RAF Waddington Airshow

Last Saturday was the 2007 RAF Waddington airshow. As usual (well, as usual since I moved to Lincolnshire) I went along.

This year was probably the worst year so far due to the awful weather. While there was the odd clear spell it was mostly drizzle with occasional downpours (although nowhere near as bad as I'd been expecting given the forecasts I'd seen).

Annoyingly, because of this, I didn't get to do anywhere near as much photography as I'd have liked. However, I did manage to take some photos.

That said, it could have been worse. Sunday was the better day for the weather but over-night flooding is said to have caused them to cancel the second day.

RAF Waddington Airshow

Had a pretty good day out at the RAF Waddington airshow last Saturday. The content and mix of the display wasn't quite up to the usual quality this year although there were still some outstanding displays (the Typhoon display was the most impressive I've seen yet).

And, of course, the Red Arrows were as amazing as ever. I never get tired of them. Drawing a heart in the sky should be naff but, somehow, when they do it, it isn't.

Top Tip of the Day

Top tip of the day: if you have a ball stuck in a tree, don't try and get it down by throwing a garden rake at it, you'll then have two things stuck in your tree:

I am not a Doctor...

Via The Reg:

Former Doctor Who Christopher Eccleston has been "linked" with the lead role in a remake of The Prisoner, the BBC reports.

I'm a quite a fan of The Prisoner and the idea of Christopher Eccleston playing Number 6 does hold some appeal — although the idea of Sky One doing the remake does give cause for concern.

Get a Life!

I got an email the other day, I don't think I know the author of it. It read:

great site!!

but reckon you need to get out more, perhaps for a byte (?) to eat or something

That was it. If I knew the person it would make sense as a good-natured dig, but as an email that's totally out of the blue from a total stranger...

Leaving aside the obvious problems with the content, and leaving aside the fact that this person talks about my "site" without saying which site they're talking about (my main site, my astronomy site or my weather site?), what I find really odd is the false dichotomy that the email is based on.

It's something I've run into for most of my adult life, and for a large part of my teens too. As well as having the sorts of interests that most people have (eating, drinking, practicing procreation, socialising, shouting at the TV, etc...) I also have a whole bunch of "geeky" interests too. Astronomy and computers have been with me since I was a child, an interest in the weather is a pretty recent development and is still very much in its infancy. What is it about the "geeky" interests that makes people like the author of the email create that dichotomy that says "either you do normal things, or you do geeky things, but you can't do both?"

I've tried to get it a number of times but, mostly, I just can't get there. I can't understand what it is about some people such that when they see you have a passion about something they assume that's the total of you, that's all you do, that you have no life outside of that interest.

Just how insular do you have to be to think like that?