Yesterday at 12pm I went to St Mary's Church in East Finchley for the Repose of Alisdair's Soul. I think that it has put (as Alisdair would say) closure on his death. I also think that he would have liked the Latin and ceremony of the Mass.

I just read this article and not that I am in any way pro the Olympics, but I think that it will be good for Southend's ambition to become a top cycling town.  By the way Hadleigh is where we sometime go to see the animals.

My parents received a postcard on Friday from Alisdair - it's only taken about 6 weeks to arrive! Anyway it clearly shows that he was having a fantastic time in Bulgaria and I know it has made everyone feel much better.

I just want to keep this bit of info handy that's why I have put it on my blog - I got it from Jeffrey Veen's blog. It basically tells you all the switches to download a directory (possibly music) from the command line, very simply and stably.

Here's the code, go here to find out what it all means:

wget -r -l1 -H -t1 -nd -N -np -A.mp3 -erobots=off -i ~/mp3blogs.txt

Wikilook is a great add-on for FireFox. It tells you the meaning of a word just by pressing the shift key and moving your mouse over the word. It also allows you to search for the word on wikipedia.

Ever wondered what the meaning of incunabulum, floccinaucinihilipilification, ይሉኝታ, كوردی, Bân-lâm-gú or lets say лютий?

Install this add-on and see what they mean.

I have just been playing with the themes for drupal. This theme is called pixture and it is possible to change the width between fixed and fluid and the dimensions % and pixels.

I think I will keep this theme for the summer - if we get one!

The original title for Alisdair's poem that Rory wrote in his post was "Soup Kitchen" and not AA which is an abbreviation for Alcoholics Anonymous.

Alisdair opened the Muswell Hill Soup Kitchen in 1994. The Soup Kitchen is still a great success. He wrote the poem more recently.

A Poem by Alisdair McPherson

The sun streams through the trees
Like candlelight dancing across the table

Leafs and twigs
snap and crunch
Like pretzels between my teeth

My dog barks
breaking a silent tranquility
that grow strong in my heart

I feel calm and free
as I
Walk in the woods

Alisdair loved the forest in Bansko. He felt happy and free there and had made friends with a wolf. He told me he was alone, but not lonely. He could always talk to people when he went to the nearby Hotel for hot chocolate or a meal or snack.

I wrote the text below on 23 June 2008. I have now come to terms with Alisdair's death, although I do miss him - I will leave the post as I wrote it.

My brother died on his own, in an apartment complex on the outskirts of Bansko, Bulgaria sometime in the last few days (probably 18 June - I found out on 22 June) just before his 40th birthday which would have been on 6 July.

I was recently introduced to Meet the Gimp which is a series of video-casts by Rolf Steinort. The Gimp stands for GNU Image Manipulation Programme and is the free as in beer, multiplatform open-source equivalent of Photoshop.

Derek Shaw of SoSLUG has agreed with Rolf to put together a DVD of the first 46 episodes and to sell them for £5 plus £1.50 P&P. I bought a copy (which helps save on bandwidth) and I am currently working my way through them and have got to episode 13. If you want to buy yourself a copy then there are more details here or click on the button at the end of this post.

The photo below was composed of 3 images that I took back in 2005, it was the composition of the triptych that I wanted to try.