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Well, how about that — a “The Weekend” post before the weekend is actually over! It’s amazing!

So anyway, what have I been up to the past day or two? The answer to that question is, “Not a huge amount really.” On Friday night, guess what? I didn’t do very much! I bet you weren’t expecting that one!

On Saturday morning Philippa and her parents came round to help out with cleaning the flat, we thought it would be a good idea to get the place nice and clean for when we move in, as well as re-arrange some of the furniture ready when we move in. We went into town and managed to get a few bits and pieces done, including picking up our wedding rings 🙂 I also bought a couple of CDs — more on that later.

In the afternoon I (sort of) watched the England match, which ended up being rather disappointing – the second half at least! I’ve rather lost any faith I did have in Sven, some of the tactical decisions he makes are nothing short of baffling.

This morning, we went to Fordham as per usual. Afterwards, Ben invited us round for a Barbecue, which was nice! It was such a lovely day, perfect weather for a BBQ. Unfortunately I got slightly sunburnt on my neck, but it’s not that bad. This afternoon I spent doing some practising for the evening service, as I was called into play at the last minute. I also managed to spill a drink all over my digital piano (well, not all over it, over the keyboard) 🙁 I think I was just rather hot and tired and wasn’t paying attention… unfortunately, now when I play a D on the keyboard, two notes seem to play. I think this is just moisture on the circuit board, I’m hoping that I won’t have to send it to Yamaha to get it repaired!

Right, onto those CDs that I bought. There were two, both by Karl Jenkins: “The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace” and “Requiem”. Both are really lovely pieces. They both get played quite a lot on Classic FM, so I thought I’d give them a try on CD. Definitely worthy purchases — really lovely music!

Anyway, I’m going to try and get some sleep. It’s lovely to have the heat and the sun, but at the same time it does make it rather difficult to sleep at night. I think we’re going to have to get an air conditioning unit in here soon… ah well. All for now folks!

Just wanted to post up quickly about Monday night’s performance at the Mercury Theatre. Like I said in my previous post, we went to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was my first live Shakespeare performance, and it was fantastic! The best part of it was the amateur players – their performance at the end stole the show. Everyone was laughing, in fact I think a lot of the actors were having difficulty keeping a straight face!

So, yes, I think it’s on for a bit longer – I’d definitely recommend going to see it if you’re around Colchester 🙂

The reason I mention Futurama in the title is because Philippa bought me the whole box set of Futurama – all four series! Yay! Now I just have to sit down and watch all of them through… as Mike Myers said in Wayne’s World, “Excellent”.

Another Monday, another “The Weekend” post! What have I been up to this weekend? Well, I’ll tell you. On Friday night, I went round to Philippa’s for dinner. On Saturday, Philippa came round and we basically spent the whole day cleaning the flat (I’d received a letter from my landlord about the cleanliness the week previously… just don’t get me started, OK? Good.)

In the evening, we went to the square dance at Fordham (part of the ‘Lone Star Mission’). It went really well and was great fun! Philippa and I had quite a lot to eat, fortunately the dances after dinner were rather more sedate than the ones before 🙂

On Sunday, in the morning we went to the service at Fordham, then came back to have lunch. We spent some of Sunday afternoon cleaning, and then we went to the evening service. It was a special service to say goodbye to the Texans who had come over to help with the mission, and it was really good! We sang lots of good songs, and had some really good positive feedback about the week. Afterwards, Philippa and I went back to hers to have dinner and watch “Doctor Who”.

On that note — how creepy was that episode of Doctor Who? (Link: Wikipedia — note: contains spoilers). I have a feeling this multi-parter is going to be another “The Empty Child” — I hope the conclusion is as good as the first one!

Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, there’s a new version of Ubuntu Linux out. I have to say I’ve been very impressed with the way it handled the upgrade. You can just do it using the built-in update manager… I’ve actually been strongly encouraged to download Ubuntu rather than using something like Fedora Core: with Fedora, every time they release a new version you have to download the ISOs and burn them to CD (or set up a network repository, or whatever). With Ubuntu, it handled the upgrade process very painlessly indeed, it just downloaded it all from the net without fuss.

Anyway, that’s me done for the time being. This evening, I’m going to see “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Mercury Theatre with Philippa and a couple of friends from Fordham. It should be good – I’ll post up soon about it 🙂

I mentioned in my last post that I was going to post up a picture of the book that Max Barry signed for me. Well, here it is! The “who rescued me in a Warwick Avenue Pub” bit was because I was the first one to arrive after Max. When I got in and said hello, he said that he was a bit nervous for a couple of minutes worrying that no-one was going to show up! Anyway. That is actually the first book I’ve ever had signed by the author, so I’m rather pleased 🙂

The next thing is, iPods and Linux. I don’t know if I posted much about this before, but basically I’ve had some trouble with my iPod and Linux. There were a couple of bits of software I tried for it, namely YamiPod and GtkPod. Both of them seemed to have trouble with my iPod. It wasn’t so much that they didn’t want to work with it at all, it was just that I would sometimes find songs disappeared (don’t ask me why!). They would appear to be there when I looked at them on my computer, but when I disconnected my iPod and looked they had disappeared. Strange.

Anyway, I think I’ve got that problem cracked. My iPod is quite a new one – it’s a fifth generation video iPod, which is apparently quite new. I was using a slightly older version of GtkPod – something like 0.93. It was in the Fedora Core extras RPM repository, which is probably why it was a few versions behind… the latest version is something like version 0.99. I’ve downloaded and installed it, and it seemed to work absolutely fine!

I’ve transferred 746 songs to my iPod, and it shows up with 746 there… not bad going!

So, I’d recommend newer versions of GtkPod if you’re dealing with an iPod and Linux! If I come across any other problems, I shall be sure to post here. Anyway, stick a fork in me, I’m done. Night!

Hello there! How have you been? Good? Thought so. I’ve been fine, you know…

On Friday evening, I came back home for dinner and then headed down to London to stay with Philippa and her parents. I didn’t get down there until quite late, so we didn’t do much. On Saturday, in the morning we went to the place we’re going to be staying at after the wedding, just to meet the people who own the place (as we’re going to be getting there quite late, we didn’t want to arrive without actually seeing them! So thought we’d better introduce ourselves prior to arriving on 24th June…)

Then we had lunch at a nice little tea rooms, and then headed back to Phil’s parents. In the afternoon I got my hair cut (riveting stuff… well, shaving at least. Or something). And, yeah, we basically spent the rest of the day doing wedding preparation type stuff. As well as watching Doctor Who (I’m not sure if I’m liking the new series as much as the previous one… I think I prefer David Tenant as the new Doctor, but I’m not sure if the stories are quite as strong.)

On Sunday morning we went to church, and then went back for lunch. In the afternoon, I went to the Warrington Hotel in London where I met up with Max Barry and a few other people for a drink. It was a really good afternoon actually – I was there from around 2-5PM, and the hours flew by. Max was chatting quite a bit about his writing and things like that, but I also had a few random conversations with some of the other people there. Max signed my copy of “Company”, which I shall take a photo of and put up here (I would have taken a picture of Max himself, but unfortunately I forgot my camera! So you’ll just have to make do with the next best thing).

I went back for dinner, and then we went out to the pub with some of Phil’s friends. Which was a really good evening as well! So, all in all, a pretty good day.

Today, we came back to Colchester. I spent half of the morning assembling a sort of table type unit (a small table thing which will fit into the rather limited space we have in the kitchen) which was actually a wedding present 🙂 Although the instructions weren’t the easiest instructions I’ve ever had to follow, it all came together eventually and it looks pretty good! And fairly stable.

In the afternoon, we went to Fordham for the Softball tournament (part of the Lone Star Mission). It seemed to go pretty well – there was quite a downpour for about 15 minutes or so (as is the rule in England for whenever you are doing a BBQ), but in general I think people had a good time and there was a good atmosphere.

I’m rather tired now so I’ll stop there… night folks!

I always knew it! According to this website: “As of January 14 2005, the IP address of the Python programming language web site is 194.109.137.226. If you add up the 4 octets, you get 666.”

Shock! Horror!!!

*ahem* I would just like to point out that I do quite like Python although I’ve never really used it 🙂

Anyway. I went to see “The Da Vinci Code” at the cinema last night. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, in several senses! The film itself was quite entertaining, and the story – well, judging by some people’s reactions from the book, I think they must have dumbed it down a bit. Or perhaps I was just expecting it. I did find some of it quite amusing, for example their depiction of the Council of Nicea was absolutely hilarious! I think the worst part about it was that the ending dragged on for quite a long while. There were at least a couple of points before the actual ending where I thought “Ah, it’s going to finish now!”

Still. I’m glad I’ve seen it – I just hope that people don’t start to think that there’s any truth in what Dan Brown really said… (well, most of what he said at least!)

I bought a book last week called “Apathy and Other Small Victories” last week, mainly on the strength of reading a very high recommendation on Max Barry’s blog. I’m not quite sure what to make of it! It’s funny, but the humour is quite black. It’s also not a book to read if you’re easily offended! But I did enjoy it, and would recommend it to anyone who likes their comedy quite off-beat!

On a different tack, I bought “This New Day” (Album) by Embrace. It’s really good! The title song “Nature’s Law” has got a really catch chorus, it’s the kind which could get easily stuck in your head! Compared to their last album (“Out of Nothing”), I think this is definitely an improvement. It seems more polished, more easy to listen to (if that makes sense?!), and I think more upbeat. If you like the sound of Coldplay or Athlete, you’ll probably like Embrace 🙂 I recommend it!

Firstly, I’d like to apologise for not posting much last week! I was fairly busy for most of the week, hence me not getting around to writing anything here. Ah well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes!

Right, the weekend. On Friday evening, I didn’t do a huge amount. Philippa came round for a bit in the evening. I also read some of my new book which arrived last week (more on that later). On Saturday morning we went into town and ordered our wedding rings, which was rather exciting 🙂 Hopefully they will arrive soon (preferably some time before the 24th June…) Afterwards we had lunch at the Playhouse.

In the afternoon we went to Asda to do some shopping – we had a 20s and 30s meeting at Fordham later in the day, and it fell to us to prepare some food for it! We bought a bunch of cheese & tomato pizzas and some toppings. Although there were only four people at the meeting in the end (I don’t think it was the most convenient of days for everyone!), we had a good time and discussed how we wanted the group to pan out over the next few months.

Yesterday, we went to St Andrews (Greenstead) in the morning to hear our banns read. It was a nice service, I enjoyed it! Then back to Philippa’s for some lunch and some Doctor Who watching. I’m quite enjoying the new series of Doctor Who… I think I actually prefer David Tenant to Christopher Ecclestone, although it’s a tough one. The episodes are very well written, and I think I’m quite hooked on it!

Anyway. In the afternoon we went round to Phil B and Jenny’s place for a bit to have a cup of tea, then we went back to mine to have a curry and watch “Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back”. So, a fairly relaxing Sunday!

I have a couple of reviews to write as well, but I’ll write those in a separate post shortly…

I’ve just written a quick tips page on using Apache Struts. It’s just a couple of tips and tricks I’ve picked up from using struts over the past few months while I’ve been using Struts. It might be quite useful for newcomers to Struts 🙂

If you’re a J2EE developer using struts, why don’t you check it out?

Right. So, what did I get up to this weekend then?

Well. On Friday evening, Philippa and I went back to Ipswich to see my parents. We stayed there overnight, and came back on Saturday morning (actually by the time we left it was just about afternoon, but nevermind). In the afternoon we went into town to look in a few jewellers’ shops for wedding rings. I think we managed to find a couple of nice ones, although they will have to be ordered in so hopefully there won’t be any problems! In the evening we went to the chaplaincy Saturday Night Social, which was a talent show. I performed in a couple of things, notably the Bond Sketch which Alex and Ian wrote for the CU Summer House party a couple of years ago. It seemed to go down very well!

On Sunday, we went to church in the morning. In the afternoon, I worked on integrating the main site of MyDJSpace with the forums there. It seems to be working now, so that’s not bad 🙂

In the evening, we went to Fordham again where I was playing. Andy preached an interesting sermon on other religions – are they all different routes to God? The conclusion was that no, they’re not all routes to God, although there were some interesting points which I won’t go into now but may do in an article at some point.

Ok, I think that’s just about it for the time being. All for now!