Vietnam

...is a fantastic and fascinating place. There is the history (with very little mentioned before the French took over in the 19th Century); there is the lifestyles, the hustle and bustle and frenetic activity of the cities; there is the weather which changes along the length of the country; and there is the countryside which is beautiful.

We travelled up the country from Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) through Danang, Hoi An, Hue, Halong Bay and Hanoi. Then we travelled West to the mountains to Sa Pa which at 1600m is as high as a European Alpine resort but with the surrounding hillsides covered in terraced fields.

The food is excellent, the people charming and friendly. All in all, and excellent place to visit.

Extinction of Engineers...

Nice article here about Engineering. Feel I should write a lot more about it, but it pretty well sums up what I feel about engineering. What should be an excellent profession sadly isn't, and the best engineering company I worked for? American.

Will ruminate further at a later date ...

I am an Uncle...

Again! Absolutely fantastic news!

In Praise Of...

...Logisitical Expertise! There are up to 350,000 homes that are without water in Gloucestershire. So a total of six million litres of water are being distributed each day; some as bottled water; the rest through 900 bowsers which are being refilled three times a day. Distribution is being coordinated from the racecourse where the army is assisting in coordination and distribution in military convoys.

On Wednesday, more than five million litres of bottled water were delivered and distributed at 21 centres across the county .

So with a daily average consumption of 120 million litres, there is only a fraction of the normal amount of water available, but what a fantastic effort to get it out to the county...!

Reality...

This picture is around on the website and shows Tewksbury (courtesy of Getty Images) on 22nd/ 23rd July. It is an amazing photo that shows the extent of the flooding.

The last few posts may be a bit flippant, but there are an awful lot of people round here who are affected. Many people from work got stuck on the M5 overnight, or in the office until the early hours of saturday, or are just generally struggling. The people in the closes behind us had a couple of inches of water flowing through their houses.

The water has run out due to a water processing plant in Tewkesbury being flooded. It will take a couple of days for the flood waters to subside, then a few days to restart the plant and flush new water through the system. It hasn't stayed open, but it is easy to moan. Harder to appreciate the efforts of the people who worked on the plant to keep it open; those who have worked to rescue people and to keep electricity substations open for the rest of us.

The blame game has already started on the media: it must be the fault of someone, probably the government as usual. But sometimes, nature just does it's thing, and you have to just go with it.

Priorities...

We lost the internet for 24 hours on Friday: it was difficult. No access to email, news, information, stuff you could buy but don't want to at the moment...

Today the water has run out and won't be switched on for probably around seven days... but I'm sure we'll cope no problem.

Perhaps I need to consider my priorities...

Too Little, Too Much Water...

No water for ages then way, way too much! The rain started at midnight on Thursday with a quick thunderstorm and didn't stop until about 7.00pm. Just over six inches of rain fell, according to the big tub of water sat in the garden that was empty on Thursday evening. I abandoned my car at work at friday for fear of getting it stuck on the racecourse hill and walked home. W got stuck in Nottingham, and spent the night in Derby before only managing to make it past the River Avon by mid-afternoon the next day.

So, huge amounts of rain, no way to get to the river as roads are blocked, and the drinking water will be shut off in a couple of hours as the treatment plant in Tewkesbury is flooded. And you really feel for the people who have had water pour through their homes. The water is still rising in Gloucester and Tewkesbury. THis really is big weather...

Music and Lyrics...

Ok, so I am a fan of music. I listen to it, I like it, and sometimes I need it to move me from one state (usually low) to another (generally higher one). It is more than jst being there in the background, or a soundtrack to a disco night out.

I like music, Johnny Marr with his guitar was (and still is) my hero, but I also like lyrics: they are what changes a nice tune into a fantastic song. They mean something, they allow you to remember a thing, however brief; they describe a picture, an image or a scene.

Elbow write amazing lyrics: they evoke a time and a place and transport you there immediately. And Mr. Garvey has written some truly beautiful lyrics as in Puncture Repair...

I leaned on you today
I regularly hurt but never say
I nearly wore the window through
Where was air sea rescue?
The cavalry with tea and sympathy
You were there
Puncture repair

I leaned on you today
I regularly hurt but never say
You patched me up and sent me on my way
I leaned on you today

My desert island discs would never include Rachmaninov, Beethoven, Chopin or some of the stuff spouted by the great and good who appear on the programme, but Lloyd Cole, Elbow, Scott Matthews, Snow Patrol and others really write songs that mean something, songs that matter...

Album of the Week...

By a long way! We saw him at the Cornbury Festival and he was outstanding. And the album is just as much so. The song Elusive has come well recommended by Zane Lowe, and on first listen it is just ok. But on a second listen it really is superb.

This man deserves to go very far indeed...

Brussels and Beer

The thing about your continentals, is that a) they brew beers stronger than your normal UK cooking beer and b) they don't kick you out a resonable time like they do over here. That is why I felt ridiculously hung over the day after a trip to Delirium. It really was a tough day.

However, I managed to pull myself together in time for a saturday out around town where we were kicked out of one bar at 3.00am, only to find another one next door open until 4.00am, and then another next door again that opened until 7.00am. Me, I ran away at 5.00am, but full marks to Jonathon and Simon for making it all the way till closing time. Aparanently it is only an atypical weekend in Brussels...!

It's fantastic: just excellent 10 minute snippets of top entertainment...

Sunshine

The new Danny Boyle film Sunshine is fantastic. The crew of the spaceship Icarus II head towards the sun with a bomb the size of Manhattan Island to try and kickstart the dying star.

You can guess that this film could be labelled as science fiction, and frankly it is (due to science not yet being able to take us to the sun). However, the label science fiction immediately gets some people's backs up and they immediately decide they don't/ won't like the film which I think is a shame, and which I believe misses the point.

Like many other films in this so called genre, this is an intelligent film with very rounded and believable characters faced with decisions with enormous consequences. It is about people under stress and how they react to situations and each other. It just happens to be set in space.

There are many appalling science fiction films: Lost in Space and Stargate to name two, but I think it is wrong to dismiss a whole body of films due to being set in space, and thus being complete fiction.

Really is a fantastic film though...

Reinstalling Windows...

After 3 years, my Windows XP installation started running so slow that it would take nearly 5 minutes for the PC to come out of hibernation. This only occurred after I installed (and then removed) Windows Desktop Search, so there could be a link but I couldn't find it.

So the only solution was to reinstall Windows. Not a technically difficult job, but boy does it take time, mainly due to all the necessary stuff you need to put on afterwards. So here is a quick list of what to do:

• Reinstall Windows (also making a separate partition for data if not already done so: means that after any future installations, you don't need to copy across everything in 'My Documents'.
• Reinstall SP1 and SP2 and any necessary updates from Windows Update.
• Install IE7 (much better than IE6), although I had to reinstall Windows twice to get this to work.
• Move the IE7 menu bar to the top where it rightfully belongs: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar\WebBrowser] "ITBar7Position"=dword:00000001
• Move the default Favourites setting to point to your favourites handily stored in My Documents (helps back them up and keeps all data in the one place) by updating the value in: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders]"Favorites"=REG_EXPAND_SZ:"D:\My Documents"
• Add the fantastic Inline Search to IE7 from IE Forge.
• Add the excellent Task Switch manager from NTWind.
• Set up IIS for your local website development.
• Download and install Php.
• Download ActiveState Perl.
• Download Filezilla (for all your FTP needs).
• Download Microsoft ActiveSync for your Windows phone.
• Download the very nice Desktop Earth backdrop.
• Download Digiguide, so you know what is on the TV.
• Download Password Safe, for all those less secure passwords we all need to keep track of.
• Download ConTEXT programmer's editor, as it hanldes C/C++, Tcl/Tk, Perl and lots else although at the moment I am trying Programmer's Notepad.
• Add the very useful Microsoft Photo Info.

And that is more or less it, although I'm sure there will be more stuff that you vaguely remember having on your old machine, and only remember when you really really need it... Still, it's nice to have a brand new clean installation running at top (or probably just relatively high) speeds...

Later additions to the list...

• Download the excellent Firebug for script debugging in Firefox.
• And this very good Html Validator.
• And CutePDF for writing pdf files for free.
• And don't forgot to make sure Command Prompt auto completion is turned on.

Put it Away...

I'm talking cameras: I know I am quite bad for always wanting to photograph stuff when on holiday, but I'd like to think I know when to put the camera down and just use my eyes.

But when in Paris we went to the excellent Musée d'Orsay, which is a beautiful building jam packed with fantastic paintings by Picasso, Renoir, Degas, Cézanne, Van Gough and Toulouse-Lautrec amongst others. And I couldn't believe the number of people who their time taking second rate photos of these beautiful paintings with their digital cameras. They did get in the way of other people trying to look at the paintings although I admit to enjoying getting in the way of their photos...

If you like the paintings, get a print or a postcard, and enjoy the originals while you can!

The Prayer

Am particularly liking the new Bloc Party album at the moment, especially some of the lyrics. Like in The Prayer:

"Lord, give me grace

And dancing feet..."

A fantastic sentiment!

Dr Who and Technology

This article is great:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2006031,00.html

the best quote being:

"PCs are the ramshackle computers of the people. You can build your own from scratch, then customise it into oblivion. Sometimes you have to slap it to make it work properly, just like the Tardis (Doctor Who, incidentally, would definitely use a PC)..."

Me, I've never really used a Mac outside of Apple shops where they are at their most shiny and so I have no real opinions about them (other than they look very nice). But great to a read a passionate, reasoned argument...

Back...

Well I thought I should get round to posting again, it being a while since I have posted anything. But what to write about... there's been holidays, kayaking, films, beer, gigs, tech stuff, wine, job hunting: it goes on.

So this will do to start off with, and will think of something more worthwhile to write about next time...