camped in the sandhills together every Easter. Nowadays, Pam helps me with my fortnightly shopping. My family and theirs have shared many different moments together.

Pam writes haiku, which she couples with photographs. She is hopeful of publication, and I hope to have more to say about her haiku in the future, including examples.

Another thing that Pam has done is to build models, particularly of old buildings and towns. In the year 2000, for a university topic then called Advanced Professional English and later re-named Creative Non-Fiction, I interviewed Pam and wrote an article about her model-making adventures.

The article I wrote is reproduced below for your pleasure.

The Thousand Pictures of Pam Marlow