the heretic genetic algorithm

The trip along the South East coast revealed a country's edge that was giving up and falling over. Brighton's a faded old happiness smelling of the sweet sugargrease of many donut stalls. But nobody is swimming in the sea - even with the sun beating down - and the pebble beach shelves hard into a pressing mass of empty molten-glassy water. Swelling under the glittery heat. Pushing back against the swell of people.

Travelling east from this jewel of the coast, civilisation expires gently into the water, rolling down to the dirty kerbstone of the not-cliffs into an oily sea. Scattered low-pressed dismal towns of unpainted fences and burgeoning drug use, elderly and young alike. Even the duolingo of Newhaven's centre ville is the last gasp before the rolling downs and dropping lands of the Seven Sisters - beautiful, yet corralled as tourist land and sanctioned extraLondon countryside.

The grim psychogeography of Beachy Head belying the bright snake rivers and snowy cliffs.

And into Kent - Cinque ports, high weald knifefolded wooded wilds. And the press of the ocean against its sea walls and grimey forts.

Photos - mostly Dungeness

New photos:

http://www.cybermule.net/photo/

Let me know if there are any broken links - the cat's been camping on my laptop :/

Desperately trying to sort out my various bits of virtual real estate so I can catch up on three years of backdated photo posting. I have a new webspace, which I've started to build up. Need to clear the old one, though, and everything is in a pickle from being left for years. Arse.

Also on an emotional rollercoaster of a job application. More on that another day. Distracting myself with OTT work generally hides the problem, at least in the short term, so here we go:

( Kent trip )

Anyhoo, files have nearly finished moving across the ether, and I should go to bed soon. Off I go...

I like to start a break with a bit of a tidy up. Especially when that gets rid of the mountain of bits of paper that have been obscuring my desk at home for weeks now. I've improved the layout of my room - there's a new bookcase to give some nursery space, and my dad's set of shelves is now on my desk, which I'm really pleased with.

Other than that, from now on I'm limited to one useful chore around the house per day. The only exception to that is anything to do with plants or photos - I can do as much as I want there as they're both relaxing and sadly neglected right now. It'll be good to catch up.

Basically, I don't have to go back to work until the 23rd. Woot!

One thing - I want to get myself a cheap printer. Colour would be nice, along with low running costs (although I'm not going to print much). The crunch is that it needs to work with Linux (specifically Ubuntu). This is the sort of thing I hate organising with Linux, so if anyone knows one that will work...

We had our first ante-natal class yesterday. Along with the expectant couple from hell - they've had sickness, diabetes, waters breaking, separating pubis, wrong shaped coccyx, and the local nappy scheme didn't cover the expensive american nappies they'd had their eye on ;) Seriously, I've been blessed with an easy pregnancy, and I really do have sympathy for them. But some people just seem to be disaster areas that you can spot coming...

My mum's still ensconced in hospital. Which is great, because as she's now one week clear of any vodka consumption, she's actually reasonably pleasant company. Physically she's knackered - she can't even sit up of her own accord. If I were more religious, I would say that that sort of alcoholism is a demon possession - it sucks you dry of everything, then just re-animates you into a vicious banshee. Here's hoping it'll last a couple of months. Wouldn't it be great if she were sober for the birth of her first grandchild?*

* I know that this is probably hideously unrealistic, but it doesn't seem to help anything much to assume the worst is going to happen, so I'm just going to hope for the best