Thursday, August 25, 2005

Holiday Day 5

Despite being over 20 km from the sea, Amsterdam feels very much like the port city that it is. The morning rain was again chased away by a fresh breeze whistling over the polders from the north sea. We checked out of the hotel and headed for the Stedlijk museum which is in a temporary home on the Osterdock, but disappointingly none of the major exhibits were on show, with no Picasso and no Beanery, so we gave it a miss (having resolved to come back again in a few years time).

Instead, we headed for the Scheepvaart museum which details the history of Dutch sea faring from the earliest days of the age of discovery to the rapacious mercenary activities of the Dutch East India Company. There were plenty of model ships, historical maps, globes and charts, (sword whore alert!) naval sabres and cutlasses and the fabulous gilded Royal barge. The highlight, though, was the Amsterdam - a full size replica of a Dutch East Indiaman fitted out to give an idea of what ship board life would have been like. It brought the whole experience to life far more effectively than any number of museum exhibits or multimedia audio visual displays ever could.

Lunch in the museum cafe and then a final stroll through the Waterloopein flea market before heading back to the central station to buy our rail tickets - it cost just €10.60 for four of us to travel on a fast, regular (every ten minutes), clean train service. The UK equivalent would cost at least three times as much and be dirty, slow and probably late. Just time for a last cup of coffee before heading to the departure gate which was of course at the far end of the terminal building. Hmmm, is 'terminal' really the word I want to use when writing this blog whilst flying on a rather turbulent flight across the North Sea? Will we all end up on a mysterious desert island with only a polar bear for company? Tune in next time ... :-)
. i

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Holiday Day 4

Today was the day for a bit of culture, so we took a trip on the Museum Boat (or should I say boot) that gave us a round trip of all of the major points of interest with a day ticket allowing unlimited travel. The first stop was the Rijksmuseum with its world renowned collection of masterpieces. Even though you may have seen prints and reproductions, there is nothing quite like seeing a great work of art in its original form.

The Night Watch was the one work I was really looking forward to and it didn't disappoint me. Rembrandt's Jewish Bride was a real revelation though, with its revolutionary use of layers of paint to create texture. Sword whores note that there was a great example of an early 17th century rapier on display too ...

A stroll in the Vondel Park for some lunch and then back on the boat for the conclusion of the round trip. It really is the best way to see Amsterdam as it is meant to be seen. We headed back to the hotel for yet another surreal conversation with Igor - "Just one more thing - next time you are in Amsterdam you can find much better hotels than this one"

Off out again, and to the Madam Tussauds exhibition for Alicia and me, whilst Jan went shopping. A bit pricey, but good fun, and it gave us the chance to rub shoulders with the likes of Rembrandt, Dali, James Bond, Johnny Rotten, Einstein and the Spice Girls to name but a few. We passed on the chance to eat at the V&D - Igor's recommended restaurant - which turned out to be a department store cafeteria, and went for an Italian meal instead, and rather good it was too. I ordered a large beer, which turned out to be a full litre - not that I was complaining or anything ...

Leaving the restaurant I walked past a cinema that was showing a premiere of 'The Wedding Crashers' complete with red carpet, adoring fans and paparazzi photographers. The surreal thing was that I didn't have a clue who any of these Dutch starlets were, and I think that I may even have appeared in the background of some random celebrity interview on Dutch tv somewhere.

Another beer on the way back at a canalside bar (a Palm Bolleke amber beer - yum) and then back to the hotel again to listen to the trams and bicycle bells outside ...

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Holiday Day 3

We awoke this morning to the sound of rain pattering on the cobbles outside as the street cleaners disposed of the huge piles of rubbish dumped along the street. We ate breakfast in the cafe downstairs and by the time we were ready to go out the rain had cleared.

The first port of call today was Nemo - a science museum on a grand scale inside an amazing angular metal clad building that looked like a gargantuan submarine rising from the waves. Inside were dozens of different activities and things to see - giant soap bubbles, a three meter high anamatronic robot, optical illusions, pickled monkey brains and skeletons, a 3d film about the inside of a cell to mention just a few. The highlight for me was a demonstration of a heath robinson style chain reaction of mind boggling ingenuity that took five minutes to unfold from a rocket that tripped a wire, to the falling lead weight at the end. We were there for over four hours and could have spent longer. The roof serves as a sun terrace with an amazing view over Amsterdam, but it was a little bit too chilly to stay there too long.

We headed south on weary feet towards the flea market at Waterloopein, which manages to outdo even the famed Chesterfield market for the number of esoteric stalls on offer - even ones selling cannabis lollypops ... ;-)

Back to the hotel for a rest, where we met Igor the cleaner - and no, he didn't say "Yeth Mathter" once ... He was puffing on a spliff and talked our ears off with warnings about pickpockets and stoned Italian students burning curries in the hall and setting the fire alarm off.

I felt much better for a quick snooze, and I was ready for a cheese, chorizo and mushroom pancake with a nice cold glass of beer. It seemed scarcely possible that we had only been here for just over a day - the intensity of the experience, not to mention the tiredness from rather more walking than I am usually used to in a day, made it seem much longer. Much better than just lazing by the pool for a fortnight. Oh, and we walked back via the red light district which was a bit of an eye opener to say the least ... ;-)

Monday, August 22, 2005

Holiday Day 2

Monday morning dawned, grey and miserable with a steady drizzle. We headed for the airport in plenty of time, checked in and settled down for a quick cup of coffee before the flight. The time on the screen clicked around to 8:45 and the details for our flight to Amsterdam changed from 'Wait in lounge' to 'Estimated at 11:45'. Oh great, just great. Still, nothing to do but mooch around the meagre selection of airport shops and blog about it. No public wifi that I can see, apart from an unsecured peer to peer network in the Dixon's shop that is not connected to the internet. Ho hum ...

Ah, now that's better - just as I finished writing the last paragraph the flight time changed to 10:35 and before long we were high above the drizzle of Luton en route to the sunshine of Schippol. I barely had the chance to read a chapter of my book (Iain M Banks - The Algebraeist) before we were landing and through passport control and customs, and straight onto a double decker train to Amsterdam. Wheee!

Right, check into the hotel - it's basic, but it's handy for everywhere we want to go. The first thing to do in a new city is to go for a walk and see where your feet carry you. In our case that involved pancakes and beer in a shady pavement cafe in a little alleyway, strolling along canal banks in the late summer sunshine, window shopping in little antique shops, another drink in what we only realized in retrospect was a gay bar, and then back to the hotel to find that I could get a wifi connection - yay! The kids are now happily munching on chips and mayonaise whilst watching the trams go past on the street outside and I'm going to post this.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

Holiday Day 1

We had the usual routine of wandering around the house, trying to think of anything that we might possibly need. I put the passports and booking details in my bum bag and then got them out again to check them, just in case they had mysteriously vanished for some strange reason. Jan dropped Barney the dog off at her mum's house and we finally set off at 1 o'clock precisely.

The drive down to my mum's house in Harpenden was fast and cool - 140 miles in two hours, listening to K-Rose and Master Sounds for the full San Andreas driving experience (but with less of the car jacking and extreme gang violence). We sat out in the garden for Sunday lunch enjoying the sunshine and a glass or two of beer. I was just dozing off on the settee when I heard Alicia scream and Jan say something like "Oh my god - what's that?"

'That' turned out to be the biggest dragonfly I have ever seen, battering its head against the skylight trying to escape. Its body was 5 centimeters long, with an even greater wingspan. Simply magnificent, and I managed to take a picture before letting it out to fly off into the gathering dusk.

Saturday, August 20, 2005

San Andreas Update

I finished the Los Santos missions, and after a gut wrenching betrayal and a furious gun battle beneath the Mullholland flyover I found myself dumped in a trailer park in the back of beyond for my troubles. I looked at the map and saw that the city of Los Santos that had seemed so big, occupied a mere fraction of the corner of the screen. Looking at the mountains to the north I felt a fabulous sense of scale and heady possibility. I've spent hours robbing liquor stores with a psychotic chica, chasing skin heads on quad bikes, running over redneck survivalists in a combine harvester, driving a petrol tanker around sweeping country back roads, rally driving in the woods and finally burning an entire crop of marijuana with a flame thrower before heading off to San Fiero with a spaced out hippy in a psychadelic microbus.

The first sight of San Fiero caught me by surprise. I'd just finished a nerve jangling race through the woods and I parked up at the side of a camping area. Looking through the trees I saw the majestic sweep of the landmark bridge for the first time, leading to the sky scrapers of the city itself. I think that I just stood and stared for a while before getting back in my car. As gaming experiences go, this will take some beating. Looking at the completion percentage, I've seen less than a third of the game so far. Bring it on ...

Friday, August 19, 2005

Ron Weasley and The Ewok Invasion

I think that I know one or two people that this might appeal to ... :-)

Tipping Sodical ...

First day of my holiday and already two calls from work, one of them urgent with the main accounts server down with a monster sql log filling the disk up. Ho hum.

Meanwhile, I'm going to stay out of the sun and listen to Tony the gardner digging outside ... Mad men and english dogs out in the midday sun.

Which Doctor Who Are You?

The Fourth Doctor
You are the Fourth Doctor: A walking Bohemian
conundrum with a brooding personal magnetism
and a first-rate intellect concealed somewhere
beneath your charmingly goofy exterior. You are
perhaps the most terribly clever of all the
Doctors, though your occasional bouts of
childishness get you in trouble. You never go
looking for a fight, but when someone messes
with you... good heavens, are they ever sorry
they did.


Which Incarnation of the Doctor Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Which Phantom of the Opera character are you?



You scored as Madame Giry. Madame Giry: You’re biggest quality is your compassion. You are a mother-like figure to many. People are drawn to you for your wisdom and advise. You do not turn people away, and could never abandon anyone.


Firmin

88%

Madame Giry

88%

Meg Giry

75%

The Phantom

75%

Raoul

75%

Andre

63%

Christine

50%

Carlotta

0%

Which Character from "The Phantom of the Opera" are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Yawn ...

By golly and by gosh, I'm tired. The after effects of fencing at the weekend and a shed load of work to complete before my holiday next week, combined with my brain already slipping into holiday mode, have left me feeling knackered. I managed to watch about twenty minutes of Battlestar Galactica last night before zonking out on the sofa. I vaguely remember struggling to open my eyes wide enough to get up stairs to bed and then waking up several times not knowing where I was.

Work today hasn't been much better and I think I've reached a caffeine plateau with each subsequent cup offering a diminishing return until all I'm left with is, in effect, a warm milky drink. I wonder if somebody has been making me de-caff by mistake? I'll make the next cup and be sure to put two spoons of coffee in to be on the safe side. The air conditioning is not working properly either and the office is now soporifically warm and muggy.

Robocat

Move over Robocop - here comes Elvis the robocat

Monday, August 15, 2005

Saturday, August 13, 2005

Duelling scars

It’s not quite a year since I picked up a rapier for the first time, and I’ve been training since last October with monthly workshops and weekly classes and occasional fun days to play around in a less formal setting. We’ve covered a lot of ground in that time, and I feel a lot fitter than I did twelve months ago. The first hurdle in the training programme is the Scholar’s assessment to test our knowledge of the basics and see if we are safe and competent to engage in free play.

It was a little nerve wracking to start with and I dropped some points on basic stuff and muffed the random attack sequence identification but I recovered on the cuts and the moulinet sequence. The eight position parry sequence and free play sections with the prof were interesting to say the least – he pushed us in different ways to see how we’d cope under pressure and I’ve got an interesting collection of bruises now with the best being a cut across the midriff that will teach me not to get backed into corners. After a break for a much needed drink whilst the prof added up the scores we got called aside to hear our results ….

The upshot is that I’m now officially a Scholar in the Art of Fence, along with Charles and Loops who took the test at the same time as me, and I can’t see why the rest of the crew due to take it in a few weeks time won’t pass as well.

Friday, August 12, 2005

This is the end ...

After 78 days, the end is nigh … now it’s Friday night, I’ve got a Banana Colada by my side and the Big Brother 6 Final to watch. Bring it on!

Oh, and Eugene to win – the geek shall inherit the earth …

 

Software, sand and swords

Work has been fun today, with one of our development managers picking holes in the user interface for our timesheet software, but fortunately it is all constructive criticism and it will stop the developers from finding excuses not to use it when they get their hands on it (and we won’t mention the quality of some of the software that they have been known to turn out …)

In other news, our garden looks like a cross between the Somme and a builders merchant’s yard with craters, piles of dirt, bricks and stones, and sundry tools including a cement mixer as Tony the horse whispering landscape gardener cracks on with building walls and leveling bits out. Barney has had a fine time running in and out with Tony’s dog, leaving a trail of cement coloured paw prints behind himself as he goes. I cleaned the kitchen floor last night, and it will need doing again tonight for sure …

Finally, it is judgment day at fencing tomorrow and I’m having my obligatory pre-exam jitters and I was convinced that I had forgotten the difference between a squalembrato and a ridoppio this morning … doh!

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Drivey

Back in the day, programmers would vie with each other to produce the most impressive effects in the most space efficient way. In these days of multi-megabyte downloads it is refreshing to find something so compelling that weighs in at just over 300K and would fit comfortably on an olde worlde floppy diske (ask your granddad).

DRIVEY: a road slightly less travelled is a hypnotically smooth driving simulation that should run as long as you have Direct X 9 and a 1Ghz PC. As a tip, press K to set the colour cycling going and play a cd of suitable music in the background (Autobahn by Kraftwerk springs to mind) and let the program drive itself for a while.

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Birthday boy

Well, Jamie is nine today, and what a fantastic day he’s had. Presents in the morning including a Doctor Who monster book, some Teen Titans graphic novels, a new video game and some lego – a fiendishly complex motorbike which he got stuck into making straight away. At lunchtime Nan and Grandad arrived and some of Jamie’s friends were collected and we set off for the big birthday treat, namely a trip to Magna.

Set in a huge former steel works in Rotherham, Magna is as interesting from an artistic perspective as for the industrial archeology and the science exhibits. The main building is half a kilometer long and over forty meters high and it is stunningly lit inside, with a walkway leading you over the relics of a bygone age to the different pavilions themed around different elements from air up in the roof space, through fire, water and earth at the lowest level. The operation of the arc furnace is recreated in a breath taking audio-visual display that is almost worth the price of admission alone.

Jamie and his friends marvelled at the fire tornado, played air hockey, drove real JCB diggers and of course managed to get completely soaked in the water exhibit before running outside to dry off in a huge adventure playground. Great fun was had by all, and we won’t mention Nan nearly managing to lose one of the children in Mc Donalds where we went for tea afterwards … Home for birthday cake and a chance to sit down with a cup of tea.

Happy birthday Jamie!

Hamster dance


120-2032_IMG
Originally uploaded by neilh.

The big melt


120-2011_IMG
Originally uploaded by neilh.
The highpoint of Magna is a fantastic recreation of an electric arc furnace in operation. The real thing was described as being like standing on the edge of a volcano and this show gives a pretty good idea of what it was like.

Fire tornado


120-2019_IMG
Originally uploaded by neilh.

Burn baby, burn ...


120-2022_IMG
Originally uploaded by neilh.

A boy and his bike


120-2041_IMG
Originally uploaded by neilh.
It took Jamie less than two hours to piece together this 550 piece lego street bike, complete with working pistons, drive shaft and chain. No wonder one of his favourite tv shows is 'Popular Engineering' ...

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Here we go again ...

Long standing readers of this blog (who really should draw up a chair and make themselves comfortable) may remember the on going saga of the timesheets system. We've had a system based on quarter day slots running since the start of the year and it is actually running quite smoothly - shock, horror. The problem is that quarter day slots aren't a great deal of use for the support and apps dev people who tend to do odd hours on particular contracts here and there. The programmer appropriated a big chunk of code for an hourly system from somewhere else and gave it to us to test. The main input screen sort of does the job, with a few niggles, but the reports and management options are not there yet, so I sent back a list of things to work on last week. Now, the manager in charge of the development team has decided that all his team will start using the system as of now - he sent out an email on Friday afternoon and then went off on holiday for two weeks on Monday morning. Terrific.

So, I've been trying to get some documentation completed whilst fielding calls from irate developers who don't know what they are supposed to be doing - I can tell them how to put codes into the system, but I haven't a clue what codes they are actually supposed to be using. I also need to prioritise outstanding work for the programmer and now I find that things that I thought would be straightforward (such as the ability for managers and team leaders to view and update their teams timesheets) and that we currently have in the current system are hugely difficult and will take ages to deliver. Grrrrr.

My boss called me to pass on one request for help and when I said I was in the Leeds office she asked if I could pop downstairs to help Sally. I toddled off downstairs and asked "Where does Sally sit?" and got the reply "Fife" ...

It's a good job that we had fencing last night so I could hit things, and it looked like being an all male evening at one point with the two new Daves joining me, Burgi, Loops and Charles, but Rachel arrived in the nick of time to restore the balance a little. Assessments in less than two weeks .... eeeep!

Into town at lunchtime for the usual sushi and a mooch in Travelling Man which proved most rewarding - a Mechwarrior : Age of Destruction set reduced from £19.99 to £4.99. Bargain! Well worth it for the gorgeous painted miniatures alone.