Nature Red in Tooth and Claw

Yesterday - was woken by a woodpecker drilling holes in the neighbour's trees at about 6 AM.

Looked out of the window, saw a fox lying on the roof of another neighbour's shed, having an early morning sunbathe. Not sure if it's the same one I've seen before, looked a little younger so I suspect it's one of the cubs they reared at the back of our garden a year or two ago.

Went to work, spent an enthralling morning preparing for next week's practical exams, at lunch time went out and noticed a magpie attacking a pigeon. Seemed to be pecking it quite viciously, the pigeon looked VERY scared and confused. Clapped my hands a couple of times and the magpie hopped off, but I suspect it came back once I'd gone.

Today - bloody woodpecker woke me at about 5.30 AM

Who says that there's no wildlife in London?

Wifi-er On The Roof (and other ramblings)

VERY pleased to say that permanently moving my router/transmitter onto a different cupboard has made a huge difference to speed and reliability in the back room and out on the back roof. Looks like all of my agonising about adding another WAP was wasted effort. Cost about 15 quid for longer cables, which I think is money well spent, and I'm now thinking of tidying up the cables and clipping them in place etc. since I think it's going to stay this way for the immediate future. This makes me a happy bunny and means I can waste time with LJ etc. outdoors, which is presumably a little more healthy for me. Only snag is that there is no shade out here, so actually seeing the screen properly on a sunny day can be a bit difficult. I'd put out a table with sunshade but I can't get planning permission to put up balcony rails, and I'd hate for it to blow off the roof and land on someone's head.

Does anyone know what's happening to the New Scientist LJ feed lately? Haven't seen any postings since March, looks like it was blocked then by bad RSS code. This means that when it resumes several HUNDRED messages will be posted. Beginning to think I should unfriend it until the flood has passed. I've sent a message, without reply, anyone know of a specific e-mail address for this?

Someone on Cix is trying to flog a laptop like mine (Compaq Armada 1590DT) for 100 quid. It's a P166 with 80mb RAM, non-expandable, and lately has trouble showing AVI files, though that may be due to all the drivers etc. it has for one thing and another. I think 100 is slightly optimistic, to say the least. On the other hand this machine has worked reliably for 3 years now, and still has about three hour's battery life on a charge (it's reading 50% after about two hours on the roof, no CD use and not much disk access but still moderately impressive), so I'm in no hurry to ditch it.

And so, as the sun sinks majestically into the west (or at any rate is finally blocked by the flats along the road) I'd better sign off and think about getting some games writing done...