Author: Steve

Flying is never a really good experience

I don’t care what any airline claims – flying is not an overly enjoyable experience : well not in economy any way.

We got to the airport, dropped off our luggage and went through security. All remarkably painless and as we didn’t have to be there 3 hours in advance as we were already checked in we didn’t end up kicking our heels and getting bored sitting in the departure lounge for hours.

Boarding was remarkably painless, probably because the flight was only about half full, but of course we ended up with people sitting in the two seats in front of us: two people who were complete pains – they reclined their seats the minute they got into them and never put them up again (even when food was being served). The woman who was sitting in front of me just didn’t sit still for the entire flight, if she wasn’t going to the toilet she was moving round in her seat making the back move all the time which made watching any film just about impossible as unless you leant forward and twisted your neck it wasn’t actually possible to see the screen properly.

The flight left late but managed, due to 75mph tail winds, to actually land on time at 17:05 EST. Immigration, baggage claim and customs was the quickest it has ever been and we got out of the airport at 17:35, just in time to see the Concord Trailways bus for Portland just leaving…. oh well.

So we waited for the next bus at 18:30 which was a couple of minutes late (if only the previous one had been) and headed for Portland. The movie on the coach was Evan Allmighty, not a film I would have chosen to watch due to the fact that the previous film in the”series” starred Jim Carey and I find his manic behaviour extremely tedious. But it wasn’t a bad film and it filled the two hours of trip up the interstate.

It was about 10:30 by the time we had arrived at Sue and Jeff’s and I have to say that it wasn’t long before I headed off to bed.

Look out Maine, here we come


Well I’ve started my holiday today, not that we’ve gone anywhere yet: Kathy is working today so I’m finishing off the packing, getting the car ready, taking some rubbish to the tip and doing some last minute shopping for things we’re taking over which include hot paprika and Paprika flavoured Pringles which for some reason you can’t actually get in Maine.

We don’t actually fly out until tomorrow but we headed down to Heathrow after supper this evening as we’ve got a very good park, sleep, fly deal at the Park Inn which is right by the airport.


We’ve started using these park, sleep, fly deals due to the rather odd concept of a bus service that National Express run (or as is the case of morning buses from Heathrow to Cheltenham, the Service that National Express DON’T run). It also gets rid of the early starts from Cheltenham (6am-7am) and the worry of what happens if there are any hold ups on the way.

The Hotel isn’t bad – its a huge place as you can see from the photo. Inside its quite smart, but I think the interior designer had watched just a few too many episodes of StarTrek – The Next Generation as the corridors look like they could have fallen right out of the enterprise. The mattress was extremely soft and Kathy was worried about her back but it didn’t seem to cause too many problems.

So we can have a nice long lie in tomorrow, take it easy and get to the airport in plenty of time for our flight as we are already checked in and have our boarding passes (oh, the wonders of the internet)

Living in the shed

I’ve not been doing much coding on the Weblogs recently – I’m just too tired. I’ve been on call (3:30am to 9am during the week) alternate weeks for the past year and basically I’ve run out of energy. The alternate weeks was a “short term” requirement after a member of the team at work quit last October, however the management then dithered and the post seemed to vanish so we’ve been a person down on the team for just over a year and there seems to be no real prospect of the person ever being replaced in any meaningful, useful way in the near future, and indeed I found out today that another member of staff has resigned leaving me as the sole UK DBA for the company… Oh Joy and Happiness (NOT!)

I’m hoping that a long break over in Maine will give me chance to recharge my batteries : apart from Thanksgiving we’ve not really got anything planned so hopefully its going to be a relaxing time … well apart from getting involved in planning my step-daughter’s wedding.

As we’ve got cat/house sitters for the duration we are away we tidying up the house a bit – I’ve finally tidied up the book case in the living room by throwing away what looks like a small skip full of old Yellow Pages and Argos catalogues etc. and shuffling a few things around. The computer cupboard sitting in the corner is over powering and we keep having great plans about moving it up stairs… well moving the contents upstairs and into one of the two bedroom cupboards – the one in our bedroom has a power line in it (I know it has because the plumbers cut throught it when they were installing the central heating) and we can easily run a network cable up through where the pipes come down to the radiator (I might even move the coax cable for the TV in our bedroom and use the same route).

Whilst all of this has been going on I’ve noticed that our neighbour seems to go out to his shed late at night and again in the morning. The other day he was in the back garden in his dressing gown… so all I can guess is that he is sleeping in the shed… seems a bit odd but if it cuts down his foul language as he shouts abuse at his kids it can only be a good thing.

Today is a good day…

To stay at home.

There is an afternoon of racing on at Cheltenham Racecourse – its the first meeting of the National Hunt season. So going anywhere by car than involves going over that side of town is a totally stupid idea.

But what is there on TV – build up to the Rugby World Cup final and coverage of the qualifying for the Brazilian Grand Prix.

And its not going to be much better this evening either – the Rugby World Cup is on and all the pubs will be full, especially with the Racing finishing a couple of hours before the rugby starts, which could explain why the Royal Oak is tickets only tonight.

So staying in the house and doing odd jobs seems like a sensible thing to do.

I’ve fixed the front door lock (which had managed to get jammed in the deadlocked position) and I’ve fixed the door latch on the inner door in the front lobby which should help keep the draughts out as that front lobby can get remarkably cold at night.

Last.FM Widgets Plugin

Well I’ve got version 1.0 of my Last.FM Widgets Plugin working. I’ve trimmed some of the extra bits out that Last.FM include in their plugs (just to make things tidy) but retained about 95% of what was there.

It supports all the standard lists and the two standard “Quilts”. One of more of the Widgets can probably be found in the side bars on this blog.

The options page allows you to configure your Last.FM ID, Select the colour (from Last.FM’s limited list) of the plugin and the size of the quilt.

I’ve tweaked it so that the plugin has a transparent background and should always be the same width as your side bar.

Its a normal Plugin so if you are using WPMU you can put it in the plugins folder. I’ve not tested it against standard WP but I can’t believe there is anything odd in there that would stop it working.

Please feel free to try it and let me know if there is anything obviously wrong with it:

You can download the latest version here

Update: Its now V1.6 – I’ve tidied up some of the code and removed some stuff that was no longer used! I’ve also added two Radio Widgets (artist like and Genre) and put these two options onto the general configuration page. At V1.6 I added a playlist widget

Internet Explorer… what a pile of Crap

For a change of scene I’ve been working on a set of Last.FM widgets which will allow you to dispaly Last.FM widgets in the sidebars on the blogs… and you should be able to see one there right now.

It was only during testing this that I found that my blog (i.e. this one) no longer displayed on Internet Explorer. For some reason it was crapping out on the GoogleMaps code. Which was odd as I’ve not got any GoogleMaps embedded in this blog.

The blog displayed fine on Opera, FireFox and Safari but produced half a page on IE 6 and then if you refreshed the page then it went blank.

After much checking of code I found it… During Development of the embedded Google Maps I’d hard coded a javascript tag into the header for this blog. It was still there and for some completely perverse reason having it there screwed up IE 6.

So I’ve taken it out and things are now working.

Well sort of – IE really gets it’s knickers in a twist if you put something into a div that is slightly wider than it should be, Everyone else ignores this but not IE, oh no, not IE.. no it reformats your page and shoves the whole column at the bottom of the page.

Smokey – Rest in Peace

Smokey, one of our two Manx cats, died today. She had developed kidney disease and she was off her food and was very subdued so we took her back to the vets on Saturday. Despite trying “poor man’s dialysis” where they put the cat on a saline drip to help flush the kidneys through the creatinine levels didn’t drop and the vet said that it was pretty much the end for her.

So Kathy and I left work early and Kathy went in to be with Smokey as she was put to sleep. Kathy gave her lots of tickles from me and talked to her, Smokey purred and Kathy continued to talk to her and tickle and stroke her as the vet injected her. She passed away very quickly, and although we know that she wouldn’t understand a word Kathy was saying the fact that there was a voice, a touch, a smell and a person she recognised and indeed would have been the last thing she “remembered” as she went under is some small comfort.

The following photos of Smokey are ones I took when I lived in my flat on Gloucester Road, when she and Sooty ruled the roost and the sofa was, as you can see, Smokey’s domain

smokey4smokey6

Smokey was much more than just a pet. Manx cats seem to favour a single person and she decided that the person she was going to favour was me. When I was sitting in my chair watching TV she’d climb up and onto the back and snuggle down against my neck, sometimes she’d even lick it for me 😉

At night she would often climb onto the bed and it was always my side that she climbed up onto and where she stayed, usually right at the top by my chest. I’d lie there listening her purring and I lost count of the number of times I woke up to find her with her head lying on the pillow.

The house seems strangely empty without her. Her “meeping” at us for food or attention, having to move her so I can get in and out of bed.

Smokey, family cat and companion, you will be sorely missed by us all.

Smokey

Smokey

Charging Circuit

I’ve been trying to put together a better charging control circuit for Mintball. The thing with Mintball’s control panel is that it is all low current – the heater and starter switch drive relays and the no charge light is a “fake” in that its not actually driven by the IND line off the alternator.

Being low current allows us to do sneaky things like disconnect the starter and heater buttons when the engine is running and the No Charge circuit is energised.

We do have a problem in that the Engine revs need to be quite high before the alternator excites which means the alternator is spinning at a few thousand RPM when suddenly bang – a whopping 60 amp load is placed on it, which makes the belt squeal. Obviously we need to excite the alternator at a lower speed by giving it more juice.

The circuit digram below (created using a great free application called ExpressSCH) is my first pass at a circuit that should hopefully do the job. Before anyone points out that there is no No Charge light on the diagram – it would basically be where it says “To Start / Charger circuit) which will only carry 12 volts when the ignition is on and the IND line is at 0 volts (i.e. the alternator is not producing output). I’ve a few concerns about the circuit but hopefully some minor adjustments will allay these fears

charger

It’s raining cats

Well the week at work seemed extremely long for some reason. Maybe the three day weekend on the boat made it seem that way, or maybe its just work.

Tuesday Night the Out Of Town Pub Night Group  went to The Fleet Inn at Twyning which was very pleasant : three Real Ales, and staff who were very friendly (like actually asking before last orders if we wanted to get one last beer in!).

Today we’ve been just working on the house – tidying it up and moving things round. Stuff needs doing outside but, once again, it is raining so its just general pick up and throw away inside. Of course all the cats are helping out – supervising mostly but from time to time deciding that something we are moving is a suitable target for a pouncing attack

Its going to be a short week as we are off on the boat again for the Bank Holiday weekend – the parents are coming down from Wigan and we are going to do the trip south again, primarily because its easy and doesn’t involve doing the 15 locks at Audlem… twice!