Apologies for the absence

I have a sore throat. It kept me awake in the night. I'm tired. Blogging to resume when these problems go away.

Check out the Home Project

On June 5th (World Environment Day), a new film by Luc Besson and Yann-Arthus Betrand will be released everywhere in the world, on every format (Movie Theatre, DVD, Internet).

Through stunning displays of aerial camerawork, the film will give people from all corners of the world a glimpse of our planet like never before and visually demonstrate the urgency for preservation efforts. In addition to its Internet premiere, "Home" will be shown in movie theaters and outdoors on big screens at key locations around the globe. It will also air on TV stations around the world. Using this unique distribution model, one with a massive online and offline effort, the film creators are able to reach the widest audience possible. So whether you'd prefer to head to the theaters, watch it under the stars, or just stay put on the couch — the way you view "Home" is up to you.

And starting today, YouTube channels in English, French, Spanish and German will feature behind-the-scenes looks from the making of the film, as well as interviews, and extras. To add even more dimension, Google Maps is featuring specially created layers that shed more light on some of the material covered in the movie. You can also use Maps to find a theater location near you.

To get a preview of what you can expect on June 5, check out some of the spectacular footage in the Home YouTube channel, like the video below of the Arctic world and its wild terrain that's essential to preserve. Or this one of Los Angeles exclusively seen from the sky, giving us a new perspective of the cityscape at night. And please respond and react to the film via video responses, comments, and ratings and share links via email with your friends.

from: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/coming-soon-to-youtube-bessons-and.html

So, check out the youtube page, put the date in your google calendar, and add yourself and your pledge to the map

Tab Closing

I have a bunch of links and docs open in various tabs and lists that I'm slowly working through. Here are some of the cooler ones.

First, Bohemian Rhapsody played on old computer equipment:



This is the first time I've embedded a video, so I hope it works!

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Next, It was a Dark and Silly Night:



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New Moby song with video by David Lynch:



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When they start talking about the credit crunch and start throwing about those huge numbers, remember that

A million seconds is 11 days
A billion seconds is 32 years.
A trillion seconds is 32,000 years.

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Online London maps: Londonist’s directory of Cartographical London

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The eyeballing game: You any good at spotting right angles?

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Apparently, the galactic centre tastes like raspberries and smells of rum.

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Mazes:

• Clickmazes (a great timewasting resource)
  
• Logic mazes
• Adrian Fisher’s World Maze Database
• History of mazes and labyrinths
• The Labyrinth Society

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Worldometers - real time world statistics

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Free, streaming music. Right in the web Browser

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Pre-order Who Killed Amanda Palmer; because you should.

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No idea why, but: http://www.mtvcherrygirl.com/play/

Nearly didn't make it again

I've finally caught up on 527 news feeds, but haven't left much time to blog.

Not that there is much to blog about.

Last night, for example, I got home, saw my daughter for a bit, retired to the studay, worked until 20:20, had something to eat, and went to bed. Hardly the most stimulating experiences on which to blog.

My daughter woke a few times in the night. On one of those she appeared to be having a tantrum. Whilst still dreaming. Even in her dreams, things don't always go her way!

The weekend was busy but uneventful. Lots of jobs, some shopping, some sleep.

Swimming on Sundays is going well. Little one knows to kick her legs and splash her arms. It's not very effective yet, but the theory is there. She's picked it up by herself too. I'm not daft enough to try and teach a 2 year old front crawl!

Busy afternoon again today. Meetings until 17:30. This should be the last time this week though. I'm starting to put my foot down. Anyone who schedules a late meeting without checking with me first will get a request to move it, or a decline. The only caveat is when it's in my best interest to be there. Today's late meeting was checked with me first, so no complaints. (Only grumbles about the hour)

Journey's taking longer than it should. We're approaching London Bridge, and I only started this post at Westminster. It's warming up too.

Just got a seat though. Woo.

Not really coming up with much else to write. Time to think about work.

Oops

Forgot to write a post this morning. A new phone app finally let me catch up on my RSS feeds underground, so I got a bit distracted.

Normal service to resume tomorrow.

Oh, and one more thing

Jade Goody - the Musical? Wrong, just wrong.

That is all.

Hot and bothered on the first great western

Early (in the journey) post today. Still above ground, slowly, approaching Paddington. It's warm. Warmest morning yet. Perhaps that hot chocolate wasn't the best move!

Worked late last night. Very late. Wife went out to the cinema, and I was still working when she got back. No relaxing movie for me.

Today I have no meetings until 15:00, then they don't stop until 18:00 (back to back, and in different buildings!), so I won't get home until 20:00. Good job it's the weekend.

Nothing "planned" for this weekend, in that we know what we might be doing, but not until we're actually doing it. As long as there's some sleep involved then we'll be fine.

Tired of running for transport

I'm sick of it. I seem to spend my life, these days, running for trains. It's not that I'm useless. I allow plenty of time for my journeys; but events seem to conspire against me.

Take this morning; I'm up a bit late, and I'm going for a rush hour train. I leave an extra 6 minutes early for my journey. 2 miles in we hit a roundabout. 3 roads converge. We all want to go for the second exit. The ones coming from the right could go down our road, or across us for their second exit. The car 2 ahead of me waited. And waited.

"Oh dear", he must have thought, "here comes another car. He's indicating; he's turning; oh, I could have gone. Oh dear, here comes another car."

Over and over this happened. He waited until there were no cars anywhere in sight (if there was a car 20 metres from the roundabout, moving slowly as you would approaching a junction, he waited).

Prat.

I made the train. Just. I had to run.

It happens almost on a daily basis now. Something will delay me in an unexpected way, and at some point I'll have to run for a train.

Anyway, enough of that. Tired. For a change.

Wife's out at the cinema tonight (again ;) ), so I might get to watch a movie or something. Relax.

I could have sworn it was Friday today. I've done enough this week for it to be Friday. My head aches like it's Friday. The fact that it's Thursday seems a cruel joke.

Hell of a day ahead (for a change), more meetings (although one has already been cancelled), more work. As always, if we can get to the end of the week, and hit all our deliveries, next week looks (at this point) easier.

Hope. It keeps us going.

Long day, short post

Got home at 10 last night, vegged, slept. Up late this morning. Rubbish day ahead.

I now need to write lots of work e-mails before I get to work. Apologies for the rubbish post.

Early II

So it's 7:30, and I'm on the tube. Usually I'd be getting out of bed around now. Late. But true.

I don't think the photo on the previous post worked. I'll fix it later.

For now it's travel and meetings in my future.

My morning hot chocolate was too hot this morning. It was undrinkable until we actually pulled into Paddington. Too hot to drink nearly 30 minutes after it was made. Good job I didn't drop it, that would have hurt!

Inflated a paddling pool for my daughter last night. Took ages. Almost an hour with an electric pump in the back garden. Our neighbours must love us!

So, drinks with work this evening. Not sure I'll be much company by then, but we'll see how it goes.

Tired. No, honestly. Is it time to go home yet?

Oh well. Ever onward.

Early

I have an 8am meeting today (and drinks after work at the other end of the day!) So I'm on the train at 06:32  here's what that time looks like.

Ticket day

Today is the day I renew my yearly tickets for travel. Flipping heck is it expensive!

Travel in London alone costs over £1000
Travel to London is nearly £3500!
Car parking is £130 every 6 months.

That's a lot! No, really, that's a huge amount of cash that it costs me just so I can go to work!

Ok, work give me the amount in a pre-tax loan, so I don't pay income tax or NI on it, but that doesn't really offset how much it costs me to come to work.

More family trips into London needed; allow me to capitalise on the expenditure.

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Anyway, enough monitary shocks. Busy weekend. I cleaned and tidied. Pretty much all weekend. Carpet cleaning friday night. House top to bottom on Saturday. Finish up, garage, and garden on Sunday.

It was fun though. The house looks a lot better. Small bits of paperwork all over the place have been consolidated and sorted. All the shredding of receipts has been done. The kitchen benches have had all the hard water stains removed. Hopefully it should allow us to keep it ticking over for a while.

I did manage, on Friday night, to watch a movie. The latest Rambo one. Not bad. Very short though. Only about 78 minutes. Plenty of room for more plot expansion. The whole thing, obviously, is just a vehicle to get to the end fight, but it's an enjoyable enough romp.

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I tweaked my twitter account last week. I went from following 300 people to 91. Suddenly I can cope with the data input again.

Trimming was easy enough. Anyone who constantly retweets stuff, or twits links on how to monetise twitter (for only $200 outlay!), or, basically, spams, was out. Add to that the people who never said anything and we were down.

I'm playing around again with numbers. I'm up in the 130s again which I think is a little too high. It's that signal to noise ratio. The key bit is the morning sweep. I get up and there are a large number of tweets waiting. If I can scan them, pick out a few links, and basically, process them, then that's fine. This morning I got half way and gave up. Too much noise. I have to remove the american bias. They tweet too much whilst I'm asleep!

I think the whole thing has hit critical mass anyway. Oprah joined, live on TV, on friday, and Mr Demi Moore achieved over 1,000,000 followers in a high publicity battle with CNN. This, combined with all the press coverage here, the constant stories about twitter breaking news, or causing companies to change decisions, has reached the point where it's hitting mainstream. It would be interesting to look at the demographic now joining.

Interesting times. My interest in facebook is now practically 0. RSS feeds are beginning to back up. It's now this blog, and twitter that take up my online time. Just need to get that signal to noise ratio right. There's a metaphor for life if ever there was one!

Absent

It's been a quiet blogging week. This is only the second time I've actually gone into the office. That's because I've been too busy working.

No interesting time off stories I'm afraid. Tuesday I came home, worked; Wednesday I stayed home, worked late; Thursday I stayed home, worked very late; and here we are today.

What a fun life. 6 hours of conference calls yesterday. And real work too.

My lovely wife and daughter are off to her Mums for the weekend, so I have an opportunity to clear a few jobs off; starting with cleaning the carpet.

As this is my blog, I know it wouldn't be complete without a travel whinge. The train I caught first this morning was delayed by 27 minutes (although, from my perspective, it was 3 minutes early), the second one ran very slow into London; and now, finally, the Jubilee is delayed due to signalling problems. Severe delays, and no sign of us moving any time soon. I love commuting.

Having just typed that, we're finally moving. For how long is anyones guess! See you at the other side!

Long weekend

Another Monday dawns. This one was different though. It was a bank holiday. Following another one on Friday. A bit of a lie in, and a day off from work.

Most of this weekend I spent away. Near, or in, North Wales.

It was an old school friend's stag-do. The next in line of the few of us who keep close contact. There's only one more of us to go.

I travelled up the country on Friday; popping in to see my parents, have a bacon sarnie, and fix some PC problems. Then it was further up to stay with one of my mates who'd be joining us on the "do" and his lovely wife. We were joined by a further friend, and served a sumptious dinner prepared brilliantly by our hostess with only minimal "help" from us men!

The evening was spent with some wine, and some PC problems.

The following day we picked up the "stag" and headed to North Wales. After a bit of faffing for lunch / trousers, we hit a hill and went for a walk. We couldn't have asked for a nicer day. Beautiful sunshine, pleasant temperature. The hill was soon conquered and we retired to the hotel for a quick shower and change.

The evening saw us hitting the streets of Betws-y-coed! A place not known for its nightlife. We found ourself a table, and enjoyed a large, tasty meal, and a few drinks, before heading back to our hotel.

We served our stag a nice whisky, and a double sambuca. The bar staff then asked if they could pick the next drink. Of course we said yes. A pint of purple arrived.

Apparently called "chief" it was red bull, blackcurrant, blue WKD, and 3 shots of smirnoff blue. It had the right effect.

Despite threatening a stripper (phones with internet access are great for making threats appear real!), the night was over at this point. We retired.

Sunday morning saw breakfast for all but one of us! Once packed and checked out we made our way to coffee for the other one! Then home. I popped in, briefly, to see my parents, brother, and his girlfriend. Then it was back down the country to my wife and daughter.

Monday saw us working in the garden and catching up on some jobs. A pleasant enough end to a good weekend.

Now a four day week starts. Great. Roll on Friday night!

On my way. For now.

Finally made it to the Jubillee. To be told that the Bakerloo is now running again. With only minor delays. Sometimes I hate commuting. When it works it's ignorable, when it goes wrong it's an utter pain in the ass.

Here's hoping the rest of the journey is without incident or delay.

Fire alert at Waterloo

On the underground, I don't think there can be worse words for my journey than "Fire alert at Waterloo".

Bakerloo is suspended. Circle line is useless (next train is 13 minutes away). So it's district to Edgeware Road, Hammersmith and City to Baker Street, and then we'll see what the Jubillee is doing (hopeful at the minute, but it too passes through Waterloo (a very long way away from the Bakerloo though)).

More soon.

Slow, slow, stop. Slow, crawl, shudder.

Yes, another train whinge! It was slow. Very slow. Signalling problems apparently. I was scheduled to be at work now. I'm only just getting on the jubilee line!

Other stuff. My run last night was a disaster. I set off too quick, and died going up the hill at the 1.2 mile mark. Tried walking it off, and then picking back up, but it was no good. Gave up and went home. I would go out again tonight, pick up the slack, but my wife is out, and I'm baby sitting. Probably just as well. I'm due out for a run tomorrow, and I still ache from Sunday and last night. I'll use the time to get my ipod loaded and charged. A bit of music might help take my mind off the aches, and the right tempos should help me slow down.

That's it really. Too much late night work on Monday combined with hayfever yesterday morning is what compelled me to work from home. Ended up working until 6 as it was. Why do people send major queries at home time? Can't they wait for the morning? Going to be a little late today too. Not too much though as I have to get back to baby sit.

Running around, all a twitter

I ran 4.3 miles last night. I have my running routes tracked via google, and posted to "my maps" on google maps. At some point I'll share. 4.3 hurt. Well, actually 2.5 to 3 hurt, I ignored it after that because it was late, dark, and I was getting cold! In 5 weekends time I'm running a half marathon. Eek!

By my calculations, I need to run 5.5 next sunday followed by 7, 9.5, 11.5 and then the 13. During each week I run the distance I ran the Sunday before. So this week it's 2 2.5 mile loops. Next week it's the 4.3 I did this weekend. So the final week would be 11.5, 2 lots of 9.5, and a 13. I may wind down the final training run though.

I have a feeling that this will hurt!

The first time I did a half marathon I trained for the whole thing from scatch (no technique, no nothing) in 5 weeks. I was younger. And lighter.

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I now have nearly 200 people "following" me on Twitter. Every one of them hanging on my every word. Ok, maybe not. But that is rather a lot of people I don't know, who also follow a lot of other people they don't know, listening to an awful lot of drivel, re-hashed blog posts, and the same link to a slightly interesting article 10 times an hour. Of course, there is some good, original commentary, and the first link to that article is interesting; so, on balance, it's still worth doing.

Overall, a good weekend. Now we have a 4 day week, a 4 day weekend (with a stag do), and another 4 day week. Could be far worse. Now, let's get the first of those over and done with!

Friday dawns, the weekend is but a few hours away

'Tis true.

Id just like to point out that the train line from Reading to Waterloo has bugger all signal. All morning I have battled with the technology, and at no point has it provided me a decent signal for longer than 5 minutes.

Rubbish.

Been through some fairly big places too.

Right, let's see if the phone can find enough signal to get this out.

Morning all

Is it only Thursday? It should be later than that by now surely. At least I've got a seat on the tube today. From the start too; no strategic waiting in the right place for me.

Not a lot else ticking on. Went for a run last night; 2.51 miles according to the google My Tracks app on the phone. Feeling slightly stiff this morning, but no hobbling.

What else? No disruption from protesters yesterday. Although some people are expecting problems in Canary Wharf today. There's nothing official planned though, so we'll see.

That's it really. Got away on time yesterday, but I have another late afternoon meeting today, so probably be 30 mins late. This American focus on time is not great, have to see if it settles down.

G20 - There's been a mhurdurr

G20, the postcode for Taggert. It's all an April Fool. Gordons final joke. Get all the world leaders together, depict it as the final chance, and then, just as we're all beginning to think we might make it, they come out, tell us we're stuffed, and leave us to rot.

From a grandstanding point of view, the G20 is fantastic. It's also a waste of time. We may have a global problem, but the solution is anything but. If the US and China agree a way forward, the rest of us will be fine. It's the G2+18!

Then we have the protests. I've worked in an investment bank for nearly three years, and the number of times I've seen a millionaire banker can be counted on one hand. The number of times I've been face to face with one can be counted on one finger. Strangely, all our senior figures are in the US this week.

I'm not expecting any problems as the protest aren't planned for Canary Wharf, but if I do run into issues, or get delayed by problems, do you think they'll care that most of the people they are inconveniencing are standard office workers. Ordinary people like me. No, they probably won't. It's more important to make your point, and go for the big picture rather than worry about the details.

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Running very late this morning, but I was working very late last night. And the night before. Hopefully things will settle down after this week. Two 4 days weeks, and a long weekend in the middle should make everyone a bit more mellow. I've got a stag do to look forward to, so that will help too.

Well, we're approaching London Bridge. Technically the only place I could get held up today. No sign of problems yet though. Work is a few minutes away, and the relative safety of my desk.