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Well, it’s that time of the week again! Yep, another “The Weekend” post 🙂

On Friday night, we didn’t do very much at all. On Saturday, we did quite a lot … our furniture from Homebase arrived (yay!). So I spent a couple of hours putting it up. Both items (a bookshelf and a cupboard) seemed to go without any problems, and both of them look good where we’ve put them 🙂 The bookshelf in particular makes the living room look a lot more “homey”.

We also went into town to get a few bits, including a whole bunch of stuff for our holiday in a couple of weeks. I needed to get some walking boots, and we both needed some other random bits and pieces. In the evening we stayed in and did a couple of things that needed doing at home… we were both pretty exhausted by the end of the day!

Yesterday, we went to Fordham in the morning. In the afternoon we didn’t do a whole lot… late afternoon, we started walking down to Alex’s in Wivenhoe. We went round there for chillout night, and instead of driving thought it would be a good idea to break in my walking boots by walking there. I think it turned out to be a good decision as we got there without any problems, and I feel much more comfortable with my new boots.

In the evening we went down to the Bengal Spice with Alex. I had a chicken Pasanda — and it was absolutely delicious! I can heartily recommend one for anyone going there 🙂

And… that’s about it for the time being. I’ve been doing a bit more work on my PHP webmail thingum, so hopefully I’ll be able to provide a demo of that soon for anyone who’s interested. All for now!

There’s one thing about Linux I don’t like. In Linux, you’ve got two big graphical desktop environments — one is called Gnome, and the other is called KDE (there are others, but those are probably the biggest at the moment).

This is all good, because it gives people a greater choice. If you prefer the look and feel of KDE over Gnome, you can make the switch. And if you have both installed, you can choose which one you want to use when you login. All good.

The problem is that certain utilities are written for one or the other. If I have a browse through the Ubuntu package repository, I see a bunch of packages starting with “K” — most of these are written specifically for KDE. I also see a bunch of packages starting with “G” – these are developed for Gnome.

Why the separation? Why can’t I use a utility whichever desktop I want to use? It is not possible to compile for both? I’m pretty sure Firefox and Thunderbird work on both. If someone can explain this to me, that would be good 🙂

Edit: hmmm, it would seem that you can run KDE programs from within Gnome. It just has to load up all the KDE libraries. Hmm, strikes me as being a bit inefficient, but still…

I’ve categorised this post as a “the weekend” post, although actually I think you already know most of it 🙂 On Saturday, we had a new hi-fi arrive 🙂 I’d ordered it the previous week in town. It’s comprised of a Marantz amplifier and CD player, and a set of speakers from Monitor Audio. Although it doesn’t have a huge power output (about 40 watts — my DJ speakers are 150W per channel), the quality is great. I think it’s probably the best hi-fi system I’ve ever owned personally (actually it doesn’t have much competition as it’s the only hi-fi separates system I’ve owned personally)… it’s a real pleasure to listen to music on it 🙂

Anyway. On Saturday we were also expecting some furniture from Homebase. It didn’t arrive… we’re going to have to call up and see what went wrong. So, a bit of a mixed Saturday, but apart from the lack of new furniture not bad!

Yesterday, we went down to Philippa’s parents for a bit of a family gathering. I say “bit of” because it was quite small — just a few people from the family who couldn’t be at the wedding. It was a really nice day, and the weather was perfect! In the afternoon we were able to sit out in the afternoon and chat, it was just the right temperature. We headed back home late afternoon, and just chilled out in the evening!

I think that covers everything for the time being. All for now…

It’s been a fairly busy week for me! Monday night I didn’t do much – Philippa was out for dinner with some of her work colleagues, and I just stayed in.

On Tuesday, we went to steak night with the chaplaincy people (Alex, Chris B, Anne-Marie, Alison and Joan). Afterwards we went round to Alex’s for a coffee. It was a good evening! On Wednesday we also went round to Alex’s for a coffee. Although, come to think about it, I don’t think we actually had any coffee that evening. But we did, however, play Alex’s new “Doctor Who” game — it was great fun, although it did drag on a bit… I think partly because none of us are very used to the game and weren’t playing with tactics in mind!

On Thursday evening, we went out to the prayer supper at Fordham. We were able to sit outside and have dinner, it was lovely! And yesterday evening, we went to a wedding reception (for one of Philippa’s colleagues). It was held at Layer Marney Tower, which is a really beautiful setting to have as a wedding reception! I’ve got some pictures, which I will upload shortly.

And, that’s it for the time being 🙂

Quick post… I know I’ve been fairly quiet on the DJing front the past couple of months. Well, fear not. The past couple of weeks I’ve bought a bunch of DnB records. The world hasn’t seen the last of DJ Phill S yet… 😉

Well, firstly, I suppose I’d better tell you lot what I got up to this weekend. Well. On Friday, it was Philippa’s graduation. We both took the day off and met up with Phil’s parents for her graduation. It was a really good ceremony — I think I enjoyed it more than I did my own graduation! Afterwards, we met up with my parents and had lunch at the Black Buoy. It was really nice, except for the fact that it was so incredibly hot (not the fault of the Black Buoy, by the way, just hot in general!)

In the evening, we went round to Wivenhoe for an informal “home group” dinner at Chris’ house. It was a very enjoyable evening – we stayed probably too late, and I seem to remember spending the last thirty or so minutes clustered round Chris’ laptop looking at Google Earth… it is actually quite addictive!

On Saturday, we went into town as per usual. I bought a few bits and pieces from Hughes… including a new hi-fi 🙂 I’ve ordered separates, all made by Marantz. I’ve never heard of them before, but they look pretty good and came recommended by Hughes… plus it was on a special offer 😉 I’ll let you know once it’s all arrived (next Saturday) and I’ve had the chance to use it a bit more.

Afterwards, we came back home and didn’t do a huge amount until the evening. Then we went round to Wivenhoe, to see Alex. We all went to the chippie together, and sat by the quayside and ate fish & chips. It was a beautiful evening perfect for that kind of thing! It was really good to see Alex again as well, as we hadn’t seen him for a while.

On Sunday morning, we went to Fordham. Then we came back home, didn’t do much in the evening, and then went to Sunday @ 7 where I played and Andy did a talk on “Why I am not… a Charismatic”. Very interesting stuff actually, I really enjoyed it!

Anyway. That brings me up to the present. Now, as I’ve mentioned a couple of times before, I’ve been working on a PHP-based webmail system. This is going to make fairly heavy use of AJAX, so I wanted it to use a decent framework which was fairly well supported, and wasn’t going to keep falling over. Up until today I’ve been using Pajax. However, I’ve experienced a few problems… I’m not really sure why this is. I think it might be some really obscure problem somewhere, I haven’t got the time or inclination to find out really! So I ditched Pajax, and started using ARSCIF. I’ve used it before, and it is a great cross-browser framework. The only problem is, it doesn’t contain a lot of the automatically generated JavaScript code which Pajax did (and other frameworks such as DWR for J2EE). So I wrote some PHP wrappers, and now I’ve got a basically fully functioning AJAX framework for PHP, using ARSCIF (try saying that ten times fast! — actually, no, don’t…)

The upshot of all this is, if you’d like a simple PHP / AJAX framework, let me know — it needs a bit of tidying up at the moment, but when the PHP webmail thingum is working a bit more, I’ll probably upload it here in its tidied form. If you’d like a copy now, let me know and I’ll send the files over to you!

*phew* that was quite a long post! I’ll stop there…

It’s hot. It’s incredibly hot. In fact, it’s record breaking hot.

Still, I have managed to survive thus far — and I take comfort in the fact that people in other countries manage to survive higher temperatures 🙂

Anyway. I’ve just watched “Family Guy – Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story.” I have to say I was a little disappointed with it. It had some great jokes in it, and there were some very funny moments… but the whole thing just seemed a bit disjointed. It wasn’t like the episodes – although the story just about managed to hold together, it didn’t flow particularly well. If you can pick it up cheaply it’s worth a watch, but even if you’re a Family Guy fan I wouldn’t really go out of your way for it…

I’m off to have another drink of water. Let’s hope it’s cooler tomorrow…

Today has been an exceedingly hot day. At least, it has been in our office. For some reason our office is particularly warm, which means that it gets uncomfortably hot in this kind of weather. We seriously need some air conditioning in there… I have a feeling I’m not going to get much work done this week. Mainly because it’s difficult to work when it’s so hot, but partly because if it gets as hot as they say it’s going to get, I’m simplly going to expire because of the heat.

Fortunately I have air conditioning in the car, which meant that at least the journey home was bearable (small consolation really, but still!).

Anyway, I’d better tell you what I did over the weekend. You know, just to keep up the tradition… well. On Friday night we didn’t do much (I have to say ‘we’ now because, of course, there are two of us living here…). On Saturday, we went into town. I bought a few new DVDs (Blackadder Back and Forth, and Family Guy: Stewie Griffin – The Untold Story); and a new CD (the best of R.E.M. 1998-2003). Also bought a few new clothes. In the evening we just chilled out and watched “Sky High”, which I bought on DVD last week… it is a good film 🙂

Yesterday, we went down to London to see my niece’s baptism. It was a really nice day. The baptism went well, and it was good to see some of the family again! We went round to theirs for lunch afterwards, and had a really nice time. It was such a beautiful afternoon! Unfortunately the day was tainted slightly by us being held up for about an hour on a busy train with no air conditioning on our journey back, but still. We managed to get home and collapse OK!

Anyway, I’m rathered tired so am going to head to bed now. All for now, for the time being!

Well, Pirates on Monday evening was pretty good! It was a very enjoyable film, although it finished rather unexpectedly for me (maybe I should read more reviews before I watch films at the cinema… or maybe not). I couldn’t remember much of the first one, but I found it didn’t really hamper my enjoyment of the film.

I’ve been working on a PHP based webmail system a little bit recently. It’s coming on – you can download and read messages from the server. I’ve discovered Scriptaculous, which is a brilliant JavaScript library for (amongst other things) effects. So I’ve got things fading in and out, which looks very nice 🙂 When I’ve got that to the stage where someone might be able to use it to do something useful, I will make a page on here for it.

That’s all for the time being…

So… what have I been up to this weekend? Well, “not a whole lot” is the answer to that question! We’re still sorting things out with the flat, so that is what we’re spending most of our time on at the moment. We now have a new TV Unit and a new bookcase in the living room, which is making the place look a lot more “homey”… also a few other bits and pieces.

Yesterday, Phil’s parents and sister came round (the “in-laws”!), which was really nice. They helped with some sorting out and brought a few things up (such as some cards which were sent to them). After lunch we watched the tennis (good match – I definitely think Nadal is a future Wimbledon champion).

In the evening we watched “The Wedding Crashers”. Oh, and I ordered “Sky High” on DVD (now it’s down to a reasonable price 🙂

So much for the weekend! This evening, we’re going to watch “Pirates of the Caribbean 2” with some friends from church. I’ve heard mixed reviews of it – mostly good though, so we should be in for an enjoyable evening.