Tee hee …. Karl

Tee hee…. Karl texted me to tell me that Aspect had re-launched their website. I was taking a look around it, and spotted a few mistakes, so thought I’d be nice and email them about them. So, I go to their contact page and choose the Feedback email address (“for suggestions and comments about this site”). Email them my comments, and what do I get back? A message from the postmaster telling me that the address doesn’t exist. Well done Aspect!

Jane left the house

Jane left the house at 5.30am this morning to head off up north for a bit of consulting work. Half an hour later than usual. Once the sun had come up, I headed out to grab a cup of coffee. With the sun shining and a lovely blue sky I had one of those great walk-in-the-city-while-no-one-is-about times. I headed down to the beach to see if there was any damage after the big storms, but there was nothing. There were some surfers in the sea, but it was pretty calm. Big empty beach, sun shining… it’s good living by the sea.

saw someone get hit

I saw someone get hit by a car yesterday. Actually, I heard a loud “thump” and turned around to see a car come to a halt and a man lying on the floor. He seemed a bit dazed but got up, but the driver of the car was hysterical. She jumped out of the car screaming and ran over to the man, and fell over in the process. The whole thing was surprisingly disturbing for an onlooker. On a plus note, an ambulance arrived very quickly. I don’t know what happened to the man — I think he walked away — but when I passed that way again the driver was being calmed down by the ambulance crew.

So: Take care when crossing between parked cars. And I think I’ll slow down in city traffic…. I don’t want to end up like that driver.

was in Chesterfield for

I was in Chesterfield for the first 2 days of this week doing some work for Imagesound and decided that it was close enough to Hull to make it worthwhile doing the extra hour and a half hour drive to go and see my Parents. So I did, and on the way back on Tuesday morning, I drove past a house with Christmas decorations outside – it’s October damn it! I did a total double take, and no really, really it was there! Shocking!

Tonight Jane almost had me in tears

Tonight Jane almost had me in tears. We were listening to Electric Landlady and Jane said: “Oh, I’d forgotten Kirsty MacColl was dead. I was just thinking it was about time for another album”. I’d erased that fact.. Most upsetting.

Anyway… yesterday afternoon I was at Linux Expo at Olympia in London. Mostly dull and very quiet. They had someone walking around in a giraffe costume. I can only assume the hire shop ran out of penguin outfits and substituted something they thought would be alright. But hey, I got to catch up with Dave and see what he’s up to.

In the evening I caught up with Jane and the New Scientist folk for some beers and then we headed off to Akbar to Suran’s pre-show party for anjali. Drank too much, way too much passive smoking, but we had fun.

Richard and went and

Richard and I went and gave blood yesterday at our local session. It was relatively painless, and didn’t take too long. What percentage of the UK population do you think gives blood? 6%. That’s all. Poor isn’t it. No wonder that the National Blood Service have increased the number of donations you can make in a year to 3, they need to rely on their existing donors to meet the demand. You can find out more about giving blood at blood.co.uk.

Living by the seaside is great…

…because it means that since we moved to our new office I can go for a walk along the seafront at lunch time. And at lunch time there aren’t many people around at this end of the promenade (near Hove Lagoon) and so it’s peaceful and all you can hear is the noise of the sea. It’s great for people watching too. Today there was a guy wearing just a pair of shorts fishing, a couple sitting on a bench making their lunch (bread, butter, cucumber for sandwiches), a lady coming back from a swim, a guy painting his beach hut and other people just wandering along.

Last night we went

Bears in play

Last night we went to see
the Brighton Bears
play the Thames Valley Tigers.
This is the first basketball game we’ve been to. Before the game I
had a quick look at the rules so we had a chance of understanding the game. Glad
I did because otherwise we’d have no idea why there was a clock that counted down
from 24 seconds. Still don’t understand what is and isn’t a foul, but there’s
plenty of time to read-up on the rules over
at the British Basketball League web site.

The Bears won 88-63, and all the players were impressive, especially the captain.

It’s fast, entertaining, and I think we’ll go again. And the crowd turn out was impressive, too.

Crowd at the bears game