Sweeties, Pies and Ginger

I met up with a couple of old colleagues and friends today. Firstly I had lunch with SteveT as due to me having to work all hours last week and he having to help Aliya outfit her school room, so we couldn't do dinner. It was great to catch up as it's been more than a couple of years since we saw each other last. In the evening I met up with RogerB, whom I haven't seen for about seven years, and his other half. Everyone will be pleased to hear that he hasn't changed a bit, except he evidently eat vegetables now. It was really great to see them both again, I just hope it wont be so long till next time.

Everyone seems to be on a blogging wane at the moment, at least most of the people I know who blog. It's not that I don't have anything to blog, got bloody loads in fact, it's just a combination of can't be arsed and too much to do at work and home to be bothered.

If I wasn't veggie before watching this, I would be now. When they cut the cows throat I nearly barfed. If you're squeamish, then it's definitely a program to watch through your hands. Gruesome.

I've decided to digitise my vinyl collection, it'll probably take most of the year, but then I'll be able to listen to all those obscure twelve inches that I've got. The main problem is what turntable to buy to enable me to do this, as you can now buy USB turntables that plug straight into your computer. However, these look suspiciously like the bottom of the range DJ decks with a built in pre amp and USB interface, I know I'd get better results just buying the bottom of the range deck, plus a half decent pre amp, cartridge and stylus.

However, I could get a really good budget audiophile deck for the same price as a USB deck, but it doesn't come with pitch control or an electronic speed change facility. You have to take the platter off and reconfigure the belt drive, I know this would annoy me after a while. So I'm in a bit of a quandary at the moment, so I buy a cheap DJ deck and get pitch control and the ability to switch between 33 and 45 easily, or do I by a better deck, but sacrifice ease of use?

Either way I was thinking of buying the Cambridge Audio Azur 540P Phono pre-amplifier as it gets good reviews and isn't too expensive. But, all the stuff I want to digitise is dance music, so I don't even know if it's worth spending money on a half decent pre-amp at all. All I know for sure is, the better the equipment, the better the sound, so for that reason alone I should maybe sacrifice easy of us to get the best recording I can.

Took the car to be scrapped this morning, it was quite an emotional experience. I've had that car for over eight years and she's been a good little runner who's taken her fair share of abuse. However, time has finally caught up with her and not only was the gear box on the way out, I'd already lost fifth gear, but the M.O.T. showed up some rather nasty corrosion to the chassis. It's currently looking like I'll inherit Karen's nasty VW Golf and we'll get a second hand large family car. I Just want my wee Corsa back...

I'm toying with the idea of changing my website, depends if I find the time though. Drupal looks to be pretty good and it integrates with Gallery2, which is nice. I'll have to have a play with it at home and see what I can get running.

Karen, Finlay and I are on holiday in Turkey. It's been very nice so far and we're all gradually relaxing. The wee man is the centre of attention where ever he goes, he's loving it.

Some thieving wanker has cloned one of my debit cards and emptied my account. The matter is now with the banks fraud department and I should be getting a letter in the next few days. Hopefully I'll get the money back as no doubt the goods that have been bought were all sent to addresses other than mine, so it should be quite easy to prove it wasn't me.

I noticed it on Saturday morning when the cash point wouldn't give me any money, even though I knew there was hundreds available. I looked at my account online and noticed a few odd transactions, so I phoned the bank and canceled my card and disputed the transactions. There were only three dodgey transactions on the account on Saturday, but another three have turned up today and I'm expecting at least three more tomorrow.

It's a total pain in the arse, but it's amazing how many people it appears to have happened to. You mention it to someone and it's either happened to them, or to someone they know. I'm not a particularly happy camper at the moment.

I'm currently sitting in the Air Canada lounge at Calgary airport waiting on my flight back to the UK. I've been here for two weeks and I'm more than ready to get home and see Karen and Finlay. It'll be nice to sleep in my own bed and eat food I've prepared, I'm sick of Subway...

I got an email from Air Canada during the week informing me that I was being promoted to Elite status within their Aeroplan scheme (their version of Air Miles). This means I've been credited with over 35,000 miles and means I'm now entitled to certain benefits.

I get preferential check in, the luggage also gets a priority tag so it comes off first at the other end. I get the use of the air port lounge, so free beer and snacks and free wireless; hence me writing this. I also get to board the plane first, which will be nice as I then wont have any issues with getting my baggage stowed.

There are also some benefits that I have to choose, like free upgrade passes and the like. The only issue I have with getting to Elite status, is that I totally bypassed the Prestige level and I'm not sure if I'll get the choices from tat as well.

The real bummer of course, is that that I don't know if I'll be back to Calgary in the near future as the projects first phase is nearly done. We'll just have to wait and see how the project copes over the next month and see what happens. Until then, I'm making the most of this lounge...

KAren and I have been on dial up since we moved house. What a nightmare! It's meant that we lost the house network and only one of us could be online at a time (not stricly true I know, but I couldn't be arsed to setup a piggy back on a dial up). The broadband got switched back on yesterday and we once again have a proper network and download speeds. How the hell did we ever cope on dial up...?

You're not going to see that time and date very often... ;-)

Finally after a couple of months of waiting we finally exchanged contracts on a new house. It feels like a lifetime ago that we put the offer in and the road to get here has been a bit bumpy, but we've finally made it. So we leave Cottenham on Tuesday next week and pitch up in West Wratting. It doesn't quite feel real...

I should really post something on here, but I can't be arsed. It seems that whenever I have a bit of free time, I've got no inclination to actually post. I've got lots to say, but just can't be arse to say it. Bit sad really.

It's been an entertaining twelve hours at home with both Karen and the wee man throwing up all over the place. It started last night when Karen and I had a dodgy take-a-way from the local curry house. I stayed up to watch the Women's Triathlon at the Commonwealth Games before heading for bed, when I got there, Karen was complaining of feeling sick.

Around half an hour later she was sick, luckily I'd got an empty basin and put it by her side of the bed. She has a habit of leaving it till the last moment before realising she can't make it to the loo. She was obviously in some discomfort and threw up every hour and a half or so for the rest of the night.

The wee man got in on the game when he coughed so hard, at around three in the morning, he brought up some bile. When I took him in to see Karen just before eight o'clock, he proceeded to chunder all over the bed. Although the worst was still to come...

After giving the wee man his lunch I was letting him wander around holding on to his walker. Without warning he retched once and then a waterfall of vomit came pouring out his mouth all over the walker and the floor. To make matters worse, he then filled his nappy with a non-solid filling that overflowed and ran down his legs.

Overall it's been a really tiring twelve hours full of foul smelling nastiness. Karen is feeling a bit better and the wee man is currently having a kip, so hopefully we're over the worst of what ever has hit us.

Karen and I put our house on the market just before Christmas as we need more space, what with the we e man and her business. We had quite a bit of interest and a number of second viewings; the second couple who came to view it wanted to put an offer in, but hadn't sold their house. We have found a buyer though and yesterday we agreed to sell them the house. Now we just need to find a house to buy...

I'm trying to redesign my website as it's been like this for ages and while I like it, it's getting a bit boring. Problem is I haven't a clue what colours go together, nor do I have the time to actually changes al the pages. I keep on telling myself that I'll move to a content system that uses templates, or that I'll learn how to use Dreamweaver or something similar. Either way I need some inspiration.

So I'm a lazy git and don't post updates enough; it's not because I don't want to, it's just with work and training I can't be arsed most of the time. Sometimes I get half way through writing an entry and just hit the back button, as I can't be arsed to finish it. I'd rather be out training, well, I'd rather be anywhere than at work I think...

So I've been a busy bee over the last few weeks, I've trained every morning except two; my parents were visiting and I went to London. While in London I visited ProFeet and got a couple of custom footbeds made for my running and cycling shoes. I can honestly say they have transformed my running; can't wait for a chance to get out on my bike and try them in my new cycling shoes as well.

Finlay is growing up really fast; he's now on three square meals a day and is crawling everywhere. Gone are the days where you could plonk him down, pop into the kitchen/bathroom/bedroom and he'd still be there. He's also got two teeth and likes vegetables, which is good.

Finally I'm of to Prauge with work this weekend for the annual Christmas jolly; I've never been and am really looking forward to it. I'm planning on taking my big pinhole camera, so it should be an interesting trip.

Ages ago I used to run a photo gallery with IDS, a Perl based album system. Unfortunatley my hoster, CSoft, changed the OS of the machine I was based on a couple of times and PerlMagick, the Perl interface to ImageMagick, stopped working. This forced me to look at other album applications, one of which was Gallery.

My initial view of Gallery wasn't positive, it was just lacking in features compared to IDS and I really didn't like the admin interface or default layout. I ended up running a script that generated static HTML pages, but this was really limiting and even though I could template it, the results were disapointing.

I decided that I could write better static album software using the Java Advanced Imaging (JAI) API and set about writing a small application. It was based on the chain of command pattenr and used Jelly to construct the final HTML pages. I have a very basic version working, but as with most things, real life got in the way and I never got round to finishing it.

What I really wanted to do was write a Struts based web application that was similar to IDS, but used the JAI API to manipulate the iamges. The only problem with this is my hoster doesn't do Tomcat or any other Servlet copntainer, so I would have to host the thing myself and deliver it over my ADSL connectio nfrom home. As I've not had time to setup the home network properly, I've never got round to starting this option.

Earlier this week I decided to archive all the Photo CD's that I have to make sure we didn't lose any. I also wanted to create a master web album on a machine at home so that I knew what photos we had available. I decided it was about time I wrote the Struts based application, but decided to do a quick test to see if my hoster had got PerlMagick to work yet, they haven't. So I did a quick Google for gallery software and ended up on a webiste running Gallery v2. I didn't recognise the software and thought it looked quite good, so was plesantly surprised when I saw it was the next incarnation of Gallery.

I downloaded a copy and installed it, the setup procedure is fantastic, a few steps, all explained with only minimal work required on a number of those to get the system up and running. First impressions of the new system are very positive, it's a massive step forward from the old version, however, it's still missing basic stuff like a site news section on the root album.

I've chucked a few albums into the install and I've deleted the old static gallery I had. I now need to read up about how to create custom themes and integrate it into my website.

A combination of being a lazy sod and being horrendously busy at work has resulted in me not posting anything here for ages. The volume of work isn't going down, so I doubt anything much will appear here for the foreseeable future...

Karen, Finlay and I went up to Scotland for a long weekend and got back earlier today. The main reason for going to was to introduce him to his to Great Grannies and the rest of the family. We had a great weekend with glorious weather and the wee man met almost all of his relatives from my side of the family.

We flew up on the Thursday and he was as good as gold on the flight; there were four other babies on the flight and he was the only one who didn't cry at some point. It was a similar story on the way back, he was really, really good, even though the weather meant his poor wee ears were taking a battering.

While we were up in Scotland we managed to pop round for an evening with friends, who kindly loaned us a buggy and car seat for our stay. Other than that excursion we had a quiet stay, which gave his doting Grandma and Papa plenty of time with him.

The big family gathering was on the Sunday afternoon and everyone was there apart from a couple of cousins who live too far away. After being passed round various family members the wee man was a bit on the tired side and Karen had a right job calming him down enough so that he'd go to sleep that evening.

All in all it was a great trip and hopefully we'll be going back at the turn of the year for another visit.

What the hell is going on with Formula 1...? I've just watch what was supposed to be a Grand Prix, what a joke. The FIA have some rather uncomfortable questions that they need to answer...

There haven't been many blog entires lately and it's certainly not due lack of things to write, but mainly due to lack of time caused by the wee man. So things will probably be a bit on the sporadic side for the foreseeable future...

Ive lost a bit of weight over the last four weeks and I'm not a hundred percent sure why. When Finlay was born I weight 12 stone 13 pounds, but this morning I weight only 12 stone 4 pounds, a loss of 9 pounds. I have been trying to eat less and some of it was probably dehydration, but I've certainly not set out to lose any weight.

I've had even more brain fade today as I nearly missed a dentist appointment this morning. I'd been holding Finlay for over an hour which was great as he was alert and looking around and I was all nice and relaxed and enjoying the interaction. So there I was bouncing Finlay on my knee and reading my book when I looked at the bedside clock to see if was five to nine and a horrible feeling set in that I'd forgotten something. Bugger, dentists appointment in Histon in twenty minutes. I was only four minutes late which I thought was pretty good considering.

Well, it looks like my old company has finally struck a deal with Sun according to this press release. I know they've been hoping for a takeover for a number of years, even back when I worked there there was the odd rumor about suitors. I wonder if this will be a smash and grab raid with all the TTLA developers taking a hike. I'll need to contact my stock broker as I may be in line for a couple of hundred dollars as I still have some stock that I bought way back in 2000.

It was Karen's birthday yesterday so I though I'd take her to a vegetarian pub we'd been told about called the Jolly Abbot in Abbotsley. I'd been trying to get them on the phone all day but to no avail, no one was answering. In the end I thought we'd just take the chance and go out and see what it was like.

It looked a bit quiet when we pulled up and it was quiet when we got inside, with half the place in darkness. As it turned out they don't do food on Monday nights, so I had a half of Tim Taylor Landlord and Karen and a lemonade. We then headed back into Cambridge and had an Italian at Prezzo.

Well the snow didn't last long... Just popped out for lunch and it's all gone. I hate Cambridge.

We've been constantly told that there will be loads of snow by weather forecaster for nearly to weeks now and we've yet to have more than the thinest of dusting's. I was delighted this morning to walk out of the house to go to the swimming pool and see that there was an idea combination for having a load of snow. IT was cold, the ground was relatively dry and it was snowing it large fluffy flakes.

When I came out of the swimming pool it had stopped and there was only a couple of centimeters on the ground, so it wasn't looking too good. Just after arriving at work it started snowing again, so you never know, we might finally get a decent dump.

If you'd told me that three games into the RBS Six Nations Scotland would be above England in the table I'd have laughed. Oh how the mighty have fallen. You'd have to say they'll still end up above us in the table as with us and Ital left to play you've still got to fancy them to beat the pair of us. Can't wait to see the Wales versus Ireland match for the Grand Slam though, should be a corker.

I'm off work ill at the moment, turns out I've got the flu bug thing that's doing the rounds. The doctor wasn't too impressed with me turning up at the surgery, but I thought I was coming down with a throat infection. Ho hum.

Before having breakfast this morning I was out with the drain rods unblocking our septic tank. I can't think of a nicer way to start the day than being covered in liquid shit...

Karen and I went to Bath for the weekend and a very nice time we had too. I've never been to Bath before so I was quite looking forward to going as I've wanted to see the Roman Baths for ages. The Baths were great, they would have been better without all the tourists; I hate to think how busy it gets in the summer.

We had a slight detour on the way to Bath as we stopped off at Stonehenge, another place I've always wanted to see. It's smaller than it looks, but it's still an amazing place, it must really have been something when it was complete.

We ate out each night in Bath and the food was pretty good. Bath has a much wider and healthier range of veggie restaurants than Cambridge, in fact Cambridge is totally shite compared to Bath on most levels. On the Saturday night we ate at Demuths a "positively vegetarian" restaurant and it was fantastic. Not only did I have a really smashing Vegan meal, they had decent beer as well; it's a definite must if you're ever in Bath.

On the Sunday we went to Cheddar gorge and visited the caves, which were supposedly an inspiration for part of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. I've wanted to see the gorge for a while as it's supposed to have good rock climbing and there were a few hardy souls braving the cold conditions.

Over all we had a nice relaxing weekend away, which will probably be our last before the wee blighter is born in April. I'd definitely go back to Bath as it seemed like a really nice place.

I've been drinking a bit too much Red Bull recently, so much so that I've had trouble getting to sleep at night. So today is my second day without any Red Bull and I feel like shit. I'm totally asleep and am so lackadaisical that I'm not getting anything done. I don't want to resort to having a can of the stuff to wake me up as that would defeat the point. I hope I manage to kick the habit, as I worked out that is would cost me nearly £500 a year to sustain it with the amount I drink at the moment.

At the weekend I had to rip the plug out of the bath as the piping was blocked and it's impossible to undo the u-bend fixings. The people who build our house obviously liked using some sort of pluming putty that sets like concrete and thus makes any sort of maintenance impossible. The result is the only way to get the u-bend off is to remove the plug fixings, which had helpfully threaded themselves.

The upshot of all of this was I had to go to Homebase and get a new plug housing and new u-bend. In retrospect I've got no idea how the design works as it just looks fundamentally flawed. So after installing it all on Sunday and leaving the silicon sealant to dry it wasn't until Monday night that I had the opportunity to test it all; it leaked like a sieve.

I was really quite annoyed as the packaging said only a spanner required, but failed to mention the size of the required spanner or the fact that you couldn't buy one of the required size in Homebase. The upshot was that I had to go to Travis Perkins first thing on Tuesday morning and buy a £30 pipe snapper that had enough of a jaw opening and large enough jaws to get round the plastic base nut.

So I stripped the whole plug unit out of the bath and took all the sealant off in the preparation for another go. When I say I just took it out, it took over an hour as the base nut had jumped a thread and I just couldn't get it undone. I ended up having to stick a couple of screwdrivers down the plughole to give leverage and stopping the unit spinning. I manage it in the e3nd, but there was much swearing and cursing going on.

So I slapped even more sealant on the bit the instructions said and tightened the whole unit up. Again we had to wait until it had all dried before using it, which was Wednesday morning, and lo and behold it was still leaking, this time from around the base nut. I was seriously not impressed and it was around this time that I was starting to realise that the product was a pile of shite and I should have got something Ridgeons instead.

So I removed the baser nut and the bottom flexible washer and slapped a load more sealant over it all and screwed it back on as tight as I could without totally knackering the base nut. Again a days wait for the sealant to dry and I tested it all this morning, lo and behold the main plug unit is not water tight, although the overflow pipe is leaking due to the abysmal design of the thing.

So on Saturday I'm going to slap a load more sealant around the overflow pipes and then hopefully it will all be fine. I just hope it doesn't get blocked again as there's so much sealant on the thing I'm not sure I'll be able to get it all off.

Imagine my surprise this morning when I checked my work mobile phone and found this little txt message on it:

I thought u wud of
txt me 2nite but u
didn't. So u do
actually like me if u
cheated on me i
wud rip ur balls n
make the bitch u
had swallow em
miss u tb 2mine a

I've just been to the BBC website and found out that John Peel has died suddenly of a heart attack. John Peel was the only reason I still occasionally listen to Radio 1, as his show was always great to listen to. You were always guaranteed to hear a wide variety of music, most of which you'd never heard of before. Radio has lost one of it's greatest DJ's.

I've been quite busy lately so I haven't had the time or energy to post stuff to my blog. It's probably not going to get any better over the next few weeks either, which is probably a blessing for anyone who ever reads the stuff I mumble about here.

Karen and I haven't been up to much lately; we're just having to combat the level of stupidity that some companies seem to think is acceptable. Ask me another time about our sofa, or The Gift Registry (you'll be hearing a big rant about them in the future) and the fact that it's the customer who always seems to be coming off second best.

The Pars got knocked out of European football last night in a nightmare tie at McDiarmid Park (the Islanders objected to the artificial surface at East End Park). As as Scotsman, I live in eternal hope that one day either The Pars or the Scottish team will actually play football.

• First leg report
• Secong leg report

With the Olympics currently under way in Athens and Great Britain having a successful weekend, I've decided to re-asses those sports men and women I admire. If you'd asked me a few years ago who was my sporting hero's were I would have said Marco Pantani and then Lance Armstrong.

Marco Pantani shattered the rose tinted glasses I wore when watching cycling, how could this man who won the Giro and the Tour in one season be taking drugs. The Lance Armstrong stepped up to the plate and started his amazing run of Tour de France wins. But how can I believe that Lance is clean? David Millar has just been banned for a couple of years due to doping and it still seems that it's endemic in the highest echelons of cycling.

I've come to the decision that I can't support Lance anymore as I just can't believe that he's achieved what he has without having taken something along the way. So this leaves me wondering who I look to as my sporting heroes now in this age of drug cheats.

There are two people who I look to now as my sporting heroes, they have gone above and beyond on more than one occasion and I found myself screaming and shouting at the telly whenever they race. Mathew Pinsent and Paula Radcliffe sum up what it is to be a truly great athlete as you can see them giving it everything they have, time and time again.

I also admire Ian Thorpe the Australian swimmer as he is majestic in the pool and a joy to watch. However, I have to believe that these heroes are all clean and not cheats. Until the governing bodies of sport start taking a stronger line and clean up sport, there will always be a shadow over some; hopefully those who I now take inspiration from are not under that shadow.

Good luck and Godspeed SpaceShipOne...

Labour had a bad night at the polls last night if the first few results are anything to go by. Already they are making excuses about the Iraq War skewing the vote against them. Hello!?! Maybe it’s the fact that no-one trust you any more as you’ve constantly failed to deliver on promises you’ve made. It’ll be interesting to see the full scale of he damage as the rest of the results come in.

Ray Charles R.I.P. The music world has lost a true genius.

It was election day today and after getting home from work I p[popped up to the polling station to cast my votes. I voted in the local district council election where I voted as I've voted all my life. Then I also voted in the European elections where I changed my vote and voted for an independent. We’ll just have to wait and see what the results are tomorrow to see if there are any major surprises.

It was the Monaco Grand Prix today and I was expecting another Ferrari whitewash, fantastically that not what happened. It was one of the best races I'd seen for ages, with loads of incidents and action. Ralph Schumacher once again showed himself to be a plonker, Rubens Barrichello underlined the fact that he's not up to the job and Michael Schumacher also showed that sometimes he doesn't make the best decisions. I felt a bit sorry for Jenson Button as if he'd been a bit luckier with traffic you never know he may have won. I expect the next Grand Prix at the Nurburgring will be a red train again though...

It was the Scottish FA Cup Final today and Dunfermline were in the final for the first time since 1968. As I can't get Scottish telly or radio, I had to make do with occasional visits to BBCi and see what the current score was. I first looked in around half time and was amazed to see that The Pars were one nil up, happy days. However things didn't last and all too soon Celtic had taken the lead and eventually won the match. At least we get to play in Europe next season.

Orbital have announced that they are splitting after 15 years together, their last live show will be at Glastonbury this year. I've seen Orbital play live twice, both times at Cambridge Corn Exchange and both times it was amazing. When I was a student at Aberdeen Uni one of the guys I lived with was a big Orbital fan, but I never saw the attraction. It wasn't until I saw them live for the first time that I started to take an interest in their music. They have a new album out later this year, I was quite looking forward to seeing them tour to promote it. Anyone got any spare Glastonbury tickets...?

Link to BBC New article

Ex-Blue Peter presenter Caron Keating died last night after a seven year battle with breast cancer, she was only 41. I don't normally write about what's happening in the normal world, but I had such a crush on her when I was a teenager that I had to post something. When I was at high school and she was on the telly I thought she was absolutely beautiful and that Irish accent she had used to turn my knees to butter.

BBC News article
BBC New photos

Looks like my blog has been targeted quite heavily over the last few days. I haven't removed any spam comments since the first of the month so they've built up a bit. It did look like it was calming down a bit as I went a few days without any; this must have lulled me into a false sense of security. So this morning I've just removed 25 spam comments that have been posted to my blog in the last six days. I'm getting pretty tired of this...

On another note, SpamAssasin is doing quite well with my email, although it's still letting quite a few obvious spams through the net. I'm slowly building up a good corpus of email to use to train bmf; although I'll have to manually move all the spam that's reached my mailbox and put it into one of the spam mailboxes before training.

I'm also going to have to learn a bit more about Procmail and Maildrop (it's just been installed on CSoft's servers) as all comments from my Blogs seem to get tagged as spam. I could write a recipe that check to see if it was a blog comment before sending it to SpamAssasin. I'll have to investigate as anything I can do to reduce the amount of spam I'm still getting would be a good thing.

All the local Magnolia trees are in full bloom at the moment, they look wonderful. Karen bought me a Magnolia tree for my Christmas and it's got a few blooms on it, but not to the scale of some of the well established trees. I don't think I'd seen one of these trees before moving to Cambridge, but they've become my favourite spring tree as the blossom so beautiful.

Finally got round to setting up SpamAssassin on my email account earlier today. The amount of spam I've been getting has gone up dramatically recently to around 70-80 spams a day. I've been meaning to set it up, but just never got round to it, so earlier this afternoon I took the plunge.

I had to firstly set up Qmail to redirect all my incoming mail through Procmail so that I could invoke SpamAssassin to do its work. I found a helpful .procmailrc script on the SpamAssassin Wiki, so it was quite painless. It seems to work as it's trapped a couple of spams since I set it up.

However, it's only trapped 2 of the 5 spams I've received, so I've obviously got a bit of tinkering to do to get it running better. Ideally I'd have Bayesian filtering working via bmf instead of SpamAssassin, but I don't have a big enough corpus of messages to train it with yet.

So now I'm actively collecting mail on the server so that I can build up a decent corpus to train my bmf filter to do a better job. Hopefully in a couple of weeks I'll have a big enough selection to give it a go and see what happens. Until then SpamAssassin will hopefully reduce the amount of crap I have to download.

I'm getting a bit pissed off as my blog is being targeted by spammers. Every morning I've got around five or six sexually explicit spam comments that I have to remove. There's nothing I can do short of banning all comments to the site. Currently I'm closing comment threads on messages that have been targeted and all new messages have comments turned off by default. When Moveable Type 3 comes out this shouldn't be a problem any more, but until then...

Go back out in the garden this weekend and finished the work I started last week. I think the people at the garden centre think I'm mad I went three times to get all the stuff I needed, the top soil was too heavy to take with everything else. So I finished my new flower/shrub bed, weeded and mulched the existing flower bed and weeded, planted and mulched some flowers on Karen's side of the garden.

So I've now got the Buddleia I've always wanted (along with the Magnolia tree Karen gave me from my Christmas), which has been planted with some Hebe's and a load of perennial's. The hope is the evergreen shrubs will provide some colour and shape in winter while the perennials will do the honours during the summer.

I've still to get my hands on a particular Sedum which is very attractive to butterflies, but the plants I've put in should attract a wide range of wildlife which is good. I even planted some Borage, which is loved by bees, so hopefully this year will see an increase in the wildlife visiting the garden.

I've still got quite a bit to do on my side of the garden with another bed to prepare and plant. I can't afford it until after the wedding though, not unless I get a bonus or something at work. I've planted some seed as well this weekend that should provide the evergreen foliage for the new bed, so I'd like to get it all done before the end of the year, but we'll just have top wait and see.

Karen has gone to San Diego for a week, she' back next Thursday afternoon, so I'm home alone. Got loads to do, so we'll just see what happens; hopefully not to many pokes of chips from the local chippie...

I was feeling at a bit of a loose end today and really wanted to just get on a do something, so I went out into the garden to start getting it up to scratch for later this summer. To start with I chopped down our holly tree as it was basically dead and looked terrible. I've left a good meter and a half of trunk as I plan to turn it into a bird table when I've got time.

While doing the tree, it started to rain a bit, but the mood I was in I didn't care and just got a bit wet. This really fired me up, so I removed some of the weed proof fabric that's been covering a half finished bed I started last year and cracked on with getting it finished. So it was off to the garden centre to buy some organic soil improver and some top soil.

I managed to get the soil improver down and realised that I'd need more top soil; since it was getting dark I decided to leave it and finish it later. So I've now started a new bed and I've gone all green fingered again, so I'm hoping I'll be able to get into the garden again next weekend to finish it.

It's snowing, but it's too warm and too wet for it to settle. Bit disapointing really as I wouldn't mind getting out with the camera to take some motre photos in snow.

Had my final testing session for the ProActive study into Type II diabetes this morning, at the hospital in Ely. Like last time it involved various body measurements and then some light exercise on a treadmill. I'll get to find out what all my measurements are at the end of the study, which will be around the end of the year.

Since starting the study, I've gone from being a lazy sod, to being not quite so lazy, in fact I'm going swimming three times a week (sometimes it's only twice, depends). Judging by the fact that my resting heart rate has dropped into the low forties, yes low forties, it turns out I'm quite fit.

While on the treadmill the lady doing all my measurements had to go and make a phone call as my oxygen absorption level were very, very high. Evidently level like that are normally reserved for people who have been training at altitude! It'll be interesting to see the full results from my final test and to see if I can keep them at a good level.

Woke up late this morning at around 07.55, so I had to get changed really quickly if I stood any change of getting to the swimming pool. I got out he door at around 08.05 only to find the gas man delivering our next load, so I wouldn't be able to get out until he'd finished.

I lent a hand, so that he'd be finished quicker, but we discovered that one of the pig's ears from the regulator is leaking. So we've now got four cylinders, although only two are turned on and I'll have to manually move them over when we run out in a couple of weeks. So now I've got to phone a Corgi registered gas man to come out and fit a new set of pig's ears...

I keep meaning to put stuff here, but I just can't be arsed. I'm going through a low motivation period at the moment...

Got home from work this evening to find that we'd run out of gas. Karen had been making some pancakes when the gas had run out, how inconvenient. So now we're going to be without heat, hot water or anything to cook on for the next few days until a delivery turns up.

I'm feeling like a right lard arse today, I think it's due to not going swimming yesterday as the arm is still a tad sore from the jabs on Tuesday. I'm quite surprised at how painful the jabs have turned out to be, I certainly wasn't expecting it to last so long. I'm not sure I'll be able to go swimming tomorrow morning either, which would be a shame.

It snowed last night, not as much as last year, but still a decent covering of a few inches. They look like they've managed to avoid the chaos of last year, but the radio was reporting that they had gritted all roads so there had been a number of accidents. By the time I got to work the main roads were just slush, or wet, so it's looking like it wont be so bad. Now if it snows again this afternoon...

Happy New Year! Like most of the country my Hogmanay celebrations were a wee bit curtailed due to Karen and I both suffering from a nasty bout of the cold. We were supposed to go to a party thrown by a couple of friends, but instead we were both tucked up under duvets on the sofa watching mildly amusing telly.

To compensate for the fact that I wasn't going out, I decided to buy some nice beer. Shame I didn't look at the ABV on all the labels and ended up with a load of beer in the 6-10% range. After five bottles of that I was totally plastered and finally managed to stumble off to bed just after three in the morning. Just because we were both ill, didn't mean we couldn't enjoy ourselves...

So yesterday was a bit of a chore until the headache had worn off, which happened in the late afternoon. The vast majority of the day was spent on the sofa under the duvet blowing my nose and scaring the cats with each sneeze. Light relief was offered by watching Moonraker and then actually watching Grease, Karen had the right idea here and fell asleep.

So it was a bit of a quiet New Year for a change and it feels quite strange sitting at work for a single day before the weekend. It feels like a Monday today, although at the same time it doesn't feel like any day as my cold is stopping my brain working.

I might get round to putting a up a few New Year resolutions, just so I actually stick to them, or maybe I might not. Anyway, have a great New Year; it's definitely going to be a good one.

Gone to Scotland for Christmas, back in a few days...

Well, the fifth Rugby World Cup is finally over and England have lifted the Webb Ellis Trophy, beating the Wallabies in a thrilling match. Even though England did everything in their power to lose the match, they managed a fairy tail ending when Johnny Wilkinson slotted home a drop goal with 20 seconds of extra time left. You couldn't have written a better script.

Even though I hate to say it, congratulations to the English rugby team, it's great to see the Aussie beaten, especially in a major final.

Yet again the Scottish football team's attempt to get into the finals of a major tournament end in glorious failure. After starting the campaign with a two all draw with the Faroe Islands, things weren't looking good. However, the Scottish team managed a slight recovery to make it to the playoffs, only to be drawn against Holland.

The Dutch are currently ranked fifth in the world, although they haven't been playing as well as they should have. So the first leg was at Hampden Park and saw a massive upset when the Scot's thrashed the Dutch one nil. Amazingly the Scottish team had won a game when it mattered, the ghost of Archie Gemmel's amazing World Cup goal against the Dutch in 1978 could finally be laid to rest.

The second leg last night, was a different affair. Played at the Amsterdam ArrenA, Scotland got thrashed with in an inch of their lives. The six nil gubbing was the worst Scottish result in 42 years. Yet again Scotland fall at the final hurdle and go out in a blaze of glorious failure.

I'm in work early this morning for reasons I won't go into at this time... Just before I started work I was looking out of the window at the Moon. It's amazing to think that someone from our planet has actually walked on its surface and brought back samples of its rock. It just reinforces what an amazing planet we live on.

I had an altercation with another driver this morning while on my way into work. There's a really bad roundabout over the A14 that I have to negotiate on the way in and it's a notorious black spot. The incident was the result of impatience on his part and bloody mindedness on mine, we were both to blame in other words.

The upshot of it all was that coming off the roundabout his car was practically in my boot as he gesticulated wildly and shouted obscenities. I returned the compliments with a well known international sign of friendship and it was at this point things turned nasty.

I turn off the road at the next junction onto a set of business parks and he followed me. It was pretty obvious that he was going to follow me until I stopped, but then what...? As far as I was concerned it was both our faults, so a bit of shouting and gesticulating was in order and that was that, there was certainly no need for a face off.

I was starting to get a bit worried as the chap looked like a bit of a thug, he certainly wasn't a business man on his way into work. He looked a lot bigger than me, so there was no way I was going to get out of my car and risk a beating just because he had road rage.

I got to my building on the business park and he was still driving in my boot, so I started to drive round the car park, looping in and out of the islands that dot it. After a few laps it dawned on him that I was taking the piss and he stopped his car, so I drove out of the car park on the other side of the building, he started to follow me again.

I then drove into the car park of another building and did it all over again, then another building and finally back into the car park of my own building. I'd locked all my door by this point, as I was getting just a tad worried.

After ten minutes of driving around, stopping, driving some more, he finally got the hint that there was no way he was going to get anywhere near me and drove off. I had to sit in my car for five minutes to calm down before going into the office.

In retrospect I should have just stopped that car, locked the doors and phoned the Police, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. It made me realise that it's just not worth it, what's the point in getting all worked up and angry when the result is you get chased by some maniac for ten minutes.

It still pisses me off when I see bad driving, impatience, rudeness, the usual stuff. I'm going to have to try to not let it bother me so much from now on, it's just not worth it.

I'm totally feeling like shit today, feels like I'm coming down with flu. I hope not as I hate getting flu; it normally renders me less than useless for a couple of days. I certainly don't feel my normal self and I'm pretty sure it's only going to get worse...

Gone to Kefalonia, back in two weeks...

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, but get distracted easily and totally forgot. Anyway, it’s run by an ex-colleague and is for a good cause, so go and check it out.

www.click4others.org

Yesterday was a day of contrasts, in the morning I was at work and then after a mad dash home Karen and I were off to the wedding of a couple of friends in Cambridge. The wedding ceremony was held at the Cambridge registry office and was really quite nice. It was then a quick taxi ride to the Gonville hotel for the wedding breakfast and evening reception.

The happy couple had booked an Abba tribute band for part of the evening reception, which was a bit of a laugh. I was even seen to drag Karen on to the dance floor for a bit until I remembered that I don’t dance. Most of the day was spent chatting away to people and it was amazing how many were either just married or just about to get married, it must be the wedding season at the moment or something.

We eventually left at around a quarter past midnight and headed home with Clare and Ben, who were staying over. A quick chat and bit of gossip about other wedding guests later and it was off to bed. I was quite surprised I didn’t have a worse hangover as I had a right dodgy pint at one point. Any hangover I did have was banished by a full on veggie fry up, yum.

My new mobile phone turned up today, thanks to the insurance company. I had to pay a small upgrade fee to get a better phone as I'd decided that I didn't want a Nokia 3310e any more as it's quite an old phone. So I plumped for a Nokia 3510i, which has got loads of stuff on it I'll never use, but at least it's slightly more up to date.

We had friends round last night, so after a curry and some drinking we ended up getting to bed in the wee small hours of the morning. Since it's been so hot, we've had to sleep with all the windows wide open in the vain hope of getting a bit of a breeze. This also means that you can hear any wildlife that happens to be in the neighbourhood and last night it was a rather noisy owl. I love owls, I think they amazing creatures, so it was quite cool to hear this one squawking away from a perch nearby.

I've just got back from a great week in Scotland which saw my finally get back to doing a bit of hill walking. The initial idea had been to go to Scotland and sit on a hill for a few day pondering my future, however, I hadn't expected to find another job so quickly so I didn't need to do any of the thinking bit. This meant that I could go back home, seem my family and friends and bag a few Munro's on the way.

It's been ages since I've been away hill walking and the idea was to go away for a couple of days to the Glen Shee area then come home for a day and head off for Glen Coe for another couple of days. In reality I wouldn't have been able to manage this as my feet took a battering on the first day, which left me with huge blisters on both heals. My right knee was also in agony and I could hardly walk the following day, there's no way I'd have been able to attempt another couple of hills.

So I decided that I should go away for a single day on the Monday and then have two day back home which would allow my to visit my sister and my Grandmother. Since I wanted to do more than just a single hill I headed into Glen Lyon and the Cairn Gorm to Meall na Aighean route which also takes in Meall Garbh and Carn Mairg. All in all it took about 6 hours 20 minutes to go from car to car, which wasn't bad going considering I hadn't been in the hills for about six years.

One thing it did reinforce though was the need to go into the Scottish hills prepared. I'd thought about not bothering to pack any gloves or a hat, but boy did I need them! When I got to the top of the first hill, Cairn Gorm, the wind really picked up and the cloud base dropped to the same height as the mountain. This meant that the temperature dropped and the cloud base started to make my clothes damp. So on went the Gore Tex jacket, gloves and fleece hat and off I went.

The cloud base seemed to rise and fall slightly throughout the rest of the day, which meant that for periods I was in the cloud and then out of it again. It was a bit of a shame really as I was hoping for slightly better weather as the forecast hadn't made it out to be that bad. It was typical really, as the next day was a complete scorcher! I decided on the way down from the last Munro that I was going to have to do something with my boots, as they were really killing my knees. So the next day I decided to try and get a set of moulded insoles for them.

So it was off to Edinburgh bright and early on Tuesday morning to do a bit of shopping, when I say bright and early, in reality it was bright and early afternoon by the time I'd managed to coerce my body out of bed. After doing a bit of window-shopping I ended up in Tiso on Rose Street, I used to work there ten years ago and how it's changed. I didn't recognise the shop layout or any of the staff, times change so I would have been really surprised to see any of the folks I used to work with there.

The end result of being in Tiso was that I didn't get any insoles, as they didn't have my size, which was just as well as they were charging £65 for a pair. So I hot footed it down to Nevis Sport and came away with a £25 pair of moulded insoles, only time would tell if they would do the trick or not. That evening I treated my sister to a meal at Black Bo's, a veggie restaurant in Edinburgh. The décor wasn't much to write home about, but the food was excellent. I can't remember what we each had, but it was really, really good, definitely a place I'll go back to.

After spending the night at my Sisters I headed off to visit my Grandma in Lanark before heading back home to pack my bags for a two day trip to Glen Coe. The weather was supposed to by okay, I had the new insoles for the boots and I was really ready to tackle some more Munro's. I'd packed the car the night before, so I managed to get away at a decent time in the morning and make good time to the White Corries ski area at the south end of the Glen. I'd decided the previous day that I was going to tackle the mountains of the Black Mount, four Munro's and a few tops, split over two days. Today I was going to be climbing Meall a'Bhuiridh and Creise plus two tops accessible from Creise.

It was looking like it was going to be a scorcher, but as I was going up the first Munro the weather wasn't all that good and I ended up with my Gore Tex jacket on. I made the first summit ion quite good time and I had no knee pain, so the insoles looked like they were working. After a quick bite to eat it was a steepish decent onto a col followed by a steepish ascent, which turned slightly scrambley at the top. It was all quite exciting and totally different to the broad grassy ridges of Mondays walking.

The wind got up a bit when I got to the broad ridge linking one of the tops to Creise, but it didn't last long. The clouds had parted slightly leaving the most wonderful view over some of the finest countryside you'll ever see. When Scotland gets good weather, there's nowhere in the World that can beat it, it's without doubt the most beautiful place on the planet. I felt really happy to be up there with a marvellous view and perfect solitude, which allowed for lots of thinking. I promised myself that I wouldn't leave it 6 years before I went back to climb some more mountains.

When I got back to the car I was quite surprised to find that my knees had held up well, the new insoles had stopped my arches from collapsing and thus I was spared the pain. I need to trim the front of them though as they bruised a coupe of my toe nails a bit, but if that's all I have to put up with I think I can live with it. I decided that it was a bit early to head to the King's House, so I drove up and down Glen Coe taking photos of all the mountains and marvelling at the scenery.

After pitching the tent and having a quick bite to eat I headed back down the road to a well-known photographic spot. I was trying for the classic sunset photo over the Black Mount, but was some what foiled by a huge low ominous cloud that was obscuring everything. I managed to take a couple of shots that might be okay, but everything else I took was pretty much useless, so I just headed back to the King's House for a few beers.

I woke early as I really wanted to get the classic shot of the sunrise on the Buachaille Etive Mor, but when I woke at half past four the sound of rain on the tent didn't really inspire much confidence for a good sunrise. I poked my head out of the tent to be greeted by really low grey clouds and pelting rain, not the sort of weather you want to be going mountaineering in. I tried to get back to sleep, but mainly tossed an turned until about eight o'clock when I decide to scrap that days walking and just head home.

It was a shame as I was really looking forward to doing Stob Ghabhar and Stob a' Choire Odhair which are the other two mountains of the Black Mount. It did mean I got home early though, which enabled me to pack my car ready to come home the next day. I went out in the evening to see all my friends and have a few beers, which was really good. Karen was expecting me back on Sunday, so you can imagine the surprise she got when I came barrelling through the door with a bottle of bubbly and a bunch of flowers as day early.

It's the end of my first week of redundancy and I've had a smashing time. I was out in the garden for most of it and yesterday I even got a bit sunburnt due to the lovely weather. The garden is starting to look better, there's still quite a bit of work to go, but it's getting there. I'm now off to Scotland for a week to see friends and family, I'm also hoping to do a bit of hill walking, so there might not be any updates for a while...

I’ve been in the garden that last couple of days, making the most of my time off between jobs. Yesterday morning I was out in the garden at eight o’clock and decided to move the compost heap to the other side of the garden. I hope I never have to move another wet compost heap ever again, what a stench! I had to fight the gag reflex because of all the half rotted fruit and veg, truly revolting.

On a lighter note, I bought both a Red Mason Bee and Ladybird houses from a local garden centre. I was going to buy them mail order, but I happened to spot them and as they were the same price I would have to pay for postage. They’re made by the Oxford Bee Company and will hopefully bring load of great wee animals into the garden next year.

I was going to write something derogatory about Jessops service, but I just can't be bothered, that's how bad it is... All I can say is that I'd better get my films back tomorrow.

I'm constantly amazed at how life can change so quickly, one minute your down, the next your up. I got a call from a job agency when we got back from Malta, letting me know there was a job on the go in Cambridge. So I re-jigged my CV and sent it off, they got back within a couple of hours saying they wanted to interview me, cool I thought.

So off I went to the interview last Thursday, it was a bit strange but seemed to go okay. A couple of hours later I hear that they want me in for a second interview, cool I though. So yesterday was supposed to be the second interview, but I hadn't heard anything regarding times, I was getting a bit worried.

I phoned the agency at about quarter to nine and asked them what was going on, they said they'd look into it. So I got to work and started to settle into the usual routine when the mobile phone went off. There was me expecting the time for my second interview, imagine my surprise when I was told they weren't going to bother, they'd just offer me the job instead.

So there you go, I get the chop from here on the 16thj, get a week or so to do the garden/build rockets/go hill walking and then it's into a new job. So effectively my current employer has paid me a large wad of cash to find a new job, excellent!

Got back from Malta yesterday, very tired after all the travelling and a longer flight. I suppose I'm glad to be back, but with everything that going to happen in the next few weeks, I'd rather still be sunning myself on a beach somewhere hot. I do feel very relaxed and centred though, although how long that will last having to drive around Cambridge, I don't know.

I don't know why, but I felt about 7 feet tall today. I walked out of Tesco's this evening after picking up some tomatoes and just felt like I was taller than everyone, my car even looked smaller as I approached. Maybe it's because today was a good day.

I've not been in the best of moods recently, a combination of thing that I'm not going to go into, but suffice to say I've got to work some of it out. So here I am relaxing after a solid days work, drinking a beer and just chilling. Maybe it's because today was a good day.

I was on fire at work this afternoon; the build system on this project is way out there, really complicated. After being helped through setting up the necessary files it was all systems go. It was one of those days where everything is flowing so well you don't want to stop coding; I ended up leaving work late after tearing myself away from the screen. May it's because today was a good day.

I'm also feeling quite chuffed with myself as I haven't been eating crap at work, normally I get through a few packets of crisps or other assorted nonsense throughout the day. I've made a conscious effort to not buy any and even bought some apples and pears to help stave off the hunger cravings that plague me before lunch. I didn't even think about buying junk food today. May it's because today was a good day.

You might be getting the idea that I'm in a good mood today and you'd be right. It hasn't been happening very often lately so I'm revelling in it.

Yesterday I was in a bad mood, but today I just can't be arsed. I'm bored, restless and bloody hungry, so hungry infact that I might have to nip to the vending machine for a packet of crips...

I really don't know what's up with me today, but I totally got out of bed on the wrong side this morning.