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A personal weblog with photographs and comments. Quiet ramblings, quite rambling...

• Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. - Albert Einstein

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Apparently I also stole someone’s ideas with the photo above. Perhaps I should wait to see if Dan Brown cops it before admitting anything.

I recently started playing with technorati, hence the blogs that link here on the menu column on the left. Besides for the fact that very few people link to this site, technorati doesn’t actually work that well. So I am now playing on with a new toy coComment. It doesn’t attempt to do what technorati is attempting, but it may eventually succeed at what it does attempt. I am not sure technorati will.

I had another go at the droplets on the roof of my car the other morning, and this photo is the result. The light is not as interesting, but the drops give better coverage.

Having thoroughly enjoyed the last Karl Pilkington podcast, I am looking forward to the next instalment. I see that his pimp, Ricky Gervais, wants to charge for it this time so I will probably miss it. Or else I just won’t pay. Whatever.  One of Karl’s stories (or was it Ricky’s) concerned the parasite/host relationship. Well, via Boring Boring (what the hell I’m in an insult one, insult all mood tonight), comes a link to The Wisdom of Parasites on Corante, with the gruesomly glorious story of the wasp named Ampulex compressa.

As an adult, Ampulex compressa seems like your normal wasp, buzzing about and mating. But things get weird when it’s time for a female to lay an egg. She finds a cockroach to make her egg’s host, and proceeds to deliver two precise stings. The first she delivers to the roach’s mid-section, causing its front legs buckle. The brief paralysis caused by the first sting gives the wasp the luxury of time to deliver a more precise sting to the head.

The wasp slips her stinger through the roach’s exoskeleton and directly into its brain. She apparently uses sensors along the sides of the stinger to guide it through the brain, a bit like a surgeon snaking his way to an appendix with a laparoscope. She continues to probe the roach’s brain until she reaches one particular spot that appears to control the escape reflex. She injects a second venom that influences these neurons in such a way that the escape reflex disappears.

From the outside, the effect is surreal. The wasp does not paralyze the cockroach. In fact, the roach is able to lift up its front legs again and walk. But now it cannot move of its own accord. The wasp takes hold of one of the roach’s antennae and leads it--in the words of Israeli scientists who study Ampulex--like a dog on a leash.

The zombie roach crawls where its master leads, which turns out to be the wasp’s burrow. The roach creeps obediently into the burrow and sits there quietly, while the wasp plugs up the burrow with pebbles. Now the wasp turns to the roach once more and lays an egg on its underside. The roach does not resist. The egg hatches, and the larva chews a hole in the side of the roach. In it goes.

The larva grows inside the roach, devouring the organs of its host, for about eight days. It is then ready to weave itself a cocoon--which it makes within the roach as well. After four more weeks, the wasp grows to an adult. It breaks out of its cocoon, and out of the roach as well. Seeing a full-grown wasp crawl out of a roach suddenly makes those Alien movies look pretty derivative.

Carl Zimmer of Corante also advises that the wasp is not technically a parasite but a exoparasitoid. I have a phobia of cockroaches and spiders, but this story appeals to me. Perhaps because the roach gets it.

We haven’t done this whole What I saw ... what you saw malarky for a long time, so here goes.  This photo and the previous are taken on the Hay Bluff, on our recent trip to Wales.  This is what I was looking at, the valley of the River Wye.

We haven’t done this whole What I saw ... what you saw malarky for a long time, so here goes.  This photo and the next are taken on the Hay Bluff, on our recent trip to Wales.  This is what you saw.

We’ve had the smallest postoffice .... and smallest church ... and now .... ladies and gentlemen .... (drumroll) ... we present ... at the feet of the bigbluemeanie .... in an exclusive photograph by Scarlett .... the smallest road! (cymbals crash)

I woke up to a light snowfall this morning, pictured above through my bedroom window. It didn’t stick around long. After work it had gone: melted in the rain, but leaving drops of sweat on the roof of my car.

Also opposite the Capel-y-Ffin Post Office is the conveniently located public telephone booth, a short walk from the Youth Hostel.  This hostel has been under threat of closure for a number of years. The local MP, Kirsty WIlliams has supported the campaign to save the hostel:

The hostel requires an investment of �100,000 in order to update the facilities and ensure it remains commercially viable, but the Youth Hostel Association is unable to meet these costs alone.

Following a meeting with other interested parties, Ms Williams said: “Capel-y-Ffin youth hostel is an historic building set in the stunning landscape of the Black Mountains. It is vital that it remains open and continues to offer the thousands of tourists who stay each year the chance to enjoy the beautiful Brecon countryside”.

Ms Williams is calling on the Welsh Tourist Board and the National Assembly to provide grant assistance to help the building, which is the oldest youth hostel in Wales, remain open.

Notes: 4,507 people stayed overnight at Capel-y-Ffin in 2004. The �100,000 would be used to create small rooms, increase the shower ratio, and provide better dining facilities at the hostel. Further investment would also enable an outbuilding to be converted into a classroom, which could be used to house the courses the hostel runs. These currently include rug making, dry stone walling and ‘Wine and Walking’ weekends”.

I feel some pity for those scientists who invested in a new technology to predict the surname of a person based on their DNA:

The method exploits genetic likenesses between men who share the same surname, and may help prioritise inquiries.

Details of the research from the University of Leicester, UK, appear in the latest edition of Current Biology.

The technique is based on work comparing the Y chromosomes of men with the same surname. The Y chromosome is a package of genetic material found normally only in males.

It is passed down from father to son, just like a surname.

On the day of this announcement, other researchers announce that they have identified social trends which will render this obsolete.

This is a barn on the side of the road in Capel-y-Ffin, Wales (just opposite the Post Office).  The sign on the door advises that you should not park next to the barn as the wall of the barn is unstable. The notice reminds me of the labels on packets of peanuts that warn consumers that the product “contains nuts”.  Still, everyone believes that an accident won’t happen to them.  Nearby there’s a barn that’s safe as houses to sleep over in.

This postbox is bizarrely labelled as a Post Office which would make it one of (if not the) smallest in Wales. It is outside the churchyard (of the smallest church in Wales) at Capel-y-Ffin near Hay-on-Wye.  I like dry stone walls, and lichen, and these features attracted me to the postbox.

The area around here is rumoured to be good for finding magic mushrooms.
Bonus links:
Wiki article on psychedelic muchrooms.
Magic mushrooms now a Class A drug in the UK, when prepared.
I do not advocate any kind of drug use or abuse. 

This is the church of St Mary the Virgin at Capel-y-Ffin, near Hay-on-Wye in Wales.  The yew tree in the foreground is older than the church itself.

Wikipedia advises that this tree

is often found in churchyards; some of these trees are exceptionally large (over 3 m diameter) and likely to be over 3,000 years old, long predating the churches they are beside. It is likely that yew trees had a pre-Christian association with old pagan holy sites and many believe that the enormous sacred evergreen at the pagan Temple at Uppsala was a yew. The Christian church commonly found it expedient to take over these existing sacred sites for churches. It is sometimes suggested that these were planted as a symbol of long life or trees of death. Another explanation is that the yews were planted to discourage farmers and drovers from letting their animals wander into the burial grounds, with the poisonous foliage being the disincentive.

Yew is also associated with Wales because of the longbow, an early weapon of war, developed in Wales. Yew is the wood of choice for longbow making and they are constructed so the heartwood of yew is on the inside of the bow while the sapwood is on the outside. This takes advantage of the natural properties of yew wood since the heartwood is able to withstand compression while the sapwood is elastic and allows the bow to stretch. Both tend to return to their original straightness when the arrow is released.

St Mary’s at Capel-y-Ffin is actually a chapel and one of the smallest in the country, measuring only 8 metres by 4 metres inside. The church is open during daylight hours, however the nearby monastery (founded by a non-conformist minister who invented the Gill Sans typeface) is not open to the public.

I am now back from Wales, and my internet connection seems to be working again, so normal blogging and email service will be resumed shortly.

This is the stream that runs alongside Trericket Mill and which used to power the old mill.  The stream is a tributary of the Wye River, and joins the river at the red 3 on this map of the River Wye.  I found an interesting account of a 10 day Wye Valley Walk that stopped over here at this point on Day 4.

Minor Annoyance: As at today, of the three links on the River Wye Links Page, two do not work due to simple spelling errors. 

I woke up this morning in Trericket Mill, in Erwood near Hay-on-Wye.  After a lazy awakening and a sumptious breakfast, we headed into Hay-on-Wye to browse the bookshops. Thereafter we took a ride up to the bluff above Hay where there was still residue of recent snow.

After my experiences with BT Yahoo complaints I can see the value of a bulldogged approach: hold tight when you get the chance and don’t let go. Only yesterday I found the first person at BT Yahoo who seems in any way concerned about the fact that I lost my broadband connection two weeks ago, and is prepared to try and fix the problem.  All my previous attempts to log incidents and complaints had been ignored.  For example this afternoon I received a response to my second written complaint, lodged five days ago:

Unfortunately we are unable to assist with the issues raised in your email. We have however passed your email to our Order Management Desk who will be in contact with you shortly to work towards a satisfactory resolution.  Should you wish to contact the desk please call 0800 169 8639.

I would again like to apologise for the problems you have experienced. I do hope this information will be of assistance to you.

Kind regards

And they have closed the complaint without even establishing that my problem is resolved: amazing!

On a more general level there is something that disturbs me about the above motivational sign, which I found in a local primary school foyer.  I would have thought it was common sense in the 21st Century that successful people need to develop critical thinking skills that allow them to determine which struggles are worth fighting and which one needs to walk away from.  We need to prioritise our energies and focus on realistically achievable goals and strategic objectives.  Further, if a project or activity is “doomed to failure” then the sooner one walks away, before overcommitting resources then the better. 

Moreover, perhaps the message is particularly inappropriate for young children who need to develop confidence to learn from mistakes, even serious ones, without feeling a sense of “failure”.  No?

My broadband connection is still down, and has been down since 1 February. Last night I was on the phone with the technical help desk again, repeating the same tests that we did on 1 February.  It is almost two weeks since my broadband broke. It is now ten days since the supervisor at the technical help desk promised that my connection would be fixed within five days.  It is now six days since I lodged my first complaint, and four days since I lodged my second complaint.  I won’t even mention the occassions they have promised to phone me with a status update and haven’t.

The BT Yahoo complaints policy advises that they will reply to a complaint within 24 hours.  They hope to be able to resolve problems within five days and say that if they are unable to do so they will contact one with a status update.  I was interested that they even state that

In the rare event of our still not being able to help you, there’s an impartial Complaint Review Service available. This involves a review of all aspects of your complaint.

The funny thing is that in my first complaint six days ago I asked them to explain what this service involved.  However (as I mentioned) they have not replied, so I am none the wiser.

On the positive side I phoned them again today to complain that my problem had not been resolved and they have promised that they only need a few more days.  Strange thing is that nobody seems to know what has actually been done about the problem, nor even what the problem is. 

The woman I lodged a complaint with today took exception when I called her colleagues at the technical help desk dunces. That was my polite choice of description. 

These are some of the colourful (if somewhat faded) games, which I discovered in the games room of a local junior primary school.

Today I am going to see Nights at the Circus at the Hammersmith Lyric by the Kneehigh Theatre Company.  It looks good, so I am looking forward to it.