Acer x243w on Linux

So I decided to get my nice shiny 24" widescreen monitor working on my linux box.

Wierdly, it doesn't advertise itself to the world as being a 1920x1200 capable monitor, even though it clearly is - so Linux had trouble with it without custom hackary.

I found a really neat tool for windows that gives you the EDID values from all the monitors ever plugged into a windows box - it can be found here.

Then, I plugged these values into a neat X modeline generator, here, and came up with two modelines:

ModeLine "1920x1200@60" 210.68 1920 1952 2752 2784 1200 1224 1236 1261
ModeLine "1920x1200@65" 236.18 1920 1952 2848 2880 1200 1224 1237 1261

The second one, although bang on the 82kHz maximum sync frequency, was noisy - I think 'cos of the KVM I have in the middle of the cable, but the 60Hz one works a treat.

Yey - linux on my desk at work - again.

Weekend fun

So, it's been an awesome weekend. Firstly the SoD and Post-P (for those who don't know - 'secret' techie dining / drinking society dinner) - John and I hosted the Post-P at home. Given the numbers that were expected to the dinner (90) hosting the after party was a scary prospect! It turned out not to be at all; only two glasses (hired from Tescos anyway) broken, and no major stains / messes / breakages / fish killings. A lot of debauchery happened though - of an amusing and (from what I could tell) not too controversial nature, which is good - the amount of sharpie used on various people was scary, as was the speed with which we got through the beer (a Firkin of Milton brewery's Sparta in about 4 hours) / brownies (thanks to Tamsin!) / cheese / crisps / other booze. Ian and Tamsin stayed overnight & thanks to their help we got the cleaning done in record time (mutter housemate didn't stay and help, mutter mutter).

Yesterday was spent lying in (until midday - not too bad given we didn't get to bed until about 3am), cleaning the house (only really took a couple of hours), then watching (well, commenting on and criticising) RTTFP with Tamsin, Hazel, Will, John, fajitas and smoothies. Was a nice chilled out evening - just what the doctor ordered after a manic party. Had to leave stupidly early this morning as Hazel had to start work in St Albans at 9am - meh.

I spent the morning taking pics around the town. Not a wonderful day for it, so the photos aren't that special - but I think I got some nice ones anyway. I've included a couple here, and there rest are on Flickr. Haven't acheived much else, but that's not a bad thing to be honest - I ought to get some work done though - and that's what I intend to do soon - once I've put the rabbit stew in the oven (yey! for St Albans market).

I didn't mention that I have new fish - as of last week - 6 Discus (two from Hazel as an early birthday present - thanks very much my love!) They look amazing as a finishing touch to the stocking of my large tank upstairs in the lounge, and have decided me to keep tropical fish in that tank (rather than going for marine, which was a possible option). With luck the Discus will grow to a good age and darken up nicely! Pictures of them (not very good ones - I need to spend more time with my camera and them now they're less nervy) are on Facebook.

Also, the guppies in 'John's' micro (39 L) tank downstairs bred the other day - I put some live Daphnia in the tank and noticed things that weren't daphnia swimming around! As they have a tendancy to eat their young (and Hazel & Will both want Guppies...) I decided to move the parents upstairs to the big tank temporarily where they seem quite happy. The youngsters are growing quite fast; already you can just about differentiate their colours.

Anyway, I have rabbit to stew, so had better sign off. Thanks to all involved for a great weekend anyway!

Opera and brokenness

So Anna, Joy, Hazel, Michael and I went to see Carmen last night at the Coliseum. It was very nicely staged, with an interesting modern approach to the genre (I have to confess I didn't know the opera at all beforehand). However, we were all left a little disappointed by the lack of any real emotion throughout the production - musically the show was excellent, but theatrically it was lacking movement and energy. The modern touches were well used in places, but a little awkward in others - The highlight of these to my mind was the bar setting which used simple fluorescent lighting and blue neon effects to produce a great atmosphere.

The fact that I was in pain throughout the show didn't help - I was taken out by a short but virulent 'flu bug on Tuesday night / all day Wednesday, and as I'd been well and truly 'manipulated' (i.e. cracked) by the Osteopath last Thursday, muscle aching due to the 'flu became really painful backache yesterday and today - fortunately Hazel's ready supply of Syndol helped during the show, and today I'm a little less sore. May have to ask Moraig (the Osteopath) to go gentle on me next week...

I'm chickening out of going to see / do the getout for Fame! at the ADC today - as much as I'd like to help I don't really think I should - I'm bound to break myself if I turn up. Ah well, will sort out things in the house (slowly!) and attempt to finish my accounts - which I _must_ get done this weekend.

Not been too happy over the last couple of days; not really sure why but things are piling up; firstly Laura emailed to say she'd changed her name back to her maiden name - not a problem in itself, but it did come as a bit of a surprise. This prompted me to talk with her about divorce - again something we need to do - it should happen soonish, but not right now I think. Work has been getting me down for a while as well - I just don't feel I've got the enthusiasm for it any more for a number of reasons. I may well be thinking again about whether to move on once the v3 development work is complete. Meh - ah well it will pass I'm sure. I have been happy recently, this is just a blip mainly brought on by nasty painful backness :(.

Right, accounts - must get them done!

TFC?

I just got a call from an 0870 number to my mobile saying they were from a 'debt recovery agency'. I refused to give them the first line of my address that they asked for unless they gave me one piece of information about me - they refused saying they'd pass the refusal through to the client who would try to contact me at the property.

Looking on this site says that they're in fact a random marketing firm - nasty and dangerous technique - argh!

Of parties, noise and theatre

So I'm kinda being bullied into this, but I thought it ought to happen anyway.

We had our housewarming here in Girton the last Friday - a very debauched, but good fun evening (cheesecake is always dangerous...). Non-censored photos of the event are on Facebook as their artistic merit didn't really warrant Flickr. Anyway, nothing got broken - the only issue was an inadvertant turning off of the fishtank which – as I was away for the whole of Saturday – resulted in some very cold and chemically unhappy fish. Fortunately (and quite surprisingly as they're normally one of the most hardy fish) I only lost one of the danios when I discovered it on the Sunday. - I dosed the tank, did a water change, and tested the water - it took about 4 days to recover properly in which I didn't feed as much and kept a close eye on it. It's all back to normal now though!

The day after the party was taken up setting up for the CUUEG (Cambridge University Dive Club) 50 year anniversary ball. The gig was fairly simple and good fun to do – lots of toys to play with – JL's digital sound desk, and JK's Vista, along with lots of LED fixtures. (cheap Taiwanese ones, but they were fun nevertheless – It was quite nice to be able to plug them all into one 13A domestic socket with no need to worry about loading) Also it was great to catch up with a few diving types – Kirstin, James D as well as JK, who I hadn't spoken with for quite a while.

Saw James and the Giant Peach at the ADC on Saturday - very good for a kids show I was amused to see Rob Frimstone's costume; which is practically the same as the one he wore for The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. Also – why did they use the lampost &ndash A little too much borrowing I feel. Anyway, despite this the show was very good fun. The use of music throughout livened it up a lot, and the characters were enthusiastic and fun. The peach set piece could have looked nicer; the join lines were obvious and the painting not very even, but for a low budget and small amount of get-in time, the show did very well.

Just got back from the ADC, where the Fame! get-in is underway; was helping T with her Sound get-in. It took quite some time to go through the patch, but the solution that we've ended up with I think is a good one. I'm slightly annoyed by sound designers not properly finishing their get-out from the show before, and feel a little sorry for T, whose MD and producer aren't being that helpful; a lot of what's going on has been happening without her say-so – she's been out of the loop on many things. Ah well, such is life I suppose.

Work is going really well. A few minor communication difficulties (things going to quickly mainly, which in itself is a good thing!) came up last week, but I think we have them resolved now, and the developers seem to be back on track. I've got a lot of catch up to do, but we've finally got to the point where we can actually say we have a product that will be delivered to a sensible timeline!

Hazel and I have been seeing a lot of each other – possibly too much given what's happened, but we should be able to work things out – I really do hope things get simpler for her as it's not been easy. Now she has a job (albeit one she doesn't really enjoy) I think that we'll both be able to get the space we need to get things straight in our heads.

Another week, another country

So I'm back in Cambridge, having nearly, finally, caught up on sleep and tiredness. Life is still busy, but things have got less silly / manic / weird, which is definitely a good thing.

The last few days in Canada were really nice. We didn't do much more than hang around in the house / talking, etc. It was a little emotional by the end as we all know that my Grandmother and her sister are both noticeably getting older - I really hope they can see each other again fairly soon - it was great to see them together again.

The trip home was uneventful - in fact Toronto airport was the emptiest I'd ever seen any airport - it took about 20 minutes from check-in to the gate, so we had a few hours to wait - preferable to rushing and Grandma panicking anyway!

I'm not really sure why I didn't just post this one when I wrote it two weeks ago, so I'm going to post it now, then write one that at least feels more current :)

Sunny California

So, the office gang and I have just been for a company eating/drinking session at Maggianos at Santana Row in Campbell. Very nice it was too - Winston, Reina, Adam, Julie, Rao, Mike, Mark, Matt and Andrew were all there - it was nice to get to know Winston and Reina a little better, and generally to relax and chat with workmates about things other than work. Interestingly the conversation largely concentrated on breaking the law in cars, and marriage (this made me feel old - worrying given the age of half of the people around me - ah well!)

The week so far here in the office has been fairly busy, but not as bad as it could have been. Got a shiny PIX box that's going to take a while to configure, but it should work well. I think I'll take it back to Cambridge & configure it there then get another for the CA office. I also have a shiny VoIP phone (with a customizable linux kernel - how overspecced can you get?) which works remarkably well and will be great to have both at home and in the office for cheap international calls, etc. Otherwise, v3 development is getting annoying; it seems there's no way to do what we want (I may blog more about this in the Spiralinks blog to avoid boring normal people). Ah well - we can work around it just am slightly annoyed (as is Adam who's spent far longer on the problem than I have).

I've also been shopping - I bought a new compact camera to replace (well donate to mum for a 'fee') my Olympus, which is a little annoying as it's quite slow to respond compared with newer models. Also got John a new lens, and me a new tarty air mouse. Should stop buying things... To my credit most of them aren't for me... Well, most of them... Ah well.

My project on the flight back to Toronto tommorrow is to ensure I can transport Hugh's new electric double bass (don't ask) on the flight - a little scared about it, but hey I said I'd transport it for him.

Enjoying it out here, but really want to go home - missing Hazel already & quite looking forward to having more time at home now the ABN project has gone live & most of the issues are ironed out - really need to get the garden planted before the winter (don't I sound domesticated?) and have to get things ready for our housewarming party!

And I really need to go home; am listening to a stupid American radio station talking about sex - the current question is 'if the man masterbates a lot does he perform less well in bed' (or words to that affect - it's only 10pm!)

The other side of the pond

So, I've just spent a lovely few days with my extended family in Tottenham, Ontario - I went with my Grandmother to visit her sister and family in their house. It was really nice to see them, and have a relaxing couple of days in the house and sightseeing.



We spent a lovely day visiting Saint Marie among the Hurons; an interesting historical site not least because it's entire history is only ten years long. The site was founded 1639 by French Jesuit missionaries travelling from Quebec to find new converts in the South (the Huron nation). After a while in which they gained a significant amount of trust and mutual respect from the local Wendat people, they found they had sparked malcontent between them and the Iroquois, and so were forced to retreat back along the gruelling 30 day canoe journey.

Otherwise, we spent most of the time talking, playing Bocci & other games, and generally relaxing in the Browns' (huge!) property. I flew out to California yesterday for work leaving Grandma with the Browns - I return at the end of the week on the red-eye on Friday.

Things at work are quite interesting at the moment, with much planning and thinking to be done on the new software version. With luck we'll be on schedule to roll the new software out to the next client (AIMCO) this year.

Anyway, it's getting late, I'd better get in my car and head back to the house. More when I return to England I'm sure.

Life after the fringe

OK, this was mainly written a long time ago, I've only just got around to sorting / finishing it…

Well, it's all over – more's the pity. Had an amazing time in Edinburgh – I saw some truly brilliant shows,
met some new people, got to know some people much better, did a lot of work, and got ill; as ever in
Edinburgh time seems to compress itself so that the whole month can feel like a lifetime;
I'm quite glad I was only there for a week!

I guess I should continue the show reviews; it's been a long time now, but I'll try to remember them in order!

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Despite living in their flat, I'll try to be impartial, but it's hard to criticise this amazingly well produced show – There were concerns about the integrity of the script, but after it had been cut I didn't feel it was a problem at all. The children's characters were very appealing; Rob Frimston as Edmund really managed to pull off his sulky character well, and Emily Hardy was a beautifully enthusiastic Lucy. I had some reservations about Megan Prosser's costume as the white witch (it looked amazing, just didn't somehow work for me) – I think though that this was due to preconceptions of the role rather than anything concrete.

The Absinthe Monologues

In a phrase – Delightfully random. At times a little crude, but not so much so that it stopped me wanting to watch (and given the title and setting, crudeness is to be expected). The show was a very pessimistic but quite amusing view of life. Each part slid fairly seamlessly from one to the other, and the recurrence of characters / sketches through the show kept a nice familiarity throughout. Oh, and the free absinthe was a bonus…

Eurobeat – Almost Eurovision

Amazingly camp, brilliantly inventive, and true to form. My only gripe was that the show was too long. In order to be realistic, the show chose to go through the entire round-up of 'countries' 'voted' for. This was a mistake in my opinion, as the jokes / characters over the 'videophone' were overplayed and frankly irritating. On the other hand, the acts themselves were brilliant; caricatures, and yet believable to anyone who had seen the real Eurovision (may we all be pitied) – not too offensive to supporters of the countries concerned, yet clearly tongue-in-cheek the acts, the choreography and the music combined to produce an incredibly enjoyable show. The whole thing was a little commercial; with flags and clappers being sold for extortionate amounts outside the venue, but this added to the effect of the show being closer to 'the real thing'.

Adam Hills – Joymonger

New, gritty and delightfully current, Adam again surpasses himself with a brilliant bit of stand-up. His down-to-earth character as ever immediately serves to put the audience at ease, and by the end of the show we all felt like we could talk to each other, stand up and dance; he can pretty much get an audience doing anything he wants. Thoroughly recommended!

Mikelangelo - The Nightingale of the Adriatic

Immaculately dressed is an understatement for this guy, and not many people could pull off a vocal number about the merits of pomade; somehow he does it. He sung a number of tunes from previous shows as Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen, which the entire audience knew and loved, and also added some of his own solo numbers as well. His immense stage presence and amazing voice, combined with the various talents of the pianist, accompanying singer (who's name I embarrassingly can't remember), and the comedy folk musician who came on and played a saw a few times. Brilliant!

Tony Blair, the Musical

I've worked with James Lark a couple of times, and have always respected his writing skills. This time he's surpassed himself – the timing, the music and the direction all combine to give a thoroughly enjoyable and amusing show from beginning to end. Interestingly this wasn't the only Blair-based show at the fringe; Tony – The Blair Musical (which unfortunately I didn't see) also had good reviews; it seems though that as the shows covered different subject matter neither was competing too much with the other. I hope James is able, to move the show into a London space as I think the show would benefit from a longer running time – giving James more chance to add to the characterisation and plot that shows much promise in this unfortunately short setting.

Auto Auto

Two mad Germans playing music, with a car. The description sounds insane, and the show basically was… Their comedic talents notwithstanding, these guys are incredibly inventive musicians who clearly can make music out of anything – Inspired, amusing and great fun from beginning to end.

Fuerzabruta

I've never seen a show as physically exhausting as this – part dance club, part physical theatre, it engaged the audience so brilliantly. We were made to stand in a dark, cavernous auditorium, while music played and the set pieces were dragged on – parting the audience. The cast were full of energy – energy which made its way to the audience, who by the end were all (myself included) jumping up and down and dancing. The biggest set piece was the massive overhead swimming pool, which held enough water to sag downwards (rather alarmingly) over the audience while the cast members dived, splashed, and spun their way through it. At one point, the pool (and the actors on it) was close enough to touch with our hands above our heads. All in all, Fuerzabrata was an amazing showcase for what can be done with no limit to the imagination – combining so many brilliant elements of acting, dance, design and technical toys to create a breathtaking experience.

The reason I haven't blogged for a while is partially laziness, partially life running away with me, and partially being in Cornwall for HMS Pinafore in the Minack theatre. I haven't been to the Minack for three years now – it was lovely to be back there and help out. I had a nominal production role as 'Executive Sound Designer' which meant I could at least pretend to be on the production team… However, I didn't really feel I was necessary, Andrew J and his team of glamorous assistants (Hazel and Tamsin) did an amazing job – one of the best organised designs I've seen for a long time, and the design patience paid off – producing an amazingly rounded, well balanced sound with minimal problems. All in all this year's cast and crew were one of the nicest groups of people I've ever worked with on a show. It was a great fun trip – despite having to juggle long noiseboy hours, a busy working week, and having fun.

I wrote a small bit of this on a train on the way back from a lovely dinner with Gemma at 'Le Garrick' in Covent Garden last week, which comes highly recommended. I haven't seen Gemma for a while, and it was lovely to catch up with her – despite us being more than a little sleepy it was a really nice evening.

USB 3G Modem working at last!

So I bought one of these last week, but, it doesn't work on Vista out of the box, well at least, it doesn't work on a non-clean installation on Vista.

I found this video on how to install it, and hey-presto, it works! I've ended up with the Huawei software not the t-mobile software due to previous debugging efforts, but that's not the end of the world.

The fix is horrible; the device clearly identifies itself as a USB Mass Storage device, and not a USB Composite Device, which it is (or needs to be in order to enable the Modem portion of it). Simply replace the driver to be a composite device, and hey-presto! Windows recognises it as the 4 devices it should be. Argh!

Why oh why do people not test drivers properly on M$ beta OSs? It bugs me - lots.

Fixing Windows Vista

So I've been bugged for about 2 months now as to why my Vista install on my laptop refuses:

1. To run Windows Media Player.
   
2. To do much interactive stuff in Internet Explorer.
   
3. To open the 'Extended' view in the Services control panel.
   

Well, I've found the answer thanks to this post. It seems that some installation somewhere (I blame OneCare, but this blame is frankly unfounded) has unregistered the VB and Java script DLLs on the system, both of which it seems are required to run WMP and display funky folder properties, etc. There's a simple fix:

regsvr32 jscript.dll
regsvr32 vbscript.dll

So congratulations to the post writer, and I now don't need to reinstall my tablet; that is, if I can get my shiny new T-Mobile 3g modem working!

Incidentally I've been fairly remiss about writing more personal blogs recently – watch this space and hopefully one will appear soon. Life post Edinburgh has been way too busy!

The talk of the festival

OK, this is becoming scary. I was standing in the queue to see 'Mikelangelo: The Nightingale of the Adriatic' (review when I have time - tonight I hope) and heard people talking about Little Red Things - reviewed earlier - being the 'best show of the festival'.

Am sitting here in Starbucks attempting to work, and I start hearing a synopsis of - guess what - Little Red Things - it really is the talk of the festival!

Greetings from the Fringe!

Well, it's been a busy festival so far; and I've only been here a day and a half.

Hazel and I arrived in the car at about 0030 on Saturday morning; which wasn't bad given the stupid number of roadworks, etc on the A1. (cue 'What's your favourite motorway' discussion) I was very grateful that Hazel was there as firstly she's a very good manuscript holder when I have to lead conference calls whilst driving, and secondly, she took a few hours driving, which meant I didn't fall asleep at the wheel - useful! (The company was v good to have as well!).

Yesterday I didn't do much work; just kept up with the active issues and sending them off to the relevant people, which unfortunately at the moment is an occupational hazard.

Saw some amazing shows though - Gomito productions' Little Red Things: The Boy Who Wouldn't Listen was an amazing show - Their use of physical theatre, simple but effective props, and a beautifully vibrant script had me hanging on their every movement and word; never before have I seen a children's show that moved me that much. Hazel and Carl, who'd both seen the show last year (to which this is a sequel) were a little disappointed by the lack of new material, but that didn't matter to me as I hadn't seen them before!

The next show we saw was another Gomito related one - 'The Quest for the Divine Bottle' - I personally couldn't relate to this at all. Again the physical elements were brilliant; very polished movements and well timed dialog, but the script did nothing for me - at times crude, and only sometimes funny, it lacked cohesion so I was left wondering what the point of it was. Sorry Hazel - I have to disagree with you there!

Then, I (only just made it!) saw the absolutely amazing ASKA Japanese Drum Troupe show - I saw them (or a similar drum troupe - can't remember) last year, and was a little disappointed with it. This show however blew me away; I've rarely seen such energy put into music; and left the venue feeling physically tired! Their timing was impeccable, the number had something for everyone, and the show was so slickly produced that everyone was on the edge of their seats throughout. I managed to sneak a few pictures (well, they specified no flash photography!)

Next came a break, before seeing Sweeney Todd in Ctoo - Wow! The cast (quite a few of whom I know personally, but I'm not being biased here!) pulled off an absolutely brilliant, energetic and moving production which visually was superb. The choreography and costumes fitted brilliantly with this darkly funny show (which somehow I'd never previously managed to see or be involved in!). My criticisms were few; but a couple of the cast were clearly struggling a little with their voices at the end of a reasonably long hard run, and the lighting sufferred the fairly usual (for Cambridge theatre) lack of facelight in parts - moody shadows are all very well, but somehow were either overused or unintentional. That said, the simple set proved to be incredibly versatile; and the show went seamlessly from place to place without any need for scene changes - well done guys!

The last show of the evening was 'Jesus: The Guantanamo Years' which I never got around to seeing last year. What can I say? Superb! A very enlightened, take-no-prisoners view of the world told from a brilliantly satirical (and not at all offensive) viewpoint - that of Jesus returned to the modern day. His views articulate a number of mine with the main takehome message being live and let live - Religion is not there to create conflict, but to provide a seldom found reassurance to people about their lives and how to live them. He's clearly not a performer, but rather than subtract from the show, this led the audience to really empathising with his views; and the power of his deeply entrenched beliefs. Unfortunately it's over for this year at the fringe, but I believe that he's touring at present; do go and see it if you can!

All in all a great selection of shows for the first day - thanks to Hazel for the suggestions of all but ASKA! I'm not seeing anything today, except possibly The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe (another ADC show who's cast flat I'm staying in!) Need to catch up on a bit of work before starting 9-5s on Monday (that's the theory anyway; really ought to stop writing this!).

Week of madness

Well, it's been quite a week. Work has been an utter mare; what we had hoped (were assured) would be delivered by our external development team frankly wasn't good enough, and we had to start again – two weeks work had to be delivered in two days. Adam – our new employee – definately had a baptism of fire – he and Matt have been brilliant and through working a number of 20hr or so days got the thing out. I had to do a couple of those as well for the admin functionality I've been working with. Anyway, the upshot of this madness is that (finally) the client are reasonably happy with us. There's still a lot to do, but that's work deadlines for you!

Work is generally a bit difficult at the moment; I think we need to see a lot of changes if I'm going to remain with the company for much longer – I'm very keen to get a resource here in Cambridge so I can be more productive as an account / project manager rather than getting bogged down in coding. That said, I think now we have a more expert team in CA this will be easier, but I spend so much time on support calls / simple development stuff that I'm not able to spend the time that I should do micromanaging (or at least properly managing) projects. Management are making the right noises in this direction, so with luck things will be looking up soon. Am going to stick it out for the time being (despite what I may have been ranting about at the weekend...) – I said I'd give it a year before making any rash decisions, and I will.

Anyway, real life – I'm off to Edinburgh for the fringe tommorrow evening – fortunately Hazel's hitching a lift and/or helping with the driving so I can be prodded if I fall asleep too much. Can't wait to be up there again; I really miss both the city (although I like the city life in Cambridge as well, so that's kinda OK) and more importantly, the countryside – will definately jump in the river at Roslin glen over a weekend, and I hope to spend a day or so walking the other weekend – work permitting (I have 8hrs or so to do – sob). However, I'm mainly there for the shows, and having bumped into Sam today have a few more on my list that I want to go see (although I've forgotten them already – need to get him to tell me again by email!).

I am actually meant to be working when I'm up there, and Alex tells me that there's a wifi hotspot within ether distance of the flat, so that's easy. Black Medicine and/or the Bedlam bar will probably be a favourite spot when I'm bored of the flat / need coffee though.


Had an amazing weekend walking with Anna up in the Lakes; really needed the break (and physical exertion) preceeding the week I had! We didn't get there 'till late - very late – too late for the hostel to be open - Doh! We called about 15 different hotels and eventually found this one which not only had rooms available, but was actually lovely, and at a reasonable price (we nearly considered staying there another night, but thought the better of it!). We started the weekend by climbing Lough Rigg fell, which is a good starter walk, and followed it up with dinner in the fabulous Glass House restaurant in Ambleside – thoroughly recommended (unfortunately we couldn't afford the £500 bottle of wine...).

Sunday was going to be climbing Helvellyn, but due to the conditions we decided against it. Striding edge is lovely in good weather, but really not fun if visibility is reduced. Instead, we climbed the Old Man of Coniston from Coniston village and a lovely day it was too. The weather wasn't too great; the peak and ridge down was in cloud, rain and heavy wind for a significant part of the walk, but we had reasonable kit with us, so didn't get too miserable. Photos are online here!

I'd better get back to the grindstone. Expect lots of reviews soon from the fringe!

Fringe anyone?

I'm going to the Fringe next weekend, and am interested in seeing the following shows (so far - there will be more!):

18th: Lion Spirit ASKA Japanese Drum Troupe 1530-1630
Assembly @ St George's West

18th: Eurobeat 2145-2315
Pleasance Courtyard

21st: Adam Hills: Joymonger 1930-2030
Assembly @ St George's West

24th: Fuerzabruta 2200-2305
The Black Tent

Of course I'll definately be going to see the CUADC and other Cambridge shows, but will most likely wangle a C venues pass to see those :)

Friendship day

So, about an hour after my previous post an ex-colleague from India pointed out that it was their Friendship day festival on Sunday, which I think is a really nice concept - friendship is something I feel that until only recently I may have taken for granted - it's very easy not to appreciate the people around you, and how much they mean to you.

There are a couple of lovely quotes on the site, some of my favourites are:

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born."
Friendship Day Quotes by: Anais Nin

"Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up."
Friendship Day Quotes by: Bible: Ecclesiastes

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather is one of those things that give value to survival."
Friendship Day Quotes by: C. S. Lewis

Long time no blog

Well, it's been a very long time since I last posted on this, but as most of you know what's happened in the last year I'll save you the details. Suffice it to say that Laura and I are no longer together, nor am I living in Edinburgh. I've gone back to my (in spirit anyway) roots here in Cambridge, and am living in a lovely big house in Girton with Ebony and John Linford (and others this summer). Bhoy had to go back to the Dogs Trust; they were great about finding him another home; neither Laura nor I could look after him properly independantly for obvious reasons.

I now have an office here in Cambridge as well; working from home eventually got too much for me, and I'm very grateful to have it - I still work from home occasionally but having the option makes so much difference. In other work news we've really started working hard on the third year implementation with our biggest client, which not only is keeping me busy, it's enabling Spiralinks to really push forward with the new software release and sales. I only hope that we have enough need for a resource here - having someone to work with will really help my moral and productivity! Having Adam, who newly joined us in California has already made a difference, so things are really looking up!

Had a lovely weekend - finally finished sorting the house, installing the dishwasher, etc. - tiring but necessary and very satisfying. Yesterday went up to Norfolk to the beach with Joy - via California (look it up!) - we ended up on Winterton beach, which despite being very near the nasty Great Yarmouth, was surpisingly devoid of irritating English beach-goers (elitist, me? Nah!). The last couple of weeks have made me realise what friendships are about; I've got some wonderful people around me and life is really very good at the moment.

I'd better get on with work - hierarchies, managers, locations and products are tedious and screw with my head, but at least it's challenging!