Digging, Hacking and Tweeting

On Tuesday morning I finally got round to weeding and digging over the little strip of front garden I have. The next day I felt very stiff, no doubt due to using unaccustomed muscles. There was a forecast of rain for the afternoon, and I was thinking of sowing some grass seed, but the rain never came, and it has remained dry since. I suspect if I sowed the grass seed in the dry ground the pigeons would soon have it, so I'll wait for some rain.

Yesterday I had an email fron Vodafone saying they were sending me a SIM card. This was odd since I've never had any dealings with them. I deleted it as spam. Today I received the SIM card. It says "We're delighted to enclose your free SIM card and details of the Vodafone TopUp and Get International Freebee you selected." But I've never "selected" any such thing. I have an old pay-as-you-go mobile phone that I got from Virgin but have not used for over a year, and have no intention of reviving. I did think of emailing Vodafone, but their website wasn't very helpful and came with lots of warnings and popups, so I think it best to just ignore it.

My twitter account was apparently hacked a few days ago, and a message under my name was sent to a number of my "followers". Originally the message came from someone I follow and said "is it you in this photo" I clicked on this thinking it might refer to the photo of me with Ken Ham taken in Leicester in 2006 that was published on the Answers in Genesis site. However the link just led back to the twitter log-in site. I changed the password on my account, and the problem has not recurred, but it seems this sort of annoyance must be very easy to do.

I've now sent over a hundred tweets and have over 30 followers, though a number of them just seem to be local businesses in St Leonards that are no doubt angling for my trade. The most useful contacts I have made are with mathematicians who have provided a lot of interesting links, to websites and PDFs. I also had an amusing exchange with Bob Churchill, formerly of the BHA, about the type face "Comic Sans" which I use for the navigation links on the Mayhematics site, but he doesn't like. He wrote that we must be "aesthetically incommensurable", to which I replied that that must mean I'm rational while he is irrational (a mathematical joke for those not in the know).

An Afternoon Walk

This afternoon I took a walk along to the Arts Forum to have another look at the exhibition of paintings by Katherine Reekie "Artists on the Beach" which feature images based on well known works by famous painters like Matisse and Picasso, and sculptors like Moore and Gormley, against a background of Hastings images. It's quite a fun idea.

I went on to walk to the Garden Centre along the Bexhill Road to see if they have anything in the way of a compost bin. They only had two old ones with bits missing. I'm thinking of installing a bin by the front garden so that I can dig up all the weeds and compost them. It's getting rather overgrown.

I carried on walking to the Glyne Gap and then back to Hastings along the beach path. At the old bathing pool site I noticed that the seagulls seemed to have some small shellfish that they were dropping from a height to crack open, or else they were practising with pebbles. Further along the promenade a black-headed gull was flying along the surf line and repeatedly landing on the sea only to immediately rise again. Presumably it was catching something to eat.

Finally I went into a supermarket to top up a few things for my own larder. I ought to be getting out more regularly for exercise, but seem to be leaving it for days and then taking it all in one go.