Psychonaut's Journal

Thanks to Nadya for discovering yet another translation of Why I Will Never Have A Girlfriend, or rather a synopsis thereof:

Katram vientuļam vīrietim ik pa laikam nākas uzdot sev jautājumus kā “vai es neesmu pietiekami agresīvs, vai es neesmu pietiekami pievilcīgs, vai es esmu pārāk resns vai tievs”. Tā vietā, lai es sūkstītos par savām neveiksmēm ar sievietēm, es pirmais atzīšu, ka manas izredzes stāties attiecībās ar pilnvērtīgu sievieti ir ļoti niecīgas. Kā arī es atteikšos atzīt, ka šai problēmai ir kāds sakars ar mani pašu. Tā vietā es domāju, ka var situāciju var izskaidrot racionāli ar statistikas formulām.

The language, in case you didn't recognize it, is Latvian, and you can read the full article, "Kāpēc man nekad nebūs draudzenes". As usual, a machine back-translation via Google Translate is available.

I've just discovered that someone has translated my article Why I Will Never Have A Girlfriend into Japanese:

なぜ彼女ができないんだろう。男なら誰だって一度はぶつかる疑問だ。残念ながらこれに対する絶対回答はないし、一言で答えられるというものでもない。なのに男の多くは矛盾を百も承知で理由を探さずにはいられない。「奥手だから？積極性が足りない？最初の一言で引いた？ボクってつまらない男？太り過ぎ？やせ過ぎ？いやいや、単にボクが醜男で対象じゃないってだけの話か」 ひとしきりありそうな理由を考えて辿り着く結論はこうだ。「きっとボクには何か問題™ があるんだ」…

Read the full post at ボクに彼女ができない理由：Why I Will Never Have A Girlfriend, and also Google Translate's back-translation into English.

This is the second time in a few months I've stumbled across a translation of my article. I sure wish people would tell me when they translate it—I think it's cool! :)

I have just authored a guide on how to install and configure openSUSE 11.3 on a Dell Insipron 1525 laptop. It's similar to my previous guide for openSUSE 10.3, except that most things now work out of the box.

I purchased my Inspiron 1525 in 2008. I've been quite pleased with it, though it's now beginning to fall apart: the case is cracked open in the bottom left of the keyboard half, and the plastic cover for the DVD drive has fallen off and refuses to reattach. This disappoints me, as I haven't been particularly rough with it, and don't tend to carry it around much—I take it in a padded laptop case to Clapham maybe twice a month. I'm thinking of getting it repaired, though at this point I'm not sure if any old high street laptop repair place could fix it, or whether I'd need to send it back to Dell for out-of-warranty service.

I long ago stopped visiting individual blogs and news sites in

favour of using Google Reader, a feed aggregator which gathers together all the new postings from various websites and puts them on a single page. The only exception has been my LiveJournal friends list; this is because you need to be logged into LiveJournal to see friends-only posts, and Google doesn't support digest

Today I discovered that there is a feed proxy service, FreeMyFeed, which will perform the authentication for you and thus allow you to view your LiveJournal friends (and any other RSS or Atom feed which requires authentication) in Google Reader, or any other RSS or Atom feed aggregator you may be using. To do this, you simply visit FreeMyFeed and fill in the input boxes as follows:

feed url

http://username.livejournal.com/data/rss?auth=digest where username is the username of the LiveJournal you want to see, except that any underscores (_) should be replaced with hyphens (-).

user

your LiveJournal username

password

your LiveJournal password

Upon clicking the "submit" button, you will be given a URL which you can enter into your feed aggregator. Links to popular online feed aggregators, such as Google Reader, are also provided, allowing you to add the authenticated feed with a single click.

There are a few caveats:

• By doing this, you are trusting the people who run FreeMyFeed with your LiveJournal username and password. They claim they don't store this information, but that's up for you to accept.
• Your username and password are encoded in the feed URL that is returned, so you shouldn't give it out to anyone.
• Unfortunately, LiveJournal does not make available an RSS or Atom feed of your friends list, so you have to add each of your friends' feeds individually. If you have only a few friends you follow, you can enter them manually, though if you have several dozen, it can be rather tedious. I came up with the following procedure to semi-automate the processing of LiveJournal friend feeds. This assumes you're running a *nix system with Bash and GNU sed.
  1. Visit your own LiveJournal profile page at http://username.livejournal.com/profile. Scroll down to your friends list, and select and copy the list into a text file named friends.txt.
  2. Run the following command, substituting seamonkey with the command of your preferred web browser:

     eval $(sed 's/_/-/g;s/[, ]*/\n/g' friends.txt | sed 's@\(.*\)@seamonkey http://freemyfeed.com/subscribe/http%253A%252F%252F\1.livejournal.com%252Fdata%252Frss%253Fauth%253Ddigest ;@g')

Nadya discovered an informal Russian

translation of my "Why I Will Never Have

"Почему у меня до сих пор нет подруги"? – спрашивает Тристан Миллер сам у себя. Он производит очень простые расчеты и вдруг понимает, что шанс найти подходящую спутницу в жизни вовсе не так уж велик, как он предполагал с самого начала. Мы-то с вами знаем, почему на самом деле этот лузер одинок, но взглянуть на его рассуждения от первого лица будет забавно…

A back-translation into English is available via Google Translate.

This week I returned from the second of two trips to Moscow during

its unprecedented six-week heat wave. On 27 June, temperatures there soared into the mid-30s, and stayed there until just a few days ago. During this time the region experienced a severe drought, and by the end of July wildfires had broken out around Moscow and nearly Vladimir. By the time I arrived in Moscow on 6 August, heavy smoke had engulfed the city. At times visibility was as little as 100 metres, and the following day the air pollution levels were six times the maximum safe limit. The Sunday papers reported that the death rate had tripled, and doctors were warning residents to stay in air-conditioned buildings as every day spent outside in the city was equivalent to smoking two packs of

Instead of staying at Nadya's place, I booked us an air-conditioned hotel suite near Dinamo station. The poor air conditioner could not cope with the 40°C temperatures; I doubt it ever got below 25°C in our room. However, it did do a decent job of filtering the smoke—this was obvious because whenever we dared to venture outside the hotel, we were immediately overwhelmed with horrible, acrid fumes which burned our throats and stung our eyes.

Here's the view from our hotel room. Visibility is about 200 metres; it's not possible to see the palace at Petrovsky Park which is about 300 metres away.

Here's a photo taken from the same window later that day when the smoke had cleared somewhat:

More photos from my trips are available. See the Moscow July 2010 and Moscow August 2010 galleries. For obvious reasons most photos in the second gallery are indoors.

Interesting conversation while waiting for the W15 today with Frettchen:

German guy: Hey, is that a ferret?

Me: Yes, it is.

German guy: Cool! Are they easy to get here in London?

Me: Not really; most of the ferret shelters are in the country. I think the only ferret shelter in London is out by Heathrow.

German guy: Oh. Well, they're very popular in Germany.

(This I found very hard to believe. I lived in a German town for three years, and have travelled all over Germany with Frettchen almost every year since moving away, and almost nobody there knows what kind of animal she is. Probably the only exception would be Kaiserslautern, where I lived. I used to walk Frettchen in the town centre pretty much every day, sometimes with Michael Buhler, the only other guy in the city to have ferrets, so lots of people there became very familiar with ferrets.)

Me: Oh really?

German guy: Yes. I used to see them almost every week where I'm from.

Me: And where are you from?

German guy: Kaiserslautern.

I haven't had much time to post lately, as I've been busy at work,

and also busy taking lots of trips abroad. But if anyone is interested, here is a summary of my trips and excursions, with links

Europe, 30 April to 17 May 2010

My cousin __ophelia__ has never been to Europe before, so for the first two weeks of May I showed her around. We (that is, me, her, and the ferret) went to Harwich, Berlin, Prague, Kutná Hora, Dunaújváros, Székesfehérvár, Budapest, Vienna, Dinkelsbühl, Nördlingen, Harburg, Schloß Lichtenstein, Nebelhöhle, Kaiserslautern, Trier, Heidelberg, Oberhausen, and Amsterdam.

Paris, 21–23 May 2010

This was my first trip to Paris since 1994, and my first on the Eurostar. Nadya and I wanted to visit the Catacombs but they were closed all weekend on account of flooding. Instead we attended a mass at Montmartre, and walked around the city, the Eiffel Tower, and La Défense.

Riga, 12–14 June 2010

Another trip with Nadya! We walked around the Old Town, and also took a train to the beach resort

     of Jūrmala and to her hometown of Tukums.

Hátíðarhöld, London, 20 June 2010

I went to the Icelandic Independence Day celebration at the Danish Church in London. My classmate Imke was there; my other classmate Giusi couldn't come on account of having to work. But as her stall at Camden Market was just a few minutes' walk away, I brought her some pylsur to eat.

Next month I'll be going to Moscow! Is anyone interested in babysitting Frettchen from 8 to 12 July?

From   : National Ferret Welfare Society
Date   : 29 April 2010 21:57
Subject: Ferret Illness Update

Dear All
 
Some of you may be aware that there have been quite a few ferret deaths  
reported in the Derbyshire and Yorkshire areas of which one  suggestion has 
been canine distemper.  
 
When at the end of March we heard about this, we started to  investigate 
possible causes, ferret numbers involved, etc.  We have not  been able to 
access the post mortem results that mention canine distemper  however, when 
another person's ferrets started to die they agreed to  having full post mortem 
and pathology reports carried out, of  which several have now been done.  
 
Whilst we are still waiting for the actual reports to  arrive which we will 
publish on our website _http://nfws.250free.com_ (http://nfws.250free.com,) 
, put forward to the moderators of the main ferret  forums and include in 
May's newsletter, we have established the  following:
 
a)    These ferrets did not die of  canine distemper.  Nor have the 
subsequent ferrets that have unfortunately  not survived this illness.  
 
b)    Whilst there is no specific pcr test (polymerase  chain reaction 
which tests samples at a genetic level) for ferrets here in the  UK, when the 
cow pcr test was used, all came back testing  positive for coronavirus.  These 
results are also  compatible with a report that was done several years ago 
in the States on  coronavirus in ferrets.
 
So what is coronavirus?  Well to you and me, it's a very nasty form of  
viral enteritis spread by infected faeces and appears to kill the old and  
infirm; as we are now in the kit season, they too would probably not  survive 
what is, a slow death.
 
Symptoms to look out for:  lethargy, loss of appetite, runny/black  faeces 
and not wanting to drink very much.
 
Unfortunately, of the remaining ill ferrets that were treated with a  trial 
treatment (not licensed for ferrets - but  both the owner and vet  felt it 
was worth trying), only one has survived, a jill.  Another owner  who had 
several  ferrets with identical symptoms has also only  had one survive.   
Please note none of these ferrets died  of canine distemper.
 
Precautions:  The Society is at this  stage, advising owners "to be extra 
vigilant, use antibacterial hand  washes - making sure anyone handling 
ferrets use it before and after each  ferret is touched, not to mix groups of 
different owners' ferrets, don't  walk them around at shows, etc and that we're 
currently awaiting pathology  reports".  As always, if you have a ferret 
that is unwell then  please seek veterinary advice. 
 
 
Some ferret clubs/welfares have cancelled their ferret shows but the  
majority are continuing as are all the PR events that our members have been  
booked to do, up and down the country including the game/agricultural show  
circuit which for many welfares, is the only way they can raise enough money to  
keep going, BUT if any of them thought that they were  endangering the 
lives of other ferrets they would immediately cancel.   (Some ferret racing 
events have been temporarily suspended).
 
The NFWS committee is currently revising it's own Show/AGM rules  which 
again will be posted on our web site and in the annual September and  January 
newsletters where we advertise this event.  
 
The loss of one ferret is at the best of times, horrible but too  lose 
several or more must be devastating; all we can do is try and learn from  these 
deaths so that other owners/veterinarians are in a better position to  treat 
our loveable, mischievous hooligans.
 
Best wishes.
 
Bennie Lye
for and on behalf of 
NFWS Committee
National Ferret Welfare  Society
_http://nfws.250free.com_ (http://nfws.250free.com/) 

A Googlewhack is a pair

of words which, when entered into the Google search box, returns only

My Googlewhacks, in order of increasing ridiculosity:

• feverishly denazify
• mexiletine doeth
• foxlike cumulonimbus
• semiotician hawsers
• sandcastle estivation
• gormless apothem
• dechristianized lacunae
• gossypol triumvirate
• phonic encrustations
• quarrelling baboonery
• bamboozled mustelid
• proselytizing camelopard
• smegma candleholders
• prehensile bishopric

I can't believe that the words "bamboozled" and "mustelid" don't appear together more often! Maybe we should start a "confuse a ferret" club.

Also, some of these would make great cartoon captions, band names, or product names. I'd totally go see a band called Proselytizing Camelopard. ("Camelopard", for those who don't know, is an archaic term for the giraffe, so coined because of the animal's resemblance to both a camel and a leopard.) I'd love to see someone try to draw a picture of a prehensile bishopric. And who hasn't wanted to buy a smegma candleholder for that special someone they know and love?

)

Posted without comment:

I have started a new blog chronicling my project to produce a complete digital archive of the Socialist Standard, the official journal of the Socialist Party of Great Britain which has been published without interruption since 1904. There probably won't be anything political in the blog; it deals more with the technical and practical challenges of digitizing a sizeable newspaper corpus. You may want to read the blog if you are interested in things such as batch image manipulation, OCR, indexing, document archiving, digital publishing, and how to do most or all of the preceding with Free Software.

So, without further ado, I present the Socialist Standard Digitization Blog.

Back in April and September I

posted on the size of my inbox and my scheme for depleting its contents. The idea was to plot a graph showing the number of messages in my inbox each day, thus encouraging me to direct the plot towards

Well, after nearly a year, I am pleased to report that I have finally reached my goal of an empty inbox! As much as I would have liked to simply do a Ctrl+A Del, I did make sure to read, act upon, and if necessary respond to all the messages that had been languishing there, in some cases for several years. According to the plot below, I started really putting a dent in the pile beginning in July, and (in fits and starts) got it down to a manageable level by the end of December. Since then I've maintained reasonable e-mail hygiene, keeping my inbox below about 30 e-mails. It was only today, however, that I was finally able to clear it out completely.

I hope this lasts! Nobody send me any e-mail for a while, please. I want to sit here and relish the blank screen for at least a few minutes. :)

Does anyone else get crazy letters from random strangers in the

post? I've been getting them every few years since 1997. Always from different people. I have no idea how these people get my address (the phone book, maybe?) or why they think that writing to me about their ideas is going to do any good. Anyway, here's the latest screed, which arrived last week—in a very fancy and expensive envelope, I might add. (If the text is too small for you to read, follow the link for a larger version.) I particularly like how he labelled his post code as such, in case I wouldn't be able to figure

Does anyone here still read Usenet? One of my favourite newsgroups

is talk.origins, which is dedicated to discussion of evolution and creationism. As you might expect, the group attracts some pretty strange characters. My favourite is Ray Martinez, a self-described "Old Earth Young Biosphere Protestant Evangelical Paulinist". Ray is a disciple of late televangelist Gene Scott, and has been entertaining talk.origins denizens for the better part of a decade with his obstinate creationist rants. Among his more bizarre claims are that the Great Pyramid is an ultrascientific monument designed by God to encase Biblical claims, and that the existence of Atlantis in the Antlantic Ocean is proven by the fact that eels return there to spawn. Ray's ideas about creationism and evolution are so kooky that he was even kicked off Conservapedia, of all

As a linguist, I find Ray's use of language particularly hilarious; people will attempt to enter into a rational discussion with him only to find that he has completely idiosyncratic definitions of ordinary English words. Some years ago I collected some of the best in a post titled "A Ray Martinez Dictionary" (also available on Google Groups). The linguistic madness has continued in the years following that post; Ray has recently entered into several protracted arguments that the meaning of the prefix a-, of Greek origin, is "in opposition to" and never "without". Absolutely no number of literary (even Biblical) examples or dictionary citations can possibly convince him otherwise; his definition comes straight from Gene Scott, who is the final authority on all matters linguistic (and scientific, and historical, and theological, and…).

Recently a Hindu creationist has appeared in the group, which makes a nice diversion from the usual complement of Christians. Yesterday he started a new thread about whether life begins at conception. Apparently he believes in something akin to the homonculus theory of conception, wherein a sperm is envisaged as a fully-formed but miniature man which installs itself in a woman's womb and grows there. People tried to explain to him that sperm are not sentient, and that both the mother and father contribute DNA to the child; his responses aroused suspicions as to whether he actually understood what the term "DNA" even meant. So someone asked him flat out if he actually knew what DNA was, which garnered the following hilarious response from him:

DNA is what I assume is the Object of the Class Definition from the Parent Class.

The definition of the class of the human is pre-defined in male and female humans, and there are modifications and updates to this class library from time to time. This make every new born that is the object of the class definition different from the every other humans born.

I guess this guy's entire knowledge of genetics comes from Biology 101 for C++ Programmers.

OK, so it's been almost a year since I last wrote about our ongoing

harassment by some company called "TV Licensing", and in that time we've continued to get spam and/or unsolicited visits every few weeks. I therefore decided to see if withdrawing their common-law implied

Santander call centre agent: Hello, welcome to Santander. May I please take

your name?

[here occurs about three patience-testing minutes of identification checks and quality control questions]

Me: I already have a Santander First Home Saver account with you, and now I would like to open a Santander Bank Account. Can I do that over the phone or do I have to go to a branch?

Santander call centre agent: It's no problem; you can do that with me. Just a moment, please.

[three minutes of being on hold for no given reason]

Thank you for holding, Mr. Miller. You said you currently have a savings account with us?

Me: Yes.

Santander call centre agent: And do you have a bank account?

Me: Yes, but not with Santander. I'd like to open one of your Santander Bank Account current accounts—the ones with 6% interest.

Santander call centre agent: Fine, Mr. Miller. First I need to ask you some questions to help determine which of our products and services are best suited to your needs.

Me: There's no need for that; I know which product I want. I want the Santander Bank Account.

Santander call centre agent: But it's necessary to answer a few questions so that we can find out which…

Me: I don't need to pick from a list of your accounts. I already know exactly which one I want.

Santander call centre agent: It's not a list, Mr. Miller. We just need to ask you a few questions to find out which of our products best match your needs.

Me: Can't we just skip that?

Santander call centre agent: I'm sorry, but this step is compulsory. We can't proceed with this call otherwise.

Me: Well, then, I guess this call is at an end. Goodbye.

Santander call centre agent: Goodbye, Mr. Miller.

Frettchen's vet called today with the results of the lab test done on the mysterious growth removed from her leg. It turns out it was a sebaceous adenoma, a type of benign tumor. The vet assured me that they had removed all of it and that it would not regrow.

A couple weeks ago I ordered some T-shirts from an American

retailer. Today in the mail I got the following letter indicating that the package was being held for ransom by a company called Parcelforce pending payment of

The £11.10 VAT charge seemed fair enough, since it's a customs fee charged by the government on importation of certain goods. But, thought I, what was this £8.00 "Parcelforce Clearance Fee" and why on earth should I pay it?

I did some Googling and it turns out that (a) Parcelforce is just a trading name of the Royal Mail, and (b) I'm not the only one skeptical about this £8 "clearance fee", which is a separate handling fee charged by Parcelforce and not by HM Revenue & Customs. In fact, many people and consumer groups such as Postwatch (now Consumer Focus), believe that this fee is or may be illegal under the terms of the Postal Services Act. See, for example, these discussions on the MoneySavingExpert.com, Consumer Action Group, and moneysupermarket.com forums. Several people have reported success in having the fee waived, abandoned, or reclaimed via an expedited small claims court process. At least one of them had some success calling the police when Parcelforce refused to release his package.

With this knowledge, I decided I wouldn't be paying the fee. I called the number on the invoice and told the operator that I wished to pay the VAT but not the Clearance Fee. She told me that that wasn't possible because the Parcelforce Clearance Fee is charged by HM Revenue & Customs, not Parcelforce, a rather bald-faced lie which I called her on immediately. She said that she couldn't help me any further and that I would have to speak to a manager in person at the depot.

Since the depot wasn't too far away, and since I wanted the package right away, I hopped on a bus, armed with the relevant sections of the Postal Services Act, a copy of a letter from an official at HM Revenue & Customs confirming that they had nothing to do with the Clearance Fee, and the number of the local police station. Yep, I was not going to pay that fee, and was ready to fight!

When I got to the Parcelforce depot, the first thing I noticed was a tray full of leaflets about the Clearance Fee. Clearly I was not the first person to have come into the depot intending to dispute it.

Interestingly, this leaflet cites as proof that their fee is legal the very same Act which I believe proves it to be illegal. I won't go into a detailed refutation, as I'm not a lawyer, but suffice it to say that our interpretations of the law differ: they say §89 of the Act lets them charge a fee, but I say §§83 and 84 prohibits it. I decided to press on.

I walked up to the service window, presented the invoice, asked to collect my parcel, and politely said that I wanted to pay the customs fee but not the Parcelforce Clearance Fee. The woman said that I had to pay both fees before they could release the parcel, and I said, again very politely, that I didn't think it was legal for them to use nonpayment of some private handling fee as a pretext for holding my package. "Just a minute," said the woman, and disappeared around back. I was sure that she was going to fetch a supervisor to argue with me.

But no! She came back with my package, told me, "That will be £11.10, please," took my money, and handed me my package. I asked for a receipt, and she handed me back my invoice with a big "PAID" stamp on it. She didn't make any further argument or mention of the Clearance Fee.

I would like to think that Parcelforce's immediate and quiet refusal to pursue the matter can be taken as evidence that they know their fee is illegal. At any rate, simply refusing to pay the fee upon collection worked for me, and so I'd advise anyone else receiving a similar notice to do likewise. Providing you're not far from the depot where your package is being held, this is almost certainly less costly, in terms of time and money, than pursuing a small claims case against the company.

Frettchen has survived her operation. As usual, she has been left with an ugly bald patch and stitches. The vet still has no idea what it is they removed from her leg—they've sent it to the lab for analysis. Will post more as the story develops…

From 4 to 11 January I took a holiday in Iceland with

Giusi and Imke, my classmates from Icelandic class. We were expecting a lovely winter holiday with lots of cold and snow. However, there was no snowfall at all, and even the meagre amount on the ground was washed away in a couple days by the rain and unusually warm temperatures (up to 7 ℃). Meanwhile back in home Britain was experiencing one of the coldest spells in recent memory: temperatures were as low as −18 ℃ in some areas, with up to 35 cm of snow. This strange reversal in weather patterns was apparently caused by an

Anyway, on to the photos. You can see the complete gallery on my web page. Meanwhile here are some non-representative samples, which I have chosen only because they have a story behind them:

People in the guesthouse kept stealing our food from the refrigerator, so Giusi made this sign. Unfortunately, it didn't work very well—our food continued to disappear even after its erection. Curiously, one one occasion someone stole our cheese and then left money in its place. It was more than enough to cover the cost of the cheese, but that's little consolation when you're hungry and the nearest supermarket is a kilometre away.

The guesthouse had a TV with four local channels. Two of them were on only from 18:00 to 20:15, the third had similarly ridiculous hours, and the fourth one played nothing but fundamentalist Christian programming imported from America and subtitled in Icelandic. Now, there's only so much Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron a person can take before going insane, so we turned to the satellite: 1500 channels to choose from! Unfortunately, among them was just one English channel and two Swiss German channels; most of the rest were in Arabic, Italian, and Polish. The above-pictured Arab guy had three channels all to himself, where he broadcast the same show nearly 24 hours a day. The show consisted of him staring calmly at his laptop while callers ranted, raved, and shouted for up to half an hour at a time. The host rarely spoke or even looked up from his laptop. We suspect he was surfing the Internet for porn.

Does anyone remember (or still use) F-PROT antivirus? The headquarters of its maker, FRISK Software International, were just beside our guesthouse.

Pre- and post-consumption photos of svið, a traditional Icelandic dish of half a singed and boiled sheep's head. Apart from the cheek, there's not much meat on it—you're eating pretty much nothing but the eyeball, nose, tongue, cartilage, and skin. (Only the ear, horn, and brain are removed prior to cooking.) It tasted much better than I expected.

My first meal of the trip: on the left, svartfugl (auk) and on the right, hákarl (Greenland shark). The shark is poisonous when fresh, but can be made (barely) edible by a process of putrefaction: the gutted and beheaded shark is buried in gravel for six to twelve weeks, then dug out and hung up to dry for several months. The kind I sampled here, skyrhákarl, is cut from the body, and is soft, white, and tastes like a very strong cheese. There is another variety, glerhákarl, which I bought in a supermarket and brought back with me. It's cut from the belly and is pink and chewy; the taste is mildly fishy at first, but after a few seconds an unpleasantly strong wave of ammonia hits you.

Giusi approaches Skógafoss. This was the second waterfall we visited, after Seljalandsfoss. Normally it is possible to walk behind Seljalandsfoss, but in the winter the slippery ice makes this impossible, or at least inadvisable without crampons and other special equipment.

The site of an auto collision near our guesthouse. Giusi and I were around the corner when it happened and we came rushing to help. One of the drivers was unconscious, so I climbed into his car, shut it off, and activated the parking brake and hazard lights. Meanwhile another woman called 112 to report the accident. Despite the police station being only 300 metres away, it took them about ten minutes to arrive.

Poor Frettchen's got a new medical problem. A few weeks ago I noticed she had a small raised scab on her leg, about a couple millimetres across. It didn't seem to bother her at all, though. But then it got bigger and bigger, until it was maybe seven or eight millimetres across, so I took her to the vet. The vet had no idea what it could be—she said possibly just an injury, or a cyst, or a tumor—so we decided to leave it for another week or so to see what happened.

Well, that week I happened to be on holiday in Iceland, so Frettchen was under the care of missy3ve. A few days into the holiday I got a call from her saying that she needed to take Frettchen to the vet right away because the scab was bleeding and causing her pain. In the end missy3ve just had a telephone consultation with the vet, who advised her not to bring Frettchen in but rather keep her under close observation to make sure she didn't get any worse.

I got home from Iceland on Monday and picked Frettchen up from missy3ve's last night. A couple hours before I arrived the scab had fallen or been bitten off, revealing a gaping wound in her leg, with a convex bulge between one and two centimetres in diameter protruding from it. We called the vet straight away, and made an appointment for her to come in the next morning (today). The vet said it looked bad and booked her in for surgery right then and there, since there was no way her skin could heal over a wound that big.

So now I am ferretless—hopefully temporarily so—while Frettchen is undergoing surgery to remove the growth (whatever it is) and close the wound. Whatever they excise they're going to send to the lab to see exactly what it is. It could be a foreign body, or a cyst, or a tumor, or something else entirely.

Also, a couple months ago I looked into getting pet insurance so I wouldn't have to pay much for these sorts of incidents in the future. However, the only company I found willing to ensure ferrets, Exotic Direct, disqualified Frettchen on the grounds that she is too old. On 15 December I sent a message to the National Ferret Welfare Society for advice, and got the following response back today:

Dear psych0naut,
 
It would appear that ferret health insurance is like trying to find hens 
teeth!  The only thing I can suggest is what a lot of other animal owners do 
and that is to set up a separate savings account or ISA if you want to be 
really tax efficient and put so much aside each month then use this as and  
when it's necessary.
 
Sorry I couldn't be of more help but apart from Exotic, they're the only  
company that any-one has come across that does or did do ferret health  
insurance.
 
All the best.
 
Bennie
National Ferret Welfare Society (NFWS)

I'm having a nice winter holiday. On 31 December I saw the Johann

Strauss Gala at the Barbican with two friends from work. I had been meaning to see a live Strauss concert for some time, and this one didn't disappoint. I especially liked the customary audience

The next day it was back to the Barbican to see the Glenn Miller Orchestra UK with missy3ve. The average age of the audience must have been over 75, making me and missy3ve among the youngest concert-goers. Nonetheless it was a great night out. They played all of my favourite Glenn Miller standards, including "American Patrol", "I've Got A Girl in Kalamazoo", "Pennsylvania 6-5000", and of course "In The Mood". There were a couple of disappointments, though:

1. The concert was billed and introduced as "The Glenn Miller Orchestra", leading us to believe that it was the original one. I found out only afterwards, through reading some of the promotional material, that it was actually a separate UK orchestra.
2. Their occasional female vocalist, Jan Messeder, was absolutely awful. Her singing was breathy and off-pitch, she kept jerking her microphone out of range, and more than once huge gobs of spit flew out of her mouth and into the audience. missy3ve and I, who were in the third row, were in constant danger of being hit. Her salivatory antics were nonetheless the object of much mirth in our row, with the pair of ladies sitting next to us barely able to contain their laughter, and later, tears.

And my holiday isn't over yet! Tomorrow Giusi and I are heading off to Iceland for a week.