UK IUA Trip - Wed 10/6

Jaunt down to London for the uk Ingres Users Association Conference. Several excellent talks, some good catching up and good (if brief) chats with Roger B and Bill M. Alfresco presentation in particular very good.

Still not a big fan of London though. Always seem to end up sweating profusely for some obscure reason, and even when I think I've left loads of time I end up feeling rushed. Having someone nearly take your eye out with an umbrella is never likely to endear a place to you though. Once in a while is fine, but I couldn't live down here I don't think. Glad to be heading home!
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Sent from Tony's Newton - the greatest gadget *ever* !

Blah Blah Blah

Blah blah blah. Let's see if we can post this with nBlog. Otherwise, it's back to emails.

Turns out, it was back to emails :(

I suspect something strange going on with the Blogger 1.0 API, since the Newton can't even retrieve the list of blogs attached to my account anymore, which it could previously do even when posting blog updates seemed not to work. Oh well, not to worry...

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Sent from Tony's Newton - the greatest gadget *ever* !

Reasons To Be Cheerful, part ... ?

OK, so Animals Weekend seemed to go pretty well. April featured three weeks annual leave out of four, during which nothing of what I was supposed to do got done, but I had a thoroughly lazy time which was still most handy :)

May has involved a trip to Southampton for work, and lots and lots of this and that for work. Still managing to come second in the pub quiz, and still managing not to win the lottery either, but hey.

With all that said, this is quite a good weekend ...

- starting another week off work with a *thoroughly* lazy day today... lovely :)

- finally getting a little time to play with Logic Express, the Audiofire 2 interface and a guitar. Oh *my*, that's a good combination !! Add in Sooperlooper, and I think quite a lot of my outboard gear might be disappearing whence it came (that is, eBay-wards...)

- Accies ended the season with a win against St Mirren

Only downer is not seeing a certain someone this weekend :'( Still, good things come to he who waits...

Here Comes The Summer...

Confusion runs riot. Or rather, it doesn't. Not for the principal players, anyway! Petruchio and Katherina are fairly clear :)

Managed to get tickets for U2 in Glasgow in August sorted out fairly easily. Kinda gratifying to see 30 quid tickets listed a few hours later on websites for over 120 quid each! This summer so far I've got Cirque de Soleil and U2 sorted out, which is a fairly low set so far - will have to arrange another couple of outings at least.

Next weekend is Animals Weekend with Cathy, and the week after that will mostly be work around the house I suspect.

Got a couple of weeks off work coming up - might try a run down to Hadrian's Wall for the day, or maybe across to East Fortune - depends on the weather probably. Be nice to do something other than stuff in the house while I'm off, and everyone else is at work :)

In other news, the Newton is back to playing silly beggars for doing blog posts again. Who knows why... but I have to admit I'm suspecting Blogger more than the Newt TBH, as problems seem to be time of day dependent (i.e. after 20:30 seems to be problematic, but before is fine... hmmm...)

Phew !

Ok, left it for most of the day-are things back to normal now?

Yes, it would seem so! Woohoo!!!

Ahem. I should probably explain. These blog entries are handwritten on an Apple Newton (in Notes) then published using Adam Tow's nBlog software - literally, write, push a button, blog. It's awesome (dood!) when it works. Which makes it all the more annoying/scary when it stops working like it did last night. Still, at least I took the opportunity to check if emailing the blog entries in would work - thanks to Simon Bell's Mail V and fastmail.fm, it sure does!

Coming soon - a real blog about real stuff!

End of the road for Newton and nBlog?

End of the road for Newton and nBlog?
Now wondering if I've been being harsh on nBlog and the Newton since it now seems that none of the devices can publish a post ! What's going on? Has BlogSpot changed something somewhere?

Minor nBlog Annoyance...

Ok, let's see how we go with a quick test from a different folder...
For future reference... had a minor issue where nBlog started to fail when sending blog posts. Irritatingly the errors appeared to be coming from the XMLRPC layer's FSM rather than from nBlog itself. The solution in the end was to use SAI Prefs Cleaner to delete prefs for nBlog:ATOW, then re-enter the details for accessing blogger.com, then refresh the blog list. This seemed to get everything back on track, and posts flowing again. Ho-hum.

Just a Quick Test - Sat 28/2

Just a quick test post using the new Newton with the Compaq wireless card to make sure it's working ok. Seems to be-had some initial concerns about the screen - seems a bit squidgy in places - but after using it for a while it seems to be fine really. So that makes two functional Newton MessagePad 2000s and two functional MessagePad 2100s - should be enough to keep going even if they start falling to pieces - which I don't think they will - they seem to be pretty solidly put together machines. Only real worry now is the 2010 bug next year!

Another Day Another Dollar - Fri 27/2

Long week at work - started quite badly, dipped a bit in the middle, but ended a bit better. Thankfully. Looks like I'm going to be off for about three weeks at the start of April! Although I may have to be interruptible... Not sure how well that will go down at home, but hey.

Got some guitar practice done this week -decreasing pain in left hand is a good thing but I seem to have lost quite a lot of the ground made up last year with my January layoff sadly.

Domestic situation a bit fractious this week, but hopefully will settle down again soon. Another weekend away this weekend, so looking forward to that! Lots of running around to do before that though... Phones to set up, computer to take to the dump after disassembling it, dry cleaning to attend to, things to put in the loft and no doubt more I don't know about yet! But it's worth it in the end I reckon.

Ha ! - Mon 9/2

And do you know what? Blogging with the Newton at Heathrow worked!

More Good Times - Sun 8/2

So, Saturday was a day of getting the MG back out and on the road - success! And at the first time of asking too! I expected to get it going, but really thought I would have a bit of a fight. given the recent cold weather and that I'm not even sure if I'd started it yet this year! But good 30+ year old British engineering didn't fail me :)

After that, in the early hours of the morning, had a brainwave about how to make next weekend work - hopefully it'll work out.

Now it's Sunday, and I'm at Edinburgh airport waiting for a plane to Heathrow, nursing a Corona and watching the rugby :)

Got down to Slough without incident. Nice relaxed evening with some food, a quick scout of the location for tomorrow's meeting and a good long chat, and now it's time to shut down for the night. Only fly in the feelgood ointment is that the nylon Newton case I got last week smells "fusty", I can't seem to get rid of the smell and now it's making the Newton whiff too :'(

Now sitting at Heathrow airport trying to get The Cloud wifi access to work so I can post this blog!

A Good Note To End On - Fri 6/2

After a fraught day or two at home, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday turned out pretty well. Wednesday things smoothed over a bit at home. New strings turned up so I restrung the Mexican Strat with 010 strings instead of the usual 009s. We'll see how that pans out. Thursday was a pretty good day at work - lots of stuff sorted out. A fun evening of DVD watching followed-Tom Cruise's cameo in Tropic Thunder is the best thing I've ever seen him do. Friday at work was a day of almost non stop meetings - all of which went a bit better than expected. On train home now...

Came home to find the Newton case I ordered on eBay earlier in the week had arrived, so now had a mini workstation of sorts to take down to Slough on Sunday - indeed, I'm typing this with the Newton keyboard in the case at home on Saturday (having started scribbling this blog by pen on the train on Friday)... Even more Newon love, after finishing this off in the Newton Notes app, I'll use Adam Tow's nBlog along with a wireless network card to post this... 11 year old technology comes up trumps again... ! (Although that said, the XML-RPC library blew chunks for a while, resulting in this post being reposted about 6 or 7 times, but hey - not to worry...)

Who Knows Where The Time Goes - Tue 3/2

So, no blogs in January - you'd think it had been a quiet monthor something ;) Plenty happened -gone of it even noteworthy! Went to the cinema a couple of times (Australia-ok, The Reader-very good despite having Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes), had some lovely social times, came second in the pub quiz umpteen times and finally started taking charge of grooming our dog. Despite several fights and bites, we still seem to be pals though. Got back to doing some guitar practice again, and today went to an Apple workshop on Logic - so might start getting into that soon. Have also agreed to help take care of a variety of animals at the end of March with Cathy - including three horses. It's been over 30 years since I spent much time with horses ! Should be fun though :)