Stag weekend in Cardiff

I have just had a cracking couple of days in Cardiff on my brother’s stag weekend along with 24 other like-minded fellows. It has to have been the most organized event of it’s type I’ve ever been on – we had a multi-page PDF before we went complete with full venue addresses (hotel, club, karting etc) and were all given business card-size laminated mini-itineraries when we got there. The best man, Chris, even came up with the idea of a ’stag phone’ – he had a pay-as-you-go phone in his possession with the phone number on the back of all of our obligatory comedy tops, the idea being that fellow drinkers could text the number with our nickname and get us to have a shot.

I’m still a little worse-for-wear some 48 hours after the event. Good times, but I’m glad we don’t do it too often!

A selection of photos can be found on the web courtesy of a fellow attendee. Stag phone results as compiled by Chris are also available. Next stop, the wedding.

Final year project

Mat has generously given me some space on his web server to host a copy of the project I completed in the final year of my degree about ten years ago.  It’s called An Implementation of Donald Knuth’s MIX and is a Java applet version of a mythical computer that Knuth wrote about in The Art of Computer Programming Vol 1.  I’ve added the source code to the page which has never been out in the big wide world before.  Hopefully someone will find it interesting!

St Albans clock tower

We recently had a lovely picnic in St Albans with a couple of our good friends who live there. I’ve always loved the town and it’s a great place to visit whether you’re a shopper or a tourist. The central part of the high street is pretty with a beautiful clock tower right in the centre, apparently the only medieval clock tower in the country.

One of our friends mentioned that you can climb the tower and I jumped at the chance. After giving the lovely old ladies 80p for a ticket at the entrance I heard the bell strike for three o’clock. They told me I was lucky I was on the ground floor and it was only after I got up to the belfry that I realised what they meant – the bell is BIG and you get to stand within an arm’s length of it. Being next to it and thinking that it could be struck at any time scared the wits out of me – I had visions of jumping at the sound and tumbling down the spiral staircase back to the entrance – so I legged it up to the rooftop.

The view from the top is fantastic – you get to see the cathedral as well as a lot of the town and surrounding countryside. On top of this, the masonry was covered with grafitti going back to the 1800s which completely fascinated me. I had the same spooky feeling I get when I see a photo of somewhere I know that was taken decades ago and can’t help thinking about the people that have stood in the same place years before. I took some pictures on my Blackberry but the camera is pretty crappy:

If you want to see more, take a look at the set I’ve uploaded to Flickr.

If you visit St Albans, have 30 minutes to spare, are happy to climb an extremely narrow spiral staircase and want to chance your luck with the giant bell, it’s worth a visit!

Visitors from NYC

We recently had the pleasure of Marc, Rachel and Jonah staying with us for a week on a trip over from NYC.  They’re even lovelier than we remembered, and it was great to meet Jonah.

Rachel has put up some photos from their trip.

What do you do when you spot another blogger?

On the train home from work today I looked up from my iPod and did a double-take – right in front of me was a fellow Berkhamsted blogger (if I can still call myself that, given my lack of recent posts) whom I recognised from his numerous Flickr photos. My first thought was to say hello and introduce myself, but I quickly realised how wierd this would be! I really had nothing to talk about other than the fact that we had both uploaded various photos to the Berkhamsted Flickr group and he had made me an admin many months back. It’s a strange feeling, thinking that it isn’t the first time that you have met someone and wanting to say “hi” but actually having nothing more of any real interest to say.

This happened to me before when I spotted the Station Master (of the now defunct Station Master’s Weblog fame) at one of the tube stations that I use on my commute – again, I thought of saying “hi” but had nothing to really talk about other than the fact that I read his blog. Not many avenues of conversation there.

Nobody wants to come across as a stalker!

Thanks

After a really long and difficult day at work on Monday, my faith in humanity was restored this morning by the complete stranger who saw of running, stopped and offered of a lift to the station. Thank you, whoever you were.

Rock, paper, scissors

Top marks to a colleague of mine who pointed me to this short note on whether the rules of rock, paper and scissors really make sense.

Addicted to Facebook

After just two days I have to admit that I’m already addicted to Facebook like it’s some kind of drug. It’s really amazing – it takes the concepts of Friends Reunited and blogging, adds a slick appearance and easy accessibility and cross-references pretty much everything you do on the site to make a completely absorbing experience.

I can’t help myself from logging in from my mobile phone at least half a dozen times a day to see what people are up to, see what messages have been left and to change my ’status message’. By being so quick and easy to use you really get a sense of what your friends are up to and already I feel as though I’m back in contact socially where I had been a bit of an email recluse before.

I’ve also just switched to using Gmail for my personal mail (with all its fantastic spam-filtering goodness) and the slick mobile Gmail application on my mobile so I’m really going to be back in contact now. Time to upgrade my mobile tariff!

Almost nine weeks on

I’m at a departure gate at Zürich airport waiting for a flight home and thought I’d check in. Our little man is almost nine weeks old now and he’s advancing in every way – it’s really amazing to see how much change he goes through right in front of your eyes. For example, three weeks ago he just started smiling – it was as sudden as that. One minute he doesn’t smile, the next minute he does. And when he does…we just fall in love with him again and again. I honestly can’t tell you how brilliant it is to see your son smile at you. We can’t help ourselves from trying to make him smile all the time.

Having him around has of course made a massive change to our lives. Time is so much more precious; you find yourself thinking about what you can do with every ’spare’ few minutes that come along. I’ve been trying to get home at a more reasonable hour from work and in order to make up some time have taken to sorting my work emails on the train. I’ve lost the personal time but I do get to see my family more, so it’s not really a negative thing – you’re just forced to be more organised.

I would expect my future posts here to be a little less frequent than they have been, but I will try!

Leon’s first few days

We’ve put a few photos together into a Flickr set of Leon’s first few days. They’ve been very busy ones – all happy but sometimes a little stressful – but Mum and Dad are working him out and can now pretty much tell windy, hungry and nappy change cries apart. He’s already enjoyed a couple of trips into town with Dad which he enjoyed very much and has liked meeting lots of his new friends and family. We’ll put more of his adventures on here soon.