Paul Hammond's Blog

I went to Kingston on Sunday with my family, with the intention of having a relaxing Sunday lunch at Jamie’s Italian followed by some shopping for various bits and bobs.  Well, we did do all of those things, but the lovely relaxing day out in the beautiful spring sunshine was completely ruined when we returned to our car to find the passenger side front window smashed out.  We weren’t alone.  A couple of other cars in the car park had the same problem – a smashed passenger window.

The car park attendants were very helpful, vacuuming the glass out of the car for us, taking our details and passing on the information to the local police force.  They even gave us a couple of hours of free parking for our next visit, although I am not sure I’ll want to use that car park again!  Unfortunately, the car park does not have camera monitoring, so that was pretty much all they could do.

What was strange was that nothing was missing from the car.  The sat nav unit was still on the dashboard, expensive sunglasses were still in the glove box, CDs still in the centre console and the player.  It didn’t make sense.  We just assumed that it was kids being vandals.  Then we heard from the attendant that another of the cars was missing their road tax disc.  I looked at ours, but it was still there.  However, we have a plastic tax disc holder that feels like it is superglued to the windscreen.  My best guess is that the idiots WERE actually after the tax disc (which was brand new, so had a long expiry), but in the limited time they had before someone was alerted they couldn’t get it unstuck from the windscreen.

For those outside the UK, road tax (or Vehicle Excise Duty) is payable to the government to allow you to have your car legally allowed on the road.  To prove you’ve paid, you get a small paper disc that you display in your front window, that has the date of expiry on it, as well as your car registration details.

I looked into this online and found an article that said (taken/slightly edited from Duck2Water Car Insurance Site):
More than 142,000 replacement tax discs were issued by the DVLA in a single year and it is believed that the majority were taken by thieves. At first glance, it is not obvious why a little paper disc which is marked with your car's details would be worth stealing. However, there is actually a very good reason.  It is very difficult for criminals to get a legitimate tax disc for a stolen car, as they would need to provide the motor insurance documentation and MOT certificate. In order to prevent a car looking suspicious because it lacks a tax disc, they will use a real tax disc stolen from an innocent motorist's car windscreen. The details on the disc will then be altered to make it appropriate for the new car.

So, UK folks, take note.  It cost me £75 to have the window fixed (the excess on my insurance policy) and it took until midnight on Monday night for the glass company to have an open slot.  Yes, midnight!  Most Police Forces sell Secure Tax Disc Holders for as little as £1 that are designed to be tamper proof (the tax disc will be ripped if you try and open the holder).  This should act as a deterrent to would-be thieves.  If you want to save yourself a large insurance excess and the hassle of replacing your tax disc and window glass, get hold of one.

I have wanted to try a pair of Vibram’s FiveFingers shoes for a while now, but have found it very difficult to get hold of them due to their popularity – nowhere had any stock. 

These shoes are designed to allow you to achieve a “barefoot” feel when you are taking part in activities such as running, trekking, yoga, water sports, climbing etc.  According to the Vibram website, barefooting “stimulates the muscles in your feet and lower legs which will not only make you stronger and healthier, it improves your balance, agility and proprioception”.  Obviously, doing many these things truly barefooted would probably result in some nasty injuries, so the FiveFingers offer a very lightweight and robust covering for your foot that still feels like you are barefoot.

Yesterday, I finally managed to find a pair that I could try on, in REI’s flagship store in downtown Seattle.  I grabbed a pair of the Injinji socks (that also have separate toes in them), and a pair of the FiveFinger KSO series in a black, gray and camoflage colour.  I then proceeded to spend a few minutes feeling very weird as I slotted my individual toes into the toe sockets, first in the socks and then in the shoes.  As weird as it was, however, they felt pretty good.  So, the purchase was made and I am now the proud owner of some great new running/activity shoes.

The KSO in the name stands for “Keep Stuff Out”.  The shoes have a thin Vibram sole, and a nylon and mesh upper that encloses your whole foot.  The velcro fastening really keeps the shoe tight on your foot, and I can definitely see these being used in situations where you want to keep your feet covered and your shoes firmly in place – perhaps in the water, or when trail running etc.  They do a number of different series that are suitable for different types of activity; see their website for the other options.

I took them for a 20 minute run on the treadmill at my hotel this morning.  One of the big differences about these shoes is that you cannot run the way most people normally do – predominantly “heel first”.  Your biomechanics have to change so that the ball of your foot is hitting the pavement first.  Twenty minutes is a long time when you’re running on your toes.  My calves have never felt so abused…  However, they definitely felt very comfortable, and I felt like I’d had a really good workout after the twenty minutes were up.  I’m really looking forward to a longer run outside.

Time for another reflection on a year passed.  I wrote my first yearly review (Goodbye 2008, Hello 2009) last year, so I thought I’d continue the tradition.

So, What Happened In 2009?

Travel featured again, although not as much as in 2008.  This year I made only 8 trips, spending 66 days on the road.  I returned to Dublin once, Shanghai twice and Seattle three times.  I visited Cyprus for the very first time for our family vacation, and headed to Chicago for the Agile 2009 conference.

I was in Chicago with my friend Dave, who lived there for a while.  He introduced me to some great food (including delicious Pizza at Giordano’s, breaded Steak Sandwiches at Ricobene’s, and breakfast at the West Egg Cafe).  I was able to catch a White Sox vs Orioles baseball game at US Cellular field, but sadly I couldn’t get tickets for the Cubs vs Mets game at Wrigley.  I visited the stadium though.

Cyprus was fantastic.  Blue skies and sunshine every day, 35 degree heat, lovely beaches.  We rented a house and a car and explored the Eastern end of the Cypriot owned part of the Island.  I was fascinated by Famagusta and the ghost town.  Highly recommended if you want a slow moving and relaxing holiday in a very beautiful place.

While I was in Chicago, I spent some time exercising with super-fit Dave, and I realised that I was seriously unfit.  I resolved to change that, and I blogged about my exercise and weight loss progress back in November.  I’ve continued on since then and lost a further 5lbs in weight.

In February, I completed my 365 Days photography project.  It felt great to hit 366 days without missing a single picture, and I learned a lot about both my camera and Photoshop.  I’ve since had the photos (rather vainly) printed into a hard-cover book using blurb.com, so I can flick through it every so often to remember the achievement.  I’ve since forgotten all of the Photoshop techniques I learned during the year, and many of the camera techniques!  I am sure it will come back to me when I take on my next photography project.  I’m yet to decide what that will be.

In July, I finally got to see a long-time favourite artist of mine, Babyface, live at the indigO2 in London.  He was completely awesome, and I hope he comes back through London again soon.

I finally bought a new desktop computer in August, one that gives me enough power for photo and video editing, as well as multi-track audio recording.  I’m looking forward to giving it a proper workout soon, time permitting.

On the 1st December, my daughter sang with the Young Voices Choir at the O2.  It was amazing to see her join 8,000 other children to sing along with a number of celebrities who graced the stage.  The kids took up a third of the auditorium!  It was a very impressive sight, and an even more impressive sound.  I am looking forward to getting the DVD of the show in the New Year.  You can see a clip from the 1st December Young Voices concert here.

I’ll be finishing out the year at a wedding on December 31st.  I’ve never mixed celebrations before, so that will be a first for me.  I’m looking forward to seeing in the New Year in a suit, rather than the usual pyjamas…

What Didn’t Happen In 2009? 

Last year’s post had a list of things I wanted to try and to in 2009.  So, how did I do?  Very poorly it seems.  I did visit Chicago and Shanghai.  I didn’t read anywhere near as much as I wanted to, I didn’t learn any more Spanish or Mandarin, nor formally take piano or guitar lessons.  I didn’t participate in NaNoWriMo 2009, didn’t record any music, and didn’t start a new photography projects.  Oh, and if anything, I blogged less.  So, pretty much a big FAIL against my predictions!

Onwards to 2010.

The first thing to think about is what I will call 2010.  Am I going to be in the “Twenty-Ten” crowd, or the “Two-Thousand-and-Ten” bucket?  Unlike in the 1900s, where saying “Nineteen-Seventy” sounded right, saying “Twenty-Ten” or “Twenty-Twelve” sounds a little wrong to me.  I think I’ll be going with “Two-Thousand-and-Ten”.  You?

Things that may or may not happen in 2010:

• I will probably be involved in planning the Agile Conference again, so will likely be heading to Nashville, Tennessee in August.  Another US city I’ve never visited before.
• More exercising, both running and cycling, including at least one formally organized race – probably a 10k.
• I’ll be visiting my childhood home town much more often that I have done in recent years.
• I will almost certainly write and record something this year.  Just one more bit of hardware to buy first (a new DI box, for those who care).
• I’ll be switching blog engines, from DasBlog to GraffitiCMS.  I’ll also hopefully have a new site design in the New Year.
• I’ll be developing an iPhone application, probably working with Tee to extend his BostonFireBox.com offering.
• We’re enjoying discussing the possibilities for our family holiday this year.  No decision yet, other than “we are definitely going on holiday!”.
• I’ll be decorating our bedroom and our hall, stairs and landing early in the New Year so that the carpet we already paid for can be fitted.  I hate decorating.  Humbug.

Anyway, Happy New Year everyone, I hope 2010 is everything you want it to be, and more besides.

My friend Dave is very fit.  He works out every day, eats right and has the will power to stay away from bad foods.

Late in August, I went to the Agile 2009 conference with Dave.  On the first day in Chicago, I decided that I should take advantage of our hotel being right on the River Walk, and suggested to Dave that we go for a run.  I think I managed about 2 miles that day, with a rest or two, and Dave seemed to be OK with me slowing him down!  I was breathing hard after a couple hundred yards, and struggled to push myself through the second mile…

At the time I was carrying about 204lbs (14st 8lbs for you UK folks, 93kg metric).  I knew I was overweight and unfit; simple tasks like walking flights of stairs made subsequent conversation difficult, so it was obvious I was out of shape.  But running with Dave really brought it home to me how bad I had gotten.  Other incidents also tipped me off.  For example, when I told a colleague that I had a 32” waist, he laughed at me!  We agreed that while I wore 32” waisted trousers, they sat very low (way below my waist) and that my proper waist size was in fact much larger!  And when I remembered that I had been 140lbs throughout college, I realised I’d added nearly 50% of my body weight in my “sitting on my backside at the office” years.  Granted, 140lbs was way too thin, but equally, 204lbs was just too fat.

So, I found myself quite profoundly shocked at myself, all of a sudden.  It took such a long time for the weight to creep up, that I hadn’t really noticed so much.  Struggling for breath as I walked the last 200 yards back to the hotel sure made it obvious.  So, right there on that Monday morning, as I watched the sun rise over the lake, I made a decision to exercise more and eat better, and to try and get myself fitter.  If I lost a little weight, that would be a bonus, but as long as my heart was healthier, I would be happy.

I exercised every day in Chicago with Dave, either running on the lake front, or in the gym.  The 5 days came and went, and I still felt awful after every session.  But when I arrived home, I decided I had to make a continued effort.  I decided that I’d make time for exercise by getting up earlier and running first thing in the morning – time when I’d ordinarily be sleeping anyway.

Knowing that I would need some sort of regimented approach, I went online and found a novice 10k training programme.  I began to follow it, to the letter.  I would run 3 times a week, and then either use our cross-trainer or take my bike out for long rides on the other 2 days.  At the same time, I started changing some of my eating habits; fewer Diet Cokes, skim milk, much smaller breakfast cereal helpings, more fruit during the day (I never was very good at remembering my 5!), and fewer snacks.  Nothing drastic, just some sensible changes.

I’ve been following “the plan” for about 12 weeks now.  Two significant things happened this weekend.  Firstly, I bought some new jeans, with a waistband that is 2” smaller than my old jeans – some lovely Superdry jeans with a 30” waistband.  And they actually fit me at the waist this time!  Secondly, I got down into the 12-stone-something range (albeit only 12st 12lbs, or 180lbs).

Incredibly, with some regular exercise and a sensible approach to eating, I have lost over 24lbs in weight in just 3 months.  No diets, no fads, just a little will power and a few hours hitting the road when I would probably have been sleeping anyway.  I’ve found that I actually like running and cycling, and that there is a certain meditative quality to both.  I’ve also found that I can push myself farther than I thought I could, able to go “just one more mile” when my body really wanted me to just stop and sit on the curb.  My lap times over the various distances have consistently improved too, and I am able to run much further distances; both indications of my fitness improving dramatically.  And you know, generally, I just feel so much better…

Despite having quite a bad a right calf strain this week which has slowed me down a little, this is not a temporary life change for me.  I intend to continue exercising 5 days a week (even though the winter months might be tough!) and I will at least maintain my fitness and my 175-180lbs of body weight.

While reasonably security conscious, sometimes we leave things out in our back garden, mostly out of convenience or laziness!  Usually there are garden chairs, sometimes garden toys, and very occasionally, our kids' bikes.

About 6 weeks ago, my son's bike disappeared from our back garden.  We have a side alleyway that isn't gated, so getting in to the garden is easy.  I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that someone came around the back and took the bike.  I am surprised that anyone would steal a bike made for an 8 year old though.  At the time, I was also surprised, they didn't take my daughter's bike too.

Anyway, as a result of the theft, we've had a 6-foot gate fitted, and had to buy new bikes for both the kids.  We probably should have had the gate fitted a long time ago, and I am not too upset about having to buy new bikes as they were growing out of their old ones anyway.  Also, Dylan got a BMX that is perfectly fine for me to ride too, and it has stunt pegs front and back.  How long before I seriously injure myself I wonder?  But I digress.  We'd put the whole incident behind us, and moved on.

Last week, my wife was driving home, and as she approached our house she noticed a small bike propped up against the fence opposite.  Doing a double take, she realized that it was Dylan's missing bike!  I hate it when things like this happen – I also want an explanation; I'm not happy with simply "oh, how lucky it showed up again!"

That said, we *think* we figured out what happened.  There are some construction works happening in the field opposite our house, laying some new pipes.  They've dug some large holes and created some large earth piles.  No-one has been on site doing any work for a good few weeks though.  We think that someone took the bike so that they could have some fun on the hilly terrain, and then simply dumped it in the long grass once they were finished.  Then, last week, the workmen finally came back to work on the site; they must have found the bike and left it leaned against the fence in the street so that the owner might see it.  Which we did!

Anyone want to buy a bike for an 8 year old boy?  Good condition, only one owner, one theft and a month sitting out in a field in the typical English summer rain.

I’ve been a huge fan of Babyface since the winter of 1989/1990, although I'm guessing that not many people really know who he is.  He wasn’t well known at all in the UK, and I only stumbled across his genius in a round about way.  In my teen years, I used to DJ with a couple of friends at a bar in a holiday camp.  The last half hour of the evening was dedicated to slow songs and slow dancing, a final opportunity for the drunken holiday-makers to try to seduce the other party-goers that had taken their fancy.  One of the tracks that was popular at the time was "Superwoman" by Karyn White.  If we played it once, we must have played it 100 times in the summer of 1989.

Once the summer was over, as part of my desire to "relive the good old summer nights", I picked up a copy of Karyn White’s debut album (eponymously titled "Karyn White").  I didn’t really care too much whether the rest of the album was good, but I wanted a version of "Superwoman" on tape.  I was pleasantly surprised that the album was actually very good, and there was a duet with Babyface on there called "Love Saw It" which I loved.  I also noticed that many of the other tracks were written by Babyface.

In January of 1990, I travelled to Florida for the first time.  While I was there, I stumbled across a copy of Babyface's album "Tender Lover" in a record store.  Based on the limited amount I knew about Babyface from the Karyn White album, I took a chance and spent a chunk of my spending money on the tape.  I never looked back.  I was an instant fan from the first few bars of "It's No Crime" playing through the tinny headphones of my larger-than-a-housebrick cheap Sony Walkman copy tape player.

Turns out that he is probably more famous for the songs he has written and produced for other artists than for his solo material.  He has had literally hundreds of hits with songs that he wrote for almost every R&B artist you can name.  Boyz II Men ("I'll Make Love To You" and "End Of The Road" anyone?), Toni Braxton, Whitney Houston, Bobby Brown, TLC, Mariah Carey to name a few.  Check out Babyface's Wikipedia page for an list of his top 10 hits (which of course doesn't include the huge amount of album tracks and international hits).

So, fast forward 20 years, July 2009.  I *finally* got to see Babyface perform live two Saturdays ago, at the indigO2 venue in London.  It was a long time coming, and *well* worth the wait.

He opened with "For The Cool In You", followed by "Never Keeping Secrets" and "Every Time I Close My Eyes".  Then, since he was playing in London and wanted to honour a local, he covered Clapton's "Tears In Heaven", with the caveat that the band had only rehearsed it that day.  Next was one of the highlights of the evening for me, a medley of songs he has written for others: "Two Occasions" (The Deele), Bobby Brown's "Don't Be Cruel", "Every Little Step", "Rock Witcha" and "Roni", "Can We Talk" (Tevin Campbell), "My, My, My" (Johnny Gill), and finally Boyz II Men's "I'll Make Love To You" and "End Of The Road".

At this point he played a tribute to Michael Jackson - "Gone Too Soon" – which I thought he did really well.

Next up were a couple of songs from that first "Tender Lover" CD - "Sunshine" and "Where Will You Go" – which I think was my other highlight of the evening, hearing two of the tracks that really got me into him in the first place.  He finished up the main set with "Grown and Sexy", "Change The World", and what seemed to be one of the crowds' favourites "Whip Appeal".

He came back out for an encore of "When Can I See You Again", which was fantastic.

All in all a fantastic mix of songs from across his whole career, an amazing band that really brought the songs to life, and an amazing songwriter and vocalist who brought charisma and humour and great songs to the stage of the indigO2.

If you get the chance to see him live, take it.  You'll love it.

I’ve owned a pair of Bose QC2 Headphones for a long time now, and I’ve blogged about the great Bose customer service before.  A few weeks ago, I noticed that the padding around the left ear-cup had started to come loose.  At first it wasn’t too bad, but with continued use it got progressively worse.  Before too long, it ended up looking like this:

The material had completely come apart from the assembly and the foam of the ear-cup was coming out.  They were still just about wearable if you fiddled with the foam before putting them on, but a lot of the noise cancelling properties of the left headphone had disappeared.

I called Bose Customer Service and explained the problem, expecting that I would have to send them back for repair.  It turns out that replacing the ear-cups is a cheap self-service option.  For £23, I had two new ear-cups delivered to me with simple instructions for fitting them.

What I hadn’t realised before calling is that the ear-cups just pop off if pulled gently; there is a plastic ring that the cushioned part is attached to, and this just snaps in under some tiny plastic wedges.

Once the package from Bose arrived, it was a matter of a couple of minutes before I had two brand new ear-cups fixed on to my headphones.  I hadn’t realised just how soft the original ones had become and the new ones feel nice and firm, creating a really comfortable fit again.

So, if you’re struggling with your QC2’s ear-cups, call Bose and give your headphones a new lease of life.

I've been a big fan of the Lego games for a while now – Lego Star Wars, Lego Indiana Jones and Lego Batman.  They are all fairly simple games on the surface, yet can be challenging when you dig into them.  My young son (who is now 9, but started playing the Star Wars game when he was 6 or 7) was able to play two player games with me, and contribute to winning (unlike some other games where he was just a burden due to his limited skills).

In Lego Batman, we easily managed to get about 85% of the game finished between us, just playing through the levels in Story Mode and then Free Play mode.  Once we hit 85%, it became a concerted effort to collect everything and reach 100%; something we'd never quite managed with Star Wars or Indiana Jones.  We played every level, became "True Hero/Villain" everywhere, rescued all the hostages, gathered all the post boxes and artefacts, and played the "special levels".  Despite that, we were stuck at 98.8% and there were still some data items that weren't unlocked.  I couldn't figure out why; there was nothing left to find, no levels left to play.

Turns out, according to various web searches, this is pretty common.  I saw a lot of "98.8% complete – help!" items in forum posts, and many seemed frustrated by what folks were assuming was a bug or glitch.  I was definitely in the "frustrated" bucket myself.  However, I don't think it is a bug.

I went back at the weekend and replayed the "special levels" – Wayne's Manor and Arkham Asylum.  I played Wayne's Manor (and due to some issues finding items), finished it in about 40 minutes.  Nothing changed in my completion status.  So I played it again, this time focussing on getting things done quickly.  19 minutes and a completed Wayne's Manor later, and suddenly I was at 99.4% complete.  Hmm, 0.6% extra for completing the level quickly.  Also, 0.6% shy of 100%.

Assuming that the elusive 0.6% could be gotten in the other "special level" by completing it quickly, I headed over to Arkham Asylum and zoomed through it as best I could.  Imagine my joy when the final 50G message immediately popped up, and the completion percentage went up to 100%!

So, hopefully this post will help some of the other folks on the internet who have been frustrated by this situation.  It isn't only about getting everything in the game, certain things need to be done quickly too.

[Oh, by the way, if anyone is reading this who can influence the right folks at the video game company, creating "Lego Back To The Future – The Video Game" would be completely AWESOME…]

I have been a subscriber to the MLB.TV Premium service for a number of years (I think this year will be my fourth season), and I have been consistently impressed with their service.  As a subscriber, I have access to every single game played throughout both the regular and post seasons, both live-as-they-are-played and as archive games after the fact.  I can also watch 30 minutes "condensed" games that include just the scoring plays without having to watch the full 3+ hours.  This year, I can even choose "home" versus "away" coverage of any given game.  As a fan of Don and Jerry, I like to watch the Red Sox on NESN when I can…

One things that really stands out this year though is the quality of the streaming video.  It has taken quite a leap forward in my opinion.  Using a browser plugin called "NexDef", they are now streaming super-high quality video.  While I was watching the Red Sox beat the Orioles this morning, I thought I'd take a snapshot of the difference between the "old" service and the "new" service – you can really see the difference in the crispness of the text.

The NexDef plugin also includes adaptive streaming, so that it can deal with temporary bandwidth issues gracefully.  It does seem to eat a little processor when running full screen, but I suppose that is expected given the video quality.

Anyway, if you're a baseball fan and you don't live in the USA, get yourself a subscription to MLB.TV; you won't regret it.

On February 24th of 2008, I started a project on Flickr called the 365 Days project.  Well, 366 days later (2008 was a leap year), I completed the challenge I had set myself.  I had taken 366 photos somehow featuring myself and uploaded them for all to see.  And most likely laugh at.

Some random statistics about my year of self-portraiture:

• 18 involved musical instruments of some kind.
• 22 were taken in Shanghai (23 if you include day 366).
• 22 were taken in the USA (including 10 in Seattle, 8 in Boston).
• 17 were taken in other countries.
• 10 featured one or both of my kids, 3 included our puppy Ruby.
• 2 were pictures of my butt.
• 16 had something to do with the Boston Red Sox.
• 44 were in black and white, or had some selective colouring.
• 5 featured Apple products or themes.
• 2 were taken in the snow.
• 1 day featured a photo that I didn't think I'd taken, but found in my recycle bin 3 days later to prevent the "fail" (day 239).
• 1 had me wearing a wig.
• Day 127 (Red Sox Tickets) got the most views, followed by Day 207 (Out Back) and then Day 232 (Shanghai World Financial Centre).

You can see the whole set of pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/phammond/sets/72157603977922609/

I had great fun doing it, although some days were a real chore.  The ideas well ran fairly dry early on in the project.  There are a number of pictures I am really happy with, and quite a few that were just terrible!  Along the way I met some cool Flickr users.  My Photoshop skills certainly improved during the year too.

Try it, it's fun!

Late last year I got a FlickrMail from the people at schmap.com asking for permission to use a photo I took of the Rogers Centre in Toronto as part of their Schmap Toronto Guide.  Of course I readily gave permission, it was fantastic to have been picked!

You can see the schmap.com guide by clicking this link – my photo appears (albeit very small) in the top right hand corner among a collection of other photos of the Rogers Centre.  Despite the size, I still find its inclusion fulfilling. 

As an aside, the schmap.com site is actually an excellent source of information when you travel.  I had actually discovered it a while before they mailed me, when I was testing an iPhone.  As well as being a great resource for “normal” internet browsers, it works really well as an iPhone site – the information is shown in text format when the phone is held in portrait mode, and it re-orients the page to add mapping when you rotate the phone to landscape mode.  Check it out at http://www.schmap.com/.

A long while ago, I posted about the fact that every office has a Kevin, and that ours was called Paul.  Well, Paul has moved on from my team now, but apparently he hasn’t moved on from his inate Kevin-ness.  Here is a transcript from an IM conversation I had with him the other day.

Paul says (16:11):
  I've just outdone any accident that I've ever done before (in an office).
Paul says (16:12):
  New contract, been here 2 weeks.. I'm the Scrum admin this week. I open the scrum draw,
  and there is what looks a toy gun with soft balls in it.  I pick it up and as i do so, 
  I manage to actually, non-intentionally pull the trigger.
  Turns out, it's a high powered professional paint ball gun.
Paul says (16:13):
  I shot the team secretary the other side of the office!!
Paul says (16:15):
  So, I'm new here... and second week I nail the secretary in the back with a paintball.

Honestly, I have so many questions about why there was a loaded paintball gun in an office drawer, but that’s another blog post...

The best bit was when he finished up with this comment:

Paul says (16:16):
  Still, at least I haven't spilt anything yet...

Fantastic.  But not for the secretary.

I was in our local grocery store on the 29th of December, and this section stood out as potentially a little premature:

What on earth?  I know shops like to get their displays out early for the holidays, but the 29th of December 2008 for Easter 2009?  I think that might be a record.

Well, 2008 has almost gone.  In just a few short hours I will be welcoming in 2009 with my family and friends.  So now seemed to be a good time to reflect on 2008, and to look forward to 2009.  I am not one for New Year’s Resolutions as such, but there are definitely a few things I’d like to try and do this coming year.

But First, 2008.

Well, as with most years, I travelled a fair amount, some for pleasure but mostly for work.  According to my TripIt.com profile, I made 16 trips and spent 93 days on the road.  I visited 8 countries and 19 cities.  I travelled a total of 93,307 miles on aircraft.  I started the year with a trip to Las Vegas with my wife.  In the summer, my family took a long vacation in which we visited Toronto, Niagara Falls, Lake George NY and Boston MA.  Laura and I then returned to Boston in October for a long weekend in order to attend the fabulous wedding of Tee and Troy.  For work, in between those personal trips, I slotted in 3 trips to Seattle, 3 trips to Shanghai, 5 to Dublin, 1 to Iceland and 1 to Paris.  Phew.

On February 24th, I started a new Photography project after I saw some pictures on an acquaintance’s Flickr account.  It involves taking a self-portrait every day for a year.  As of right now, I have taken 311 pictures without missing a day.  Today’s will be 312.  My Photoshop skills have definitely improved throughout the course of the project, but I am not sure my eye for a picture has!  Wish me luck for the last 54 pictures.

A selection of other things that happened include:

• I had a hard disk failure in April that made me thankful for my backup strategy.  Did you all get your own backups in place yet?
• 2008 was a poor year for live music, but I was lucky enough to see Sara Bareilles live in September.
• I caught a live Red Sox game while I was in Boston.  Boston didn’t win the World Series this year.
• I went skiing at Crystal Mountain in Washington State.
• I grew a Mo for Movember.
• My iPod disk failed, and Apple delighted me with an instant replacement.
• My kids started music lessons – both playing the Steel Pans, Niamh starting Piano, Dylan playing the drums and both of them very recently starting to learn to play Horns (Tenor and Baritone).  I hope they enjoy it and continue on with it.
• I read around 40 books.
• I played way too much Rock Band.  I play guitar on Expert most of the time.
• We had 5 Christmas trees in our house this year.

So, what about 2009?

Well, to be honest, I am not sure what 2009 is going to bring.  Isn’t that half the fun?  As I mentioned, I do have a few things I’d like to try and do this year.  Here are a few of them:

• I’ll almost certainly being visiting Chicago in August for the Agile 2009 conference that I am involved in organizing.
• I have a semi-firm plan for a Shanghai trip in March.
• I have a STACK of business and leadership books that I need to really knuckle down and read (or re-read in some cases).  The fiction books seem to get in the way!
• I’d like to retry learning both Spanish and Mandarin.  I need to figure out a rhythm that will allow me to spend a little time every day on both of these things.  Maybe I should just pick one at first…?
• I’d also like to get some formal jazz piano and spanish guitar lessons, if time and budget permits.
• I’ll probably attempt to write a novel in November again this year (like I did in 2007), for NaNoWriMo.  It will be another novel using the same characters as for my last one.
• I WILL write and record some songs this year.  I’ll plan on an albums worth…
• I have a thought for an alternative Photography project this year, called 100 Strangers.
• I’ll try and actually blog more!

Other than that, I’ll look forward to spending time with my family and friends, watching my kids continue to grow up (too fast) in front of my very eyes, and enjoying the time we all spend together.

Leave me a comment, let me know what your resolutions will be for 2009.

Happy New Year to all. May your 2009 be a hugely exciting, enormously joy-filled and very prosperous year.

I love theme parks.  In particular, I am a big fan of the Disney theme parks.  Their attention to detail is amazing, and their approach to customer service is exemplary.  I try to visit regularly to get a fix of Disney park fun.

As a cheaper alternative, this past year I decided that I would buy a Merlin Annual pass for the family.  This would allow us 365 days of unlimited access to Chessington World of Adventures, Thorpe Park, Alton Towers, Legoland, Madame Tussaud's, The London Dungeons, Warwick Castle, the London Eye, the London Aquarium and the many UK Sealife Centres.  Since Chessington is less than 5 miles from my house, it seemed like a really good idea – we could drop by and ride the rides whenever we wanted.

We've certainly had our money's worth at Chessington over the past few months, and that is before we even visited any other attractions.  It has been great to see the kids riding all of the rides, and I think it has help them overcome some of the trepidation and fear they both felt about riding attractions when we went to Walt Disney World in Florida back in 2006.  The pass is definitely money well spent, and I will definitely consider it again when renewal time comes.

But I guess I have been very spoiled by Disney.  Despite having some fun thrill rides, I feel let down by the experience at Chessington.  The decor seems tired and feels like it lacks the love and attention it needs to sparkle.  Many of the "side" attractions require more money (on top of the entrance fee) to be spent to play; this gives the park more of a fairground feel.  The employees feel like they are simply "employees" going through the motions, rather than Disney's "cast members" who are there to bring the fantasy alive.

The final straw for me was when I was queuing for the Vampire Ride the other day.  All along the queue line are fun props that try and create some sort of Vampire fantasy as you queue; most of these require some attention. Even just some weeding of the overgrown areas would help enormously.  I could forgive this.  But, also situated along the queue line were a number of TV monitors.  Instead of showing pre-ride film, heightening the excitement for the attraction and drawing in the audience, they were showing adverts!  In our case, mostly for Kellogg's Frosties.  Emblazoned underneath the advert was a big message saying "TO ADVERTISE CALL XXXXX XXXXXX".  Such a shame.  I can't help feeling that more attention to the experience would bring more guests, and negate the need to make money from advertising.

[Click the image to the right for a larger view.]

I’ve posted before about Sara Bareilles and how much I love her music.  Last night, I had the chance to see her perform live at Scala in London.

The evening was opened by a guy called Rod Thomas.  He played solo, and used looped recordings of various instruments to build up songs as he went, recording each one live, there and then.  Rod’s a great singer with some very well written songs, and I am always impressed with a solo act who can create such a full sound all by himself.  I particularly liked his layered harmonies in some of the later songs.  Actually, he reminded me of a singer I saw when I was on vacation in Lake George, NY this summer – Rich Ortiz – who did similar things with looped and layered recordings.

Anyway, on to the main event – Sara and her band.

Let’s start with the sound quality.  It was awesome.  Everything was the perfect volume and the sound guys created a great mix that made every instrument and vocal nice and clear.  The only criticism was that the band’s microphones were a little too quiet for the harmonies to cut through like they do on the record.  The drums were mic’ed superbly, with a huge bass drum that you could feel in your chest, and excellent clarity from the snare and cymbals.  Usually I am left disappointed by the drum sound or mix, but not on this occasion.  The bass levels matched those of the bass drum perfectly to create a nice fat bottom end.  The guitar stack was on the same side of the stage that we were standing so very occasionally the guitar was too high in the mix, but that didn’t matter at all.

The set list was a little shorter than I would have liked, but was excellent.  Most of the tracks were from the album, with one Beatles song thrown in for good measure.  The songs are so well written; they sound great on the CD, and easily as good live.

The band was awesome.  Sara was backed by Javier Dunn on guitar, Josh Day on drums and (I think) Brian Allen on bass.  All three are excellent musicians, and I particularly liked Josh’s work on the drums.

And Sara.  Well, what can I say?  Sara has such a fantastic voice.  She has complete control, singing subtly in the sensitive phrases, open up to be strong and powerful when the songs build.  There aren’t many artists today who sound this good outside of the protection of a studio, with all of its sound tools and multiple takes.  There were certainly moments in the show where I had goose-bumps…

If Sara Bareilles tours in a town near you, do yourself a favour and go see her.  You’ll love it.

…the taste of it’s cherry chapstick (Thanks Katy Perry - song reference here).  Sadly though, after a month of use, I have reverted back to my Windows Mobile phone.

My wife bought a first generation iPhone and then upgraded to the iPhone 3G when it was released.  This left her first generation handset sitting on my desk, nothing more than a tastefully designed paperweight.  My mobile account is with another provider, so at first I couldn’t use the phone with my SIM card.  A short session with my Mac Mini and the Pwnage tool soon had my phone unlocked for use on my own network and running the iPhone 2.1 software.  All in the name of research you understand…

Anyway, on the whole I like the whole iPhone experience.  The handset itself looks and feels great, with a nice “solid” build quality, and a satisfying weight when held in the hand.  The touchscreen is bright and responsive, and again the firm feel of “finger on glass” has a more solid feel than the stylus on my Windows Mobile PDA.  Some of the applications available from the App Store are pretty nice too.  I was particularly impressed with the MLB At Bat software, the Apple Remote software that can control iTunes over a wireless network, and the dual spirit level was fun and actually useful (who knew that the accelerometers in the iPhone were so sensitive!?).

So why did I switch back?  There were a number of reasons.  Some things were just small niggles, other things downright frustrating, and all combined to make my old phone a better option right now.  A few of them are below:

• No ability to cut and paste text.  There are plenty of comments around the web on this.  Only qualifying as “mildly annoying” for the most part, but it was definitely something I missed.
• General instability of applications.  More often than I would have liked, an application would stop responding (hanging the whole phone while it did) and after some timeout period it would crash you back to the home screen.  The most annoying times this happened was after typing some lengthy email replies but before getting a chance to send them.  I lost quite a few emails this way.  Grrr.
• I actually found some of the applications very slow.  Opening my SMS inbox would display a blank screen for a good few seconds before displaying my text messages.  Ditto for the messaging inboxes.  Going back to my Windows Mobile phone seemed positively lightning quick in contrast.
• No “true” multi-tasking for applications.  In Windows Mobile, I can load IE and start a page downloading, then switch to my inbox, or some other application, and switch back and forth happily.  Some iPhone applications appear to remember where you were, but do seem to load afresh each time you enter them from the home screen.  For example, the At Bat software would reset to the home screen of the app (instead of just redisplaying the page I was on when I flipped over to my inbox). This didn’t suit my need for truly doing more than one thing at once.
• A question mark over my Exchange Calendar entries.  After syncing with my iPhone, I have been getting some odd behaviour with Calendar entries.  Deleting an occurrence of a recurring meeting now doesn’t work correctly (it leaves the meeting in my Calendar, but with the time marked as Free).  I’ve done nothing else to my Calendar in this time so I am suspecting iPhone-Exchange functionality, but I cannot confirm this.

My Windows Mobile phone is a couple of years old now, running Windows Mobile 6.  Even so, it still does as good a job as the iPhone for most things I need, and in many ways it is better.

I will be watching future iPhone software and hardware revisions closely, as I feel like it could eventually become my phone of choice.  Not right now though.

I have but one regret - if only my HTC looked more like the iPhone instead of a brick, I could retain at least some street credibility…

I had the pleasure of watching my twins Dylan and Niamh play the steel pans (you might know them as steel drums) in their school's summer concert this evening.  They have only been learning for 10 weeks, but they have come on enormously.  You can see them playing in the Soapbox video below.

(BTW, I misheard the name of the second song and captioned it wrong in the video; it should be "Janey Girl".  I didn't notice until after the edits had finished processing, and I didn't want to wait while it encoded it again!)

At the end of the concert, the head teacher came on stage to thank all the staff.  He thanked the recorder teacher, adding that she had also helped out the brass teacher this term; trumpets and tenor horns and the like.  She acted very modestly as if she had done nothing special, and then tried to validate her coyness by shouting out to the audience "I'm very good at fingering, I just can't blow".

I thought my head would explode from the pressure of keeping the laughter inside!

Most people know that you should probably shop around for insurance when your renewal is due.  It doesn’t matter what type of insurance – car, house, pet, life – you should always do the due diligence around renewal time to ensure you are getting the best deal for the right kind of cover.  Now, normally I am not so good at taking my own advice, since I have tendencies towards procrastination when it comes to that kind of thing.  This year was different.

The house insurance renewal quote came in the post (building and contents under the same policy) and I was quite surprised at how expensive it was.  It was up 10% from the previous year, and was in the £800+ range.  I asked my wife to check out some of the comparison sites on the Internet to see what other companies might charge.  She managed to find some quotes of £250-£300, which was obviously quite a difference!  I presumed this was because the cover was different, and that these quotes were somehow inferior.  To check, I asked her to get a quote from our current company.  Once she’d selected all the same options we currently have, the website told her it would cost us £310 to insure our home.

Wait a second.  Let’s review those numbers again.

Renewal quote: £825.  New customer quote: £310.  That’s a saving of around 62% on the initial quote.

I called the retention department to complain.  I was told that there were large discounts for getting a quote online, and that there were numerous “free” portions of the insurance right now for new customers.  In fact, the whole insurance industry in the UK right now seems to be geared towards customer acquisition and not customer retention.  Even so, no-one could explain where such a huge difference came from.  What was worse was that the retention team could not match the online quote – their software simply wouldn’t allow an adjustment of that much.

Then the helpful lady told me that I should simply cancel my current policy and take out the new, cheaper one.  Which is what I did.  So, I have exactly the same insurance with exactly the same company (that I am very happy with, by the way), at 38% of the cost.  Scary.

Ladies and gentlemen, check your policy renewal prices!

I am going on holiday with my family in August, and the last part of our trip will see us in Boston.  Being a big Red Sox fan, I wanted to take my family along to a Red Sox vs Toronto Blue Jays game.  A few weeks ago I searched on Ebay for tickets (since all home games at Fenway Park are sold out for the season), and through that stumbled across a link to StubHub.com.

StubHub has loads of tickets available for the game I want to attend.  The site has some great security features for the wary ticket purchaser, including guarantees that you will get the tickets you pay for etc.  It all seems very professional.  With tickets hovering around $250 each, I wanted to feel confident that it was going to be a genuine purchase, and I was very pleased to have found a great looking solution to my ticket-purchasing desires.

Well, I finalised my travel details today, so decided to choose and buy some seats while there was still a good choice.  I found some excellent seats in the right price range, and proceeded to the checkout.  Now, as part of the checkout screen, there is an option to select your country of residence (and billing address) that includes the following items:

Naturally, I selected “United Kingdom”, entered the rest of my address details and pressed “Next”.  At this point, the page reloaded with the following error:

Just in case, I tried re-entering the post code without a space; this sometimes works.  Same error.  I was pretty much blocked completely!

I called the helpline to ask what I should do next.  The helpful lady on the phone informed me that I cannot order anything off the StubHub.com site unless I use a credit card that has a US billing address, and I have a US address to ship the tickets to!  I asked her why there were options for other countries, but she didn’t know.  All she could do was repeat that I needed US-based shipping and billing details in order to proceed.  So that is it.  The end of the road for me and StubHub.

I’ve looked everywhere on the site, and unless I am being useless (which is, of course, completely possible!) I cannot find a single reference to the fact that you can only purchase from the US.  Not even deep in the help files or the FAQ is it mentioned.  Why didn’t the error just say “I am sorry, you cannot purchase from this site unless you are in the US”.

Sites that restrict sales to “US only” generally frustrate me to a point, but I do recognise that there are often reasons for doing so – perhaps licensing laws (in the case of iTunes or radio services), or shipping difficulties for bulky items etc.  What annoyed me about this situation was the fact that the website lists the UK (and other countries) both during account registration and purchase, with the direct implication that I am perfectly fine to go ahead and spend a large amount of money with them.  I spent probably an hour in total checking out tickets, looking up the view from the seats on various other websites etc.  That is a wasted hour.  To get to the last hurdle and be presented with a particularly cryptic error message that required me to make an international phone call to address is completely unacceptable to me as a user.  To have wasted an hour on a site that could have told me up front that I was not able to ultimately use its features is doubly unacceptable.

Oh, and it means I don’t really have any options for buying Red Sox tickets either.  Which is going to upset my kids more than this experience has upset me!  Any ideas on where I *can* buy tickets from the UK, blogosphere?

I am wondering if it is only me that was confused by this, so I thought I'd post a picture and ask everyone out there what they think.

My satellite TV DVR has been playing up the last few weeks, often marking a programme as "not recorded due to no signal".  I went in to the settings of the system, and check the signal strength.  The screen is shown below, click for a larger version of the image.

Without thinking too much about it, what do you think my "Input 1 Signal Strength" is?  Is it high or low?  Please leave me a comment with what you thought.

Apparently, the very light gray is the "positive" colour, and it turns out that I have a very high signal strength for input 1.  However, for days I was fiddling around with the dish and the cables, because I believed I had a really *low* signal strength as indicated by the small dark blue portion of the box.  The dark blue colour was a much more obvious "positive" colour to me.  The predominantly dark blue areas for the Lock Indicator, Network ID and Transport Stream drew my eye to the dark blue of the strength and quality scales.  Without any cues as to the correct way to read this, I got confused.

My wife tells me I am being pretty daft, that reading the bars "left to right" is totally obvious, and that the light gray is obviously the "content" colour (see the 07d4 on the Transport Stream for example - the background is blue, the content gray).  I've asked two other people, and they also said the gray was the measure colour.

Even knowing the correct way to view this, I *still* see the dark blue of the indicators first.

So what did you think?  Is this easy, and I am just nuts?  Or is this a confusing UI?  Leave me a comment, let me know!

Niamh had a friend stay over last night.  At one point during the evening, in between computer games and movies and popcorn, the three of them disappeared upstairs for a while.  They were very quiet.

The next thing I know they burst into my office growling and hissing and looking like this:

I thought it was quite an impressive job!

If you prefer your conclusions as a mathematical equation:
unattended_8_years_olds + make_up = zombies for all known values of unattended_8_year_olds.

I have a question for you all.

I am in the HAVE LOST bucket.  The few times I have lost data in the past have certainly contributed to my current backup strategy.  More recently though, the shear amount of important data I have has shaped my backup strategy even more.

I have a single 500Gb disk that holds my entire "My Documents" directory.  When I look at it in detail, the drive contains:

• 23,665 photos, stretching over 9 years; this includes ALL the photos and videos of my kids first 8 years of life (75.4Gb).
• 2,090 video files from my DV camera and my HD camera, also going back 9 years (172Gb).
• 15,062 MP3 and M4A audio files from my iTunes catalog (65.7Gb).
• Many MIDI and Audio files from my music composition and production.
• Documents, Financial files etc.

As you can see, "My Documents" = "Almost My Entire Digital Life".  Losing any of this data would have been depressing.  Losing all of it would be completely heart-breaking.

While I was away on business, at some point this data drive died.  Completely.  No hope of connecting it to copy off whatever I could salvage.  It was simply unreadable.  Dead.

At this point, think about how you would feel, given the above data.  Would you be a little sad?  Sobbing?  Suicidal?  Or mildly annoyed?  Thankfully, I was simply "mildly annoyed".

Restoring My Data

Twenty four hours after arriving home, I am now back up and running with very little pain (apart from the cost of a new drive to replace the dead one).  My attention to a backup strategy completely saved my backside on this occasion.  However, this failure has also made me aware of another round of tweaking that I need to do to ensure total and flawless recovery the next time this happens.  AND REST ASSURED, IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN.

So, what is my current approach?  I have a single drive that holds all of my data, as you have seen.  You could have multiple drives, this works just the same.

• I use the online backup service Mozy (http://www.mozy.com/) to backup most of my data.  This guarantees that I have off-site copies of my files.  An alternative service I have also used in the past is Carbonite (http://www.carbonite.com/).  Both have good features, and are reasonably priced.
• I use FolderShare (http://www.foldershare.com/) to create multiple copies of my most important files, or files that I use daily on my multiple home and work machines.
• I have a nightly backup that runs, which copies all of the files from the system and data drives to an external 1Tb drive.  I use a product called Retrospect that came with one of my external drives.  There is a great alternative called SyncBack that is either freeware (v3) or a very cheap option (v4).

In this particular case, it was from the 1Tb backup drive that I was able to salvage my data.  If that had failed, I would have resorted to a combination of Mozy.com data and FolderShare'd data on my other machines.  I attached both my 1Tb backup drive and the new drive to my laptop, and copied the data back to the new drive to create an identical version of what was there before.  Then I reattached the drive back to my desktop and booted up.  Once logged in, I simply reset the ownership and permissions of the "My Documents" directories to the correct settings.

Potential Flaws

There are a couple of possible issues with the above that I have been considering since the failure occurred.  Luckily they didn't occur this time, but I will be altering my approach to cater for these.

1. When the drive died, it disappeared from Windows.  The Mozy client then decided the files had been deleted, and proceeded to remove them from the current online backup set.  Luckily I can go back to older backup sets, but "deleted" files are only kept for 30 days.  If I had been away for a longer period of time, they may have been purged.
2. My nightly backup currently does a "mirror" of my filesystems, with no history.  Files that are added are added to the backup, and files that are deleted are removed.  Luckily, in this case, the software recognized that the drive was missing and skipped the backup.  If it had seen the drive and decided the files were no longer there (as Mozy did), it would have proceeded to wipe the data off the backup too.  I need to look at the options I have for my backup software to keep historical versions of files.

I mitigated the possible issues above by simply powering down the machine remotely to ensure no further damage could occur until I could be back at home there to figure things out!

Side Note 1: Windows Home Server

This incident has also made me think more seriously about buying a Windows Home Server.  One of the great features about this solution is the backup software.  It can backup complete machines, and has historical backups so you can get at older versions of your files if you need to.  Scott Hanselman did a review of Home Server that you can find here: Review - HP MediaSmart Windows Home Server

Side Note 2: FolderShare and Off-Site Backups For Family

One other thing I use FolderShare for is to backup data from various family machines.  I set FolderShare up on their machines and then invited my own FolderShare account to share their key folders.  The files get copied to my machine here.  That way, they benefit from having an off-site backup as well as duplicate data via my nightly backup.

Go And Do It.  Now.

Let me finish by saying this.  WHOEVER YOU ARE, WHATEVER YOU DO WITH YOUR COMPUTER, WHATEVER FILES YOU HAVE, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A BACKUP STRATEGY THAT SAFEGUARDS *ALL* OF YOUR DATA.  Do it now.  Turn the TV off, and get working.  Don't stop until you have everything backed up, preferably in more than one place.  Your data drive could fail tonight.  It won't give you any helpful warnings before it does.  Make data loss an event of "mild annoyance", not complete despair.

If any of you checked out Sara Bareilles from one of my earlier posts and enjoyed what you heard, you should also take a listen to Colbie Caillat.  More great song-writing, great lyrics, and a fabulous voice.

Once again, Walmart has a Soundcheck session that you can watch.

I snapped these two pictures of Ruby the other night while she was snoring away on the sofa.  How is that a comfortable position to be sleeping in?  It must be, because it is pretty much her default position, even when sleeping on the hardwood floor.  I often find her upside down, right up against the front door!

Click on the images for a larger version.

[P.S. please excuse the state of the sofa - she was playing in the mud all day and decided our sofas needed some light brown highlights.]

It has been a while since I posted about an artist I am enjoying listening to.  Frankly, there aren't that many that strike me enough to warrant a blog post!  However, after stumbling across some videos of Sara Bareilles playing acoustic sets of her music, I decided that I really wanted to tell the world to run (not walk) to the CD store and buy "Little Voice".

I first discovered Sara when I heard the song "Love Song".  This song is about as perfect a pop song as you could wish to write.  It has fantastic lyrics, a kick ass chorus that you'll hum for hours after hearing it, and her voice is just perfect.  The song prompted me to seek out the album, and it turned out to be my "album of 2007", resoundingly so.

There isn't a single "album filler" track on the entire CD.  Every single song is well written, both musically and lyrically.  Some of the harmonies make the hairs on your arms and neck stand up straight when they kick in.  The production is great.  And Sara's voice is anything but "little".

A great test of an artist for me is usually when I see them playing in a really stripped down acoustic environment - it tells me whether they are for real, or just well produced.  I stumbled across the following video linked to via the Sara Bareilles Facebook fan page.  The music pretty much speaks for itself, so I won't even try!

Watch Sara's acoustic set for Walmart's Soundcheck site (particularly "Morningside" and "Gravity").

Is the world going mad?  From this article at FoxNews.com, it is reported that:

"People who have been injured while walking and texting on their cell phones may be in luck.  A London street is experimenting with padded lampposts to protect those not paying attention from banging into them, ITN reports."

I have a whole other solution.  DON'T TEXT WHILE YOU ARE WALKING.  Stop and move to the side.  There is a reason why they have banned mobile phone use in cars in the UK, and it is mostly because people are completely incapable of any other cognitive function once a mobile phone is introduced into the mix.  Even just talking on a phone can render a person incapable of sensing their surroundings.

The report goes on to say:

"In a study, more than a quarter of respondents wanted lines on the pavement to create routes for texters to walk while using their phones."

Mad I tell you.  Completely insane.

Last week, through a friends blog, I stumbled across a Flickr group called 365 Days.  Since writing a novel for National Novel Writing Month last November, I have been looking for something new and creative to challenge me.  I don't feel that I have been spending enough time with my camera of late, so this particular challenge appealed to me.

Very simply, to quote the 365 Days rules page: "the 365 Days group is a project in which members submit one self portrait each day for a year".  There is further clarification on the site on what counts etc., but that is pretty much the essence of the project.  Again, I quote, "the main thing is that you are both the photographer and the subject. For the purposes of this group, any photo which you took that contains any part of your body counts".

If you'd like to follow my progress, here is my 365 Days Flickr photo set.  Alternatively you can follow in your feed reader, via the RSS feed here.

For day 1, I couldn't decide on a specific photo, so I ended up creating a collage.  It looks a bit like this:

As the year goes on, it'd be great to hear your feedback.  You can comment on the photos over at the Flickr photo set.

I bought my son a new Lego set on my recent trip to Seattle; gifts are a mandatory bribe for the whole family when I go away for twelve days!  This time I chose a Technic Dune Buggy (item 8296 for those who follow that kind of thing), which is a smaller version of a set I have had since I was about his age.

Saturday afternoon, we set about building the set together.  For a long while, Lego kits would involve Dylan impatiently watching me build, because for him it was mostly about playing with the finished article.  More recently though, I have enjoyed getting Lego for him a lot more than I used to.  This is because he now has both the dexterity and patience to work through the instructions by himself, with occasional guidance by me as necessary.

He got about half way through construction, and was putting together the assembly that would make the rack and pinion steering.  We both searched for a while in the remaining unused pieces for two funky looking Lego bricks that were to hold the wheels in place.  Nothing.  After 5 minutes, Dylan got bored of looking so I sorted through the remaining pieces one by one to make sure we weren't being silly.  Still nothing.

This surprised me - I don't think I have ever had a Lego kit that was missing pieces before.  I headed over to the Lego website to see if they had a customer service phone number.  I found that they actually had something much better than that, a simple online service!  You simply select "I have missing pieces in a new kit" from the options, enter the code number of the set you purchased, and it gives you a list of the pieces that should be in the box including pictures of the pieces.  You select how many of each item you need, enter your mailing address and sit back and wait.  Genius.

I received a confirmation mail not long after ordering that said "We are sorry to hear that your new LEGO set was incomplete. Our production checks are rigorous. We even weigh the boxes electronically before they're shipped to check that there's nothing missing. However, from time to time one or two pieces can be missing from a set, and of course we're happy to replace them immediately".

I love it when a company makes it ridiculously simple to deal with simple enquiries.  Good stuff Lego.

A couple of weeks ago, Laura and I took a trip to Las Vegas.  Neither of us had been there before, so we weren't totally sure what to expect.  Turns out, Vegas is a fun city, and I'd definitely like to go back there soon.

We left the kids at home early on a Tuesday morning (thanks to my Dad and Martie for kid/puppy-sitting!), and headed to Heathrow.  I'd cashed in a bunch of air miles, and we were lucky enough to be flying British Airways First Class to Los Angeles where we were going to pick up a car and drive the 280-odd miles across the Mojave desert to Las Vegas.

First Class was a fun experience.  I am fortunate enough to be able to travel Business Class on some of my work trips, so I am a used to the larger seats and better food.  For me, First didn't seem to warrant the large difference in price you would pay over traveling Business.  For Laura, who doesn't regularly travel, I think the experience was a lot more exciting.  Or perhaps that was just the champagne they *insisted* on making her drink, over and over again! 

Our car ended up being a Ford Mustang convertible.  Fun car.  It was the cheapest deal they had for something that wasn't a 2-door compact, would you believe!  The drive from LA to LV took a while - about 6 hours in all I think, with a stop at In and Out Burger and a car refueling break on the way.  It was dark by the time we got out of Los Angeles, so there wasn't a lot to see along the way.

We stayed at the Wynn Hotel.  I was surprised at how cheap the rooms were for a luxury hotel.  I guess they make their money elsewhere - the shopping and gambling were both extravagant and ubiquitous.  The opulent stage was set on first arrival with the Ferrari / Maserati garage at the hotel entrance and the shopping parade that included Dior, Vuitton and Rolex among its tenants.  We had a "regular" room, which measured 640 square feet - that's huge for a hotel room in my experience - for a little over $200 a night.  Having walked through many of the other hotels whilst we were there, I really came to like the vibe of the Wynn - it isn't really themed as such, and just has a mellow, luxurious quality to it.  I highly recommend it to anyone who is thinking of visiting.

We took a helicopter tour to the Grand Canyon which was fantastic.  We used a very professional company called Maverick Helicopters, which again, I recommend highly.  Taking off from the airport, we headed east over suburban Las Vegas, over Lake Mead, a quick view of the Hoover dam, then over to the Canyon.  We landed deep in the Canyon at a spot perhaps 300ft above the Colorado river.  It was a perfect day, visibility over 100 miles.  It is hard to describe (or even capture with a photograph) how awe inspiring the views were.  Wow.

Something else we'd never done before was to visit a shooting range.  We both took turns using a 9mm pistol to shoot holes in paper targets.  You see hand guns used in TV shows all the time, read about them in books.  You can't get a feel for what it is really like until you've actually picked one up and pulled the trigger.  Everyone should try it at least once.  The place we went to was appropriately called The Gun Store.  If you're feeling more adventurous, they offer machine gun rentals too...

Of course we spent time touring the Strip, checking out the various fun things each hotel had to offer.  We rode rides (kudos to Laura for riding all three at the top of the Stratosphere - I only managed one of them), ate great food, watched shows, shopped.  We really liked the steak restaurant Gallagher's at New York New York; the steaks are all dry aged on display in the window of the restaurant.  The Bellagio fountains are very impressive even if their choice of accompanying music is sometimes a little on the lame side.  The LE RÊVE show at the Wynn was incredible; the logistics of presenting a show that is predominantly in or under water fascinate me.

I'd foolishly decided up front that a 6 day trip to Vegas where the flights were virtually "free" would be a cheap holiday.  Forget that.  The food is fabulous, the shopping is great (especially with the £/$ conversion) and the gambling is a little too much fun.  If you're going to go to Vegas, pack an extra wallet, and make sure it is full of cash.

All in all, a great time in a great city.  I feel like we only scratched the surface of what it has to offer.  What would you recommend we see next time we go?

I went skiing yesterday with my colleagues Elliot and Arran up at Crystal Mountain here in Washington state.  Crystal Mountain is the largest ski area in Washington, and is located about 70 miles south east of Seattle.  It has the base at 4,400ft and a summit at 7,012ft.  In contrast, for those who know the area a little, Mount Rainier's summit is at 14,411ft.

Prior to yesterday, I had only skied once before (for 3 days in the run up to my sister's wedding on top of the mountain at Courchevel in France).  I have also never had any lessons which meant I was relying on the few technique tips I could remember that my sister's husband had given me back in April 2006.  As a result, I was finding the green runs at Crystal pretty hard going at first.  With my fitness at its current low state, my legs were soon screaming at me for the punishment I was giving them!

But perseverance is key I always find, and before too long I was snow ploughing less, getting up some decent speed and cornering more smoothly.  I was still finding the steeper sections hard, and the longer I skied the less power I had in my legs to correct myself when things started to go awry.  I definitely fell over more in the later part of the day as a result.

After a total of 4 days skiing in my life, I have decided that I must take lessons the next time I visit a ski slope - I don't want to end up with bad habits that are too ingrained to change.  In the meantime, I will enjoy the muscle pain from the exertion, and the dull throbbing of the various bruises I gained from wiping out, knowing that I'm marginally better at skiing today than I was on Saturday.

I've been a fan of the Moleskine notebook for a while now.  Used in days gone past by the likes of Hemingway and Picasso, they are described as "notebooks covered in hard-wearing oilcloth-covered cardboard (Moleskine)".  I am not convinced about the hard-wearing bit.

I use a large lined notebook.  It is about A5 sized, and has 240 pages all ready for note taking goodness.  However, I have never made it to the end of a notebook without the cover cracking or splitting in some way.  My latest notebook didn't even last until the middle, as you can see in the first picture below where the black elastic marks my "current page".  The second picture is a close-up of the split along the edge of the spine, and the third is a larger image showing where I crudely patched up the initial cracking with tape.

Yesterday, I finally had to buy a roll of gaffa tape and replace the shoddy tape with a decent "top to bottom" taped up spine.  It has given the notebook back a spine, but boy does it look ugly!

When I see other people's notebooks, they always look pristine.  Is it just me?  Am I particularly hard on my Moleskines?  I don't feel like I am; I'm not deliberately mistreating them in cruel ways.  I bet Hemingway and Picasso didn't have to gaffa tape THEIR notebooks!

Oh well.  The paper is still great quality and the notebooks sit nice and flat when you open them due to the way they are stitched, so I guess I'll just have to make do with my custom repair work to keep the outsides as good as the insides.

Having purged over 1Gb of Temp Files after writing my last blog post about iTunes using lots of disk space, 5 days later I was back up to 1Gb again.

This time I noticed that the Temp Files were all timed at either 2 or 3 minutes past the hour, which made me suspect something specific was triggering the new file creation.  I checked my PodCast update schedule, and found it was set to run hourly, at 2 minutes past the hour.  Coincidence?  I think not.

I set PodCast updates to be daily, and the Temp File creation has become more of a daily occurrence.  Still annoying, but at least I won't have to purge the files so often.

[4:53am, Shanghai - jet lag can be nasty sometimes]

I discovered an issue with iTunes a little while ago while performing a routine clean-up of my hard disks.  Essentially, when iTunes tries to save your "iTunes Music Library.xml" file, it appears to create a temporary file first that it renames once it is successfully saved.

The issue is that iTunes doesn't clean up these temporary files, for some reason.  When I didn't have many songs in iTunes, that didn't seem to matter so much, but now I have 65 Gigs of music (approximately 12,000 songs and counting) my Library XML file is 20Mb in size.  Every temporary file it creates is the same size - 20Mb - and that soon adds up.  iTunes is supposed to delete these files when you exit the software, but (a) it doesn't and (b) I never quit iTunes anyway as I leave it running to download PodCasts.

What is worse, is that it seems to be adding between 5 and 8 copies of this file every day.  Here is a screen shot of my current iTunes folder.  I cleaned it up 5 or 6 days ago.  I am already back up to 1 Gig of used space in "Temp File X" files already.

I have had to set up a nightly job that emails me the size of this folder so that I know when to go and purge it.  Ridiculous.

There is an Apple help file on this that you can find here: "iTunes: Multiple Temp Files in iTunes Folder".  Incredibly, this has been happening since version 3 of iTunes.  *Surely* iTunes knows when it isn't using a particular "Temp File X" and can just go and delete it for me?  Oh well.

So, go and check your "My Music\iTunes" folder to see if you can reclaim any of your disk space!

It is good to know that I have brought up my baby girl with a well-rounded approach to Christmas.

Well, after 29 days of writing, I submitted a 50,025 word novel to the NaNoWriMo website and their word-count bots verified my masterpiece.  Then they let me pick up my "Winner" award.  That's right, I get a small graphic that I can post to my blog and send to my mum and dad.  Oh, and of course, I get the satisfaction of having succeeded at something.

For those who are interested, I used an Agile approach to my writing.  To prove it, here is my burn-up chart for the month.  As you can see, I had a nerve-wracking few days around the 23rd due to sickness.  The 28th was a word frenzy as I caught up!

Little things can sometimes make me very very happy.  I was just checking out the new options in v4 of ClearContext and stumbled across the "Mark message(s) as read when filing" option.  I have been waiting for this simple feature forever!

Usually, I would have to select each message in a thread individually and mark it as read manually before filing it.  Now I can just click "File Thread" on any message in that thread and know that it is cleanly filed away.  That will save me a ton of time and keystrokes when managing my inbox.

Yey!

Having temporarily turned this blog into the Ruby-blog when we bought our puppy, I am now turning it into the Novel-blog.  Sorry...!

Midnight last night marked the halfway point of the month.  15 days gone, 15 days to go.  To be on track I needed to be at 25,000 words by bedtime last night.

I am pleased to say I am at 25,911 words, just keeping the word count slightly ahead of the game.  The better news is that I *think* I have the rest of the story planned out in my head now, and I *think* it will be enough to fill the remaining 24,000-odd words.

Now, who wants to read it when I'm done?

So, I am seven complete days in now, and I should be at 11,667 words.  I am at 11,292, which is pretty close.  I am finding it a little easier to write than I did on days 1 and 2, and the words are definitely flowing better.  There is no guarantee that they are any good, of course, but at least I am getting them down "on paper".

In the process, I have found a nice editor that allows me to focus just on the novel - Dark Room.  They describe the tool as follows:

"Dark Room is a full screen, distraction free, writing environment. Unlike standard word processors that focus on features, Dark Room is just about you and your text."

By default, it runs full screen, and is completely black.  The text is green.  It allows you to focus on only your writing, without screen clutter or distractions.  Give it a go.

My friend Casper is also working on a novel, and his word count currently stands at 1,859 according the the NaNoWriMo site.  I hope he has written more than this and has just neglected his online count, otherwise he may struggle to hit the finish line!

Also, Drew Miller has started writing, after seeing tweets (either mine or Casper's I guess) about this on http://twitter.com.  Scarily, he started on day 3, and then trashed his first effort yesterday on day 7 and started again.  He now has to write 2,175 words a day to succeed.  Doubly scary is the fact he is posting every chapter to a blog as he finishes it - I just don't have the guts for that!  Check out Drew's work here.

An update to my favourite Outlook add-in has been released today - check out the ClearContext press release here, and then run (don't walk) to download ClearContext here.

November is National Novel Writing Month.  I initially found out about this a couple of years ago, but never felt that I had the time to spend writing 50,000 words in 30 days.

This year though, having just returned from a relaxing holiday in the Caribbean and believing I had just enough spare time to do it, I thought I would bite the bullet and have a go.

The idea is to write 50,000 words in November to "win".  The only prize is your own sense of self-achievement.  Think "running a marathon" for lazy types who prefer to exercise their fingers.  You have to just let the words come, with minimal editing.  It isn't even all that important to have the plot lined up in advance (at least I hope it isn't, since I don't have a clue where mine is going).

So here I am on day 5, with 4,593 words under my belt.  45,407 to go.

Makes you wonder what the heck I am doing wasting time and words writing to you folks reading my blog!  Get back to the novel Paul, time is ticking...

Anyway, it isn't too late to catch up - you can still get 50,000 words in if you start in the next day or so.  Go on, challenge yourself...

At the risk of turning this blog into a "Ruby-blog", here are a couple of recent videos!  These will be the last for a while, I promise. 

The first one is from the day she came home with us:

Video: Ruby Comes Home

The second one was the first time she barked - apparently she thought she could fight the mop and win!

Video: Ruby vs Mop

Last weekend we took our kids to see the quarter finals of the British Basketball League, where Guildford Heat took on London United.

I have been to see the Seattle Supersonics play a few times at the Key Arena, and saw the Boston Celtics a long while back, and have had great fun every time.  Somehow though, it was much more fun watching Guildford play.

• Maybe it was because they are effectively my "local" team?
• Maybe it was watching my 7 year old daughter eat a foot long hot dog while my son banged the noisy blow up sticks together (do those things have a name?!)?
• Maybe it was because Guildford trailed by 16 at the half, but managed to pull it back in exciting 3rd and 4th quarters to win 71-68 and go through to the semi-finals?
• Maybe it was because the 1,000 strong crowd had a surprising amount of passion for the team?

Anyway, whatever the reason, we all had a blast.  We will definitely be trying to catch a few home games when the season returns in October.  If you live near a town that has a British Basketball League team, I highly recommend going along to check them out.

We are now at the end of the 9th week of construction on the extension to our house.  It has been quite a transformation so far, but I am already getting frustrated with the constant dust sheen over everything, as well as having to live in our dining room.

A few weeks ago I added some pictures to my photo album that showed the initial construction of the new outer walls.  You can see those here.

Since then, things have drastically changed.  All of the windows are in, as well as the conservatory glass.  The new roof is on, and many of the inner walls have come down.  We are just waiting on the new steels that will prevent the house falling down before the final wall is knocked out.  We can really see just how big our new kitchen will be now, although I am not sure the photos really convey this.  Anyway, check them out here.

We're getting a puppy.  After years of badgering, I finally gave in.  We went to visit the litter this morning, and I managed to take some video of Ruby, soon-to-be our flat-coated retriever puppy.  She's about 6 weeks old in this video - ain't she as cute as a button?!?

Video: Visiting Ruby

We'll be able to pick her up in a couple of weeks, and we are all looking forward to it a lot.  Except me.  The kids have dished out puppy-chores and guess who got "poo and pee duties"... 

I was in the kitchen the other day, washing up. I heard a noisy banging on the stairs.  This was shortly followed by my daughter appearing, dragging a small wheelie suitcase behind her.

"What are you up to, honey?", I asked.

"Nothing Daddy, just getting my hair bobbles."

Come again?  Surely she can't have that many...?  Sure enough, the case is pretty full.

I hope it is a while before the "handbags-and-shoes" phase kicks in...

I was skim-reading USA Today last night while waiting on dinner at my Paris hotel, and one particular story caught my eye.  It led with a headline about Phoenix embarking on a project to widen the Interstate 10 highway from 14 lanes to 24.  Yes, 24.  That's 12 each way.

In the UK, I think the widest motorway is 10 lanes - the M25 Heathrow stretch to the West of London - it lasts for maybe 10 miles.  Comprehending a highway that is 2.5 times as wide is amazing to me!

But it seems this is becoming more common in the US.  The article goes on to talk about some other significant developments:

An interstate highway wider than the length of a football field is not as rare as it was 10 years ago, when the El Toro interchange of Interstates 5 and 405 in Orange County, Calif., opened with 26 lanes.

The Katy Freeway, a stretch of I-10 from the Houston suburb of Katy to downtown. It's being widened to nine lanes in each direction.

A public-private plan to widen a stretch of Interstate 75 north of Atlanta to 23 lanes. Work could begin in 2008.

Incredible!  Read the USA Today article here.

We are having our house extended to create a larger living space downstairs.  The whole back wall of the house is moving 6 feet further out, and we are adding a conservatory on the back.

The first phase will involve building the new outer shell.  For the time being we are relatively unaffected by it all.  As soon as the outer shell is constructed though, the rooms currently being used as our kitchen and my office will be completely destroyed.  We are having fun trying to figure out what to do with all our stuff!

Current scheduled completion date - June 4th.  Four months of dirt and dust, with no cooking facilities.  Pity us!

Week 1 pictures can be see here by clicking here.

I got my inbox back to a zero email bounce over the weekend.  For some reason I have had a little trouble keeping the count down for the last couple of months, so it feels great to have an empty inbox again.

A twelve hour flight from Shanghai definitely has it's productivity plus points...!

I had a momentarily confusing moment last night when I tried to get money out of the HSBC bank next to my hotel in Shanghai.  In fact, it happens to me every time I come to Shanghai, usually multiple times!  Take a look at the picture below of a Shanghai ATM keypad:

Now, without thinking too hard about it, try and type your PIN number for your ATM card as quickly as you can, using the picture above as a pretend-ATM.  Did it feel odd?

The keypad is upside down - specifically, 1-3 and 7-9 are reversed!  I haven't seen that anywhere else I have traveled.  Very weird.

Casper has passed the blog-tag on to me, so here are five little-known Paul Hammond things.

• I am an avid musician; I play the drums, bass and some keyboards.  I compose too.  In my youth I played the drums for hundreds of theatrical productions at local theatres.  One such gig ("Chicago") involved playing in a small band on stage in full drag.  I was fifteen at the time...
• Many people know I "come from" the Isle of Wight.  However, I wasn't actually born there, so the rumours about inbreeding are thoroughly untrue.   I lived there from the age of 6, so some of the local traits may have rubbed off on me, but I was actually born in Warwick.
• I hate doing DIY.  I don't have the skills nor the patience to do a very good job.  Painting is my least favourite activity.  Despite this fact, I love to shop for tools in the local hardware shop, and recently bought a "Tim the Toolman Taylor" toolbelt to hold all of my tools while I procrastinate and complain.  I hung new curtain tracks at the weekend and I swear the toolbelt made me do a much better job...
• Michael Connelly is my (current) favourite author - he took over from Dean Koontz.  James Patterson's Alex Cross series is always excellent too, except "London Bridges" which I really disliked.
• If I hadn't discovered talents in IT, I would probably have been a session drummer.  My other two serious career thoughts were as a Police Officer or to join the Navy.  Is that a uniform thing?  I don't think so.  Both professions seemed to offer the chance to be a part of something bigger and really very important to the world.  Looking back I would probably have hated the discipline of the Forces.  I can still see myself as a Policeman though.  'Ello 'ello 'ello.

In classic "annoying chain letter" style, I am now going to tag Simon, Jo, Brian, Tee and David.

For the last 5 or 6 years, we have had an artificial Christmas tree at our house.  It is a nice tree, very realistic with wire branches that you can fashion how you want and fake pine needles that don't end up all over the floor.

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I had a long discussion after she announced that she wanted "a real tree this year".  Why I asked?  We have a perfectly good one in the loft, and getting a real one would cost money we could spend on other festivities.  "They look nicer, and they smell nice".  Long story short, I eventually relented and she went off to the local garden centre.

A couple of hours later, I was unloading a 6 footer from the car, along with a metal base to hold it in.  Even at a glance I could see that the monster trunk this tree had would NEVER fit in the metal tube on the base.  My wife argued that it would, so I spent 5 pointless minutes proving it wouldn't by trying to ram the huge knotted bulbous trunk-bottom into the tiny metal opening.

So, she went back to the garden centre the following day and bought a larger sized metal holder.  Sadly this was to be about an inch too small as well.

I spent a frustrating hour hacking away at this poor tree with a saw and chisel, until the trunk eventually fit into the holder.  It wasn't quite vertical, but it would do.

And you know what, I had to admit it looked alright.  Not huge amounts better than the artificial tree, but a little.  Over the next few days, I would also comment on the smell - it did indeed have a festive fragrance about it.

That was 2 weeks ago.

Now, our house is rather hot.  My wife and kids like living in a sauna.  It turns out that real Christmas trees without roots - they don't appreciate it so much.  I came home from work last Wednesday (the 22nd), and looked at the now very listless, droopy and slightly yellow tree.  I then looked over at my wife sitting on the couch.

Without even glancing up from her magazine she said "Before the guests come over on the holidays, can you just nip up into the loft and get the old tree.  I'll need to take that one down and use the artificial one."

AAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrggggghhhhhhh! 

Check out this video from MSN Video of a great piece of video editing by Lasse Gjertsen from Norway.  He has taken loads of very short clips of a drummer and a piano player (literally milliseconds long) and cut them into a full "song".  Very very cool!

A couple of weeks ago, some friends at work had me sign up for the online Chess site www.chesshere.com.  It is an online Chess playing service that allows you to play "at your leisure" as opposed to real time.

The concept reminds me of the fridge magnet games you can buy from your local Borders where there is a little "your turn" token to tell your significant other that you are done with your turn!

The site is very basic looking, but don't let that fool you - when you start digging, there are all sorts of analysis tools etc.  You can run teams and championships, there are forums and a chess database.  You can even retrieve your game status via RSS.

So far I have lost two games (thanks Diana and Paul), and have another 11 going on.  I think that is too many, as I have to reanalyze each board when it is my turn...

Anyway, if you enjoy Chess, and want to play at your leisure, you should take a look.  If you want to add me as a friend, my username on the site is "phammond".

My good friend of mine just sent me a link to "Little People - A Tiny Street Art Project" - and I love it!  It is a project by an artist called Slinkachu, where he takes little hand-painted people and just leaves them on the street in London to fend for themselves.

And "tiny" really does mean tiny!  He generally has two pictures for each scene - a close up (that looks really realistic) and a longer range shot.  In some of the longer shots, I can barely make out the characters.  Anyway, waste 5 minutes, check out the link for the pictures...

Well, a few other people I know have done this - so I felt I needed to see what my maps would look like.  Since I invested the time reviewing and ticking the checkboxes, I figured I may as well paste the results into a blog entry!

Probably not all that interesting to anyone but me.  It does tell me that I need to get out more...

Visited Countries: 

Visited States:

My good gamer-friend Darren just sent me this link to Game System Wars - it is a round up of various sales statistics for the 3 games systems, with the data pulled from Amazon.  Right now, Xbox 360 leads the way in all categories (as you would probably expect, since it has been out for longer).  It will definitely be interesting to see how things change in the coming weeks and months.

I went to Best Buy and Circuit City here in Redding last night.  Best Buy had about 15 tents in a line, and Circuit City had a couple, waiting for the PS3 launch today.  One of the Best Buy employees said the tents arrived on Tuesday.  I read in the paper there are PS3's on Ebay for upwards of $2500.  People really do love their game systems...

On a slightly unrelated note, Circuit City had a ton of Microsoft Zune players available for sale.  I had a quick play with one - the screen is really bright, and the UI is nice.  When they do one with more hard disk space, I could possibly be tempted over from the dark side.

I am spending a week in Northern California visiting my friend Dr Bert.  Boy was it a long journey to get here - an 11 hour flight (stupidly high head winds!) followed by a 4.5 hour drive North up I80 and I5 in the pouring rain.  Funny to think that it is the same I5 I drive on from SEA-TAC airport to downtown Seattle.  I guess that is why the "I" stands for "Interstate"...

SatNav saved my soul a couple of times on the trip.  I used my laptop with MapPoint 2006 and the GPS receiver to plan and follow my route.  I took a wrong lane just north of the Bay Bridge and ended up slap bang in an Oakland suburb, and I surely would have had trouble finding Bert's house on arrival in Redding.  Definintely time to consider a dedicated SatNav system (as lugging the laptop everywhere is not such a great idea!).

Anyway, the sun shone bright yesterday, and the views of Mount Shasta were pretty impressive.  I hope to get some pictures taken in the next day or so, so stay tuned...

I'm told the place to eat locally is Jack's Grill, so I'll be checking that out this week.  I also have a ton of things on my shopping list for a trip to the local Mt Shasta Mall.

Fun!

My baby sister Kerry gave birth to her first child yesterday.  Abbie came into the world at 1:51am BST (there is some confusion right now about when the clocks actually went back, so they are going with that), and both mother and baby are doing fine.  Daddy Dave (better known to pretty much everyone as Griller) is doing pretty good too... 

For the details oriented among you, I seem to remember a 6lb 2oz weight being mentioned but I have to confess to being "mid-new-born-cuddle" when that information was being discussed, and so wasn't really paying much attention.

I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate Kerry and Griller on their fabulous news, but even more importantly, I want to say "welcome to the world, Abbie!".

If anyone is interested, there are a couple of photos of Abbie here.

Yesterday was the 5th anniversary of me joining Microsoft as a full-time employee.  Sure, I clocked up around 15 or 16 months as a contractor prior to taking a permanent position, but yesterday marked 5 years of having a blue pass.

Whilst I have worked in the same building for the whole time (in Soho in London) and with predominantly the same group of people, plenty of changes have occurred.  Some random fun things off the top of my head:

• I am on my 4th manager, and my 3rd job title.
• I must have endured at least 5 or 6 team name changes, to align with re-orgs.  Thinking about it, it's probably way more than that, given the propensity for re-orgs at Microsoft!
• I have had the pleasure of traveling to many places for work or conferences, including Seattle, San Jose, Minneapolis, Shanghai, Paris, Copenhagen, Vienna, Munich, Dublin and Reading(!).
• I have worked with teams responsible for developing and maintaining an old publishing platform, developing a new publishing platform, and developing and deploying many versions of the many MSN websites (from MSN6 through to today).
• I have 5 "Ship It" awards for products I have helped to ship.

"Tradition" says that I should provide a pound of M&Ms for every year I have been at Microsoft.  I think this works better in environments where there a lots of people and ton of corridors - I am sure five pounds of M&Ms would go very quickly like that.  However, our office is not set up that way, and I don't think the sweets would get eaten.  I feel that a couple of boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts would probably be a welcome alternative.

Here's to the next five years.

My wife managed to hurt herself yesterday in a way that makes me cringe every time I think about it.

We are currently visiting friends just outside Clonakilty in Southern Ireland and had planned to spend the weekend camping in Killarney.  After a ton of time packing up the cars and getting prepared, we were ready to leave.

All my wife had to do was close the gate behind us as we drove out of the yard.  It is a big 5 bar farm gate, with a sheet of metal mounted on the front of it to prevent the various pets from escaping.  The metal hangs down probably an inch or so below the bottom bar.  Laura was closing the gate by walking forwards, pulling the gate behind her.

She managed to pull the razor sharp metal sheet on to the back of her heel, creating a large gash that bled like crazy!

After sitting down for a while, and trying to stop the bleeding, Laura was all set to "stick a plaster on it, and lets go camping".  I was a little less convinced, so we headed to the local doctors.  5 stitches, 1 tetanus jab and a crutch later, and we are back at the house dreaming of what it would be like to be waking up in a field this morning.

So, I challenge you to think about hacking at your Achilles heel with a lump of rusty metal without cringing.  I have been shuddering on and off all night!

I posted a while back about fantastic customer service from Bose.  Well, they've managed to impress me again.  My headphones developed an annoying crackle when you moved (presumably a dodgy connection internally) so I packaged them up and sent them back to Bose.  Within 4 days, another brand new pair was sent back to me!  These guys are great... 

The other day, my son was watching a TV show that is set in Boston (The Suite Life for those of you who watch the Disney Channel a lot).  The particular episode featured a baseball game between the Red Sox and the Yankees.

Half way through the show, out of nowhere my son suddenly says, with a big sigh, “I HATE the Yankees…”

When questioned on who he DID like, he replied “The Red Sox of course”.

When I used to visit Florida years ago, even at the busiest of times there was no option other than queueing for the attractions.  Depending on the time of year you visited, you could be lining up for anything up to 2 hours to ride a 90 second ride.

Both Disney and Universal have tried to combat this problem with a “speedy pass” concept.  However, they are operated in very different ways.

Disney’s FastPass

With the Disney system, each attraction that is part of the FastPass system has 3 different areas near the entrance to the attraction.  There is the regular “stand-by” line, the FastPass line and the FastPass distribution area.  To use the system, you make your way to the attraction’s FastPass distribution area, put your park ticket into one of the machines and it gives you a ticket with a printed time range on it.  Then you simply return to the ride some time in the range on your printed ticket and enter the FastPass line.  You will generally be able to ride the ride within 5 or 10 minutes.  You can only hold one FastPass at a time.  You cannot get a new FastPass until the start time of the one you currently hold has passed.

WDWInfo.com has more information on FastPass, including a list of attractions that are currently using the system.

Universal’s Express Plus Pass

Universal charge for their Express Plus pass – $35 per person for a single park, $50 for both parks (and it is the same price for adults and children alike).  This is on top of the cost of a regular park ticket.  This pass lets you ride every Express Plus pass attraction once and once only, and they guarantee a wait time of less than 15 minutes at each.

More details on the Express Plus Pass can be found at the Universal website.

Comparison

The Disney system is OK – for the most part it works.  It has a few drawbacks though.  First, you need to visit the actual attraction to get the FastPass tickets.  This means you potentially have to trek to a completely different part of the park, just to pick up a ticket that might not be valid for a while.  The biggest issue is the way in which FastPass tickets are distributed.  When the park opens, the time window is 9am until 10am.  As people begin getting tickets, and the quota of FastPass tickets for the current time window is met, the time window advances forward to 9.05–10.05.  It then moves in 5 minute increments as more and more people show up.  This is fine for most rides, but for very popular rides this could be a problem.  Today, we went to ride Expedition Everest at Animal Kingdom – we arrived at the ride at 9.20am (20 minutes after park opening) and the line for the ride was already 70 minutes, and the current FastPass window was 12.55pm to 1.55pm – almost 3.5 hours later.

When I first found out the cost of the Universal pass, I was pretty horrified.  For a family of four, this amounted to a cost of $140 plus tax, and that was on top of the price I had already paid for the entrance tickets.  When we toured the original Universal Studios park, the crowds were not too bad, and we just bypassed a couple of the rides that had longer wait times.  However, when we went to Islands of Adventure, within about 45 minutes of park opening most rides were at least a 45 minute wait, a lot of them over an hour.  It was a really hot day, and the kids were already starting to moan, so I relented and purchased the tickets I had previously written off as a rip-off.  We then proceeded around the park, entering each ride and riding within an average of 10 minutes.  Almost every ride is Express Plus enabled.  It made touring the park a complete joy, and I felt kind of sorry for the people lining up for well over an hour to ride the amazing roller coasters etc.  The main drawback with this system was hearing “cool! can we ride again Daddy, please!” as soon as a ride was over (since the ticket is good for one ride only on each attraction).

Universal’s system is very expensive (IMHO), but an excellent way of touring with smaller kids and hitting every single ride.  Universal limit the available tickets for any given day, which guarantees the 15–minute maximum wait time.  I give it 4 out of 5 (with the cost disallowing a 5 out of 5 rating). 

Disney’s system works, as you can always find things with short lines to fill the gap between FastPass attractions.  The Expedition Everest example seems to be an extreme case.  However it can cause a lot of extra walking and requires extra planning to decide which order to get your FastPasses in.  I give it a 3.5 out of 5. 

So, neither are perfect.  I wonder if there is a hybrid that is possible.  Maybe Disney could allow you to hold a couple of FastPasses at once.  Or maybe they could allow you to get a FastPass for any ride in the park from every single FastPass station (hence cutting down on the walking aspect).  Perhaps Universal could allow you to get priority access to 3 or 4 rides for free, before making the expensive charge.

Whichever system you prefer, it is better than the system that was in place when I last visited in 1996 – the “wait in line regardless” system.

We have been in Florida a few days now, and have been enjoying the sunshine; it has peaked at about 94°F each day.  You can’t beat that sort of weather!

Some fun things that have happened so far:

On the flight over (Virgin Atlantic), none of the seat back screens in our row were working.  To appease us, the flight crew brought us two mini DVD players, and two very cool entertainment machines.  They had basically taken an HP1100 Tablet PC, replaced the keyboard with more of a “media keyboard”, and then loaded software onto the machine that allowed the user to play all of the same media that the in-flight entertainment system was showing.  Of course, it meant that we had much bigger screens than everybody else!  The only drawback was that my son was more interested in watching the in-flight safety video than the main movies; I think he managed to watch it 8 or 9 times...

The house we are staying at is great.  About 6 miles to the west of Disney, it is really convenient for the parks.  It is a large house, on one level; so more of a bungalow really!  As you walk in there is a large “Great Room” with adjoining kitchen.  The three bedroom areas are joined to the great room.  There are two double rooms, both with walk-in closets and en suite facilities at one and of the house.  At the other end are two twin rooms, a childrens den and a bathroom.  This is great, because it makes the children feel like they have their part of the house, and we have ours.  The childrens den is particularly cool – it is equipped with a TV/video, funky chairs and games.  On top of all that, the pool and hot-tub are great fun for everyone, and the garage has had a pool table and foosball table installed.  There are more details about Silver Creek Villa here – if you book, tell them I sent you… 

On the first day, the kids asked to go to SeaWorld; this was surprising since it is not a Disney park.  We went early and the place was pretty quiet at that point.  We found ourselves towards the back of the park (intending to see the Sea Lion show) and with a few minutes to spare.  I thought I would check out the queue for Kraken, SeaWorld’s roller coaster.  A 2 minute wait time!  You don’t get those on big attractions often, so I decided to ride.  Now, I know the details of most of the area attractions (height, speed etc) but for some reason, I knew very little about this one.  This just made the ride so much better – it was fantastic.  It has a top speed of 65mph, and there are a total of 7 inversions during the ride.  The Roller Coaster Database has more details.

The kids and I have all been wearing our Boston Red Sox hats.  I am very surprised at the amount of fans there are around.  I have had many conversations in queues etc, most starting with the question “where are you from?”.  Most people seem surprised when I say “London”.  We were watching some street performers at Epcot called the JAMitors (very much in the style of Stomp, playing old trash cans and flower pots with drumsticks – totally awesome) and when they had finished the head JAMitor even came up to me to ask where I was from, and if I knew the score from the previous night.  I guess it really is Red Sox Nation. 

Of course, we’ve met quite a few characters already, and the kids are enjoying getting their autograph books filled up.  They have seen Pinnochio, Timon and Rafiki, the 7 dwarves, Chicken Little and Abby Mallard.  They are looking forward to seeing Mickey and Minnie et al when we head to the Magic Kingdom.

My little girl lost her first tooth the other day.  I thought I would just take a picture to capture the moment.  Isn’t it cute?

While I was taking the picture though, she suddenly did something that I thought was weird.  She managed to get her tongue to twist through 90 degrees so it was vertical.  Now, it may be that she was using the afore mentioned gap to anchor one side of her tongue, but she maintains not.  I have been trying to do it ever since, and failing!

Give it a go.  Just make sure no-one is watching when you do!

For a while now, I have believed that every office has a Kevin.  No matter where you work, you find that one person who is a magnet for “amusing anecdotes to tell at the pub”.  I call this “having a Kevin” in honour of one of our sales guys when I worked back at Worldmachine.

A couple of my favourite Kevin-isms:

• Kevin wore casual clothes to work most days, with a suit in the office closet for client meetings.  Wednesday, 10am.  Kevin realises he needs his suit dry-cleaned for a client meeting the next day.  Since it is winter and pretty grotty out, Kevin gets a white bin/trash liner bag from the supplies cupboard, covers his suit, and hangs it on the cubicle wall behind him ready to take to the dry cleaners later that day.  Of course he forgets about it and goes home that night.  Unfortunately, Wednesday is “cleaners day”, and by sheer Kevin-luck, he has left the trash bag enclosed suit hanging above the trash can!  On arrival at work the next morning, Kevin realises that the suit he forgot to get dry-cleaned is no longer hanging there waiting for him to don for the impending client meeting.  Before you know it, Kevin is in the dumpster behind the office, knee deep in rotting vegetables from the restaurant below us, desperately searching for the Worldmachine trash bags containing his suit.  Once located, the suit is immediately put on, and he is off to the client meeting…
• We ate at a nice Italian restaurant a few times for Worldmachine team outings.  Kevin liked the steak.  The waiter took his order – New York Prime, rare – and disappeared.  When he returned with the food, Kevin looked perturbed.  The waiter asked if everything was OK, and Kevin “umm’ed and aah’ed” a bit, then said “yeah, sure…”  The waiter, sensing that perhaps something was wrong, sent over the head waiter.  “Is everything OK sir?”.  “Well, I think you brought me the wrong dish.”  The head waiter asks what he ordered, and he replies with the New York Rump.  The head waiter responded that “we have a New York, and a Rump – that is the Rump”.  Kevin decides that he really wanted the New York (a dish he had enjoyed before), so the head waiter says “no problem”, scoops up the plate and heads off to get the right dish.  A+ for customer service.  Then, as he is walking away, Kevin suddenly calls out “Hey, you couldn’t box that one up for me could you?”.  And they did.  And they didn’t charge him for it!

For a while, in my team at MSN, Mustafa took the role of Kevin for the team.  Some amusing episodes gave him the crown.  He once physically shoved a Senior VP out of the way of the sink with the words “come on, hurry up”, thinking he was someone else.  He mistakenly received a confirmation for an armoured car order.  The FBI scheduled a couple of meetings with him to talk about NT security.  Not quite up to Kevin-esque quality, but pretty funny.

However, Mustafa’s position as “Head Kevin” has been usurped.  Enter the new champion, Paul.  Paul worked with us a while back, and I swear I don’t remember him being this bad.  He has been back at MSN 2 months, and the list of Kevin-isms is already on two sides of paper.  A selection:

• We went to Barcelona for a team offsite last week.  30 minutes before leaving for the airport, he joined us at the breakfast table, grabbed a cup of coffee and then casually delivered the comment “I lost my passport”.  Matt replied with “I sincerely hope you mean you lost it, but found it again?”.  “Oh no, it’s still lost!”.  Not only is the losing of said article typical, the total lack of concern is pretty common too!  He found it not long after tucked behind the mini-bar.
• After a meeting, everyone had left and someone held up a watch saying “who does this watch belong to”.  Without even looking up I said “it is probably Paul’s”.  Bingo!  Forgetting things is pretty common – his bag in a pub the other week, his coat in a Tapas bar in Barcelona.  It is funnier because everyone else generally notices and then waits for Paul to come running back with a sheepish grin on his face.
• Paul’s desk is the clearest desk in the whole office.  This is because it limits the damage when he knocks his bottles of water over.  That has to be a 2 or 3 times a week habit for him.
• Another colleague Jack mentioned the other day that he knows when Paul is coming because of the noise he makes bumping into things.

I am told Paul’s nickname is “cluster”.  It is short for clusterf**k.  The Urban Dictionary includes these definitions: “to have everything wrong happen at the exact same time”, “commonly used to descriptively generalize any situation with a large scale of disarray”.  I think this about sums Paul up!

Every office has a Kevin.  Who is yours?

I will soon be heading off to Walt Disney World in Florida for the first time since 1996.  We chose to wait until the kids were really old enough to enjoy the trip, and now at 6 and a bit and just a tiny bit over 44” tall we figure they are ready.  Disney’s thresholds for attraction heights are 44” and 48”, so when the kids passed the 44” mark, a whole world of rides opened up!

Before 1996, we went pretty often.  Things didn’t really change hugely between visits.  This time, there is going to be a massive amount that has changed and I am looking forward to seeing it all.  For example, Disney’s Animal Kingdom has opened, as well as Universal’s Islands of Adventure.  A number of attractions have closed in the parks I am familiar with, as well as a whole generation of new attractions that have opened.

What will be most different though is sharing the experience with a pair of excitable 6 year olds with enormous imaginations.

Temperatures will be in the upper-80s, so i am really looking forward to that – just my kind of temperature.

Rides I am looking forward to experiencing for the first time:

• Expedition Everest (at Animal Kingdom)
• Mission: Space (at Epcot)
• Kraken (at SeaWorld)
• Test Track (at Epcot)
• The many coasters at Universal Islands of Adventure

Of course, there are the old favourites to look forward to as well:

• Splash Mountain (at Magic Kingdom)
• Haunted Mansion (at Magic Kingdom)
• Tower of Terror (as Disney-MGM Studios)
• Back to the Future (at Universal)

Sadly, Pirates of the Caribbean is closed for rehab, apparently to include Jack Sparrow and Barbosa from the movie.  Shame, that is a great attraction.

What are your favourite rides at Disney or Universal?  What tips do you have for “Disney with Kids”?  Leave me a comment, let me know…

Earlier this morning it was 01:02:03 on 04/05/06.

Of course, if you are American you already had the geeky pleasure of this back on the 5th April.

I have been an “on again, off again” runner for a few years now.  Whilst I used to play a lots of sports back in school, I used to hate running.  This was probably due to a lack of determination to run through the harder moments (hills, stitches etc).  However, more recently I have found running to be very therapeutic.  When running alone it is easy to get lost in a rhythm, thinking of nothing but reaching your goal.  When running with friends, it is great to just be able to spend time being social whilst hopefully getting fit.  That said, I have been “off again” for a while now.

However, yesterday marked the first day of a hopefully extended “on again” period.  I ran for 30 minutes on the treadmill in my garage.  Now that the weather is decidedly better, I plan on starting running outdoors on Tuesday and will hopefully manage 3 times a week at least from there.  The biggest hurdle will be to continue running frequently while on holiday in Florida in a few weeks time…

I am lucky that within a few hundred yards of my office there are two magnificent London parks that I can run around in my lunch hour.  I run along the Mall, around Green Park, cross over the Mall again in front of Buckingham Palace and then around the edge of St. James’ Park.  This is a distance of about 5k/3 miles, so constitutes a good work out.  I have created a pushpin map of this over on Windows Live Local in case you want to try it.

My friend John has a goal in mind for his recently instigated training regime – the Great North Run.  I prefer 10k runs myself, but unfortunately I am not around for the one I would usually run.  I will just have to find an alternative.  Any suggestions for a good 10k run in the UK anyone?

I got a Polar S610i watch for my birthday, and yesterday was the first time I have used it.  It will store profiles of your heartrate during your workout, and I can download them to my computer.  I think it will make a world of difference to me, since it can show me in hard numbers that my fitness is improving over time.  Being the competitive soul that I am, beating myself is always a great motivator!

I spent last week in the French Alps with my family – my sister was getting married so we all travelled over there to be with her and her new husband, and to celebrate the big day.

Twelve of us stayed in a chalet together – my parents and their partners, my sister and her family (husband and two kids), and my family (4 of us).  Many of you may be shuddering with dread at the thought of spending 5 days with your entire immediate family, but it actually went OK – almost NO tension at all.  Almost!

The wedding itself happened at the top of the mountain, right there in the snow.  It was a pretty amazing scene – the sun shone, the champagne was on ice (well, dug into the snow!) and a ton of people made the trip up the mountain to witness the event.  Great times.

I have never ski-ed before last week.  I spent Tuesday and Wednesday practicing and seemed to pick it up quite quickly.  I was able to ski down the mountain with the happy couple and all their friends after the event.  I was very proud of myself for making it all the way down – there were some pretty steep bits!  I only landed on my backside 4 or 5 times too…

What surprised me was how good the kids were.  All four of them (my two and my niece and nephew) really picked it up quickly.  I wonder how good they could become with a couple of weeks in a ski school.  Probably as good as all the other 6 year olds who were zipping past me on the way down from the wedding…

All in all, it was a good time, despite only being 5 days.

There are two great pieces of utility software that I have purchased in the past 12 months – FolderShare and Onfolio.  I have blogged about FolderShare before, but I don’t think I have mentioned Onfolio.

Onfolio is a tool for collecting and organizing information; it integrates into your browser (IE and FireFox), into Outlook and has a standalone desktop application version.  You use it to create  “Collection” files.  These are single files that pull all of the clippings you make together into one place.  You can capture links, whole web pages, snippets of a page, images, PDFs, in fact any file you can drag and drop onto the treeview, and they are all then available offline.

I have been using Onfolio in conjunction with FolderShare for a while now to ensure that all of my “information”, the stuff I care about, is available to me at all of the computers I regularly use without me having to think about it.  Each machine has Onfolio installed, and I have my Collections folder shared using FolderShare across all of the machines.  So, when I find something useful that I want to keep, I clip it to Onfolio, and minutes later all of my other machines have that same data available.  Genius.

A little while ago, my employer (Microsoft) showed how much they agreed with my taste in utilities by buying the FolderShare company, and then making the software free to all.  Now they have done it again by buying Onfolio, and rolling the product into the new Windows Live Toolbar; they have also made this product free too.  Mildly annoying since I paid for Onfolio back last year, but great news that my favourite utilities are now both part of the Windows Live family of products.

You can download the Windows Live Toolbar beta here.

After I posted last night, Brad from ClearContext left me a comment to say that version 2 is now out of beta, and released as Release Candidate 1.

One great new feature for this version is that the ClearContext toolbars now work when composing emails if you are using Word as your editor; this wasn’t the case in the betas.  I live for AutoCorrect so I made the choice of continuing to use Word and missing out on some of the ClearContext functionality, so this is great news for me! 

So I have had my TD-12 for a few weeks now, and I have been playing quite a lot.  It is really very weird playing so much again, as I haven’t played in many years.  I am finding that I get some pretty bad aches in muscles that are long since overdue a work out!

I am still so impressed with the quality of the drums, and the extent that you can achieve a “live” sound from electronics.

I recorded some random stuff the other night – just me sitting at the set playing whatever came to mind while warming up – and thought I would share it so people can see just how good it sounds.

Excuse the playing, it is a few years too rusty for my liking.

Random Drum Stuff 1 – 0:19 – 312kb
Random Drum Stuff 2 – 0:19 – 317kb
Random Drum Stuff 3 – 1:23 – 1,315kb
Random Drum Stuff 4 – 0:26 – 416kb

Recently, my sister visited us, bringing my niece (Georgia, 10) and nephew (Max, 6) with her.  At some point during the day, Georgia and my daughter Niamh (who is almost 6) spent a little time playing girlie games on the computer.  I didn’t think much of it, other than how nicely they played together, printing things out, doing virtual makeovers and generally having a good time.

A few days after our guests left, Niamh came to me and asked if she could play “that dressing up game on the computer where you put clothes on the celebrity cardboard cutouts”.  I told her that I was sorry, but I didn’t really know what that was or where on the computer it could be found.

She replied “Come on Daddy, it’s easy.  Just go on to Google and type dress up celebrities”.

Now, that is not the sort of thing I expected my almost-6 year old daughter to say!  Don’t they grow up fast?  Of course, being a Microsoft employee, I had to spend the next 10 minutes explaining why “we don’t GOOGLE honey, we use MSN Search for all of our internet information needs”. 

It sounds like moving on to Kids Programming Language is not too far away.  Like father, like daughter.  *grin*

NOTE: I cannot recall exactly what the search term she said was, so I am using artistic license.  If I do remember, I will post it here for all you other dad’s with daughters… 

I’m not the only one who loves my new V-Drums…

Microsoft has a ton of buildings in the Redmond area of Washington.  They are split into a couple of different campus areas.  The office I visit when I am here is on a smaller campus that has 5 buildings and a cafeteria, and it is where all of the MSN folks live.

Parking is usually tight at the campus, but today I had to do something I have never done before.  John and I drove out to Issaquah to pick something up during lunch and when we returned, we spent about 35 or 40 minutes repeatedly cruising the 6 car parks on campus trying to find a space.  Nothing.  Nada.  Zip.  I have never seen it like that before.  In the end, we had to drive to another building about a mile away and park there, and then call a shuttle bus to take us back to our campus.

All in all, the act of finding a parking space and returning to our desks took longer than the rest of the errand!  And of course, when we want to leave we’ll have to call for another shuttle and make our way back to the other building just to pick the car up.  Is that nuts, or what?

Being a proud Englishman, I thought I would register this blog in the BritBlog directory.  Why not sign up yourself? 

It is that time of year again; time for cold sweaty mornings.

I spent last week in Shanghai, working with our new development team over there. It was very sunny, highs of 30 degrees C most days, with high humidity.  This morning when I left the house, it was 6 degrees C, and the moisture came mostly from the large amounts of dew on the grass and foliage.  I used to think dealing with time-zones was the hard part of travelling. Now I think that is the easy part compared to the temperature-zones!

Luckily, I am back in Shanghai again next week, so I will briefly be able to enjoy the heat again. Just easing myself into Autumn one week at a time...

I have had the pleasure once again of staying the weekend at my good friend Simon's house in West Cork in Ireland.  Simon's family is fantastic, the best bunch of folks you could ever want to meet.  His kids are great, and there is always something funny that happens when I am there.

Euan is 3.  He is the cutest and happiest kid in the world.  He also has a mischievous streak a mile wide.  He gets everywhere and into everything, and it is usually while you are not looking.  The first time I was over here, he managed to microwave a gameboy and the telephone handset.  He was 18 months old at the time, and managed to drag a chair to the kitchen counter, open the door and load the items and then turn the microwave on at the switch and turn it on!

Simon's wife Esther has just come and found us in his office with the latest piece of mischief.  At some point in the recent few weeks, Euan has managed to put some toys onto a plastic plate and put said plate into the Aga cooker in the slow cooker section.  Esther has just brought in one of the metal shelves with a now half-melted assembly of toys making a fantastic piece of abstract art.

Constituent parts of the art include a tamagotchi, two dummys, Thunderbird 2 and a toy train.  Photos follow.

Just in case you cannot make out the individual pieces...

Way back in December 2003, I was travelling a lot more than I have been lately.  Frustrated with the cheaper headphones I had been using to listen to my Ipod and movies on planes, I splashed out on a pair of Bose QuietComfort 2 Headphones.  These things are fantastic, the noise cancelling is great, and the sound quality is everything you would expect from Bose.

A couple of weeks ago, the plastic shielding on the left arm broke; this meant that the left dome wobbled about in the breeze and made them pretty unusable.  Since I bought the headphones in the US, I only had a years warranty on them (it is 2 years if you buy them in Europe) so I was definitely out of my warranty period.  At first I was thinking that I would simply glue them back together to save me the cost of repair.  However, these headphones cost quite a lot of money, so I changed my mind and decided that the right thing to do would be to send them off and take the cost of getting them professionally repaired.

So, I called Bose and arranged for them to be sent in.  I told the guy on the phone that they were a US pair, and he confirmed that since they were out of warranty, they would take a look at them and then call me back with a cost to repair prior to doing any work.

They sent me a pre-paid UPS sticker for me to send the headphones back to them, which I duly did.  I then went away to Ireland for 8 days and thought nothing more of it.  When I returned, there was a parcel waiting for me at a neighbours house; I was surprised to see that it was from Bose, since I had not heard from them at all.

I opened the package fully expecting a note saying "we are sorry, this is not repairable unless you feel like superglueing it".  To my total surprise, inside the package was a completely unopened, brand new set of headphones.

So, to recap: they paid the postage in both directions, and replaced my headphones with a new pair totally free of charge, despite them not being under warranty any longer.  That gives them an A+ in Customer Service in my book.

Bose ROCKS.

I can quickly add links to google or links to dictionary.com using content filters.  Nice.

Testing the picture uploading facilities...

I have used MSN Spaces for a while now, and it is pretty cool.  I like the photo albums and the lists, and of course the integration with MSN Messenger so people can see when it has been updated.

However, I am trying this as an experiment; I wanted to try out a proper grown up blogging tool. 

Had some fun setting it up.  For a while I couldn't get a lot of the sub-pieces working (comments, permalinks) etc.  This is because dasBlog re-writes URLs and has an HTTP Handler to cope with that.  This means that the URL you visit doesn't really exist and is mapped by some code.  Unfortunately my hosting provider doesn't allow "non-existant" URLs and instead returns a 404 before the handler kicks in.  So, I took a look through the source code and realised I had missed a really obvious dasBlog config setting to turn off URL rewriting!  Now it all seems to be working...