Lazaretto

I have just returned from the airport after having dropped off Kath. We have spent the last week together, I think it's the longest time we have spent together since Christmas.

She arrived last Tuesday evening, I picked her up after work on the late flight. I had to work Wednesday and Thursday so she relaxed and visited with my mum.

Thursday evening we went out to Lobster Steak at the Radisson Blu hotel in Manchester. An interesting concept they only have two menu choices, lobster or steak. You get unlimited fries and salad on the side whichever you choose. Kath and I both ordered steak medium rare. Kath's was more on the rare than medium (almost blue) so we had to send hers back for more cooking. The meal was very pleasant though I think my steak had a little too much gristle, and personally would have preferred chips to fries but overall a very nice restaurant treat.

Friday, I had the day off so we went round the shops. Primarily we were looking for some new furniture for the garden. Nothing seemed to be comfortable at a price we wanted to pay. Stopping in at Waitroise we bought some nice cheeses and meat to make a platter which we ate watching the Wolf of Wall Street. It was an enjoyable film, Di Caprio was on top form.

Saturday we had a leisurely

morning then went off to see the garden at Tatton Park. The Japanese garden there is amazing, the best I have seen outside of Japan. Its well worth a visit.

Inspired by the Gardens we decided to have an evening meal at the Samsi in Wilmslow. Chatting to the waitress apparently she and her partner have taken over running it. We did noticed a few new touches and the food was excellent, especially the sushi rolls.

Afterwards we headed into the Bollin Fee for a drink. Taken in by the marketing we enjoyed a Captain Morgans served in a plastic cannon ball, living like the captain!

Sunday, we went to my parents for a roast pork lunch. It was very tasty, even got some crackling. After lunch we had a chat with my parents, enjoying a coffee. Then Kath and I headed to Bramhall Park for a walk.

Monday, we decided to tackle the garden a little more. Replacing the old rotten tub out the front with a more contemporary pot. At the back we turned a small patch of dirt near the gate into a rockery.

It looks really nice, with golden grit and new alpine plants.

In the evening Nina and Bruce arranged for another curry at the Sangam. It was basically a replay of two weeks ago with the addition of Kath and Ian. Apparently Ian has managed to sell his flat and is enjoying life with Helen. Unfortunately she wasn't able to join us, hopefully I will get to meet her soon. Bruce was telling us all about a website where you can buy surplus equipment from the armed forces. He was after an ICBM launcher from the Cold war era, or an armour plated Bentley! Overall a throughly enjoyable evening.

Youth

Last night I went out for a meal with a few people. Jo and Holly had arranged for us all to meet at the Sangam III in Heald Green. Jono joined me after walking round from his house, I asked him if he was going to walk home, but he declined.

We arrived last meeting Phil, Caroline, Bruce and Nina along with Joe and Holly. They were sat having a drink waiting. I got myself a Diet Coke and the waiter showed us to our table.

Jo and Holly told me about their break to Yorkshire. It sounded really nice time. They both looked like they had caught the sun and been able to relax.

I ordered a Jalfrezi, it was very tasty. The waiter was really fun, having a few jokes with us, even daring Phil to eat some Naga chillies.

Green shell suit

I am typing this blog on my new mechanical keyboard. I have wanted one for ages but this purchase was prompted by my colleague at work buying one. I had some vouchers from doing surveys for IPSOS so I finally bit the bullet and bought one. I ordered a Cooler Master CM Storm Quick Fire TK Mechanical Gaming Keyboard - Brown. It has Cherry MX Brown mechanical switches which has a good combination of noise, feedback and actuation pressure to be useful for typing and gaming. So far I am really enjoying typing on it. I have used a Microsoft ergonomic keyboard for years but the key-presses were starting to fail a little, typical of a traditional keyboard as the domes wear out over time.

It's been a tough week, I managed to hurt my back on Sunday so I have had to take this easy. Next week I am off to London for DevWeek.  I am excited to go, I have never been to a developer conference before so should be an interesting experience.

I just finished a book given to me by my mother. The City of Strangers by Michael Russell. A book set just before the outbreak of the second world war. A country Garda Sergeant is sent from Ireland to New York in order to bring back a murder suspect. He gets caught up in intrigue. It is in interesting insight into the beginning of the Irish state, the IRA and the pro German and pro Irish groups in America. It was well worth a read and I enjoyed it.

Lucifer son of the morning.

I met Matt yesterday, he wanted me to go with him to Scan. He decided that he wanted three monitor at work as well as home. We spent a lot of time deciding, he wanted size, but suggested that he spend a bit extra and get a 24inch with 16:10 ratio running 1920x1200 rather than the more common 16:9 1920x1080. The extra 120 pixels vertically make for a much more usable desktop. He opted for three IIyama 24inchs and they look gorgeous set up in the triple monitor stand.

Triple monitor

Solar Installation Day 4

Today the installation was completed, the panels went up and the final wiring was made. I took the pictures in the morning before going to work, if you notice on my consumer meter the red light is solid on. That means at 7:33am the array was producing more energy than was being consumed. Indeed the meter was flashing "rEd" which means reverse energy, so I am exporting to the grid, I hope my neighbours like solar energy :)

Generation meter

Consumer unit

Solar array

Solar Installation Day 3

Today the installer, Karl arrived. He went onto the roof and installed the mounting rails for the panels.

Karl was an interesting chap to talk to as he had been working with P.V. for many years, being involved in some huge projects, the week prior he had been doing a 50KW commercial installation on a farm. Year ago he worked on the first active solar (where the panels track the sun) installation in the UK.

The inverter and wiring went in, including the new generation meter. All the energy generated by the solar panels is metered. then flows into the standard consumer unit. Solar generated energy is use first saving you money as using the power generated means not buying units from the gird.
My power company doesn't measure power exported to the grid, instead they make an assumption that 50% of the generated units are exported back to the grid.

Roof mountings (and no chimney!)

Solar Installation Day 2

Today the builders removed my chimney, I don't have a fireplace and the chimney would have shaded the panels. According to the figures from Solar energy firm this would have resulted in an 8% drop in output. Given that is close to taking away one whole panel, and the cost of removing the chimney was not too high we decided to have the stack taken down.

The gear arrived today, filling my garage full of panels, an inverter, mounting points and a wattson energy monitor.

The panels are Sunpower E20/327. They are rated for 327 watts per panel, generating 3.27KW at peak performance across the 10 panels. They are highly rated panels both in terms of efficiency and in terms of longevity. Solar panels degrade over time, and Sunpower are supposed to have the lowest level of degradation at the end of the 25 year warranty they are rated to perform at 87% of the minimum peak. As this is a twenty year investment I thought it was better to pay a bit extra for the better warranty and long term performance.

10 Sunpower solar panels

Mounting and roof gear

Inverter and Monitor

Solar installation Day 1

I decided to go ahead with solar panels, and today was the first day of the installation. Not a lot happened other than the skip arriving and scaffolding going up.

Scaffolding up

Look how far we have come

I was looking at vintage computer advertisements and it made me both nostalgic and amazed at how far technology has come. From having to explain to users what copy and paste did, and how fast electronic mail is most people now have these things in their pocket on a smartphone.

As predicted by Moores Law technology has roughly double in power or put another way more power is increasingly cheaper. So much so that the smartphone in your pocket is considerable more powerful that the computers in these adverts.

My first computer was an Acorn electron it was 8-bit running at 1Mhz and loaded programs from tape. My mobile phone (which itself is a little dated) is a Nexus 4 running a 32-bit processor running 4 cores at 1500Mhz. Incredible really.

However one area which maybe hasn't come so far is design. I recently saw this amazing video on design.
 
Aral Balkan: Superheroes & Villains in Design from Thinking Digital on Vimeo.

Gone girl

I just managed to finish Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. It is really an excellent read. The title like a lot of things in the book has a double meaning. It is hard to talk about the book without ruining the experience, so I can't really say much about the novel without ruining the surprise.  It is the sort of book that you will get to the end of and immediately want to talk about.

There is a forthcoming film, however from what I have read about it, they have changed the ending of the book.

Bitcoin mining

I decided to try some bitcoin mining, after reviewing a few options like buying an ASIC (application specific integrated circuit). I decided the the least effort seemed to be to buy mining on a rig someone else has paid for. I bided on 4 GH/s on ebay at CEX.io one of the largest cloud based mining solutions.

Interesting solutions

I saw an article that today that brought me back to a directors throwaway comment, only this one was for real.

Years ago I worked on a site for a company, it had been developed at a huge cost by an external company. The client and outsourcer had fallen out at some point and the application was brought in house. That was my job to support this application. The only problem was it was a dogs dinner, the commercials were all wrong and in the end less than 100 clients signed up for the package only two for the site. The director decided to can it and stated "It would be cheaper to pay for spearmint Rhino to personally delivery the statements than continue this project".

I remember being a little upset at the time after working on the site for months. However it was the right decision. I though of it today after reading about Nursing jobs in the US who have decided it makes better sense to buy new PC's for their clients stuck on IE7 than to optimise their website to run on it!

I am going to try this on my boos next time a feature breaks in an old browser.

All of Me

I have just finished reading the second Inspector Rebus book "Hide and Seek" by Ian Rankin. Jono had given me the first book "Knots and Crosses". I was very impressed Rankin has a real feel for the dark underbelly of Edinburgh.

In the first novel John Rebus is a troubled policeman haunted by events from the past and present. His past some of which he can't remember following a nervous breakdown after a terrible time in the SAS. Add to this a troubled relationship which his daughter and ex wife, and overachieving brother. Then mix in the dark drug dealing parts of Edinburgh.

The second novel follows almost immediately from the first. Following the events of the know and Crosses Rebus has been promoted, but his relationship with Gill has failed, she taking up with a DJ. A junky is killed and laid in a satanic pose leading Rebus into a dark underworld of crime, run by Hyde.

Both novels heavily reference Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a book that I have never read but certainly will try and pickup.

The action takes place in the 1980's so there are some weird anachronisms reading today. I couldn't help but think, how much mobiles phones have changed things so much. No more calling bars, and other places where someone might be. Or struggling for change at a payphone are a distant memory, the internet generation wont even know what it was like not to be constantly available.

Fight the power

I wrote before Christmas about my weird case of the water meter that wasn't there. After much convincing they had given me a month from which they worked out the average water usage and then backdated the payments. Today I received a revised statement, I am very happy with the result!

They calculated that over the last five years I have overpaid to the tune of £1,437. They are going to refund this to my water account. So no only has getting a water meter meant I save around £20 month on my payment but I am also getting a huge cheque back too. It's well needed after the Christmas excesses.

In other news I have been evaluating getting solar panels for the last couple of months. It might seem an odd idea living in the North West of England, however with the government subsidy the figures stack up well as a long term investment. If you are planning to stay put for at least 10 years and have a southerly aspect its really a no brainer (at least in financial terms, at lot of people argue the eco benefits but I was less concerned on that score). The cost is easily repaid by the governments feed in tariff over the lifetime 20 years. Unfortunately for me on balance the chance of staying put for 10 years seems unlikely at best. Therefore with a heavy heart my idea of self generated power goes on hold for now.

Hollow talk

Yesterday Jono came round for dinner, I made chilli. I got a text from Bruce who was in the Kings Hall with Nina, Philip and Caroline.

Bruce and Nina are jetting off to Mexico next week, by the sounds of it they are going to have an amazing time. Phil was telling me about the diving he did there, it sounded incredible.

We sat and chatted, bitcoin came up a lot, I think I have missed the boat but it we live in interesting times. I have decided to try and do a bit of mining. The window of opportunity is nearly closed but hopefully I can get in and mine something before it snaps shut.

I felt a little tired and was missing Kath a lot, but it was really nice to see everyone.

Honesty

There has been a lot in the media about the impending opening up of migration rules which would allow Bulgarian and Romanian citizens to freely move around the EU. Clearly as I am married to a Pole I have a certain bias. Indeed I think the migration Policy has been correct in terms of Europe. The UK economy has benefited from the influx of hardworking and cheap labour.

In Geography class they used to teach about push and pull factors in migration. When Poland joined the expanded EU in 2004, the UK had been very positive supporting Polish entry and not putting up barriers as some European countries had done. For Bulgaria and Romania the UK did put in restrictions, even going so far as to use negative adverts.

A lot of people think take issue with the sheer number of Polish people who came to the UK after the 2004 expansion of the EU. There was also a long history of Poles migrating to the UK. Not least after the settlement act following the second world war. Given The UK twice let down Poland, in World War 2, firstly by failing to do anything practically to stop the Soviet Union and Germany carving up Poland, then at the end of the war the Yalta treaty allowed the Soviet union to keep Poland under communist rule. Rather than delivering the free democratic state the exiled Polish government had hoped for.

One thing I haven't seen much of is the raw numbers. In terms of population Romania at 21 million and Bulgaria 7 million people. In 2004 Poland's population was approximately 38 million people. So even if the same proportion of Romanian and Bulgarians moved to the UK as did Poles, in terms of numbers there would be far less actual people. Thanks to the lower combined population.

Therefore in terms of simple push and pull there are less cultural ties between the UK Bulgaria and Romania less pull factors in terms of our failing economy, so right now I don't expect to see as many Romanian  shops as Polski Skleps.

Reflector

I received a letter in the week to inform me that the price of my Virgin Media services was going to increase by £4.50 per month. This is pretty annoying as I had renewed only last month after negotiating a discount.

Money Saving Expert had done a 50% discount on SKY for an entire year, this would have been significantly cheaper than Virgin  so I was all geared up to cancel the service. However Virgin offered a new deal including a price match. That was great until this price rise (which starts in February).

Fortunately Ofcom have recently decreed that price rises inside contracts represent  "materially detrimental" to customers.

This Guidance sets out that:

• Ofcom is likely to regard any increase to the recurring monthly subscription charge in a fixed-term contract as ‘materially detrimental’ to consumers;

• providers should therefore give consumers at least 30 days’ notice of any such price rise and allow them to exit their contract without penalty; and

• any changes to contract terms, pricing or otherwise, must be communicated clearly and transparently to consumers.

Therefore I have 30 days to find a better offer, or suck up the price rise.

Disappear here

I was awoken early this morning by an engineer from United Utilities. I had done a survey on their website after advice that I am spending too much on the water charge from the Coop bank. It appeared that having a meter could save me £150 per year, and given installation of the meter is free seemed like a good idea.

I called United Utilities last week and asked for an installation. They sent me a message saying that they would come and do a survey. The guy arrived at 9, and after checking outside comes back to inform me that I already have a water meter, and not just that the reading on the meter is pretty low. He installed a different meter apparently the new ones have some sort of circuity to allow easier reading.

The meter is sat out on the road next to the water stop tap I never lifted the cover as its not on my property. When I moved in they could have told me that I had a meter! Surely they should know what buildings have meters? I am going to write to United Utilities and see if I can get the meting backdated as the engineer helpfully gave me the reading and serial number.  The reading was pretty low so it helps justify getting a meter.

Abduction

I have just finished reading a book Jono gave me called Abduction, by Mark Gimenez. It follows the abduction of a young girl. It was quite entertaining, especially the first section which focuses more on the effect of the abduction on the family and the response of the FBI. I must admit the larger plot and eventual ending was a bit much for me to stomach however the characters were very well drawn especially the mother Elizabeth and Vietnam veteran grandfather Ben.

Interesting to compare the drunk character in this to Jo Nesbo's Detective Harry Hole. Nesbos character seems more realistic, whereas Ben is an all American hero who cant stop drinking to save his marriage but suddenly stops to save his granddaugher. In the plot itself is somewhat better done than I lay out. The action plays out in an exciting and interesting way coupled with several story arcs to keep you entertained.

Indigenous Britons face a bleak future

According to this telegraph article British citizens have generally worse literacy and numeracy skills than immigrants. It appears that schools must be failing to instill the most basic skills. Odd given that A-Level and GCSE pass rates have risen for over a decade. What is really happening here, is the general population suffering from a lack of skills, or are people with the skills not applying for the jobs forcing employers to look abroad?

Mind Your Manners

Kath was over this weekend, she arrived Thursday evening, I picked her up from the airport after work. After a quick stop off at home to drop off Kath's bag, we headed out ont he train to Wilmslow. The aim was to catch the early evening buffet at the Samsi. We walked in on a Thursday night at 6.30pm. The restaurant was nearly empty when we entered but the waitress insisted on going through the rigmarole of checking how many reservations there were (I can tell you there weren't full up at 8.30pm when we left). Service was pretty good once we sat down though it was difficult to attract their attention. The banquet started with Miso soup, followed by a choice of 4 pieces chef's choice sushi, Gyoza, Karage Ginger and Garlic Fried Chicken or Vegetables tempura. I took the sushi and Kath took the Vegetable tempura, it was really good, the batter was light and crisp and the teryaki sauce was lovely. The main course was a choice of Chicken or vegetable yakisoba noodles, Yakitori grilled chicken skewers with rice, Pork Katsu curry with rice or Crispy chicken curry with rice. I had the chicken katsu curry and Kath ate the chicken skewers. Both were very nice, the skewers had a really nice flavour, while my chicken was succulent, the curry sauce was lovely not too spicy but flavoursome. Finally there was ice cream. The banquet was excellent value at £12.95 per person, the drinks were a little more expensive £5.50 for a can of Sapporo beer. After the meal we headed to the Bollin fee for a drink before catching the train home. It was ages since I was last in Wilmslow drinking, it used to be a regular thing but things change. On Friday Kath and I went to visit my aunt Jean*, unfortunately we managed to miss her. The chairs had been broken so we decided to take a trip to Ikea to look at tables. We wondered the huge expanse of furniture, trying to decide on things like all the other people on the Conveyor belt drifting from soft furnishings to kitchenware. In the end we bought a new table four chairs and after finding its impossible to get replacement parts from Ikea we bought a replacement shoe cupboard. Spending the rest of the afternoon putting everything together. Then I made a stir fry dinner to christen the table. Saturday we relaxed built the shoe rack (which oddly took longer than both the tables and chairs). I made dinner of tuna steak, using our new blender to whip up a fish sauce. The weather was cold and wet so we decided to mostly hide from the world and enjoy each others company. A lot of people ask what Kath and I are going to do when she is over, and often we do try and do special things together. Sometimes thought its just good to be with each other, I think a lot of people don't realise the value of spending time together, not just the special event time but the normal everyday time together. For Kath and I we spend most of our time apart so we miss those moments. Making dinner together, lounging on the couch watching TV these are precious times. *she isn't my actual aunt rather a close relative.

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.

Porn Sex vs Real Sex: The Differences Explained With Food

The Vampyre of Time and Memory

Kath arrived for a weekend a week last Thursday, I picked her up from Manchester airport and as my Polish lession was cancelled we decided to go and get dinner. The Bulls head in Handforth do two steaks and a bottle of wine for £22.99 on a Thrusday night. I can heartily recommend it!  The wine wasnt anything special but the steak was very tasty, in face the food has been consistently good there.

Coco has been having a hard time recently. It all started last week, she was off colour for a couple of days, not eating her food and general spending her time moping not moving. Last Friday Kath while was over we got so worried as Coco felt hot that we took her to the vet. A shot of painkiller, and antibiotic we took her home.

Friday evening Kath and I went to the Stockport beer festival. We met up with Phil Caroline, Nick Charlotte, Bruce and Nina and Phil's sister Tina. It was a fun evening of sampling beers chatting and handing out our wedding invitations.  After the festival we went for a curry at Kantipur, they have had a refit since I was last there, and the food seemed to be of a higher standard.

By Sunday Coco seemed to be a little more lively even eating a little food, however when I got home from work on Monday evening (saying goodbye to Kath in the morning) it appeared coco had thrown up. I decided to take her back to the Vet, she seemed very worried about Coco, her neck was covered in what we thought was vomit. She offered to shave it off and I am glad that she did. Underneath was a massive abscess, which had burst. Her neck was a mass of necrotic tissue, and rather than vomit it was puss, yuk! She suggested the best course of action was to take Coco to the veterinary hospital. For a moment the cost put me off but then I thought she is worth it so off to veterinary hospital.

The next day I got a phone call from a surgeon, they had operated to clean up and remove dead tissue, and when they knocked Coco out they had to put a tube down her mouth they found that she had a sewing needle lodged there! It had puncture from her mouth to neck and cased the abscess. No wonder she was off her food it must have been terribly painful.

Fortunately over the last week she has recovered well, her appetite is back and she is I can even put with her waking me in the night as I know its a sigh of recovery.

Should be higher

Yesterday I sat and watched the Eurovision "song" contest for the first time. The reason for this was a post BBQ TV session, nestled into Bruce and Nina's comfortable new reclining sofas. Nina was celebrating her 30th birthday, they were throwing a BBQ day. I arrived about 5, in time to help out cooking the meat. Bruce hand managed to get the coals so intensely hot the hairs on my forearms got singed while flipping a burger! Holly Jo, Phil and Caroline were already there. The food was fantastic and plentiful after gorging on burgers, and kebabs there was homemade cake. I sank into the recliner, and sat back in to take in the delight of Euro vision. Phil used his industry knowledge running a commentary on the stage and set design. He was impressed by the Swedes I think, especially the projects onto the presenters dress. I found the music pretty dreary, however with a room full of good company and banter it was bearable enough. I caught acab to the Cheadle Hulme with Phil and Caroline just managing to fit in a Gin and Tonic night cap before catching the train home.

Like Spinning Plates

Apparently more than 250,000 people will be unable to repay there interest only mortgage at the end of its term. Interest only mortgage were very popular as they reduced monthly payments. In an standard repayment mortgage each payment pays the interest and a small part of the capital. Over time the proportion of your repayment covering the original borrowing increases as the size of the borrowing reduces. In the interest only scenario you only ever pay the interest on the original borrowing, and at the end of the term usually 25 years you still owe the original amount borrowed.

For example on a £100,000 borrowing at £3% over 25 years with a £995 fee added the monthly repayment would be £474 / month totalling £143,258 over the mortgage, an interest only mortgage you would pay £250 / month and £75,995 in total (plus the additional £100,000). So overall although the monthly payment is lower the overall cost of the mortgage is considerable higher £32737(around 22%).

 Proponents of interest only included, saving the money into a separate investment might be more beneficial over the long run (you can check this using Money Savings Exerts payment calculator). Also the rising value of the property would enable you do sell up downsize and pocket the difference. Interest only also makes a lot more sense on investment property as it frees capital for investments or improvements. If you have an interest only mortgage you need to decide on the best plan of action for you, but bear in mind though it might cost more a month in the long term it could save you a lot of money to switch to repayment.

Inhaler

Saw Phil last night, he told me all about his trip to Mexico. The Cave diving sounded amazing, I was pretty jealous. Phil looked better than I had seen him for some time, tanned and relaxed after the trip. We sat in the Kings Hall drinking and chatting, it was like the old days. In the last few years going out has gone from regular to a rarity which is a shame I miss it. I woke up with a dry mouth and headache though, don't miss that!

The rest of my weekend has been spent cleaning up the house in time for Kath and her sister Karoline visiting next week. She has never been to the UK before and we have a few things planned it should be a great week. Unfortunately because my holidays are limited I have to work some of the time but have Friday off and Monday is a bank holiday, so we should be able to do something exciting. I just hope that the weather holds out.

I just finished the On the Road film, somehow it was deeply unsatisfying, it had all the major scenes from the book but somehow lacked all the energy. The characters weren't quick as larger than life as I expected. Sal wasn't nearly as naive or wild eyed to Deans crazy antics.  The books is a wild trip with full of characters and events. In the film we don't really get to know any of the characters well. The scenes are well set but something is missing, there isn't enough energy its not frenetic enough.

Amok

Yesterday morning after only a couple of hour sleep I was sat drinking a glass of beer in the beer garden of Cafe Esperanto. Kath and I both felt a little overwhelmed after booking the wedding venue.

I had arrived into Warsaw the previous evening and we travelled on the night bus to Bialystok arriving around 3am. The appointment with the registrars office was at 10 in the morning. Accompanying us was the state registered translator, Jolanta. Apparently a necessity to explain what was going on to the alien, me.

First we went into a room where two ladies went over the documents and the translations. I had to provide a certificate of no impediment, my birth certificate and passport. All of which had been translated by Jolanta. Kath had to present her ID and birth certificate too. One if the women checked Kath's the other mine, she had difficulty distinguishing the area from my British address.

After they were happy with the documents we all trooped into the office of the registrar general. As we entered I could hear Jim Morrison's voice eminating from his computer speakers. The registrar a large balding man looked very relaxed with his music wearing a velvet suit jacket. He gave Jolanta a piece of paper with conditions for the wedding.

Then we had to sign some declarations, It was quite strange to be told that our children would have my surname, that was a last minute decision by Kath that she would use my surname.

It was pretty stressful for me having to rely on the interpreter to explain, however we resolved that we were happy. There was a moment of panic when he opened the calendar to the 24th August and there were already a list of names written. Fortunately there was a gap at 16:30, so that is when Kath and I will be married.

Walking out we went for a quick look around the venue itself a rather psychedelically painted period room. I tried to picture our friends and family in there watching us getting married, it should make for a good scene.

After saying farewell to the translator we decided despite the early hour a drink was in order to celebrate and contemplate. The weather was a warm 22c then sun beating down on us not a bad way to start the rest if our lives together.

A tooth for an eye

I started at a new company in January, so far it's been going really well. The team is well organised and the project we are working on is interesting. As a side benefit I found that I have more time in the evenings as I don't have to work like instead working 8-4 most days.  The extra free time has helped me get back into going to the gym and not too soon. 18 months of longs days in an office sat too close to the vending machine have left me flabby and unfit. I decided I needed a bit more focus so I decided to try out a personal trainer. After searching on the internet I choose Jon Bass and expert in Tabita training, a kind of high intensity interval training. So far its been working and I have started to turn the tide slowly improving my fitness. I still feel half dead after a session, not really managed to do a full hour as yet, but I am hopeful.

Thanks to vsauce I saw the following chart charting when people will forget. Its a good reminder that history is in fact not dead in spite of what some books might say. It is a point that has been reinforced to me while working with one of the interns. He is where I was in 2002, part way through university doing a year out in industry. It really interesting I can see something of myself in him, only he has a totally different set of experiences. He didn't grow up using Basic, typing in lines of code out of Computing magazine. He didn't have to rely on encyclopaedias or magazines like Quest to find out information the whole internet and Wikipedia is available to him. Who knows what changes will take place to the next generation, history certainly isn't dead.

The boy who read some books

I have just finished "the girl who kicked the hornets nest" the third and final part of Stieg Larsson Millenium Trilogy. Kath bought me all three books almost a year ago, but I have spent that time very slowly reading Life and Fate. I finially finished that and started reading the girls with the dragon tattoo. I was hooked from the first chapter, and read like a manic finishing the first book over the weekend. The spending more of my free time, hitting a chapter before work at lunch in the evening. Its been a while since I read a story that was so engaging as this. Larsson invented some really interesting characters, including Lisbeth Slander an almost unique heroine. highly recommend them if you fancy a goodbook but be warned they are a hard habit to break. I was sorry to finish off the book in the knowledge that following Larsson death there will be no more to follow.

Life and Fate is also a spectacularly good book, both frightening and surreal it documents the battle for Stalingrad. Written as a homage to Tolstoy's War and Peace. In War and peace where Tolstoy wraps his characters lives around the Napoleonic invasion Vasily Grossman exposes the monstrosity of Stalin's state. There are a number of incredibly distressing chapters showing both the brutality of Fascism and Communism.  It took me a long long time to read my mum bought me the book after I lightened to the excellent BBC Radio drama. I am very glad that I read it and though its a hefty tomb weighing in at over 800 pages I would recommend to any bibliophiles.

Linux Command Line Cheat Sheet by DaveChild - Cheatography.com

Linux Command Line Cheat Sheet by DaveChild - Cheatography.com

A tale of two stores

Today the news that HMV was going into administration had lots of people on talking about why shops fail and lots of people were talking about ways to fix up the shop.

 I got me thinking about something, today I went out into Altrincham centre to buy some lunch and a couple of other things. I popped in to Waterstones, formally a part of HMV now on its own. Oddly I was drawn in there by the Kindle display. Recently refitted the store is excellent, a nice coffee shop enthusiastic staff, reviews of merchandise and still room for tables with special offers on. The special area for e-readers is what I went in to look at, though I have enough unread books at the moment I have been thinking about getting an e-reader as my iPad is a little heavy for reading a book on in bed. Overall I was very impressed with Waterstones I wanted to buy a book and sit and read in the coffee store like a sceanster, unfortunately I had to get back to work.

Across the road is WHS smiths, I popped in to buy a pen, and well there couldn't be more of a start contrast.  WHS Smiths are attempting to sell e-Readers too, they retail the Kobo glow but rather than than have a nice display they simply had a sad pile of empty boxes stuffed into a cardboard display, not very appealing. In fact the whole shop looked tired, cluttered. Even worse when I turned round there was a very dodgy looking legal services stand. Behind the counter were a series of dirty ugly office filing cabinets, horrid.

With so many chains failing I would suggest that stores need to go do more to entice customers in create an experience. Attempting to compete with supermarkets overstocking shelves isn't the answer, then again which shop did I spend my money in, I didn't walk out with a Kindle but I did buy a pack of Pilot G2 pens from WHSmith so what do I know!

I was just a card

Boxing day and my forth Christmas lunch of the year. First one my parents made as a treat for myself and Kath at my Brithday. The second was the works Christmas do and the final two Christmas day at my parents and today the final boxing day using up the leftovers meal.

Today marks one whole year since I proposed to +Kath Borkowska, it was one of the best days in my life. I can still remember the nervous preparation the ring arrived on the last day of postage before Christmas, with Kath arriving on boxing day. I can also still picture the excited surprised expression on her face when I asked the question. I think up until the moment I produced the ring that she thought it was some sort of joke. The wedding is in August, I can't wait thought there is an awful lot of organising to be done beforehand.

I got some nice gifts this year, Nina and Bruce got me some new touch screen gloves, they are even better than my old ones (and look slighlty less geeky). Paul got me Lord of the Rings Trilogy for Xbox, mum gave me some Polish Zloty for my New Years trip to Poland.

Kath bought me a Samsung Galaxy Note II, unfortunately I have to date not received this, despite the fact that Kath sent early December (it arrived in the UK on the 4th December). In the same timeframe, I sent Kath a Nexus 7, she had it used it for a week until it broke. She sent it back to the UK I received it and sent it back for replacement yet I still have no idea when the Note II will arrive ( or even if). My current phone (an 21 month old Samsung Nexus S) Samsung kept rebooting itself so I decided to purchase a Nexus 4.

The Christmas dinners at my parents consisted of turkey, cranberry sauce, pig in blankets, sausage meat, sprouts, carrots and swede, baked parsnips, baked potatoes, chestnut stuffing topped with gravy. It was incredibly tasty and there were even some extra sausages for Mr Storm.

I was so full after both meals I spent the afternoon afterwards ina  sort of food induced coma watching TV. I watched the latest Bourne film, I found it OK mildly entertaining for a lazy evenings watching.

Tomorrow is my grandmas funeral, quite a sombre occasion, I don't think I had ever been to a funeral before David's, now it's two in a month. Hopefully it will be a cathartic event and allow us to relate good memories of her life.

I have to work tomorrow afternoon, another day in an empty office. Not ideal but due to the job change, I start at Civica on the 7th Jan finishing at Close Brothers on the 14th left me with an employment gap which I am filling with some extra time for my previous employer. It isn't ideal but it will help bridge the gap and pay for my New Year trip to Poland.

Langauge

Yesterday was Christmas Eve but unfortunately having no holiday left I worked, in a nearly empty office. I was slightly surreal but at least I managed to get a piece of work done in peace. 

Last night was Christmas Eve so I met up with the with everyone for some drinks. I grabbed a lift to Revolution with Nick and Jono, and he wasn't staying though just acting as chauffeur.

+Paul Aiden Craddock, +Ian Brook , +matt wooller  and Dan were already in there having left early to get a table.

It was still fairly early when we arrived and the place was pretty empty. Fortunately as we arrived so did a hoard of other people. Including on the table next to us a table full of girls dressed as the nutcracker sweet, apparently it was the only costume available for seven people.

Everyone was in good spirits. Woller was in a good mood he was telling me about his Yoga. Paul about his ongoing music work. Its probably the most I have spoken to Woller in ages. Danny was he usual boisterous self. Ian and Dan are were on the hunt for

+Philip Hadfield +caroline kedian and +Bruce Tonge turned up a little later. Phil was subdued, though Caroline made the best of it considering it was nearly all guys.

Revolution got increasingly busy, oddly I noticed Monkey boy Roberts sat with a group in the corner. I was going to go over and say hello right until one of them pushed in front of my at the bar. Annoyingly I think its someone else I went to school with, though he was a lot less pushy back then. I don't think any of them recognised me so I decided it might not be the best plan to sidle up and say hello.

It looks like Nick and Becky are back to being an item, she gave he and I a lift home in her Range Rover evoke, very nice wheels.  We left fairly early, leaving Dan, Paul, Wooler and Ian behind I hear that Paul and Dan managed to come to blows! Fortunately turned out to be a spur of the moment thing all forgotten in the morning.

Why I like and loath Freegal

Freegal is a free and legal group in which you can offer unused items to other members, so that they go to another home rather than landfill. Freegal is simply replacement for the Wilmslow Freecycle I previously recommended

In principal I think this is a great idea. I find it very difficult to take perfectly serviceable items to the tip so they often sit around the house for a long time. Plus after having a lot of hassell selling items on ebay and with all the fees or with anything expensive to post it is often not worthwhile to sell.

Recently I had some items from my grandma's flat to dispose of including a miniature dishwasher. I listed this on Freegal and before I knew it I have 23 people  wanting the item. According to the Freegl principals the idea is to only offer or request not to put in any message about why you need the item. The idea is simply to find homes for items based on offer and desire not to personalise or sway the decision.

There is also Fair offer policy (FOP) to see what responses are received before deciding who to give item(s) to. This gives members on Daily Digest, or those who don't have continual access to the Internet a fair chance to reply.

Here are a selection of the responses;

"I would so much appreciate this please.  Am a single mum & having some help with that chore would make such a difference".

"I'm a carer for my bed bound mum. Your small dishwasher would be really really handy for me when I'm up at her house. I often find myself stood at my mums sink doing the pots, then have to come home and do the dishes at home too. This would be ideal and would save me so much time ".

It puts a lot of pressure on the poster, but how to make a good decision one of the other poster might have similar problems? Therefore I always put all the names into a spreadsheet and use the random function to pick a name, I think that is the fairest way.
 

Circles

The last few weeks have been up and down. There was good news as several of my friends had children or announced they were pregnant. That has been tempered by the deaths of several people, my grandmother died last Friday. In a way at was a release she had been very unwell and was suffering, however it still felt very ghoulish clearing out her flat. This followed the death of Philips father, whoes funerial I had attended Thursday. Then Kath Aunt died, so a sad time at what is normally a happy time of the year.

Last night I went out for a curry with Jo and Paul, was a nice evening good food, nice chat, very relaxing. Paul was in good form telling us about his trip to Sweden and how he has got back into running

I finally got a replacement phone, a Google Nexus 4. I am very happy with it. It zips along much faster than my previous Nexus S, the screen is gorgeous nearly edge to edge in Gorilla Glass. The new version of Android follows the evolution of the operating system, making it slicker and more integrated. The cards feature is a real innovation, Cards dynamically display depending on location and recent searchs. For example if I record an item in my calendar I get a reminder to leave in order to beat the traffic, updated in real time. 

There is still no sign of the Galaxy Note II that Kath sent me, according to the tracking it arrived in the UK on the 4th yet it hasn't moved from the warehouse. Whilst waiting for it, I have sent Kath her Google Nexus 7 to Poland. Unfortunately it developed a fault, so she sent it back to the UK and I returned it to Google and got a replacement. So something tells me that the Note has been lost in transit.

Shake it out

I met up with Phil, Bruce, and Nina for a Drink in Cheadle Hulme last night. Bruce has finished his contract in Cheltenham and starts a new job in Warrington next week. They had gone for a meal together using the vouchers Jo and Holly gave them as a thank you for helping out doing their photography at their wedding.

Phil came and picked me up after visiting his parents, unfortunately when we got to his place he realised that he had left his keys at his parents. He dropped me at the John Millington where Bruce and Nina were enjoying a post dinner drink.

Bruce seemed pretty happy about not living away, and Nina seemed in a great mood. She was looking very nice having grown her hair a little longer which suits her very well.

There was a big wedding party in and the pub was very busy. We had a sit under the heater outside enjoying a few drinks and a chat.

I took the train home, the weather has gone quiet cold, I felt a chill stood on the platform.

Sun

After a lot of deliberation I finally decided to change my car. The Focus I bought as a cheap stop gap back in 2008 after my Saab bit the dust. At the time I had just bought my house, and then been put onto a four day week at work so my funds were extremely depleted.

Kath had been over on the weekend, so we went to view the car together. A 2008 model Nissan Qasqhai. It was really nice and we were both very  impressed. It had no marks, and all the options I bearly bought it on the spot but decided to have dinner and think about it.

Dinner was Mexican at Chiqutos, I had the jambalaya.  After dinner we headed into Manchester to catch Radiohead at the Manchester Arena. They were supported by Carribou, who provided an excellent warm up. Radiohead were awesome, highlights were Paranoid Android and Everything In Its Right Place it made me want to listen to all there old albums again. They did three encores finally finishing on a high with Idioteque. As usual for Radiohead the sounds was super clear, and the lighting effects were really impressive. They had a series of screens with their images projected on. Which moved around during the performance.

Set List

• Lotus Flower 
• Airbag
• Bloom 
• The Daily Mail
• Myxomatosis 
• The Gloaming 
• Separator
• These Are My Twisted Words
• Pyramid Song 
• Nude
• Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
• Reckoner
• There There
• The National Anthem 
• Feral 
• Paranoid Android
   
• You And Whose Army? 
• Full Stop
•  Morning Mr Magpie
• Planet Telex
• How To Disappear Completely
• Give Up The Ghost
• Everything In Its Right Place
• Idioteque

It was the second time I had been to a gig with Kath, thought this was seated in the Manchester Arena list time was the Manic Street Preachers at the Apollo. Normally I would have preferred to be in the crowd but Kath had a cold and had been travelling, so the day was long. It was nice to sit and enjoy the concert.

I decided to buy the car on Monday, had to wait until Tuesday to pick it up by which time Kath had already headed back to Poland.

Thursday started my first Polish lesson, the pace was pretty quick. We started with pronunciation and introduction. I am hoping to practise with Kath and become a bit more proficient before the wedding next year.

National Anthem

Jo and Holly had their wedding in Milton Keynes on Saturday. Kath and I got back from Portugal on Friday lunch time. My Dad picked us up from the airport and dropped us off at home.

We had a quick change, grabbed our wedding clothes then set off on the motorway. Just under three hours later we arrived at Greens hotel. Most of the wedding party were staying there, we met up with the crowd at the local pub. We ate dinner together and had a chat watching the opening of the Olympics.

On the wedding day we met Nick Charlotte, Ian, Rachel and Danny at the hotel bar. Ian and Rachel had made a real effort with the vintage theme, she had a red polka-dot dress and a 40's style hair. Ian looked like someone from Man Men with his suit and waistcoat, he even matched his tie and handkerchief to Rachels' dress. Kath had done a similar thing for me, buying a tie to match her dress. We took the bus to the venue, ladies first and guys following. It was a delightful country house with a very well cared for garden. Jo  and his best man John were both looking dapper in there tweed suits.

Fortunately the weather was lovely for the ceremony. I really enjoyed the ceremony there is something nice and good humoured about Humanist style weddings. A lot more palatable to me than the dry and formal nature of the Church.

Bruce and Nina were the camera crew, wondering around snapping people. Phil did his turn are the the camera man.

Joe and Holly had made a lot of nice touches, the flowers in tea pots and the wedding favours of seeds really were touching. Dinner was a BBQ so luckily the rain kept away so we were able to grab our faire without getting soaked.

In the evening Jon Kenzie and the others played funky Jazz into the night. Kath and I weere still tired from travelling so we headed back with Bruce and Nina around early. All in all an excellent wedding, really pleased for Jo and Holly.

Sunday we said goodbye to the hotel and headed to Bletchley park. It was really interesting for me and Kath to see the impact of the Polish code breakers on the war effort. There was even a Polish memorial at Bletchley park. I would recommend taking a look around if you are in the vicinity. It is a very interesting place stepped in history.

Helter Skelter

Kath and I headed out to Portugal last Sunday, we both had two weeks off work with Joe and Holly's wedding in the middle so we had decided to escape to the sunshine before the wedding.

I picked Kath up on Saturday from Liverpool airport at 2pm. I had spent the morning sorting out the house but had neglected to pick up a couple of items for the trip. I needed some new sunglasses and a pair of swimming shorts so we headed to the shops to get them. Fortunately for me Kath is the best shopping advisor and was able to help me find everything I needed.

Arriving in Faro about 6pm then a lengthy wait for our bags we finally got on board the airport transfer to Estoi. We were staying at the Hotel Pousada De Estoi, a converted Palace with a modernist extension. Guest rooms are situated in the grand designs style modernist building. While the Palace has been renovated and serves as a rather impressive location for the bar, salon, and dining area.

I had paid a little extra to get one of the superior rooms, it really lived up, and exceeded my expectations. The bed was huge, really huge like double kingsize! We were actually worried to lose each other in it.

The hotel wasn't near to the coast but fortunately made up for that by having an excellent pool with a spectacular view right out to sea. On the first day we spent a lot of time by the pool, it was a very relaxing place to soak up the sun read, and swim. I read some more of my book Life and Fate, and Kath surfed on the iPad.

The town of Estoi was a small place. According to the guidebook it had several cafés and a Roman ruin. The actual town was pretty small, but with plenty of character. The centre had a square, Church courtyards and a number of Cafés. We attempted to find the Roman Ruins, the guide book suggested that they were a 15 minute walk downhill from the centre. From the centre of the town three routes led downhill. We walked down the first route until the pavement ended and the amount of traffic made us decide to turn back. Next we tried the second direction this time we walked for 15 minutes until we ended up at an empty market in the middle of nothing. Finally we tried the last direction this took us into a load of apartments no ruins to be found. Given the heat we stopped to have a beer a sit down at a café before wondering back to the town centre still not having seen any ruins. On the way back to town we spotted a sign pointing us to the ruins down guess what the first road we walked down. Feeling hungry we decided to eat before visiting the Ruins. There was a small inviting café, a little run down but clean and somewhat homely. I had a Portuguese style steak, which was essentially a steak topped with ham and a fried egg. Kath had a steak with mushroom sauce. This was paired with a bottle of local Red wine. It was all very good and we enjoyed it very much however after the wine we felt ready for a siesta so headed back to the hotel.

On Tuesday we decided to go and visit Faro. Booking a taxi from the hotel a rather enthusiastic taxi driver took us to Faro dropping us off then saying that we must call him for a lift back no-one else.
We wondered around Faro finding a nice little restaurant where I had one of the best calamaris, Kath had tuna.

Wednesday we finally made it to the Ruins in Estoi. We were really glad that we finally made the journey. Though we felt somewhat silly that we hadn't walked the extra 5 minutes on the first day.  The ruins chart over 1000 years of development. Starting with the Romans then charting the different ages as new buildings were constructed on or around the Roman villa.

Thursday we headed to Olhão a fishing port about 9km form the hotel.  It is famous in that after the French were pushed out of Portugal following the Peninsular war some sailors set out for Brazil in a fishing boat, sailing there in three months without any navigational aids to tell the King the news. We decided that we fancied some spicy food. We found the Indian Hut five minutes walk from the beach. The waiter was extremely polite and the food was spectacular. I hadn't expected much from the décor however the chutneys were all home made, and the starters were very tasty; Seek kebab and chicken Samosas. By the time the main course arrived I was already thinking it was one of the best Indian meals that I had ever had. Even the traditional palate cleanser was special instead of a mint with the bill we were served a mix of spices and seeds, it was a real treat.

For our final night we decided to have dinner in Olhão again. Taking a taxi again we had the crazy driver from our Faro trip. He seemed offended that we didn't call him direct as he asked, but given he charged us an extra 5 Euros than the taxis the day before we were pretty glad that we hadn't! This time we had a Pizza from Docas' pizza on the seafront. It was a lovely pizza but we had to wait for ages to get them. After the Pizza we had a couple of drinks before heading back to the hotel.

Anti-Pioneer

Yesterday was a write off, I felt so exhausted that I spent the day on the couch. Many months of longs weeks at work getting systems ready for the new platform have taken their toll on my body. Long days shut up at the office in close proximity to the vending machine have not been kind to me. I have been trying to get back into a fitness regime, however I ma very much out of shape. A 6km jog used to take me about 40 minutes now its more like an hour, hopefully I can build back up to that.

Fortunately next week Kath and I are off on our summer holiday to Portugal. I can't wait we have nearly a week there arriving back in time to head to Jo and Holly's wedding.

I just watched a classic album show about the Nirvana album Nevermind. Hard to believe that it is more than twenty years since it release.

I have been putting off the cleaning, watching television and playing Wii games instead.I better snap too it before the day gets away from me. Hoping to catch up with Phil later and find out how his house purchase is coming along.

Sexy Song

Yesterday was Jo Bergers Stag Do. The best man Jon K had organised an ambitious day of Go Karting, Paintball then drinks and a Jam session at Solomon Grundy. 19 people turned out for the activities and more in the evening at Solomon Grundy.

Paul had stayed with me the previous evening. We ate a curry drank some beers, watched a film and put the world to rights. He got up fairly early

Bruce picked me up and we headed to the Karting 2000 centre. We had to wait around for a around an hour because the previous group ran late. Once we started we had 3 practise laps then in groups of four a Gran Prix style race. There should have been 4 grind prix each with racers randomly chosen. Unfortunately we had to leave the karting early to make it to the Battlefield Paintball so I only managed 2 races.

Paintball was an indoor arena. We started with 100 paintballs, and were assigned to either Red (French) or Blue (British) teams. There were several games however they all amounted to the same thing shoot the hell out of each other. It was fun however they didn't seem to pay much attention to gassing the guns and I had to exchange my gun in pretty much every game, three times during one game.  I was on the French side, as was Joe Berger. There was another stag party in with us. Their stag was wearing a rather fetching tutu. In an effort to level the playing field they gave Joe a high visibility jacket.

There was a rather sadistic shoot the stag game where the two stags and their best men had to walk the length of the arena while we all shot at them. It was a pretty brutal assault, actually much worse than when Bruce, Phil and I had to do similar at his Stag party. I felt bad for them however it didn't make me refrain for shooting them.

The final game was a free-for-all to use up the remaining paintballs. My own team shot me more than the opposition. After two gun changes I was finally able to get rid of my paintballs.

After a short break to shower and get changed then head to Withington. Danny drove and dropped off his car and we went into the bar. After grabbing some food we went downstairs for the Jam session. It was a funky affair with Joe playing first drums then bass. Jon K, Paul and many others playing various instruments.

It was a realy good day however by 1 I was beat and so was Phil, he also had to work the next day so we took a taxi home.

Polish wedding adventures

I headed to Poland last Thursday and Kath I and had been invited to Mike and Caroline's wedding. I arrived before Kath, and following her text messages managed to navigate myself to the Coffee Heaven. Her coach was delayed thanks to bad traffic in Warsaw. Eventually she met me at the coffee shop. We grabbed chai latte and a sandwich for the journey on the coach bus back to Białystok. The coach took several hours and so didn't arrive back in Białystok until after 11. We bought a couple of beers took a taxi back to Kath's flat. She made some dinner and we headed to bed.

After a lie in Kath made a breakfast of French toast topped with Parma ham and a caprese salad. Kath's gran gave me a warm welcome with kisses. She also talked to me in Polish forgetting I don't understand it. After which we headed out early so that Kath could go to the Polish NHS to sign a new contract for her prescriptions. We took a walk around the Palace gardens, stopping for a Coffee at the Odeon Jazz club.

After another walk we decided to try out the new Japanese restaurant Tanoshii. It was a really good choice, I had spice dragon soup, Kath had Tanoshii soup. We shared a sushi mixed set. Kath had a Mochi dessert with rice and cherries and I had tempura ice cream kind of a baked Alaska. All accompanied with Japanese beer and Jasmine tea. All of the food was of a high standard and we enjoyed it very much.

It was the night of restaurants in Białystok so our plan was to eat out but first we headed to Esperanto Cafe bar for a Gin and Tonic. However thinks took a different turn when Kaths friend Goofy and his dog Kliper  joined us. We struggled to have a drink and a chat there but the service was terrible so we switched venue to Pub Fiction. A film themed bar near the centre of town. Sitting outside with the dog we talked and talked while drinking. We carried on that way until it started to get light, Goofy made sure that the last drink was a large whiskey which pretty much finished off Kath and I, we finally headed to bed.

Our heads felt very sore when we woke. We had an easy morning before making a short trip into town to pick up something for Kath then changing and getting dressed for the wedding. Goofy had organised a coach for us, himself and his wife Ela, Goofy's sister Mary and her husband Łukasz, their parents, Mr Goat, and Dominc and Agata.

The coach took us to the Church a large place. I couldn't understand the ceremony however Mike told us later that the priest managed to get his name wrong, not that anyone could hear as there wasn't any amplification. 

After the ceremony we got on a different coach to the venue for the reception. It was a place out in the country quite picturesque, it will be even better when all the plants have bedded in.

We took our seats and eat something, drank and chatted. They had a very cheesy DJ, apparently they call cheesy disco music, Disco Polo; basically cheesy disco music with simple rhythm and lyrics. We danced a little but it was very hot and the DJ was a little overpowering, so we mostly mingled outside. As the evening went on and the Vodka flowed peoples English improved. Everyone was really nice, Mikes Mum and Gran said hello, I met Caroline's sister mother and father again. It was nice to join in with the party and meet everyone.

The coach home was scheduled for 4 however we were absolutely shattered well before that. We managed to grab a lift back with Mirka and Kamil. Kamil was very drunk and Mirka was driving for the first time in many years, so it was rather an exciting drive. She did very well though and we were very happy to get back to Kath's flat earlier. Kamil was hilarious  I was nodding off and he kept shouting "Alright mate". He also delivered a soliloquies about Mirka, "my wife is so angry with me but I am so proud of her".

After another long lie in we went out to see a film, the Avengers, which I enjoyed very much. Afterwards we went for a meal out at Lejdis. It was very tasty, and nice to spend time together. It was still fairly early after we got home so we decided to watch another film. We watched Intouchables, a very good film about a man who becomes the carer of a tetraplegic man. I hadnt really wanted to watch the film but I was glad that I did, it was unexpectedly good.

The last full day we went to look around Białystok historical museum and looked at a potential wedding venue. The museum is a collection of traditional Polish buildings, the weather was great and we took a leisurely walk around. The venue was near to the museum, another traditional wooden building. We ate lunch there it was very good and the venue looked perfect for us. A large space, with plenty of potential for a good party. Afterwards we went back into the into the city spent the afternoon enjoying a few drinks as Esperanto, then an early night in time to get up for the early coach and my flight home.

Google docs Reasearch tool

Just went into Google docs (it has been a while) and noticed the new research toolbar. Basically a search tool that floats to the right hand side of the writing pane. It allows you to search Google while writing. I realise this is already pretty simple given you could open another tab pretty easily.. However having it right there in the same window seems like a real winning as it saves time switching between tabs there are even shortcut keys Cmd + Opt + R on Mac, Ctrl + Alt + R on PC.

Hopefully the guys at Blogger will add the same to the Post Window....

Windows backup gets my back up

A few months ago I replaced my ancient (in computer terms) Apple PowerMac G4. One of the best things about getting the new one was that to restore everything I simply had to plug in my time machine disk and within an hour I was back up and running with all my files and programs. I mention this because backup is one area where Windows is seriously poor. I had high hope when Vista came out boasting a new backup tool, however like the operating system it sat on the new tool was rubbish.

Windows 7 is now better, I just tried to backup to a new external 2 TB drive. Comparing Windows 7 backup to  Time machine is like comparing a Ferrari California to a Trabant. Firstly Windows backup is very very slow, backing up from an SSD to an external USB 3 device should be fast, very fast yet hours later the backup is still slowly chugging away, a quick Google and its clear lots of people are having issues. No only that but somehow it can work out Deltas (file changes) on files properly. Not much data on my computer actually changes however subsequent backups are massive filling a TB drive in only two backups given that the machine has got less than 1TB of data, I find that pretty odd.

So in Short Time Machine is full of win, where as Windows backup is a joke, I can only hope that Windows 8 boasts an improved tool.

Friday night was Dan's birthday do. I picked up Ian and Rachel from their place and headed to Dan's pad. Dan was in good form, Ian had brought a bottle of champain to start the evening off. He looks in good shape apparently.y down to his new walking habits. Something certainly is doing him good. We headed up the road to the Joshua Bradley pub. Meeting some friends of Dan's and Wooler. Wooler is another chap who simply looks better every time I see him. A healthy diet plus daily yoga seems to be doing him a lot of good. After a few drinks there we headed futher down the road to the Cheshire cheese. Described by Dan as "a proper drinking pub", it lived upto the hype. Being a rather traditional pub. There was a good atmosphere and a nice mix of people. I had a LAN party on Saturday so made my excuses around 12 and left for home with Ian and Rachel. Dan seemed to have enjoyed a dry good evening. Saturday's LAN was pretty busy 18 people attended, call of duty worked well but it's obvious that we need to do something more about finding some new games. I tried to find an updated unreal stairs of doom map but the only port is pret woeful. Today I was fit for nothing, I managed a lunch at my parents and a short 3 mile jog other than that I just relaxed, watched some tv and started reading a book my parents gave me called lands edge. It's a description of the Austrlian coast, the first few chapters bout back a few memories already. Kath and I talked a lot this weekend, I think we were both missing each other a lot this weekend. Fortunately only another 2 weeks until I see her. I am heading to Poland and we are attending the wedding of Kates friends Mike and Caroline. In other news Phil has had an offer accepted on a house in Cheadle Hulme, I hope it all goes well for him. Certainly looks like a good place from the photos.