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Saturday, 31 July 2004

We cemented the lumpy floor, and got a load of other jobs done. I also wrote a quick OPL program to turn an EPOC Agenda into an XML file, after I (finally) won a Sony UX50 on eBay :-). It'll be good to have a small PDA with wifi, BlueTooth, colour screen, music & video as well as all the stuff I currently use my Psion for. Of course, this means the broken Psions will have to go on eBay themselves, but the plan is to keep the S7 either as a bigger, more powerful machine - running either EPOC or Linux.

Friday, 30 July 2004

Megan on education most of the day, so I got to spend some time with the team. We worked well together - especially on some press-related blurb for Amsterdam.

Went for a walk at lunchtime and ended up crashing the IT Department barbecue, but gave an opportunity to say goodbye to James - and lose at a game of giant Connect 4.

Mel came down to Hursley about 6ish and we had a bowl of chips (and beer) at the clubhouse before heading off to Gill's for the party.


Sunday, 25 July 2004

Sprayed the fence and the shed with Dad (well, with wood stain thing, but Dad helped). Then Mel made a lovely roast dinner for us all.

Saturday, 24 July 2004

Oh, feeling rough. Not ill, just knackered. The 4am bed time was obviously not a good idea. Mum and Dad came down, but Dad was bad as well so Mel and Mum did all the work whilst we lay down :)

Made it up to them later by taking them out to Galetto's for a posh dinner - even if Mel, yet again, found something in her food. This time it was a hair in her desert :-(


Friday, 23 July 2004

Day two of the Extreme Blue "retreat". Got lots of both work and Extreme Blue handover, however after Gill and I went out to get lunch, we came back to a mutiny: they'd convinced Megan that an exam was unfair and mean and horrid. Ye-esss. Anyway, it went well in the end, even if it was slightly rushed as the other teams started arriving for the party.

The party itself was good, even if I burnt myself cooking four massive pizzas. A few of us went on to the pub, to get some more food (for some reason a single slice of pizza isn't quite enough!) After we got back we watched Johnny English followed by Dogma. All washed down with excessive amounts of cocktails expertly prepared by Jules. Unfortunately, it was 4am by the time I went to bed, and that's what we call Stupid O'Clock.


Thursday, 22 July 2004

Got up early to head on up to Ben's house and found theLm all... no, not busily working (well it was 8am), but still asleep.

Anyway, a lot of work was done - the handover concept we came up with seemed to work well, and it was all topped off my a nice visit to the pub, and general loungingness. The swimming pool looked a little cold out in the exposed elements at the bottom of the garden. Megan and Ben climbing the tree, however, was just a little too weird.


Wednesday, 21 July 2004

Bad head so didn't go to the retreat at Ben's house as planned. Instead, I'll head up tomorrow to ensure I don'tmiss any of the work.

Tuesday, 20 July 2004

Robert's 17th birthday - it'< scary to think he's now driving.

GO Ape! after work, with all the Extreme Blue teams. Wasn't quite how I'd imagined (it was more like a tightly controlled series of five rides than an adventure playground), but it was still good fun with plenty of opportunities for Spider Man and Superman impressions :-)


Saturday, 10 July 2004

Slightly hungover as we scoped out the Watercress Line, as preparation for Mel's school trip next week.

Friday, 09 July 2004

Megan came round for dinner and ended up staying. Spent the evening like true spods: me on the S7, MEgan on Mel's laptop, and Mel using mine. Unfortunately, Megan didn't find anywhere for the "retreat" - not sure what's going to happen, there.

Wednesday, 07 July 2004

Psion Series 7 got delivered. The colour screen is very nice and the larger keyboard is cool. Managed to load the Ethernet drivers but the Gold Card from Expansys (which says it's CardBus), didn't work as expected. It'll need to be returned under the Trade Descriptions Act - since they claimed it was a PCMCIA card.

However, did get Linux running on it very nicely - albeit bsaically. It even ran, well, my spare Netgear MA401: proving, beyond any doubt (to me at least), that the S7 isn't capable of driving relatively high-current PCMCIA cards.


Monday, 05 July 2004

Took a 6-seater hire car to Farnborough with Megan & "the guys" to see Graham Bent and James Luke to discuss clusterirng, data mining, ANNs etc. Very interesting, and certainly valuable to the team.

Stopped off back at Basingstoke and walked into town to Pizza Hut for dinner, then all back home for more booze, Wallace and Gromit and Coupling.


Sunday, 04 July 2004

Oops, bought a Psion Series 7 on eBay for about a hundred quid.

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