Yes, now I am 35. Years ending in 5 and 0 are always difficult ones. This one makes me, now, well on the way to middle age.

Ah, well, there's nothing that I can do about it, so why worry?

While I was out walking yesterday, up around Northumbria with my friend, Ian, I realised two things: first was that Ian and myself hadn't been on a walk together since before I went to Edinburgh, more than fifteen years ago; second, that I didn't know how to clean the pipe of a water skin. These things are great in general, but can be tricky to clean, and you have to remember to empty the water and dry them. Last time I walked, I left some water trapped in the pipe and it went green. How to clean it?

So, here is my solution: cut a piece of cotton thread about three times the length of the pipe; about half way down tie a small piece (about 2cm) of hemp string or something similar; feed the end of the thread into the pipe — getting a couple of cm's is easy, more is hard; now, dribble water through the pipe. The point is that the flowing water removes the friction between the thread and the edge of the pipe, and slowly pulls the thread through; you just have to feed the slack. When it's all the way through, you can pull the string into the pipe; again, keep the water flowing or at least full of water. You can use the string to scrub the insides.

Fell across my old flat mates tour of Virtual Edinburgh today. I had some good times in the flat there, although it used to get into a real mess. This picture of the bathroom; the bit which says "if anyone stays in too long" largely refers to me.

Spent some time in Manchester; I went down mostly for the BioPAX meeting. They are hoping to use the formal semantics of OWL, within the BioPAX encoding, which the current versions do not. I think that the difficultly is going to be deciding what should be represented in OWL and where is should be used as a surface syntax.

It was lovely to see everybody again. I even got to buy some cake as I had a paper accepted last Wednesday.

I decided, yesterday, that I would let my brother in on the journal; in general, I haven't been telling many people about it. While I might have been hoping that the world at large was about to discover a Samuel Pepys for the new millenium, I wasn't entirely to give up the day job. Still, I might have hoped that my brother's first opinion hadn't included adjectives such as "pompous" and "muiresque" (as in, like Frank Muir).

Well, what can I say? Ever has the path of the true genius been strewn with the yapping and braying of those snapping at their heals. But I shall continue, I shall persevere and broadcast my words to the unfeeling ether of cyberspace that surrounds us!

Following yesterdays road scraping, I've decided to commemorate the occasion with a gallery, named after a band I've been getting into recently. So, I proudly announce the Bruise Armada. I will update it over the couple of weeks.

Well, having felt middle-aged in my last entry, today I feel rejuvenated and young. Just to prove that I can be foolhardy and idiotic, I fell of my bike during an overtaking manoeuvre of quite staggering incompetence. It's nice to know that I can still engage in fits of youthful over-exuberance. Kind of knackered the bike up though.

The image is included as my contribution to medical science. Ouch. Thanks is due to man I was overtaking, who helped me up; particularly nice, as I almost bought him off.