Mr Mist’s Blog

Mmmm, pie. West-Yorkshire pie-lovers have had a special wedding cake made - a three tier pork pie [news.bbc.co.uk]. The special cake took a day to produce, and was made because the groom is a member of the Pork Pie Appreciation Society and the bride thought it would be a good lark. Heh. Yummy.

Time to do this week’s photo friday [www.photofriday.com], which is Glow [www.photofriday.com].

I decided to give this week’s photo challenge a slightly Eastery theme (though Easter is not until next week really). So for this picture there’s lots of little yellow chicks, with a bit of a glow.

As usual, you can click the picture for the medium-sized version, or click here for the large glow picture.

And, in the news today, the royal wedding blessing is to be aired live on tv [news.bbc.co.uk] "coo" and such. I’m sure that they said it wasn’t to be. Oh well. Elsewhere British soldier Private Johnson Beharry has been awarded the VC [news.bbc.co.uk] for bravery in the Iraq war. He is the first living person to get the medal since 1969.

There’s not a whole lot of news about just at the moment. Well, there is, but it’s not the sort of news that I desire making entries out of. I mean, we have had a story about Provident Financial, where I once worked [news.bbc.co.uk], a Budget [news.bbc.co.uk], in which not a whole lot changed unless you are particularly old or have kids, or want to buy a cheap(ish) property, and Bank Fraud [news.bbc.co.uk], but, altogether nothing that has really caught my eye [news.bbc.co.uk].

So I’ll leave things till tomorrow evening, when hopefully there will be a good photo friday.

First off, I have a couple of replies to make to commenters..

Armin [www.ministryofpropaganda.co.uk] responded to my last entry, helpfully explaining that it was The Independent that had carried the drunken calling story [news.independent.co.uk]. So that is good.

Secondly I had a few commenters asking how mould is formed. To be honest I can’t quite remember the specifics. Mould is organic growth that forms when spores from the air make contact with foodstuffs and have a suitable environment to live in (things like light, heat, moisture). Mould will grow quicker and better in a moist warm environment. Here’s a page about mould [www.airearthandwater.com].

You can tell from my mouldy bread project what happens when a piece of preservative-added bread is kept fairly dry - you get virtually no mould at all.

The past few days have seen a programme on BBC1 about Super Volcanoes [news.bbc.co.uk] backed up by sciencey follow-ups on BBC2. It wasn’t majorly gripping drama, but it was pretty interesting because it had a reasonable scientific basis and, I suppose, could happen. If we had a giant volcanic eruption over in the US then most of the US would be destroyed and the rest of the world would be plunged into permanent winter for a good few years. We can’t do anything about it with present technology. So there’s something to ponder, eh?

I heard on one of the news programmes today someone reading a newspaper article that mentioned that people could stop those much-regretted drunken mobile phone calls that folk make at 3AM after a night out.

Simply dialling 333 and the number you want to block out means that your provider doesn’t let you ring that number from midnight until 6am, which should cut out a lot of those embarrasing moments I expect.

Strangely though the only references that I could find on the net about this relate to Virgin Mobile Australia [www.virginmobile.com.au] who offer the service.

Lots of people do this according to their survey, so maybe a similar service is to be introduced over here in UK land.