Lighting up my life

Just replaced the last of my compact florescent GU10 bulbs for Osram GU10 7 Watt LED GU10 Bulbs, so much better instant light and only 7 watts.

LED bulbs are so much better than halogen and compact florescent. They light up immediately, rather than slowly light up from a dull glow. They also last up to 15,000 hours whereas a standard halogen bulb has a lifespan of around 1,500 - 2,000 hours.

The Girl Who Fell From The Sky

I spent most of the day reading The Girl Who Fell From The Sky by Simon Mawer. I got the book free from WHSmiths as an O2 priority offer, and its sat on my side table for quite a while. I quite regret that now as it was an interesting read, following a women recruited into the Special Operations Executive her training and posting to France. Some of the scenes were a little clumsy bit it chipped along at a good pace and was pretty entertaining.

Other than that I finally completed all the main missions on Grand Theft Auto V (Xbox 360). Overall it took around 40 hours of playing, tohugh I did complete a lot of the side missions in the tat two. Not sure I have the patients to find all the letter pieces though.

I tried playing online but it wasn't much fun, out of passive mode your lifespan is short. No-one seems to want to play the missions, I tried to begin one and waited for 15 minutes without anyone joining. It was a great game though, I really cant believe how large and detailed that map is, its truly amazing.

Facebook is a weird world

Readership of this blog has dramatically fallen off in recent times. Mostly that is down to my failure to publish, but also notably attributes to Facebook removing the ability to publish from bloggers RSS feed.

Increasingly I have been wondering what facebook is for. Everytime I go on my feed is full of narcissistic postings. I am as guilty as anyone for posting things that portray me in a good light, tha the point though itsnt it?

This weeks nes that Facebook allowed posting of videos showing someone being beheaded made me think what a strange digital world this has become. If a pervasive and agenda setting website like Facebook which blocks pictures of Women breast feeding but allows pictures of beheading. What is going on with our society if the perfectly normal is veiled but distressing and violent scenes are allowed?

You only need to see how many Facebook share buttons adorn the average news website to realize Facebook how incredibly important Facebook is in terms of promoting news stories.

All abord the failboat

I saw this on Slashdot, its a report on the failure at Knight capital whom lost over $400 million after a glitch in their trading software.

I can't imagine how I would feel if I had worked on that! Its a typical developer error, a logic flaw introduced accidental, then not tested and put into the wild without peer review. Generally these are caused by oversight and sometime arrogance on the part of the developer, unfortunately god syndrome is quite prevalent amongst some developers especially in the high octane world of finance.

Police

I have just finished reading the latest book from Jo Nesbø, Police
. Its the eigths in the Harry Hole detective series. I think he is back to his best form. It reminded me of the Redbreast the third in the series, and probably the best of the lot. The book follows on from the events of the last book the Phantom which left on a cliff hanger with us not knowing whether Harry would make it. It takes about a third of the book before we find out what happened.
 
Like the other Nesbo books I have read the action clips along at a pace with plenty of Red Herrings and twists to the plot. I  could bearly put it down once I got into the story, overall a very good read.

Wedding photos have arrived

We finally got the professional wedding photos back this week. The look really nice, Kath and I look really nice. Now we need to chose our favourite and make an album. I already have hundred of photos taken myself and given to me by others. Such amazing memories of our wedding, happy times.

Photo in Bialystok

Summertime sadness

Kath has been over this weekend. It's the first time since we returned from honeymoon in September. She arrived on Saturday and we spent the day relaxing and enjoying each others company. I made dinner of Higgidy Pie salad and wedges.

Sunday I booked us in to the Hilton Hotel for afternoon tea. The Hilton has a bar on the 23rd floor called Cloud 23 (see what they did there?). The view is pretty spectacular, we dined and enjoyed a cocktail overlooking the city, even saw a rainbow over the horizon.

Today we had a busy day. We are trying to integrate Kath into the UK signing her up for a bank account and to the local GP surgery. Getting a bank account involved a producing lots of different type of ID and answering what seemed like never ending questions including a full account of our major regular income and outgoings. We were also advised to go and get a will!

 The GP was slightly less difficult just a couple of forms and proving our address and photo ID.

After all the boring form signing it was a treat to go and see my relative Jeanie. Due to her health she hadn't been able come to the wedding, so she seemed really pleased to see the photos and see Kath and I. She was in good spirits talking about my cousins.

There seemed to be something slightly surreal about this weekend, the first of our normal married life. We had a really nice time just being together but always somewhere in the back of my mind that she is heading back to Poland on Tuesday. Hopefully in time it will become easier,  and eventually there wont be so many times apart.