Keys Corner

If you live outside the UK, your mental picture of the country is likely to include the view that it rains a lot and it’s not exactly the place to go for a hot dry summer.

Actually, that view seems to be wrong – London’s mayor, Ken Livingstone, told Londoners yesterday “if all you have done is take a pee, you don’t need to flush the toilet every time.“. The reason isn’t so much the hot dry summers, however. It is more a case of dry winters, which if they continue, will lead to standpipes being used in London as early as next year. Livingstone wants an immediate ban on using hosepipes and sprinklers, and is also recommending that the Londoners switch from taking baths to having showers to reduce water usage.

Sevens Shopping Mall on the Düsseldorfer Kö

We visited Düsseldorf yesterday. To see some of the bands performing in the 13th Düsseldorfer Jazz Rally. We always to try to go to the Idstein Jazz Festival (22 – 24 July, this year), and comparing the two, I’d say the Düsseldorfer Jazz Rally is the better one to visit, if you can only go to one festival. It is not as popular (or well known?) as Idstein, which is always very crowded.

In comparison, Düsseldorf was well attended, but nowhere nearly as crowded as Idstein gets. The performances are partly indoors (for example in the airport departure halls, in a shopping mall, and in many bars and clubs) and partly outdoors in the various squares around the old town. The outdoor perfomances are free, the indoor ones are covered by a single ticket that you can buy almost anywhere in the city center.

Düsseldorfer Banjo Club performing at the Rathaus

One thing we did notice, is that the average age of jazz fans is, shall we say, a little high?

Some of the spectators at the Rathaus

David Rothenberg discovered that birds responded to his playing the clarinet by singing back. Visit his website to hear samples of “duets” played between David and the birds, and also to find out more about both birdsong and what human componists have done using birdsong for inspiration. There is plenty to keep you occupied on the website, but if you want to follow up in more detail, David has also published a book and a CD on the same subject. Details are on the web site. If you happen to live in the USA, he is currently touring both the west coast and the east coast.

Patrick Luby and Edward Peterlin have released version 1.1 of NeoOffice/J, which is based on OpenOffice.org 1.1.4. Patrick and Edward have done a brilliant job, bringing this version to release status in just three months. NeoOffice/J is considerably better suited to the Mac than the official OOo port to the Mac and requires less Unix-know-how to set up. Actually, NeoOffice/J requires absolutely zero Unix knowledge to install and set-up, which can not be said of the OOo port.

This is a must-have, if you have a Mac. Go and get it here. (But, check for the latest patch too.)

The BBC and the Oxford English Dictionary are trying to track down the first use and origin of some 50 words or phrases which have crept into the English langauge without the OED having noticed at the time. So, if you can produce evidence, which can be irrefutably dated, of where to bonk, codswollop, the Old Bill, a ploughman’s lunch or any of the other 46 terms here came from, get in touch with the BBC.

The Globe and Mail (2005-06-17):

Washington — U.S. cattle are eating chicken litter, cattle blood and restaurant leftovers that could help transmit mad-cow disease — a gap in the defences that the Bush administration promised to close nearly 18 months ago.

Well, it’s hardly surprising that a second case of BSE is suspected in the USA. The question is really, where are all the other cases? Probably a case of also not having tested properly for BSE since the first cow – sounds just like the UK nearly twenty years ago, doesn’t it? Here is the UK timeline.

Digital photography is slowly but surely killing off the traditional variety. In May, AgfaPhoto GmbH (made cameras and film) filed for bankrupy.

Yesterday, Kodak announced that from 2006 they will no longer produce B&W photographic paper:

“As the imaging industry transitions from film to digital technologies, demand for B and W paper is declining by 25 percent per year and no longer represents an attractive market for Kodak.”

Kodak will still produce B&W film and the chemicals to process it, but this is just one more step in the spiral downwards. You’d better order any extra copies of B&W prints you need soon, or you may not be able to get them processed…

I just heard from our doctor that they finally isolated the bug which I have been suffering from all week; it is campylobacter. Nasty, but also common. Well, I have recovered quite a bit yesterday and this morning, so I will be back at work on Monday. Or more exactly, taking part in an SAP-customisation training in Walldorf. (It is possible that in the next few weeks, I could develop Guillain-Barré syndrome as a side-effect, so I have strict instructions from the doctor to let him know if any new problems materialize.)

In the UK the so-called “superbug” MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) is serious problem in hospitals. It is resistent to almost all antibiotics and infects people with reduced immune resistence and those who are weakened because they have been operated on. The number of deaths doubled between 1999 and 2003 and is rising each year. A member of Ruth’s family died from this bug about two years ago, when she went into a well-known teaching hospital in London for what was supposed to be a minor operation. There is also a version of this bug, called VRSA (vancomycin resistant Staphylococcus Aureus), which has resistance to a drug considered the “last line of defence” when all other antibiotics have failed.

So it is good news, that the FDA has approved the use of a new class of antibiotic, developed by Wyeth, which can be used against both these bacteria, providing an additional treatment for infected patients.

I am quite “under the weather” – I arrived back here with the beginnings of diarrhea, which has had me travelling every hour or two, day and night, between the bathroom and either my bed or a chair ever since we got in on Saturday. Thank goodness it didn’t start 24 hours earlier, or I would probably still be stuck in Spain.

Right now, I’m not feeling like devoting much time to the blog, but here are one or two photos we took in Salamanca which is where we did our Spanish course. We really enjoyed both the classes at the school and Salamanca, which is a very laid back student town, with an extensive old quarter consisting of many well preserved sandstone buildings. There is a large (38 000 students) University there, which was founded in 1218, making it one of the oldest in the world. So, many of the buildings in the old town are university buildings. Most of the teachers at our language school were graduates from the University, which offers a large number of language courses.

One of the highlights of the town is the cathedral – actually two cathedrals: the “old” cathedral and the “new” cathedral, which are directly joined together. The stonework of the main portal to the new catherdral was restored in 1993, when the stonemasons made the additions shown below, They weren’t noticed immediately and caused quite stir when they were discovered, but are now well-known and loved features of the facade: