On November 13th we acquired another roborovski hamster. He came, complete with cage, from a breeder who was retiring due to poor health. We christened him Zacharia, or Zac for short. Upon closer examination he turned out to be a she so we put 'him' in the cage with Ira and Gel to see if they'd all live together. We kept the cage in our room overnight so we could keep an eye on them. They play ok during the day but Ira chases Zac around the cage at night so we decided to seperate them.
This is similar to what happened with Reggie, Theo and Archie - there would be fighting in the night and we found blood in the bedding and Archie covered in cuts. We decided to seperate those as well so we now have 6 hamsters in 5 different cages.
 

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The film was slightly over long at around 3 hours but most of the time this wasn't a problem. There were a few scenes which dragged a bit but cutting these out wouldn't have shortened the film by much.

One nice touch was early in the film when we're first on the boat and a cage can be seen labelled 'Sumatran Rat Monkey' - a reference to director Peter Jackson's earlier film 'Brain Dead'.

The best thing about the film (apart from the impressive CGI) was the ending. The writers must have realised that the original version of the film with King Kong, the Empire State Building and the biplanes was such an iconic cinema moment which shouldn't be messed with. Some of the aerial shots could be bad for vertigo sufferers - they made my legs tingle during some of them. It was almost like being up there yourself.

Back in Coventry now. The house was so cold when we got back, the toothpaste was almost solid in the tube - it was really difficult to squeeze any out. The house doesn't have any central heating, only storage heaters which only come on at night. To stop the hamsters from freezing, we had to plug in an electric heater to warm the room up for them.

Christmas was good - we drove up north to visit our parents. This meant we had 2 christmas dinners, which was nice.

Thankfully, unlike the moron who wrote the review for the 'Addict' magazine (given away free in Odeon Cinemas), the film makers knew that the book was written by C.S Lewis and not Lewis Carrol! Also thankfully, they stayed faithful to the story and didn't feel the need to move it to America or to attempt to modernise it - an earlier aborted attempt to make the film did just that and had Edmund asking for Cheeseburger instead of Turkish Delight.
The film was reasonably well acted and the animals voices seemed well chosen, especially Ray Winstone as Mr Beaver and Liam Neeson as a suitably majestic Aslan. The film was a bit slow starting but worth watching if you liked the books. Hopefully they'll continue to make the other 6 in the series.

My last day in work this year. I'm really looking forward to the week and a bit holiday. We were supposed to finish work at lunchtime tomorrow but my travel card expires today and I can't be bothered paying to come to work for half a day so I booked all of tomorrow off as a holiday.
I've had more trouble than usual doing my Christmas shopping this year, probably because by the time I've walked to the shops from work I only have about 40 minutes shopping time. It's made casual browsing a bit hard and as a result it's taken me much longer to do it this year - I've still got one present to buy tonight!
Ah well, that's nearly it for another year. The run up to Christmas has been a bit more stressful this year - partly shopping problems, partly the car dying. Hopefully the holiday itself will be a bit more relaxing.

On last nights Mark Radcliffe Show on Radio 2, he had Badly Drawn Boy as studio guest and coversation got onto the subject of tribute acts. It started off with the possibility of a Showaddywaddy tribute act called 'ShoddyWaddy' and soon got more surreal as listener suggestions started arriving. Somehow, it ended up with joke racist or fascist bands. Mark admitted that it was in poor taste and he probably shouldn't be doing it but went ahead anyway. Some of the funnier ones (or at least, the ones I can remember) were: Ku Klux Klannad, BNP J Harvey, Far Right Said Fred, Barry White Supremacist.

Berry Wine

This used the berries we collected in the autumn, along with some plums to increase the fruit level to around 3½ pounds.

• 2½ pounds elderberries
• ½ pound blackberries
• ½ pound plums

The fruit was washed in a metabisulphite solution before being boiled in a pan with 4 pints of water and 1kg of sugar. The mixture was poured into a fermenting bin to stand for a few days. 1 teaspoon each of pectin enzyme, yeast nutrient and brewing yeast were added. The fruit mixture was then sieved into a demijohn, a tin of grape concentrate and water was added to take it to 1 gallon.
After a few weeks a thick sediment had formed so the liquid was syphoned into a clean demijohn and the volume was topped up with water - actually 200g sugar dissolved in water because the mixture was tasting too 'dry'.
A month later and fermentation had stopped. The wine was tasted and seemed ready for bottling. Wine stabiliser was added. After leaving to settle for a few more days, the wine was decanted into clean sterilised bottles. It's supposed to have several months to mature but I think I'll try a bottle over Christmas.

Jam Wine

This was more of an experiment. I used 3 jars of jam to provide the sugar and fruit content (plum, blackcurrant and strawberry jams), and added 2 teaspoons of pectin enzyme. No extra sugar was added and I used bakers yeast instead of brewers yeast to stop the alcohol content getting too high. Unfortunately I only got 4½ bottles out of it because so much sediment formed in the demijohn.

Earlier today, a truck appeared to take away my old Rover Metro. Nicknamed Lasagne (from the number plate), I'd had the car for 3½ years but it was becoming increasingly unreliable. After being broken into by possibly the most inept car thieves in Coventry, the steering column was left at a funny angle (they managed to break into the car but not start it - they were probably confused by the manual choke). More recently, the starter motor had become temperamental which led to a push start in the Tesco car park.

I graduated last summer (MSc Computer Science) but the photo developers lost my Dad's film so I didn't manage to get any photos until recently (thanks to Phil and Janet who both sent me theirs).  

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Every friday in work, at around half past 10, the fire alarm is tested. This morning when it went off at 10:28, everyone thought they were simply 2 minutes early and stayed in the office. After about a minute the alarm was still sounding so we decided an office evacuation might be a good idea. At least it wasn't raining.
It turned out to be a problem with the alarm panel (they couldn't get the alarm to switch off) rather than a 'real' incident.