David Morris - brassedoff.net

It’s been nigh on three weeks since I blogged - last year in fact, so after an extremely pleasant Christmas and New Year, I thought I’d catch up on a few bits and pieces. Firstly, some Christmas presents.

Mrs Woolforbrains and the Young Master conspired to get me a new Sony PRS-505 eBook reader for Christmas, despite me unknowingly saying to Daniel that I didn’t want or need one a few days before Santa arrived. Having got one though, I’m very impressed by the build quality and user interface as well as the ‘reading experience’ and can see that the device will be a great boon when travelling.

The two images above show the reader in detail including a screen closeup. It’s an extremely easy deive to sue. There are two lots of page turn buttons and facilities for bookmarks (shown as turned don page corners - despite my Mum telling me I should never turn down the corners of pages). Once you’re engrossed with the book, it’s easy to forget that it’s not a paper book. In fact, on several occasions, I’ve found myself wanting to turn the pages rather than clicking on a button.

The device also plays MP3’s, but I’ve got an iPod for that, so I’m unlikely to be exercising that feature; it has a headphone port on the bottom next to the charger and mini USB ports. It doesn’t come with a charger, but will charge from the USB. On the top are MS and SD card slots to permit the on-board storage to be expanded.

Before books can be put on the reader, the usual pile of software has to be installed (Mac / PC only). The Sony software isn’t too bad (a bit fancy when a straightforward WinXP look and feel would have done, but c’est la vie). Before protected eBooks can be installed, the Adobe Digital Editions software must be installed. This allows protected eBooks to be transferred between PC and reader. I’ve tested out the system with a purchase of Ben Elton’s Blind Faith from Waterstones and the process was relatively trouble-free unless you have a violent objection to all the DRM stuff that goes along with protected formats.

The second “toy” actually isn’t one of mine - it’s one we bought for Daniel in the hope it would kick-start the association of notes to keyboard (bear in mind he only plays brass at the moment). What was it? Can you tell what it is yet?

Yep, a good old traditional stylophone, complete with vibrato and three octave settings. Concessions to a more modern era are an MP3 input so you can play along to your favourite tracks. Anyone for “Tie my kangaroo down, sport”?

Finally for today (it was always going to be a big catchup), there’s the prospect of a new car on the horizon. I currently drive a 2.0l Peugeot 206CC convertible, but an upgrade is on the cards. It’s highly likely to be a Mini Cooper S. I’ve got an option on one on an 06 plate. I’ve driven a similar car and am waiting on the car in question being moved from its current location down South up the dealers at Chesterfield. No doubt you’ll hear more soon!

Have you tried to install Oracle XML BI Publisher Desktop and the installation complains part way through that Word isn’t installed but you know it is? Quick tip: Try updating to Office SP3.

Last night was the Cubs night hike around Rother Valley. Four or so miles, setting off at 7pm in the dark (well, it would be wouldn’t it, it being a night hike) from the Scout HQ in Killamarsh, down to the park, back to the south end of the park, up on to the TPT and back in to the village, most of it off road or on the closed park access roads.

It was a bit cloudy so the planned star gazing was out of the window, and it was cold. So cold in fact that it was starting to freeze as we were walking. The mud was getting crunchy under foot and the puddles were starting to solidify. The freezing was more advanced in some areas than others. It was particularly advanced in the area on the Park access road when I put my foot down on the far side of a speed bump. My foot shot from underneath me and I was rather unceremoniously dumped on the floor. This morning, I’ve got a bump the size of a mango on my rear end and the makings of a marvellous bruise. Funnily enough, I think I was the only casualty. It’s probably a good job I was at the back of the procession so the witnesses were fewer.

Despite that, it was a pleasant enough walk.

Daniel now has his night hike badge to go with his Scientist badge (they did things with cress seeds) and his water awareness badge. That in itself was fun because the Christmas treat for the cubs was scuba diving at Eckington pool. They did the water awareness as part of that, but the scuba diving seemed to be enjoyed by all, and as a consequence, all the kids got their PADI Bubbleblowers badge and certificate.

Tonight’s job is transferring the third lot of home brew to the keg in preparation for Christmas supping. It will keep nicely cold in the garage.  It also looks like this brew, a Canadian style lager is going to better than the last  Mexican style one. It seems to have more body and a fuller taste. Hmmm.

How to make a million?

Don’t pass on VAT cuts to your customers. That’s exactly what Microsoft appears to be doing with subscriptions to XBox Live. Priced at £39.99 inc VAT for some time, after the UK VAT cut from 17.5% to 15%, strangely, XBOX Live is still £39.99 instead of around £39.15. Admitted, £39.15 doesn’t sound as sexy as £39.99, but it’s not on.

On a positive note, the new Guitar Hero World Tour is the dogs what-nots.

Coming soon, some seasonal pictures…

I set off early this morning as I wanted to be in our Birmingham office for 9:30-ish. The satnav said I was on target for 9:15 but she soon revised her opinion to 9:35 after a congested M1. I could live with that though. There was nothing spoiling particularly. We were planning to bring a new phone system live today, but the actual cutover wasn’t slated until around lunchtime and it was the handset training that was taking place first thing.

Everything was therefore pretty rosy until I hit the back of the traffic jam on the A42 around 9:15.

…time passed…

…and passed a bit more…

…and a bit more…

…and eventually at 12:15, I reached the problem. A car transporter heading North had tipped over, taking a fair bit of the central reservation Armco with it, depositing several cars on the north and southbound carriageways. Not a particularly pretty site. Unfortunately, caught slap bang between the two junctions, there was nowhere for us to go. We had to sit and wait it out, so it took three hours before we were able to get past the obstruction that was only a mile or so in front of us.

So, today, I’ve set a personal worst for Sheffield to Birmingham of five hours.

It could have been worse though. I was pretty close to the accident itself. As I write this, the A42 is still closed southbound and only partially open northbound.

On a positive note, we got the new phone system up and working ok, and we’ve got SIP trunking working between the two systems. This forms the first part of a pan-European  system linking all four offices with trunking between the offices. It’s something I’m really looking forward to getting implemented and will, I think, be a considerable feather in the cap of my team in Sheffield.

I think I’m destined to become a Saturday morning music school father. Dan’s half way through his first visit to Chesterfield Music Services’ Saturday morning “school”. It’s a bit too far for me to go home in between, so it’s a good job there’s somewhere for abandoned parents to sit themselves and plenty of cheap coffee on tap. Mains outlets for the laptop are in short supply, but the new Huawei 3G dongle gets me an Internet connect so it’s not too bad! Funnily enough I bumped in to old friend and fellow Chapeltown Band member Chris Davies and his son Jonathon. Jonathon’s part way through a music degree and is teaching the beginner band here, so it was nice to see at least one familiar face.

Ah well, only 15 minutes to kill now…

I was looking for information from one of the services offered by the council, but by the looks of it, they’ve had some unauthorised bod playing in their database.

Needless to say, I’ve reported this to the Council. One of their people has seen the problem now and hopefully it’s going to get passed off to their internal IT services team to sort out.

…well, almost :)

You may recall that Dan and I provided the seasonal entertainment for the Seth Ellis Santa Special publicity trips last Saturday? It was Dan’s first public outing playing and it went very well indeed. I was indeed the proud Dad.

I’d passed my camera to James, another crew member to get some suitable shots for publicity purposes and he managed to come up with this one as well. Well done James, and well done Daniel!

It should be second nature to most people working with web sites that they need to be easy to navigate around, but there are some very bad examples out in Internet-land. This video from the BBC explains how we view web sites and offers some quick design tips for making sites better for the user. For what it’s worth, Richard did a cracking job in my opinion on the Scimitars site, especially if you compare it with the mess that is the Steelers web site. I think the latter is a good example of “just because you can doesn’t mean you should”.

I wrote a couple of posts back about my famous poker-playing mate. He mentioned he’d been written up nicely on blondepoker.com. After a bit of digging around, I found the post concerned with a rather nice picture here. I’ll freely admit to not understanding the technicalities of the posting; I’m clearly better off sticking to J2EE, WiFi, interrupts and the like. Next time I see him, I must remember to ask for his autograph!