The Art Of WFH

Yet another day working from home (or WFH, as it shall be referred to from now on) which takes the total days for this week to three. A new record for me. Must confess to still not being as effective as I would like to be. I have to improve this if I want to continue with the WFH routine. Having to work on the family dining table is not ideal and there are many, many distractions throughout the domestic day to contend with.

Yesterday I popped into the office for some traditional desk action. The highlight being confirmation of the tech specialist conference in Karlsruhe. Hotels and flights now booked, this trip is on! Looking forward to a bit of travelling, something I haven't done for a long time.

Giving Githead A Miss

A second day working at home. My neck was stiff this morning (and still is now) so I gave the commute a miss. I was planning on going to see Githead tonight at The Garage in London. But laziness got the better of me. I don't expect that the set has changed much since the QEH gig so I'm probably not missing much. Would have been good to catch up with the IC massive but it's a long way to drive on a wet evening just for that.

Now THAT'S What I Call A Salad Sandwich!

Sometimes 'Working From Home' has it's advantages you know. Had quite a productive session this morning and stopped to make this beast of a sarnie. Probably my favourite ever meal, the salad sandwich. Oh well, blog post done, break over, back to the Functional Spec.

Drink At Heights

My new desktop background, showing off a composite I assembled this morning from our visit to the Heights Of Abraham last weekend.

Took Dylan and Sofia to Dions party today and left Harriet playing with Aksa. Everyone had a great time. Jacq and I planned to get lunch at the California Pizza Factory in Harborne, but on arrival we were disappointed to find that it's closed down. Some new thing in it's place. End of an era for us.

Dylan has discovered the telephone. Spent ages on the phone this afternoon to his mates Sumeet and Arron. It was so funny listening to him chatting away.

A Nice Saturday

A nice Saturday today with swimming lessons this morning then the afternoon spent at the Belbroughton Scarecrow Weekend. Lizzie, Steve and Theresa were there too. Weather was nice. All in all it was very nice just wandering around the place.

Worked from home again yesterday. Quite a productive few hours. Getting back into the discipline of it all.

Quite a good week just gone. As Phil mentions in his blog, there's a Technical Consultants Conference in Karlsruhe at the end of November and we've been approved to attend. If that comes off it should be excellent.

Tags

Tags are great! It is such a cool way to organise information now that I've finally got the hang of using it. My first experience was with Flickr, and like most things I mused too much over what words to use. But lately I've loosened up a bit through tagging my bookmarks in My Web and I've found that the more tags you use, the better resource of info you have at the end. Obvious really, but it takes me time.

Tags are being used more and more by different sites, there's even a name for it, Folksonomy. Not very catchy. There was an article in The Guardian about it recently.

Would you like to see my tag cloud? You may have to sign in to see this, not sure.

Revolution Controller

Nintendo do it again! Always prepared to think that bit wider. The new controller design is a classic example. Like many, I first saw it and thought Nintendo had lost the plot. But now I'm convinced that it's going to be awesome. The thought of using it as a sword / lightsaber will be so much fun. Check out an article about it here.

Cold In The Shade

Working at home today at the end of an ok sort of week. I'm plodding through my current tasks as best I can. Jacq not feeling too good so I left her in bed and took the kids down to school this morning. A cloudless blue sky. Bright sunshine, but cold in the shade. It's starting to feel a bit like autumn. Soon the back garden will be full of leaves.

Chugged away at my documents all morning while the home PC was busy hoovering up on Soulseek. Quite a haul. More than I've had for a long time. Listened to a few tracks from the forthcoming Boards Of Canada CD. That's one I need to buy for real.

Puters Gone Crazy!

Have had a whole heap of problems trying to keep my puters online recently which has had me suspecting router problems. Tracked the problem down to a DNS failure which could be bypassed by manually setting the addresses in the TCP properties. Finally tonight I found out thanks to a forum post that it's iTunes 5 that has caused the mayhem! Apparently some bundled service called Bonjour is causing DNS conflicts. I'm glad that there is an explanation for the craziness and hope Apple sorts it soon.

In other news, there isn't much news. Yesterday was an in-the-house sort of day and today was a quite good office day. Picked up The Guardian and I love the new size, but still getting used to the logo. Got a 19" TFT monitor for my desk today which works lovely in dual desktop mode with my laptop. I was enjoying just dragging windows from one side to the other. Easily pleased me. Not that the wife would agree.

One More Go

Worked from home yesterday for the first time in ages. Good to be not driving to Coventry. Even better to see the kids in their new uniforms going into school.

Inbetween doing work stuff, Jacq and I shopped for clothes for Harriets trip next month. It was much easier picking up the clothes without dragging the kids around the shops. Thankfully it all fitted at treat when tried on at home.

This morning the kids had swimming then we went over to Lizzies for the afternoon. She did a curry which was very nice. Steve and I discussed the imminent design changes to The Guardian which I was completely unaware of. The merits of the new masthead typeface were discussed and we both agreed that we didn't like it much but that it has probably been considered long and hard by others way more qualified than us.

We took Super Monkey Ball Deluxe over to play which I picked up yesterday for a good price (20) at Game. A top game it is, with great little mini-games inside. The footie game is a fave of mine. The main game itself is the kind of things that provokes screams of pain upon failure, but always results in the urge for 'one more go'.

Up Early

The hum of a police helicopter over the house woke me at 4:30AM from a sleep that wasn't very restful to begin with. Too hot and mad dreams about work stuff meant I had to go downstairs for a drink. The PC was running so I checked that my Soulseek downloads had completed and started this post. I'm thinking now that I might as well go into work early and get some more hours in.

Back To School (Learning Stuff)

Kids back at school today. Jacq says they both have nice teachers. Harriet is in year 5 now. So next year is her last before senior school. Gosh. Time is marching on. Dyl got a sword from the local post office as a treat on the way home. A splendid samurai type blade that we played with over at Jims tonight.

Got Laika best of CD 'Lost In Space' in the post today. Top notch bargain at 3.99 off eBay. What a top quality band Laika are. Yet totally ignored it seems. Pleased to see in the liner notes much respect for Wire.

Mike couldn't make the sesh tonight so I had another hour with Ableton. Still getting familiar with the program and trying to establish a workflow. Not sure if I'm doing stuff correctly at the moment but it's fun and I'm liking my current results so that's good enough. Need to do much more though. These current things are just the necessary initial experiments.

MUST just mention this article spotted over at Lifehacker. Absoultely spot on stuff. REALLY connecting with this. Read it here, 11 Tips to surviving a day job with your creativity intact.

New Sofas

Had my first look at a PSP this morning in a Game store. Have to concede it's quite a sexy beast but not sure that I really want one. Played with Wipeout Pure and the graphics were stunning but it seemed a bit sluggish to me. I like the fact that it can browse t'web but if that's something I really need then I'd get better functionality from a PDA.

This afternoon we ordered a couple of new sofas. Our old ones are too big. Smaller sofas will give us some flexibility in organising and decorating the living space. Included two stools in the order for some feet-up time when kicking back in front of the telly.

Sorted!

Harriet passed her Level 7 swimming test this morning with some superb technique. I'm so proud of her. Dylan did well but still needs to concentrate more. He's still just in there ducking his head under water when Keith is trying to talk to him. He's always having fun. We went swimming yesterday afternoon and he spent the whole time underwater.

In the afternoon I spent some time with my central heating system trying to understand what is going on with it. Having changed the diverter valve recently I've been focussed on the fact that the independent control of HW and CH I expected is not available. After much digging around with my meter I started rechecking the wiring around the programmable controller and stone me if I didn't find that the damn thing was wired up wrong from the start! I was well chuffed by this discovery and after changing the connections I had full control of HW and CH. Sorted!

Tonight Jacq and I watched Manhattan. An absolute classic. A wonderful movie. Worthy of a copy.

I'm A Post-Punk

You're a Post-Punk. You know 70s punk was cool, but it was mostly just a stepping stone for the greater intellectualism of what would come after. The 80s were amazing. You quite possibly have huge hair, and may wear lots of black. Snare drums need reverb. Lots and lots of reverb.

You Know Yer Indie. Let's Sub-Categorize.
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Sleeping Over & Good Tunes

Becky has been staying with us for a couple of days and Harriet has had a great time with her. Steve picked up tonight on his way home. Dylan is over at Davids for his first sleepover. What fun everyone is having!

Mike phoned to remind me about info I'd promised him and failed to deliver. Slack I am, and no excuse. I've now mailed him the info and hope he gets a result as I was stoked to hear how excited he was about the project and about Ableton Live.

Ripping and listened to a few tunes dug out of boxes. Promised Dave at work a copy something by the Pixies. He's just been to the Reading Festival but not on the right day to catch Black Francis and friends. What a blast it is listening to Surfer Rosa.

The Money Thing

In the middle of a Bank Holiday weekend, it's been a productive few days doing various tasks. I finally changed the diverter valve on the central heating system, a job that's been hanging over my head for a few months. Glad that's done.

Many of the other tasks have involved spending some money. Money I wish we weren't spending right now but there seems no other choice. It's bad timing with recent work announcements that will probably result in me doing less overtime in the coming months. And I can already feel christmas breathing down my neck. Trying my best not to stress about this. Trying.

Sorted Mikes lappy out on Thursday night and I've had Duggos PC this weekend for a rebuild also. I haven't had my own lappy out for days. Must get more time with Ableton Live 5 my current fave rave. The skills can only build if the time is put in.

Another bit of software that's floating my boat is Konfabulator. A bunch of desktop widgets like those in OSX but amazingly they were out before the OSX Dashboard. Check my desktop here...

They are very cool and some I'm finding really useful. I hope in the future Yahoo integrate more of their services into Konfabulator. Stuff like Flickr and the Yahoo calendar would be smart to have on the desktop at all times. Still evaluating how much of a load these things put on the system but I should really have more RAM in this PC anyway. But this brings us back to the money thing.

Spontaneous Curry

Jacq and the kids were over at Marys today so I drove over from work to pick them up. The kids had a great time as usual. Got talked into staying there longer and getting a curry in. Sitting round the table afterwards, Steve was in fits of laughter playing with 20Q (his word was 'fart'). He had the rest of us falling about. And then the bloody thing guessed it correctly! That thing mystifies everyone that comes into contact with it. It's amazing.

Workshop

The workshop got a bit of momentum going today and I got quite a lot out of it. Never mind PCS7, there's so much of SIMATIC Manager I don't know! If I get put on another non-SIMATIC project I will refuse as I'm determined to try an achieve some sort of expertise in SIMATIC. I feel like I've lost all the experience I previously had and am kind of starting from scratch but I'm relishing the process of getting into it. Respect due to VMWare which is impressing me during the workshop. Tonight I spotted a ref on the net to running OSX in VMWare so I'm on the case with a torrent downloading of an image right now.

Late getting over to Jims tonight as I couldn't duck out of work early. The kids were in fine form tonight playing with their McDonalds 'The Dog' toys. Such a pair of cuties they are. Apparently Dylan was doing great this afternoon at the swimming baths. Harriet was teaching him how to do handstands. I was determined to get back into some Ableton Live 5 action tonight but the time just tore away from me. Oh well, maybe tomorrow. Looking forward to second session this Thursday.

Old Faces (No Offence)

Back to work in dreadful weather dampened the spirits slightly but it was good to be back and see some old faces. Phil was back after a major stint at Winchester. I was most impressed by the AWESOME email he received from the Operations Manager speaking of him and his project in glowing terms. I think the phrase 'raised the bar' was used which convinces me that Phil is now secure in his position as 'Top Software Engineer In SAS'. Official. Popped out lunchtime with SteveD and caught up with Steve Yearl. Good to see him, it's been quite a while since the last meet. All is well with him and the chat was good as always.

PCS7 Workshops all week with Wolfhard. His flight was delayed today so we started late but I'm hopeful of some very useful sessions as the week progresses.