Bagel Belly Blog

Here I am

Monday. I must be in Warwick.
Today was one of those days when you just wish you hadn't got out of bed. Transport hell.
When I arrived at Zurich airport, I found my KLM flight to Amsterdam had been cancelled, and that I'd therefore miss my connection to Norwich. Apparently Norwich is considered 'exotic' because there are only two flight there a day. And I couldn't get on either of them.
I ended up getting a flight direct from Zurich to London City Airport - it seemed like a smarter move than going to Amsterdam and hoping for a connecting flight. That just left a sprint across country from London to Norwich for a 4pm conference call. I made the 12:30 Norwich train with minutes to spare, but inevitably, it was running late.
I got to Norwich just in time to hit the traffic from the school run. I grabbed a hire car, hit the office, dashed home, then hit the road for Warwick. Unfortunately my map and directions were somewhat inaccurate, so it took me 20 minutes to find the hotel.
All in all, I've done more miles than I care to think about today. And I got to do trains, planes and automobiles all in one day. It's nice to live in such interesting times. But now it's definitely time for sleep.

OS X Mail trouble

I'm having problems with the OS X Mail application. Occasionally when I reconnect to the internet it will get stuck while synchronising and downloading new email ... and looking on the server, it has opened over 300 IMAP connections.
Is anyone else suffering from this?
Maybe it's time to switch to Thunderbird. I need to get Sieve working on the server first, though.

Today is Saturday ...

Today is (was) Saturday, so I must be in Zurich. I love traveling, but the journeys always seem to occur within a few days of each other.
Anyway, here I am in Switzerland and I'm loving it so far. My first impression of the country was "what a small airport", but then I realised I was just in one terminal. When I got off the plane, I realised how impressive just this one terminal was - spacious, clean, shiny and new. It's a shame - Zurich was apparently conceived as a transport hub, but the collapse of SwissAir has left it an echoing shadow of the opportunity it represented.
I've already eaten more chocolate than is entirely healthy, as well as indulging in fondu and admiring the fantastic views. My congenial hosts have made me feel right at home (even down to the small details like drinking lots!). But it's late, and I have meetings tomorrow, so time to turn in.

Sometimes Apple suck

Here's an example of really bad UI design, on a critical (to me) component of the Mac:

The Bluetooth Firmware update has the following message:

Important - Please read before proceeding
Downloading firmware cannot be canceled.
Downloading firmware may take up to 15 minutes.
Don't let your computer sleep while downloading firmware.
Don't turn off your computer while downloading firmware.
Don't reset your computer while downloading firmware.

I've had the firmware updater running for about 30 minutes. There's no sign of life from it - the progress bar is doing nothing, and the status message is "Idle". But if I click on Quit, it tells me that the firmware has not been updated. And the bluetooth status icon in the menu bar shows bluetooth is unavailable.
So is it safe to quit? Should I reboot? Am I about to destroy bluetooth on my laptop two days before I go on the road again?
This is not a terribly satisfactory user experience. What on earth are Apple thinking?

Travel thoughts

Two and a bit hours to fly from Rome to the UK. Two and a bit hours to travel from Stansted to Norwich. The sooner I have a private jet, the better.

One thing I noticed about the trip this time: they've stopped asking "did you pack your bag yourself?", and all the other associated really stupid security questions. "Are you a terrorist?" ... "uh, well actually, yes I am. Please lock me up and throw away my civil rights^w^w^wthe key". It's definitely an improvement.

The realities of different climates tend not to sink in that often. I've visited Cyprus in late October before, but that fit into the holiday pigeon hole in my brain, and holidays are generally meant to be hot and sunny. But being on a working trip to Rome, and finding the climate pleasantly warm ... well, that led to a whole new kind of disorientation. Of course, pleasantly warm is all relative - most of the Italians thought I was insane walking round in shirt sleeves in the middle of winter ;-) Anyway, it gives me a pleasant sense of inappropriateness to have got sunburn. In November. Wehey!

Once again, I'm reminded how much poorer we are in the UK due to our isolationist attitudes and linguistic incompetence. Seeing (or rather, hearing) my colleagues conversing in English, German and Italian is a frustrating experience. But then, I read that something like 60% of 18-30 age group believe we should get out of Europe, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I learnt/remembered more German than Italian on this trip, despite being in Rome. What's that about?

Leaving the country and doing the coin shuffle, and once again on return to the UK, I'm impatient for us to switch to the euro. My traditional post-travel moan. Yeah, I know the economic benefits are anything but clear cut, but frankly I can't be bothered to think in multiple currencies any more. As we rapidly approach the time when coins and notes are obsolete and electronic payment is the method de jour, it seems anachronistic to have to worry about pounds and cents.

You know you're in Italy when ...

Another great meal in a fantastic restaurant in Rome. You know you're in Italy when Gianugo is dishing out amazing spaghetti! More (bad, mobile) pictures on the moblog and flickr; today I have the digital camera so hopefully the quality of the pictures will improve ...

Non-standards

One of the enchanting things about my house is how nothing about it is standard.
When I replaced the windows, they had to be made to spec because the window sizes don't resemble what's common in the marketplace today.
When I looked at replacing some of the doors (I wanted ones with glass in), it turns out my doors are taller and narrower than the doors you can buy in the shops.
And guess what I just found out, when looking at radiators?
The one that sprung a leak is 75cm x 75cm. These days, radiators are made to the nearest 10cm. So in order to get a new one, I'm going to have to move the pipes 5cm in or out. I'm curious about whether my home insurance will cover replacing the radiator, fitting it, and so on. My bet is that it won't.
On the plus side, radiators appear to have transformed from necessity to designer lifestyle statement. Not sure I want a designer lifestyle statement in that room, mind you.

Fancy a swim?

Ok, so the situation is sort of stabilised, at least for now. The water's off, and the 11th plumber I called is actually on the way (should be here within the hour). The good news is he should be able to fix things enough to be able to put the heating back on. The bad news is he wants £150 for the job. This seems pretty standard - all the other plumbers I managed to speak to ranged from £120-£160, and in theory the home insurance will cover the cost.
This has made me think of a couple of things, though - other than switching insurance companies. I really need to get a UPS for my set-top box and wireless router, so the internet connection stays up when the power trips. No point having batteries in the laptop if I can't connect to the outside world, after all. I also need to get new batteries for the, like, three dozen different torches I have kicking around the house. It was rather silly that in my hour of need I had to use the mobile phone to find my way to the candles and matches.

I also need to decide whether to overhaul the central heating in this house (there's one or two well-rusted valves and stop-cocks), or move. I can't simply do nothing - the financial implications when things go wrong are worse than the financial implications of preventative maintenance. The only problem is that the last quote I got for overhauling the central heating was in the region of £6,000 :-( Mind you, the cost of moving is far greater than that, so I guess I just have to accept it.

Another curious thing. I did a quick search on yell for plumbers, but I wasn't really happy about calling them from there. I preferred to get the old-fashioned dead trees directory out and look at the individual adverts - as though somehow I could better judge the kind of service I would get based on the message and layout of the adverts. I think I'd have been happy to use yell.com if they'd had the same badly-reproduced typeset-challenged adverts online. Weird.

Flood

At 16:50 this evening, I heard a curious dripping sound coming from the kitchen. I dashed downstairs (this is not long after the valve in my header tank overflowed, so I'm nervous about these things), and because I couldn't see what was the cause, I turned the kitchen lights on - which tripped the mains, plunging me into darkness.
Using my phone as a torch, I lit a couple of candles to see water pouring from one of the kitchen light fittings. I turned the lights off and flipped the mains back on, then headed upstairs to find the cause. Not the header tank this time - that cascades into the porch, not the kitchen. This time, the radiator in my spare bedroom has burst. A jet of hot water was flying out the back and running down the wall, soaking the (new ... grr...) carpet, and pouring downstairs.
I turned off the central heating (it's 6 degrees outside ... don't need that), shoved a waterproof container under the radiator (and under the lights downstairs), and retrieved the phone.
The most logical first call would be to my home insurance company, NatWest. I wanted to check whether they retained any plumbers or not, and whether they'd cover me if I called any random plumber out. I tried their website. I tried google. I tried five different phone numbers for them, including their travel insurance emergency number. I don't have the documentation with me, as it's all at work (I called them last week because they messed up my direct debits). All I've found out so far is that their office hours are 9-5 mon-fri, and I can call them then for a very competitive quote. Great.
Next, I grabbed the yellow pages, and started calling plumbers. Guess what is the latest thing to be outsourced? Yup, plumbing call centres. The first three I called were all proxying for the same local plumber ("sorry, too busy on a major job tonight"). The fourth isn't answering, the fifth didn't have his tools handy (couldn't be bothered for such a simple job), and I'm currently waiting for the sixth to call back.
So here I am, in a soggy and rapidly-cooling house, cursing call centres, banks, insurance companies and leaky radiators. Time to go raid the toolbox and see if I have the required bits and pieces to either patch the radiator or cap the pipes for the time being. Why do these things never go wrong when the hardware shops are open?

The bomb

Like everyone else, I succumbed and bought Half-Life 2. It's the first first-person shooter I've been able to play without suffering severe motion sickness, thanks to the amazingly detailed graphics. Unfortunately, it was decidedly sluggish on my Windows machine... until I downloaded unofficial ATI graphics card drivers. It increased frame rates by about 30%, which is pretty impressive ... but also makes me wonder why ATI are fobbing us off with what appear to be pretty useless official drivers.
Is this how they plan to sell more graphics cards - by making the existing ones underperform? I'm not impressed.
Anyway, it means I can now play at 1024x768 instead of 800x600, and the graphics are smoother than they were at the lower resolution. Excellent!

links for 2004-11-18

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Crazy economics

Remember how the front wheel of my bike got stolen? I eventually got round to replacing it, at a cost (if I recall correctly) of about £40 for the wheel, inner tube and tyre. Pretty expensive.
When the back wheel sprung a puncture for about the billionth time, I realised I needed to buy a new inner tube and tyre. More money.
Then I recalled being pointed to these guys by my sister, who was shopping for a bike for the youngest of her sons. I took a look - and for the price of a new wheel, I could buy a new bike. That's madness!
So, seeking some redundancy, failover and frankly a more comfortable bike seat, I went ahead and ordered one. It arrived yesterday. It's not perfect, but it's more than adequate given how quickly I get through bikes (this would be the sixth in 12 years).
It cost almost as much to sort out new lights, lock, and geek toy (cycle computer) as it did to buy the entire bike. It's going to be fun seeing how many miles I clock up before this one gets stolen...

Tsk

Alex has a new laptop.
I'm going to resist the urge to take umbrage at the scandalous claims of me being a heathen (one sacrificial goat and vestal virgin and they just won't stop talking).
No, I'm going to stay quiet. Really.
Alex says: "if using a laptop rocks this hard using Windows, I know it’s going to be super-cool with a free OS installed. Can’t wait."
I give it a week before we start hearing tales of incessant kernel recompiles, software suspend troubles, incomplete support for the hardware, etc.
On a more helpful note ... Alex, try vmware. Get shot of the Windows partition entirely, and run it virtually if you ever need it. I manage just fine this way (currently with Virtual PC, but with vmware on a previous machine).

Sudafed and Suprnova

In line with the changing of the seasons, I have the obligatory cold. I'm therefore sat at home with the heating cranked up a couple of degrees, alternating between Sudafed and Lemsip trying to figure out which makes the most difference. Obviously I've also drank about a gallon of orange juice in the last 24 hours.
In anticipation of a dull weekend, I've been stocking up on plenty of films and TV programmes via the wondrous bittorrent. Seems to me this is the killer application. There's a video store just opened about 15 minutes' walk from here, but what if I simply don't feel like braving the elements?
I would look forward to the day when we have true TV on-demand, but I know deep down that the recording industry will do their best to screw the model up - either through proprietary DRM that requires excessive expensive hardware upgrades, or by simply setting the film prices too high. So for now, I'm happy with plugging the mac into the TV and picking from the hundreds of movies "out there".
I am going to need to invest in a new hard disk, though. The machine I have set up to do downloads only has 4gb spare, which means I continuously have to shuffle large files around.

Oh well...

Apology accepted.
(via David)

That book

This book is changing my life.

... the difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next.
The difference between the two is the difference between living fully and just existing.
The difference between the two is living intentionally and living by accident.

-- Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited.

This book is the first book about business that I've been unable to put down.

Uptake indicator

So, get this. In the photo in this post, you can clearly see several people taking photos of tonight's firework display with mobile phones. At any one point, up to a dozen people were snapping away. That's a pretty clear indication of the seriously mainstream adoption of mobile picture phones.

Cool.

Bubble

bub·ble, n.

Something light or effervescent: “Macon - though terribly distressed - had to fight down a bubble of laughter” (Anne Tyler).

Henceforce all random photos from my mobile will be on a separate moblog.

moblog live

Ok, looks like through the joy of flickr I can upload to the blog via my mobile now. I tried it a while ago but made the mistake of attaching the pic to an email. Seems like 'send by email' in the nokia gallery app is smart enough to do that automatically. Anyway, here's a random picture of martin from when we were all out in the pubs of norwich a couple of weeks ago.

Restaurant recommendation

I was in London all day Thursday, and in the evening went to a fantastic restaurant: suze in mayfair. If you're ever stuck for a place to eat, I can't recommend it highly enough. I had the leek and parsnip soup followed by duck. Great atmosphere, great staff, great food. Not hugely expensive - it worked out at around £28 per person, which included a rather nice bottle of wine too.

C'est la vie

You know, I had all sorts of insightful thoughts running through my brain this evening. I was going to unleash them all upon an unsuspecting world. I'd figured out what we were doing wrong with cold fusion. Cures for the major pandemic diseases. The secret of world peace. How to ensure John Kerry wins the next election. All these and more I was set to tell.

But actually, I'm a bit drunk, so I think I'll just go to bed.

(Aside: met Lori this evening, lovely to make her acquaintance. Seems like John and her had a fine time doing the whole UK tour thing. Reminds me of when I did much the same a few years back. All good fun.)