Nick Gibbins

A TotL Quorum

So, we’ve got myself, , and now . What’s the likelihood that we can also get Dr Nick, Darth Rich, Sideshow Al and Marvin on LJ?

The Garklet has landed!

Alexander Iain, weighing 3.268kg (or 7lb3 in old money), at two minutes past midnight this morning, by caesarian section. Both the garklet and are doing well, even if mum is rather tired. More tomorrow (later today?), including pictures.

If you have a friend on who you think you can rely, you are a lucky man

I have a favour to ask of LJ friends… One of my long-standing filmic gripes is that so few of Lindsay Anderson’s films are available. Britannia Hospital is available on DVD, as is This Sporting Life. Neither If…. nor O Lucky Man! are available on DVD; both have been on video, but even those are now out of print. It turns out that Sky are running a ‘Not Available In The Shops’ season on Sky Cinema 1, and that they’re showing O Lucky Man! at 10pm on Thursday 30th November. Would one of you lovely, lovely people on LJ with… Read More »If you have a friend on who you think you can rely, you are a lucky man

A good start to the day

I don’t usually receive parcels at work, so I was a little surprised to find a big squishy jiffy bag in my pigeonhole this morning. It certainly didn’t look like something from a publisher (on those occasions when I get examination copies of books), but there was every chance that it was a birthday present arriving before this weekend. I was wrong. It was much, much better than that, and even more unexpected – a bright red cot blanket knitted by the capable hands of the fair . Nicola, you’re an absolute marvel – thank you very much from us… Read More »A good start to the day

Sucking teeth

My first solo car journey turned out to be mundane, but not uneventful. Picked up the car from the garage yesterday morning and drove it home (it was in for a service, which seemed a good idea before the garklet arrives). Car seemed to be a bit on the noisy side, and the engine was missing a cylinder from time to time, but I put that down to the new spark plugs needing time to wear in. Drove to her aquanatal class down in town that evening. Still working my way through The Octopus, which is proving rather fun now… Read More »Sucking teeth

Fixing Firefox 2.0

This is mostly for my own reference, but I thought it worth posting in case anyone else finds it useful. Now that Firefox 2.0 is out, I’ve noticed a number of changes in the default UI and behaviour from 1.5 that one can no longer change through the options dialogue, and which I find awkward. This is a list of the hidden preferences (visible through about:config) and their settings. Opening a group of bookmarks in tabs overwrites existing tabs browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace should be set to false (open bookmark groups in new tabs) Close buttons on each tab make it harder to… Read More »Fixing Firefox 2.0

The ethics of spoilers

While we were putting up the new shed a couple of weeks ago, and I had a debate about the ethics of film/play/book spoilers, and what one should take to be common cultural knowledge. We didn’t come to any sort of agreement, so I’ve decided that the best option is to Ask LJ with a poll. The poll below is under a cut because it contains spoilers for the following films, plays and books: Hamlet Citizen Kane Casablanca The Third Man Psycho Waiting for Godot The Empire Strikes Back The Wasp Factory The Crying Game The Usual Suspects The Sixth… Read More »The ethics of spoilers

Beep beep! Beep beep! Yeah!

Somehow (I know not quite how) I’ve managed to pass my driving test after being a learner driver for the past sixteen years, and after failing four or possibly five previous tests (I lost count some time in the early 1990s). Gosh!