As I mentioned last weekend, summer has most definitely arrived. And this year, rather than make a quiet, reserved and somewhat stuttering entrance as we are mostly used to here in the British Isles, this time summer has arrived with all the subtlety of a 20-stone Glaswegian doing a bombshell from the topmost diving board at the public swimming pool. “I’m SUMMER! Deal with THAT ya great ponce!”
The weather people were at one point predicting that this could be the hottest summer since the heatwave of 1976, which I don’t think I remember on account of being a little too young, and besides, aren’t all the summers we recall from our youth sunny? Anyway, the last week would certainly seem to back up their claims. It’s been bearable in the sea breeze (which we tend to get a good deal of here), but in enclosed spaces it’s stifling. I spent maybe 10 minutes up in the loft of my wife’s parents new house chasing TV aerial cord, and it was like a sauna, I was literally dripping with sweat the whole time despite doing nothing particularly strenuous. I can only imagine what it’s going to be like for poor London commuters next week on the Tube - I’ve been on the Tube quite a few times in summer before and it can get close to 40 degrees at the worst times; when the wind of an approaching train hits you you find it’s just like a hair dryer in the face. I hear they’re installing air coolers now using the ground water they have to pump away all the time, but I’m sure it’ll take a while to get around the whole network.
I played with OSX a little more and have to try to get OIS and FreeImage working on it (for Eihort), but the heat of a Powerbook on the legs made that unbrearable. I’m doing some other preparation work now since we have the first Dagon maintenance release tomorrow.