East Fortune Airshow 2010

So this time we remembered to bring folding chairs, so that we didn't a) crick our necks looking up all the time or b) get wet off the grass. I took 300 photos and videos, mostly of empty sky, wingtips, exhaust smoke or trees. Of the rest, these are the least worst.

As usual, click to embiggen.

Vampire

Russian Red Arrows

Spitfire

Wing Walkers

Wing Walkers (video)

The Tale of the Missionary and the Black Sheep

A missionary gets sent into deepest, darkest Africa. He spends years with the people, teaching them to read and write, and about the good Christian ways of the white man. One thing he particularly stresses is the evils of sexual sin, "Thou must not commit adultery or fornication!"

One day the wife of the Village Chief gives birth to a white child.

The village is shocked and the chief is sent by his people to talk to the missionary.

"You taught us of the evils of sexual sin, yet here is a black women who gives birth to a white child. You are the only white man that has ever set foot in our village. It doesn't take a genius to work out what has been going on!"

The missionary replies: "No, no, my good man. You are mistaken. What you have here is a rare, but natural occurrence. It's called an albino. Look to thy yonder field. See there a field of white sheep, and yet amongst them is one black sheep. Nature does this on occasion."

The chief pauses for a moment and then says, "Tell you what, my friend, you say nothing about the black sheep, and I'll say nothing about the white child!"

Edward Cullen Eat Your Undead Heart Out

So this week, young, almost teenage girls have been falling over each other to get some of my precious bodily fluids.

They've been very, very persistent, sending me letters, begging me to come and pay them a visit.

And when I eventually arrived, they were clamouring around me in their short, white skirts and tight blouses, demanding to know every little thing about me.

"What do they call you, handsome?"

"What's your star sign?" ¹

"Hey, do you operate, you know, heavy machinery?" They get totally turned on by that.

"So, where do you take your holidays? San Francisco? Equatorial Africa? Anywhere that's had a recent outbreak of a communicable disease?"

"Man, have you done any good shit lately? Smack, crack, anything involving needles, basically?"

And then they got really personal, asking about my sex life and that. Not so much about all the prostitutes I'd murdered but whether I'd had unprotected sex with them, either before, during or after.

Then they gently laid me down and I barely felt the tiny, sharp sting as they began to suck out my lifeblood and I slipped into a daze...

Next thing I knew, I was sipping a nice cuppa tea with my chocolate Hobnobs.

Best thing about it? Not an angst-ridden Twilight fan in sight.

¹ Technically, "What's your date of birth?" But anybody can work out your star sign from that, right? Right.

Computer Terms Illustrated

Haven't done this for a while. Honest, these are all genuine computer terms.

API

Enterprise Architecture

Micro

Polling

Proxy(sp?) Server

Spoofing

Escape Characters

Pipe

Tar

There's also Shell, of course. Think I'll save that for later.

Down By The River

So as my Twitter followers will know, I went for a stroll down by the Water of Leith yesterday, watched the pretty birdies and broke the first rule of photography - didn't take my camera. #headslap

To make up for it, I went back today with camera in hand and took a few snaps.

As usual, click to embiggen.

Water of Leith

Heron>

Swan

Swan closeup

Another Heron

Duck

Wallflowers

The only thing that spoiled it for me was trying to get a shot without the assorted prams, bicycles and shopping trolleys that have been discarded in the river over the years by gormless vandals.

Gormless

Toot toot!

Shit My Dad Said

Some time ago.

Dad worked on the top floor of a four-storey telephone exchange. There were no lifts (elevators), but the exercise he got from climbing the stairs every morning was still preferable to the drenching he'd regularly received while fixing junction boxes in the streets of Edinburgh.

Be that as it may.

One day, a uniformed police officer turned up by his desk, puffing and wheezing.

"Good day, my good man," or words to that effect, said the filth. "Would that be your car parked on the pavement downstairs, only it's causing an obstruction?"

"Would that be the silver Bentley?" asked Dad innocuously. Dad never drove in his life.

"Ah, no sir," replied the pig. "It's a blue Ford Escort. Sorry to have disturbed you."

And off he went.

Five minutes later, with much pounding on the stairs, the rozzer was back, gasping for breath this time. "Sir! Sir! There's no silver Bentley down there!"

"Oh, my God, it's been stolen!" Sharp as a pin, was Dad.

So then he made poor PC Plod go back down again, have another look to make sure, come back up and prepare to take a statement before declaring, "Ah, wait, the wife said she would be taking it today to fetch the shopping."

He would have loved Robin Cooper.

Roaming In The Gloaming

So I noticed that this week my sex change was commented on in Scottish Roundup, juxtaposed with the most excellent Scotland In The Gloaming. Seriously, I'm not worthy, but that won't stop me nicking their name linking to them for this post.

Be that as it may, I was at a "do" up near Bathgate a couple of weeks ago on one of the few days it didn't rain. A professional photographer had warned me not to bother taking my camera, since there was nothing to see but scenery. Yes, of course I ignored him. Was it worth it? You decide.

Distant Lake
Those cows totally knew I was there.

Walking At Sunset

Roaming In The Gloaming

Through A Glass, Darkly
I rather enjoyed climbing over the wall to get this picture with the sun directly behind the lamp.

Stay With Me Till Dawn

Sunset Over The Loch
Well, I say 'loch'. 'Artificial reservoir' doesn't have quite the same ring to it.