Today saw the announcement of the next chapter in the WebSphere Appliance Management Center story. Significantly, you will find this in the WebSphere DataPower Appliances firmware V5.0 announcement letter as the next version will no longer be a chargeable product in its own right. Instead, it will be freely downloadable and supported free of charge for all customers with a current support entitlement for a WebSphere DataPower SOA appliance.

Not only will it cost you less – but we’ll also be giving you less! The team has been working flat out to create a much lighterweight offering which is faster to install and less resource intensive. The management user interface has also been extensively reworked to be more responsive and better support user interaction patterns. In particular, the current restrictions around managed set membership will be lifted allowing much great flexibility for firmware and configuration deployment. In addition to the existing domain management capabilities, you will also be able to manage configuration at the service level. All of this will be available for download on June 26.

For those attending IBM Impact next week who’d like to find out more about this exciting new release, I’ll be co-presenting on WebSphere Appliance Management Center (Monday, 5:15-6:30pm, Lando 4305). We will also be hosting a series of round table sessions in Toscana 3701 (Monday, 10:45-12:00; Tuesday, 1:20-2:45pm; Thursday 3:15-4:30pm) which will be your chance to shape the future direction of the product. Alternatively, please feel free to contact me directly or post questions in the DataPower developerWorks forum.

I had a phone call at work earlier this week to tell me that Emma had lost a tooth. She’s been saying it was wobbly for a while so it was no great surprise. Unfortunately, there is no sign of the tooth and the suspicion is that it was swallowed along with the apple she was eating at the time. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to want to retrieve it and the tooth fairly settled for a note explaining the situation! I can’t begrudge her £1: she’s spent some of it on stickers for my birthday.

In other news, Duncan is potty training again this weekend with about a 50% hit rate. Further evidence of the children ageing: I’ve finally got round to removing the remaining stair gate (children swinging on it being more of a danger than falling down the stairs) and most of the cupboard locks in the kitchen (so hopefully they’ll stay on their hinges a bit better).

Yes – I can be bought! For the price of a watch, WatchCo.com have bought themselves a scattering of links in this review. I was given a budget of $200 which still left me with a huge selection of watches to choose from on their website. My main criteria for a watch is that it tells the time, and the right time at that. Consequently, I found myself looking at what the site calls automatic watches (solar or kinetic powered) and atomic watches (radio controlled – not nuclear powered!). The overlap between those two categories is unfortunately rather small (particularly once you’ve taken out the watches that are incorrectly labelled as atomic). I eventually settled on the G-Shock AWG100 from the range of Casio watches. Sadly well under my budget at $130!

Of course, you may need to factor in customs fees when buying from overseas sites like US based WatchCo.com. It cost £25.23 to retrieve the small package from the sorting office: £17.23 in VAT and £8 in Royal Mail international handling fee. Thankfully, in my case that was refunded as part of writing this review. Having unboxed the watch, I was generally pleased with the look of the watch. I have pretty slim wrists and some watches just look far too big and bulky. This one doesn’t although, as you can see from the second photo, the end of the strap does stick out a bit as I’m nearly on the smallest setting. The strap is consequently something I might look at replacing.

The watch very nearly met my main criteria: it was showing the correct time… for NYC. Seemingly you have to manually tell the watch your location, at which point the hands chugged their way round to the right time. By default the watch only adjusts the time from the radio signal once a day at one of six preset times throughout the night but you can force it to perform an update which I duly did. One of the small digital ‘dials’ on the front of the watch tells you which transmitter it is receiving a signal from which seems rather a waste of screen real-estate. Bizarrely, it seems the signal from Germany is stronger here than that from the UK! The manual gives detailed instructions on how to position your watch on the window sill to receive a signal which seemed a bit of a faff. The watch does tell you when it performed the last update and I was therefore glad to see that it seems to manage to do so from the comfort of my bedside table.

Only time will tell how the solar charging works out. The manual cautions you against keeping your watch out of sight under your jacket. Not a problem for me as I’m almost always have my sleeves rolled up! The only real evidence of this aspect of the watch (beyond the patterning on the dial) is that, after a period in the dark, the digital part of the display is turned off to conserve power until it sees the light again or you press a button.

The other two digital parts to the display generally show the seconds (the watch has no second hand) and the time or day/date. The dials are also used for viewing the battery charge, world times, countdown timer (not less than a minute), stopwatch (one lap time), alarm (only beeps 10 times so not one I’d want to rely on after a heavy night) and, if necessary, manually setting the time. Unavoidably for this design of watch, the hands can sometimes make the display hard to read. It also isn’t possible to read them in the dark as the LED light just illuminates the hands.

All-in-all, a reasonable looking watch which does its main function of telling the time accurately competently. I’m not sure I’d fork out £80 for the watch (not counting the import costs) but I’m generally a cheapskate when it comes to watches. It will, therefore, probably be replacing my previous timepiece that came free with a running book! Thanks WatchCo.com!

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Christine worked the last couple of days so I had time off to look after the children. Well, on Thursday, I actually only looked after one of them as Emma and I dropped off Duncan at nursery before spending most of the day at Manor Farm Country Park. Much to my surprise, Emma even enjoyed the 40 minute Victorian school lesson on offer although she only put her hand up once (to spell dog!). We stopped off at the library on the way home. Having spent most of the stay colouring, her contribution to the book selection was a cartoon book of Shakespeare’s plays: Midsummer Night’s Dream is the only one which doesn’t involve at least one murder! Yesterday, Duncan, Emma and I eventually made it out the house and went to Hilliers where the children ran themselves in the ground. We managed, for example, to spend half an hour playing manically on a wobbly bridge that is all of three metres long. They also spent ages jumping around a circle of log stumps. Duncan just leapt from one towards the next regardless of whether he was likely to make it! I’m looking forward to having a rest at work next week…

Having had a trial run in Monmouth with friends, when we arrived home on Easter Sunday the children were in no doubt that they wanted a treasure hunt in order to find the Easter eggs provided by Grandma. Christine therefore whipped up a quick set of clues: written for Emma and pictorial for Duncan, and distributed them around the garden. It didn’t take long for them to follow the trail and even less time to start to demolish their prize!

For the first half of the Easter half-term holiday we booked a last minute break at a cottage on the north edge of the Brecon Beacons near Llanfrynach. We arrived on the Saturday and the next day enjoyed a fantastic cycle ride along the east edge of Talybont reservoir up to the waterfalls where we had lunch. Duncan got a bit cold during the shady ride there (he doesn’t put any effort in when sat in the child seat) but the falls were in the sunshine and he seemed to have warmed up enough by the end of the trip to enjoy an ice cream!

The next day, after much indecision we decided to take a crack at climbing a hill and if you’re going to climb a hill it might as well by the highest: Pen y Fan. We spurned the motorway footpath up from the Storey Arms, instead using the car parks on the north side near the cottage. This gave us a nice gentle climb up past Pen Milan, stopping near Llyn Cwm Llwch for lunch before the final steep climb up past the obelisk and to Corn Du. Emma was starting to flag a little bit on this final ascent but she and Duncan enjoyed playing with the stones on the flat summit. From there, it’s a short hop to the marginally higher Pen y Fan. We descended north from there and I abandoned Christine and the children and ran off to bring the car round. It may have only been about five miles in total but it was still a fun day out in the hills and we were pleased that Emma made it round without too much grumbling. Even Duncan walked more than we expected!

The weather began to turn at this point and we spent the next day at Dan-yr-Ogof caves. I was actually quite impressed by the caves but for the children I think the Dinosaur Park was the real winner. By the time we reached the Shire Horse Centre, the rain had set in and sadly the indoor play area didn’t appear to have much for young children (a tricycle race track which isn’t much fun on your own) so we set off back to the cottage. The Wednesday was pretty much a write off as we watched the thick snow cover first the hills and eventually the fields surrounding the cottage. We managed a twenty minute walk in the morning and then went to the swimming pool in Brecon after lunch.

The cottage was booked for the Easter weekend so we packed the car on Thursday and went for a short walk along the Brecon and Monmouthshire canal before heading off to stay at Christine’s parents’ for a couple of days to make a week of the holiday.

I’m catching up on some old blog posts – primarily as an excuse to link to some photos. Back at the beginning of March we’d booked a return trip to Whitemead in the Forest of Dean to catch up with Christine’s cousin and family. It didn’t quite work out as planned – I started to come down with a cough on the Friday and by the time we arrived I was shivering uncontrollably and took to my bed. Saturday was a write off (at least for me) but by Sunday morning I was starting to feel a bit better and Duncan, Emma and I joined the soon to be be birthday boy, Daniel, and his Dad for a ride on the Dean Forest Railway. I have to say that, once you’re actually on the train, the fact that it is steam powered is rather lost but the children all certainly enjoyed themselves.

There was a full weekend of orienteering on offer on the weekend just passed. In the end, we decided not to make it three trips to the Forest and spent Saturday enjoying the sunshine doing a bit of work in the garden. I then headed down to the Hamptworth Estate on Saturday evening for the British Night Champs. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with night orienteering. You can’t beat the pleasure of running through the pitch black and seeing a control looming out of the darkness. Sadly, I tend to spend rather too much time running around in circles and this was not to be an exception.

As RouteGadget shows, I made two major blunders. Everything started well enough but at the fifth control I was rather thrown by the presence of contours in the New Forest and turned up-hill just 10 metres short of the control. Actually, I think I was thrown because my attack point was supposed to be a ditch junction whereas, in the daylight, it was evident that the ditch on the map actually turns in to a veg boundary. I had more trouble with vegetation boundaries at 12 where it looks like I had the rhododendrum boundary out by 90 degrees.

Each of those mistakes cost me five minutes. On top of that, in the tussocks and brashings I was generally too cautious and when I finished I was third out of three and a good 25 minutes down on the leader. As it transpired, the remaining three runners in my class managed to take even longer so I can still claim a bronze medal!

On Sunday, the sun was shining again and we all went along for a fantastic day back at Hamptworth. I took the children round the string course whilst Christine ran. Duncan walked the whole way and both were pleased to see sweets at the finish rather than the usual SOC raisins! We then sat in the sun next to a large puddle adjacent to the finish waiting for Christine to return.

I found the area much more enjoyable in the daylight when it was possible to make use of more distant objects in the vague terrain. Two mistakes again on RouteGadget. The first at 8 where, in the presence of Tim Britton, I failed to realise that I had drifted to the north. Then another two minutes en-route to 12 where I failed to negotiate the rhodies successfully. I was six minutes down on Jack Benham so my running speed was definitely up on the previous night. I can’t quite work out where I’ll end up in the SCOA Champs as a result – probably second or third.

I got back to discover that Christine (with a little help from the sweets) had persuaded Emma to go round the string course twice more (on her own this time) and Duncan had even walked round again. All in all, a fun weekend of orienteering although given my aching legs today, not one to be repeated too frequently!

We’ve quickly settled in to the school routine when it comes to organising our holidays around term time. For February half term, Emma and I enjoyed a day together whilst Christine worked and Duncan went to nursery as usual then, the next day, we packed our bags and set off to visit Christine’s brother and family at their new house in Cornwall. We stopped off in a Travelodge in Ilminster on the way down. I wouldn’t recommend it as it’s looking pretty tired. We also made the mistake of attempting to go out for dinner in the town on what was, of course, Valentine’s night. We traipsed around with the children in tow being turned away from one pub after another. Eventually we did ended up at the Marston’s pub which did us proud.

We had an enjoyable time with my Uncle in Devon the following day, visiting the miniature zoo in Shaldon amongst other things, before completing our journey down to Cornwall. The next day we headed back west to re-visit the Eden Project. It must have been five years ago when we last went as we met my parents there and told them that Christine was pregnant with Emma. The children enjoyed themselves greatly, particularly the chocolate theme! The next day was spent in and around Falmouth with the relatives. We even managed some sunshine down on the beach. I’m afraid we can’t recommend the Gylly Beach cafe as the wait was prohibitive. The ice creams afterwards went down well though.

Sadly the nice weather was not to last and our journey home was spent under a rain cloud. We did, at least, have a day to gather our thoughts again before getting back to the school/work routine.

On Sunday we went to the Wessex event at Black Water near Burley (not in Dorset, despite the name of the event: Dorset Delight). Although Thursday night’s snow had disappeared from around our house, it was still very much in evidence in the forest. We were therefore grateful to Christine’s Mum for taking the children round the string course and saving us all from a prolonged day of split starts in the cold. It was a lovely bit of runnable forest and I enjoyed my run in the crisp snow and ice. The mapping and planning left a little to be desired (the former perhaps suffering from a summer revision and the latter from the former) as did my navigation. My meanderings through the forest can be seen on RouteGadget which explain why I ended up nearly six minutes down on the winner. Although my calf was a bit sore, my ankle stood up to the test so time to enter some more events…

Duncan has becoming increasingly stubborn, not helped this week by having a lingering cold as side of which he’s come out in spots all over his cheeks. For example, for breakfast he currently needs to have two bowls: one for porridge and one for cereal (or breakfast as Duncan insists on calling it), and has to sit on someone’s lap to eat them. If you ask him whether he’d like a little bit of something, he always reply with ‘big bit’.

This evening we had another classic example. Half way through the first course, Duncan pushed his plate away and declared that he wanted a lollipop (which usually means an ice lolly). After a few minutes of persistence, he decided better of it and ate a bit more off his plate. Anyway, eventually Emma went to get the lollies out (ideal for possibly the coldest night of the year!) and made the mistake of first getting out the packet containing the last remaining Fab. Emma generously agreed to let Duncan have it (having had a real lollipop earlier from a birthday at school). After one bite, Duncan decided he rather have a milk lolly like Emma and tried to palm his off on me. Luckily, half way through, Emma decided she didn’t like hers and gave it to Duncan, only to then decide she’d have Duncan’s Fab instead. Fantastic – two happy children. Only then, having seen Emma biting off all the chocolate and sprinkles, Duncan decided that he really would rather have the Fab! Luck would have it that Emma then decided it was too cold for lollies. Duncan reclaimed his lolly for the third time and I got a half eaten mini milk!

After much indecision on my part, we have finally bought Emma’s new bed (her first full size bed) and it duly arrived on Friday. I managed to get the bed itself assembled by bedtime (although, as you can see from the picture, the drawers didn’t arrive until later in the evening). Emma was very excited and was suitably pleased with the bounce of her new mattress! The biggest change, however, was for Duncan who was finally able to move out of his cot and transfer to Emma’s old bed. He has been preempting that move for sometime by climbing in to Emma’s bed just before lights out, tucking himself in and shouting “my bed” on a regular basis. Much to our surprise, he didn’t take advantage of his new found freedom and went to sleep without leaving his new bed. He also doesn’t appear to be quite so prone to falling out of bed as Emma was (and sometimes still is). The best bit, of course, is that they can both get in to our room for their morning stories without either of us having to leave the warmth of our bed. Even better: Emma has taken to waiting in her bed until our alarm goes off – whatever time we might have set it for!

I had suggested that on Sunday we get the train to Brockenhurst for a walk but the day before Emma managed to get a cut between her toes by standing on the edge of the up-turned washing basket! Emma has been hopping/hobbling around ever since (except when she forgets when she runs around quite normally!). Our fallback plan was to go to nearby Lakeside Country Park and have a ride on the miniature dual gauge railway. Christine declined to join us on the train and, in the 20 minutes we had to wait for it to leave, could easily have walked the length of the line several times!

Unlike last time, Emma seemed entirely unperturbed by the smoke and noise. When we got off at the playground, Duncan spent most of the time watching the other trains go round and, as each one departed, he would shout “another train, another train”. We walked back through the park taking in the planes from the nearby airport and the r/c sailing yachts on the lake. We didn’t linger though as, despite the sunshine, the wind was bitterly cold.

At the weekend, we went to our first orienteering event of the year (and Christine’s first as a W35!). I went round the 2.9km yellow course with the children which, when combined with the 800m to/from the start/finish and the hills proved a bit of an epic and we ended up in our usual position in the results. Other than a little pre mid-course snack whining from Emma, both children seemed to enjoy themselves although Duncan only climbed out of the buggy to punch at each control. I went for a run afterwards, sticking to the paths as my ankle still hasn’t fully recovered nearly three months on. I’m now on anti-inflammatories to try and remove the last of the swelling from the joint and hopefully allow the physio and exercises to do their work properly.

I had a full two weeks off over Christmas so it was a nice relaxing period. We were at Christine’s parents in the run up to the day itself with her Dad’s birthday part of the festivities. Father Christmas had brought Emma a doll’s house and Duncan a balance bike (both from eBay I’m told). Needless to say, the bike is still too big for Duncan and Emma likes riding it and Duncan is probably the prime user of the doll’s house. We attempted a walk up the Skirrid in the morning. It proved far too muddy for even the off-road buggy and, although Emma surged up the hill with Granny Sue, the wind turned them back once they left the trees. Christmas Day didn’t end too well for me as I was sick – I put it down to eating too many pistachio nuts!

After a return home we then decamped to my parents but we were back home again for the New Year weekend when we attempted to get done at least a few of those things on the to-do list before returning to work. Not one of those items but Emma and I particularly enjoyed putting together and decorating the gingerbread train I’d received for Christmas – a much more successful effort than last year’s gingerbread house. On New Year’s Eve we had a bit of screaming from Emma when the first few sets of fireworks went off but, by some miracle, she slept through the half hour of fireworks that came around midnight. Although I was back at work on the Tuesday, it was an inset day for Emma and she had a very enjoyable afternoon with a few friends from school over (including starting to demolish the train!). That seemed to leave her ready to go back to school the following day.

After weeks of preparation, Christine and I finally got to endureenjoy Emma’s first school production: the obligatory nativity play. Christine went to the first showing with Duncan in tow (and the local nurseries also in attendance) and I had the pleasure of attending the adults only performance. The show was quite entertaining with each of the three classes split in to two halves and each half doing a dance routine. Emma was in the star group and I don’t think I’m being biased if I say she wasn’t the worst in her group! If nothing else it gave me a chance to give my new flash (Canon Speedlite 430EX II) a run for its money. Sadly no photos here as I don’t have any good ones with just Emma and I don’t want to suffer the wrath of any other parents. We have some amusing videos for posterity. Let’s just say, it isn’t always obvious that all of the children are doing the same routine!

Emma’s becoming a bit demanding when it comes to birthday cake decoration. For Mummy’s birthday, it was to be a castle. This proved to be an unmitigated disaster: there wasn’t really enough cake mixture and then the icing was too runny so I spent a good while spooning the icing off the plate and back over the top of the cake until it finally reached a consistency where it would stick. Thankfully there were no complaints from the children when it came to eating it!

I’m going to be upfront – I’m about to do some gross back-dating of posts. This post is actually being written in January 2012 as I’ve been hopeless at blogging in the last couple of months of 2011 – not helped by having to re-instate a months worth of posts from Google’s cache when an enforced AWS reboot seemed to send my image back in time. Don’t expect volumes of text though: just a few words and an excuse to link to some photos. The one’s about the running race that I organised at work as part of the inter-departmental games. It was three laps adding up to (approximately) 5km. There was a good turnout, helped by the . I got a bit of stick for being too far out in front although still took 19:15 (the course did have a few hills). It actually transpired that I wasn’t far enough ahead as, having applied the World Masters 5k grading (my rules), I actually ended up back in 4th place. One way to look at it is that I don’t need to get faster – I just need to get older and not get slower! Andy Piper did a nice write-up on eightbar.

I was pleased to find that my ankle, although still slightly swollen from the CompassSport Cup final, didn’t seem to be causing me any trouble and, not having done a huge amount of running, my legs actually felt reasonably fresh. My navigation wasn’t particularly clean though and I seemed to spend rather a lot of time about 50 metres adrift from the control site. It wasn’t a bad run though and would have put me in fourth place had it not been for the small fact that, on downloading, I appeared to be missing control number 4…

I try to use a backup card at larger events using Emit but there was apparently no mark in the appropriate place. Unfortunately, the use of a backup card was probably my downfall. Without one, I’m pretty good at checking the display on my card to ensure I have punched but I tend not to when I do have a backup card. As is often the case with Emit though, on this occasion there were several controls where I found it impossible to get my wrist oriented to get the card down flat. It would seem that control 4 was one of these and, although my GPS shows that I did at least visit the control (I found I couldn’t actually remember!), I stand disqualified.

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