Farewell, my friends.

For the next two weeks I shall be on holiday. We're only actually away for one week, and are at home the next for Jessica to start High School with the Big Kids. So Snowdonia beckons, and there's a mere 1603 things on my list to do and pack tonight.

Update the TomTom with new speed cameras.
Check the tyre pressures.
Buy petrol.
Buy dog & cat food.
Clear out the car.
Fit Anise's car seat.
Buy some rolls to eat on the journey and make them.
Pack clothes.
Pack the other million things we need (towels, hair-dryer, alarm-clock, map, books, camera + bits, video camera, phone charger etc etc).
Load everything into the car.

And many more besides.

We're staying in the tiny village of Llyantysillio (ok, I made that up - I've got no idea on what it's called) and I'm sure we'll have a good time. Even though the weather forecast for this week read something like this: London - rubbish, Wales - great; and the forecast for next week reads: London - great; Wales - rubbish.

See y'all in a couple of weeks.


PS - Any burglars out there please disregard this entire post. I was only joking and I'm not going anywhere. Instead I'm staying at home for 2 weeks training my rottweilers and sharpening my knives.

Morning crisis

Is there anything more depressing than strolling into the office at the stroke of 9:15 (oops), filling the kettle, spooning some coffee into a mug, pouring the water onto it, savouring the aroma of the lifesaving nectar, then opening the fridge to discover there's no bloody milk?

"Drat!" I exclaimed. Well, obviously I didn't actually say that, I said something rather ruder that attracted the attention of several colleagues. A discussion ensued, during which I proposed the theory of a milk-warning system, whereupon should the first arrival to the office notice there is no or little milk, telephone calls or text messages would be sent to somebody to pick up some milk on the way in. If they were unable to fulfill it, it should be passed onto the next person on the list and so on.

With this idea in mind, I realised that one person was not in yet so I grabbed my phone from my bag to give him a call. And on my phone was a message from a colleague. Asking me to get some milk on the way in.

Drat.

I tried to contact my other colleague but couldn't, so I sent him a text message. Predictably, he didn't notice it, so we still had no milk.

Of course, the really really sensible solution would be to arrange for a local milkman to deliver a couple of pints of the stuff every day, as we used to do, but that got cancelled a while back because it was too expensive or something. I don't know what he charged for his milk, but if we have to cancel it because it's too expensive, he must be on a good racket there.

The new office

I'm in the new office now. It's not too bad. It's a bit small, and the kitchen is, well, not a kitchen but rather a sink and a cupboard in a corner. But overall it's livable.

The drive in is much nicer. A comparison: On my old route to the old office I usually stopped at a garage to buy a newspaper. Often I'd have to inch around a van or some sort. Yesterday at the garage on the nice country lane through a small village I had to inch around a tractor. Pity this garage doesn't seem to sell newspapers. The new drive is lots of nice country roads, scattered with huge mansions that I will never be able to afford. It also takes me past the Epsom racecourse, so I suspect come Derby-time I may need an alternative route.

It didn't take too long either. 30 minutes, compared to 20 minutes to the old place. Bearing in mind it's twice the distance, this isn't too bad. Of course the end of the school holidays will have a big effect though.

Currently we have internet access but nothing else, so I can't actually do any work. Shame.

It never rains, but it pours...

And in this case, it's pouring through my kitchen ceiling.

When I came out of the shower on Sunday, Joe was downstairs. "What are you doing, Joe?" I asked.
"Splashing in puddle" came the puzzling reply. I went downstairs and, sure enough, water was pouring through the light fittings and the kitchen was soaked.

We called the insurance company and they sent a man with a big shiny red van around pretty quickly. As the bath was also emptying at the time of the escape, he tried to determine whether it was the bath or the shower causing the problem by variously running both, and eventually decided it was the shower. He knocked a hole in a ceiling (the one we only got fixed a year or so ago) but couldn't see anything, and as no further water was leaking, decided that the problem had gone away. He left with the advice that we should use the bath only for a few days, and then try the shower again. And the insurance company wouldn't do much as it's not an emergency because we can use the bath.

So this morning we used the bath. And even more water came cascading down through the ceiling. This was even more puzzling because we used the bath in between the first and second floods for Joe. Perhaps it's because there was more water in this time. So we called the insurance company again who agreed it's now a higher priority as we need to bath a baby (and a baby with Eczema at that). So it's been passed onto the underwriters, but I don't know what they'll pay for. Fixing the bath will probably involve removing the tiles off the sides of the bath (there's no access panel, stupidly) which of course may break them. The kitchen ceiling needs fixing as it's now got holes in it, and the lights are all discoloured, and probably not that safe now either, their electrics having been doused in water.

What with Jessica's birthday, a new pushchair for Joe, a new tyre for the car, now this, and our impending holiday the money is pouring out of my bank account as fast as the water is pouring into my kitchen.

Damn I'm bored

I'm sitting at the last assembled desk in the old office, surrounded by packing crates and disassembled furniture. There's nobody else here. I can't go because I need to stay in case of an emergency on our main tracking website, and because I've got to babysit a RAID array rebuild on a server that decided to go wrong just as we were about to back it up before unplugging and moving it.

What fun.

Tomorrow I'm going to the new office. Hopefully there'll be some kind of internet access then (BT are working on it at the moment); otherwise if there's a problem I'll have to drive back here to sort it out.

And in very irritating news, Ele called me yesterday afternoon to say there's a nail in the tyre of the big car and it's gone flat. I talked her through using the air compressor and she drove it down to ATS, but it's too near the edge and can't be repaired. So that's £150 for someone to come and fit a new tyre. Wonderful.

In slightly more amusing news, those of you with Firefox might have noticed the inbuilt spell checker that highlights words if you spell them incorrectly (or in a non-American way) whilst typing. Type the word buckinghamshire (not with a capital B), then right-click the word when it underlines it to give you the list of options. Very amusing, in a schoolboy sort of way.

How, exactly?

Occasionally, I look at a website where people post details of specific photographs they want to buy, in the vague hope that one of them might want a picture that I've taken. If they want hundreds of pictures of Joe, then I'm the man to supply them.

Anyway, I looked at it just now, and somebody has posted requests for many photographs of dinosaurs. Not pictures of skeletons, but live ones, in action shots, such as a Allosaurus killing a Sauropod.

I've a feeling they won't be getting many responses.

Hi-ho Hi-ho...

...Moving offices we go.

Yes, the Great Office Move is finally almost here. Today marks my last day of work in the building that I have spent the last 6 and a half years in. Gone will be the 25 minute commute. Gone will be the amazing views from our 5th floor windows (we can often see the arch at the new Wembley Stadium which is about 13 miles away). Gone will be the luxury of space.

In its place there will be a commute of undefinable length (until the summer holidays are over and the traffic levels are back to normal I've no idea how long it will take), a view of a field (nice) and the M25 (not so nice), and half the space that I've been used to as I downsize to a single desk. Still, at least I've bagged a window seat.

And we had the pleasant surprise of a bunch of packing crates arriving last week. I've packed up most of my stuff, with just computers, monitors, servers, network switch, KVM, 8-way extension cords etc to do (i.e. most of it). This will be packed tomorrow, so there will will probably be a short interlude of a few days whilst everything gets setup at the new place.

Please imagine there is some hold music playing during this time.

On another note, did you see her? Did you? On the TV? Last night? Jessica was on the TV! She was in several playground and classroom scenes (once right in front of the camera) in Little Devil last night on ITV.

How to care for a hamster in 20,000 words

Last week my brother sent me a message asking if we could look after his hamster for a few days. My reply was something like: "Of course. Er, when did you get a hamster?"
His reply was something like: "Well, I was in the pub and there was this pet shop next door..."

Anyway, we looked after this hamster, which was really rather easy. He even gave us a book he had bought along with his hamster and hamster paraphernalia. It was about how to care for a hamster.

An entire book (admittedly not a huge book, but a book nonetheless) on how to look after a hamster. Necessary? I think not.

After being a hamster-carer for a week, I can sum it up thusly to save you £5.99

Step1 - Put hamster in cage and secure door.
Step2 - Give food and water.
Step3 - If hamster appears unwell, refer to Step2.
Step4 - If hamster is missing, refer to Step1.

We Will Rock You

Last night, Ele and I went up to the Dominion Theatre at the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street to watch We Will Rock You. And Rock Us they did. I wonder if there is any comeback under the Trades Descriptions Act if one attends a showing of We Will Rock You and does not feel sufficiently Rocked at the end of it?

This was my birthday present from Ele, and it was amazing! I highly recommend going to see it. The cast are incredible singers, and the band were just superb. It was also very funny, but it should be, having been written by Ben Elton. We had seats up at the front (row C) of the circle and had a great view.

One thing that got me thinking though, is what is the correct way to perform the hand-clapping to the title track? The conventional wisdom, as practiced by the cast, is the clap-clap-hands apart method. But, I know better. I was told by extremely high authority (and this authority is Brian May himself), that it is supposed to be stamp-stamp-clap.

Many years ago, when I was younger and carefree, and actually had time to play the guitar, I went to a music exhibition at Wembley Exhibition Hall. There, all the main instrument, amplifier and accessory makers were showing their wares. I had intended to buy a 4-track recorder, and did, but came back with another guitar as well. Anyway, part of the exhibition was a talk given by Brian May in a small-ish auditorium. A few hundred of us gathered there to hear the great curly man speak about his guitar (which he built himself), and he told us all about its features, and what amps and pedals he uses. To finish with, he did the solo from the end of We Will Rock You (the song, not the musical), and got us all to do the stamp-stamp-clap bit, as he explained that this was what it was intended to be all along, but somehow it never seemed to work out that way when they played it live.

So last night, when everybody was clap-clap-hands aparting, I was stamp-stamp-clapping, smug in the knowledge that I was doing it as the man intended. And very conscious of the fact that everybody else in the entire theatre of 2000 people, including the cast, was doing it the other way.

Computers are amazing

Computers are getting fast. Really fast. Cast your mind back over the years and think about the computers you've owned.

My first was a Commodore Vic-20 when I was about 5, or maybe a little older. It had something like 4k of RAM. My first PC was about 12 years ago. It was 60Mhz, had 512MB of hard-drive, 8MB of RAM and 1MB of video memory. My current PC, ten years later (it's two years old now) is 3500Mhz (58 times as fast - ok in Mhz it's not 3500 but it's the equivalent of), 500GB of hard-drive (1000 times as much), 1GB of RAM (125 times as much) and 256MB of video memory (256 times as much). It also cost about a quarter of the price.

This is in a mere ten years.

A few years ago there was a race to see who could build the first computer that could do a Teraflop - a trillion floating point operations per second. Later this year will see a computer capable of 1000 Teraflops - a thousand trillian calculations per second. Incredible.

And this will be eclipsed by the arrival of quantum computing and spintronics. Rather than shuffling electrons around a processor, spintronics uses the natural spin of electrons to compute and store multiple (almost infinite) values at the same time. This will make 1000 Teraflops look like the Vic-20 of old.

It's not here yet, but it will be, and it will be amazing.

Speechless

Get this: Some poor girl, a mere 18 years old and excited to be leaving education and striding forth to make her mark on the world, applied for a job at some government department. I'm not sure which one; something to do with the environment I'm sure, as that's what all the departments are for these days. The Department of Dealing With Floods Really Badly probably.

Anyway, she was turned down for the job because... you won't believe this... no, seriously, you won't... she was white and English. And this was against the guidelines.

Apparently, it is actually now illegal to be English and white in the largely white country of England. Words fail me. Even more astonishing, is that Welsh and Scottish people could apply! It's not enough that the Scots get all of our taxes, and run our parliament, but now you cannot apply for a job unless you are Scottish (or some other ethnic minority - since when are the bloody Scots an ethnic minority!), or Welsh, or Asian, or black, or Eastern European etc etc.

I'm seriously beginning to despair for the future of my kids. If they manage to avoid turning into Chavs, or getting murdered, then they'll not be able to get a job because they are English and white.

Did anyone order a summer?

Because it's arrived! 2 months late mind, but that's about right for the strike-ridden Royal Mail these days.

And because we can't just have good news, the government has decided it's about time we had some more Foot in Mouth disease. They have achieved this foot-in-mouth by mentioning the fact that the new outbreak of Foot and Mouth might have accidentally leaked from a government laboratory.

Sometimes, though, they just hit the nail on the head. Like whoever thought of the title of "Department of Health", responsible for stopping stuff like this. Known of course, by it's initials: DOH!

I love you, Virgin Media!

As I am quick to point out the shortcomings of corporations, I feel it only fair to point out the good as well. And today, Virgin Media were very good indeed.

A few days ago I wrote about how I was angry with them regarding my bill. The short version is that my monthly charges increased from £59 to £71.50. When I called to find out why it was because I had been on a discounted deal which had now finished. They offered me the same for £61 which I wasn't happy about; not so much because of the extra £2, but simply because it was more than I had been paying. It's the principle of the thing, y'know?

Anyway, this morning I called them back and said I would take their £61 offer. The man indicated that it was no problem. I then asked if I could add the free evening calls package for an extra £3.95 per month. Again, this was no problem and he put me on hold whilst he typed and clicked.

He then came back on the line and said "Good news!". I waited anxiously to hear what could be good about my bill being increased, but then he hit me with the amazing part: "Because you added this extra phone service I can give you a bigger discount, and you can have all of it, including the extra phone service, for £48.45".

????

"So by taking more services - and costing you more money - you will give it to me for much less?"
"Er, yes," said the man. "The lady you spoke to before probably should have offered you a better deal anyway."

So, my love for Virgin Media has been restored. And when he said that he'd give me a £38 credit on my last bill (that had the higher charges), I was ready to have his babies, and those of Sir Richard of Branson, should medical science make it possible.

But, it's a bit daft, isn't it??!!