Jacqs 40th

Jacquies 40th birthday spent up town in a posh hotel in town. My parents came over to look after the kids and off we went. We checked in at the hotel about 4:00PM and I requested a corner room for the extra space. The room was fantastic and the floor to ceiling windows gave a great view out from the ninth floor.
The complimentary bottle of wine was swiftly necked as can be seen in the photo. In the same shot, you can spot the MacBook with me in its camera sights enjoying the free broadband. I was well impressed with the design of the toiletries and was compelled to take a photo. Well, I don't think it's weird.

We went out to eat and more drinking around the canal and Mailbox area. Town was chilly and christmassy, it was nice to be wandering around just the two of us. We went to the Electric Cinema to watch Pan's Labyrinth. We watched teh film from a sofa with a nice bottle of wine. The film itself was good but pretty harrowing in places. After the film we hit another bar, the Sunflower Lounge. Standing at the bar amongst the young people was entertaining as was the conversation. And of course, more drinking. Can't remember what time we left there but it was a short stagger back to the hotel and straight into the hotel bar. We took our drinks back to the room but couldn't even finish them. Game over.

You can imagine how we felt in the morning. It wasn't pretty. Some nice fried food at breakfast helped steady me. Then we made our way slowly home for a quiet Christmas Eve.

Armed With Torches

We got a Wii!! Jacq took the kids to the cinema and I popped into town to pick up the Nintendo goodness. Phew, that's a relief, the kids have a main Christmas present after all. Who's that saying that the present is really for me and Jacq? Shame on you!

Tonight Mike and I went out with Paul for the obligatory Christmas drink. Not that it wasn't pleasant, but when things get to the once-a-year state, what does that say? I don't know. The highlight of the night was walking back from the pub and talking a short-cut through the woods armed with Mike's torches. Mike always has torches about his person, he's that kind of guy.

Not Christmas Shopping

Lovely day today, blissfully away from the hellhole that is christmas shopping around about now. We went to see Flushed Away which was great. I laughed out loud plenty of times. Great voices, great slapstick humour, rats getting their nuts bashed, and a healthy dose of French-baiting, everything that a movie needs for greatness. CG not bad but could have been better. After the cinema we took a stroll around the German Market which was not too packed as everyone was probably going headless-chicken-crazy around the shops. Sampled many yummy foods then popped into the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery for some culture. A choir in one gallery was providing a very festive ambience. I lingered a while in the Buddha Gallery. We did some interactive and craft stuff in some of the other galleries. I liked an artist called Robert Perry a local guy I'd not heard of before who paints exclusively outdoors. Next door to an exhibition by Patrick Hughes of his perspective paintings that the kids liked.

Having my say.

Hi,

Wife here. Went to Dylan's school play today and what did Mark do throughout? Play games on his phone!

Then we went to the dentist and Mark was the only one that needed treatment - hurrah.

Christmas Disco

It was the Christmas disco at school tonight. Dylan went for the first time. Sounds like he and his mates had a great time. He said they were dancing but I bet they were also doing their share of kung-fu fighting and the like. Harriet went after, looking cute. She also won two prizes in assembly today, runner-up in a card design competition and a 'respect' award for just being generally nice I think. So proud.

Tonight on the computer I discovered MediaMonkey which looks like a real good management tool for large mp3 collections. I'm loving it right now. Hopefully it will assist me in grappling with the huge admin task of sorting out my tags and coverart.

Christmas Tree

Thankfully, this morning I wasn't suffering from the beers the night before, which was a bonus. I got down all of the Christmas stuff from the loft and we set about putting up the tree. Weather was dreadful so we spent the whole day inside. The weekend finished off with another splendid episode of Lost.

Chancers Winter Meetup 2006

Today was the Chancers meetup and it was truly awesome to see everybody, Phil, Dan, John (Trapper), Adrian, Mike (The Fox), Chi, Dave, Geoff and Steve.

Phil and I travelled into town together and worshipped a short while at the Apple store before heading into the German Market for some knoblauchbrot and glühwein. We then met up with everyone else at the Malt House pub. It was a joy to see that pretty much everyone had turned up.

Chancers chow-down at the Big Wok

Plenty of beers and much chinese food was consumed and LOADS of good conversation was had. A few of the guys expressed real pleasure at the common experiences we had during our time at Siemens and the fact that we are making a real effort to keep in touch with the meetups. Long may it continue I say.

Chancers 'chilling' outside the Sunflower Lounge

Chancers bid farwell at New Street station

See you all at the Summer 2007 meetup guys!

Drifted By

The week has drifted by without a blog post. Just haven't been in the mood. It was Jim's funeral on Wednesday. Not a fun time, but went as well as these things can.

A gathering tomorrow of the Chancers. Looking forward to it. And on Sunday it's putting up the christmas tree time.

This is a rubbish blog post and I thinks I'd better just stop and go to bed.

Through The Viewfinder

Finally, after scoring myself a Kodak Duaflex on eBay, I took my first TTV snaps today. I haven't yet built the required tube for it but I just wanted to click something in the back garden. I'm really expecting a big boost in photographic inspiration with this contraption as I love the grungy square format. Expect my photostream to be flooded with the stuff soon.

Getting Back Into It

Getting back into the music thing a bit more. Mike came over last night and we had a dabble. Slowly getting more into Ableton Live. In amongst the improvising and twiddling there were a few moments that I take with me this morning. The trick is to capture these moments and wrestle them into pieces.

Pebbles was 'done' by the vet yesterday and the poor thing is not herself right now. She is very subdued, not our normal bouncy puppy. Hopefully she'll be back to strength soon.

Working at home today and much more into it. As well as the work stuff there are a few chores to be done as well. Jacq has a flat tyre that I have to get sorted and I want to pop down to the Citroen dealer to have a look at the Picassos they've got. So better get back to a bit of work.

Outer Space Is A Good Thing

On the way to pick up the kids I spotted this little cutie parked just a short way from school. I just had to stop and take a snap with my phone. You don't see many of those around these parts. A passer-by looked at me oddly and commented that the car looked like 'something from outer space' like that was a bad thing. Surely outer space is a good thing, isn't it?

Worked at home again today as Jacq was out with Mary sorting out more business. Got a bit more done than I did on Friday. Nice soundtrack provided by my main MP3 archive connected to my laptop via iTunes. You can checkout what I've been listening to here.

Quiet Weekend

Autumn Leaves. Cannock Chase. 19th November 2006.

Quiet weekend. Harriet on a sleepover Friday night, she finally fell asleep at six Saturday morning. Cute. I remember the mysterious allure of staying up all night. Took a prezzie over to Lynette as it was her 40th on Friday. Today was mostly just hanging. Tonight we sat down with the kids, a big bowl of popcorn and the new Cars DVD which just arrived yesterday.

A Very Autumn Day

We got a call at five this morning, Jacqs dad had passed away. She is over with her sisters right now. I'm working at home. Well, trying. Took Pebbles for her morning walk in the woods. Autumn dampness. No sun today. I feel kinda muted too. Chatted with dad on Skype for a good while. Still struggling to get work stuff done. I'll go and pick the kids up from school in a minute.

Skype Me

Having tried and failed to get video chat working from iChat to a PC app, I relented and downloaded Skype tonight. And guess what, it just worked. Quite impressed really. Of course the mac version looks cooler. If you want to chat sometime, I'm mark.mcquitty on there.

Another mac app I had a play with recently is the splendid Delicious Library media manager. Scanning barcodes with the iSight webcam to add items to the library just made me giggle every time I did it. I think I might upgrade to the full version when they update to version 2.

Back in PC-land, I picked up Quake 4 for a few quid at Game recently and I'm gonna install that now and shoot the shit out of some monsters! Good times :)

Some Random Stuff

• This looks like a very interesting piece about Eno on Apple.com promoting his new dvd 77 Million Paintings and giving Macs props. One for my christmas list I think.
  

• Nice post about the latest Spiderman 3 trailer that captures well a number of questions that came to mind when I first watched it. Despite little niggles, I'm stoked for this movie. Roll on next May.

• (Snigger) seems like Zune is getting soundly trashed by everyone who comes in contact with it. From what I heard on TWiT the other day, it really does appear to be completely doomed. I'll be sticking with iPods thanks very much. Here is how The Guardian reported the coverage.

• And finally as a treat for you all, some lovely footage of X-Ray Spex in 1978. The first band I ever saw live. This was the start of it all for me. Enjoy.
  

www.flickrmeets.co.uk

Aeiou from the Birmingham Flickr group has setup a website called Birmingham Photographers to showcase the work of those in the group. And what a nice website it is. The clean and simple design shows off my composite photo beautifully (see screenshot). Now my problem is choosing which photographs of mine I wish to submit. Looking over my photostream it seems that most of my photos are family or gigs. I think I need more 'art' photos in there.

This Week In Tech

No wonder 'This Week In Tech' always tops the podcast charts, it's always interesting and entertaining. Here's an episode from back in August featuring my favourites John C. Dvorak and Cory Doctorow. If you got some time, take a listen...


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Trusted System

One of the hurdles for me in implementing a GTD-type system in my life is deciding on the Trusted System. I've thought for a long time that this system is a single entity and I was stuck deciding between something real or something electronic. The something real would be some type of organiser thing containing lots of lists and actions and when I lost this object I'd be screwed. The electronic thing would be computer based which would be rendered useless if I didn't have a pc or internet connection to hand. I've only just begun to think that I've been completely wrong. Neither of the two approaches is the Trusted System. The Trusted System is the whole thing! Duh. The real object and the electronic approach are just Capture Devices. I can run both if I like as long as I process them as inputs into my system. I think get it now. What a dufus!

See? When I'm online more I can blog about any stupid thought that pops up and then I can stop rambling about it in my own head. Therefore it's a bit quieter in there. Hence better mindfulness and hopefully a bit of GTD!

That's What Happens

Agreed, my blog posts of late have been poor and infrequent. But it's not that I'm fed up with the blog, more that I'm simply not inspired to write much at the end of the working day. An internet connection is a rare thing for me of late so I'm not in a position to blog when an idea hits me. And blog posts being what they are, it's rare for any idea for a post to be strong enough to hang around in my brain until I'm next online.

So now I've bothered to open up a new post and ramble a bit, what else do I have to post about? Well, not much really, the mind's gone blank again. That's what happens. Now do you understand?

Working At Home What A Joy

After working up in Manchester for four days, I'm working at home today and what a joy it is having no M6 to deal with. And what a treat having a proper lunch of pasta with pesto and olives. The sun is shining though it's cold out there. Jacq has gone off to the cinema. John The Builder is fitting new guttering out the front. Pebbles is padding around the garden freshly shorn from yesterday at the groomers. Dad popped in for a cuppa this morning as Mom is away for the weekend with friends. All's well.