Andrew's diary

Sunday, 27 February 2005

It seems it's less than 4 weeks until the new Dr. Who starts on primetime Saturday night BBC1 (the rumour is 26th March); there's a natty teaser trailer on the website, and also a picture of the new logo.

Saturday, 26 February 2005

Crashed the car. It may well be on the cusp of a write-off. Feeling very foolish. Lots of wreckage left on the side of the road.

Fortunately, after my rant about the country grinding to a halt (hmm, an unfortunate turn of phrase) with a bit of snow on the ground, it wasn't snowy or icy at all. Oh, and no-one hurt, either.

Friday, 25 February 2005

I'm a press release!

Thursday, 24 February 2005

Channel 4 News showed a fantastic interview with Moazzam Begg - a British citizen and ex-Guantanamo Bay internee. The poor guy seems to have been genuinely mistreated on shaky (at best) grounds. Fired off an email to the C4 News team to congratulate them.

Wednesday, 23 February 2005

Watched the first episode of The Long Way Round, the last 15 minutes of which we saw on Sky Travel a few weeks ago. Quite entertaining, but then the summary of the rest of the journey at the end of the episode reminded us why we'd bought the DVD. Definitely looking forward to seeing the rest.

Tuesday, 22 February 2005

A bit of icy water in the air and the country grinds to a halt. I could understand it taking an hour to get to work if we were in Scotland, or another part of the country badly affected, but the M3 was fine - apart from the slow, crawling traffic and idiots driving too fast and too close.

It seems that Mel's school also received several calls from presumably hopeful parents asking if school was closed.

Sunday, 20 February 2005

I've succumbed; as the work-supplied laptop isn't suitable for using at home I've put in an order for a Mac Mini. Technically, we can't justify the cost until after pay-day, but as that should be just over a week away the lead-time of 2-3 weeks is perfect. Unfortunately, now - having ordered it - now want it ASAP. Will I also regret not waiting for Tiger (the next version of Mac OS X) to be released?

Friday, 18 February 2005

Last night I started reading Eats, Shoots and Leaves which, in retrospect, may not have been a good idea before the company meeting.

"Today's best practices are tomorrows minimum standards."

Missing apostrophes seemed to be commonplace and the statement above, although slightly twee, is probably rather astute. It's a shame about the grammar, though.

Afterwards the directors opened a tab at a nearby bar which was a good chance to meet a few more people.

Monday, 14 February 2005

Saw an interesting article comparing OO languages: C++, C#, Delphi and Java. Whilst I'm pasting interesting links; a rather classy Imogen remake.

Saw the Stargate Atlantis pilot; it was certainly promising. Unfortunately, in doing so missed ER on Channel 4. Hopefully no-one will mind me downloading it as a one-off PVR-like recovery.

Saturday, 12 February 2005

Finally got to see Ray at the only, late, showing at the cinema. Beforehand had dinner with Dave & Linda and fortunately the bad head I woke up with was largely gone.

The film was very good: Jamie Foxx's portrayal was spot-on and the cinematography was excellent, the colours were especially breathtaking in the flashback sequences. As with any biopic, it felt a little episodic and stilted at times; but that's only a minor problem with an otherwise excellent film.

The scene showing the recording of Georgia on my Mind put shivers up my spine. Unfortunately, if you get the Quantum Leap season 2 DVDs, you won't see why :-(

Saturday, 05 February 2005

Mum down for her birthday (shock, TMI? ;-)) - went out for dinner at the ever-fabulous Bistro Je T'Aime.

I must admit I'm still an IBMer at heart; the Dell laptop's very frustrating, especially compared with a ThinkPad X40 - it's smaller and lighter than a 12" iBook FFS! Also, Delphi is crap compared with Eclipse as an IDE and Java as a language. Oh well, it seems simple enough and is just a tool - and if it were cutting edge technology I wanted to work with I'd've stayed at IBM.

Tuesday, 01 February 2005

First day at work. The drudgery from Basingstoke to London wasn't too bad, however it'll take some getting used to, sitting next to a stranger with limited personal space and poor radio reception rather than sitting in your own, empty, car with a decent radio and RDS to track Radio 4 for the journey :-).

I'm getting my own super-compressed induction, and the talk was of sending me to a customer site to join a small team there on Thursday. That changed late on though into me going on Monday and getting some Delphi training on Thursday/Friday.

Everyone was very friendly, and I got taken out for lunch to one of the (many) posh trendy bar/restaurants littered around the base of Tower 42.

It's an all-Windows shop, unfortunately (well apart from the AS/400s) and the laptop I've got is a massive, slow, heavy, clunky, fragile Dell. At least it's got a nipple. Hot-desking and the propensity for visiting customer sites means I have to lug the mouse and power adapter around with me. Depending on how it goes, I may end up asking if I could use my own, and then go out and buy something nice and portable. At least next week when I'm off-site I'll be driving there and back.