Tax Return Submitted - Early

Got it done, a good 1hr and 40mins before the deadline, HMRC website was under load to say the least and wasn't failing too gracefully - had one page with just some large red font text "Socket Error", oh dear. It's not a trivial task I'll admit.

Bonus was it was way less than I'd budgeted, yay!

Swim TT

Good fun at the Cardiff Triathletes 400m swim time trial last night - some controvesy!

It was two swimmers side by side per lane for the timed 16 length affair. Ex winter league leader (and now banned from triathlon) Brian 'I'll swim through you' Hawkins used up what could only be described as 100% of the shared lane, leaving poor Andy Pearce swimming under the lane rope.

Afterwards Brian said "He was lucky to have the lane rope, I wanted him out into the next lane. I like a bit of personal space."

Andy was too shocked to comment, he hasn't spoken since.

Meanwhile, Pete Beaumont claims he took part in a timed 400m swim in Sweden while on his arctic expedition, but I can't see it really. He'll have to accept maximum penalty points for a no-show and give up his second place.

Personally this hasn't helped my chances, I'm stil waaaaayyyy down the batting order. Anyone for tennis?

Oh, I did 6:36 for 400m
That's not far off my PB, not bad for the training I've done lately - not much! (Just swimming really)

The Resurrection

Cartman has been replaced by baldrick while I source a replacement hard drive.

Baldrick was a Win XP box, but now it's dual boot to Suse Linux and I see no need to boot to Windows except perhaps for Photoshop occasionally (should get a Mac license instead).

That makes me Windows free, yay! No Vista for me thanks, I'll be sticking to secure, scriptable operating systems.

If only I can find a reliable hard drive? The software raid that was running on baldrick prior to dual-boot hit a glitch and wasn't effective, great.
I don't really want to go to the expense of the decent raid levels where you need 5 disks to reliably have 1!

Cartman Dead

My Suse Linux machine, Cartman, has died today, rest in peace. New hard drive will follow the burial. Pleased that I had automatic backups running and a wiki detailing how to install/configure it all.

It's still a time consuming hassle I could do without though!

Running Return

Just been for a 20min run - first run since before xmas when my knee/hamstring was causing extreme pain. Feel great now after it, no problems or twinges, hopefully a good sign that a month and a bit of rest has let it heal.

I'll build up the time/distance slowly and will also try cycling on the turbo trainer.

Preventing Comment Spam

New Google link attribute to help prevent comment spam - read the Google article here

Google bot indexer will avoid these user provided links for ranking algorithms etc, the idea being that there is then no point in creating spam links.

It's worthwhile having a confirm image on the comment submission form too to avoid bot comments in the first place.

Weekend Pics

Sunny & Blustery Golf



Matt & I both managed a respectable score despite the interesting conditions - course is still really wet in places. Nice to have the sun out though.

Waterfall walk



Can't beat the sound of flowing water.

O'Sullivan Victorious



Ronnie finished up quickly - so quickly I missed the end of the match!

Discovered the zoom function on my Nokia 6280 - RTFM! Mostly digital zoom - better to move closer to the object it seems. Still, pretty neat for a phone.

BB Jade takes some (racist?) stick

ROFL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/19/goody_crucified/

DIY- it's that time of year!

Extra Kitchen Storage



New carpet ordered for stairs & landing

Apple TV versus Mac Mini

Interesting comparison here.

Wireless printing and disk storage

Available with the new Airport Extreme Base Station:
http://www.apple.com/airportextreme/



Plug your USB printer and USB external hard disk into this wireless hub (which also has 3 x RJ45 LAN ports) for wireless printing and disk storage, neat.

£119 is a fair cost but wireless printing and disk storage (NAS) is really useful.

Works on PC or Mac (Bonjour required - available on the provided install CD for Windows). I assume should work fine on Linux also.

Weekend Pics

Looking @ sofas


New shelving under stairs


Nice weather for golf

Redecorating

Finished painting and fitting new carpet under the stairs this week...

Motorbike for sale

My 1989 Honda VFR400 NC30 is for sale...



Looking for £750 for the bike, £999 including a load of spare parts including swing arm and engine.
Open to offers too, must be sold.

Apple TV

Apple TV was announced yesterday, a way to watch downloaded tv shows and movies on your TV as well as view your photos and listen to iTunes.

Looks great, a good incentive to get a HD TV? 40GB hard disk won't hold too many movies though. This might not be a problem if streaming from other PCs works well.

Available in Feb, looking forward to a demo at an Apple Store.

More info at Apple Store.

WICC

I Climbed at the Welsh International Climbing Centre last night with Gareth Sheppard - he's back in Cardiff, must have been 2 years at least since my last visit there!

The wall is under new management, not sure how long they've been holding the reigns but they seem to be making some changeds. The two grey feature walls are being revamped - one of them has been stripped of all panels.



The bouldering wall located in the main centre is now taller too.



No climbing shoes were available to hire despite it being not that busy which was quite suprising.

Suprised myself by climbing 8 routes from 5a to 6b and not getting completely pumped!

Rupert's Birthday

Out in Bristol last Saturday, some drunken pics...

Tech.co.uk launched

Future Publishing's new Technology website has just launched - I was part of the team that worked on this from July-Oct last year.

http://www.tech.co.uk/

Looks good!

Customer Service

Interesting and entertaining example of poor customer service if you've got a spare few minutes:

customer service email exchange

2007

Going to make a concerted effort to start blogging again, posts have been patchy at best over the past few months!

Anyhows, Happy New Year!