First flight

I now know what its like to be the parent of the child who is screaming on the aeroplane! Kath Thom and I headed from Manchester to Warsaw via Ryanair (I know but there aren’t many options from Manchester).  Thankfully the person next to us was very kind and was travelling with a group so spent most of his time further down the plane with his mates. They were off to watch a drifting competition.

Given that the flight was late around 40 minutes so we had already been queuing prior to that. Thom was actually a really good boy. It broke his normal routine but he only had one big cry mid way through the flight. I don’t think he liked being cooped up on Kath’s lap. It was our first flight in over two years and the first with Thom so we were a little on edge.

On arrival to Warsaw, we were met by Piotrek who generously offered us a lift to Bialystok. The drive is around 2.5 hours, and unfortunately it was extremely bad weather rain lashing down all the way in the dark. I am very glad I didn’t had to drive myself. Had we have had to take public transport it would have been much longer as we would have been forced to take the bus into Warsaw first then either take the train or another bus to Bialystok.

Thom was mostly ok on the drive he was extremely tired but also very awake so we had a range of moods

from singing to screaming to sleep. Kath had rented an apartment for us in the city centre a short walk to her old apartment which is now where her sister lives. It is on the top of the ten floor building so we have no upstairs neighbours and we get a pretty good view out of the balcony.

Today I met Karolina future husband Artur, we enjoyed a family meal together it was a really nice evening. Her brother and mum and dad were also present so we had a nice catchup over a burger and fries.

Family cycle

This Sunday we all went on a family ride courtesy of the Cycling Wilmslow community.  Starting off in Handforth we navigated around Tesco Extra, through the industrial estate, then picking up the bridal way which runs alongside the railway and A34, then through Cheadlee Drive to Turves road.

Crossing over we continued to Bruntwood park where we stopped off for an ice cream and to let the children have a play in the park.

After the ride Kath and I ended to the Bulls head for a celebratory drink and snack. You can see the route on Komoot

Cycling home with my son

via IFTTT

Zip world

via IFTTT

My first intro to IRC

 

A long time ago (2004) I was working at a company in Accrington. I ran the IT systems for this company and they used an old version of Microsoft exchange (6 I think). One of the options which had been enabled was internet relay chat. Though mostly now used by career criminals. Back in the 90s and early 00s it was the a tool to communicate with other people. 

Microsoft produced at the time a client called Microsoft comic chat which in one mode rendered the conversations as a sort of comic strip. This was the first time I had seen Comic Sans in use!

Later I would try and start a venture which sold IRC bots which spectacularly crashed and burned after we were DOS attacked. The hosting provider not only took us offline but removed our server and sent it back to us.