Andrew's diary

Monday, 28 April 2003

Rang the TV shop in town to cancel our Alphason Designs AD3/93S stand from them as I found it £85 cheaper from little shop in Lancaster.

Found an interesting thread in the evening about how Nokia phones with BlueTooth are always discoverable, allowing you to bluejack them. Some of the people on these web forums aren't exactly witty, though. I also doubt it's as successful as they're making out.

Saturday, 26 April 2003

Saw our final photographer, and we've decided to go with the artist/designer/generally clever bloke in Leamington. Went to see David's house for the first time - in the centre of Leam, it's well placed for the pub and not a bad house :-)

Mel drove home in the evening, as I had wine with our lovely steak dinner.

Friday, 25 April 2003

Day off and up to Warwickshire to sort out wedding photographers. Saw four today (and was absolutely shattered by the end of it). The first was near Stratford and was reasonably good (for a traditional-style album) but a little expensive for what you got. The second, in Coventry, felt like a guy who had taken up his hobby as his business: cheap, but the quality of his photographs wasn't nearly as good. The third, in Leamington, was excellent - more expensive than the one in Coventry, but cheaper than the first one. You could tell he was an artist, not just a photographer: he was so enthusiastic about photography as art and experimenting with different styles to see what worked best. This means it'd be easy for him be utterly crap, but he was actually really rather good. Finally, out in Radford Semlina^WSemele, we saw someone whose samples seemed very dated: not a good sign.

Thursday, 24 April 2003

Heard on the Today programme: "The problem with this country is the Daily Mail". Having read the Daily Mail in the past, and spoken to people who believe everything they read in it, I can only say the above statement could very well be true :-(

SCO's CEO (Darl McBride) sounds a lot like Mohammed Saeed al-Shareef.

According to emode I've got an IQ of 133 and am a "visionary philosopher" - that means I love chocolate apparently. Well, yes, I could've told them I love chocolate without having to spend 10 minutes completing an inane test ;-)

Tuesday, 22 April 2003

Included various suggestions on my CV and it's now finished (and available on request ;-))

Saturday, 19 April 2003

Got Mel's new phone unlocked at Basingstoke market and then the whole family (save David who's moving house) trekked off to Marwell Zoo. The weather was a little nippy (to say the least) but it was a fairly good zoo. Unfortunately, nowhere near as good as Chester Zoo and eugh, argh, PEOPLE! Loads of ignorant people going round banging on glass; taking flash photographs in the bat's dark room and through glass at nocturnal lemurs whilst saying "ooh, look at that monkey". So... much... ignorance... can't... contain... misanthropy.

Thursday, 17 April 2003

My cynical mind couldn't accept that the Mouse Trap/Incredible Machine-esque Honda ad wasn't at least partially CG - however, it turns out it isn't.

Ciao Baby was booked up, so we went to Galletto's Italian restaurant instead, to treat Mum (and Mel) for their hard work over the last couple of days. Absolutely lovely meal with a great atmosphere, and reasonably priced.

Wednesday, 16 April 2003

Tried to explain to several people today about why I'm not affected by (extremely) pornographic spam and pop-up ads but couldn't really explain how to solve their problems (given they don't want to shift technology away from the bastardisation which is Outlook Express). Then, half an hour later, I find that Danny O'Brien documented exactly the same problem yesterday - suggesting that they're living in the "hinternet". Reading his article shows how good a writer he is, unlike the people who are now working in comms - the proper use of the apostrophe seems to confuse them, so we'll leave it out altogether.

It's been difficult to be in a bad mood though, despite Busybox being "odd", as the weather's so utterly fantastic. Stepped outside at lunchtime and met a wall of heat, just like being on holiday - even the breeze was hot, which made an (un)refreshing change. Also helped getting some good news: Ian and Kathryn have got engaged :-)

Got home to find Mum & Mel had done masses of work: the hideous blue door was now a nice clean white doorl the coal cupboard had been tidied; the bedroom had no curtains, no carpet and little wallpaper and the front door is now probably water-proof.

Thursday, 10 April 2003

vhost actually launched. Finally. Some good take up and much interest. Continued updating my CV: it's coming along well, but is slow going. Also defended why my mini-distribution should be on Sourceforge - they finally accepted my argument (against policy ;-)) and so at some point I'll have to setup salvare.sf.net :-)

Tuesday, 08 April 2003

Woke up feeling particularly groggy, got up and tried to have some breakfast but gave up and went back to bed feeling dizzy and nauseous.

Monday, 07 April 2003

Got a small parcel at work which turned out to be a complimentary copy of "Google Hacks" - even though I never gave them my address. My bio for the book mentions I work at Hursley, and the address they posted it to is my name prefixed to the address you get on the first Google result for "IBM Hursley"... that's cool :-)

Allen down for the evening as he's got a seminar in Winchester tomorrow. Mel and her colleagues went out for their Christmas(!) "do" so Allen and I went to Wetherspoons. Felt a bit funny so only had a couple of glasses of wine with the meal - by the time we got home, I felt really ill so was in bed by 10.

Monday, 07 April 2003

I'm beset by bureaucracy on all sides! I give up!

Mel went to bed early, not feeling well.

Sunday, 06 April 2003

Bad head. Got up about lunchtime to see Glen off, but didn't do a lot besides watch Stargate, Full Metal Challenge, Smallville and then, later, last week's Angel and two episodes of 24 on the Beeb.

Saturday, 05 April 2003

Glen was on Oaktree and randomly asked if we fancied going out for a drink; taking any excuse to get out of my turn of cooking we said yes and walked into town to meet him at the station ;-)

A bit of cash to Mr Tim Martin and some random pub on the way home and then we started on our own booze until about 2ish.

Friday, 04 April 2003

When management gets more than three levels deep it becomes ineffectual. Whether that's the people that get that high or just my own unfortunate experience, I dunno. Surprise surprise, I disagree with decisions senior management is taking (which specifically impact my job): they don't disagree with what we've done for any particular reason, but are concerned what other people might think - so they have no objections of their own. The empirical evidence also suggests that the feature causing so much consternation is harmless anyway, since it's been running for over two years without problem.

Thursday, 03 April 2003

One year to go. We went out to the Hatch for a rather nice meal. Rather worryingly it's nearly 6 months since we got engaged and it's flown by - I doubt it's going to slow down either.

Wednesday, 02 April 2003

Mini-CD rescue distribution is coming along quite well. Must sort out Sourceforge hosting for it (but preferably to coincide with the 0.01 release)

Looks like the bizarre "security" measures introduced at work (oooh, plastic cones prevent bombing) aren't as useless as we though - someone might try to blow us up.