The Barnum Effect

It's official - I'm going grey. Evidence? One 15cm hair, grey from stem to stern. Using average hair growth rates, I calculate I've been greying for somewhere between 12 to 15 months. I wanted to measure the grey hair which is the only reason I pulled it out. I certainly won't be pulling out any more as 4 good brown hairs were sacrificed in the process. Deep meaningful and profound thoughts on the occasion of this momentous discovery escape me, which I'm sure is a sign of incipient... now then... what's the word... oh yes... I've got it.... senility. Now then. What was I talking about?

Last night's episode of the Antiques Roadshow ( Series 35, Episode 13, Stowe House ) featured an autograph album containing signatures collected at a garden party held at Windsor Castle for Victoria Cross winners. One of the signatures that militaria expert Graham Lay picks out is that of William Boynton Butler . Transcript: "We've got one here for W. B. Butler, West Yorkshire Regiment. Now he was in charge of a mortar, in the trenches, during the first world war, and accidentally the lever of one flew off, and it was in danger of exploding. So quickly he took the mortar, put it in front of him, turned away from all the other troops that were behind him, and said "Get out quick" and they all rushed to safety. And when they'd gone to safety he threw it over the top of the trench and it exploded instantly. So he saved all those lives, and again for that he was awarded the Victoria Cross."

I've been using XtraNormal to produce animations for the last nine months. Their slogan is "I f you can type , you can make movies." This was my first effort using the Create facility on their website : After that I switched to the XtraNormal Desktop product, and have since published 28 animations which collectively have had over 18,000 views to date. This is one of my recent efforts: I start with the basics - dialog and camera angles. Then iteratively I add expressions, gestures, character movement, noises and so on. I'll play the animation frequently as I go along, in order to tweak the dialog and timings. Once you press the play button you have to wait for the program to render the animation. Every time you make a change and press play that rendering process takes a bit longer than it did before, until you find yourself waiting several minutes before the animation starts playing. The only cure is to close and re-run the application (which itself takes a