I’m not the kind of person who gets homesick, and I don’t really miss much about Perth, but sometimes I catch a smell, miss a taste, or see a photo which really brings it all back:

Perth, Australia by night

And, even in the year since I’ve been gone, Perth seems to have changed a fair bit now.  We now have a fifth, metro train line, which even has a section underground.  Definitely something to check out when in a little under a year when I get home for a holiday.  I’m sure it’ll be an enlightening experience.

Just like the 11pm train from Kings Cross

The Things I’d do if I was back in Perth :-

• See Family/Friends (of course)
• Drink up a storm at the Queens Hotel in Mt Lawley
• Eat Twisties
• Stock up on Aussie red wine, and Coopers Beer
• Get the best pizza in the world from Il Padrinos (The Pizza King) in Northbridge
• Take a weekend down south in Margaret River
• Ride the train

And that’s about it!

Home Sweet Home!

Remember the days of Winamp, that funky, light (~v2 anyway) little MP3 player? It was the ultimate accessory on every geeks tools belt, along with ICQ, mIRC, Netscape and possibly Eudora (though I never cared for it).  I remember it, very fondly, it was in my opinion responsible for bringing MP3 music to the masses, or at least to those geeky enough to have gone out looking for it.  It did, what every good music player should, and what many of todays media players faily miserably at (especially a certain Media Player that’s at ver 11).  Simplicity is what it did well, and at the time it worked fantastically.

Winamp v2 - Basic, like a crappy car stereo

Sonique media player was a funky upstart that was in development about the same time, which had a completely different approach to to the MP3 and media playing application.  It went outside the box, of what a normal application looked like with funky designs and skins that didn’t fit into the shape of a normal window, and if I remember correctly came standard with a host of plugins, visualisation and other addons.

Sonqiue’s interesting style

Now, to the point of my post!

I was talking to one of the guys at the office the other day, and it turns out he was one of the lead developers on the Sonique application and some of the plugins that came with it to produce oh so clear crystal sound.  He spoke of the hype surrounding the application, and the chance at millions when bought out by Lycos (I think??!), and subsequent downfall as the other competitors tried different/more successful things.

This proves basically nothing except that once again, the world is a tiny place, but oh well, I still think Winamp was the better player!

Off topic, but I still happen to have the original set of MP3’s I first managed to download all those years ago (digitally copied many times of course), but the tracks have managed to stay (embarrisingly) in the collection all these years and have kept their original script kiddie style filenames.  These include such greats as:

• John Denver’s, Thank God, I’m a country boy (aptly name Denv-ThankGod.mp3)
• various Smashing Pumpkins songs
• Paul Simon, You can call me Al
• Pink Floyd
• Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin

and many more! Random!

It’s been a whlie since I posted an article on the N95, and thats not to say it’s falled out of favor, or I’m bored of it.  To tell you the truth, this truly amazing piece of portable technology, continues to enlighten me, and still I’m finding new things out every day.  A couple of months ago, in my previous post, I mentioned Nokia Sports Tracker, which at the time, was a buggy, horrible example of beta software.

That’s all changed though, Sports Tracker is now a powerful, bug-free (at least from what I’ve seen), exercise accompanyment which is a damn load of fun to use at the same time.  Broken down, it:

• use GPS to map speed/distance travelled on a map;
• allows you to set routes for commonly travelled paths, and records times for previous workouts so you can beat previous routes;
• includes a Step counter to approximate work done and energy consumed;
• updates progress, and live workout status online, updating the users profile (ala Facebook).

Nokia Sports Tracker Online

I’ve now completed the 3.5 mile walk from the office to Waterloo Station 10 times, and got my time down to 24 minutes, though I’m sure this could be a lot better if I wasn’t walking through peak hour traffic to get there.  And best of all, the GPS/live part still works jammed in my pocket.

A quick one, and not the best title I know.  But there’s been a noticeable increase of late in police numbers onthe streets around the office, and in tube/train stations on the way home.  Over the last fortnight, I’ve noticed at various times during the week there being at least 20 or 30 (and possibly many more on platforms and other lines) police officers putting in a presence at both Green Park station, Waterloo and Twickenham stations.

One of the guys at work was stopped randomly was searched (padded down, emptied bags, etc) under the terrorist act (can’t say No, basically), in Green Park station on the way home the other night, nothing came of it, of course.  And completely unrelated, but the police have closed off a lane outside the office and are searching cars too.  Though that’s probably licensing, more than anything.

A completely unrelated sign I spotted whilst on my way to the rugby on the weekend

It really makes me wonder though, since I’ve been here (especially since attempted car bombings in June* last year) there’s been an on/off police presence, which in a weird way I find oddly reassuring.  But it begs the question, “Why the sudden spikes in activity, and then nothing for a few days?”. Are these really just random, routine acts in a way that could make the public feel safer and feel like the government/metro police are doing something?  Or is there something more sinister going on?

I’m no conspiracy theorist, but suspicious one inside me notices an alarming difference between one police/security officer whom you may see at a stationi entrance or patrolling the street, and literally an army of officers stopping/searching/charging people as they go about they’re daily commute.

I still can’t help but think these stop and searches could be better conducted in the problem areas, not the terrorism problem, but the problem that is still gripping London, and thats youth gang stabbings and warfare.  I’d have to guess and say you’d be far more likely to find a butterfly knife on a dodgy looking youth in Brixton, than anything of Terrorist nature in the bag of an otherwise innocent Software developer in Mayfair.  Priorities!

But, in the end, we’ve just got to forget about it and get on with the task of getting home, god knows I’m not going to walk the whole distance.

I remember a few months ago, I thought to myself, it’s nice to have everything in a rythym (spelling?!).  The money was coming in, and more was being saved than I’d managed to the previous 24 years of my life, I was embarking on some exciting new work prospects, and I was writing on this page over twice a week.

What the hell happened?

Falling into a rythym, out of rythym

As I said, for a period (probably a lot shorter than I actually remember), I felt like I was getting things done, and working towards some goals.  The last 2 months has shattered this, and I’ve now managed to fall into a new rythym or being completely out of the previous beat I was following.  I shouldn’t blame myself too much, there’s been a lot of time consuming, money draining things going:

• the Wedding (enough said),
• the quasi HoneyMoon,
• the 3 different visits of different groups of family and friends, spanning now over the past 6 weeks; and
• the 4 holidays (of various lengths coming up to Paris, Southern England and of course Russia)

With all the interruptions, I’ve managed to lose a fantastic work oppurtunity (don’t ask, big project, stake in company, yada, yada….), eat and drink (badly) constantly and quite frankly waste a metric f$#kload of money.  And with things not paid for, such as the holidays I mentioned above, I can’t see any easy way out of immediate debt.

Planning…

So here I am, preaching to Google crawl bot (possibly this posts only audience, given its less than exciting nature), and getting my thoughts down on paper (we’ll call it, the interscroll), to come to a quick as possible solution to the problem.

I’ve spent the last hour updating the C&S Income/Expenditure budget (yet another thing, I’ve lost track of), and whilst things ain’t as glum as I thought they might be, it seems something has to give:

• stop on the spot purchases (easy, I’ll stop scouring internet shops in downtime at work)
• cut back on drinking/going out (should be fine, now that the visitors have moved on)
• borrow more money (read debt) from the bank, not a good idea.  The way things are going at the moment, I’m probably one of their favourite small-time customers.
• cut back on one of the holidays (kind of hard as it was booked months in advance (not with our money, at the time).

I find myself in the money pickle again, something I’m no stranger to.  I’m comfortable enough that I know I can be clear and mostly debt free again by say… September, but its the now that I can’t handle.

Completely off topic, but the book I’m reading at the moment, Tripwire (my 6th novel since April!), starts with a CEO of a faltering U.S electronics business going to a loan shark for a large loan.  In borrowing 1.1 million dollars, he falls into the trap of paying back a high interest rate, and giving a rather large proportion of his fledgling companies shares to the shark who sells them all instantly for nothing causing the banks to freak and dump his enourmous loans off on a large mortgage recovery operation (ftonted in the Cayman islands, by the loan shark himself).  This has nothing to do with my situation at all, but geez, show’s what debt and stupidity can do in times of desperation.

Recoupling on the rail to success….

I’ve got a 7 point plan to rectify this little situation of mine, firstly:

• enjoy the holiday to Russia, no point in stressing about that
• get all debts on the way to be being repaid by September 2008, this includes costs for the wedding, the previous personal loan, and credit card debt
• write at least two posts a week to HD911, content is the key
• continue reading novels, but branch out into some different authors, 4 books by one author (Lee Child) and 2 by another (Harlen Coben) is proving a little too much
• continue good things at the office
• get off my ass and get this work started and flowing again; and
• and keep exercising as much as possible, the 15 mile week (counted 4 trips from the office to Waterloo station (3.5miles) and smaller trips between work and Trafalgar Square) was a step in the right direction.

Let’s do this thing…. Yea!

Damn, it’s been the better part of 3 weeks since I made that nutty 2am post about feelings and love and stuff, which sets a new standard in the life of HD911.  Yes, its the longest time between posts yet, and I’ll have to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

We’ll pick up where I left off last time.  The day of the wedding turned out to be a complete success, which could be caused by the fact it was planned rather quickly.  It’s weird, that I’d guess the more thought and planning that was actually put into the event, the more things that can possibly go wrong.  A win-win situation for us really.  And the room the ceremony was held in, The Rosetti Room (Kensington & Chelsea Registry Office), was really pretty, though probably not as nice as it seems, on the website. Damn those photographers and your snazzy cameras.

Most of the weddings I’d been to previously were the church ceremony type affair, with the waiting, and the preparation, and the priest, and the music, and the crying, and the flower girls.  This was nothing like that at all, simply a nice, quiet room with a few friends and family and a registrant in the corner.  No sooner had I walked in to the room and heard 3 seconds of Have I told you lately by Van Morrison, that I had a ring on my finger and was walking back out the front door again, marching down the stairs with my new viiife (the lovely Catherine).

The Apprentice

The day continued to get better and better as we arrived at the London Apprentice in Isleworth about 11:00am and the sun was out, bright and blaring.  There’s no other way of describing it, apart from, “bloody awesome”. The turn out was really good as well with a few family and friends from each of our places of business.

This was about 2:00pm in the afternoon, I was already a little weary.  Who’s that fella on the right?

But I won’t comment any further, as I really can’t remember much after about early afternoon.

It’s the night before my wedding, no, scrap that. Let me re-phrase, it’s nine hours and twenty minutes before my wedding.  I’ve only just had a chance to sit down and actually think about the whole thing, I’m not nervous, or scared, or overwhelmed.  I’m just… happy!  I can’t really explain it, thoughts are running through my head at 1,000 miles an hour, many at the same time, but I do have an outstanding feeling of contentment.  The rest of the clan are over at the moment, and its great to be able to see them after a year, though it feels like yesterday that I saw them last anyway.

Note: Not anything like the suit I’ll be wearing tomorrow

In my pensive state, I figured out something though, I’m sure its blatantly obvious to everyone else, but I feel like a genius anyway, and I’m not talking the same kind of genius I was when I invented the Bloody Genius.

Do you know the real reason why you’re not supposed to see the bride the night before the wedding?

The answer to this became very obvious when I walked into the bedroom at 11:00pm, and Cath wasn’t there.  I wasn’t expecting her to be, as she’s spending the night over at a friends to keep with tradition.  But it’s blatantly obvious to me that something’s missing, and not just that, but I’m lonely as well, why else would I be writing this post?

I think if you can make the decision not to see your partner for the point of not seeing them, and then instantly wish it didn’t have to be that way and feel as lonely as I do right now, then that’s a compelling reason to make sure it never happens again.  And if the opposite was to occur, and on your last night of ‘freedom’‘ as they say you feel nothing whilst apart, then maybe that’s a good reason not to get married.

See, genius!

But, (and I don’t want to sound corny here), I didn’t need to have this experience to know that want to spend the rest of my life with just one certain person, I knew that already.  I knew that soon after we met almost 8 years ago, though I can’t remember the point it occured to me.

Now I’ve just got to remember all the things I’ve got to do for the big day tomorrow, which thankfully isn’t much.  I’ve got the rings safely in plain view so they’re not forgotten, and the certificate, and my suit & shirt are pressed.  Hell, even my shoes are buffed and polished, that’s some forward thinking right there.

Rings

Despite the integral people who’ll be missing tomorrow (you know who you are), I’m looking forward to it, despite its low-keyness.  There won’t be a big ceremony, nor confetti (at least I don’t think), a bouquet, a priest, a first dance or an enourmous feast.  But there most certainly will be the couple, speeches, toasts, good friends, some immediate family, food and drink, all at a nice little pub with a fair bit of history in what must be the best city in the world.  And for that, I’m looking forward to it.

And then Sunday, we’re off to Majorca in Spain, which sounds fantastic, like a little holiday island, and another place I’d never heard of before about a week ago.  Cath and I, my parents and my brother in a villa on a sunny island in Spain for four days!  Once again, a little unorthodox with regards to the normal wedding/honeymoon situation, but I haven’t seen them all in such a long while, it’ll be great.

I’m in London Still*….. I’m getting married, and, I’m loving it!

* Weirdly enough the Waif’s song London Still just came on while I wrote the last line, and it really just seemed to slot into place.

You can ask anyone, I’m not usually one to pick up a book, and it’s even more unlikely that I’d be caught reading one.  In fact over the last year, apart from daily reads of websites (which often contain relatively large stories/articles), and various tech (read: geek) books, the only books I’ve read are:

• Tucker Max - I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell…
• Maddox - The Alphabet of Manliness

In the last ten days I’ve doubled this, and now I’m onto my third book.  This is amazing because, as we’ve already estabilished, I don’t read, so it takes something unusual to break the literary drought.  And I’ve definitely that something I think.  Lee Child’s alter ego Jack Reacher is just about the most interesting character I’ve ever read about, which tells me a) Child write’s f*&king good books, or b) I’m uncultured and haven’t read anywhere near enough books.  I’ll go with option a, because I know how cultured and cool I am.

So far, I’ve read too of Child’s books, One Shot, and Bad Luck and Trouble, which kept me glued from start to finish.  The former is about a seemingly random mass murder in Indiana by a trained sniper where the crime is completely faked and made to look like it was a retired army Marine who did the shooting, and the victim’s weren’t all completely random (shock horror).  The latter involves half of Reacher’s old Army group getting killed for uncovering a plot to ship new U.S missile technology to terrorists and Reacher meets up with the remaining four members of the group to bring justice to those taken down.  As usual, weapons, money and a whole lot of violence is involved.

One thing I really liked about the first book (that I didn’t notice as much in the second) is that the whole book plays out almost exactly like a Law and Order episode.  I’m a Law and Order nut, if its on I’ll watch it, and even episodes I’ve seen before rate pretty high on the re-watchability scale (as long as they’re not watched in close succession).  Apart from the abomination that was Trial By Jury, or Justice By Jury (something like that), I’ve liked pretty much every episode that I’ve watched in the past 18 series the original show has been running.  And I appreciated that about One Shot.  It plays out like any cop/military drama, and it keeps interest the whole time.

I’d had Lee Child recommended to me recently, and by coincidence, the newspaper The Evening Standard happened to have a free copy if you bought a copy of the paper.  So I guess advertising works, as I’ll now probably continue and buy the rest of his books, starting from the first of the series of course.

Anybody want to recommend me some good reading?

My new Laptop, a Dell Vostro 1700 arrived on Tuesday, and its more than a worthy replacement for my ageing Latitude.  I might even go as far as to say its the perfect notebook, for the person who doesn’t need to take their machine to work with them every day.  The only reason I say that is because its big, and really heavy as well (I’d estimate 4kg).

But for a round-the-house desktop replacement, media and occasional gaming machine, its perfect, and cheap too!

I got:

• Core2Duo 9500 (2.5Ghz)
• 4GB RAM
• nVidia 8600GM
• 2×200GB 7200RPM HDD’s
• Intel Wireless Draft-n card
• 17″ 1920×1200 WUXGA+ Monitor

Plus all the throw in options (Vista, MS Office, Bluetooth Headset, etc etc)

For £895!

Once again, I put it to anyone to find a similar spec’d machine for anywhere near this price because Dell definitely seems to have the upper hand in these stakes.