My descent into responsible adulthood continues apace. The vacuum cleaner that came with my current flat appears to be powered by elastic bands. It doesn’t suck. So finally in a fit of practicality and technophillia I bought one of these.

To quote one of Neal Stephenson’s characters:

“Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Columbian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted myself to being bad.”

At 30 the fact that I’m excited about a new vacuum cleaner proves that this is no longer, if it ever was, true for me.

On the plus side. My new vacuum cleaner totally rocks.

Skated the new Severn bridge last night..

Hurt.. So.. Much..

After spending Friday eveneing skating further and faster that I ever have before my knees now hate me. But I have the warm fuzzy feeling that in a couple of weeks I may no longer look like a complete gimp while I’m skating.

swskate are lovely people and are entirely to blame for my currently aching joints. And before anyone sends me any emails about the javascript on that website I’ve already talked to their web chap about the proper way to do things. In his defence he’s only just learning and appears amenable to clue.

Spent much of Sunday getting my head around generating and parsing XML in python. The upshot of this is that I can now import OPML feed lists straight into peapod. OPML export is next on the list, after which adding pcast support should be fairly straight-forward. Juri Pakaste’s OPML library made this all very easy. A little bit of XML knowledge should come in handy now that I am beginning to wade hip-deep into the new generation of grid toolkits.

Jonothan Coulton has done it again. Codemonkey should warm the cockles of all programmers’ hearts everywhere. Enjoy.

Since lots of people have been badgering me for photos of my new flat I’ve finally managed to summon up the organasational energy necessary to remember to bring my photos into work so that I can upload them.

So for your edification. I present:

A picture of the block I’m living in.

The view from my living room.

My ADSL should finally be connected at the end of the week so normal blog service will be resumed shortly thereafter.

So, as some of you already know, the time has come for me to leave the film industry. I’ve been working at MPC for over four years now, the single longest period of time that I’ve ever been in one job. My feet have been getting increasingly itchy over the last year or so and I’ve been keeping my eye out for interesting jobs. When a position opened for a “Grid Technology Specialist” at Cardiff (my alma mater) I jumped at the chance. Cardiff is a lovely city and I thorougly look forward to moving there. In case you are interested I shall be working for these guys.

Four years in post production/VFX have pretty much taught me all that I know about adminning big *nix systems. It’ll be interesting to try and apply all that knowledge in a more academic environment. I’m not sure how I’m going to adapt to the comparative lack of pressure. I keep thinking ’35 hour week’ and grinning.

The advert for my replacement is already up. Anyone interested in talking my place should apply PDQ as there have already been responses.

So long and thanks for all the fish.

Good Omens is an extremely funny book. So rather than drone on about my own dreary relolutions I shall point you to these.

Working in Soho I often see stars of film and TV wandering about. Bizarrely I was more excited when, this evening, former chancellor of the exchequor Nigel Lawson sat opposite me on the tube.

It being the friday of a particularly hectic week my colleagues and I decided to head on down to Ping-Pong for some Dim Sum. While not as good as the free for all that occurs at The New World, Ping-Pong has one awsome thing going for it: the Jasmine Tea.

It appears as a unprepossesing green lump in an empty glass. Once the boiling water is applied a miraculous transformation occurs.

Spent a rainy weekend back home in Manchester. Meanwile it was lovely and sunny down in London. Bugger.

Anyway, my parents and I took the opportunity to go and visit the museum of the Northern Mill Engine Society. I don’t care what anyone says; steam engines are cool.

Photos preserved for posterity.

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