Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

"Jèrri a un lian spécial auve la Couronne Angliaîche tch'est l'rêsultat d'chein tchi s'pâssit en 1204. En 2004, toute l'Île est à mèrtchi huit chents ans dé ch't' èrlâtion 'partitchuliéthe'."

Or rather, summarising in English rather than in the convoluted Norman-French variant we call Jerriais - 2004 is the 800^th anniversary of the island of Jersey's relationship with the English crown. Until 1204, Jersey was part of the duchy of Normandy, until the fall of Rouen, which led to the splitting of the Angevin Empire. The Channel Islands were the only piece of the Duchy to remain with Britain, a relationship that still stands to this day...

This site (where I stole the icon) has more information ...

marypcb and I just seem to have cleaned up cat vomit a gift from the beasts using a Nominet certificate for an expired domain which we bought for a con we ran once...

Only in this house...

...or as the BBC puts it "Trilobite was ancient snack food".

A paper in Biology Letters shows that they have found trilobite body parts in the gut of a Cambrian arthropod...

While wandering round Edinburgh at the weekend, we found a lovely shop full of kawaii tat - including various Moominvalley objects...

Egged on by marypcb I bought myself a lovely 3D desk calendar, featuring Snufkin on harmonica, Little My, and a small group of Hattifatteners...



[joys of digicams with macro settings]

Rocco Tower is one of Jersey's west coast landmarks. Out in the middle of St Ouen's bay it's the last thing between the island and Canada. A Jersey Martello tower, it's a relic of the Napoleonic wars, and was badly damaged when used by German artillery for target practice during the Occupation. There's also a family connection - my uncle helped restore it in the 1960s.

It's also a ten minute walk to the tower from the slip at low tide. marypcb and I were having a Father Ted discussion on the relative size of the tower and Corbiere Lighthouse ("These are small, but the ones out there are far away..."), so we solved it by walking out the tower...

Out there, buried in the sand at the edge of the rocks, we found a lovely ormer shell, the spiral of its curves fading from green to brown to mother of pearl in the water. Picking it up, and turning it over we found it contained a fairly sizable pearl bonded to the lustrous interior...

( Pearls often lie behind cut tags... )