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izmeinaI have definitely done quite the disappearing act over the last year and certainly the last few months.
It's just that now my Tweet Stone has become my main port key to Cyberia since the tablet died and I rarely slink upstairs to this Big Mac, it is easier to spend time pottering around and lurking online rather than squiggling.
I did get a Bluetooth keyboard for November Nanowrimo a couple of years ago but now the Y and Z keys no longer work. I mean it's not exactly like losing the S or the E but it still has the effect of being a speed bump on the road to the Green Zone.
I am sure that Y is in the bottom 10 of letters used in English but it is pretty indispensable when you want to talk about the days of the week, when you want to talk to someone or about a bunch of people.
As well as that, I worked out from timed squiggling blitzes that it is simply more efficient to write with a keyboard for 15 minutes than to hunt and peck on a phone only to get frustrated because my fingers cannot keep up with the words.
But aside from squiggling, the days have been filled with an assortment of temptations lately.
I am quite the culture vulture. Last night I went to the Half Mad Bar at the musuem. For the 4th time. Not to get drunk and disorderly but for a more mundane motive.
The museum usually closes at 5pm but they brought in special Friday night openings for the duration of the Wonderland exhibition.
The presence of the bar makes it an 18+ event which is precisely the point. I would rather pay a premium to go in the evening knowing that there will be no squealing rug rats or chaos monsters assaulting my ears with their squealing.
The Wonderland exhibition finishes on Sunday 23rd and it is also the school holidays now so next week will be packed with all the procrastinators channeling their inner White Rabbit.
There is also a heritage festival on during all of April. Tomorrow the extremely creepy hospital museum is open along with the old fire station in the city which is now a museum.
The hospital museum features old nurses uniforms, iron lungs from the polio epidemic in the 1050s, giant hypodermic syringes, old surgical instruments, old dialysis machines and some very rickety bockety uncomfortable looking wheelchairs.
Definitely the stuff of nightmares.
Today it was the turn of the Supreme Court. The different courts take turns doing Open Days every year and COVID also messed around with the usual routine.
The last time I darkened the door was in 2019. They did have an Open Day in April 2021 but the queue to get in was so long that I went to the little court building next door instead.
Today I was worried that there would be more of the same and had a Plan B in mind since there was no shortage of events to go to.
So i was very pleasantly surprised to find that I could just turn up at the main door with only 3 people in front of me at the security screening.
It was perfect timing for a demonstration jury selection in one of the old courts but unfortunately the microphones must have been off at the front because I could barely hear a word the judge was saying.
It was fascinating visiting the various courts, judges robing rooms and libraries. There was a room full of old wills on parchment paper in elegant copperplate script with seals and the works.
There are also rooms with bound transcripts of all the court cases ever heard in the place. I had seen some of the high tech stuff they have in the bright shiny new District Court on a previous tour.
They no longer have stenographers or typists in the court itself. They are in another room. Also a lot of transcripts are now made using voice to text software with humans checking for errors.
The clerk was explaining how it was in the old days with the reams of tapes and people employed solely to keep changing them and delivering them to the stenographers for cases where a running record was necesaary.
Nowadays any lawyer or judge can just listen to digital records of any case as wall as do searches on the names of lawyers, judges, defendants etc.
The tour followed the same path as last time with the final destination being the cells in the basement where defendants are held while awaiting trial.
But a bit of a tweek this time. They also had a prisoner transport van on display with one of the drivers answering questions.
No Black Marias just a normal looking van. A bit oversize and definitely the sort that the dodgy man offering kids candy would drive.
You would get claustrophobia just looking inside that van let alone being actually locked in there.
Last week I visited the Bell Tower on its free entry Open Day. Apparently they will be doing a proper peal for the Coronation of Charles who I will still always think of as Prince Charles.
Since there is an 8 hour time difference, I imagine that the live coverage will be around 8pm local time but I cannot see the bell ringers hanging around that late.
I spent an hour on Easter Sunday watching and listening to the bells. I don't think there are too many bell towers where it is possible to be in the same room as the bells so that you can watch them ringing. God knows what special soundproof glass they must use since the sound would be deafening.
But there is something hypnotic and trance inducing about watching them. not least because you can feel them in your bones as well as hearing them.
Some of the critters weigh 1,400 kilograms. The biggest weighs 6,500 but they don't have real ringers doing that one. Unlike all the others, it does not rotate but stays in the same spot and is struck by some electronically controlled clapper.
Since the tickets to get to ring the bells last Sunday sold out so quickly, I booked a spot in a couple of weeks time and get to be there when they ring the 6500 kg monster bell.
It's just that now my Tweet Stone has become my main port key to Cyberia since the tablet died and I rarely slink upstairs to this Big Mac, it is easier to spend time pottering around and lurking online rather than squiggling.
I did get a Bluetooth keyboard for November Nanowrimo a couple of years ago but now the Y and Z keys no longer work. I mean it's not exactly like losing the S or the E but it still has the effect of being a speed bump on the road to the Green Zone.
I am sure that Y is in the bottom 10 of letters used in English but it is pretty indispensable when you want to talk about the days of the week, when you want to talk to someone or about a bunch of people.
As well as that, I worked out from timed squiggling blitzes that it is simply more efficient to write with a keyboard for 15 minutes than to hunt and peck on a phone only to get frustrated because my fingers cannot keep up with the words.
But aside from squiggling, the days have been filled with an assortment of temptations lately.
I am quite the culture vulture. Last night I went to the Half Mad Bar at the musuem. For the 4th time. Not to get drunk and disorderly but for a more mundane motive.
The museum usually closes at 5pm but they brought in special Friday night openings for the duration of the Wonderland exhibition.
The presence of the bar makes it an 18+ event which is precisely the point. I would rather pay a premium to go in the evening knowing that there will be no squealing rug rats or chaos monsters assaulting my ears with their squealing.
The Wonderland exhibition finishes on Sunday 23rd and it is also the school holidays now so next week will be packed with all the procrastinators channeling their inner White Rabbit.
There is also a heritage festival on during all of April. Tomorrow the extremely creepy hospital museum is open along with the old fire station in the city which is now a museum.
The hospital museum features old nurses uniforms, iron lungs from the polio epidemic in the 1050s, giant hypodermic syringes, old surgical instruments, old dialysis machines and some very rickety bockety uncomfortable looking wheelchairs.
Definitely the stuff of nightmares.
Today it was the turn of the Supreme Court. The different courts take turns doing Open Days every year and COVID also messed around with the usual routine.
The last time I darkened the door was in 2019. They did have an Open Day in April 2021 but the queue to get in was so long that I went to the little court building next door instead.
Today I was worried that there would be more of the same and had a Plan B in mind since there was no shortage of events to go to.
So i was very pleasantly surprised to find that I could just turn up at the main door with only 3 people in front of me at the security screening.
It was perfect timing for a demonstration jury selection in one of the old courts but unfortunately the microphones must have been off at the front because I could barely hear a word the judge was saying.
It was fascinating visiting the various courts, judges robing rooms and libraries. There was a room full of old wills on parchment paper in elegant copperplate script with seals and the works.
There are also rooms with bound transcripts of all the court cases ever heard in the place. I had seen some of the high tech stuff they have in the bright shiny new District Court on a previous tour.
They no longer have stenographers or typists in the court itself. They are in another room. Also a lot of transcripts are now made using voice to text software with humans checking for errors.
The clerk was explaining how it was in the old days with the reams of tapes and people employed solely to keep changing them and delivering them to the stenographers for cases where a running record was necesaary.
Nowadays any lawyer or judge can just listen to digital records of any case as wall as do searches on the names of lawyers, judges, defendants etc.
The tour followed the same path as last time with the final destination being the cells in the basement where defendants are held while awaiting trial.
But a bit of a tweek this time. They also had a prisoner transport van on display with one of the drivers answering questions.
No Black Marias just a normal looking van. A bit oversize and definitely the sort that the dodgy man offering kids candy would drive.
You would get claustrophobia just looking inside that van let alone being actually locked in there.
Last week I visited the Bell Tower on its free entry Open Day. Apparently they will be doing a proper peal for the Coronation of Charles who I will still always think of as Prince Charles.
Since there is an 8 hour time difference, I imagine that the live coverage will be around 8pm local time but I cannot see the bell ringers hanging around that late.
I spent an hour on Easter Sunday watching and listening to the bells. I don't think there are too many bell towers where it is possible to be in the same room as the bells so that you can watch them ringing. God knows what special soundproof glass they must use since the sound would be deafening.
But there is something hypnotic and trance inducing about watching them. not least because you can feel them in your bones as well as hearing them.
Some of the critters weigh 1,400 kilograms. The biggest weighs 6,500 but they don't have real ringers doing that one. Unlike all the others, it does not rotate but stays in the same spot and is struck by some electronically controlled clapper.
Since the tickets to get to ring the bells last Sunday sold out so quickly, I booked a spot in a couple of weeks time and get to be there when they ring the 6500 kg monster bell.
