Films of 2008

Films that I've seen and other notable outings in 2008.

Jumper
Definitely not a bio-pic about Bill Cosby, this was an original and interesting idea that never really realised its full potential. The first act was interesting, the second action packed, but the third was a disappointment.

21
Another interesting film based on a true story. I was expecting much more from the film than it actually delivered (I think I was confusing it with another similar film) but again the picture shines in the second act but fails to find a satisfying conclusion.

The Eye
A novel and compelling pseudo-horror flick, Jessica Alba is not the strongest performer but does well with a movie that only slightly over-uses the CGI effects. Unusually, I actually found this one to be quite engaging and despite the normal need to make you jump out of your seat at least 3 times, the effect is somewhat harrowing. The ending is strong, if predictable. A surprisingly enjoyable film.

Hancock
A surprisingly thoughtful and insightful summer blockbuster laden with masses of effects. Review here.

Indiana Jones
Just like the X-Files movie, this was a poorly timed release on a franchise that everyone has lost interest in. In this case a strange schizophrenic movie which was wonderfully entertaining at best and woefully ill concieved at worst. Review.

Iron Man
Finally, a well paced, enjoyable action film with a good plot, marginally interesting characters, drama and tension. All the premises the film is based on are complete nonsense, but that doesn't stop it just being great fun. Review.

Dark Knight
It was going to be tough to get this franchise back on track after some lacklustre offerings and dubious casting choices. Dark Knight had a lot to do and it did at least some of it well. It looks wonderful and has some memorable performances and fantastic moments but just does hang together as a coherent film. It does, however, have plenty of explosions. Review.

The Day The Earth Stood Still
Apart from the obvious fact that it didn't, this is like watching a show reel for some new special effects with a vague story trying to hold them together. I loved the first act, how well paced and mysterious it was, but wish I'd just left after that. Disappointing that none of the characters (other than Klaatu) was at all engaging and that the story was very mundane. Review.

Wanted
This really is a comic brought to the big screen, complete with all its omissions and flaws. Enjoyable enough, but not nearly enough to warrent the money that was spent realising it. Review.

Those I've not seen
The main film I didn't see for very deliberate reasons was Cloverfield. The teaser trailers were great, but I felt it was going to be another Blair Witch Project which leant a little to an innovative idea and a lot to shaking the camera around a lot. Another one for me to miss was Harry Potter, I've never been a great fan of the films and I feel they get worse as time goes on.

On a more positive note, There Will Be Blood looked interesting - especially since I got a lot out of Syriana. Burn After Reading was a movie I was all set to see, but somehow failed to, as was HellBoy II. The original Hellboy was a surprise to me, in that I enjoyed it so much. I was also going to see Prince Caspian, since I liked the first Wardrobe picture, although I hope they are more careful with their use of effects.

Be Kind, Rewind, looked like fun, and I hope to see that on-demand or on DVD soon and I will probably also see Mamma Mia. I resisted since I saw the stage show and wasn't sure about the casting in the film, but I've been informed it worked very well (I did enjoy both versions of Chicago, so who knows?). Quantum of Solace was a possible movie for the holiday period, but I tend to think of all Bond films as the same, so I'm quite happy to wait for a TV viewing.

Finally, the Time Travellers Wife was a film I heard little about. I loved the book (yes, I know it's a chick-book) and so wanted to see what they'd do with the film. Another one for the small screen, I think.

Look back at 2008

2008 was supposed to be about finishing off a commercial product I had already been working on for 18 months, finding a market and selling it. It was the first full year in our new house and it was a big landmark birthday for me.

January
The year started at a small party with some of our friends who live close by. Returning to work, I found one of my team had resigned – this was to set the scene for the remainder of the year. Other than that, and getting over Christmas, January was filled with thoughts of skiing. A great deal of time was spent researching and monitoring the various ski company websites which meant that we eventually booked just 2 weeks before the holiday and received a handsome saving, enhanced by a concession given to us the year before when we had a number of issues with the company.

February
The month started with the skiing in France, which was excellent, the snow was really good and we had a good crowd in our chalet. This year we had no problems with our travelling and no problems with noisy children (there were none in the chalet). The beginning of my work woes for the year commenced when I returned; firstly a witch hunt, trying to find someone to blame for the companies woes, which centred on me, but which eventually failed to point any fingers, and then the announcement of redundancies.

March
The redundancies were finalised an instigated. All but 2 of us left the company, either being pushed or jumping. There was a real end of an era feeling and a great deal of concern about the future, but with the company performing the way it wasn’t, it was inevitable. Herself was also in the process of changing jobs, so this was a very uncertain time of the year. The upside was that Herself went on a short-break with one of her friends to Prague – all a surprise arranged by the two husbands.

April
Things started to settle down again in April. It seemed I was being paid and that there were still bits and pieces of work to be done. A technical audit was first on the list. I also found I was the victim of a nasty credit card con where I was paying every month for membership to a club I knew nothing about. This got jumped on very quickly.

May
Herself’s birthday looms in May. Having decided to buy her a new camera, I spent many, many hours researching the best one to get and finally bought a Casio (somewhat to my surprise). Because I had some more time on my hands, I also started a blog.

June
My birthday is at the start of June and this year it was the landmark 40. Herself organised a lovely surprise and took me to a hotel where I was wined and dined and then stayed the night. The next day I got my presents, most notably my Wii, which has seen much use this year. I also transferred the blog to its current home on Blogspot. June was the month I started mainly working at home, only going into the office twice a week.

July
The main event in July was the launch of the iPhone 3G. I was to be found queuing outside a mobile phone shop in Didcot and did eventually come away with one on launch day (recorded in great detail). The other main event was a fraught computer rebuild, necessitated by a faulty graphics card and a messed-up RAID array, again, recorded in detail.

August
Our month for visitation, with us travelling to visit long-lost friends ooop North, and other friends coming to see us an introducing me to Guitar Hero.

September
Our diving holiday was this month, after the obligatory purchase of lots of kit. I also failed to finish Mario Galaxy (even though I thought I had), and had to shell out lots of money on my Car for reasons which still elude me.

October
I finally finished Mario Galaxy this month and also finally used my Christmas present of a flight simulator experience.

November
November started with the Dive show at the NEC, which was busy but not particularly informative, and ended with Herself’s Mother moving house. In between, I was served my redundancy notice – not unexpected, but a blow nonetheless.

December
The end of quite a year. I officially finish work at the end of this month and still don’t have a new job lined up. Christmas was spent at our house with the whole of our two families visiting for Christmas and Boxing days, which was quite something. Lots more research produced a suitable printer for Herself for Christmas.

Quiet

It's been very quiet on here of late.

This is for a number of reasons. I've been busy with a couple of things; the first being Christmas and all the various paraphernalia that surrounds it - especially having to cater for lots of people, but more of that another time. The second is a project I've been working on for myself, which is proving rather tricky, but also compelling. It's basically been eating time where I would otherwise be lazing around, playing on the Wii and posting here.

Also, however, there is my general apathy at the moment. This is not helped by having an interview for a rather promising position just before Christmas, and then the whole company toddling off on holiday without deciding if I should work for them. A bit frustrating since I will officially be unemployed tomorrow.

Anyway, I'm working on a few posts which I hope to cram in before the end of the year (day), just to fill up some space and to make 11th December seem as far away as it really feels to me.

So I hope you all have a smashing Christmas and have something suitable lined up for New Year's eve ... I know I have.

Movie: The Day the Earth Stood Still

It's a remake (of sorts). The trailers look great, the visuals look good but it's going to be compared to one of the great SciFi films of the 50s.

I remember being blown away by the original film when I first saw it, many years ago. Unlike a lot of SciFi, it had lots of real life in it, but mingled with the real flying saucer, aliens stuff. The ship was great and Gort was fantastic. So when I heard about this remake, at first I thought it was a _really_ bad idea. When I started to see clips and trailers, I thought I might have been wrong.

This film has much going for it. It looks wonderful, with some very nice SFX and some wonderful use of the big cinema screen (which does make it worth watching at the movies). The story is shrouded in mystery and we slowly find out where it's taking us, the initial meeting has the same tinge of tragedy that it did in the original film and the benevolent / malevolent pendulum is used to some good effect.

There are however problems with the film, the two main ones being the characters and the plot - both kinda important. The story is just too simple, there is no depth, there is no twist, there is just nothing. You see some lovely effects, they parade some "cutting edge" technology, rather clumsily, in front of you, the players move around from scene to scene, but it's all so shallow as to be meaningless. In the first act, I felt it was very well paced, it seemed to be very slowly unfolding the story, but then it keeps on at a snail's pace only accelerating right at the end of the film, and by then it's just too late.

The characters not only lack a third dimension, but also a second dimension too. Reeves is a plank. It works for a while, but then he's supposed to be understanding humanity and you get lots of lingering closeups - but he's still just a plank. The other characters are even less memorable. The inclusion of the de-facto annoying kid is actually welcome as it's a character the whole audience can dislike together, otherwise you can't feel anything towards any of the characters at all.

The only thing that saves it from being a total disaster is Gort - who is just very cool, and very well updated from the original, I feel. That and the ship, which is very mysterious and eerie.

I liked what they were trying to do with this film, but it was just executed so poorly that it's another remake to quietly forget about, whilst continuing to reminisce about the far superior original offering.

4/10

Era ended

Today was (hopefully) my last day in the office.

I say hopefully because my boss has been hedging his bets a bit and has refused to take the office keys off me - but I've finished the tasks stipulated on my termination letter.

I've spent the last few days not only pulling all of the last 2 years work into one place, but also having a go at cleaning out some of the junk in the office. Given that the company is (probably) winding up - pretty much everything is junk, especially all the products we spent the last 2 years struggling to put together.

In a way it is quite sad, and I do feel some pangs of regret, but in many ways I am glad it's at an end. The last year has been difficult and I've had to deal with taking the blame for all kinds of things, a witch hunt against me, some rather unprofessional antics by both my bosses and team and also the continued and persistent playground politics of the directors.

I still feel that we did a good job, against all the odds, and produced something which, under different circumstances with a different company, could have been a nice little product selling into a niche market. We were never going to be huge, but I think we could all have made a good living and had fun doing it - however it was not to be.

Ironically, healthcare is probably one of the few sectors which will weather this downturn quite well. But that's all behind me now.

Being so close to Christmas, the job market is very sluggish at the moment. With the added uncertainties of financial meltdown it's proving very difficult to find a job which doesn't just disappear overnight - I've had a number of really good looking prospects which suddenly cease to exist - so I suspect it will be the new year before anything concrete comes along.

I've got a number of ideas for projects and products but it is difficult to get the motivation to really drive them forward - I also don't have the money to finance them myself - but perhaps I will tinker around with a few ideas and see where we go. I don't need to desperately find a job imediately, but some form of income is going to be essential in the not too distant future. It's interesting to consider this may be a crossroads in my life, or it may just be a little blip which is soon forgotten - only time will tell which.

Pie

The all important pre-Christmas mince pie tasting session has been done (complete with the obligatory sherry) and the results are in.

We went for the more expensive end of the market, and didn't scour all the supermarkets since 6 mince pies is quite enough for anyone.

In 6th place with 4/10 came Sainsburys Butter Enriched. These were pretty poor - thin and rather dry but with quite a buttery taste.

In 5th place with 5/10 came Waitrose Shortcrust. These had lots of filling but with too much thick sauce. The pastry was rather thin and they were a little too sweet.

In joint 3rd with 6/10 came Sainsburys Deep Filled - good pastry and a better consistency in the filling than the Waitrose, but a little oversweet. Also Mr Kipling which had a rather over-buttery pastry which was too crumbly and a rather disappointing, bland filling.

In 2nd place with 7/10 came Sainsburys Organic. The filling was excellent, quite spicy and zesty but the pie was let down by the pastry which was far too buttery - the taste overwhelmed the whole pir.

And our prize pick is Waitrose All Butter with 8/10. Good crisp pastry which isn't crumbly and a tasty filling - not as spicy as the Sainsburys Organic, but still very creditable. Very pleasant indeed.

It seems from our experience that the best pies are the more expensive ones - which is rather a shame - but we are trying to track down some cheaper independent pies, so there may be an update to these results. It's so exciting.

Closed

The inevitable has finally happened.

It's been rather quiet on here recently whilst several things have been going on. But as of yesterday it seems my ailing company is finally locking the doors. I've been given my termination letter.

I've been expecting this since April when the majority of other people left the company, but it is sad for it to finally happen. There are lots of bad things about the place but we were working on a great product and it's sad to see it end this way.

I think the most frustrating part is that the whole enterprise has really failed because the directors lost interest. It seems they can't wait to move on to the next things they have lined up. And overall it seems they aren't losing much money either - which probably explains why they never really fought for the company or really committed themselves to its survival.

So a brief pause for a bit of reflection and then its time to step up my search for the next thing. Not the best time to be looking, but hopefully something will come along - I hope something quite interesting - but will settle for paying the bills. In the meantime I have several ideas and projects that are filling my time, plus some finishing off that needs to be done for my old company.

Surprisingly this is the first time I've been made redundant and only the second time I've left a company at their behest rather than mine (the previous time was the end of a contract which wasn't renewed). Given my liking for small companies, I think this is quite unusual.

The Dark Side Rocks

The most ridiculous and utterly cool gizmo I've seen in a long time.

Just had to post this one. It's from here

May the force be with you.

Short back and sides

I had my hair cut today.

And couldn't resist adding another post with the same title as the last.

Yes, these are the depths of tedium to which I've sunk.

Short back and sides

I was right in the first place, the new series, Fringe, is rubbish.

I've now seen two more episodes, and it just doesn't work.

My favourite part was the citing of Occam's razor to support the supposition that a suspect was psychic - surely the more straightforward reason would be that he was commiting the acts that he was supposedly "seeing"! It actually made me laugh, which I don't think is a good thing.

Afoot

Sometimes, it's frustrating that secrets have to be kept.

One of the reasons it's been a bit quiet on here of late (other than my completion of Mario Galaxy) is that there is lots going on in my day-to-day work life that I'm not allowed to discuss for reasons of commercial sensitivity. I did consider just ignoring this, but in the end discretion got the better of me and I decided that I just wouldn't discuss it at all until matters have been resolved, or at least a little more resovled than they are now.

Once again, with things hanging in the air, it's difficult to get motivated, but I do have a number of things to do, which will keep me occupied for the next couple of weeks, by which time I think at least some of this will be resolved and I can return to normality again.

I understand the curse of "living in interesting times" with a little more clarity than I'd really like.

Galaxy Quest

It is now finally, once and for all and definitely over.

I finished Mario Galaxy - really this time. It took more than a month to work my way all the way through all the levels again, this time using Luigi, but I got there and unlocked the legendary Finale Galaxy.

The Finale is the easiest level ever - it simply being a way to re-meet a lot of the characters from the adventure in the setting of the original prologue level. Quite a nice way to finish it off.

To prove I finished (with both Mario and Luigi), the game sends you a thankyou note on the message board and the save game icon goes all sparkly - such excitement. So I can now definitely say that it's done and I now have to move on and find new world to conquer and new things to do of an evening.

Beside the sea-side

Following my flight simulator experience at Bournemouth airport, we headed down into Bournemouth itself to have a look around.

Having travelled 2 hours to get to the airport, it seemed a good idea to take a look around the town rather than just head straight home. I’ve been to Bournemouth twice before, once when flying out to Guernsey (on the very splendid Dan Air), we were forced to divert back to Bournemouth airport because of fog. We ended up staying in the Royal Bath Hotel (which was rather nice) and setting off again (and arriving) at Guernsey the next day. The other occasion was attending a Microsoft developer conference. Neither of these occasions gave me much chance to look around.

By the time we arrived at the sea front it was well into lunchtime and we were both ready for something to eat. Having walked through the gardens into town and had a quick look around, we decided on the Weatherspoon’s pub. It was pretty busy and we had to fight off the pensioners who kept trying to push in front to order their food and drink but we eventually got served. Beer was good but the food was a little indifferent.

After lunch we headed back to the sea front, with only a brief stop to look in a couple of shops. Herself had decreed that we would visit the Oceanarium – and so we did. We arrived at dead on 2 o clock and were told the sharks were being fed, so we rushed through the first several rooms to find the main pool. Indeed there were sharks and they were being fed. The obligatory commentary was provided by one of the staff and a fair crowd of people stood around whilst the sharks generally swam around and around the pool and didn’t seem very interested in the food. The turtles, however, were very interested (albeit in different food).

Having calmed ourselves after that excitement, we headed back to the start and wandered through the first few rooms. I wasn’t really expecting it to be too brilliant – probably a few mangy goldfish in a little tank – but it was, in fact, very good indeed. There were a variety of tanks, some of considerable size, and domes which either allowed you to put your head “inside the tank” or let the fish swim “outside the tank” making for a really good view either way. When trying to find the Piranhas we were rather shocked to find them swimming above our heads. We were also pleased to be able to spot several fish we’d seen on our various diving travels – and I even managed to identify a fish from our holiday that had been troubling me.

There was a very interesting skeleton of a turtle on display – did you know they can actually feel through their shells? – and some lovely baby sharks and rays. The interactive dive cage was, I feel, rather more targeted at children, since it didn’t seem to allow you to get very deep into any subject, but it had lots of interesting facts.

The tunnel beneath the main pool was great – the sharks and rays swam right over your heads and I got a very intimate view of a turtle too! It reminded me of the similar tunnel at the Sydney Aquarium (which is very good indeed).

Unfortunately time got the better of us and we had to rush through the last couple of sections to go and put another parking ticket on the car. But we did spend over an hour and felt we could have stayed much longer – definitely a worthwhile visit, especially if you can go when it’s not too busy.

Having recharged our parking ticket, we strolled down the pier and back. Not much going on, but it was nice to have a look around. We, of course, had to have an ice cream as well – even though the selection was somewhat limited. Finally, I got to have a quick go on some video games in the arcade: Airline Pilots – which was rubbish (and I should know), Tokyo Drift, which also wasn’t great and was over too quickly, and Mario Kart which I did rather well at (can’t imagine why). Then it was back to Oxfordshire for us.

A most agreeable day.

Open skies

It was a quiet, clear night at Heathrow airport as we lined up for take-off on runway 27L. The plane accelerated down the runway and smoothly lifted into the air, climbing to 6,000ft.

Nothing particularly unusual about this, except I was flying the plane. The other unusual thing was that we were actually in Bournemouth and not Heathrow at all.

I finally got to use my Christmas present, which was a spin in a commercial flight simulator. In this case a Boeing 727 (an aircraft not seen in Europe anymore – due to noise restrictions - but still common in Africa).

We travelled down to Bournemouth Airport and to European Aviation. It all looks quite impressive as you drive into their offices as there’s a huge hanger with a number of airliners being serviced – these guys are obviously the real thing. We were soon ushered through into the simulator area where 4 simulators are housed – these are big impressive beasts – and had a great talk about the way they worked and the different simulators (a B737-200, B747-100/200/300, S-61 Sea King helicopter and a B727-200) (Note: their website is out of date).

Then on to the actual flight briefing. I have flown once before in a Diamond DA20 for half and hour from Blackbushe Airport (last year’s present) and have pounded Microsoft flight sim for a few hours in preparation, so the instruments and controls were reasonably familiar to me. The plan was to take off, fly a circuit around Heathrow, try a few turns and then come in for a landing – it seemed a pretty tall order to me, but I tried to sound confident and asked a few pertinent questions about climb speeds and power settings to try to appear as if I had at least a bit of a clue.

Then it was over to the simulator, up onto the gantry and across the bridge. Inside was like stepping back to the 60s or 70s (which we were) – the plane was launched in the mid 60s and this simulator was built in 1979. But this was good – it was a lot simpler than the modern aircraft flight decks with hardly a computer in sight (except the pocket-calculator looking navigation computer). Even the simulator control console at the back looked more like a modified fruit machine than a sophisticated computer, with just a monochrome display and lots of obscurely labelled buttons.

The flight-deck environment appeared very authentic to me, down to the individual circuit breakers on the rear bulkheads, and the air conditioning, keeping it cooler than outside. It was also rather dark, which is when I realised it would be a night flight – computers of the ‘70s weren’t up to generating daytime scenes, so you had a fairly basic set of runway lights through the front window and that was about it.

So, into the big chair on the left (my instructor / first officer climbed in on the right) and a quick run-through all the instruments and controls – including the engine gauges (just for fun). Herself was to be our flight engineer (these were the days of 3 people on the flight-deck). A quick try of the controls – ailerons, rudder, elevators revealed them to be very heavy. The engine controls were pretty much as expected (three levers in the middle), but the flaps and speed brake seemed very clunky and the landing gear was a huge lever to the right of the centre console. I’m pretty sure that modern airline pilots would find it all very quaint and amusing.

It was time to go, so feet on the rudder pedals, a suitably large lever released the parking brake and then it was full thrust on the 3 engines. The whine of the noisy jets grew somewhere behind us and the flight deck started moving slightly – the front window showed us gathering speed down the runway. Some fairly ham-fisted rudder controls kept us on the runway – just about – and the airspeed indicator climbed upwards. “V1” I heard (the point of no return) and then “Rotate”, I pulled back on the column and the flight deck pitched up and the runway lights disappeared beneath us – we were airborne.

It took some doing to keep us climbing at 15 degrees – the plane was quite sensitive but everything had a delay before it responded. We eventually levelled out at 6,000ft and tried some turns. I found initiating them was fine, but it was hard to stop right on the heading you wanted and keep the plane level – I also kept losing height, especially banking at 30 degrees. I got gradually better as the flight progressed though – especially not losing height. I also played with the trim which caused these big wheels to whizz round and round on the centre console, which was good fun.

Eventually I had to do my final turn back towards the runway. The ILS lined us up but we were way over to the left, so I did quite a nice transit (I thought), back onto the approach line and started my approach. Throttles back to idle and nose down to about 2 degrees to give us a 3 degree approach angle. I was pretty well lined up, but kept forgetting to look at the glide slope indicator, so came in rather high. Extending the flaps caused some fun as well as the lift changed, making me even higher, and pulling the big landing gear lever down actually changed the way the plane felt (and made it much more noisy). I pitched the nose down a bit more and managed to come in, albeit a bit far down the runway.

I was rather worried about the flare, but the radar altimeter gave me the cue and I pulled the nose up and then we felt a bump and heard the tyres squeal and we were down. I pulled up the reverse thrust on the throttles, clunked the big speed brake lever on and then cranked up full reverse thrust. I almost forgot to steer, but with a gentle reminder I just managed to keep us going straight. Brakes on, and throttle down and there we were, back on terra-firma – virtually, at least.

We clambered out from the seats and had a look at the simulator track. My landing was pretty good in terms of heading, but right on the limit in terms of glide slope – I kicked myself for not looking at the ILS, but I was otherwise pretty pleased – a couple more goes and I think I’d really get the hang of it.

The folks at European Aviation were really friendly and gave me my full time on the simulator as well as making it challenging but fun. This isn’t something you’d want to do lots of times, but it’s nice to be able to say you landed an airliner at Heathrow, even if you do have to add the footnote that it was a simulator.

Confused

It is confusing how much work I'm suddenly having to do.

After months of quiet solitude and bimbling about with very little to do, things have suddenly come to a head and I'm dashing all over the country giving demos and having meetings. It's just not on.

Admittedly, none of these meetings seem particularly productive and we've just had a major foundation stone unceremoniously ripped out from under us, but I am still surprised at how much interest has suddenly been generated in our company and product. We do have a new freelance sales chap - which does explain a lot of it.

The physical new product (due end August) is still not here - mostly due to the fact we still have some outstanding issues with the supplier (which are a bit commercially sensitive).

So all in all, we seem to be steaming at full speed in ever descreasing circles and probably generating our own whirlpool in which to drown.

Anyway, this, and the fact I decided to embark on a programming project of my own which is rather far-fetched and foolish, but keeps me off the streets, is the reason for lack of posts and general activity in the past couple of weeks.

P.S. I still haven't seen the next episode of Fringe, but if and when I do, I shall be sure to report back

Dodgey Haircut

Is it just me, or was the first episode of Fringe on Sky last night totally rubbish?

I was quite looking forward to it, being pitched as a bit of a modern day X Files, but it was pretty well awful from start to finish.

I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for some of the story, although it was riddled with cliches and derivitive ideas, but the acting was so unconvincing and so was the clumsily tacked on love-interest.

Maybe, just maybe it was just the pilot and the series will be better. Hmmmmm, not sure I believe that

Hubble Trouble

After all my waxing lyrical about the Space Shuttle things had to go a bit wobbly.

In this case the neat mission with 2 shuttles on the pad has been scrubbed due to yet another problem developing on Hubble. Ah well, at least the problem showed up before they went. Is still going to be interesting. Perhaps I might go and see that one taking off ... maybe

Paranoid Android

The first mobile phone based on Google's Android has just been announced.

The T-Mobile G1, made by HTC has gained a lot of attention in the press with all sorts of journalists clammering to fiddle with the thing and pass verdict.

But does it live up to the hype - well, in short, no. That's not surprising though. The hardware is pretty much a standard smartphone - that they've been conservative is no surprise - it's pretty standard in the computer industry to take what’s there and fiddle with it, not to reinvent. One must remember that the software is designed to run on lots of platforms, so the first ones will be very standard. That the software looks very much like other handhelds is a bit more of a disappointment, but one has to remember that the UI is just a small part of the whole - the actual functionality is much more important. The simple truth is that its going to take time before we see if Android is really going to live up to all its been hailed as.

I think the phone would have fared better before the advent of the iPhone and all the lookalikes. That really has changed the map for handheld communications devices. The touchscreen interface looks clunky, the keyboard looks old fashioned and the UI just looks too much like Vista.

But it will be what the developers do with the platform that will be important in the months to come. Can it really carve out a niche in the smartphone market (a market which is ever-expanding) and can the right products be envisaged and realised using this open-source base. That will be the real test for Android - and if it fails, it will be quietly discarded as yet another high hope that didn't quite reach the bar.

Big Business

It's been a strange week at MG Towers where I work (pictured).

I was going to do a story so far opening, but decided it would probably depress me too much so that I wouldn't finish the post, so you'll just have to go and look here and here.

We finally have some movement on our next batch of hardware (due end August) and it looks like it's about ready to ship. This has now been held up by a number of commercial issues mostly centred around a senior figure in the company doing b'all for the last 4 months and holding up all the financial transactions above about £1.37 in value. This has somewhat annoyed me (as you can probably tell) because I've been pestering and chasing our supplier to sort themselves out at get our order sorted out for about 2 months now. Nasty words have been exchanged - via me because there is never any response from aforementioned senior figure.

So that is pretty much buisness as usual for us.

The strange thing is that not only do we seem to be close to getting a partner to handle calls for us, but we also have another project which has suddenly revived itself (although, the rumblings are that it will all fall apart again), 2 out-of-the-blue enquiries which actually sound quite interesting and two forthcoming demos, one of which is to a major high street retailer considering a retail version of the system.

We've been here before, of course, when everything looked rosy and then nothing happened, but at least it's something. It's been so damned quiet (both in terms of the office itself and the buisness) for the past 6 months, it makes the Marie Celeste look like Spearmint Rhino on a Friday night. Also strange when everyone else appears just about ready to board up the doors and call it a day.

We also seem to have somehow managed to get ourselves back on some kind of moderately stable financial footing, at least for a while (also a bit of a mystery). I keep asking myself if it's really going to make a difference or just prolong the inevitable. I think I probably know the answer.

Seeing double

I think this is such a great view.

I'm a bit of a sucker for the Space Shuttle because even though it's 70s technology that should have been superceded ages ago, it's still a really great achievement to be able to fling those things up into space.

Although I was alive for the Moon landings and growing up when Skylab was around, the Shuttle is really the spacecraft I grew up with and I've always had an interest in it and it still gives me a thrill. I tried to see a launch one, but it was delayed (incidently it turned out to be Columbia's fatal mission) so I missed it, but got to see lots of other space-stuff at the Space Centre - which in no way made up for it at all.

So now we have a very rare sight of two Shuttles (Atlantis and Endeavour) ready for launch at once. I really wanted to go and see this in person too, but it wasn't meant to be. The end of the Shuttle era is drawing close and I'd still like to see a real launch - perhaps just to prove to myself that it's really real. Strange that it is still so evocative after all these years, but despite every effort it still is a noteworthy and difficult task to get people into space, costing huge amounts of money and carrying not insignificant risk. It's inspiring that this kind of venture still goes on when everyone is so concerned about the balance sheet.

I, for one, will be sad when the Shuttle era passes.

Incomplete Galaxy

It serves me right for looking at game sites on the web.

I was just idling checking through some game sites whilst I drank my coffee this morning and decided to have a look for Mario Galaxy cheat codes. To my dismay, I discovered that I hadn't finished the game - as I'd previously thought.

As I'd heard before there ARE 121 stars, not 120. What I hadn't waited for, when I finished the game before, was for all the video footage to play through. If you do that, a new video comes up at the end and then the system unlocks Luigi - so you can play as him. Apparently you now have to go through and get all the power stars again before it finally unlocks the Finale Galaxy.

So I'm back to the very begining, but this time playing Luigi. He's a bit different than Mario - he slides a lot more but he can jump a little higher. So far I've managed to get 2 stars. I'm hoping that it will be a little easier this time because I've done it all before, but I'm not convinced I'll be able to remember it all - oh well, we shall see.

I have to take back my words about a disappointing ending - at least until I've worked my way through another 188 stars as Luigi - phew!

Merchant bankers

(what a complete bunch of)

Banks are not my favourite institutions at the best of times. I object to the fact they can make vast sums just by holding other peoples money. I also object to the way they can make money out of thin air (most of the trading doesn't have anything to do with reality). So, as you can imagine, I'm not particularly impressed when the tax payer has to bail these institutions out when they go horribly wrong.

However, I also don't like that way that rules can be bent or broken to allow one big bank to buy another big bank and thus become a massively dominant player in the high street banking market. You can tell these are desperate times and Lloyds have played a blinder by picking the perfect moment to snap up HBOS. The government, of course, is all behind it because they're desperate to avoid another Northern Rock fiasco. But is it right? I think it's something Gordon Brown may live to regret - although probably not as Prime Minister.

As a shareholder (very, very small shareholder) in HBOS, I should probably be jumping for joy, but I never like monopolies because they go against the whole way things are supposed to work in the west (not that capitalism actually works, hence why we need so many watchdogs and laws and ministries to prop the whole thing up).

So well done to Lloyds for picking their moment, but shame on the Government for rolling over and positively promoting this because they're so afraid. Fear is what precipitated the whole mess in the first place and more of it doesn't do anyone any good.

Holidays

The pics and info from our recent holiday are now up.

This is somewhat experimental but will hopefully work reasonably well.

http://dive.olgaandandy.com

Autumn comes to us all

We had occasion to visit a sheltered housing development at the weekend.

I won't go into the detail because it's rather personal, but a number of things struck me, especially when speaking to some of the residents.

I was profoundly impressed with the strength and courage exhibited. It can't be easy to accept that, as time goes on, you can become less able to cope on your own and sometimes need help from others, and yet these people had. The development itself was rather good and saw itself as a safety net rather than an integral part of the residents lives - this allowed them to go on living their lives in the fullest way possible for as long as possible and there is a certain dignity in that. But the services are there if and when needed and there is a warden on duty for emergencies.

Perhaps the only slightly disquieting thing was that the housing development was situated behind a nursing home, which did rather give a stark reminder of how things could end up for the residents, but it also enabled them to be very flexible in the levels of support provided.

But to concentrate on the services provided by the care organisation would be to miss a big part of what these things are supposed to be about. Community is a key concept which came up time and again. The residents could and did organise their own clubs, went around to each others houses for coffee or even just waved to each other from the door, but it transforms an otherwise isolating existance into one where sharing and involvement play a valuable part. They have the best of both worlds, the privacy of their own homes and the community of the communal gardens and proximity to others. Not unlike the rest of us.

As someone who works for a company which provides technology for just such developments, it struck me how simple some of the needs were and how technology should never be the focus of the solution, but can sometimes be assistive in its delivery. Simple needs and simple solutions.

The elderly aren't another species or foreigners or a different generation. We don't wake up one day elderly. We edge up to it whilst looking in the other direction and suddenly are faced with the reality of being there.

Close call

This time last week I was on holiday.

We were just about to do our last couple of dives, spend a day on shore and then fly back to old blighty on - guess which airline? Yes, Excel.

And today, they went into administration.

We had a rather close call since if our holiday was a week later, we'd be waiting to here about what replacement airline they'd lined up to ferry us home (I understand Iraq Air aren't too busy at the moment) and if we were two weeks later we'd be wondering how we were going to get there at all.

It was fairly obvious that Excel were struggling. They repeatedly reduced their service, by removing free food, putting in-flight prices us, charging stupid amounts of money for exit row seats and so on. But the budget airline model is quite a well trodden route and Excel did is so badly.

Their seating poilicy sucked - not only could you not pre-book seats, you couldn't even guarantee your party would sit next to each other - only "in proximity". Their baggage restrictions were rather draconian and set to get even worse, their seat pitch was dreadful, such that even I (with short, stumpy legs) found it difficult to get comfortable. The flight we were on also ran out of food - for which they were charging (a princely sum) thus immediately depriving them of one of their most lucrative revenue streams.

All in all, they just ran the business badly. They obviously felt they had to compete on cost and to hell with everything else. I don't quite understand this, as they were a tour operator themselves, not just a budget airline. They seemed to lack the basic marketing nouse that would tell them it's about the customer proposition, not just the cost. Poeple are very aware of their choices these days and, frankly, there are a lot of other people out there doing a far better job than Excel.

I'm sorry for those that are being inconvienenced by lack of return flights and those who stand to have their holiday plans ruined, but I won't be shedding many tears over the demise of this company.

The World ends. Again.

Perhaps I've been a little unfair.

I was rather scathing of the media in my last post (which they deserved), but having been through the coverage of the LHC on the BBC website, it's actually rather good. I'm very heartened by the sheer amount of media coverage this project has attracted. Of course, it's huge, it's expensive and it's strange, but it is in fact, one of the most important projects undertaken for a generation (or maybe two or three).

People have taken to likening it to the Moon landings, but in fact, scientifically, they were a white elephant. The Moon was a political target, not a scientific one. What we see at CERN is real, meaningful and cutting edge science, unfolding before our eyes. We may not understand how it all works, but we can be inspired by the purity of the quest for knowledge and the incredible level of international cooperation.

There are so many aspects of the project which push the boundaries, from the large scale use of super-conductors and the associated cooling required, to the massive computing power needed to make sense of the vast swathes of data being produced. In a time where everything is made to a price and cost engineered it's fantastic to see something which brings together so much innovation on such a grand scale.

... and just to lighten up, my juvenile sense of humor rather liked this.

The end of the World

I have just been watching the grand switch-on of the Large Hadron Collider.

For the uninitiated, this is a rather large particle accelerator situated 100m underground on the Swiss-French border. For the even less initiated - it's a physics thing.

Particle accelerators whizz microscopic streams of particles around and around a big loop getting faster and faster until they are going as fast as you can make them go and then force the two streams to collide. Why? Well, because when all that energy comes together, interesting things happen.

I must admit, it does sound a little like schoolboy physics - "Lets bash these things together really hard and see what happens" - but, then, that's what physics is all about anyway.

Anyway, the reason I'm posting this is because of the preoccupation of the media on the story that this accelerator is going to form a giant black hole and destroy the Earth. I don't mind opinions being voiced, but every time you hear them mention it they have to say about it destroying the World. Talk about journalistic integrity, it's more like the medieval chruch shouting "Heresy" whenever anyone came up with a slightly new idea.

Science is all about trying new things, pushing frontiers, doing things when you're not quite sure what the results will be. I find it worrying that those who preport to disseminate information throughout our society adopt such a negative attitude with little or no basis in fact when faced with something that cannot, or do not want to, understand.

Sensasionalism in journalism may sell more papers, but it also affects pubic opinion and even possibly the future direction of society and culture. Once again, the popular media show themselves ill-equipped to simply report the news - which, after all, is their function. Yes, we have ourselves to blame - for buying the papers with the sensational headlines - but the media also have a responsibility to report the truth and the facts, not some distorted or misrepresented version which better fits their idea of a good story.

Having said all that, I do have to say that the actual activation of the LHC was possibly the most disappointing media event. Ever.

Interview - or not

This morning, I had an interview scheduled for Thursday. Now I do not.

Some scummy contractor has decided to do the job instead. Well good luck to them.

I don't normally get too bothered about people cancelling interviews on me at the last minute, but this is now the third time in a row I've had an interview set up (after lots of chasing and badgering and trying to find out what the hell's going on) only to have them cancel at the last minute. I'm begining to sense a conspiracy.

In the meantime my current company is ploughing forward and, I believe, about to make some serious mistakes that I want nothing to do with.

Don't know why I'm so hacked off about it, but I am.

Movie: Dark Knight

It was always going to be tough for this film to live up to the hype.

Much has been said and written about it and many claims made. I tried to ignore everything I’d heard and just watch the movie – the results were surprising and a little confusing.

Firstly, there are some excellent performances. Of course, Heath Ledger as the Joker is just wonderful - very quirky and jumpy and always feels very dangerous. Christian Bale is good, especially as Wayne where his understatedness combines wonderfully with his flamboyance - a real feeling of a man playing the part rather than being it. His Batman is not quite as convincing for me, but is certainly gritty and oh so dark. Gary Oldman did a wonderful job with Gordon – again, underplayed the part but with an underlying strength. Morgan Freeman wasn’t given much to work with, but is a safe pair of hands in any movie.

Then we come to Aaron Eckhart. I very much enjoyed his characterisation of Two-Face – and loved the visuals – but never could quite warm to him as Dent. Perhaps this is where the film fell down for me. He looked the part, did the right things, but I could never connect with the character and I think I needed to in order to be taken on the journey that the screenplay intended. I feel perhaps there was too much Two-Face in him from the start. In a movie with so many carefully considered and subtle performances (much to it’s credit), his was too obvious and clumsy. Not that it’s easy to play the good guy when there are so many wonderful characters with dark sides to them.

The feel and visualisation of the film was excellent. Very dark and brooding, lots of interplay between the dark and good sides of the characters. There was a pithy sense of reality throughout – in that dead people actually mattered and doing the right thing wasn’t straightforward or easy.

All in all I loved lots of this film, I loved many of the performances and I enjoyed both the action and developmental scenes. I appreciated the understated performances, the thoughtful and three-dimensional character development and the edgy, dark tones. But in the end, this isn’t enough to make a great film. The whole thing just didn’t hang together as it should, didn’t carry me along with it. I always felt I was watching a series of half-hour adventures, one after the other, instead of a single, fully realised work. I hate having to say this because I feel this film is a real return to form for the franchise (after a number of poor, shallow offerings) and I really wanted to love it, but there we are.

You can go and watch it, you can enjoy it and get a lot out of it, but it just doesn’t have that magic factor of really personally meaning something.

7/10

The Big Blue

The Red Sea is an ever receding memory as we return from our holiday to the normal world.

I have to say that all-in-all our diving exploits were a total success. I don’t know what it is about lobbing a big metal tank on your back, bunging a hosepipe in your mouth and jumping into large, fish-filled expanses of water, but I do seem to enjoy it enormously.

Of course, we were a little concerned about the other people we’d be sharing a boat with, since I’ve seen a number of instances where compressed air seems to have had very detrimental effects on the personality and social skills of divers, but we needn’t have feared since they were a great bunch, even if one had a penchant for diving in a dressing gown and there seemed to be an ongoing competition to dive in each other’s clothing – I kid you not.

The flight over was even more dreadful that I was expecting – what sort of airline charges you for food and then runs out of it? – and of course we were late. They also managed to tell us the wrong local time, so we spent the first day rather confused as everything seemed to be happening at the wrong times. But the boat was great, the diving was great and the food was great.

I had the usual technology hassles – my GPS crashed and wouldn’t turn off until the battery went flat, but luckily the dive sites are all on a map, so I should be able to plot our sites – which was the whole idea. My dive gear had a few hiccups and I broke a bit off at one point – although it actually seems to work better without it. The new underwater camera worked a treat, however.

Herself enjoyed it far more than she (or I) thought she would and we’re even talking about doing another one next year.

I shall be assembling the photos and writing some text in more detail, for those that are interested.

I also came back to find I have an interview on Thursday. Neat.

Service interruption

We're off on our holidays today.

Since we'll be on a boat in the middle of the Red Sea, it's unlikely I will be posting here for a week.

Delivery Ninjas

The delivery ninjas are out in force today.

No one knows where they come from. No one knows when they will arrive. But come they will. With stealth and guile and patience. When you least expect it. When you've popped down to the shops or gone out in the garden. And faster than light, they will knock on your door and let loose their weapon - "We called. You were out". Anguish, heartache, rage. What did they bring? Why wasn't I in?

Yes, they have beaten me once. But they have vouched to return. And I shall be ready for them. Their speed, no match for my intellect, their patience, no match for my determination. And I shall relieve them of their booty and shall call it my own.

So come, Ninjas, come. Fear me, for I am wise in your ways and I shall empty your vans of their treasure.

What a difference a day makes

So, the August bank holiday has come and gone.

Traditionally it’s a time to head of for a long weekend break which consists mostly of sitting in traffic jams on the country’s laughable motorway system and then staunchly squatting on the beach at some dismal seaside town, despite the fact it’s 8C, blowing a force 6 gale and pouring with rain.

But, I gave all this malarkey up many years ago. Instead we had quite a busy weekend doing a variety of different things.

It started well. On Friday I spent most of the day (when I should have been working) dashing around on various dive-kit related chores. My replacement dive computer came in, and with our diving holiday but a week away the whole dive kit issue was brought to the fore again. After much searching (both soul and internet), I decided we should get an underwater camera – a proper, diving one, not just one of those “take it in the pool” things. So much research ensued and grinding of teeth and banging of heads. Eventually I decided upon getting a cheap camera and housing rather than risking my own camera. We also needed some torches because there was a real prospect of some good night diving. My need for spangly new kit was finally being fulfilled.

So I toddled off to the dive shop, stopping only to have my ears washed out by a very friendly nurse – well, it was herself really.

Managed to get the dive computer – despite a mix up with the price they’d quoted – it was 60 quid less than the real price, but in the end he gave it to me for the lower price, we fixed the requisite new bits onto my dive kit and there we were. I enquired about cameras, and Carl in the shop told me what I already knew, so I bought the camera he recommended. And a filter. And I got him to knock some money off that too. So I was feeling rather smug and satisfied with myself.

Bit annoying when I got home though. My new dive computer has an IrDA interface for plonking dive logs onto your computer. Since there’s an IR port on my Mac, I’d kinda assumed that I’d be able to use that, but alas no. It’s only a receiver for the remote control, so I had a tough time searching for a Mac compatible IrDA dongle – the cheapest I could find were about 40 quid. Not good. Decided I’d have to think about this.

Went and got all my dive gear down from the loft. We were doing a practice on Sunday. Now it really felt like I was going diving.

Saturday morning consisted of chores and grocery shopping and things like that. After lunch I started to sort all my dive gear sorted out and decided that we needed a dive manual so we could read up about Enriched air (I’ll tell you another time). Off I toddled to the dive shop.

On the way to the dive shop, I decided to go and look for an IrDA interface and some more rechargeable batteries for the dive torches I’d just ordered. I’d resolved to give up on the Mac compatible ones, since they all seemed to cost 40 quid whereas I could get a PC one for a fiver. But, when I got to Maplin – behold, a Mac compatible IrDA dongle for 15 quid – not quite a fiver, but it would do nicely.

Stopped off at the dive shop and got my manual and then home. The IrDA interface didn’t work straight away, but a quick reboot of the Mac and the dive computer application suddenly sprang to life and talked to my new computer. Excellent.

Sunday saw us get up very early for the 90 minute drive to Stoney Cove. It’s not really a cove at all, but an old mining pit which has been flooded in order to provide a diving environment. It’s always packed with all manner of divers – both novices and old hands – trying out new skills or new bits of kit and today would be no exception. We parked up and then had the difficulty of carting dive kit back and forth from the hire shop, the car and the water’s edge, but we got there in the end. Both of us set all the kit up without drama and we ventured into the water, which turned out to be jolly cold and rather murky

The dives were unremarkable, but just reminded us of how things worked, what it felt like and generally what to expect when we go diving again – in considerably warmer and clearer waters – in a week’s time.

We tried out the camera too, and have some amusing pics.

After a stress-free trip home, we hooked up both the camera and the dive computer and both worked fine. It was quite enlightening to see my dives shown in great detail on the computer including depths and tank pressures and all manner of things (if you’re a diver you’re interested in all that stuff).

Monday was a day of odds and ends. I sorted out our holiday details and dive kit also read up on how to use the whizzy features on my dive computer. Herself sprayed the fence with wood preserver – despite being a bit too windy really – as we were to find out.

Later on in the evening there was a ring at the bell and our next door neighbour asked me to go around to their house. He showed me his van and their car (both white) and they were splodged all over with little spots of browny-orange wood preserver – obviously from where herself had sprayed the fence. We then spent 40 minutes helping him (with the help of his 4 boys) clean all the little splodges off the cars. It was tough work as it took lots of rubbing to get the stain off, but they did come off in the end. We rather sheepishly left with promises of being more careful and letting them know to move their cars in the future. Whoops.

And that was the weekend. Seems I’ve managed to pick up a touch of a cold or something as I’ve been feeling rather off. It’d better be cleared up by the weekend, or there’ll be hell to pay.

Hasta la vista, baby

I got a Wii Zapper today.

Don't tell herself because I'm not supposed to be buying things like that, especially with our (expensive) dive holiday coming up and the need to buy spangly new kit.

But it was in Tesco, it was cheaper than I'd seen it anywhere else, and I just fancied shooting things.

The game that comes with it seems OK, in fact better than I expected, but I shall have to consider which proper game to get. I'm definitely going to be in trouble now.

Oxford Rock

We had friends to visit this weekend.

Had an excellent time with walking and drinking and chatting and eating far too much, but the highlight had to be Guitar Hero.

It really is rather jolly to play - much better than I expected, having seen kids playing it in HMV. We didn't spend a huge amount of time on it, but enough to start getting the hang of it (and get very sore fingers).

I do feel it's a bit of a social game, rather than one I'd want to go away and play for hours, but the sheer concentration it takes and the utter humiliation when you miss the button on a long note and have to stand there for about ten minutes in complete silence is so much fun. Herself didn't get on with it, so I don't think I'll be getting it - at least not yet - but maybe it's worth it for the party season.

I ROCK
(but only on easy level and only on about 1 song which I can almost play all the way through)

Masters of the Universe

I feel the end of an era in my life is soon to occur.

I am very close to finishing Super Mario Galaxy. I mean, really finishing it, not just doing the main bit, but the really annoying Purple Comet bits too.

I've been stuck for ages on Luigi and his wretched purple coins, but having finally completed that (by the skin of my teeth) this morning, I've now been through 2 more, pretty easy levels and am within 2 stars of victory.

My Star total is 119. 1 more Star unlocks the end game and then that's it (so, I've heard). It's been a long time since I've been so engaged by a game over 2 months, but that's what it's been. Frustrating at times, fun at others, but always addictive. The only time I didn't want to go back to it was this stupid Luigi level (where you have to not only persuade the software to do the right jumps in the right direction, but also remember the pattern you have to use to be able to get back to the start).

I feel an immense sense of satisfaction because I've only used 2 hints in the entire game. One to find a hidden star, where I'd done all the right things but not in the right ways, and one to find the pattern you need to finish that Luigi purple coin level (because it was taking FAR too long to work out on my own - although I eventually used a bit of a hybrid).

I shall now have to find another suitable game to fill this void in my life in order to avoid having to do things like get a life, talk to my wife and go outside the house.

The time has now come, I feel, for a gratuitous quote:

I HAVE THE POWER!

[13:00]
Couldn't resist. The last star was a bit tricky but it was a good level and I managed to complete it. Was rather disappointed to be then taken to the same end level that finished the first part of the game - so contrary to my expectations, there were only 120 stars, the final level was a duplicate. A bit of a shame, it would have been nice to have some kind of fun level at the end, but it can't detract from what is simply a stunning, thoroughly enjoyable game. I feel such a sense of achievement that I just want to celebrate.

You know things are bad when ...

You're offered a fat bribe just for staying with the company.

My visit to the pub ... err, sorry, meeting today all focused around looking after me. This, apparently, invovled promising me the Earth, letting me know in no uncertain terms that everything would be alright and giving me a bribe to not leave.

Admittedly, the bribe was only in shares - which are worthless anyway - but I do get the feeling that things have got one stage worse if my esteemed leaders are now so desperate that they have to try to hang onto me at all costs - even by doshing out some of their hitherto impossible-to-obtain shares.

Perhaps I should be motivated, flattered and enthusiastic about this move, but it just leaves me feeling like things are even worse than I thought, somehow. It serves as a graphic illustration of how incentives can sometimes work against you.

... Or maybe I'm twisted and cynical and nothing's ever good enough for me.

... Naaaaaaaaaa!

Traffic calming

No, I am not at all calm.

Thanks to horrendous traffic in Reading, I just missed my eyesight test. This is a test they should have booked me in for last week when I went for my contact lens check-up, so it's doubly annoying that I had to struggle into the middle of Reading again and that this time it was a nightmare.

I don't know what caused the traffic to be so bad, but at 10:00 it normally seems to at least be manageable, but not today. It might be something to do with the school holidays, I just don't know.

I could have waited an hour and a half for another appointment, but that means being late back to work (maybe not a major problem), having to pay for the car parking (at great expense) and also hanging around Reading for far longer than is healthy.

I have now rebooked my test in Didcot, which is a far more sensible place to get to, on Thursday. Just means I have to hope I don't break or lose my last remaining set of lenses for a little while longer.

[15:55]
Typical. My boss now wants a meeting on Thursday which will make it difficult or impossible to get to Didcot in time. I'm trying to persuade him otherwise.

[12/08/08]
Phew. Meeting rearranged for Wednesday.

It's dark and we're wearing sunglasses

This weekend saw us visiting friends.

First a get-together in Reading, which was great fun. Especially trailing around umpteen shops beforehand to try and find some sour cream – which was a vital ingredient we’d been asked to bring. Stress levels were brilliantly low, even when the dinner did get slightly singed – but it tasted great in the end.

We then had to get up especially early to drive up to Penrith for a 40th birthday party. These were friends I’d not seen in over a year, so even though it was a long way for a pretty short visit, it seemed worth it. The journey up was the usual tedium with lots of traffic and road works, but we did it pretty much right to schedule and arrived at the appointed pub in time to surprise the birthday boy, who knew nothing about his visitors.

Even a pub with a replacement chef, a limited menu (half of which wasn’t actually available) and slow service due to the barmaid having to do basically everything, couldn’t dampen our spirits. We drove back to their cottage and did some chilling out and chatting and the time since we’d last met up just slipped away.

Being 40, he’d been given a Wii by his wife (a fine 40th birthday present if you ask me) – although, I discovered it is referred to as a Wye-eye in Northern climbs. After the obligatory box opening, peering at cables and controllers and eventually the manual and a bit of trial and error, he had the thing up and running and we were soon involved in delights such as 4 player tennis (which I’d never played before and is totally chaotic).

Despite dubious looking weather, the barbeque was lit and we soon had the usual bucket-loads of burgers and sausages. Staunchly sitting outside, even though it was threatening to rain, it was rather pleasant (other than the wasps, who seemed to have come out of hibernation especially for the event). Lots of catching up and chatting about trivial and non-trivial things and doing all the normal stuff that friends do, it was most agreeable.

It did eventually start to rain, but for some reason we got into some kind of competition about who could stay out in the rain for the longest. We got away with this a couple of times when we just had brief showers, but once the rain got more determined, most people gave up and went inside. Except for 3 of us. I soon realised that there was no way the other two were going to give up, and so retired to the garage where I could continue chatting, but not get soaked. They chatted and got soaked. It got dark. We were still out there.

I don’t know if sanity returned or not, but eventually we gave up and went in. The two guys were wet through. It was just silly, but for some reason it just had to be done.

The next day saw large amounts of rain and so there was lots of playing of the Wye-eye and a very fine pub lunch before braving the M6 to head home. It was generally rather rubbish but pretty much as expected.

All in all a hectic, but excellent, weekend. It's always great to visit really good friends who you can completely relax with and just have fun (and be rather silly). I always think that we must visit more often, but it never seems to quite work like that.

Holidays

I booked our holiday today.

After huge amounts of research and discussion, we finally had little choice because we're so restricted on when we can go. But we've booked on a liveaboard for a week in the Red Sea (poo-pooing this whole credit crunch nonsense and have a cheap holiday in the UK ... it certainly isn't cheap). I'm ridiculously excited about this already, even though it's weeks away because I get to unpack all my dive gear and check its all OK and hopefully even go for a dive or two in a local puddle - just to make sure everything is up to scratch, you understand.

Sometimes I forget just how much I enjoy diving. One of the best times of my life was doing my Divemaster training in Australia. I think it has the ideal combination of activity, technology, shiny bits of kit and water. I love to see the fish, but am rubbish at telling anyone what they are (much to my embarassment when I'm dive-leading).

The most exciting thing about this holiday is that we are stuck on a boat for 6 days with nothing to do but dive. This means doing several dives each day - which really gets your diving up to scratch. The last time I did that was in Australia. Even though we've managed to do some diving on most holidays, herself is not as keen as me and so we have to pace the diving and spend time sitting by the pool or playing table tennis or something. This time there will be little or none of that and I'm hoping that I can, and feel up to, doing the 4 dives a-day which represents the maximum ... although, maybe not every day.

The boat we've selected (see the pic) gets some very good reviews and sounds fantastic. All that remains now is to decide what bits of kit I simply must replace. Having been forced not to replace the main things, I'm sure I can still find a number of bits and bobs which will be absolutely essential to my enjoyment and full participation in the week. We also need to get herself a wetsuit. Oh, I can feel my credit card vibrating at the meer thought of it.

Weather and things airbourne

Time for a weather update.

Today it has been mostly sunny, but with clouds and rain at times. The weather station says it's going to rain, but the weather seems to have given up on this and has been pretty sunny all afternoon, but with the odd dark, black cloud making it look like the heavens are about to open - but they don't.
The wind is almost non-existant and the pressure is 994 millibars. The temperature outside is 27C

Well, I had to do that after all the effort of setting this weather station up.

The Red Arrows have been flighing around this afternoon. Basically a couple of hours of hearing them in the distance with a few very close and very low fly-bys which I totally failed to capture on camera. It was rather exciting. I also saw a helicopter landing this morning (the only link between these being that they were both in the air).

There was a brief panic this afternoon when I couldn't find my passport, but it was soon located in my ski jacket (guess the last time I went abroad).

Other than that, it's been fairly quiet today. Was going to book the holiday, but decided to wait until my credit card statement has been issued - see, I'm such a financial wizard.

Gear crisis

Following my last post about the need for dive gear, this has been a traumatic day.

Having honed my selection of new gear down to a few choices, I decided the time had also come to get a new battery fitted to my dive computer - well, in face the time was about a year ago as I found out when we went away diving and my computer didn't work. So, off I toddled to the local dive shop (toddling being a fine method of travel in my neck of the woods).

I've had said dive computer for many years and it's never needed a battery, so I didn't really know what to expect in terms of price. I do, however, know what I didn't expect and that was the healthy sum of £140 being required. This seems rather excessive, but apparently it's all very complicated and time consuming and you basically don't have any choice (you can't do it yourself because you need to replace the seals to make it water and pressure proof again). Add to this the fact that I needed a new screen protector and was also thinking of getting a nice computer interface for it that I'd seen on eBay and we're rapidly heading in the direction of 200 quid. The worst part of it being it's not new or shiny, just the same old computer I've had for years (albeit in an improved state of actually functioning).

Just as I was pondering all this, Carl in the dive shop informed me that instead of shelling out all this cash, I could, instead, shell out even more and upgrade to a suitably shiny new computer - with whizzy new features like microbubbles and IRDA interface. I did ponder this for several hours before ringing him back and going ahead with the new-for-old option.

So these events have put rather a dent in the budget for new kit - amounting to basically the cost of a new BCD. So I've made the hard decision to keep my existing kit - with all its weighty joy and instead just get a couple of new spangly things to celebrate our forthcoming trip. Bit of a change of tack, but then I didn't expect to be getting a new computer.

We have also agreed to book the hol - even though herself hasn't officially been granted the holiday yet. I shall (hopefully) be doing this in the very near future.

In need of gear

We have been contemplating holidays recently.

Due to a variety of reasons, we find ourselves with only one week to go away and the need to do something engaging, rather than just relaxing. This makes me immediately think of Scuba diving.

As soon as I start contemplating diving, I remember that after last year I vowed to buy some new gear, as the kit I have now is rather heavy and although works well, is difficult to get onto a plane to go anywhere. So I've been forced to search the internet for new and shiny diving equipment whilst working out just how much my current stuff is worth on eBay.

There is, as always, an awful lot of kit out there to be purchased and its not always obvious which is the best choice. I had some very definite goals when I bought my original set and although it does do what I wanted, there are a number of notable flaws - the weight of the whole thing being the most obvious.

It's interesting to note that technology has not really moved on a huge amount in the 5 years since I last researched such things. There are all kinds of technical breakthroughs, but nothing really big has changed at all. Even dive computers have simply been tweaked and enhanced rather than being dramatically overhauled. I think this is probably partly due to the natural conservitism that occurs when equipment is responsible for your life - quite reasonable really.

So, I'm starting to think that I won't get anything better, but it will be considerably lighter. I also want to keep things as simple as I can, since there is a tendancy to just bolt more and more kit on and end up looking like some kind of demented cyberman. I guess in this respect my own goals have changed since I am considerably more experienced now and have learnt (often the hard way) which things are important and which aren't.

It always strikes me as an irony that a sport such as diving, in which the goal is to be close to a whole different form of nature in a relaxing and tranquil environment needs so much stuff to actually achieve that. But then, maybe that's part of what I like about it.