Opps On My Back Again :/ (by sarah)

I realise that I haven't actually blog that I'm pregnant yet but hey I'm pregnant and scatty!

But mainly this post is about how I ended up once again flat on my back surrounded by concerned by people wanting to call an ambulance - as to what happened I'm not entirely sure :/ We'd gone to the farm shop to have ice-creams and for Jean to play on the toys etc... I came out of the shop with an ice cream and bottle of water saw stars and the next thing i knew people where rolling me onto my back with mum shouting from a distance that I was pregnant and Jean telling everyone I was her mummy :/

My main thought was - oh no I've landed on the ice-cream Jean will get messy eating it now. Jean picked up the ice cream and after a bit of me explaining I was ok and would phone the midwife I was helped onto a chair the shop people bought out for me - along with more water!

Jean then handed me the ice-cream because me and the baby would need it now.

A phone call to Alaric got me the phone number I needed but I have to say thought processes where being a bit fuzzy - so mum ended up phoning and explaining I was seeing stars.

And so poor Jean was whipped off the toys and we where in the care heading to Stroud Maternity. We picked up Alaric and my notes on route (as we had to almost drive past the house anyway plus I wanted him there as I knew I wouldn't remember stuff).

Blood pressure is great and there was not protein in my wee - yay! This was a major concern after the whole hypertension and pre-eclampsia thing from before. I have however had a bad stomach which is why drinking the amount of water I was wasn't enough to keep my hydrated :/

Also they said they had had several girls in at this sort of stage in the pregnancy passing out and they where all fine too - it appears to be the weather!

Especially as we all had headaches but no temperatures or anything. Apparently the body goes down hard with anything and everything before 16 weeks as it's still forming the baby and that's all it's interested in - after that it's just growing so your body starts caring about you again.

But I'm on rest again for a few days and if there is no improvement in 24 hrs I have to go back etc...

I hate finding myself on the floor surrounded by people wanting to call abulances :/ But thanks guys (on the off chance any of you will ever read this) and thanks to the Primrose Vale staff and sorry we didn't tell you to come and get your chair back.

Syntax diagrams (by alaric)

I've always liked syntax diagrams as a way of describing languages. They make it clear what options are legal in any given situation.

However, drawing them by hand is tedious, so after a moment's thought, I realised it would be pretty trivial to design a reasonable layout algorithm to generate them automatically.

And so, on a train journey, banterpixra was born!

It's quite simple. It takes a BNF-esque grammer, encoded in s-expressions like so:

(rule
 . (choice
    rule-label
    literal
    (seq "(elidable" " " literal ")")
    (seq "(optional" " " rule ")")
    (seq "(zero-or-more" " " rule ")")
    (seq "(one-or-more" " " rule ")")
    (seq "(seq" (one-or-more (seq " " rule)) ")")
    (seq "(choice" (one-or-more (seq " " rule)) ")")
    (seq "(optional-choice" (one-or-more (seq " " rule)) ")")
    (seq "(comment" " " literal " " rule ")")))

...and it turns it into a nice syntax diagram, rendered as an SVG file. I found producing an SVG to be a very easy way of generating vector images - SVG is quite a decent format to generate, and inkscape will happily convert .svg files to .png and .pdf from the command line, so it's easy to automate rendering.

The layout algorithm is quite easy. The BNF is parsed, and a tree of layout objects generated from the bottom up. Layout objects may contain other layout objects, recursively, and cover a rectangular extent of the two-dimensional plane. New layout objects are created at the origin, and then the parent layout looks at the sizes of the child layouts within it, and relocates them to appropriate locations within itself. When the layout object tree has been generated, it's processed top-down to generate actual SVG. Each different type of layout object renders its children recursively (unless it's a terminal, in which case it just renders itself at the chosen location), then it adds the arrows and lines that join the children together.

That's really all there is to it.

The output is quite decent, if your browser supports SVG!

Convince Alaric to let the Drs Put him under the Chop (by sarah)

Alaric has a... well nipple on the back of his head, the size of which only became apparent when we chopped off all his hair to try and deal with a dandruff problem. The dandruff problem turned out to be interesting as well but more on that later!

This lump on the back of his head has a distinctive look and I found a couple of smaller ones on him (one of which I had accidently mangled with a razor 🙁 ). The Dr says it's a variation on a wart but isn't that contagous but that it should be removed - doesn't have to be but should be. It will really need a scalpel taken to it as it is too large and fleshy to be frozen off and it simple wouldn't get it all.

Any way - due to the horror on Alaric's face the DR said he could think about it - I think it should be removed - help me convince him

You can’t get the staff these days! (by alaric)

We've got houseguests over, and we left them at home while we went for a walk in the countryside.

However, when I got home, I found they'd decided to go to Tesco many hours previously, and had gone off leaving:

• Jean's rabbit outside in his run
• The shed unlocked
• The front door of the house wide open

When asked why, they said "Oh, Barbara (the next door neighbour, my aunt) was around"...

Had it not occurred to them that Barbara might decide to go out herself, and is not supposed to be responsible for locking up our home? Or that Barbara might not actually take it upon herself to guard our open doors from passing opportunists, and sit watching, but might have her own things to do?

sigh

Last Day of Reception Class (by sarah)

Jean has had a busy week at school full of end of term activities and now it is the last day! It seems amazing that she is at school let alone finishing her first year!

We got her ready this morning with her thankyou cards for the teachers and some oreo cookies and jelly babies (they where going to have home made banoffe cupcakes but the power didn't come on until late yesterday so that was a no go!).

Then this afternoon was the end of year celebration assembly in the village hall - it was sweet watching the years sixes (about to leave and go to big school) go over the highlights of the year and it reminded me just what a lot of stuff they had packed in!

But then came the Prize Givings and the first person called for the Ray Tortenese Competition was Jean! So we now have a shiny trophy cup (for Class One) sitting on the bookshelf next to a citificate and she got lots of other goodies too like a gardening book with an inscription to her in and lots of run recyclables like purses made from old juice cartons!

Jean didn't realise what was supposed to happen though so had to be encouraged to go up on the stage! Then she is so small and the prizes relatively big to her that she looked a bit swamped until help came along in the form of one of the year sixes!

She didn't know what it was about until it was explained to her and she stood on stage looking all wide eyed and bewildered - however since it was explained she hasn't stopped talking about it and how she didn't know she was going to win!

So yes I'm being a gushy parent and probably too proud especially when I think she wont be five until the end of next month!