wabson

Various reasons. I’ve been busy at work, busy at Glastonbury, busy flying around various European countries. The usual. My absence from the blogosphere has not helped by the fact that Facebook has recently been giving me that quick fix of Internet-based broadcast expression but with a lot less effort than is required to actually sit down and write something. But it’s time to stop the rot.

For once, I’ve had a weekend that I actually want to pen something about - and enough time on a slightly grey-looking Sunday evening to do so. Last weekend was all about G’s birthday weekend, too much Pimms and recovering from the effects whilst paddling around Chichester harbour and beyond in a vessel clearly not designed for such purposes but which worked surprisingly well.

This weekend has been similar, but with the Saturday festivities and socialising having been moved 40 miles south down to Brighton and the Sunday paddle consisting of the slightly more challenging 18 mile Maidstone to Tonbridge marathon, the latter having been completed in 2 hours, 48 minutes and 26 seconds (though estimated to be some three and a half minutes short due to the closure of the river at the last portage ).

Brighton was good. Sufficiently different from the last time round, a scary five years ago. There was still plenty of Park-based fun, the rather gusty yet still utterly fantastic beach - where fish and chips were eaten - a little bit of drinking, and plenty of meeting new people. My pictures are about to go on FB, which though no doubt missing a large part of the evening after I trundled back off to London I must say I’m still rather happy with.

Next time it won’t be so long

Am I the only person not to have picked up on this already? Suddenly half of that last book makes a lot more sense.

JK - you’ve surprised me. And I certainly don’t agree that Harry Potter is “ruined forever”. What terrible views to have.

Found on the bottom of a pack of Salmon fillets this evening:

Allergy advice: Contains fish

Sometimes I wonder what the world is coming to…

This is a great example of why I love free software - with the latest version of GNOME out the door, Evolution now helpfully warns you if you try to send an e-mail containing the word “attached” or similar but neglect to actually attach a file to the message.

Is that not the kind of simple, yet brilliant feature that when you hear about it makes you wonder why nobody’s thought of it before? Amazing.

The irony that when you have lots of blog-worthy things to write about you never seem to find time to do just that has been commented on many times before in conversations with friends. More worrying though is when you don’t even seem to be able to find the time to read other peoples’ musings anymore. And I guess I’ve kinda got out of the habit of doing both of those lately.

So yesterday I invested some of my remaining time off in setting up a whole bunch of subscriptions on my Google account. Their Reader has a few too many bevels and waaay too much baby blue for my liking, but at least I can access it from any of the three computer accounts I regularly use and should I get that fed up of it I figure I can always export the feed list list to something else - so long as it can read an OPML file.

I haven’t even added half the feeds I want to yet (since the process is a little cubersome in Firefox), but I’ve already managed to get back into quite a few blogs that I haven’t read regularly in a little while.

It’s nice to catch up. So today I’ve discovered (via John Dale) that Warwick’s new VC seems much more down-to-earth that the last guy, and that Amazon’s MP3 download service is apparently open for business - with pricing particularly attractive to those of us lucky enough to be living in a country that’s not headed straight for a recession ;-).

Who knows - at this rate I might even have Planet Afterlife working again soon. But don’t hold your breath.

I read this evening that Apple have once again resorted to blocking third party software from accessing the song databases build into every iPod.

Last time it was over Real cracking their DRM and I didn’t care so much given that I can’t use most of their proprietary-ware anyway, but now Apple have completely broken the main Linux-based library used by the fabulous Rhythmbox and Banshee, amongst others.

What I find most sad is the fact that the changes they’ve made - involving some kind of checksumming built into the latest iPod firmware - serve no useful purpose whatsoever other than to limit the ways in which consumers can use their own players.

That Apple would spend engineering dollars in order to make iPods less useful - arguably completely useless to anyone using Linux - is appalling. But not surprising to anyone who’s followed their moves in recent years.

I was seriously considering buying an iPod up until yesterday. I’m certainly not any more.

Glastonbury flew by. I have to go to work tomorrow but my mind is still stuck there in that rain-soaked field. I can’t describe what happened there in words - it was just magic.

Specific Things That Were Good included:

• The rain - I’ve not seen that much water drop out of the sky in a very long time. It really started teeming down as The Who played last night, but I don’t think anybody really cared
• The wonderful Dame Shirley Bassey - proving that she very much still has what it takes.
• Making a flag! And making sure that Ricky from the Kaisers noticed it when he came down to meet-and-greet the crowd. That’s mine in the middle of the shot!
• The food - we’re not talking gourmet by any stretch, but all things considered I’ve not eaten badly at all over the last five days.
• Cider, beer, vodka and coke and G&Ts. Not that pear cider though - I’m staying away from that one in future.
• The people. And their unrelenting determination to keep on going despite everything.

I am officially no longer a music festival virgin. Go me.

On Apple.com’s new look-and-feel, discovered via Laurie.

First thoughts: it looks like someone’s just found the Colors > Invert menu item in Photoshop. Is black really back in again? I thought we’d seen the end of back of white-on-black text, banished along with circa-1998 websites and MS-DOS windows. Sure, it looks different from the old design, but not vastly so and I’d actually say it’s a step back in terms of the nice minimalistic look they previously had going on.

Their news ticker is neat, although it looks rather similar to our own.

Overall I give them seven out of ten - but only because it was so good before, they haven’t changed it that much and their small army of graphic designers seem to be able to make anything look good. Even if it is in black.

Well done Mr. Eavis - this year’s line-up looks amazing. Now can I have my tickets please?

Today we posted the details of two new openings that we have at Alfresco up on the web site. We’re looking for a web manager to take over my current role managing the main site and associated infrastructure, and other person to look after our various internal systems. Both great opportunities, but admittedly I’m kinda biased there.

If you’re interested, send us a copy of your CV and a short blurb to careers at alfresco dot com.