As you can see from the picture, my neighbor, Bill, and I enjoy relaxing around a camp fire and solving all of the world's problems, while keeping a careful eye out for satellites passing overhead. You may also notice a recorder (a Zoom H2 Handy Recorder, which I believe is no longer produced) with which we are recording ourselves for the purpose of podcasting.

I have been an avid listener to podcasts for many years now and several people have told us that we should start a podcast of our fireside chats. Most everyone who has been with us for our evening chats have commented that they enjoy them immensely.

It's been a 2Cellos kinda morning, so I have been enjoying this and a good number of other tracks by the guys. I looked at my blog offerings and to my horror realized that I had not shared this gem to date.

Whole Lotta Love is, of course, one of the classic tracks by Led Zeppelin from their album Led Zeppelin II. At mumble, mumble years old, I am just old enough to remember when it was the primary theme music for Top Of The Pops.

As I approach the end of my first school year of driving my big yellow school bus I have some thoughts on the matter. I'm thinking of sending this into our local newspaper, so I'll write this in the style of a letter to the editor.

Dear local drivers,

As the driver of a big yellow school bus, I'd like to take a moment and thank all of the good, attentive and courteous drivers that I encounter on the roads around Dodgeville and Iowa county.

Image from Wikipedia page for ZX Spectrum By Bill Bertram - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=170050

I wrote about my first computer last month and it seemed time that I wrote about computer number two. This computer was made by the same company as the first, Sinclair Research. The computer was introduced with a cost of £175 for the 48K memory version, which was much more than was available in the family budget at that time. I had a hard time convincing my parents to get me this computer. In my favor was the fact that I had diligently studied programming (not just playing computer games) on the ZX81 and found a friend who was willing to buy my ZX81 from me.

So, lovely daughter number one is studying to be a graphic artist and has spoken on a number of occasions about her desire to illustrate books. Being the helpful kind of dad that I am, I suggested that she start out by illustrating my blog with some of her classic cat pictures.

Today I am delighted to report that she has delivered the first of the promised cat pictures and so this blog post is just a thinly veiled excuse to publish one of them.