bignoseduglyguy

Awesome England claim Grand Slam

Awesome England claim Grand Slam says it all. This year's Six Nation's has been one of the best I have watched. Off to celebrate with a beer...

A cog in the machine

Just a few minutes ago, I discovered that I am part of the TTLB Blogosphere Ecosystem. After a little delving, I discovered this to be "...an application which scans weblogs once daily and generates a list of weblogs ranked by the number of incoming links they receive from other weblogs on the list."

As well as details for my good self, I not surprisingly found some for my fellow bloggers and Happy Palm staffers Chuck, Jason and his good lady Crystal.

Not quite sure what it all means but I now have a warm glow about me and feel entirely nutured and validated by this byte-based communal linkage....which is even kind enough to suggest reading matter I might like.

Interesting historical site #2

Finding the Forgotten New York website last night prompted me to flick through a few UK based site of a similar nature. One such site is the excellent London Footprints, which details some very good walks through London and a lot more besides. The author, whose name I couldn't ascertain, crams in historical facts, some nice images, good clear routes, transports details and even suggestions on where to eat and rest your feet. With a growing family who always moan that they're bored, this will help dynamite them from the sofa and into the outdoors for a little exercise and education.

Whilst surfing the London Footprints site, I found a link to a single purpose site with a really handy tool. If you hardcode your website in Notepad or use fairly basic HTML editing software, you probably won't have one of those URL-checking doo-hickies to check you links are good. If this is the case, Andy Harper's URL LINK CHECK page is just the thing you need. Pop in the URL of the page that you wish to check, hit enter. The resulting page gives fairly detailed and accurate reponses, handling redirects quite well but indictaing it doesn't like mailto: links. A nice piece of coding and one to bookmark.

Interesting historical site

Forgotten NY is Kevin Walsh's very detailed look at the disappearing face of New York and its environs. He clearly has a great love of the city which is borne out in his research, writing and photography. A labo(u)r of love.

Baghdad blog or bluff

Where is Raed ? is is either the blog of the self-styled Baghdad-based 'Salam Pax' ('peace' in Arabic and Latin) who is blogging the conflict from within Iraq or a work of cynical and satirical fiction of someone pretending to do so. The possibilities are examined an article and two blogs - here, here and here.

Life imitating art?

The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has dug up an article in an old copy of The Onion entitled Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over'. As blogged by The Guardian, the piece is remarkably prophetic and closes with Bush stating "We must squander our nation's hard-won budget surplus on tax breaks for the wealthiest 15 percent. And, on the foreign front, we must find an enemy and defeat it."

Impulse Buy

© United Artists- all rights reserved
I went to the supermarket earlier to buy a SCART cable so I can plumb the DVD and the digital TV decoder into a switchable TV feed. Walked past the DVDs and caught sight of Jean Reno (above) and Robert De Niro on the cover of John Frankenheimer's Ronin. I remembered reading somewhere that it has some of the best car chase scenes since Bullit in '68 and The French Connection in '71. Two seconds later, the DVD joined the cable in basket.

Now I just need to wait until the rest of the family go to bed. Cue beer - cue pizza - headphones on - volume up - press PLAY. One should never underestimate the simple pleasure of not having to be someone's husband or dad for a few hours. A little escapism every now and then is a good thing.

Office Politics

A new research document called 'Politics in Organisations' found that "that nearly half of the survey believe that micro-political behaviour in the workplace has increased over the last three years. Only 7% feel it has waned."

The author Linda Holbeche states that with managers talking "...in terms such as manipulation, back-stabbing and the 'dark side', office politics is predominantly viewed as detrimental to organisations and it is seen to be on the increase, but at the same time, many managers believe that office politics is a fact of life, even a natural part of human behaviour. Some see it as a key skill for survival in the corporate jungle and a justifiable form of safeguarding much-needed resources."

As one who has been unwillingly involved in such 'corner office warfare' in the last week, this only stiffens my resolve to get out of it all as soon as possible.

Out of the blue memory

A chance posting in a food newsgroup brought a response that, in turn, prompted memories of family holidays long ago at Postgate Farm in Glaisdale in North Yorkshire, although the farm seems to have changed a fair amount in the 30 or so intervening years. I remember watching a chap drystone walling further up the dale and marvelling at the way he made the stones fit together. For me, the sight of drystone walls stretching over dales and hills is an enduring one, representative of the way humans have interacted with the land and the sheer effort and determination it takes to farm that land.

You need to get out more

OK. You like to be organised. You have a PDA. You've got a PIM application to get your addresses, diary and to dos sorted and filed. You've go a bunch of other applications to keep all your data, from internet passwords to bank details, safe and sound. If you're really into this stuff, you'll probably have HanDBase or MobileDB to create your own tailored databases. So I'm betting that the last thing you'll be needing is another database app. Unless, that is, you're Dick Dastardly, a getaway driver or simply a bad, careless & selfish driver, in which case Traffic Fines 1.1 is the must-have app for you. The author maintains that 'this program will help you to keep track (of) all the traffic tickets/fines'. As fellow UKPUG member Steve T, who found this yesterday, asked "...who drives so badly that they need an application just to track their traffic offences?". Good point, well made.

Remember, use protection - update.

As mentioned below, I lost my credit card in an hotel last week. Calls to the hotel over the weekend met with the too-rapid response of "No, we haven't seen it, we haven't found it, we haven't got it." even before I had barely finished the question. Subsequent enquiry today, via a colleague's spouse who works in the establishment that the card was picked up and kept in the safe all weekend. So, although the loss was my own fault, the worry and hassle over this could have been avoided if the hotel had lived up to its famed customer service pledge*, rather than giving me the brush off with their 'Can't do' service.

* Aforementioned famed customer service pledge with name change to protect the guilty: We pride ourselves on Vacation Tavern** service. Our friendly and efficient staff will always go out of their way to make sure you feel comfortable. It's all part of what we call our ’can do service’.

**I'm sure you can work it out for yourself.

The War Office #4

Though I suppose it is only to be expected, where ever one looks, it seems the conflict in Iraq has managed to permeate. With little on TV, I have been surfing the foodie newsgroups but keep coming across really OT threads where folks are arguing out various points on view. Whilst this kind of posting can always enliven a newsgroup, ugliness and spite never seem too far behind and now, infuriatingly, I find myself tempted to join in. Like BBC London's Jon Gaunt admitted this morning, I find myself strangely drawn to watch the endless rolling news coverage on the BBC's News 24 digital channel, even when there is little happening and the same reports are seemingly looped. Why? I haven't a clue except to say that not even in the second Gulf War (if one takes the Iraq/Iran War as the first) were the news teams so 'embedded' with those in the frontline as they are in this.

I'm over the (cyber) hill

Apparently, I'm too old and too married to be a virus author. Who says so? Wired News does in a story entitled Not Just Your Average Loser. I'll just have to work on other ways of being dangerous and interesting.

Remember, use protection.

As witnessed below, I have had a busy week and by late lunchtime yesterday, I was ready for a almost-the-weekend pick-me-up. A quick glance at my colleagues Bill, with whom I share an office, confirmed he was of a similar mind. We ducked out and into the bar of the Holiday Inn next door for a swift restorative beer.

I was feeling generous so, whilst Bill joined friends in the easy chairs, I bought the round on my card and, in a hurry to get the drinks to the table, I did something I never do - I just tucked my card and receipt into my shirt pocket.

It was only when I parked at the supermarket this morning and went to tuck my parking refund voucher next to my card that I realised that it was no longer there. Luckily, armed with my data-enabled mobile phone and my Sony Clie, I was able to call the hotel to see if they had the card, call Sentinel® Card Protection to cancel the card and order another and fire up an internet connection to check my bank balance for fraudulent charges before confirming a balance transfer to another account so I could do the family's shopping.

Twice in 8 months (one theft and one loss), I have been glad to have card protection and a couple of pocketfuls of technology to help get my financial life back on track.

The War Office #3

Another day spent with one ear tuned to the rolling news program on London's local radio station and one eye trained on the live internet news feed from the BBC's News 24 service. As well as the 'business as usual' stuff, I had a ping server app running all day, checking facilities in Kuwait, Dubai and Tel Aviv were still 'visible'. Whilst we have monitoring teams who do this stuff every day, it seemed important to have my own independent means of checking if any facilities had been affected by the hostilities. A shout went up mid-afternoon when a sizable portion of our global IP connectivity disappeared, taking our intranet and internet access with it. Within minutes, there were whispers of DoS attacks 'on the West' and of IT-terrorism from the more impressionable though it subsequntly turned out to be DNS server issues.

I have just watched a wooden-looking Blair give his reasons for sanctioning military action in a statement to the electorate and I cannot say that I am really any the wiser or that I have been convinced. Having said that, I'm not sure I know of a viable alternative that would achieve the same ends so I find myself in the strange position of being on the fence when all around me are voicing strong opinions.

Coincidentally, I just tried to get a couple of links for this post from the always reliable BBC only to find that http://www.bbc.co.uk/ returns 'Cannot find server'.

The War Office #2

Just heard on the news, from a defence analyst at King's College, that I am more likely to be run over in the street than injured or killed in a terrorist attack in London. For those still in doubt, the Home Office has post the following 'Simple Preventative Steps Against Terrorism and Terrorists' on their website.

The War Office #1

It has been a long day in the office. The looming crisis in the Middle East has brought a new and unwanted dimension to my work.

With one eye on breaking news and in additon to running normal business, my colleagues and I have been running through contingency and disaster recovery planning measures. Whether to support our teams based in offices and technical facilities throughout the Middle East or react to threats or attacks closer to home, our focus has been on trying to make preparations without causing alarm.

As I type (2230hrs GMT), the BBC news is discussing special forces movements in the demilitarized, the improvements in the GPS-guided aim of smart weapons and the warning to British nationals everywhere of the rapidly escalating likelihood of reprisal attacks.

So, tonight, it is with very mixed feelings that I head off to bed with a pager, a triband cellphone and a wallet folder with a handwritten sticker reading 'WAR'.

Movie money pit II - The Update

Two days back, I mentioned I was trying out the DVD rental service movietrak.com. Well, I can report good things. My chosen DVD arrived in it's little pouch within 36 hours of me pressing the 'rent' button. The film ran fine and is now nestling in its pouch (tearing off the address section reveals the prepaid return label) waiting to be dropped into a postbox tomorrow.

Like telephone banking, I have no idea why it has taken me so long to get round to discovering this stuff. Plaudits to Movietrak down in Fulham.

I used to have a friend called Jason

There am I relaxing, clicking through a few of my favourite blogs. I click over to my friend Jason's, which he has just redesigned for the umpteenth time, to find this post maligning the title of his own blog. Why should I care? Because it took me minutes to come up with that name, that's why!

Seriously, Jason's a great guy and a good friend so if you want to see a neat fully featured blog that is always a work in progress for the better, you could do worse that click over to justasimpleonlinenerd.

Idle curiosity....

Ever wonder what the most regularly used keywords on the major serach engines are? Nope, me neither but just say you did then Keyword Results, care of the team at AnalogX, would be a great place to start. And for those who are musically minded, the same for MP3 searches.

Bloggle or Googer?

Just dipped into evhead and clicked ovet to Steve Johnson's piece entitled Google's Memory Upgrade - How Blogger could do more than improve Google's Web searches. Steve's premise is that Google's minions want us to use them to find sites and then use Blogger to make a more user-friendly record of site than the more usual bookmarks/favourites/hotlist do currently. The future version of this is predicted to be automatically blogged bookmarks that you can choose to web-publish or not.

Who'll take bets on when the first person will be convicted of accessing dodgy materials through failing to hit the 'confidential' radio button on this stuff? Only a matter of time, IMHO.

Movie money pit

I have spent a few week's trawling through all the online operations that run a post-back DVD rental service. After running a few comparisons, I have decided to try movietrak.com as they have partnered up with my newspaper/online news source of choice, The Guardian. The site is simple to use and, having searched for and found random choices from my 'want to see' list (mainstream, arthouse, foreign language and more), it seems to offer what I'm looking for - films I want to see at a price I can afford a few times a month with the minimum of hassle.

And the first rental? Taxi 2 because I enjoyed Taxi and fancy more of the same.

Fun with Google itself

Head on over to labs.google.com to see all the goodies Google are brewing up for the future.

Fun with Googlism

Checking Googlism for my ranking simply determined that bignoseduglyguy is back online...still...apparently.

However, when I entered 'isle of dogs' I got an extraordinary cross-section back, even after excluding all references to Patricia Cornwall's eponymous novel. I have edited my favourites into the small stanza that follows.

isle of dogs is once you have seen the leaders pass 17
isle of dogs is revealed to be more water than land
isle of dogs is near where jah wobble lives
isle of dogs is smaller than the isle of man
isle of dogs is a good place for animals
isle of dogs is not really an island
isle of dogs is coming together
isle of dogs is perfectly valid
isle of dogs is now legendary
isle of dogs is a comic romp
isle of dogs is still water
isle of dogs is involved
isle of dogs is a dump
isle of dogs is a dog

Email scammers beware!

Unless you are a troglodite or have been on a deep space mission for decades and therefore do not have an email account, you are more than like to have received an email from scammers seeking to part your from your hard-earned.

Whilst these are no more than an annoyance to most of us, there are those who have risen to the challenge and have scammed back, some successfully suckering the scammers and others not. A long list of the attempts, successful and otherwise can be founs at Scam o Rama, or The Lads from Lagos

Get your reading glasses out as some of the email exchanges therein are long.

Bad day for blogging

Don't get me wrong but there are days when blogging seems to be the hardest thing to do. Some days, one can surf round the web, taking in favourite sites or randomly hitting on newly discovered treats. On other days, you just can't seem to move for bigots, racism, hatred and simple narrow-mindedness. Today is one of those other days. In an hour, I reluctantly followed a chain of blogs in which every blog was either extremely right wing, racist, homophobic, xenophobic or plain hateful and sociopathic. The common links were that each was the online 'voice' for a seemingly well educated white middle American and the central theme was related to September 11th and calling for immediate military action in Iraq, regardless of the consequences.

I have spent time in the the US and I count myself lucky to have American friends and colleagues, of both the online and face-to-face varieties, who are drawn from varying races and creeds. However, it saddens me to have to try and reconcile these wonderful firends and their country, held to be the home of the free and champion of liberty, with the blinkered, inward-looking rants of those calling for death and destruction at any cost. How does this work?

The American media are often chided by European commentators for their unashamedly 'domestic' news bias. However, the fact remains that little of the world's news makes the main networks' news broadcasts and I am convinced that this is one of the key factors in the apparent spread of such extreme attitudes. On an East Coast visit after September 11th, I was discussing my love of cooking with a colleague and referred to an Afghani dish. Someone who overheard rounded on me for even daring to mention Afghanistan and was soon joined by the majority of those present. I spent a sweaty half an hour explaining to the assembled crowd that the Afghani people and the Taliban were not synonymous and that other nation's armies, including the Russians, French and yes, the English, had used Afghanistan as a battleground for their own agendas for hundreds of years. Yet people like me, and more recently the French due to their stance on Iraq, seem to be regarded by the authors of such sites as pinko liberals who are not to be trusted. Time and again, the central texts of these sites maintain that non-Americans can have no idea of the pain that America felt, and still feels, in the wake of the WTC and Pentagon attacks. As a result, folks such as I who expressed alternative views on such things are villified and cursed by a section of the American people who act as though they have a monopoly on grief and outrage in the face of terrorism.

To anyone of that mindset reading this, I say have two things to say.

Firstly, just because we don't bay for war like Bush, it doesn't mean that those of us in the rest of the world beyond US territorial borders were not affected by September 11th too. I and my European colleagues watched the the unprecedented horror of the WTC attack unfold on a plasma screen in my network operating centre, only too aware that telco technicians that we spoke to on a weekly basis were in the basement switchrooms of the towers when they collapsed. For three days after the attack, I tried in vain to contact a friend in NYC that I had only just been reunited with a week or so before. On the fourth day, a one line email arrived to say he was alive but too shocked to write.

Secondly, whilst the US was keeping the foreign policy nightmare of Vietnam at arm's length, people in the UK and Ireland were learning to live with the ever-present horror of terrorism wrought on the streets of Belfast, Birmingham and London. For three decades prededing 9/11, British and Irish families were coming to terms with the fact that a loved one would never return from their office, shopping trip or pub - victims of a campaign of terror funded, in part, by the finance raised by NorAid in the US. Yet no right-thinking person will ever hold the American people responsible for the actions of a small and determined group of terrorists this side of the Atlantic. Whilst I can never know what it is like to belong to a nation who lost so many in one single attack, I believe I can empathise. At just before 7p.m. on my birthday some years back, I was showering before going out for a meal with friends. At the same time, about 900 feet from my house, James McArdle, a 29-year-old bricklayer from County Armagh, calmly walked away from a truck that contained the 1996 Docklands bomb. When the half tonne of explosives was detonated shortly after, not only did this end the fragile IRA ceasefire, it ended the lives of Inam Bashir and John Jeffries, from whose kiosk I had bought the evening paper half an hour previous.

Many people around the world live with the aftermath of fear, hatred, war-mongering and revenge. No one is right and no one is wrong. Ironically, it is the very differences between us that seems to ensure that, no matter what we as a race do to extinguish oursleves, we thankfully can't quite manage to do so.

Why did I sync so low?

Pumatech's byline is " Information Without Limits" but after the last couple of days, I'd have to disagree.

Working in a 24/7 operations environment in the telecomms industry means that my work schedule and actions change as rapidly as the NASDAQ ticker. Whilst Palm Desktop has been a fine tool to use, it's inability to sync 'out of the box' with my Lotus Notes (don't get me started, please) account in the office has always been a drag. Having trialled Pumatech's Intellisync product seemlessly and successfully with my Sony Clie and Lotus Notes on my top end Tecra and despite newsgroup and forum warnings a plenty, I bought the $70 full version. After just one week, I found that my syncs were hanging at the DateBook segment...or so I thought. In fact, they were just slowed to a snails pace and, as a result, an average sync was taking 25 minutes or more.

Whilst I haven't yet got to the bottom of why this is happening, I managed to get the syncs nearly back to normal with some ruthless editing of entries and performing a 'PDA overwites Notes' sync to slim the entries down.

If anyone knows why this happens (Notes data too bloated? Field mapping issues?), I'd love to hear from them.

Curried goat recipe to feed 10

Came across this whilst researching an answer for a posting in uk.food+drink.misc. Yummy!

Another childhood hero gone

Number 7 drops it down a cog, gives it a handful, lifts the front wheel and disappears over the horizon.

A good afternoon's sport

Not only did England's Six Nations team overpower a brave Italian squad, David Coulthard pulled off a suprise win in Melbourne in the first F1 Grand Prix of the year.

Useless info but fun

It is always comforting to know that our national broadcaster is finding new ways to spend our licence fee. I just wandering into a page hidden on their News site entitled 10 things we didn't know this time last week. Keep up the good work, lads and lassies.

A meal at Zeera

The meal at Zeera turned out to be a great night out. The raiding party consisted of me, a bignoseduglyguy; SWMBO, my long-suffering wife; Herr Doctor, a marathon-running medico friend and The Deputy Head, his teacher wife. Herr Doctor knows the owners and this proved to be a valuable source of insider knowledge.

A point of interest for those with an ecological or architectural bent is that this restaurant is situated underneath the 'green bridge' which spans the always busy Mile End Road. This bridge is covered with grass and trees to link two sections of the long linear park that bounds the road on its northern and southern edges. A picture of and from the bridge respectively can be found here
and here.

The decor and layout of the restaurant are very contemporary, with a very high suspended wooden ceiling, panelled walls with the odd metre square photograph of various aspects post-war Indian life from the owner's own albums. The menu is not as overwhelming as some and provides a good variety of old staples and newer variations to choose from. When we arrived, it looked to be a slow night for a Saturday but, thanks to a recent glowing review on London Weekend TV, it soon filled to capapcity.

From the starters, Herr Doctor chose Murg Chat which was a mild but flavoursome combination of julienned chicken breast on a bed of onions, peppers, beetroots and tomatoes, derssed with lemon and coriander. SWMBO plumped for the Tulsi Lentil-ka-Shorba soup, which was reported back as a thick, hot, yummy soup positively bursting with coriander. The ever-slender Deputy Head, who runs dance classes as well as teaching full time and mothering six kids, ordered the Zeera treat mixed grill option comprising of murgh tikka, tandoori lamb chop, lamb boti and salmon tikka - all of which were tender, full flavoured but never overpowering. I had the marvellously named Jalpani Pani Pat, perfectly cooked jumbo prawns that had been marinated, according to the menu, in 'herbs and tumeric'. Despite gushing praise, the wily owner wouldn't divulge any more details, thereby confidently securing a return visit from me to try and work it out.

I followed this with Khadi Gosht, a hot peppery lamb (on and off the bone, interestingly) stew made to a Central Indian recipe based around coriander seeds and chillis. This was not as exciting as I had hoped but the large portion was by no means a dud and I enjoyed every mouthful. To my right, SWMBO tucked into a Zafarani Shashilik, which she claimed was amongst the tenderest chicken she had eaten in recent years. At this point, Herr Doctor piped up saying that, amongst his many medical commitments, he sits on the local EH panel. Apparently, two of their number declare Zeera to be one of the few restaurants on their East London patch that they will eat in with no demur. Furthermore, impressed by the tenderness of the chuck, they too had pressed for details on marinating but had been denied also! Herr Doctor's Zafarani Tikka proved to be far from the usual work-a-day tikkas elsewhere locally and was rich in flavour as well as tender, nicely charred in places but never too much. His wife The Deputy Head joined me in choosing lamb but favouring the medium heat Kashmiri-spiced Rogan-e-Nizam, which she pronounced emminently eatable.

All these were accompanied by pulao rices, one flavoured with fresh lemon the other roasted cumin seeds, a delicious dal of black lentils (Punjab-di-Dal) and a medium hot mixed vegetable dish called Millijuli Shobji. With marathon runners and drivers in the party, we shared a very fresh and fruity Chenin Blanc to drink and, whilst a tad expensive, this was just the ticket alongside all the heat and spice, though the lack of a cooler (and me forgetting to ask for one) saw it go off a little as it warmed. Nice menu touches were an accurate coloured chili icon heat guide and symbols to warn of the level of nut content. This is no 'every Friday night' local curry house (not on my salary anyway) and the prices reflect that, though with the bill topping out at £100 for four including drinks and tips, it was by no means out of step with the food and service we received.

Do I want to live here anymore?

Saturday's have a basic pattern in this house. Sleep as late as the kids will allow. Breakfast and shower in no particular order. Walk over to the shops in the local square. Drop off dry cleaning and chat with the owners Gary and Gail. Pop next door to the newsagent for the Saturday newspaper. Back home for some fresh coffee and read the paper whilst planning the rest of the weekend.

Not this morning.

I walked over to the shops on the square - a mere 30 yards - to find POLICE tape everywhere and little clusters of local folk gossiping in muted voices. One didn't need to be Sherlock Homes or Andy Sipowicz to work it out. A friend, standing in her front garden in her dressing gown, beckons me over and says the word we are hearing more and more each day:

"Murder"

I'll spare you the numerous versions but each I heard contained words like knife, shots, kids and, almost inevitably, drugs. In recent weeks, Londoners, like so many in inner cities around the world, have woken up to an 83 year old being beaten and burned, a man knifed cleaning his windscreen in a petrol station and the biggest ever crime reconstruction in the UK to find the killer of an American woman killed whilst jogging in a park. Whilst London has always had it's share of violent crime, our area has seen a marked increase over recent years and each incident makes me pause and question if this is still a place I want my family to grow up in.

At home, we have discussed moving out of town for a long time and, with my recent job relocation to the other side of town and redundancy possible, these discussions have become more frequency and relevant. The original motivation was to get to find a house and smallholding where we could be a little more self sufficient, growing organic and eating better. Of late and try as I might, I can't stop feeling that we should be making just such a move as soon as possible - not so much for self sufficiency as self preservation.

At last, I get my curry...

A month ago my wife and a friend tricked me into attending my 'surprise' birthday party by saying we were off out for a curry. Eating out with friends is one of my favourite ways of spending time and Indian food is amongst my favourite so, whilst I was overwhelmed to see friends old and new at my party, my stomach longed for the promised heat and spices.

Tonight, they will make good on that promise and we're off to Zeera, a much touted and well reviewed restaurant in London's East End

With reviews like "The best restaurant yet!", "The Star of East London" and "The best
restaurant in London", I'm hopeful for a fun evening with good friends and good food.

A book at bedtime

Blogging isn't the only thing I have returned to recently.

In the early nineties, I used to work opposite a bookshop and it was there I first found the books of Lawrence Block.

If you like crime fiction but don't know Block, try a novel or three from his various series based around the lives of ex-cop Matt Scudder, burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr and Evan Tanner, a spook who never sleeps.

Right, I'm off to bed in London to read about ginmills in New York.

Too pooped to PUG

The UKPUG are having one of their twice yearly meets tonight and yet again I'm not there. I hate it that my work, which I enjoy, is just way too busy at this time and that this is impacting on my geekish activities. Less time to blog, less time to user group stuff are now added to a list that already includes more time commuting and more time away from the family.

Having said that, in the current climate of post 9/11 global downturn and international sabre-rattling, I am grateful to have a job and will stop moaning now....especially as the pizzas have just arrived!

One Homeless Guy, Two Blogs

One of the joys of having time to return to blogging and blog reading (after my workload and RSI/CTS enforced break, for new readers) is rediscovering other's blogs I like and catching up.

One perennial favourite of mine is the homeless guy which is, for me, one of the very best there is out there. Not only does Kevin Barbieux truly open up a world that few really know about with his frank and forthright writing, in doing so he totally confounds the stereotyped misconceptions society holds and perpetuates about those who live on the streets.

In fact, Kevin has enough insights and opinions on subjects that have nothing to do with homelessness that he now has an eponymous second blog where he quotes and excerpts his favourite thinkers and commentators.

Lotus Bloats Woes

I'd just like to go on record as being entirely pissed off with being compelled to use Lotus Notes on a daily basis. If you are are fellow inmate in Notes Hell, you'll know the thousand reasons why. If not (i.e. your employer's IS procurement team has made a rather more sane choice of email client) then take a look at the archived version of the Interface Hall of Shame to see what some of us have to put up with.

Oh, and by the way, in case you got the feeling I worked for some ill-informed lo-tech backwater of a company, let me put you straight - I don't - I work for one of the largest telecommunications carriers in the world.....

PDAs to monitor puff..

The BBC NEWS Technology pages are carrying an interesting piece on the use of O2 XDA PPCs to monitor asthma.

Where did the last two months go?

Much prompting from my buddies Chuck and Jason has got me back to my blog and Chuck has dragged my old b2 based blog kicking and screaming into MovableType. Work's still crazy but hopefully I'll still have time to blog again....