So, what have I been up to this weekend?

Well, other than picking up and fitting the speaker for my car, I’ve ordered a new central heating boiler and a set of thermostatic valves for the radiator, so that’s another 2.5K going to go out of the kitty. Still, that’s what I’ve assigned the majority of the funds for, house improvements.

I’ve also discovered that 3mm diameter masonary nails are just the ticket as shelf supports in my bookshelf units. So, after getting a board of the correct depth and cutting it to the right length I now have two more shelves and the CDs are now where they should be, leaving more shelf space for other things in the tall unit. (And hence fewer boxes in the spare bedroom.

I now have recovered enough space in there for the next retro-computing project. A person e-mailed me a few weeks ago asking me about the Research Machines 380Z I have in my loft and whether I could make copies of the disks or sell him the disks so that he could get his mentor’s old 380Z up and running again by his mentor’s 80th birthday.. Now, this came at *JUST* the wrong time (typically) when my spare room was filling up. I now have a chance to get the old machine out of the loft and see if it actually works. I never did try it after I rescued it from the Department about 10 years ago (along with all the disks, manuals and sales material I could find).

On the evening between last Tursday and Saturday the “Oxford Inspires” project held a fire festival on Broad Street in Oxford. I diced to go, along with my camera, on Friday.

Most of the northern side of Broad Street had installations of various ironwork, some of which were chimney type objects, others were structures which could hold wax filled flowerpots. The chimney structures had adjustable, bowl-shaped hearths which could be moved up and down allowing the amount of draw, and hence flame, to be varied. At the very centre of Broad Street stood a 40ft high bamboo pylon from which a firey pendulum swung (apparently 1000 times, once for every year since Oxford was founded) and a bandstand on which various musicians played to accompany the show. And finally, outside Balliol College was a huge steel chandelier housing lots of flaming flowerpots.

As artistic “experiences” go it wasn’t bad, other than for the huge numbers of people. It was impossible to use a tripod but despite that I did manage to get a few usable images…