Somebody at my webhost (WebHostGiant.com) thought it would be a great idea to move my server from one data centre to another without telling me… The change in server IP address ment my website (and e-mail systems) where all down for almost 48 hours! And to top this off they lost 3 months worth of data from the site! Mind you for the price I guess I should not complain much. After all it’s like my dad said “You pay penuts you get monkeys…”

Just annoys me I paid for another year last month but will be looking to cancel or move after this term is up.

Anyone have experiences of better unlimited hosts for around the £50 a year mark?

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So we found out today that the little flat we where buying is a no go. Turns out that the lease that defines what we can and cant do with the common areas of the block was written up in the 1980’s by a total moron. It misses out a lot of things like the right to use the bins and such minor things as the right to a roof over your head… It also had a habit of contradicting itself from one line to the next and all these little things make mortgage companies (and me) nervous. Normally this would not be a problem. Documents can be changes after all. That is unless the current residents refuse to let you change it without having theirs changes too oh but wait they cant afford to do that so nobody gets their lease sorted.

So after calling the estate agent today to express my concerns and let him know that unless someone budges over these changes we would pull out. After hearing this the seller decided to take the toddler approach to diplomacy and put the property back up for sale before we could withdrawal… A case of ‘you cant resign your fired’.

So 3 months and sever hundred pounds worth of wasted lawyer later it’s back to the drawing board. We live and learn. I guess the moral of this story is never get over excited about things until they are signed and sealed and don’t ever think something we be simple. Oh well Me and girlfriend will start looking again in the new year.

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It was a group of men and woman all dressed in full regalia and masks dancing the Dark Morris to welcome in the winter and say goodbye to summer. It was interesting and and reassuring to see that even in these modern times that traditions like this are still kept alive.

Slightly annoyed I had neither of my cameras with me so I’m afraid mobile phone pictures are all I could snap. Enjoy!

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So I decided to do a bit of data processing on the server logs and came up with the following list of people who have downloaded the cookbook (With search engines and robots removed so just real people here):

Anyway is quite interesting to see how it spread. Also I can pick out both my cousins on that list

That’s all for today!

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They gave me live access to the production servers last week… I still get a little cold sweat when I do updates or deletes on the live data but I’m getting used to how it all works. The learning curve has been rather steep but that’s how I like it and I’m starting to work out how the systems all fit together but there’s never any rest for the wicked and already I’m getting development tasks for the new release.

So 3 and 1/2 weeks in and I’m nicely settled into a routine. Another 5 weeks to go before my contract become permanent so fingers crossed it caries on going well!

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I promised myself I would blog about it but seem to have run out of time and / or will. Suffice to say things are really good and i’ll post again when I have a bit more spare time

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Now the world of cooking and food seems to include almost unlimited sources of advice and instruction. Whether you’re wondering how to prepare a certain dish, or just looking for something new, you can be sure that you can find what you need on the Internet, whether in a stranger’s blog or in a professional article. The same is true of the world of wine, where there is an endless amount of variety that can be explored by even the most casual drinker. To some, wine may seem like an upscale luxury, or something that only the wealthy or pretentious can properly enjoy; this, however, could not be further from the truth. The world produces an astounding number of wines, and you do not have to be wealthy or educated in wine to be able to figure out what you enjoy.

For example, a source as simple as the Marks & Spencer wine section can help you in a surprising number of ways when you want to find a tasty and affordable wine. They offer a variety of wines from many different countries and many different years, and they even have features that allow you to pick your orders based on what wine experts recommend. This is just one way of coming into contact with a variety of affordable, highly recommended wine… you can try different options, order more of what you like, and gradually figure out which bottles best suit your needs.

Most people know at least a little bit about the most common types of wines the world has to offer. You may know that there are a few regions most renowned for their wine, such as France, Italy, California, South Africa, and Australia, to name a few; and, you may know a bit about some of the most common types of wine, such as whether you prefer Merlot or Pinot Noir when drinking a red, or whether your preferred white is a Chardonnay or a Sauvignon Blanc.

Indeed, for many casual drinkers, this may be all you care to know. But doing only a small amount of research and experimentation can open your eyes to a far greater variety, and you may find something that you love and which you never knew existed. For example, you may find that you love Sémillon whites from Australian vineyards, or Cabernet Sauvignon from Chilé. Both of these wines have strong reputations, but may be less familiar to the casual wine drinker. But, as mentioned, the world of wine is constantly increasing its output and its number of options, and just a little bit of experimentation may well lead you to some of your new favourite wines.

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Now fairs fair so I dropped a particularly good apple and raspberry pie up to nan and grandad as a thank you for the fruit, While there I was able to talk nan into lending me her fabled cook book. Copied down into an old Chailey School exercise book by my aunt it contains the distilled knowledge of 60+ years of baking. Lets not forget we’re not talking any old cook here either. We’re talking the iron chef of the Newick WI! For 15 years she cooked pies, cakes and biscuits for the market and people came from far and wide to snap them up. To give you an idea of this ladies renowned one Christmas her orders for mince pies totalled 40 dozen in one week! that’s 480 pies… and she did it too! every last one with some to spare for the family.

So to ensure this wisdom is not lost I have digitised, indexed, commented on the full cookbook and uploaded it for you all to enjoy! All the family favourites are there from the poncing about biscuit to the legendary chocolate sponge all with comments from Nan, The auntie, My dad and myself. That’s three generations for the price of one!

So dig in everyone, leave comments if you have questions and happy baking!

Download: Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

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“This is the way the world ends: Not with a bang but a whimper” - T. S. Eliot

And evidently the same can be said for degrees. A bit of an anticlimax to my degree when I finished my final exam last Saturday. I’m not sure what I expected from my last day of university but I can honestly say just going home wan’t one of the things I had in my head… Hopefully with the next month before results, results day itself and graduation there’s plenty of time to go out with a proper bang!

Now it’s just fingers crossed for results day people! Good luck to everyone!

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A fairly average desktop screenshot from a few weeks back

Pretty much the sum of my existence for the last 2 months

So the question is what do I have to show for 8 months of work? Well the answer is the following:

• A 13,102 word report
• 25,487 word typed total including appendices and testing reports
• 6,520 lines of programming code across 6 programming languages
• 8.47 MB of programming code
• 300 Hours and 6 minutes spent in front of the computer writing and programming
• 4 inches extra on the waist line
• 1.5kg of biscuits that are no more
• 5 nights worked completely through till dawn
• 1,600mg of caffeine ingested through supplements and energy drinks (Around 45 cups of instant coffee)
• A lot of people being very patient with a sleep deprived, caffeine fuelled grump…

What else I get out of it is now in the lap of the gods and the markers. Hopefully my next and last post on this subject shortly after the exams (eeeep…) will be a positive one.

Finally a massive thank you to the following people for their help with this project:

Dad, Mum, Brother, Fern, Ciaran F, Chris D, Dan C, Gemma F, Software System’s Lab People and everyone else who supported me

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