Connected!
April 30, 2006
We finally have a network connection at the new place. Though we don’t have ADSL yet (there’s a problem transferring it here because plus’s website thinks my flat is a business address) plus kindly gives us a backup phone connection. We tried to get it working yesterday but got no dialtone and figured the phone was not working yet (it was only connected on Thursday, and there was talks about a fault on the line somewhere). It still didn’t work today but after unpacking a phone and successfully making a call to my mobile we smelled a rat, and, indeed, we had a dead socket. Plugging the modem into the master socket we could call out just fine.
Only problem is the cable is very short and the master socket is in the hallway. Luckily there’s a small closet just across for it with room for a seat. It’ll be great to have ADSL again though. Here’s Nadia enjoying our current connection arrangement.
Moving-in party
April 26, 2006
Stein came over from Norway Sunday morning. We spent a few hours catching up and reminiscing about the past before going to Yo! Sushi at the N1 centre (beware, eeevil site with music) for dinner with Nadia. Nadia went home afterwards while we went to the pub. The rest of the evening is a bit blurry, but I woke up the next day partly dressed and with a severe hangover. A plastic fork in my pocket revealed that I’d had kebab the previous night.
After drinking lots of water and eating dry bread we decided that we needed some fresh air, so Stein and I walked to the office and picked up Nadia’s iBook (she had it delivered there since we were in the middle of a move). Nadia stayed home looking after the washing machine; I had put new washers in and we were running it for the first time in almost three years.
On the way back we got a bit lost trying to take the bus and save ourselves some walking. Not knowing quite where we were we had English breakfast for lunch, served by a very enthusiastic young man. We were then pointed in the direction of Essex Road and started making our way back home. On the way there we accidentally found the pub I’d invited people to that evening. This was rather lucky, since I still have no internet connection at home and I’d forgotten to print out directions there from my flat.
Monday evening Stein, Nadia and I went to the Canonbury Tavern. Not long after more friends than I thought I had started turning up–more than 20 people in the end. Dean said I owed him a alot of money as he had paid many of them to turn up (at least I hope he was joking). Thanks to all who came; you made it as soon to “my perfect night out” as you can reasonably assume ever experiencing.
Moving in
April 26, 2006
Thursday (20th) at lunchtime I got a phonecall from Nadia. I had received a letter from my solicitor saying he needed about three thousand pounds (for stamp duty, 1 month’s advance rent & service charge, his and the seller’s solicitor fees) to complete the sale. Since we had arranged to have removers come and pick up our stuff the next morning things were looking bad. After a bit of fretting and calling my solicitor to confirm the requirement, and the bank to transfer money, it was all sorted however. Co-workers were impressed with me coughing up that kind of money in such short notice, but I assured them that (unfortunately) it is not a party trick I can pull very often. It will be a very long time till I can do it again.
After packing boxbes till late at night Thursday evening we had a good night’s sleep before getting up early for more frentic packing before the removal men arrived. They managed to get everything into the truck this time (when we moved into the flat in Stanmore they I believe they had to round up a second truck). Quite frankly with all the things we’ve thrown away and given to charity lately I’m surprised we had anything to move at all.
After picking up a surprising number of keys in Clerkenwell we met the removal men at my new flat at 1:30pm. Nadia went off to Islington council to get a parking permission while I guarded the lorry with all our stuff so nobody would run off with it. I helped out a bit by moving stuff from the inside of the truck to the back for easy picking up. The removal men exploited this fact and ran up and down the stairs like demons, giving me no chance to sit down and take a rest.
The removal men left at 4pm, about the same time Nadia came back from the Counsil, parking permit in hand. She told me that before she left for the counsil she had emptied a year’s worth of “welcome new customer!”, “you owe us money” and “we’re coming to get you now!” letters from gas, electricity and tv licensing people.
The rest of the afternoon and evening was spent setting up our one piece of furniture, an oak dining table; unpacking boxes; trying to figure out how the hot water and heating worked; and clear enough floorspace to fit our mattresses. Unfortunately our neighbours were awfully inconsiderate and didn’t have an open wireless access point as I would have liked to check my mail…
Gamma rays
April 19, 2006
According to the Metro’s Science and discovery in brief section we’ll be safe from Gamma ray bursts:
US astronomers have found that the hugely destructive bursts happen only in small galaxies lacking heavy elements such as Hydrogen.
Not only does this bring me huge relief, it’s also very educating; up until now I’ve always thought Hydrogen was the lightest of the known elements. I now know it’s not so, and it must be true because it was in the paper.
Late night baking
April 11, 2006
Just arrived home and realised I have no bread for breakfast tomorrow. “Not to worry!” I thought, I’ll just bake one. So now I’ve filled my breadbaker with ingredients and am looking forward to fresh bread tomorrow. I improvised a bit; the recipe was for a simple wholewheat loaf but I ended up with a black olives & sundried tomato wholewheat & oats loaf. I’m sure it’ll be great.
Update: (7:25) It seemed a good idea at the time; I wasn’t quite so enthusiastic about the idea this morning. It turned out OK though, if a bit heavy and slightly salty. I must mix a bit of white flour in with the wholewheat next time, and skip some of the salt if I’m adding salty olives to the mix.
London Cocoa Developers’ meeting
April 11, 2006
I went to a London Cocoa developers meeting for the first time today. It was very interesting. The group is much smaller than the other geek groups I frequent (Lonix, GLLUG & London.pm) but I was not dissapointed and I’ll probably go again next month. It was an eclectic mix of friendly geeks of all ages. Great.
What I want for my Birthday
April 3, 2006
According to the World Land Trust, citing The Independent, Britons last year spent £3.6 billion on food, healthcare and accessories for their pets. I realise that pets have to eat and that the occasional visit to the vet is in order, but a shocking £294 million alone was spent on pet gifts.
I am saddened and distraught by this mindless waste; to put it in perspective, £294 million could save 20 million acres of Rainforest. That’s more than a third of what is cut down for timber, agriculture and development each year; 1.5 acres a second, according to this site; just shy of 50 million acres.
If you were thinking of buying me a present for my birthday (hint hint, it’s the 24th of April) then I suggest you save an acre of Rainforest. It’s only £25, so buy someone else one too. And maybe one for yourself.
Ok, rant over.
Migration
April 2, 2006
I’ve bought a flat. Nadia and I will be moving from Stanmore, HA7, to Islington, N1. Mere words fail to express how much I’m looking forward to the shorter commute. Instead of a 75+ min commute involving 2 or 3 tubes I’ll be able to walk to the office in about 25 minutes; I’ll get almost a work-week of extra spare time each month.
The actual move will be taking place on or around the 21st of April. If you planned on sending me something for my birthday (April 24th, hint hint) you might want to use my work address (which you can find here) or send it right now to make sure I get it. (I will of course be redirecting my mail to my new address for a while after the move but the redirection service here sucks; you can never be sure it will actually work.)
Cocoa Games
April 2, 2006
I’ve released new versions of both my Connect4 and Reversi games. I now use the excellent marble graphics from Gnome Iagno to draw my board instead of hand-drawing white and black squares. Trust me, they look a lot better. I may have a go at mimicing the animated transition from one colour to another that Iagno does at some point, but for now I’m happy.
Puck and Desdemona don’t have their own pages anymore; they now share the Cocoa Games page. I also rearranged the source repository a little bit; everything related to my Cocoa games now lives under Cocoa/trunk/ in my Subversion repository. If you want to hack on the games yourself it is now a lot easier since you can just checkout the trunk and the project relative paths will be correct; previously you had to make sure you checked out AlphaBeta in the same directory as the game you wanted to hack on.
These games are pure Cocoa built using Xcode2.1 so should Just Work(tm) on Intel macs. I don’t have one around to test though. If you do, please tell me if it works for you or not!
Perpetual mid-season
April 2, 2006
Sainsbury’s were out of their nice orange juice so we had to buy Tropicana instead. Eating breakfast and reading the back of the carton I found this:
So every day a mile long Tropicana train travels over a thousand miles from lush, green groves to New York laden with just-squeezed juice. Naturally pure, and squeezed from only the choicest oranges, each one handpicked at its mid-season best.
How curious. That is either a very liberal use of the word “just” or those green groves have remarkably short pre and post seasons.
