:: top tip for successful recuperation

Keep taking the painkillers. The reason you're not feeling any pain is because the painkillers are working.

Yes, I got over-confident and cut down on the painkillers. This morning I took full doses of everything and lay very still waiting for them to kick in. The rest of the day I've been taking it very, very easy; reading, watching tv, sunbathing.

I had visitors: Richard and his wife (a lovely woman whose name completely escapes me for the moment), who are up from England for the festival. Richard's lived in New Zealand so he knew I'd be unphased by an unannounced visit, but his wife was astounded at how well I took it. "I'd be all over the place!" she marvelled. Yesterday John from work and his wife Penny and their wee dog Oz visited.

I also had a visit today from a nice young man who offered to replace all my windows for free. I said goodbye three times, but he was still talking when I shut the door.

I know I haven't gone through the whole hospital stay and what happened and so on. One day I'll do it, maybe tomorrow.

:: floral tributes

Just logging on for a minute before going for a walk, to post pictures of the flowers from Faye and Pinky. I haven't taken a picture of the bouquet Mother and John sent yet -- it arrived yesterday.


Pinky's basket. She actually ordered a bouquet because she thought the baskets looked "naff", but I think it's pretty. The pink stargazer lilies are my favourite flower.


Faye's bouquet. It came beautifully swathed in purple tissue and cellophane, with a big lavender bow.


It has some unusual flowers in it too -- I don't know what this is.

:: home safe

Just a quick note to say I'm back from the hospital and feeling great. I even went for a wee walk down the street to the library (which was closed); felt a bit woozy but otherwise ok. I spent most of the day lazing around in the sun, reading and watching TV. Faye and Pinky both sent flowers, which are gorgeous and fill the house with scent.

I'll write up the past few days over the next few days.

Linux Newbie -- in case I get bored.

:: Uh huh

Elvis Bust 'Weeps' in Dutch Town

"The tears you can see started at 10 o'clock. When you taste it, it's salty. It's a miracle," he said.

He would say that, wouldn't he -- he's a 50-year-old professional Elvis impersonator.

In other Elvis news, I was listening to Duchess of Devonshire this morning on the radio (or "the wireless" as she would no doubt call it) spilling the beans about her Elvis obsession. She denies being obsessed, of course but she IS. You can listen to it here.

I'm ticking things off my "to do" list with great speed. Now I just have to mow the lawns and that's about it, which is great -- I'll have the weekend free and the weather's promising to be good. Note to self: try not to get sunburnt. Bertie leaves for his little holiday in Dunfermline ("Hedgehog Capital of Central Scotland") on Monday morning.

A bloke who left work six years ago is up from England "doing" the Festival, and last night he popped in to say hello. It was quite strange, because so much has changed since he left. Lots of people have left, most of our department in fact, and of course we're in a new building. We've also had about five or six new editors since then. Spooky.

He's leaving journalism altogether, and Britain -- he and his wife are off to live in France.

:: nearly ready

I'm getting organised, gradually. Today I even wrote a shopping list. And a time has been set for Bertie's departure -- 11am on Monday. I'll pack his bags on Sunday. He has a lot of luggage -- a huge quantity of food, for a start, plus treat biscuits, towels, his duvet and sheepskin, some toys, a spare lead, a cheque for the vet in case he hurts himself, some videos, his Playstation ...

I went to the library today and got out some "light reading" -- The Wind Singer by William Nicholson, One for My Baby by Tony Parsons and something else ... a science fiction novel I think, I can't remember now. I ordered a couple of other books too, while I was there: My Lover's Lover by Maggie O'Farrell and Unless by Carol Shields. They don't have a marvellous selection at the local library, but if they have the book you want at another branch you can order it and they'll send it out.

I still have a stack of books to read at home. At the moment I'm enjoying The Snow Geese by William Fiennes. It's a wonderful yarn -- he follows the geese migrating from the south of the US right up to the north of Canada. He's excellent at drawing pen-portraits of all the people he meets along the way. And I've also started True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey, and The Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy. Oh, and Fifty in Fifty, a book of science fiction short stories I already had out of the library.

Piled up on the shelf, unread, are a bunch of books I got at the last review book sale here at work -- too many to mention. A novel, a couple of travel books, some philosophy, some popular science. The Snow Geese is one of them.

Time to do some work.

:: nee naw nee naw

We had a fire alarm at work tonight. First of all everyone ignores it, even thought it's deafeningly loud and shrill. Then finally, grumbling, everyone gets up and puts their coats on and plays follow-the-leader to the special fire alarm stairwell, which disgorges us on to the street by the garage doors. We're supposed to collect across the road outside Dynamic Earth, but no-one did.

It was cold and it was raining. We stood around for ten minutes moaning, waiting for the fire engines. They didn't turn up. Finally someone poked his head over a balcony and said it was ok to come back in. The alarm was still shrieking away as we pounded back up the special staircase.

That was the highlight of the evening, can you believe it? Very slow day. I got horribly wet on both morning and afternoon walks. I did some stuff on the computer (see pics below).

Er, that's it.

:: pix

Finally remembered to plug my camera into my computer and download some photos; ah the far-off days of summer....


No photo-trickery involved, the rapsberries really were this big.


Remember I told you about the bridges and the haar? Well here they are.




And here's Bertie on Blackford Hill the other day.

Finally, some floral studies, from the front garden:

St John's Wort (I think)


The rock rose


The rose climbing outside the kitchen window.

Computer Stupidities Here's one for Liz and Ken -- and anyone who's new to computing (you know who you are...)

:: last links

Here are the last few:

........
Bad Science "Be very, very careful what you put into that head,
because you will never, ever get it out." Thomas Cardinal Wolsey (1471-1530)

.......
Places of peace and power Photos of pilgrimage sites around the world.

..........
The Olympians By jove.

........
Nosepilot This used to be a beautiful hippy trippy, dreamy piece of animation. Now it's an angry, bitter artist's rant. His work was too beautiful. Too many people looked at it. And then he got the bill...

.........
And finally: Vedas and upanishads

...........
Enjoy.

:: deleting hocklinks

For a while there I was keeping a separate blogspot for my links, but I didn't use it much so I'm going to delete it. But before I do, I'll have a poke through and put the useful/interesting stuff here.

........
Greysweater.net because it's nice to get flowers Mmmm... the photolog.

.......
p h o t o g r a p h i c a . o r g Wow.

........
UBD E-Directory Street Search Now when friends and family move house I can track them down with ease.

The Best of Bread - Recipes Index I haven't baked any bread for a while...

........
WorldFactbook The CIA knows everything. (Or so we thought, naively, before 11 September.)

.......
UT Library Online - Perry-Castañeda Map Collection - Country and Regional Map Sites Brilliant, brilliant site. I love maps. This has historical maps as well as current ones.

.......
A List Apart: Practical CSS Layout Tips, Tricks and Techniques Might come in useful if I ever get round to a redesign (in between fixing the shed doors and painting every room in the house and putting in loft stairs and ....)

.........
harrumph! still crazy Another goddamned journal, with interesting photos, interesting links page, interesting life.

........
soygaucho.com My boss is an Argentine & has often told me about gauchos, cowboys of the pampas. This is a superb site, really worth visiting.

.......
Free Email Address Directory -- Not only web-based email but on-line storage, calendars/PIMs, forwarding etc and other resources.

.......
Kiwifruits New Zealand shop in London The temptation to immediately order 20 peanut slabs is almost overwhelming.

.......
OH LA! Oui! En francais!

Somehow it all sounds so much more sophisticated.

LES PETITS SECRETS DU MARIAGE DU SIECLE: "Il y a vingt ans, le 29 juillet 1981, le prince Charles épousait lady Diana Spencer, de douze ans sa cadette, en la cathédrale Saint-Paul à Londres."

Even poor old Céline Dion sounds interesting:
"Plus de 1500 fans ont fait le pied de grue dès l'aube devant la basilique Notre-Dame-du-Sacré-Cour à Montréal attendant que la chanteuse leur montre la création dont elle est plus fière : son bébé miracle, conçu par fécondation in vitro, après la découverte du cancer de René."

The English and Spanish versions are also online. Sigh.

.........
VICTORIA BECKHAM - OFFICIAL SITE! Strewth. I can't believe it's not a satire. So much purple ...

..........
the kat page I love these little games. Fluff the Kitty ... haw!

........
Geocaching - The Official Global GPS Cache Hunt Site Almost worth getting a GPS for ... looks like fun.

...........
kottke.org - home of fine hypertext products Another blog.

........
Patsy Cline: Patsified! A Celebration of the Legendary Patsy Cline! Crazy! Crazy for lovin' you!

.......
Aviation Safety Network: Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) transcripts Woop woop pull up pull up woop woop ...

........
- snapshot.auerweck.com - Peekshas, many peekshas

......
Les Photos de Villes How completely extraordinary. The French ... what are they like?

........
Worldwide Internet Music Resources: Song Lyrics; Libretti More song lyrics.

Songfile This used to have a searchable database with lyrics of more than 2 million songs, but I don't think it has any more.

........
Japanese Engrish Very funny -- but I think the funniest one is where someone has sent in a "haiku" from some Japanese stationery, mocking its silly English, and someone else writes in to point out that it's actually a Simon & Garfunkel lyric ...

..........
Matt Barrett's Greek Island of Sifnos Guide Next year ...

........
HowStuffWorks - Learn how Everything Works! This site is fantastic. I've just been looking at how USB ports work -- it's very clear and concise, with photos and diagrams.

......
Scottish words - illustrated Hilarious.

............
The Blue Roebuck will lead you into her World of the Goddess. May you share in Her ecstasy as you learn of Her many faces. In addition, The Blue Roebuck is happy to bring you Her Sacred Trees and the Ogham Alphabet.

Very interesting info on myths, lovely pics.

.........
George Eastman House International Museum of Photography & Film Great pictures ....

.........
Rescued Racers More greyhounds ...

...........
Linlithgow Canal Centre Ooooo -- this looks like fun.

........
:::::coolstop/2002::::: Coooooool sites.

......
Welcome to uComics featuring -- The Best Comic Site In The Universe! (It IS pretty good...)

.........
Guillaume Dargaud's home page I stumbled on this while looking for info on Antarctica. It has some fantastic photographs, many of which Guillaume provides in sizes suitable for downloading as wallpaper. He has an interesting little link where you can donate a bit to him via amazon.com if you do download any pictures.

The photos are stunning -- he climbs all over the world and has visited Antarctica four times, plus he's interested in all kinds of everything & has a cracking sense of humour.

........
HotSource HTML Help - Main - Tutorials and resources on HTML, JavaScript, Cascading Style Sheets, DHTML, CGI, Graphics Design, Ethics and Design, Publicizing and Promoting your Website, Frequently Asked Questions, and More from HotSource It does just what it says on the tin.

.........
laura Holder not com Another photographic weblog, this time New York.

............
Hunkabutta.com » » » A stranger's life in pictures Weblog with wonderful photographs, by a US techie type living in Japan.

........
Über: Better Than You, Daily. Magazine of some sort.

.......
McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Notes Toward a Restaurant Review for the Living Section of the New York Times Editor Dave Eggers, who wrote A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.

........
The Gazetteer for Scotland Names of towns etc.

...........
Bord Na gCon Irish Greyhound Board, the racing authority.

..........
Whitfield This place sounds absolutely gorgeous. Just the ticket for a relaxing holiday.

Pet Planet Or hey! We could go to civilised Europe, where people take their pets everywhere!

........
Operabase Wow.

The Aria Database - Information, translations, and MIDIs of famous opera arias for singers and music lovers Double wow and hurrah!

........
Welcome to the Embroiderers' Guild

.........
lantern waste: do you see what I see Tesserae's journal. I keep losing the link to this one for some reason, but it's interesting & well written.

and miles to go before I sleep More from Tesserae.

..........
Alex's paper airplanes I love the internet.

.........
Cat-Scan.Com Scan your cat! It's hilarious!

.........
DonationJunction.com Donate to good causes just by clicking on buttons ... it's easy and free.

........
File /asdfhjkl not found! Snort.

........
Love and Rockets I love these comics, I first read them around 1980.
More: The Unauthorized Love and Rockets Page ... this one has lots of artwork

.........
First Chapters from various publications:
First Chapters The New York Times.
Booknotes First Chapters C-Span (US non-fiction).
Guardian Unlimited Books | First chapters | First chapters The Guardian.
Washingtonpost.com: Style Chapter One The Washington Post.
Calendar Live - 'First Chapters' Archives Finally ... the LA Times.

...........
OK, that's the last 100 entries (less really, because a lot of links were broken). I'll do the rest at some point.

:: what is that strange fiery ball in the sky?

Mmm, yes, we had a day of sunshine that coincided with my day off. Sort of unbelievable. I made the most of it.

The morning walk was eventful in that first of all we met two lads who've decided Bertie must be cured of his fear of children, by them. They were excellent: they got off their bikes, ignored his wild barking and posturing, spoke to him gently and actually got him calmed down enough for me to get him on the lead.

Then we went down to the marina, where we met Lisa from down the road. She gave me a cigarette and we sat and smoked while her dogs splooshed about in the river. Bertie had copied them drinking from their favourite puddle, but romping in the river? No thanks.

Back home I mowed the lawns and did some very light gardening: dead-headed the roses and hacked off some blackberry infiltrating the honeysuckle. Had a long chat with Frances from next door. Then I went out the back and flopped down in my under-used folding chair with the crossword puzzle and a cold drink to soak up the rays.

Took the dog for a quick afternoon walk, then did some more lying around in the sun. Staggered back indoors much later, washed the dishes in a fit of shame (they were starting to smell) and was just contemplating what to cook for dinner when the phone rang. It was John -- he and Penny were coming to Queensferry to walk the dog, would l like to join them for a meal? Yes please!

So Bertie and I sauntered down to the agreed cafe, on the seafront. It's a new one, it has tables and chairs outside. It was busy, plus they were setting up a funfair across the road -- part of the Ferry Fair Week -- and the two dog-taming boys turned up, so Bertie was not a happy dog. John and Penny's terrier, Oz, on the other hand, was very well behaved, sat quietly under the table. We didn't discover until it was time to go that he'd been gnawing away on the furniture ... oh dear.

It was amazing how busy it was: the road was thronged with traffic -- including an annoying boy on a motorised scooter who droned back and forth in a "look at me" manner. At one point he was holding up some blokes on Vespas, who were beeping him: Hey, we've got real scooters, all right? Haw. And the footpaths were thonged too, and the cafe. Bertie got lots of attention -- a man with no shirt and lots of tattoos threw his arms around him and gave him a good cuddle: "There ye go, darling, ooooh ye beauty, lovely boy..." etc. Then he said, "Ye can tell he's no racing, he's fat." I laughed at that, because everyone else thinks he's really skinny -- only the experts can spot his lard-arse state.

So yes, that was fun. I walked J&P back to their car, at Dalmeny, and they gave me a lift home. At home I discovered a phone message from Fiona, who'd called to invite me to an Abba singalong! Wah! Never mind, I'm meeting her tomorrow (later today actually, as it's nearly 1am) at the same cafe as last night's meal.

Then Faye rang, and I talked to her for two hours! Blimey.

To backtrack a little, the weather was horrible on Saturday so I did go clothes shopping. I spent several sweaty hot hours at the South Gyle mall, ugh, but came away with good purchases, including a very pretty pink shirt and four bras. Four! My old ones were falling apart, literally.

Today's weather report: intermittent haar, hot and sunny otherwise. Some spectacular sights as the haar blanketed the river, leaving the bridge pylons poking out, the rest completely invisible. Then later on, after I started work, there was a tropical deluge. The skies opened and the rain thundered down.

I visited the podiatrist this afternoon for a follow-up on my insoles, she's pleased with progress and so am I. I thought last week they were horrible but my legs/ankles/feet/knees are so much better now. Everything just about is pain free, and when I don't wear the damned insoles I feel my ankles wonking around like dough hooks.

Oooh! Time to go home.

Weird website alert, before I go: I don't know if this is a piss-take or not.

:: make it stop!

The rain is starting to get me down. This morning was bright and sunny and hot, so I bundled Bertie into the car and went to Blackness, planning to mow the lawns when I got back. Fantastic walk, very peaceful. Just as we were heading back, the first drops fell.

By the time we got home it was raining steadily, with occasional torrential bursts.

I went to the supermarket instead of mowing the lawns.

Tomorrow, if the weather is still horrible, I'm going to force myself out to do some clothes shopping. A certain dog tore the sleeve of one of my favourite white shirts on Friday night. When I had a close look at it, it was actually worn quite thin. A lot of my clothes end up like that, worn thin because I'm so reluctant to shop for new ones. Some of my trousers need replacing too. So there's that.

If the weather IS good, I may go for a sail in the afternoon. I haven't been out for ages, and I want to try out my new buoyancy aid. The lawns can wait.

Then I'm doing a Sunday shift as foreign editor, 11am to whenever, 9am probably -- we've got early deadlines because of the festival. I've got one story lined up already, about a man in Bulgaria who's changed his name to Manchester United. His dog is called D. Beckham.

The paper's become famous in Bulgaria since our Moscow correspondent visited there and wrote a story about King Simeon. Here's what a Bulgarian acquaintance of the reporter wrote to him: "The day it was published, the Bulgarian Information agency, the National radio, Dautche Vele and probably some others radio stations gave it to he public. Next day all the national newspapers had some bits of you, or had published all the article. It could be read also on the main www agencies. The day after - today - I read in the "24 hours" newspaper some kind of "investigation". The author had interviewed some people from The Scotsman."

By contrast, an earlier article about Bulgaria focusing on the plight of dancing bears tortured by hot coals -- thrown in as a desperate space-filler on a slow news day -- evoked this response from A. Bulgarian: "I am sorry, BUT THIS IS A LIE!!! I do not know which is the sourse of this discusting libel, but the dance on hot coals is not played by bears. This dance is part of our nationality and culture, as well as the stripped skirts in your country. It is a part of our folclore. This dance is played by HUMANS, usually at our national holidays. We believe that with this spiritual ritual the evil forces will be sended off our lands."

It reminds me of how New Zealand used to be: amazed if anyone took a blind bit of notice of us overseas (apart from sport, obviously). And horribly offended if they got it wrong, of course.

Quite a good American greyhound site, with a discussion forum and articles: A Breed Apart. In one of the forums an Englishman mentioned that he walks his greyhound through central London without a leash. You could nearly hear people sucking their breath in! Is he mad? But apparently his dog is very well behaved. Maybe it's not a greyhound...

Later: On closer inspection, there isn't a post on any of the forums since 1999. Maybe there was a mass alien abduction of greyhounds and their owners.

:: good morning sunshine ...

... and good afternoon fog. Or rather, good afternoon haar. It came drifting in from Fife at about lunchtime, blotting out the ends of the bridges and chilling the air. It was also quite blustery, which is unusual with a haar and may mean it'll be blown away.

Weather gets to be very important when you have a dog -- nothing as dispiriting as glancing out the window at the rain/sleet/hail/fog and thinking, time for walkies.

We had nice walks today though -- met up with lots of Bertie's large fan club. Like Alastair, who works on the road bridge and has a Lhasa Apso called Jasmine. "No' so great when I take her to the pub." And Bridie from down the road with her short, fat terrier, Butch -- Bertie's scared of him but loves Bridie. Then there were George and Sheila, from down the road and around the corner. They have a corgi and a guide dog, because George is partially sighted. They live above what used to be a pet shop, and today they were telling me about how many shops there used to be, before the Scotmid supermarket opened. There were three butchers, three grocery shops, a bakery and a wool shop. Now it's all knick-knacks and tartan tat. And of course Scotmid is suffering in turn because now an enormous Tesco has opened nearby.

So yes, that was interesting. And then I got busy and swept up the dog hair and dirt littering the floors, and washed the dishes. A very suburban day.

I'd had very little sleep -- Bertie got up crying and carrying on at about 5am. I let him outside and he went out and started eating grass, so I suspect a stomach upset. He wouldn't come back in so I left the door open and went back to bed. I'd just dozed off and he came back inside grizzling and crying again. Argh! This time I ignored him. Today he's fine, after a slow start.

Work has been ok today, no major dramas.

:: wet wet wet

"A month of rain in just one day" says the headline, and yep, that's about how it feels. This morning when Bertie and I set out on our marathon walk (nearly to Kirkliston and back) the fog had lifted a bit -- you could see most of the bridges -- and the old lady we passed was optimistic. "Seems to be clearing up!"

But during the walk the thunder started to rumble, and the radio newsreaders spoke ominously of flooding in England. On the way back, rain started splatting down and basically it hasn't stopped since, though I managed to get Bertie out for his afternoon walk between showers.

The drive to work was hair-raising, great pools of water across the road in several spots. There was a bus behind me on the motorway, and in my rear-view mirror I saw it throw a gigantic wave up over a poor cyclist struggling along in the bike lane. I hope it didn't knock him over. The next pool I drove through swept up over the bonnet of my car on to the windscreen -- scary!! I'm not looking forward to the drive home.

:: how weird is this?

Synchronised swimming solo event. Did I miss something? Synchronised swimming is strange enough, but solo?

I thought of something rivetting to talk about then was interrupted by work and forgot what it was. Well, that was interesting.

Some good news on the website front finally -- according to Steve at easynet support, I now have a 15Mb limit on my "unlimited" webspace. I still find this bizarre, that they says it's unlimited then dole in out in little chunks. Why not just give me a 100Mb limit? Anyway, it will probably be enough for the blinking helicopter pictures. Stand by for further announcements.

I'm being foreign editor for the next few days, which means long hours, lots of stress and a crabby dog. I may see if I can get someone to walk him in the afternoons. He's feeling better after all his recent traumas but I'm thinking I might try and find some obedience classes or perhaps have private sessions with a trainer -- I'd like to have more control over him in the vital seconds before he loses his mind in a crisis situation.

:: rain rain go away

Yes, it's raining again. During my days off it did stop raining long enough for me to weed the front garden, where the convolvulus was staging a comeback. It's looking quite spiffy out there; the St John's Wort bushes that had been choked out to just sickly sticks are flowering well, and the hydrangea I moved from the back garden is also blooming, a lovely blue. I dotted some dark blue lobelias around too, and they all look lovely together. Along further there's a rock rose I got from the "Search and Rescue" section at the garden centre, it's doing really well too.

I moved all the Spanish bluebell bulbs I could find from the big bed to the narrow one by the wall -- they look good for about five minutes while they're flowering, but they grow so thickly their leaves block out anything smaller, and then there's just bare ground where they've been. I thought they'd be good with the bushy plants and would help fight the dreaded convolvulus. We'll see. If they're a pest there I'll move out the back up under the trees. They'll grow anywhere, apparently.

I dug some ericacious potting mix in around the daphne, to help it along -- it's still sickly despite all the spraying. It has more leaves, but they still eventually go yellow and spotty and fall off. I'll give it until next year before I try moving it to the back.

I've been working hard on Pinky's new website and also on a new design for mine.

On Sunday night I went to the movies, saw Minority Report -- it was ok. I went to the cinema at a newish shopping complex at Leith, it's the one that has the Royal Yacht Britannia tied up outside. And this time, just along the dock from the Britannia, there was The World.



To quote from the website: "It is the world's first residential ocean liner. It is a temple in Thailand, a seaswept summer in Newport, an ancient journey through the Greek Islands, and New Year's Eve in the South Pacific - all without leaving your home." Yes, all very well -- but it's also a rainy afternoon in Leith. Plus, it's an ungainly-looking thing, like a floating block of flats (which is basically what it is).

More traumas for Bertie, and for me, today. I was waiting to cross the road with him after his walk. A bus was just pulling out up the road and a boy was running down the hill to catch it at the next stop, round the corner. He flew across the road right at us, and Bertie panicked. I grabbed his collars and his hindquarters, but he still managed to drag me out into the road -- right into the path of the bus. Luckily the driver saw what was happening and had slowed right down and stopped.

It took five minutes to get Bertie calmed down enough to carry on home, he was rattled to his core. Then as we were on the home straight, a couple of boys came past on their bikes, larking around, and one of them actually hit me. More panicking from Bertie, but not as bad.

We had an altercation last night over a hedgehog. Bertie caught it on his late-night walk, and refused to drop it. I tried prising his jaws apart, but they just tightened. I tried pinching his nostrils, but he just breathed harder through his mouth. I couldn't get a grip on the poor animal, of course, so I had to just walk around and wait for Bertie to get tired of carrying it.

Then as soon as he dropped the hedgehog we had a furious scuffle as I pushed it into the undergrowth with my foot and he tried to pick it up again. The hedgehog made a run for it, which I was happy to see. Very unhappy dog though.

:: Swirled News

I thought crop circles had died out. How wrong I was. What interests me is that the X-Files types get furious when anyone suggests they're man-made -- but I think it would be even more amazing if they are in fact man-made (which I think they are).

They're beautiful, intricate, cleverly crafted and all completely pointless. Acts of pure genius.