www.thegilmours.co.uk

To Michael and Veronica Hantke-Torres, who are expecting a baby this week!

Hope all goes well! We’ll be thinking of you both in our prayers!

I wonder why?!!

Actually… this is why… complaints about monthly expenses for additional services, wifi reading services, weather and news service charges, short battery life, ears breaking (literally “breaking news” then!), exploitation of chinese workers for an object costing £80 ($150) and, get this… Lack of Fur!

I want to laugh at the kid who bought one (or pursuaded his/her parent to buy one) only to find it had no fur! Idiot.

Perhaps they should re-name it the “furbee”? It sold well. Has fur. And still has some cult status. Indeed, we came across one in the bedroom of a chilean child recently and I was tempted to put in an offer! You can buy one in the UK for a cool £6. But it doesn’t have moving ears and doesn’t charge you for something you don’t want. Oh, hang on…

Rachel has a theory… one that I cannot discredit nor confirm to be true (for risk of revealling a male manipulation strategy)! Shhhh lads.

Last week i suggested buying two Nabaztags, one for our flat and one for the control room in Paranal.

For those preferring to stay in their burrows rather than dig deep, Nabaztags are wifi rabbits, which connect to your home wireless network and read/sing/move/flash (their lights…) to provide you with live RSS feed blogs/comments/news/weather/time/planetary readings. You can send messages to the rabbit and schedule them, so the recipient can have a morning greeting or a song played to them. Touching.

“Even better than that!”, the rabbits have ears which move! This allows them to do their daily tai-chi or to wave at you in the morning. Or the first signs of Myxomatosis.

So, given that Rachel is working away up to 10 days every month, but works in a control room with more connections than you’re average rabbit warren, you can understand why my suggestion might have been carefully considered.

Her response? “No, absolutely not. What a silly idea! FHM are right” (see title)

But i’ll let you know the result of my next suggestion to Rachel… “how about an integrated tent and mudguards for the LandRover darling?”.

A man’s world, contrived and expensive as it may be, is reassuringly comprehensible to the opposite sex when compared with with a talking rabbit. Phew.

Sorry we’ve not managed regular blogging recently…. its been a bit hectic.

Rachel had a 10 day shift in September followed by a conference in Germany and a visit to London for 5 days. On her return, we had a short break, resting at home, taking a day trip to nearby Los Andes and to a beautiful nature reserve just NE of Santiago called Yerba Loca (“Mad herbs”).

Then Rachel left for another shift, where she was trained on a second telescope, met the European government sponsors of ESO and got to track comets…. lots of fun!

She returned two weeks ago to the news that our Land Rover had cleared the last few bureaucratic hurdles. “Liberate the Landie” is a new game, to be released by DG productions in Chile and the UK next year.

Doug spent a few days sorting out the Chilean equivalent of an MOT, which included “Grand Theft Landie: Chile edition” (leaving it overnight with an emissions testing location), before we played “Cover a Landie in dust and dirt”, followed by “Fill a Landie with a Family” (at our Church Retreat) and finally, “Wash a Landie in the gutter” (see below).

Last week we had a visit from an astronomer friend from Edinburgh, Olivia Newton-Johnson (ok… without the Newton bit though physicists ought to appreciate that), who brought the scottish dreeeeeeeeich weather with her; it poured with rain for two days, which shocked the chileans but didn’t stop us from going out and going off-road on the poor chilean roads (aka rivers). Still, we had a great time visiting the house of Pablo Neruda, the former Chilean diplomat who later became a writer, commentator, poet and finally, a Nobel prize winner (under Allende). His house contained a fascinating collection of strange and not-so-strange artefacts from Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Chile and the sea.

So, back to the office this week for us both. The Gilmour Clan are pitching up at the end of the month for a 3 week holiday which we’re really looking forward to. We can hardly believe we’ve been here almost 11 months now! We feel like we’re finally settling down… just in time for another holiday! More details to follow on the above events…

The first company to trademark their logo in Britain was BASS, the brewery in 1876.

But this fact raises more questions than answers…
Why did they trademark a basic english word painted red? It turns out, the trademark refers to the red triangle, not the word… but why would we wish to associate a red triangle with beer (the legal case for a TM)

Secondly, why a brewery first? Was someone threatening to produce a copy called Treble, Alto or DoubleBass? (incidentally, I believe there is a beer named the latter now)

And what did the brewery pay to defend its right to the word Bass, or even stranger, the triangle? Was that in Shillings, Pounds or Pints?

For more information, see Wikipedia