Andrew's diary

Friday, 28 February 2003

Bad bad head.

Got up around tea time, so stayed up late. George Michael was on V Graham Norton being particularly eloquent in his anti-war sentiment and sung a version of Don McLean's The Grave. Then watched most of Derren Brown's new series, before flicking over to Curb Your Enthusiasm (introduction) on BBC4 to see if it lived up to the hype. Will watch it again, but initial thoughts seem to suggest it's a cross between Alan Partridge and Marion and Geoff - this, of course, is not a bad thing.

Thursday, 27 February 2003

Headed home. Enemy of the State had arrived (how extravagent: buying a DVD cos we couldn't be bothered to stay up late to watch a film on telly), as had yet another British Gas bill for £337.03. Dug out details on the "Employee Assistance Programme" - basically a form of Citizen's Advice Bureau for IBMers and gave them a ring. Harrassment of debtors (or alleged debtors) is a criminal offence under the Administration of Justice Act (1980). Wrote some strong letters to the head of customer services, the CEO and EnergyWatch.

Wednesday, 26 February 2003

Mel went to Leicester with Mum to try on wedding dresses - she seems very excited but didn't buy one.

Monday, 24 February 2003

Fiddled some more with video capture on my Dad's machine - got it working but it's not up to compressing and capturing at the same time: uncompressed full-screen, 25 FPS PAL is rather big in 45 minute chunks :-( The plan will have to be abandonned.

David exhibited his total lack of social graces by going out to the pub with Rob and some others without asking me or Mel. In fact, we didn't even get the chance to invite ourselves... Ended up watching Corrie instead. Evil "bastard" Richard confessed. Shocking.

Saturday, 22 February 2003

The UK Wedding Show at the NEC, for which we met up with Allen and Carol. David didn't end up coming so it was just Mel's parents, my mum and Mel and me. Was interesting, but the smallest event I've ever been to at the NEC - it wasn't that much bigger than Wakefield.

Friday, 21 February 2003

Up to Southam. Mum & Dad went out for dinner, so David drove his new car to the chippy.

Thursday, 20 February 2003

Lab kick-off meeting - unfortunately I was a kickee rather than a kicker. Standard corporate stuff: earnings etc. However, the guest speaker was Professor Mike Brady - the leading force behind the eDiamond project which, amongst others, comprises of Oxford University and IBM and aims to revolutionise the way breast cancer screening is done in the UK using the Grid. Very interesting and he's incredibly passionate about what he does and the laughable state of the use of technology within the UK health system.

Tuesday, 18 February 2003

The engineer from South West Water came round before work and confirmed that our supply pipe was indeed the one leaking. Although the official letter says they'll repair it for free, he's dismissive of that idea and says it's really just there as an anachronism and should be removed: the pipe really needs to be replaced. Insurance companies apparently are 50/50 at whether or not they pay for this, but he's got a "mate who'll do it cash-in-hand at the weekends". This is suspicious: what if he just says it needs replacing, geezer comes to do it and they split the proceeds. The one redeeming feature is that we'll get £100 rebate on our water bill if the pipe is replaced (about a third of the cost).

Unfortunately, we've got to trust someone, so we'll have to do something.

Monday, 17 February 2003

Phil's worked valiantly over the weekend to restore the broken hard disk, so everything's back up and running. I have, however, taken a backup now :-)

Sunday, 16 February 2003

Finished off the tidying we started yesterday, also finally sorted downstairs' door frames and the surrounding floor and we boarded the top loft. We both ache all over now, though.

Watched the first two episodes of the new series of 24 - the second was much better, but the start at 8am rather than midnight has meant there's less build-up: you know what's happening straight off. It'll be interesting to see if it can maintain interest...

Saturday, 15 February 2003

A day of crap: bleb.org went down for "scheduled maintenance" and didn't come back up due to another IBM hard disk failing. The bad thing is I'm not sure about the backup situation. I managed to get about half of the site last night, but rsync didn't complete and I got distracted and never finished it. Certainly not got any of the behind-the-scenes code for the new TV site or the user stuff; however I do have copies of the front-end code and all the actual accounts. The biggest worry though is the diary: it's odd I feel such a sense of loss for something which is, essentially, trivial and inconsequential. Fortunately, Mel had a good idea: Google's cache (I'd already thought of archive.org and various browser caches). Managed to piece together April and May 2001, March-December 2002 and February 2003. I reckon that leaves about 14 months lost :-( This will however ensure I set up a decent backup strategy.

Also decided to put together MFI's TV cabinet, but various pieces were damaged and they can't deliver replacements for about a month. The woman on the other end of the phone didn't seem to grasp the concept that Mel was putting across: "we can't take another day off work". I was impressed with Mel though: I'd have got a little more cross.

Wednesday, 12 February 2003

Osama bin Laden has apparently released a recording suggesting that the people of Iraq rise up against the American dogs. Bush and Blair point to this as proving that he is in league with Saddam Hussein after all. Unfortunately, they ignore the part where he describes Hussein as an "unclean Muslim". But what better way of getting rid of someone you're ideologically opposed to than releasing a statement which your enemy believes links you to someone they want an excuse to go after. Very clever - almost a case of "the enemy of my enemy is an easy target".

Continued discussions with Adrian about my dissatisfaction with my current job and got some resolutions: he's going to look at getting more immediate help as part of a succession plan and I'm going to write up a job description or two.

Mel didn't feel well in the evening and, to be honest, neither did I so an early night - I think the hectic dashing about from the last few weeks has caught up with us. But after Home Front (which was particularly scathing about poor Milton Keynes) we did some planning of wedding reception venues and so I'll have some phone calls to make tomorrow.

Tuesday, 11 February 2003

An epiphany is a sudden awakening to the essential nature or meaning of things. The day you realised that babies aren't delivered by storks: that was an epiphany. The day you recognised that men and women are not the same: that was an epiphany. The day you realised that your web site is your business and your software can't handle your traffic - that was an epiphany. It's a different kind of world, you need a different kind of software. IBM advert - "Epiphany" - Avery Brooks

Alternatively, the day you realise that your team is massively understaffed and your job is standing still: that is an epiphany.

Monday, 10 February 2003

Nato's seemingly falling apart with some pretty strong words from both sides of the Atlantic on (mainly) France's decision to try and delay war preparations. That cheery news kind of set the tone of the day, which continued when I got to work and found out that something broke on Friday and hadn't been fixed: the day was spent trying to track down: a) the problem and b) the people capable of fixing it.

Castle have replied to the GPL breach, whilst Gerph's received a death threat! Interestingly, Castle say the kernel doesn't contain any GPL code, but the HAL is "based in part" on some functions from the Linux kernel - and elsewhere they describe the HAL and the kernel as being separate. We'll have to wait and see what happens next, but not many people can actually make something true by just saying it...

...which brings me on to the night's telly (coo, a segue ;-)): the second part of The Second Coming confirmed that the idea was certainly more interesting than the execution and the ending's sentiment was commendable (despite a couple of rather large plot holes). Personally, I'd agree that a world without God (and therefore religion) would be a better place. I just wonder if humanity really would accept a world without religion (even if "everyone felt it").

Sunday, 09 February 2003

Headache. Home. Started feeling a little better.

Got back home to some interesting news: it seems Castle may have included GPL code in the RISC OS 5 kernel. Gerph's evidence is pretty compellling. Most Slashdot comments are screaming for blood: not realising the size of Castle; most comp.sys.acorn.* comments totally mis-understand the GPL and its implications. Hopefully someone has some idea about what they're doing... It'll be an interesting few days to say the least.

ITV showed the first part of their new two-part drama, The Second Coming. It was certainly thought-provoking and felt "real" enough. The only real problem was that the petty digs at the BBC and the cross-promotion of other ITV programmes cheapened the whole programme.

Saturday, 08 February 2003

Mel was up early to start cooking and it was a day of chaos, ending in a rather fun party. Most of the people there were Mel's family (some more distant than others) but it was good to see everyone. Photo's online soon - assuming we're not all blinded from Juggler's flash. (*wink*)

We even got loads of presents, which we weren't expecting. And the bar staff gave Mel and me free drinks all night. Everyone seemed to have a good time and there wasn't even much food left over. The only depressing thing was the lack of time spent with any one group: when you're the focus of the party, you have to spend time meeting and greeting everyone - when all you want to do is sit down and have a drink or get up and have a dance ;-)

Friday, 07 February 2003

Day off work. New TV cabinet came in a big box of lots of little pieces - putting it together can be saved for another day. Did some Bush Surf Set fiddling - unfortunately, the fax to modem interface didn't work.

Eventually headed off for Folkestone with a packed car.

Thursday, 06 February 2003

Chased up OSPP about the missing accessories: customer services say that they usually just post them out without actually replying to emails, so just should wait a couple of days. Hmm.

Wednesday, 05 February 2003

Tracked the parcel on the (hideous) Royal Mail website and it was attempted to be delivered at 10:12 - less than 24 hours after I placed the order. Left work a little early to go and get it from the depot. Slightly annoyed that the promised bundled extras weren't there, but we'll see what they say to the email about that. Transferred my old phonebook using my Psion and had a bit of a play with the other functions :-). The colour screen is particularly nice.

Now, though, I've got to pack up my old Nokia 6210 from work and give it back (no more desperate calls from colleagues though, muwahahaha). You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find a box the size of a mobile phone in a 3-storey house with two lofts. Eventually found it on my third time up in the loft, in the far corner in a box of boxes.

Also watched Monday's Frasier: it could've been the Klingon, but I really enjoyed it :-)

Tuesday, 04 February 2003

Ordered a new Sony Ericsson T68i from One Stop Phone Shop - turned out a contract phone (with 3 months line rental refunded) was the cheapest way of getting a new phone which met all my requirements (the primary one being IR for my Psion).

Was very impressed with the order process, especially the parts for speed-checking credit history and credit card validity. For the latter, they charge 1p to your card and get authorisation for, but don't collect, a further £59. Clever.

According to the website, it was even despatched this evening!

Saturday, 01 February 2003

Drove to France (£1 each way!) with Claire and James (who both work for Eurotunnel): dire warnings from the cashier about the chaos awaiting us in France due to icy roads, severe blizzards. It was something of a disappointment to find the weather in Calaias was exactly the same as the weather in Folkestone. Strange how we didn't shift to arctic conditions in the twenty-odd miles distance.

Got back to find out that the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on re-entry. Very sad news, not just for the families of the astronauts (after all Bush is about to send hundreds of thousands of people into battle - the fatalities there won't get the flag flown at half mast) but for the future of space exploration. It's already cut-back to the bone: this is unlikely to help :-(