No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die

If I was filthy rich and had nothing better to spend my money on I would fly to London in December; The James Bond guns are up for auction!

From the article:

JAMES Bond's guns are going under the hammer at Christie's. The weapon which Sean Connery wielded in 1962 film Dr No is the star lot and is expected to fetch up to £25,000 ($61,705).

Other guns up for auction include Roger Moore's Walther PPK from For Your Eyes Only, which carries an estimate of up to £12,000. ($29,618).

The model from 2002 film Die Another Day is expected to sell for up to £7000. ($17,277) Timothy Dalton's WA2000 sniper rifle from The Living Daylights has a price tag of up to £6000 ($14,809).

Other lots include Bond girl Halle Berry's Beretta Cheetah handgun from Die Another Day (£5000 - £7000 ($17,277 - $12,341), the midget Nick-Nack's Derringer from The Man With The Golden Gun (£3000 - £5000 ($7404 - $12,341) and Tanaka's Gyro Jet gun from You Only Live Twice (£3000 - £5000 ($7404 - $12,341).

How cool would it be to have those guns! I'm not a gun fanatic by any stretch of the imagination but having those in a display case in the house, to pull out and pretend you're a covert agent when no one is around would be incredible.

Alas, I won't be going to London and I won't be buying those guns. I don't have £61k just laying around.

But I'll still pretend to be Bond when no one is looking...

Hat trick - Somafm.com

Sometimes you want to have some background music playing - nothing that requires you to actually listen. If you haven't heard of somafm.com, take a peak. The have several steams going (my favorite is Secret Agent). It's a nice break from talk radio, pop radio or our CD collection.

Study Pics

Some of you have asked where the photos of the new study are. This morning we put the finishing touches on the furniture placement and this evening I took some snapshots. It looks a lot different with artificial light than with natural night, so I'm going to wait until the sun shines and snap another set.

We are really happy with how the colour turned out. We are still not sure if we like the doors (a pigment called 'lemongrass'), but that can be easily changed if need be.

We still have our cheap Ikea book case in here - we'd like to get something a little more classy. But with Tara in school again we'll have to wait until we find something classy and on sale. Or I could get off my butt and make one.

On second thought - let's wait for a sale.

[Updated - October 29th]
Here are the three pictures during the brief and sporadic sunlight today - I'm not sure if the colour change comes through or not but if nothing else they are nicer pictures than the ones above (and the screen doesn't glow quite as much during the day).

Trip to the barn

Tara and I spent the better part of the afternoon today at the barn. It's been a while since I have been there.

Tara rode around the arena on King while I talked to Sydney's mom on the side lines. I snapped a bunch of pictures, but the lighting in the arena on rainy days isn't handled too well by my subcompact Canon, especially with the halogen bulbs. Pictures with Tara moving come out blurry and noisy. You'll have to ignore both of those factors in the next couple of pits

The camera does ok without a lot of movement, but there is still a lot of noise in the photos. I'd like to borrow a nicer camera (perhaps even a DSLR) to see if the issue goes away.

Places I'm going

There isn't much new going on these days with us. We just finished painting the Study/Office/Computer room; it's a nice shade of olive green called "Grasslands". I'll post some pictures when we have the room setup.
Offtopic 1: If you are looking for house paint, you can't go wrong with Benjamin Moore paint. We have been getting ours at Expressions on King (sadly no web presence). We highly recommend them. The staff has always been helpful and the paint has gone on like a dream.
Offtopic 2: Who comes up with the names for paints? Do you need a degree to do such a job or just a dictionary?

To pass the time, I thought I'd pass along a few websites that I visit daily or semi-daily (this is a hyperlink document after all)

egullet: This isn't your ordinary culinary site. This is the place where professionals go to talk and learn. There have online courses on all sorts of things, thoughtful articles, and very very interesting forums. They take food seriously; if you want to become a member you have to write an essay on food. If you have a passion for cooking or baking or eating, this is one spot you don't want to miss.

Creating Passionate Users: If you write software, create a product, or provide a service that people use, this is a must read. It is all about getting people to love what you produce. Reading this blog makes me wish I was involved in software that was marketed to a wider audience.

Coding horror: This a blog about software - coding, methods and philosophy. It is geared towards the windows crowd, but a lot of his stuff is useful all over. I don't agree with 100% of what he says, but his points come across well and always make you think.

PopURLs: This site amalgamates the top links from a number of sites (digg, del.ico.us, reddit, flicker, metafilter...) into one handy site. When I want to see what is interesting on the web, or at least, what is popular, this is where I go.

Hmmm - that's all. My daily surfing routine includes several other sites (dilbert, foxtrot, xkcd, boingboing, slashdot, making light, joel on software, braidy tester, make, plus others), but I don't have time to go into each of those here...