Incoherent mumblings on random topics

Let's piste again

2010-02-26T21:24:00.000Z

It is once again time to embark on a trip up a mountain, nail some planks to my feel and chuck myself down steep, snow-covered slopes.

Wish me luck

Rides

2010-02-02T18:16:00.003Z

With my fabled Mini Cooper S continuing to cost me lots of money and the mileage climbing sky high, I started thinking about a different car.

This is a tough decision for me and one I make seldom - I have only chosen and bought 3 cars in the past and only one of those was what I really wanted at the time.

So I've spend some time scouring the magazines, reviews, price lists and so on and eventually came up with two cars which I test drove last week

Volkswagen Scirocco 2.0GT

I actually went and drove 2 of these, one was an auto and one a manual. The auto is a DSG box with manual change paddles

First car was the auto - drove around the outskirts of Oxford and felt a bit cheated by the route, but nevertheless I ended up less than impressed. I didn't feel involved in the driving experience. It made all the right noises and did mostly the right things but even using the manual shift still felt a little distant. Thinking about it afterwards, I decided it was the auto box - I just didn't like it - it always lagged behind what I wanted it to do. Not a great start

Second Roc was driven out in the country. I immediately felt the car was more alive and much more fun to drive. We did a bit of A road work and then lots of lanes and it was great fun. The engine pulls right from the low range to not far from redline and it's eager and responsive. Steering was good but not pin-sharp and overall it felt more eager but less positive and precise than the mini - But it's a bigger car. I really enjoyed this drive

Audi TT 2.0 Roadster

I don't want a roadster, but it gave me a good idea about the TT. Considering the shared heritage if the two cars, I was really surprised at just how different this car felt. It was sharp and nimble and fun and pretty damn quick. I immediately felt in complete control - like I knew how it would behave. There was no sense of anything other than precision in the steering and even when pushed around the lanes it did exactly as you'd expect - complete with a bit of understeer and rear slide at times.

The TT had buckets of grin factor, where the Roc was a bit of a brief smirk. I didn't have much doubt at the end about which one I prefered.

Movie: Avatar

2010-01-14T07:10:00.003Z

I finally managed to drag myself out, despite the snow and ice, and see a movie. The film that got me out of the house was the massively hyped Avatar. I had hopes and expectations of this film, but ended up being surprised in a number of respects.

Long before the film came to the cinema the hype machine started its work. In the case of this film, I allowed it to carry me along to some extent – mainly because I like quite a lot of James Cameron’s work. It took a fair bit of discipline to avoid reading or watching all the previews and interviews around before the film but I have found, in the past, that knowing less about the movie before walking in the door makes for a much better experience.

Having said all that, you couldn’t help but have expectations (and worries) about this massive presentation. I wanted to enjoy it, but felt that it was rather too gimmicky (or cutting edge as they like to call it) to be taken seriously. I’ve been let down by lots of films over the years, and was fairly certain this was going to be another one.

How wrong I was.

My first concern, the 3D. The previous generation of 3D films used to revel in the additional dimension – usually to such an extent that it destroyed the rest of the film. Avatar resisted the temptation to continually use this effect, but instead used it sparingly and in some very creative ways. For most of the film, you almost forgot about the 3D, then there would be a scene or sequence which would do something, often quite subtle, and jerk you out of your seat for a moment. Very well judged.

My second concern was the CGI characters. We still all live with the travesty that was Jar Jar Binks, but luckily things have moved beyond all that. The characters were well considered, well conceived and wonderfully executed. The motion was fluid and believable, the range of expressions and emotions was good and the blending of live action and CGI generally worked well. The rendered environment was incredibly detailed and breathtaking. The vehicles were perhaps a little less masterful, but overall the effect was very pleasing.

Then, of course, there was the plot – often the downfall of many films. In this respect, the film was anything but groundbreaking, relying on a fairly tried and tested formula – adding in a few twists, but nothing particularly revolutionary. But this was a great call by Cameron. Telling a solid story with a message held all the technology, effects, groundbreaking visuals and untried techniques together. He had a vision of what he wanted to say with the film and he stuck to it – which makes the whole film work as a single entity, not as a series of effects shots or clever animations.

So, with all these concerns out of the way I could sit back and enjoy the film. And enjoy it I did - it was great. Not without flaws and not without a couple of poor judgements, but generally very entertaining, engaging and enjoyable. Definitely one for the big screen, it initially carries you along with the visuals before wrapping you up with some very nice characterisations (Sigourney Weaver enjoyed herself a lot) and a strong, emerging plot line. Yes, it takes you where you expect it to, but with a few twists and turns along the way.

The first two acts are very enjoyable, and the film only falters towards the end, where it feels that Cameron wanted to do more with the characters and the story. The pace stumbles for a few steps and is overlong in a couple of sequences before recovering for the predictable, but enjoyable finale.

I came out of the cinema feeling that I’d really enjoyed it – from start to end. I felt the story had something to say and the characters were believable. This, in the end, is the thing that makes the movie. The effects are great, the 3D is fun, but the story, the characters and the overriding message create this whole package that is just undeniably enjoyable. And that, after all, is what a movie is supposed to be all about.

9 / 10

Let it snow

2010-01-13T20:02:00.003Z

Why does the whole country go mad when small amounts of snow fall?

This is a question that has been puzzling me for a few weeks now.

We've had 3 helpings of snow of late, one before Christmas, one a week ago and another today. The middle one was, at least here, reasonable - in that about 15cm fell overnight. The others have been 2-5cm.

When I wake up in the morning and there's any amount of fresh snow on the ground, I take the trouble to walk up to the main road and have a look to see what conditions are like. If the road is solid with snow or ice, I'm not budging. What the world at large seems to do is anything but.

People, and by people I mean drivers, seem oblivious to the conditions beyond their windscreen - so you get the ridiculous situation where the road is covered in snow and ice and people believe that 83 mph on a B road is a good idea (estimate). Then you get the road which has been cleared and had 4 million cars drive on it such that there is not a hint of snow or ice and captain terrified in the car in front is doing 23mph all the way from Oxford to not-quite-Oxford.

I don't know if it's a product of the non-challenging conditions we have through most of the year, the improvements in car handling, poor training or rank incompitence, but it's very confusing and annoying to make an informed decision to venture out into some demanding conditions and be confronted by a not-inconsiderable number of people who fall into one of those categories.

Looking back again

2010-01-08T17:40:00.002Z

I have to come clean and say that 2009 has not been my favourite year.

I know everyone’s got a bit of a downer on it and it came from a broken home and all, but that’s the fact.

The year is underscored by the 6 months I spent without a job. This was serious time “without a job” because I even went to the job centre and claimed allowances and everything. It was strange to be working on the computer most of the day but have no one pay me a sum of money for my troubles. Of course, with the general job situation the way it was, it took some time to find something suited to my skills and when that didn’t work I just took something that looked vaguely credible.

After getting the job things turned around a bit and after settling in, things were going quite nicely. We even went on holiday and had some time away. I never really felt settled in the job, but it was ticking along reasonably well. Then big reorganisations came along and everything was thrown into disarray once more. It brought back memories of the uncertainties of the future of the year – which is not something I want to re-live.

We did manage to visit several people we’ve been meaning to see for ages this year and do a few of the things we wanted to but I feel we’ve not really felt like we can relax and do things and plan things because of the uncertainty of what may happen next month or the month after. Of course, there is always uncertainty, but most of the time you aren’t so acutely aware of it.

So after feeling that 2008 was a year that went nowhere, 2009 did go somewhere, just not very far and we may all have to turn around and go back to the beginning again. I won’t say it was a bad year, but 2009 has not been my favourite year.

Time flies

2009-12-24T07:01:00.001Z

Is it really Christmas again?

Freeze

2009-12-21T20:47:00.004Z

I got to work and found my car door frozen this morning

Bit of a shock - went to get out of the car and the door wouldn't open - it was fine when I got INTO the car at home! I eventually had to clamber out of the passenger side in a most undignified way.

Further investigation seems to indicate that it wasn't frozen at all, but probably broken. Looks like the car will pay YET another trip to the garage (it's only just come back from having a new expansion tanl)

Update: The door is officially broken. Garage man said it's probably one of the clips inside the door.

Festive

2009-12-15T20:38:00.003Z

The festive party season is with us again

At least, it is for most people. Because of silly company rules about not taking partners, herself and myself find ourselves going to parties along, or not going at all - respectivley.

The closest I got to a company do was my team boss' leaving do. That was quite a good affair, only marred by the fact that we got to the curry house so late that I had to leave to catch my train before the curry arrived - not at all pleasing.

There was a get together for a select group of neighbours this weekend, which was quite good, and we do have a party some distance away at the weekend - which should also be pleasant, so I guess, for me, it's quality and not quantity that counts.

Top pie

2009-12-06T10:27:00.000Z

Yes, it's time for the annual mince pie tasting again.

We had a number of new pies this year, from diverse providers including Raymond Blanc, a local cookery expert, the Co-op and Greggs as well as our favourites from last year, Sainsburys Organic and Waitrose All Butter.

The shock news is that the winner is the same as last year - Waitrose All Butter were judged to be the finest mince pies by an expert panel of judges including myself, herself and our next door neighbours. Our tipple of choice this year was mulled wine.

Yum!

Poison Chalice?

2009-12-05T15:23:00.000Z

Things are changing at work and I'm not sure it's for the better.

Our team boss (my bosses boss) is leaving next week and my immediate boss has been transferred onto another project. This now leaves 2 of us on the team for my project and it looks like that may not be for much longer.

We work on a system which integrates a number of older customer management systems together and it has a rather difficult time in the organisation. It threatens some, whilst others think it isn't a good solution - which is true in many ways - but it fills a gap in the IT systems which would otherwise be very costly thing to do.

There is always a battle to keep funding for the project and that seems to be where we are now. The future is by no means certain, but it looks like whichever way it goes, it's going to be down to me to plan and organise it all. Given the bureaucracy and suspicion that seems to be rife in the organisation, I'm not sure I'm happy taking this on.

Time will tell

A New Hope

2009-11-25T21:29:00.001Z

I've finally decided to start a project I've been thinking about for a while. Hopefully it'll be some fun and will keep me occupied on the long, cold nights

Blow by blow account can be found here

Technology ... at last

2009-11-08T12:58:00.001Z

Our updated technology is finally here

Following yesterday's disappointment, the Engineer came today and we finally have our shiny new Sky+ system. It was rather galling since he was here for a total of about 20 minutes, including checking the alignment on the dish. After all that waiting, it was so quick and simple. We're now looking forward to all the whizzy things that it can do.

Boo ... new technology failure

2009-11-07T15:39:00.001Z

After MONTHS of waiting, our new Sky+ box was not delivered today

I reserved the box back at the start of July. Due to the strange system that Sky use, you have to wait to actually be allowed to order it (I think it's a way of making it look like they're not totally rubbish that doesn't really work). Last month I was told I could order it, and today was the earliest they could install it. Not what I would call great customer service

We had the usual thing of an appointment any time between 8am and 1pm, so I dutifully waited in to make sure I didn't miss the engineer when he arrived. At 11:30, Sky rang to say that they wouldn't be coming because the engineer had rung in sick.

Whereas I do understand that you can't predict sickness and there isn't much you can do about it at short notice, what I don't understand is why it took them until 11:30 to call me. That was 3.5 hours after the Engineer should have been working. It just adds another instance of dreadful customer service that we seem to have to put up with because there is only one company that we can use to get anything like a decent TV service.

Watery Voles

2009-10-17T18:25:00.002+01:00

Just back from our hols. More watery pursuits for us with lots of diving and swimming and general lazing around in nice hot places.

First week on a liveaboard is remembered here.

The second week we were at the Coraya Beach Resort just near Marsa Alarm airport in Egypt. This is a reasonably upmarket sort of hotel which we enjoyed a great deal. The staff were excellent, friendly and helpful without being over the top. The food was generally pretty good, although we noticed a little lack of variety by the end, but on the whole most enjoyable. We, luckily, didn’t take the advice of people on trip advisor to go fully inclusive. Basically, because we weren’t drinking loads due to the diving, the restrictions imposed by “fully” inclusive made it not worthwhile. We also found if you chatted to the staff for a bit, then tended to slip you free drinks anyway.

or diving we had to walk all the way around the bay (about 10 minutes) to the sister hotel on the other side which was far more family oriented. The dive shop was very well organised (by Germans) and there was a very creditable house reef which took care of our diving needs for the second week. Nitrox was free too, which was nice to see, although we didn’t make use of it because our itinerary was a very relaxed one.

The first week saw some problems on the boat which did detract from our enjoyment a little, but the second week was a blast and overall left us with great impressions of Egypt once again.

Brass Monkeys

2009-09-22T20:23:00.003+01:00

In preparation for our forthcoming holiday (hooray) herself and myself ventured of to the NDAC dive centre in Chepstow to refresh our diving skills and try out our equipment.

It’s quite an impressive sight, with the car park overlooking the huge hole in the earth which was the quarry and is now the dive lake.

They were a great bunch at the centre and we soon had all our kit sorted out and jumped on the minibus for a lift down to the water’s edge (much appreciated, it would have been a long walk). After the usual faffing about we took the plunge – literally – and got rather a shock as to just how cold it was.

We descended down to the bottom of that part of the lake at about 14m and it was eerie and murky – typical British diving. To try to prevent ourselves getting lost, we headed to the quarry wall and followed that around – admiring the collection of gnomes they had thoughtfully installed – and Olga tried out some extreme ironing whilst I tried, rather unsuccessfully, to snap some photos.

We had a quick surface interval on the pontoon and then went in to the shallower end for our second dive, which was just as cold and murky but a good deal shorter. Olga broke her torch, which was not a good Omen, and after swimming through a couple of cargo containers we decided to call it a day.

The showers were a welcome relief, being nice and warm, and after a quick cup of coffee to further defrost ourselves, we headed off – mission accomplished.

Back to the Future

2009-09-06T17:03:00.000+01:00

We had a reunion of everyone who I used to work with this weekend.

It was a lovely afternoon and we all relaxed in the beer garden and caught up on things trivial and meaningful. It was especially goo d for me - having finally secured a job – because there was a real sense of everybody moving on. It already seems like a long time since we all worked there together – I guess it was nearly 18 months, which is quite a while. Good to see everyone doing something new and also good to reminisce and air a few of the old grievances as well.

Shaken, not stirred

2009-09-01T19:12:00.002+01:00

We had the pleasure of enjoying a champagne cocktail evening this weekend.

We seem to have got into the habit of doing these tasting events every couple of months were our neighbours get together under some pretext and then eat and drink to our hearts content.

On this occasion, champagne cocktails were the order of the day and we were presented with a dazzling array of different cocktails – from the simple to the bizarre. In order to maintain the semblance of a serious tasting session, we had to score each one before moving onto the next. This resulted in a great deal of serious thought and consideration being given to each one (no, not really).

A clear winner did emerge by the end of the evening but none of us can remember which it was – I guess we’ll just have to repeat the whole thing again to find out.
Being champagne, the morning hangover was thankfully minimal – a good tip, I think.

Movie: G.I. Joe

2009-08-08T17:54:00.001+01:00

I think we knew what to expect when we decided to go and see this film. To be honest, we weren’t expecting much – and the film delivered that in spades.

There are a ridiculous number of CGI effects, some of which are reasonably good, but all too many are rather unconvincing. There are goodies and baddies and a kind of plot to play with and there is a most obvious 3 act format with a beginning, a middle and an end. It all adds together into exactly what you would expect, an effects filled spectacle with no lasting value, 2 dimensional characters (some of them struggle to get to TWO dimensions), a predictable plot line and some fantastically bad acting.

Having said all that, I quite enjoyed it. You can put your brain in neutral and coast through the experience – watch the pretty pictures and listen to the loud explosions. It doesn’t change the fact that, overall, it’s a pretty poor effort.

5 / 10

July: Still got a job!

2009-07-31T18:35:00.000+01:00

Settling into the working life again

I now enjoy a much longer and more troublesome commute into work than before, combined with the interesting deployment processes of a large, cumbersome, company. This has combined to keep me very busy over the last month or so.

I have to say that it's good to be working, doing something constructive and learning about some different (if not exactly useful) technology. It's not so good to have to contend with the M25 every day - but we can't have everything.

With our newfound wealth, we went away for a weekend this month to an interesting, if not entirely successful, hotel. We had a (long planned) birthday celebration and we had several weekends of recovering from the rigours of the week. We're even contemplating a real holiday.

June: Got a job

2009-06-30T20:27:00.002+01:00

I got a job!

That was the big deal this month.

After more months than I care to contemplate, someone has seen fit to finally gainfully employ me.

Hoorah for deregulated energy companies

Movie: Terminator Salvation

2009-06-04T10:47:00.003+01:00

The fourth Terminator film needs to find something new to keep the franchise alive after a generally lacklustre third outing.

The trailers for the film have, I think, been rather good - showing a post-apocolyptic vision of a shattered World and certainly the imagary in the film is one of the strong points with effective use of CGI against some stunning, bleak backdrops. But, visuals alone do not make a film.

I want to like this film and, in some ways, I do. It's a massive departure from the previous Terminator films, perhaps not surprisingly given the setting, however this was a good choice since rehashing the old ideas again would just be a disappointment.

Where the film struggles is in stitching together the plot. The first act is generally incoherent - moody, interesting but hard to follow - the characters are only realised to a basic level and the focus is on action and visuals rather than dialogue but the basic seeds of the story are sown. The second act starts to bring some interesting twists and character pieces into play. Bale is mediocre - being given little to work with but it is Worthington who shines with a well considered, sometime subtle edge to his character. There are some more teriffic CGI sequences and some development of the story - it isn't a strong second act but brings more than the first.

Finally, in the third act, the film finds itself. This, alone, saves it from being a meaningless disaster and manages to present an enjoyable climax - with a few caveats. This deliberatly draws on previous Terminator films and gives the audience what they really want (I shall say no more).

Overall this is one of those films which is enjoyable enough, but not great. Bale's character needed to be more central, stronger and less conflicted to pull this off and it's only in the climax that we see this. Wothington is good and engaging throughout and Bonham Carter makes a good, effective, appearance. This isn't your traditional Terminator film but it has plenty of action, lots of great visuals, some good CGI and, if you can wade through the first two acts, a satisfying and enjoyable climax.

7/10

Return of the Jedi

2009-06-03T17:41:00.000+01:00

Today, I have finally finished Lego Star Wars on the Wii.

I started back in January, after receiving it for Christmas, so it's been a good 5 months of work and 150 hours of play to get to the end with 100.0% complete.

I've enjoyed it, on the whole, it's quite good with a nice bit of humour. Not quite as polished as Mario Galaxy with a few more bugs and annoying bits, but - with the exception of 1 particular level, which I think is just dreadful - generally a good mix of gameplay and plenty to keep you busy.

Zelda Twwlight Princess is next on the list.

Final Frontier

2009-06-02T14:20:00.004+01:00

I still get a thrill from images like this.

It's strange but true that, unlike a great many people, I still find the whole space programme rather inspirational and compelling. It's a rare sight these days to see a Space Shuttle being transported like this (they prefer to land them back in Florida), and it does look rather old and clunky in many ways (it was designed nearly 40 years ago), but I think it reminds us of a more optimistic and idealistic time.

The Space Shuttle was born at the peak of the Space race, conceived during the golden Apollo years when everything seemed possible - after all getting to the moon had only taken 7 years. The reality was somewhat different - with NASA being pulled in different directions, budget cuts and persistent problems it was 10 years after Apollo when the Shuttle finally took flight.

The history of the Shuttle has, perhaps, not been flawless, but when you remember that until the dawn of the reusable spacecraft a very, very small number of people had been into orbit. At the end of 18 years of service, there are now a whole army of those who have left the Earth. Although the craft never became what NASA envisaged - never the cheap, reliable, day-to-day space transport, but its achievments are nevertheless, remarkable.

The Shuttle will be retired next year and it will be the end of an era. Not just the era of the shuttle itself, but the era of optimistic, idealistic spaceflight. It is the legacy of the Kennedy space race, a bold, ambitious move to make space more accessible and a fitting tribute to all those who laboured to let mankind take its first, small steps away from the planet. Despite being an outmoded, expensive and none-too-safe system, I, for one, feel sadness at the end of such an era. It remains to be seen if the ambitions of NASAs current flagship manned space programme, Constallation, will have the same ability to inspire and compel attention - based firmly, as it is, in the budget mentality. Time will tell, but time will also remember the Space Shuttle.

Movie: Star Trek

2009-05-18T11:00:00.003+01:00

As a franchise, Star Trek has been in troubled times.

The last film was not well received, for a number of very valid reasons. The last TV series was cancelled after run of just 4 seasons, again, for a number of good reasons. Rumours of a new film had been circulating for a long time and the publicity machine has been winding itself into a frenzy over the new film. It's not really a make-or-break movie for the franchise, but it will determine if Trek goes dormant for another few years or is re-energised (pun intended) with life.

So with all the hype and publicity, the generally good reviews and a few personal recommendations, I went to see the film at the weekend. I was dubious that they would capture the essence of what I believe Trek is all about (the last film missed it by a mile), and I was doubtful that a gaggle of young actors could successfully step into the shoes of such well know and well loved characters.

As the film starts, it is obviously Star Trek, but the way it's photographed is rather new, rougher, more organic. The opening sequence grabs your attention and sets the quality and pace for the entire film.

Establishing the main characters is a thankfully swift sequence. We then start to meet other characters and there are jokes, both obvious and subtle, woven in to both the dialogue and situations. Much as I'd like to, I won't include any spoilers here, but if you've a passing familiarity with the previous films, there are some great things to look out for.

The second act brings us to the Enterprise and some wonderful performances, both serious an light hearted - the crew briefing was so ludicrous I just can't help chuckling, even now. The pace is perfect and the story is engaging and compelling, with enough action and character development to produce a well rounded film.

The cameo sequence works much better than I expected and Simon Pegg obviously had a fantastic time as Scotty.

The final act proceeds mostly as expected, not to say that it isn't thoroughly enjoyable. There is a little over-sentimentality at the end, perhaps, but it's quite well executed.

Overall the actors did a great job. Quinto was especially pleasing as the young Spock, with Urban also doing a fine version of McCoy. Pine had a tough job, as the central protagonist, to emulate Shatner's Kirk whilst not compromising the character, but he had just enough of the classic to make it work.

The film is not without its flaws - for me, mostly technical issues. I can understand those who take exception to these flaws, but the film works well overall, brining an immediacy and energy back to the series which has perhaps been lacking in recent outings. The pace is perfect, with plenty of action but also time for reflection, the effects work very well and the cinematography, although not the Trek norm, works well in the action settings. Basically, it's just good fun - an entertaining film which works well on it's own but even better as part of the long franchise. It deserves to be a success.

9/10

Time and busyness

2009-05-15T10:40:00.004+01:00

A month has passed since my last post, so decided to provide a quick update of what has been going on.

Firstly, no advance on the job front - still have a number of things looking hopeful, but nothing at all concrete for now. It's starting to hack me off again. I've been for one more interview (maintaining my one-a-month rate) but it frankly wasn't a very good interview and they, once again, decided to change the job spec a couple of weeks later which made me unsuitable.

Secondly, I _am_ still doing my Prince 2 course, but it's ended up being far more work than I anticipated plus, I've been finding it difficult to make the time to actually do it (see below). I'm hoping to start spending some serious time on it again soon.

It has been a busy old time. It started with a telephone interview near the end of April, this resulted in me undertaking a programming project over the next week (which ended up taking 50 hours of work). It was fun and it was good to be doing something with a purpose again (albeit, unpaid). Regretably, half way through, I had a phone call to say they'd been put on recruitment freeze and so the job I was working toward didn't exist any more. I decided to finish the project anyway and send it in.

It's quite unusual to be given a full project to program, rather than just a programming test, but I rather liked it - although I'm glad not everyone does it because it takes a great deal of time to produce anything that gives a clue as to what you're capable of.

The following week was a bank holiday, so not only did I have to catch up with searches and applications which had been neglected the previous week, but I only had 4 days to do it.

This week's been mad with job applications, as well as my wedding anniversary and my wife's birthday. Between all these things there's been little time to do anything at all that I actually wanted to!

In the meantime weve been on a progressive supper around our village (great fun), had a village festival (damp but good), had visitors and family staying for a while.

I now have to complete a very long application form for a job, get some birthday presents and plan some birthday events for the weekend ... so I'd better get on with it.

Go West!

2009-04-14T10:00:00.001+01:00

This Easter weekend, we 'av mostly been visiting Zomerzet.

There was a big old family reunion in Somerset this weekend, so we toddled down on Friday evening to join the festivities.

Saturday was spent careering around the South West in search of fine walks, ice cream and fish and chips on a beach. All were totally successful, and for once the weather at the bank holiday was wonderful.

We spent a couple of lazy hours wandering around Golden Cap and sitting on the cliffs enjoying the sun followed by a drive into Weymouth and dinner on the beach.

It's good to get together and do stuff like this.

Sunday was more zooming around - this time between different courses of our lunch. It was all good fun too, and kept us amused for most of the day. Far too many Easter eggs were exchanged and quite a few eaten by the end of the day too!

Monday consisted of some wandering around Yeovil, again enjoying the sunshine, and after a quick lunch, the trip home - which wasn't as bad as we expected. We even had time to sit out in the garden when we got home.

Another highly successful and most enjoyable weekend.

Munchkins and Mushroom Stroganoff

2009-04-06T19:38:00.003+01:00

Another very enjoyable weekend was had. This time with Munchkins and Mushroom Strogonoff.

The weeks seem to be flying by at the moment - with looking for jobs plus studying for my dreaded Prince 2 exam (another time). The weekends also fly by but luckily because we're doing nice things.

Friends over for dinner on Saturday followed by entertaining them plus 2 small ones on Sunday. Enjoyable but exhausting.

We also saw the first ducklings of the year on Sunday - it must be Spring!

Pub

2009-03-30T09:12:00.005+01:00

The Frog came to visit this weekend.

This entailed hurtling in Herman (q.v), drinking and and eating sausages (although no sausages for me ... being a poncey veggie I had frittata).

We had a fine time, visited a pub I'd not been to, visited a couple of pubs I had been to, was treated like a long lost friend in one of them (having not been in for ages due to my continuing work situation) and generally had a jolly spiffing time.

The next day was spent in quiet contemplation of the cosmos and muted conversation of many things (if you know what I mean). We also went on a walk and went past a pub, but not into it.

Soup was then consumed and we all went home for tea.

The futility cycle

2009-03-23T13:34:00.003Z

Another week has dawned and I am still without gainful employment.

I have noticed a pattern in my job hunting over the past few weeks, it goes: Excitement, Impatience, Sinking and Resignation.

Each time I find an advert for a job which looks tailor-made for me it's all very exciting as I tweak my CV and send off my application.
The impatience kicks in when the agent inevitably doesn't get back to me, or there's a delay for some reason, or things are put on hold. This can last from a couple of days to a couple of weeks.
The sinking feeling comes when the overwhelming evidence finally hits me and I realise that I am either not going to be called for first interview, or subsequent interview or not given the job.
I usually managed to keep in the sinking phase for a couple of days by telling myself it's not over til it's over, but the inevitable phone call usually kicks me onto the final phase.
Resignation that yet another job has slipped through my clutches is the last phase. This is especially bad when there are few other prospects around. The phase is usually characterised by stomping, muttering and use of excessive pressure on the keyboard. This phase continues until another tailor-made job is advertised at which point the cycle starts all over again.

To be honest, the situation is made worse by an increasing number of agents who choose to be very aloof and only ever communicate with you on their terms and by companies who place adverts either for non-existent jobs, or for jobs that are later withdrawn with little or no warning. Having looked for work many times in my career, I have to say that the process is far more painful at the moment than it's ever been.

So, in order to break out of this cycle, I've taken the hard decision to invest some of my dwindling funds in some training so I can plaster some shiny new qualifications on my CV. Employing the MacDonald's gold star approach, I'm going for the least effort, maximum shinyness route of PRINCE2 and ITIL certification, possibly followed by some nasty Microsoft ones. This is based on what I've seen employers asking for, what is cheap enough and what won't take me too long to do.

I shall now see if training also has a futility cycle, because right now I'm at the excited bit and already planning how to emblazon my new qualifications across my CV.

FOOTNOTE: The two jobs that looked promising both fell through last week. Reasons were not exactly convincing.

Feature presentation

2009-03-17T18:49:00.002Z

Just heard from the Apple announcement about the big iPhone software upgrade.

The big news for me is that it's getting MMS - something which drives me insane at the moment as I have several people who send me MMS all the time and it's not only laborious to pick up the messages from the dubious O2 site, but also embarassing to send emails in response.

There are a number of other neat things they announced, including copy and paste - which will be useful - and a push system that actually works (apparently) but the real test will be what the developers do with the new stuff they've been given as part of the upgrade. Certainly Sat-Nav functions look on the cards now, so that'll be handy - albeit annoying if you get a call in the middle of the tricky bit.

I shall be following developments until the upgrade is available in June - and perhaps I can bore you silly with them, just like I did with the iPhone 3G.

Weekend wanderings

2009-03-17T18:41:00.005Z

The weekend saw us venture away from home for the first time in a while.

On Saturday, we were to be found in (Royal) Tunbridge Wells. Never been there before and other than a dreadful road system with no signs, it was rather pleasant - quite historic and surrounded by some lovely countryside. (I would tell you why it's called Royal, but you can look that up just as well as I can).

We went for a long walk on Saturday, punctuated by an inevitable trip to a fine pub, and it was most agreeable - especially as it was the first time this year we've been able to sit outside and enjoy a pint - Iron Horse in this case.

Sunday saw us visiting Sidcup. A somewhat different prospect and not quite so leafy and rural, but even there we managed to have a wander around quite a secluded wood at Scadbury Park.

All in all, very nice - got to see a few friends and also some new countryside. Shame about the trip home on the M25 which was a total 'mare, as usual on a Sunday evening.

The rollercoaster week

2009-03-06T11:17:00.004Z

Another week has flown by and things haven't changed a great deal.

The job market is still sluggish, employers still seem very loathed to interview or make decisions and I still don't have a job.

I did, however, land an interview at another company - making a grand total of 2 this year - and have a second interview for the first company.

I think my interview yesterday went well, I said most of what I wanted to, they all peered at some documents I'd prepared in advance and generally I feel I answered the majority of questions well. I am waiting, with baited breath, to see if they are going to call me back. Yes, there is a thrid interview! Never come across this process before, but there we have it.

There are a few things about the job that concern me. Not least of them is the location - it's in a very out-of-the-way place and although it's not too difficult to get to, it involves travelling along some narrow, windy and poorly maintained roads. Not what you want when you've had a busy day and just want to be home.

The next job I'm going for is the opposite - straight down the motorway - very easy. But I have to wait and see what sort of a place it is and whether the people are OK. I generally get a feel for a place and its people quite quickly - years of honing this talent as a contractor.

So, I'm on quite a high at the moment. After starting to get very annoyed that we were now in March and I still didn't have a job, a couple of interviews make me feel closer to that than ever before. We're also managing our money very effectively and still haven't had to raid the savings, and my benefits pay for a few things as well.

I've spent the last week frantically reading about project management and development techniques and feel I've picked up a lot of valuable info, so I'm planning to keep up my research reading and read around a number of technologies and techniques that I've been putting off - it can't hurt. Of course, my progress in Lego Star Wars is going to suffer, but these are the crosses we have to bear.

Mini-film reviews

2009-03-02T09:56:00.005Z

My sister came over for the weekend.

She brought some films with her, plus I watched another after she had gone, so it was a bit of a film-fest weekend, after a long absence of any films. Brief thoughts on the films follow.

The Illusionist
A film about magic in 19th Century Vienna sounded interesting rather than compelling. I feel the story starts in a rather clumsy way, but soon settles down. The magical interludes are charming, reasonable accurate, even if some are CGI, and very watchable.

It very quicky becomes apparent that this is a love story, set against the backdrop of the Austrian Empire, the class system and magic. The story is interesting enough, but nothing spectactuar, but it is nicely photographed, well scripted and engaging enough. However, this film has a sting in the tail in that things are not what they seem. All becomes clear right at the end with a magnificent twist. Depending on how quick you are, you probably worked it our at some point, but the full implications are more that you imagine. A very well crafted, well considered and enjoyable work.

7/10

The Prestige
Another magic film, but very different. This is a much darker, more psychological and sinister film. Rather than love, this is about rivalry, ego and pride. Some more magic sequences, but this time more grotesque, more base and more sensational.
The three act film is mirrored by the microcosm of a magic trick, also in three acts. This is explained very carefully at the start of the film but belies the film's highly complex and interwoven plot.

I would challenge anyone to fully appreciate this film at a single viewing, there is too much to take in and too much misdirection for you to follow the whole story. The more you consider it, the more possible realities spring up. The parallels between the main protagonists, their motivations, their troubles and their obsession is well realised. Tricks and misdirection rule and unfold as the story progresses to its, unexpected, conclusion. There are clues along the way to help unpick the truth, but this is a tough challenge as the pace is relentless.

This is not a thoroughly enjoyable as The Illusionist because it raises too many questions, but the scope of the film is fantastic and the amazing journey it takes you on is worth hanging on for, through all the twists and turns. It's also a film which, I believe would not only benefit from a second viewing, but demands it.

8/10

Hellboy II
A very slight change of pace from the other films.

I was pleasantly surprised by the first Hellboy film. I didn't expect much, but what I got was quite a good, straightforward film with a well paced plot, good characters and a sprinkling of humor.

Hellboy II fell into the typical sequal trap. We have all the same components as the original film but bigger and better with more effects, a broader plot, more characters and bigger threats. But right from the begining this was a film without a soul, something which was made to a checklist rather than being an artwork in its own right. Because of this, it ticks a lot of boxes, but it falls short of being engaging.

The all-too-familiar trap is to constantly think of the sequal in terms of the original film (i.e. bigger this and more that) rather than creating a film that stands on its own merits. Although enjoyable enough, it doesn't carve a niche for itself in your memory, doesn't have much to say about anything and doesn't really develop any of its characters. A missed opportunity to do something intelligent and clever with a seemingly crass and shallow franchise.

5/10

Downward trend

2009-02-26T09:55:00.005Z

With all the doom and gloom in the media at the moment, I thought it only right and proper that I jumped on the bandwagon too.

After what looked like a good start, this week has been rather dreadful, jobwise. Things started to look up last week, with not only more jobs showing up on the searchs, but more that I could actually apply for. It started to look like I would be batting them away with my weighty CV.

A week later and I feel that this week has been at a total standstill, so I decided to tally up some statistics to see if it was really true (the offshoots of having too much time on my hands). It turns out that this week is pretty much bang on average in terms of job availability, but last week, which had the most jobs around, I applied for just one (which was unceremoniously withdrawn this week). So, it seems, that I'm suffering from last week's standstill.

Of course, the real issue is the lack of interviews. I still have a number of applications "being processed" including one that's been out for over 3 weeks. All kinds of excuses are offered, but the truth at the end of the day is that no one is in a hurry to hire at the moment. The problem with that is the longer the job is out there, the more likely it is that the budget will be pulled (it happens a lot at the moment) and then you're back to square one.

So I'm still in the unfortunate position of all my eggs being in one basket, which is good in that it looks really interesting, but not so good in terms of negotiating a salary, or if they decide to hire someone else. But - there's not much I can do right now other than grow a phD or three.

Suspiciously quiet

2009-02-23T17:52:00.003Z

No more news on interviews

Following on from my previous post, there is still no word as to whether they want to interview me or not.

Back from a weekend away in Gloucestershire and into the old job hunting lark again, it's picked up a little today after last week being very poor. Still, the only agents that call are the ones that don't need to - either confirming that I'm _still_ OK to attend an interview, or telling me that they have no more news.

Since I spent half of last year trying to recruit decent software developers, I know what it's like from the other side. One has to draw the conclusion that there are jobs available and people well qualified to do them, but agents are totally hopeless at putting the two together. Maybe there's a new buisness opportunity here .... ho hum.

Academic Fanaticism

2009-02-19T16:16:00.003Z

I've just endured one of those conversations that really annoys me (Caution, Rant)

An agent rang me and wanted to quiz me about my academic qualifications. "Do you have any?" she asked. "Yes", I replied, "I have an HND". Now, of course, this was rather confusing as I didn't say "Degree", "Masters", "PhD" or "Overlord of the known Universe". "So you don't have a degree?" she retorted. "No", I curtly replied, "Why not?" she asked.

At this point I attempted to explain what a totally pointless question this was. I have 20 years of experience, 20 years since I left a Midlands-based Polytechnic after only 2 years instead of 3, 20 years of actually learning something useful rather than the strange fixation my course had with Cobol (if you don't know what that is, be glad), 20 years of solving real-world problems, learning things the hard way, finding out for myself rather than being spoon fed, sorting out other people's mistakes and chasing impossible deadlines. But this means nothing, because it's an agent and agents don't understand these things, agents always say "I don't really understand that, I'm not very technical", they say "But you don't have experience with version 2.716, only version 2.715" ... it's a wonder anyone ever gets a job!

As you can tell, that touched a nerve. In fact it touched nerves on a number of levels and made me quite cross.

So, after my short outburst (somewhat shorter than recorded here, as you can imagine), she refused to take that as an answer and I had to admit, rather lamely, "I didn't get a grant", which was true - in my second year the local authority did not pay me a single penny in grant money (in those far off days when they generally used to do things like that), and if I'd decided to go on to a post-diploma course, I would have received a similar amount.

I didn't, however, mention that the reason I took a 2 year course in the first place was my dramatically bad A level results, or that these could probably be attributed to the amount of time I spent in the Red Lion or any number of other fine public houses in the area, or the fact that on a Friday afternoon I really didn't give two hoots about Physics and would much rather be playing some nerdy role playing game.

How is this at all relevant now?

We shall see, I'm still waiting to hear if they are going to interview me for the job.

It annoys me most because about 90% of what I learned on my course has been totally useless, I've never used Cobol, or SSADM, or used structure diagrams, or programmed a 6809, and I only spent 6 months writing commercial Pascal. The most useful thing my course taught me was the C programming language, and that was just 6 months out of the 2 years - I learnt far more in the folloing 6 months in a real job. But the academic standard makes it easy for people to put you in a box. It's easy to rank people based on 1st, 2:1 2:2, how "good" the University was, and so on. It's more difficult to look at experience and decide how relevant it is, and that is all, I believe, there is to it.

Breakthrough

2009-02-18T16:05:00.003Z

Seems I have a second interview for the job.

Unfortunately it's not for a while, due to holidays and the like, so I'll have plenty of time to second-guess how to approach it. There are, alledgedly, a number of candidates involved, so obviously not everybody ran screaming from the building.

Knowing the situation they have themselves in, I think I've got a few pointers on what to research, so a couple of new software project books are winging their way from Amazon as we speak. I genrally find its good to get your mindset aligned beforehand, so I'm hoping they will do the trick.

Sign on day tomorrow too. I have to print out my 4 page job hunting log to prove I've not just been sitting on my backside whilst the government shells out everyone elses hard earned money. Fun.

Land of make-believe

2009-02-17T16:15:00.004Z

I've returned from a job interview today.

It's the first interview I've had in a little while, and it was somewhat different from the norm. Usually you get asked a load of leading questions, answer them by selecting a situation, viewing it from the most favourable point of view and adding 6. It is then traditional to spout mumbo-jumbo about technology or processes or synergistic flangehandly doohickies and finally retire for coffee and contracts.

This interview started by being told in no uncertain terms that they were up a certain place without a certain implement, that the customers were banging fists on tables, the developers were delivering dodgey code and everyone was running, at increasing speed, around an ever-collpasing singularity of terror.

My first thought: RUN AWAY!

My second thought: Well you could hardly make things any worse, and it would be nice to have a job ... or more particularly, the money that comes with a job.

Don't get me wrong, I've been there before, with project falling around your ankles, code that just won't work and impossible deadlines for impatient customers. It's just that most people try and keep it a little bit quiet. To be faced with this in an interview was interesting, and, I must say, has piqued my curiosity about the company. It's probably some kind of self-harm urge brought on by unemployment, but I actually thought - yes, I could go and sort that lot out.

I am now waiting to hear if they want me for a second interview, so I may never get the chance to find out any more, but we shall see. At least no one will be able to pretend they didn't know what they were letting themselves in for when they joined.

Vista and the art of going to the lavatory

2009-02-16T10:06:00.004Z

Hoorah!

After my dispondancy of yesterday, today is all fresh and new and technology is my friend again. Having downloaded numerous updates from Parallels and spent about an hour refactoring the virtual machine, Parallels now runs the 4OD player in Vista, hosted under OS-X.

I am quietly hopeful that this means I can get the video onto the telly, since it was very easy to get OS-X onto it yesterday (perhaps I'm being stupidly optimistic). Still not sure what the problem really was, but a good old driver update has done the buisness.

Shame it wasn't the same for the NVidia drivers for Vista, which are the latest ones, but still fail to drive the S-video output.

Technology

2009-02-15T20:28:00.004Z

As is often the case with these things - it should be so simple.

I meant to record a programme on Channel 4 a couple of weeks ago, but for various reasons forgot. Never mind, I thought, I can use the 4OD catch up service - the on-demand video streaming service that has now entered the realms of reality and is free.

But, I thought, watching it on the PC screen is a bit rubbish, lets watch it on the proper telly. So I toddled off an purchased a lovely adapter from my local Apple reseller (for my equally lovely MacBook Pro) and set about plugging it all in to the telly to watch in glorious, old-fashioned, CRT-vision. But NO, Windows on my Mac refuses to accept that I have anything plugged in to the DVI port and gets into a bit of a tizz when you ask it to use the external display port. Whereas, OS-X works wonderfully without a whimper, but, of course, Channel 4 OD is not available for the Mac (for reasons which seem steeped in ineptitude and stupidity).
Ah-ha, I thought, time for Parallels, but alas no. Whereas iPlayer works fine under Vista in Parallels, for some reason the 4OD player does not.

So, I'm left at the end of a very frustrating afternoon with little chance of actually making it work. I shall spend some time in the next few days searching the forums and hope that there is some magic cure for this, but I generally feel that the PC (i.e. Windows, and more specifically NVidia) has let me down again. The platform itself and the people who develop for it always make too many assumptions, which is why it end up in things just not working properly. With a bit more care and thought, things like this just wouldn't happen and, other than putting armies of support people out of business, the world would be a much happier and better place.

Times pass

2009-02-14T12:56:00.003Z

I stayed up especially to watch Morrissey on Johnathan Ross' show last night.

I'm not sure why, I guess I was just interested to see what he'd be like - I'd not realy been aware of him for years and, for me, he was still caught in a timewarp from the late 80's/90's.

I don't mind admitting that I was quite keen on quite a number of his works, especially The Smiths. He got quite a rough ride at times, became ridiculously pretentious and smug, but beyond it all wrote and sung some wonderful songs in his own, unqiue angst-ridden way. You always knew when it was a Morrissey song.

So what would he be doing now and what would he look like. Quite alarmingly, he was singing very similar sorts of songs in a very similar way. To me it sounded less edgy, more like going through the motions than really feeling every word and sentiment, and the voice had lost some of its raw power, but it was obviously him.

But when I looked at him performing, 20 years on from the big-time, it just struck me that he looked like a cross between an aging Country-and-Western singer and one of your mates Dad's from when you were a kid. It just didn't seem right that he was still singing these songs. I don't know if that's wrong of me or wrong of him - I know I still have many of the emotions I did 20 years ago, but I guess I can't pretend they are the same ones or that they still keep me awake at night. I think most of us find some way of finding some peace with ourselves later in life, which is a place we just haven't got to when we're in our 20's.

So, I felt a little sad. Sad that, as much as you might want it to, time never stands still. We all get older, we all change, and I think, if we're wise, we accept that this happens. There's nothing wrong with this, it's inevitable. But then, maybe it's not him, maybe it's me. When I heard his old songs for the first time, I was in a very different place than I am now. I like to think that I am happy with this and accept it, but perhaps from time to time I still like to think that I could change the World, just like we all thought at one stage in our lives.

To quote the man himself, has the World changed or have I changed?

Housebound

2009-02-09T20:04:00.003Z

Looks like January's in the bag for this year and not much progress for me.

Job market has been decidedly sluggish until about the last week when several things all came along at once. Of course the big achievement was applying for Jobseekers Allowance (which I've heard I'm going to get).

It seems strange, but I feel I have less time to spare than when I'm working. Despite the fact I hardly emerge from the house on many days, I seem to fill the time up with a combination of (often futile) calls to agents, hunting through job sites and fiddling around on various epics of my own devising. Of course, I haven't mentioned Lego Star Wars, which is also consuming a degree of time, and proving rather compelling.

Motivation seems to go in peaks and troughs, but generally is not as hard to come by as I was expecting. I was starting to wonder how long it would be before I actually landed an interview, but I now have one lined up, albeit in a week's time, which seems like an eternity away. It's not that there are no jobs out there - I see them advertised every day - it's just that people seem to be very, very slow at progressing at the moment, probably hoping that all the doom and gloom of the economy will somehow nurture some small ray of sunshine that can be clung to like flotsam in a shipwreck.

Looks like my annual skiing holiday is off, much to my annoyance.

For some light relief, however, I've actually been and performed a demo for my old company. They are still trying to sell the edifice to someone who'll take it on and do great things. It's a strange situation, but somehow seems about as surreal as the rest of my existence at the moment.

Dole scum

2009-01-23T11:09:00.004Z

I took the plunge and decided to claim Jobseekers allowance.

After my first attempt to use their online system which just got lost in digital oblivion, I had a lovely half-an-hour on the phone answering lots of questions about all my personal finances. I then had to attend an interview at my local Jobcentre which I did yesterday.

It was a strange experience. The actual people were actually reasonably pleasant, but the whole process did seem very protracted, with photocopies of things being taken and tons of paperwork to fill in.

I then had to formulate my Jobseekers agreement, which is basically the beginners guide to looking for a job. If I don't do 3 things to find work each week, my money is cut off ... seems like very little to ask. He also did a search for jobs for me which yielded absolutely nothing - which was funny because I had 2 emails about jobs whilst I was sitting there.

I think it was a good idea to reinforce that the unemployed should be looking for work, and hence be called Jobseekers, but I also think that the blurring between the benefits side and the looking for work side is counterproductive. The stated goal of the centre is to help you back into work, but in fact half of what they do is make sure you're actually looking yourself. The one-size-fits all approach which sees me having to ring the Jobcentre for jobs just as if I were an unskilled school leaver seems like a waste of everyone's time - when the specialist agencies have far more to offer.

Possibly the most amuzing thing is that I can specify the sort of job I want and the salary, but this only holds for 13 weeks, after that, I have to take any job - which is just foolish. If the pay won't cover the mortgage, there's just no point.

All in all though, I felt it was a more positive experience than I was expecting and, given the range of people they probably get, I felt it was quite constructive. I am, however, looking forward to officially being Dole scum when my application is finally processed (about 3 weeks, apparently).

Looking back

2009-01-07T17:49:00.002Z

As a year, I feel 2008 wasn't the greatest.

There were some great bits in there for me personally, especially our first liveaboard diving holiday. There were some landmarks - most notably turning 40 and my wonderful weekend "away". There were some firsts - landing an airliner at Heathrow, albeit in a simulator. There were some gadgets - iPhone 3G being top amongst them.

There were also some bad bits, foremost being made redundant, followed closely by the rest of my team being made redundant earlier in the year.

I think that the overriding feeling for me throughtout '08 was, to coin a meterological term, unsettled. Working from home most of the time for a company which was obviously about to fail is something that is difficult to deal with at the best of times. Added to that, the fact that all you strived to do over the past 2-3 years is about to be binned dosen't help. And that the whole thing can't just quietly be put to rest because the powers that be keep on coming up with ways of reviving it.

On the whole, I think I've been quite philosophical about it and have faired reasonably well, but the feeling of going nowhere will, for me, always be associated with '08.

Films of 2008

2008-12-31T17:19:00.003Z

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

2008-12-31T15:14:00.003Z

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

2008-12-31T12:06:00.003Z

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

2008-12-11T17:33:00.002Z

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

2008-12-05T18:44:00.004Z

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

2008-11-29T20:40:00.005Z

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

2008-11-19T09:59:00.001Z

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

2008-11-07T09:10:00.003Z

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

2008-11-04T12:41:00.003Z

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

2008-10-27T17:44:00.004Z

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

2008-10-27T17:32:00.005Z

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

2008-10-26T19:27:00.003Z

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

2008-10-22T13:29:00.004+01:00

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

2008-10-22T09:42:00.005+01:00

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

2008-10-16T08:41:00.003+01:00

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

2008-10-06T21:39:00.000+01:00

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

2008-09-30T18:35:00.003+01:00

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

2008-09-25T12:59:00.001+01:00

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

2008-09-24T13:10:00.005+01:00

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

2008-09-22T18:33:00.004+01:00

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

2008-09-18T19:23:00.004+01:00

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

2008-09-18T19:23:00.003+01:00

(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

2008-09-17T09:25:00.004+01:00

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

2008-09-15T14:26:00.003+01:00

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

2008-09-12T09:42:00.004+01:00

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.

2008-09-11T18:41:00.004+01:00

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

2008-09-10T10:24:00.002+01:00

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

2008-09-09T18:16:00.001+01:00

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

2008-09-08T22:07:00.002+01:00

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

2008-09-08T17:43:00.002+01:00

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

2008-08-30T08:39:00.003+01:00

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

2008-08-27T09:01:00.003+01:00

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

2008-08-26T09:36:00.003+01:00

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

2008-08-19T23:28:00.001+01:00

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

2008-08-18T12:12:00.002+01:00

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

2008-08-15T10:05:00.008+01:00

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 ...

2008-08-13T15:00:00.004+01:00

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

2008-08-11T14:48:00.004+01:00

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

2008-08-11T11:11:00.005+01:00

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

2008-08-08T13:02:00.003+01:00

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

2008-08-07T15:18:00.000+01:00

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

2008-08-06T15:59:00.000+01:00

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

2008-08-05T17:17:00.003+01:00

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.

(Son of) Bill Giles

2008-08-04T08:39:00.005+01:00

It all started off so simply

We have (had) an indoor/outdoor thermometer in our bedroom. This is very handy when you're the sort of mad fool that gets up early in the morning to go on runs and walks and the like - British weather being what it is, it's often difficult to decide just how many layers you need to wear.

This essential device broke. To be more accurate, the wire that connects the external sensor has been severed by the constant opening and closing of the window - through which the wire was run. So we needed some kind of replacement. Somehow, this all spiralled out of control and we ended up buying a weather station - complete with an anemometer, a wireless thermometer and a rain gauge.

So I spend a jolly Sunday afternoon clambering over rooftops and screwing various posts and polls and bashing nails into cable grips (of course, it started to rain whilst I was doing all this) and we now have a functioning weather monitoring and prediction system which obviously rivals the Met Office for sheer technology and accuracy.

We have found it stragely compelling to continually peer at the pressure, windspeed and temperature - and spent quite a bit of Sunday doing so. This probably indicates a huge degree of sadness on our part, but in my day, that's what Sundays were for - cause there was nowt else to do.

Ref: Bill Giles

Clueless

2008-08-01T17:54:00.004+01:00

Despite my resolution at the begining of the week, the past three days have been the normal techno-hell.

The following facts have come to my attention during the last few days:

1. Our IT support sub-contractors are clueless
2. Whoever configured the routers in the office is clueless
3. Whoever cancelled the wrong ADSL line is clueless
4. I am clueless (for leaving my laptop power supply in the office and losing an hour going to get it)
5. Surprisingly, our ISP appears to have support staff with more than one clue to rub together

So, I've had to sort it all out myself and finally have some picture of the things that have been going wrong.

On a positive note, our electronics sub-contractors are now talking to one another and have vowed to sort out the mess they created, I actually found a job worth chasing and it's Friday and I'm off to the pub tonight.

Movie: Hancock

2008-07-31T09:12:00.004+01:00

I was intrigued by the publicity for this movie.

It seemed to be a summer (Will Smith) blockbuster, but also seemed rather off-the-wall, different and interesting. Will Smith sometimes manages to pull off some pretty good films, so it was worth a try.

In the end, it was even more off-the-wall and interesting than I would have expected. Hancock is established as a character very quickly, and we get a very definite feeling of the type of person he is and of what the public think of him. However, we are kept off balance by occasional glimpses behind the facade, of contemplative moments where the character becomes far more three dimensional that your normal super-hero. There is a good deal of humour, but it is well considered and the first act is well paced and compelling.

As we enter the second act, as is traditional, the character undergoes changes and we start to see a different side to his personality. There is still humour, and there are some great moments, but the pace falters and the story feels laboured in places. This is a shame, because with a little judicious editing, the pace could have been spot-on throughout the three acts.

The third act comes as a complete surprise and turns this film from a "run-of-the-mill A list actor with a superiority complex flick" into something far greater and more enduring. Many questions are asked, some are answered and there are some brilliant touches, which many people probably missed, which hint at some great ideas. There are some clunky moments, some inconsistencies and more cliches than you can shake a stick at, but in the end the story hits exactly the right pace, the suspense is perfectly timed and the conclusion is satisfying, if not unexpected.

The epilogue is corny and adds little to the film, but lets the American audiences leave with a warm glow in their hearts, and everyone else leave feeling sick to the stomach.

This is a clever, insightful and thought provoking film masquerading as a feel-good summer blockbuster. The violence and language in it mean the 12A certificate (in the UK) is woefully inadequate (remember under 12's can see it with an adult - any adult) and probably mean it will be edited to hell when it comes on TV. But I, for one, enjoyed it - more than I expected to.

7/10

Trivia: I didn't understand the cultural reference to John Hancock, but apparently this refers to a signature. If you look at the U.S. Declaration of Independence, you can see John Hancock's signature is by far the most prominent. This is a nice touch and shows the thoughtfulness and intelligence of the script writers.

Turmoil, revisited

2008-07-30T10:21:00.005+01:00

I was wrong.

It is not a better week at all. In fact it's turning into a bit of a disaster.

With lost photos at home, failed ADSL line at work and an inoperable mail server, technology is still firmly in my bad books. Seems wherever I look, everything's gone distinctly fruit shaped (what does that mean anyway?).

Despite a special trip into the office yesterday evening, lots of fiddling around with settings and phone calls to everyone I can think of, there are still about 4 disasters all layered on top of one another. The worst thing is, once I've sorted this out, I've got to get on and deal with the real disaster which is what prompted me to find out about all the other disasters.

The profession of mad old hermit is looking decidedly appealing at the moment.

I hate ADSL, I hate email, I hate Draytek and most of all I hate suppliers who can't put things together properly (or even in the right place). If I was the Hulk, I'd be looking distinctly green around the gills by now.

[12:40]
Things have turned around a little. Found out what 3 of the 4 problems were caused by (in order: hardware failure, IT consultants, disgruntled ex-contractor) and have started tackling the main disaster. An appropriate snot-o-gram has been sent and (gentle) threats made. Time to retire to a safe distance and have some lunch, I think.

Technological turmoil

2008-07-28T09:17:00.004+01:00

It's a new week and I've decided it's going to be a better one.

The last couple of weeks have seen me immersed in various technical disasters, both at work and home. I don't want any of that nonsense this week - I want to get back to doing proper stuff and having something (half) decent to write in here.

My Mobile Me mail started working on Saturday night (suspiciously soon after I sent them a snot-o-gram), my iPhone is therefore all working correctly, as is the computer AND the servers at work.

So, time to actually use the technology, rather than just fix it.

Can you hear me, Mother?

2008-07-27T19:21:00.005+01:00

Since I swapped to my iPhone, I've had a problem.

This problem basically equates to: O2 coverage is rubbish in my house. This causes me to lose signal all the time and be unable to actually have a voice conversation on my phone - a bit of a problem when you use it for you primary phone number.

After lots of looking around and generally checking things out, because the coverage in my area is _so_ poor (but not non-existant), I decided a cell repeater was what I needed. These aren't exactly bits of kit you get on the high street, so I eBayed it and soon had a few options. Since most of the units originated from China, I decided it was best to deal as directly as I could and went for the cheapest option.

After waiting innordinate amounts of time (not least for ParsolFarce to get their act in gear) it arrived. It got tested and installed and I now have a pretty reliable 5 bars of coverage in my house.

It's great when technology actually does what it says it will. I am very pleased at the moment. I even got to drill some holes in things - which always helps.

Oscar's legacy

2008-07-26T18:32:00.001+01:00

I had to go shopping for a handbag today.

It strikes me as a rather futile activity as handbags have not had a decent memory upgrade or architecture mod since ancient Greece.

The only good part is we (that is my wife) actually got one.

I cannot recommend this activity in any form.

Whose bright idea?

2008-07-24T17:41:00.004+01:00

Our gas company sent us some energy saving lightbulbs today.

The big question is why?

This is the company that took 12 months to send us our first bill (having consistently denied that we existed), is actually one of the most expensive suppliers in the country, and we are due to stop being their customer in about 2 weeks (having waited 6 weeks for the privilege). So from a position where even sending us a bill was too much trouble, we now get light bulbs - 4 of them.

Apparently this is supposed to be green. But firstly, we only buy gas from them, not electricity - I can therefore only assume it's a fiendish plot to make us buy less electricity from their competitors. Secondly, if I'd wanted some lightbulbs, I'd have bought some. Thirdly, we can't even use them because out house is full of halogen downlighters, not conventional incandescent bulbs. All in all it's a complete farce.

All this cheap stunt does is to reaffirm my commitment to stop paying them any more money as soon as possible.

Swings and Roundabouts

2008-07-23T19:19:00.003+01:00

Today's had its good and bad points.

The computer is now officially working. New graphics card arrived, was duly installed and now we're back up and running. Only slight issue is I couldn't fit one of the fans into the case so the fan controller now throws a fit when you turn it on - but it doesn't affect actually using the thing.

On the more negative side, I've been waiting for a delivery from Hong-Kong and Farcelporce tracking told me it'd be delivered today. I dlilgently waited in all day, and of course it didn't arrive. Why? Because the delivery man couldn't find the house. Everyone else seems to manage - it's the big house-shaped thing. It even has a sign on it with the number and the road name.

We used to get this all the time, because it was a new house, but it's been there for 2 years now and most people have finally managed to update their various systems to actually recognise where it is (except for Google - which points to the middle of a field). When your one and only job is to take boxes to addresses, you would think some kind of up-to-date map might be pretty high on the list of things you need - but apparently not. They have now very kindly offered to take it to the local Post Office tomorrow (because I actually have to go to the office) - I just wonder why they didn't do that today. Or better still, just give the parcel to the Post Office to deliver in the first place.

My graphics card came by Citylink. Far better. The drivers are always friendly, they actually know where houses are and they drive lovely green and yellow vans.

My Mobile Me email is also still not working. This is starting to get silly.

Still Teetering

2008-07-22T18:52:00.001+01:00

Despite my best efforts, I'm still at the cliff edge.

No sooner had I unplugged all the extraneous drives from the computer and tidyed everything up, ready to put the whole thing back together, than the graphics card stopped working. I get the feeling this computer is trying to tell me something.

After lots of fiddling and decoding of beep codes, a new card is on order and I hope this solves the problem (otherwise, it's a new motherboard).

Added to this, email on my iPhone hasn't been working since Friday due to some problem with Mobile Me. I'm starting to feel just a little paranoid.

Edge of the Abyss

2008-07-22T08:56:00.004+01:00

The World is safe again!

Well, at least, my World is safe again. I have completed my rebuilding efforts and removed my hard-hat and ill-fitting trousers. Although, when I say "completed", the more accurate phrase would be "given up". I managed to recover about 90% of the files but, of course, the particular files that herself wanted were doomed to an early binary grave.

It does however mean that I can tuck the innards of the computer safely back in their case and actually spend some time doing things other than pouring over partition and file allocation tables - like play with my iPhone, and play Mario Galaxy (84 stars, by the way) - oh, and possibly do some work - if I'm particularly desperate.

Big Smoke

2008-07-21T21:07:00.003+01:00

I had a trip to London today.

I had to drive to Paddington, which I really wasn't looking forward to. My general experiences of driving in London involve sitting in queues, ridiculous one-way systems, total lack of signposts and a Rolls Royce nudging the back of my car every time I stop at the lights. None of this was to come to pass, though. I had an excellent trip down the A40, managed not to get lost (despite the somewhat misleading signage) and arrived at the hospital about 40 minutes early.

I was giving a demo of our system to some patients - although it seemed likely they were simply there for the (rather splendid) catering that'd been laid on. But I did the demo anyway. One of them fell asleep. But it looks like it was a success and the hospital staff were very enthusiastic. We just need them to actually order something now (not that I care, because I'm leaving and everything, but perhaps I do care, just a little bit).

Amazingly, I had an equally good trip back - a couple more queues, but got back to the office in record time. Then I got stuck in a traffic jam for 45 minutes going into Henley on my way home. Ah! the delights of Henley again.

... and I did it all without the SatNav (mainly because it's so hopelessly out of date now that not only have the roads changed, but the continents have drifted significantly).

Bob the (re)builder

2008-07-21T09:38:00.005+01:00

I sometimes hate being a "computer person".

I've spent a lovely Friday and most of the weekend attempting to recover some files from my computer's old hard drives. I've rebuilt, scanned, fiddled, fixed, mended and patched the partition stuff and the wretched thing still won't read the files.

It would be so much easier if I knew nothing about computers because then I could just throw my hands up and say it was broken, but instead I keep on coming up with more cunning ways to get at the data which takes me another 2 hours to execute. And then it doesn't work.

It wouldn't be so bad, but it was my fault the files got lost in the first place (because I didn't back them up) and they're a load of Olga's work files. She's being very good about it, but I'm determined to recover them. Into the 4th day of recovery efforts though and my patience is starting to wear a little thin.

It was never like this in the old days when I used to load Manic Miner off a C60.