The Musings of a Red Dalek

The Musings of a Red Dalek http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/ My personal weblog with the usual stereotypical posts about life, uni, the news, politics and technology. But I do try to make it fun too! en-gb Nucleus CMS v3.50 © Dominic Self 2004-2010 Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://dominicself.co.uk/images/graphics/reddalek.gif The Musings of a Red Dalek http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/ <![CDATA[How to recover files from corrupt Norton 360 backup disks]]> http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/09/how-to-recover-files-from-corrupt-norton-360-backup-disks http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/09/how-to-recover-files-from-corrupt-norton-360-backup-disks stop right here. This blog post isn't meant for you. The only reason I'm putting this out there is because it took me two days to figure it all out for myself, and although certain forum posts found through Google helped me along the way I've not yet seen any comprehensive guide to recovering files from corrupt Norton 360 backup disks. It certainly would have sped things up

So, if anyone else finds themselves in the same situation, this is for you!

Here's the background. A couple of days ago, a relative inadvertently wiped the data from her PC. Although she had a three-DVD set of a Norton 360 backup, they were refusing to restore anything and Norton's technical support were - apparently - less than helpful. (Judge for thyself.) I didn't want to poke around the PC, since I'm not a data recovery expert and didn't want to overwrite anything, but did bring home the DVDs to have a look if anything could be salvaged.

This is a sample of what was on the disks:

Useful?

There didn't seem to be anything actually wrong with reading from the disks, but the backup consisted purely of extension-less alphanumeric files arranged in various folders. I tried running both Norton 360 itself and Norton's 'Portable Restore Utility', but they both reported that the backups were essentially empty. It seems a crucial database file was missing from the disks, and for a while I thought there was nothing more to be done, at least without Norton's decryption algorithm.

However, after searching about some more, it turns out that these backup files were simply the original files but without their file names or extensions! (So much for 'encryption'

)

So, as promised, here's how to restore at least the file contents:

1. Copy all of the backup files into one folder on your hard drive.

2. Download the supremely excellent TrID, by Marco Pontello. Note: for Windows, and I'm kinda assuming you are a Windows user here, given the circumstances, you'll need to download both the Win32 zipped package and the 'TrIDDefs.TRD' package of file definitions from the bottom of the page.

3. Extract both of these zipped packages into the same folder housing your backup files.

4. Open a command line window at this location. Note: on Windows 7, the easiest way to do this is by holding down the shift key as you right-click on the folder. Then select 'Open command window here'.

5. Type 'trid * -ae' (no quotes) and press enter.

At this point, TrID will run through all of your backup files and attempt to restore their extensions. If you have a large number of files, this may take some time, but it should be obvious that it's working:

TrID running

And that's it! Once TrID has finished, you should have your files back - albeit without any useful names or folder organisation. Still, a mammoth filing task is surely slightly better than losing it all forever

P.S. I really don't recommend you use Norton 360 as a backup solution...

P.P.S. A minor point, but yay once more for Windows 7! For a task like this, little things like grouping and moving files by certain criteria are just extra-easy.

P.P.P.S. If I do get any payment for this, I will definitely be giving some to Marco Pontello, promise.]]> Technology http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/09/how-to-recover-files-from-corrupt-norton-360-backup-disks#c Wed, 1 Sep 2010 01:18:06 +0100 <![CDATA[Goodbye, gospel music]]> http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/08/goodbye-gospel-music http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/08/goodbye-gospel-music

Selfs (1989-1995 models)

Tash left yesterday to live in Paris for a couple of months with Beth - accompanied by some of the largest luggage I have ever seen in my life. (Who is going to be there for late night tea chats now, I ask you?) So, partly in farewell, we've been doing quite a lot of extended family things over the past week - lunch with Leonard, Carolyn's amazingly tasty roast, Grandma's 'tea' (and, yes, now's the time to draw the obvious connection between these things) - although Tash had already escaped by that last one, so I hope she was able to, um, afford some food of her own instead

Some more old family cine film has also been resurrected on DVD, so we've also been marvelling at footage of my mum toddling into the sea with the help of a ~~maid~~ nanny. Very cute, and also very spitting image of Tash to a scary degree.

As for me... I'm in a bit of a temporary limbo for a week or so until I find out whether my next project is a goer. Plenty of time for the thrilling final season of BSG, then! And also for avid reading of Sophie's new blog from the US, which is written at the level that I sorta wish my own blog could be written at - particularly her latest post on immigration. Well worth a look.]]> General http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/08/goodbye-gospel-music#c Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:13:52 +0100 <![CDATA[And on a moonlit night he plays a magic flute in the sky...]]> http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/08/and-on-a-moonlit-night-he-plays-a-magic-flute-in-the-sky http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/08/and-on-a-moonlit-night-he-plays-a-magic-flute-in-the-sky Back To The Future with dad and Katie. What fun! Indeed, it has just inspired me to prepare a tall glass of chocolate milk for myself - which, as everyone knows, is the sure-fire prerequisite to approaching attractive 1950s American girls in chrome-plated suburban diners and successfully asking them to the dance. Fantabulous!

(Of course, and here's the weird thing, if I had to travel back in time to make sure that my parents got together I'd be round about the right time to go see that film in the cinema on first release. But then 1980s Britain would hardly be my first choice of time-travelling destination... [cue predictable 'I wish the same could be said for David Cameron, eh?' witticism. Aha. I'm here all week.])

Anyway, Back To The Future was a generous DVD loan from Paul last night at Abbi and Paul's dinner party, also featuring Paul's brother and cousin. This was my first time visiting their lovely new flat, but the potential for many more parties has already been well observed, assuming that we all band together and get them some more cutlery. (I did wonder, on my way there, what would happen if I ran into one of those public transport knife-searching efforts clutching my little bag of knives, forks, spoons, wine bottles and After Eights... threatening much?) A lovely evening, and delicious food too

Now, holiday part #2: from Sunday to Thursday I had a wonderful time down in Deal with Oliver, Abi and Abi's friend Helen. It feels like we did a lot, even though it was hardly packed with strenuous activity, from seaside fish and chips to Jenga Truth or Dare. We watched All About My Mother and the adorable My Neighbour Totoro, as well as lots of Black Books and (my contribution) The Day Today, and just generally had lots of fun - especially during the now infamous 'why look, we're running out of lemonade...' vodka night. (Ahem.) And now, alongside photos, I have some tasty rhubarb jam to remember it by! Yum yum.

Little piggy pig

Always a good combination

Here we all are!

Oliver can never get enough praise for all of his cooking

Finally, I was grinning happily on the train home on Thursday after Tash phoned that morning with her A-Level results and the fact she's confirmed for Manchester next year. Hurray! Am incredibly delighted for her, as I am for all those who got what they wanted, and I wish you all lots of fun times ahead. Equally, I'm sure there will be lots of fun times ahead for those who were disappointed, even if it doesn't feel that way at the moment. Stick on in there

]]> General http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/08/and-on-a-moonlit-night-he-plays-a-magic-flute-in-the-sky#c Sat, 21 Aug 2010 20:42:09 +0100 <![CDATA[Croatia Strikes Back]]> http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/08/croatia-strikes-back http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/08/croatia-strikes-back Croatia, unsurprisingly enough, was hot and sunny and very restful! I feel under a bit of pressure to blog well about it, though, since we were sitting around one evening discussing blogs - as families do - when my own mother opined that The Musings of a Red Dalek has gone downhill over the past six months. A stab to the heart is what it was, I tell you, a bloody heart stabbing incident indeed. (Between mournful gasps, I countered that at least it was still going, and has comfortably outlived most of its contemporaries. So there.)

Croatia woo!

If you're short of time, this basically sums up my holiday

No Self holiday is complete without air hockey

Aww...

As you may have gathered, Tasha was having an eventful time doing other things this time round, so Katie and I held the generational fort with a raft of silly activities. These included a developing a serious addiction to German MTV - or Mighten Tighten Vighten, as it shall now forever be known - to the extent that I now have a bunch of German-only pop songs stuck in my head: an itch that Spotify sadly fails to satisfy. Wir war'n Geboren um zu Leben, mit den Wundern jeder Zeit!

I have to say, though, that acting as a family of four for a while did confirm to me that being one of three siblings is clearly best. I know this is controversial territory. Only children in particular can be rather militant in demanding equal rights these days, and I'm totally not prejudiced - some of my best friends are only children! - and liberal enough to believe if consenting adults don't want to share their toys that's alright, as long as they do it in private and don't try to teach siblinglessness in schools. But just one sibling still isn't enough. Don't get me wrong: Katie and I got on great in Croatia, as we (almost) always do, it's just that family mealtimes with five people are even more competitive in terms of getting a word in edgeways, and I rather enjoy this ~~constant shouting~~ healthy dynamism. Maybe even more would be even better...

Oh yes, and on the subject of me and Katie - we had a wonderful moment together in Split, after petulantly refusing to accompany our parents to see the interior of a church and opting instead to stay outside in the glorious sunshine. (It was borne of an immediate but nonetheless remarkably firm conviction that we rather liked our own shoulders, thank you very much, and weren't about to cover them up without a more enticing incentive than, um, the interior of a church.) Yet the moment they went in without us a pagan alternative suddenly turned up outside, in the form of a bunch of toga-clad, crowd-pleasing ancient Romans. Hurrah! No matter how much gold was inside that church, in the coolness stakes our team totally won.

Down with Theodosius!

Also: mum, Katie and I went rafting, which was lots of fun...

Row, row, row your boat

...and included an optional rock-jumping stop. Now, before I conclude on a photo of said rock-jumping, I must say a word about Katie's sneakiness. Because there's also of photo of her jumping off the rock - a photo I won't be blogging, because it makes me look stupid by comparison - with her arms outstretched and a carefree, isn't-this-fun look on her face. Great. I, on the other hand, am clasping my life jacket like a fool. But, ladies and gentlemen, we were told to do this! Honest! Katie just abandoned health and safety in pursuit of a cooler photograph - it's her that you should judge

Down, down, down, down, down

]]> General http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/08/croatia-strikes-back#c Fri, 13 Aug 2010 21:30:42 +0100 <![CDATA[Show me some sole]]> http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/08/show-me-some-sole http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/08/show-me-some-sole

Some of the shoe-buying team

(Oh yeah, Katie and I are building a Dalek btw)

This past week I've been working on another ~~UCL~~(funding cuts)-QPCS summer school, and although the kids were all pretty sweet it does leave you with a sense of relief when you can return to talking to people your own age, tempered by a fear that you will inadvertently start shouting at your friends to stay in line or stop talking. For this reason, amongst others, it was very very nice to unwind in the pub with Matthew on Friday night - Matthew being someone that I see often enough to feel in touch with yet rarely enough that I feel compelled to blog his name. And then last night I went to the wonderful Alice's birthday party, in which ~~Elizer~~ Eliezer and I were both mistaken for 23 (ahem), a corner of the room became dedicated to telling Jewish jokes and we all ate Emily's delicious cake. It was great, and slightly nostalgic, for I remember being the age when you gathered at someone's house for a birthday with vaguely illicit helpings of blue WKD...

Right, planned engineering work on this blog: I'm off on holiday to Croatia! (Again!) Have fun in my absence - and if you do find yourself without anything to do, try listening to a song about birds.]]> General http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/08/show-me-some-sole#c Sun, 1 Aug 2010 10:59:56 +0100 <![CDATA[PuntCon, yay!]]> http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/07/puntcon-yay http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/07/puntcon-yay

PuntCon: Geeks Welcome

On the Cam

Wonderful day on the river with friends both old and new - looking forward to next year already!]]> General http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/07/puntcon-yay#c Mon, 26 Jul 2010 00:02:47 +0100 <![CDATA["Oh, <i>another</i> level..." "Yeah. It's like Themes and bloody Sources all over again."]]> http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/07/oh-ianotheri-level-yeah-it-s-like-themes-and-bloody-sources-all-over-again http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/07/oh-ianotheri-level-yeah-it-s-like-themes-and-bloody-sources-all-over-again was a strange choice of word.)

Now, how's this for commitment? On Monday I started out taking part in a protest against the mass cancellation of Building Schools for the Future, which reminded me how very silly it feels to chant a slogan over and over again, but had to dash off before very long in order to *whispers* have coffee at the BBC. (Although it was actually tea, I think the whole story sounds better with coffee.) It was all in the service of stalking Bill, of course, who showed me round TV Centre (ooh exciting!) before we relocated to Bush House for the recording of Digital Planet. All great fun, and an opportunity to see Gareth Mitchell's stylish leather which is left cruelly untransmitted by the medium of radio, so I'm sure the gods of political chanting will forgive me. (Still, 'free schools' rather than rebuilding actual schools? C'mon, government...)

Still, on the topic of a strong and stable coalition, what was most lovely this week was that Matt, Caroline and I full took advantage of all being in London at the same time. On Wednesday, Caroline braved the journey to Willesden in return dinner - OK, in return for fish and chips - and then on Friday night I successfully gathered people together at Camden's Bar Gansa for ever-popular jugs of sangria and tapas. (And thanks especially to Saoirse for agreeing to come and making sure the political spectrum was about as wide as humanly possible

)

Much love to all!

Afterwards, Matt and I went back to Caroline's thrillingly central flat for a couple of bottles of wine, Utopian Writing reminiscing and - I have to say - some of the nicest political chat I've had in a while. There's nothing like a the calm atmosphere of late-night terrace drinking to get beyond party political point scoring and onto more interesting discussion - although I'm not sure the public are quite ready for the History of Political Thought theme park which, in a related free exchange of ideas - mum, Matt and I came up with over breakfast this morning. (Oh yes, and inbetween those two conversations, I got Matt onto his first London night bus. Hurrah!) Seriously, though. A theme park. For political philosophy. With rides. It would be awesome.

And then today, we three got together again for Hyde Park pic-a-nicking and Inception: a great watch, and likely to engender a good deal of existential teenage angst for years to come. (Now just don't go and ruin it by making dull sequals a la The Matrix, yeah?) One thing bothered us about the film, however, and although it's not much of a spoiler you may want to stop reading here if you haven't yet seen it. OK, so: if you were in a long-term 'dream' with just you and your partner, in which you had the time and ability to create the entire world around you, then why on earth would you create a bland city of scarily symmetrical copy-and-paste skyscrapers and no greenery at all? Not even a little park? (It's a lack of imagination which our theme park at least will avowedly avoid, you can be sure of that.)

Rise and shine!]]> General http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/07/oh-ianotheri-level-yeah-it-s-like-themes-and-bloody-sources-all-over-again#c Sat, 24 Jul 2010 23:55:55 +0100 <![CDATA[Nothing Comic Anymore]]> http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/07/nothing-comic-anymore http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/07/nothing-comic-anymore knew what you'd done..."

I could barely speak anymore – great waves of horror kept building, bigger and bigger, and then smashing over my head until I was struggling just to stay standing. She was still sitting on the sofa, motionless, frozen, numb from the shock. When I think back I imagine her eyes as pleading with me, apologising, begging for me to forgive her, but they weren't – they were just lifeless. Dead. All so suddenly it was over, and we both knew it.

Please! A little background.

We met on Omegle: a beautiful union of You and Stranger, or Stranger and You, depending on which way you saw it. "Hi!" – the exclamation mark did it at once – that effortless burst of joy which came so naturally to her. I signed off with my Facebook page, just in case, and the next morning there she was, new friend request, new lives together. She posted on my wall. I liked. She tweeted, I retweeted. Tagged you in a photo. Tagged you in a note. In a relationship? (I became mayor of her bed on foursquare.) In a relationship! Lots of love, xxx.

By the next iPhone release cycle I had moved into her place for real. It was a perfect little flat, just off Swiss Cottage, cosy, homely and with an unsecured wireless network from that nice Mr. Papucci next door. We would spend whole evenings together just snuggled up on her sofa, planning our futures together – and then our future together – feeling utterly safe from the bustling world outside. We had each other, and that was the only news feed story that mattered.

"Ding!"

My phone flashed lazily with a new message. I paused from my current task – stroking her beautifully long hair – just long enough to lean over to the table and pick it up.

"Hey, do you sometimes think we're too dependent on technology? xxx"

I laughed. "Nooo..."

She turned round smiling. "Well of course, I don't really. But sometimes I think it might be nice to try living without it all for a day or something, y'know, like our ancestors did."

"Yeah, that could be fun actually. If we went really primitive, just for a day, as an experiment."

"I mean, obviously I'm not saying go crazy."

"No."

"Not kill ourselves doing this!"

"No!"

"But like, there's something quite noble about the old days really. Take phones. We take this all for granted, but in the past people had to cope with much lower screen resolutions..."

"God yes. No HD screens for them – nothing even close. Sometimes they weren't even full colour! And polyphonic ringtones..."

I felt a little shiver of excitement run down her spine. "Y'know, my grandfather had one of those phones, or something even older! It was a Nokia, a 3310, yes that's right, and before he died he gave it to me to keep!"

"Do you still have it?"

"Of course! I think it's over in that box on top of the wardrobe somewhere. Y'know, the one I need a stepladder to reach..."

I laughed. "Aha, but I don't, shawty. I'll go get it for you."

The box was pretty heavy as I lifted it down, and covered in dust, so I put it down and began rummaging through it in the corner rather than spreading the dust all over the living room. It seemed to be a wonderfully eclectic collection of stuff from over her life: photos from her childhood, a signed Ethereal Fire gig ticket, a human skull from her gap year in Tyrgyzstan. ("It was all so exotic!" I remember her saying to me about it, "and like, so interesting! We got there just as the civil war was really breaking out, so there was so much to do – in their culture when there's a civil war it's traditional for the different groups to really go for each other, like really brutally, so there was always room for volunteers to pitch in, laying mines, shooting, executing prisoners of war... and they were so grateful, those guys we were with. It felt like we really made a difference to their world, y'know?")

Aha, there it was! Laying right at the bottom: a battered old Nokia 3310 lying peacefully at the bottom of the box, frozen in time. I reached in to pull it out, but then something else caught my eye... a little piece of card, tucked neatly between some photographs. There was nothing remarkable about it, and it looked innocuous enough, so I can't explain why I pulled it out other than idle curiosity. But I did.

And then my life fell apart.

Fade out. Background over. Back to the start.

"I... I... I thought we had something. I believed in you! I loved you, dammit, I loved you! But you kept this from me – you lied, lied about the most important thing... all those times you looked me in the eye you knew what you'd done..."

What could she do? I mean, what could she do? Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, she did at least try and make a go of it – taking the card weakly from my outstretched hand and trying, at least, to feign ignorance.

"Look, it's nothing... yes, it is a wedding invite, and yes, it is my wedding invite, and yes, Dave and I were engaged once. But you knew that, or near enough: I told you all about us, remember? I don't know why I kept it really, but it doesn't mean anything, I promise..."

She trailed off. I stared at her. She stared at me. I started to well up, and tried as hard as I could to stop the tears from coming as I forced out more words.

"Please. Don't do this. You know as well as I do that this is nothing to do with Dave, nothing to do with you being engaged... fuck it, I wouldn't mind if you had forty two children living in a shoe somewhere. This isn't about that. This is about you."

She looked down.

"Look, I just need an answer to one simple question."

She said nothing, but nodded slightly.

"This invite..."

It was so hard to speak. So hard.

"You... designed it?"

She looked up, avoiding my eyes.

"Well, um, I mean, I can't remember exactly, I think, maybe, maybe Dave did some of the work, I don't..."

"It was you. I can tell. It's you all over. Look, you've even included your website on it. This was you."

Silence.

"But... but..."

"STOP IT!" she yelled. "Yes, it was me. YES, OK, IT WAS ME. There, I said it, I confessed, I'm guilty. I designed that invite. I designed that invite down to the very last pixel. And I..."

I took a deep breath, and then finished her sentence for her.

"...used Comic Sans MS?"

"Yes. Yes. I used Comic Sans MS."

"For your wedding invitation."

"For my wedding invitation."

I breathed in deeply, again.

"And the WordArt?"

"At the time, it just... seemed... so... zany..."

By then I was already backing out the door, re-arranging the furniture of the flat in my head to be without my stuff, mentally packing up my Blu-ray discs and USB cables.

She remained still. And then...

"So, this is goodbye, I guess..."

"Yes. The end."

Now she was crying too.

"Look, I hope we can still be friends. Y'know, on Facebook and stuff. LinkedIn."

"We'll see."

It was all I could manage. My voice was cracking. I had to get out of there.

We was over. Finished. Sans serif, sans us.

And then I was gone.]]> General http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/07/nothing-comic-anymore#c Tue, 20 Jul 2010 17:04:34 +0100 <![CDATA[Right To Reply]]> http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/07/right-to-reply http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/07/right-to-reply To: macer.hall@express.co.uk
Sent: Tue 13/07/2010 16:55
Subject: Request for comment

Dear Mr. Hall,

I am writing in advance of publishing a short comment piece on my blog about your front-page article in today's Daily Express, headlined 'ONE IN 5 BRITONS WILL BE ETHNICS'.

In particular, I was wondering if you could let me know what you envisage the remaining 80% of British society as being composed of? I had always assumed that human beings were universal possessors of ethnicity, but clearly I am mistaken in this regard. Could you identify the key characteristics of 'an ethnic', please?

On a personal note, I trust you will understand that any critical tone which I may take in my coverage of you will be purely in the interests of sensation and the courting of controversy. So if, for example, I were to describe you personally as 'nasty', or 'revolting', or 'cowardly', or 'squalid' – or, indeed, all of these things and more – rest assured that this would all be in the public interest and should be taken in a warm spirit of open dialogue and discussion.

Wishing you a pleasant evening,

Sincerely yours,

Dominic Self

Sadly, no response from the nasty, revolting, cowardly and squalid man at the nasty, revolting, cowardly and squalid newspaper has yet been received. Shame.]]> News & Politics http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/07/right-to-reply#c Tue, 13 Jul 2010 19:40:15 +0100 <![CDATA[In which debates are held, dinner is served, tweeters dance and gender role reversals are finally undone ]]> http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/07/in-which-debates-are-held-dinner-is-served-tweeters-dance-and-gender-role-reversals-are-finally-undone http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/07/in-which-debates-are-held-dinner-is-served-tweeters-dance-and-gender-role-reversals-are-finally-undone ) Anyway! It was fun, is all, as was the fair itself. To mark the school turning 21, they had a little exhibition up on its history, which was actually quite moving when you consider the circumstances into which QPCS was born. Brent in the 1980s was touchingly ahead of its time in many respects, but the idea of a mass exodus of students from its schools is pretty chilling...

Yes, so anyway, after the fair I went to Joshua and Niamh's for dinner / drinks / rehashed debates about how to make a White Russian. All very enjoyable, except at about 11 I realised that I was dangerously close to just curling up on the sofa and contentedly dozing off, which probably would not have been greatly appreciated. So forcing myself to get up, I moved on to join the rest of my family at the Fox household's multi-birthday bash, a house which I haven't been to in years but which is instantly warm and comforting as a place where I spent many happy childhood days. (Including, let it be noted, the place where Tash and I were left to play whilst Katie emerged into the world.)

(You could tell it was a party of the great and the good, because everyone from Twitter was there! @charlottespeech, @giantlawnmower, @theyspellalice ... all real and speaking in more than 144 characters at once. Excellent. I think if @alextrafford had shown up, I'd have been so overwhelmed I'd had have to run into the garden at once in order to get reception to tweet about it.)

(Oh, and the chocolate cake was superb. Happy birthday, Jack and Charlotte!)

And then today was Saoirse's ~~eighteenth~~ seventeenth birthday picnic in Green Park, which was also suitably well attended by further delightful people: Saoirse, obviously, DF, Tash, Abbi, Paul, Sanna, Robert, Emily, Lucy, Alice, Jamie, Eliezer - have I forgotten anyone? - plus a very decent amount of food and drink. But after a great time, I still made sure I got home in time for the World Cup final - I know, weird, right? - reflecting an immense softening of my heart this time around. The tectonic plates have now shifted in our household, however, since dad has also joined in with the football - and as a result, the old reliable family quirk about the boys completely ignoring the World Cup while the girls sit around the TV has been forever broken.

(We'll have to come up with something new now!)]]> General http://dominicself.co.uk/blog/item/2010/07/in-which-debates-are-held-dinner-is-served-tweeters-dance-and-gender-role-reversals-are-finally-undone#c Sun, 11 Jul 2010 23:27:29 +0100