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	<title>Davblog</title>
	
	<link>http://blog.dave.org.uk</link>
	<description>In which someone you've never heard of writes about things you have no interest in</description>
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		<title>Week Notes 6 &amp; 7</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/realdavblog/~3/Laz_0pB_pcI/week-notes-6-7.html</link>
		<comments>http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/02/week-notes-6-7.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 19 Feb 2012 11:22:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dave Cross</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[week notes]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.dave.org.uk/?p=2489</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Another fortnightly &#8220;week notes&#8221;. But on the plus side I&#8217;ve written four other blog posts in the last two weeks. Health I went back to the fracture clinic on Friday. They removed my cast and x-rayed my ankle. The consultant was happy with the way it all looked so she has discharged me. I&#8217;ve still [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="plus-one-wrap"><g:plusone size="small" href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/02/week-notes-6-7.html"></g:plusone></div><p>Another fortnightly &#8220;week notes&#8221;. But on the plus side I&#8217;ve written <a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/02/tracking-packages.html">four</a> <a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/02/atheism-humanism-and-secularism.html">other</a> <a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/02/the-inescapable-rise-of-secularism.html">blog</a> <a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/02/10-reasons-why-religion-is-like-masturbation.html">posts</a> in the last two weeks.</p>
<p><strong>Health</strong></p>
<p>I went back to the fracture clinic on Friday. They removed my cast and x-rayed my ankle. The consultant was happy with the way it all looked so she has discharged me. I&#8217;ve still got one crutch which I&#8217;m using as a walking stick occasionally, but I&#8217;m getting around pretty well. I have an appointment at the bone densitometry clinic in ten days time &#8211; but I assume that&#8217;s just standard procedure for anyone who breaks a bone.</p>
<p>The biggest surprise was getting on the scales for the first time in six weeks. Given that I&#8217;ve spent the intervening time doing almost no exercise and eating far too much, it was a pleasant surprise to find I&#8217;d lost six pounds. The body works in strange ways when it&#8217;s traumatised.</p>
<p><strong>Speaking and Training</strong></p>
<p>I updated the course material for my intermediate and advanced Perl courses and sent them off to be printed for <a href="http://learnperl.co.uk/">next week&#8217;s sessions</a>. Because of the leg it&#8217;ll be a more sedentary course than usual. Hope the attendees don&#8217;t mind.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve also had a email conversation about doing some more training in a couple of months time. Looks like the training side of the business is really picking up.</p>
<p><strong>Writing</strong></p>
<p>I completed an article to go in issue 157 of Linux Format. That won&#8217;t be out for a couple of months (issues 155 has only just hit the shelves). This was slightly unusual as it wasn&#8217;t about Perl. It was a simple introduction to database design and SQL. And there&#8217;s a sample application written in PHP. Developing that was <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/davorg/status/168667524668469248">quite an experience</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Technology</strong></p>
<p>My new laptop arrived. I was hoping to get a few blog posts out of the problems I had installing Linux on it. But everything just worked. If anyone is interested, here&#8217;s what I did.</p>
<ul>
<li>Downloaded and burned CDs of Partition Magic and Fedora 64 bit</li>
<li>Booted laptop using Partition Magic Live CD</li>
<li>Resized Windows partition to free up most of the disk (I gave Windows 100 Gb of the 750 Gb disk)</li>
<li>Booted laptop using Fedora Live CD</li>
<li>Installed Fedora from the Live CD (I created a custom partition layout with two 250 Gb partitions &#8211; one for / and one for /home)</li>
<li>Rebooted into Fedora &#8211; which all worked</li>
</ul>
<p>Actually, I&#8217;ve had one tiny issue. I like to use <a href="http://www.tweetdeck.com/">TweetDeck</a> for Twitter. And TweetDeck is an <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/air.html">Adobe Air</a> application. And Adobe have stopped supporting Air for Linux. And I&#8217;m not sure that they ever supported 64 bit Linux. So I&#8217;ve given up on having TweetDeck as a desktop application and have installed the application for Google Chrome.</p>
<p>For the first time ever, I&#8217;ve bought a laptop without a VGA  port. This is important as I&#8217;m often plugging my laptop into rather ancient projectors. I didn&#8217;t spot the lack of VGA port until the laptop arrived so I bought a Mini DisplayPort to VGA adaptor from Amazon. Bizarrely that&#8217;s not one of the extras that Dell try to sell you when you&#8217;re buying the laptop. I think they&#8217;ve missed a trick there to be honest.</p>
<p>Installing a 64 bit version of Fedora on my new laptop made me realise that I&#8217;d only installed a 32 bit version on my desktop machine. And I&#8217;d been quite disappointed with the performance of my desktop since I bought it eighteen months ago. As an experiment I installed a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension">PAE</a> version of the kernel and found that the system suddenly got a lot faster as it could access twice as much memory. The PAE kernal is only a halfway step though. At some point I need to reinstall the system completely using a 64 bit kernel.</p>
<p>But I suppose it&#8217;s good to be reminded that there are areas of IT where I&#8217;m just as clueless as the next person.</p>
<p><strong>General Business Stuff</strong></p>
<p>Bought some new business cards to hand out at this week&#8217;s training sessions. Bought them from <a href="http://www.moo.com/share/xp99nz">Moo</a>, of course (that&#8217;s a referral link &#8211; if you use it I get some kickback on you get 10% off your first order).</p>
<p><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/magnum_sm.png"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-2490" title="Magnum Solutions Ltd Logo" src="http://blog.dave.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/magnum_sm.png" alt="Magnum Solutions Ltd Logo" width="219" height="73" /></a>The cards feature the new Magnum Solutions logo that I&#8217;ve started to use. Need to redesign the <a href="http://mag-sol.com/">web site</a> to use it &#8211; but at the same time I&#8217;ll probably move the web site from <a href="http://movabletype.org/">Movable Type</a> to <a href="http://wordpress.org/">WordPress</a>, so that&#8217;s a project for another time.</p>
<p><strong>Films</strong></p>
<p>I&#8217;ve been rewatching old superhero films for no good reason &#8211; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catwoman_%28film%29">Catwoman</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incredible_Hulk_%28film%29">Incredible Hulk</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Rider_%28film%29">Ghost Rider</a>. The quality varies incredibly. The only films I&#8217;ve seen for the first time are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Disappeared_%28film%29">The Disappeared</a> (which I can remember nothing about), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Robot_%28film%29">I, Robot</a> (which I wish I could remember nothing about) and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wrestler_%282008_film%29">The Wrestler</a> (which was ok).</p>
<p><strong>TV</strong></p>
<p>Watched a lot of TV on DVD. We&#8217;ve now seen all of the first four seasons of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Men">Mad Men</a> for the second time and are very much looking to the new series next month. We&#8217;ve also got to the end of series three of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_%28TV_series%29">Lost</a>.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve also seen the first episode of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm_%28TV_series%29">Grimm</a>. It sounded like my kind of thing, but it turns out to be a bit obvious and repetitive. Might give it a couple more weeks to prove itself.</p>
<p>After series five of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skins_%28TV_series%29">Skins</a> I came very close to giving up on it. The third generation characters just didn&#8217;t interest me at all. But I&#8217;ve been watching series six and it seems that, slowly, I&#8217;m warming to them.</p>
<div id="crp_related"><h3>Related Posts:</h3><ul><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2006/05/new-toys-laptop.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">New Toys &#8211; Laptop</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/02/week-notes-4-5.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Week Notes 4 &#038; 5</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/01/week-notes-3.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Week Notes 3</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/01/week-notes-2.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Week Notes 2</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/01/week-notes.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Week Notes</a></li></ul></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/realdavblog/~4/Laz_0pB_pcI" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>10 Reasons Why Religion is Like Masturbation</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/realdavblog/~3/--YyS_YhSEE/10-reasons-why-religion-is-like-masturbation.html</link>
		<comments>http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/02/10-reasons-why-religion-is-like-masturbation.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:53:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dave Cross</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[religion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[masturbation]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.dave.org.uk/?p=2484</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Most people try it at some point in their life It&#8217;s generally harmless in small doses But you would be worried if a friend was constantly doing it Or constantly talking about it Or inviting you to do it with them It can bring on bouts of extreme ecstasy But they never last long No-one [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="plus-one-wrap"><g:plusone size="small" href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/02/10-reasons-why-religion-is-like-masturbation.html"></g:plusone></div><ol>
<li>Most people try it at some point in their life</li>
<li>It&#8217;s generally harmless in small doses</li>
<li>But you would be worried if a friend was constantly doing it</li>
<li>Or constantly talking about it</li>
<li>Or inviting you to do it with them</li>
<li>It can bring on bouts of extreme ecstasy</li>
<li>But they never last long</li>
<li>No-one should object to it taking place behind closed doors</li>
<li>Between consenting adults</li>
<li>But never in front of children</li>
</ol>
<div id="crp_related"><h3>Related Posts:</h3><ul><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2007/06/balham-communit.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Balham Community Church</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2009/11/please-dont-label-me.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Please Don&#8217;t Label Me</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2008/09/michael-reiss-steps-down.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Michael Reiss Steps Down</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2006/04/faith-schools.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Faith Schools</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2003/08/live-comedy.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Live Comedy</a></li></ul></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/realdavblog/~4/--YyS_YhSEE" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>The Inescapable Rise of Secularism</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/realdavblog/~3/phZarjQt77g/the-inescapable-rise-of-secularism.html</link>
		<comments>http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/02/the-inescapable-rise-of-secularism.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 12 Feb 2012 10:58:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dave Cross</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[religion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bideford]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dorries]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[secularism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.dave.org.uk/?p=2480</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve got rather sucked into the comments on Nadine Dorries&#8217; nonsense about the &#8220;attacks&#8221; on Christianity. Here&#8217;s the first comment that I left, which pretty much sums up my feelings. The Christian church&#8217;s outcry against Mr Justice Ouseley&#8217;s eminently sensible ruling can only be seen as the death cries of increasingly irrelevant group. Spout whatever [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="plus-one-wrap"><g:plusone size="small" href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/02/the-inescapable-rise-of-secularism.html"></g:plusone></div><p>I&#8217;ve got rather sucked into the comments on <a href="http://conservativehome.blogs.com/thecolumnists/2012/02/from-nadinedorriesmp-parliament-must-prevent-anti-religious-groups-from-stopping-prayers-before-coun.html">Nadine Dorries&#8217; nonsense</a> about the &#8220;attacks&#8221; on Christianity. Here&#8217;s the first comment that I left, which pretty much sums up my feelings.</p>
<blockquote><p>The Christian church&#8217;s outcry against Mr Justice Ouseley&#8217;s eminently sensible ruling can only be seen as the death cries of increasingly irrelevant group.</p>
<p>Spout whatever statistics you like about the percentages of people who call themselves Christian, but the inescapable fact is that the UK ceased to be a Christian nation by any meaningful measure about thirty years ago. The fact that we still have an established church is nothing but a historical accident. It&#8217;s inconceivable that this relationship between church and state will still be in place in twenty years time.</p>
<p>So, yes, maybe parliament will waste some time overturning this ruling. But it will only be a temporary setback. Secularism is on the rise. Religion has no place in the public square.</p></blockquote>
<div id="crp_related"><h3>Related Posts:</h3><ul><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/02/atheism-humanism-and-secularism.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Atheism, Humanism and Secularism</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2003/02/onward-christia-1.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Onward Christian Soldiers</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2007/06/balham-communit.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Balham Community Church</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2004/07/pagans.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Pagans</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2007/03/bigotry-united.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Bigotry United</a></li></ul></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/realdavblog/~4/phZarjQt77g" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Atheism, Humanism and Secularism</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/realdavblog/~3/hU8YEo5o-xw/atheism-humanism-and-secularism.html</link>
		<comments>http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/02/atheism-humanism-and-secularism.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:09:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dave Cross</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[religion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[atheism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[humanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[secularism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.dave.org.uk/?p=2477</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Yesterday&#8217;s news stories about prayer in Bideford council meetings and the Christian guesthouse owners have triggered the expected levels of outrage from the usual suspects. One thing that critics of this ruling often seem to (deliberately?) misunderstand is the differences between atheism, humanism and secularism. I thought it might be useful to post simple definitions [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="plus-one-wrap"><g:plusone size="small" href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/02/atheism-humanism-and-secularism.html"></g:plusone></div><p>Yesterday&#8217;s news stories about <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-16980025">prayer in Bideford council meetings</a> and the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-15811223">Christian guesthouse owners</a> have triggered the expected levels of outrage from <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-16995239">the</a> <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2099300/Councils-BANNED-saying-prayers-meetings-sparking-fury-Government-church-leaders.html">usual</a> <a href="http://conservativehome.blogs.com/thecolumnists/2012/02/from-nadinedorriesmp-parliament-must-prevent-anti-religious-groups-from-stopping-prayers-before-coun.html">suspects</a>.</p>
<p>One thing that critics of this ruling often seem to (deliberately?) misunderstand is the differences between atheism, humanism and secularism. I thought it might be useful to post simple definitions of the meanings of these three words.</p>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism"><strong>Atheism</strong></a> is simply the absence of belief in any kind of deity. Atheists just don&#8217;t belief in your god. In fact they don&#8217;t believe in any gods. They don&#8217;t believe in your god for pretty much the same reasons they you don&#8217;t believe in other people&#8217;s gods. Atheists don&#8217;t hate god. It would be incredibly silly to hate something that you don&#8217;t believe if. For obvious reasons there is are very few religious people who would call themselves atheists.</p>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism"><strong>Humanism</strong></a> is a philosophical approach which assumes that the best way to build a system of morals and ethics is to approach the problems logically and rationally and with humanity. Humanists don&#8217;t want to take moral instruction from a supernatural entity, but rather assume that moral and ethical decisions should be taken on the basis of the effects that they will have on human beings. Despite <a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2011/10/dorries-on-humanism.html">what some people would have you believe</a>, this does not lead to them murdering babies. Although there is nothing intrinsically preventing religious people from being humanists, many religious people prefer to take moral and ethical stances prescribed by their religion rather than thinking things through for themselves.</p>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularism"><strong>Secularism</strong></a> is the belief that religion has no place in public affairs and that there should be complete separation between church and state. This means that the USA is, by definition, a secular country (it&#8217;s in their constitution) whereas the UK, which is by any measure a less religious country than the USA still has an established church and therefore (by definition, at least) is not a secular country. Whilst many religious people can see no problem with their religion being tightly integrated with the state, they can often recognise the problems when someone else&#8217;s religion is in control. For this reason many religious people (although by no means all of them) are keen supporters of secularism.</p>
<p>The three concepts are completely separate, although (of course) many people subscribe to all three beliefs. In the UK we have separate organisations to promote each of these ideas &#8211; <a href="http://www.atheismuk.com/">Atheism UK</a>, the <a href="http://www.humanism.org.uk">British Humanist Association</a> and the <a href="http://www.secularism.org.uk/">National Secular Society</a>. You can join any combination of the three and members of each of these organisations should not be assumed to hold the beliefs of the other two.</p>
<p>In particular, the campaign that led to the Bideford council ruling was run by the National Secular Society. Therefore it cannot be seen as an attack on religion in any way. If it is an attack on anything, it is an attack on the influence that one particular religion (actually one particular church within that religion) has (or, rather, had) over the governance of that local council.</p>
<p>No-one has been told that they can&#8217;t pray. They haven&#8217;t even been told that they can&#8217;t pray before their council meetings. They have been told that they can&#8217;t pray on the meeting&#8217;s agenda. Effectively, they can&#8217;t pray on taxpayers&#8217; money. And I&#8217;m astonished that people are seeing this as an attack on their. faith.</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t believe the stories that church leaders and the tabloid press are telling you. The full text of Mr Justice Ouseley&#8217;s ruling is <a href="http://www.secularism.org.uk/uploads/bideford-judgment-final.pdf">available online</a>. Read that and see exactly what he said.</p>
<p>Even if you can&#8217;t be an atheist, or you&#8217;re doubtful about humanism, please accept that secularism makes sense.</p>
<div id="crp_related"><h3>Related Posts:</h3><ul><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/02/the-inescapable-rise-of-secularism.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">The Inescapable Rise of Secularism</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2007/10/catholic-call-t.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Catholic Call to Boycott &#8220;Golden Compass&#8221;</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2011/10/dorries-on-humanism.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Dorries on Humanism</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2009/11/please-dont-label-me.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Please Don&#8217;t Label Me</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2007/02/the-guardian-on.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">The Guardian on Faith</a></li></ul></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/realdavblog/~4/hU8YEo5o-xw" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>Tracking Packages</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/realdavblog/~3/vpvAF6tNup4/tracking-packages.html</link>
		<comments>http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/02/tracking-packages.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 10 Feb 2012 20:13:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dave Cross</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[tech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[package]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tracking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ups]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.dave.org.uk/?p=2474</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Last week I ordered a new laptop. Yesterday, Dell&#8217;s web site told me that it had shipped. And, an hour or so later, they gave me a link to track the delivery on the UPS web site. Now that link is fun of course. But refreshing the page dozens of times a day gets a [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="plus-one-wrap"><g:plusone size="small" href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/02/tracking-packages.html"></g:plusone></div><p>Last week I ordered a <a href="http://www.dell.com/uk/p/xps-l412z/pd">new laptop</a>. Yesterday, Dell&#8217;s web site told me that it had shipped. And, an hour or so later, they gave me <a href="http://wwwapps.ups.com/etracking/tracking.cgi?tracknums_displayed=5&amp;TypeOfInquiryNumber=T&amp;loc=en_gb&amp;HTMLVersion=4.0&amp;InquiryNumber1=1ZV5E8040453670240&amp;track=Track">a link to track the delivery</a> on the UPS web site.</p>
<p>Now that link is fun of course. But refreshing the page dozens of times a day gets a bit boring. So I started to look for alternatives. Firstly, UPS have a service that sounds like it emails you whenever the status changes. So I set that up. I got an initial email at that point, but nothing more &#8211; even as the status changed a couple of times. Reading the description more closely, it seems it only sends an email a) when there&#8217;s a delay, b) when the package is delivered and c) when explicitly requested on the web site. So that&#8217;s no good.</p>
<p>Of course, what I really wanted was a web feed. Something that I could subscribe to in Google Reader that would always show me the latest status. Being a geek I started to think about a writing a program that would grab the information from the web site periodically and turn it into a web feed. But I stopped myself before I started writing any code. &#8220;Surely,&#8221; I thought to myself, &#8220;I can&#8217;t be the first person to want this. Something like this must already exist.&#8221;</p>
<p>I was right, of course. A quick Google brought me to <a href="http://boxoh.com">Boxoh</a>. Give them a tracking number (and it&#8217;s not just UPS &#8211; they also understand FedEx, DHL and USPS) and they will not only give you the web feed that I wanted, but also a Google map showing the progress of your package. How cool is that?</p>
<p>There appears to be no way to embed the map on another web site, but that&#8217;s the only fault I can find with the site.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s the <a href="http://boxoh.com/?t=1ZV5E8040453670240">progress that my laptop is making</a>. It started in Shanghai, before travelling to Incheon in South Korea and Almaty in Kazakhstan from where it flew to Warsaw, which is where it currently is. On Monday it&#8217;s due to arrive in Balham.</p>
<p>I love the fact that I can track it so easily. And I&#8217;m more than a little jealous of its travels.</p>
<div id="crp_related"><h3>Related Posts:</h3><ul><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2005/08/dell-customer-s.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Dell Customer Service</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2005/10/how-not-to-publ.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">How Not To Publish RSS</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2005/11/spying-on-you.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Spying on You</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2007/02/when-rss-goes-b.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">When RSS Goes Bad</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2008/03/redesigning.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Redesigning</a></li></ul></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/realdavblog/~4/vpvAF6tNup4" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Week Notes 4 &amp; 5</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/realdavblog/~3/1SqPbEllHjI/week-notes-4-5.html</link>
		<comments>http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/02/week-notes-4-5.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 05 Feb 2012 08:40:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dave Cross</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[week notes]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.dave.org.uk/?p=2470</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[One of the ideas behind writing these week notes was that it would force me to write at least one post a week. That doesn&#8217;t seem to have worked. So here&#8217;s a combined post for the last two weeks. Health It&#8217;s four weeks today since I broke my leg. The leg itself feels fine; it&#8217;s [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="plus-one-wrap"><g:plusone size="small" href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/02/week-notes-4-5.html"></g:plusone></div><p>One of the ideas behind writing these week notes was that it would force me to write at least one post a week. That doesn&#8217;t seem to have worked. So here&#8217;s a combined post for the last two weeks.</p>
<p><strong>Health</strong></p>
<p>It&#8217;s four weeks today since I broke my leg. The leg itself feels fine; it&#8217;s just the cast that&#8217;s bloody inconvenient. I get around the house pretty well, but I don&#8217;t get out much. Last weekend we took a taxi to <a href="http://www.blahvegetarian.com/">Blah Blah Blah</a> in Goldhawk Road to celebrate various birthdays. Other than a couple of trips to the hospital that was the first time I&#8217;d been out since it happened.</p>
<p>I was considering hobbling down to the pub quiz tonight. But the snow has probably put paid to that idea.</p>
<p><strong>Speaking and Training</strong></p>
<p>I was supposed to be in Romania at the end of last week, but we&#8217;ll be rescheduling that trip for later in the year.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve been spending some time preparing for the <a href="http://learnperl.co.uk/">public Perl courses</a> I&#8217;m running at the end of the month. Still a few places left if you&#8217;re interested.</p>
<p><strong>Writing</strong></p>
<p>I didn&#8217;t write anything new (not even a blog post) but the final part of my three-part tutorial on Modern Perl was published in issue 155 of <a href="http://linuxformat.com/">Linux Format</a> which went on sale this week. I already have an agreement to write another series for them later in the year.</p>
<p><strong>General Business Stuff</strong></p>
<p>I finished moving all of my domains over to a shiny new server. And then I spent a week or so fixing all of the niggling little problems that I found. There still seems to be <a href="http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/25351/bug-in-mailman-version-2-1-12">one outstanding problem</a> with the Mailman configuration.</p>
<p>I bought a new laptop. It&#8217;s a <a href="http://www.dell.com/uk/p/xps-l412Z/pd?c=uk&amp;stk=xps%2014z">Dell XPS 14z</a>. I say bought &#8211; actually I&#8217;ve ordered and it&#8217;ll be delivered in the next ten days.</p>
<p>Buying it was a bit of a nightmare. I ordered it on Wednesday using the HSBC credit card that I got when I moved my company bank account. But unfortunately the credit limit wasn&#8217;t high enough (I&#8217;d forgotten about a few other things I&#8217;d put on t he card) and the transaction was declined.</p>
<p>But the transaction wasn&#8217;t declined as I was placing the order. No, it was declined at some point in the following twelve hours. So Dell cancelled my order. They didn&#8217;t contact me to find out if I wanted to try another credit card &#8211; they just cancelled the order. They didn&#8217;t even tell me that they had cancelled the order. I found out as I logged on to my account and checked the order status on Thursday morning.</p>
<p>I spoke to them and gave them the details of another credit card. But apparently they couldn&#8217;t just reactivate my existing order, they had to start again from scratch. And for some reason Dell&#8217;s web site seems to change from day to day so it took them 24 hours to be able to replicate my order at the same price. But finally on Friday morning I got an email confirming that the order had been placed. For £4 cheaper than the original order.</p>
<p>I can&#8217;t help thinking that Dell&#8217;s systems are a little overcomplicated.</p>
<p><strong>Films</strong></p>
<p>Watched a few films for the first time. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candyman_%28film%29">Candyman</a> was terrible. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/127_Hours">127 Hours</a> was grim, but gripping. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troll_Hunter">The Troll Hunter</a> was a lot of fun.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve been investigating <a href="http://netflix.co.uk/">Netflix UK</a> and <a href="http://lovefilm.com/instant">LoveFilm Instant</a>. I think that LoveFilm have a slight edge as their application is already installed on my Bluray player. For Netflix I&#8217;d need to use my Wii. I need to see if I can persuade LoveFilm to give me a free trial &#8211; as a returning member that doesn&#8217;t seem to be their default behaviour.</p>
<div id="crp_related"><h3>Related Posts:</h3><ul><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/01/week-notes-3.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Week Notes 3</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/01/week-notes.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Week Notes</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/01/week-notes-2.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Week Notes 2</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/02/week-notes-6-7.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Week Notes 6 &#038; 7</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2005/07/credit-card-the.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Credit Card Theft</a></li></ul></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/realdavblog/~4/1SqPbEllHjI" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Week Notes 3</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/realdavblog/~3/TfgOyDJZH98/week-notes-3.html</link>
		<comments>http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/01/week-notes-3.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 22 Jan 2012 08:49:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dave Cross</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[week notes]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.dave.org.uk/?p=2459</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Finally I actually managed to write a blog post that wasn&#8217;t week notes. That may well be my biggest achievement of the week. Health Still hobbling around in a cast and on crutches. Getting a bit better at it, but my upper body strength is still almost non-existent so I&#8217;m not going very far. I [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="plus-one-wrap"><g:plusone size="small" href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/01/week-notes-3.html"></g:plusone></div><p>Finally I actually managed to write a <a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/01/nadine-dorries-just-say-no.html">blog post</a> that wasn&#8217;t week notes. That may well be my biggest achievement of the week.</p>
<p><strong>Health</strong></p>
<p>Still hobbling around in a cast and on crutches. Getting a bit better at it, but my upper body strength is still almost non-existent so I&#8217;m not going very far.</p>
<p>I went back to the hospital on Friday. On my previous visit it took about three hours. This time I did pretty much the same things and it took about half an hour. The doctor says everything seems to be going ok. They don&#8217;t want to see me for another four weeks. At that point they hope to remove the cast and replace it with a plastic boot.</p>
<p><strong>Speaking and Training</strong></p>
<p>Not much going on here. Still slowly building up to the courses I&#8217;ll be running at the end of February &#8211; which it now looks like I&#8217;ll be running with a plastic boot on, so there will probably be a fair bit of sitting down involved.</p>
<p>A couple of enquiries came in for training sessions later in the year. Looks like it could be a good year for my training business.</p>
<p><strong>General Business Stuff</strong></p>
<p>I host most of my domains on servers rented from <a href="http://1and1.co.uk/">1 and 1</a>. They&#8217;re not the best option by some distance, but they&#8217;re really cheap. At the end of last year I noticed that they had servers available running <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CentOS">Centos</a> 6. I rented a new server and have been slowly moving my domains over. This is a long and rather dull process. But I expect to be finished by next weekend.</p>
<p><strong>Gigs</strong></p>
<p>Anther gig that I couldn&#8217;t get to this week. This time it was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Sheeran">Ed Sheeran</a> at the Brixton Academy. Put the ticket on <a href="http://gumtree.com/">Gumtree</a> and within hours I had a huge number of replies. Guess I set the price too low.</p>
<p><strong>TV Highlights</strong></p>
<p>Sherlock, of course. For the record, here&#8217;s my theory.</p>
<p>Moriarty had a Sherlock mask that he used when he kidnapped the children (which is why the young girl screamed when she saw Sherlock). Sherlock jumped into the back of the lorry that we saw, but at the same time threw off Moriarty&#8217;s body with the mask on. The cyclist that bumped into Watson also gave him a quick squirt of the H.O.U.N.D. gas so he saw what he feared most. Molly arranged to have the body collected and misindentified as Sherlock.</p>
<p>Of course, this is just a synthesis of many theories that have been going round on the web this week. And Stephen Moffat says there&#8217;s <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2012/jan/20/steven-moffat-sherlock-doctor-who">a clue that no-one has spotted</a>.</p>
<p>Finished series two of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_%28TV_series%29">Lost</a> on DVD and made a start on series three. And we&#8217;ve started to watch <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Men">Mad Men</a> against from the start. Hope to watched it all before series five starts in April.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Hmm&#8230; doesn&#8217;t sound like I&#8217;ve achieved that much this week. But that&#8217;s probably an accurate reflection of how I feel.</p>
<div id="crp_related"><h3>Related Posts:</h3><ul><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/01/week-notes-2.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Week Notes 2</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/02/week-notes-4-5.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Week Notes 4 &#038; 5</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/01/week-notes.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Week Notes</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/02/week-notes-6-7.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Week Notes 6 &#038; 7</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2008/03/the-return-of-doctor-who.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">The Return of Doctor Who</a></li></ul></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/realdavblog/~4/TfgOyDJZH98" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Nadine Dorries: Just Say No</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/realdavblog/~3/n9zibOPngko/nadine-dorries-just-say-no.html</link>
		<comments>http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/01/nadine-dorries-just-say-no.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:32:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dave Cross</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dorries]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[twitter]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.dave.org.uk/?p=2448</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Today was the day that parliament had a rather long list of private members bills to debate. Originally there were sixty-four on the list. As this informative post from Kerry McCarthy tells us, they&#8217;d normally expect to get through about three of them. The MPs sponsoring the rest of the bills were pretty much wasting [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="plus-one-wrap"><g:plusone size="small" href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/01/nadine-dorries-just-say-no.html"></g:plusone></div><p>Today was the day that parliament had a rather long list of private members bills to debate. Originally there were sixty-four on the list. As this <a href="http://kerrymccarthy.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/the-rough-guide-to-this-friday-in-parliament/">informative post</a> from Kerry McCarthy tells us, they&#8217;d normally expect to get through about three of them. The MPs sponsoring the rest of the bills were pretty much wasting their time.</p>
<p>Number eight on the original list was Nadine Dorries bill to teach girls between 13 and 16 how to say no to sex. The Guardian&#8217;s headline was <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/jan/20/mps-debate-sexual-abstinence-bill">MPs to debate sexual abstinence lessons bill</a>, which was slightly disingenuous as the chance of the debate reaching that far down the list was tiny.</p>
<p>But this morning, when the <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmagenda/ob120120.htm">order of business</a> for today in parliament was published Dorries bill was missing from the list. Everyone assumed that Dorries was responsible for this removal. As a spokeswoman for the Commons information office <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/jan/20/nadine-dorries-sexual-abstinence-bill-withdrawn">told the Guardian</a> &#8220;No one would be able to remove a private members&#8217; bill without the permission of a member&#8221;. The assumption seemed to be that Dorries had realised the futility of being so far down the list and had removed the bill. She wouldn&#8217;t have been the only one &#8211; the published list only contains forty-nine of the expected sixty-four bills.</p>
<p>At lunchtime, things got even more interesting. A new Twitter account called <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/NadineDorriesMP">@NadineDorriesMP</a> appeared with <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/NadineDorriesMP/status/160342780336545793">this tweet</a> (in reply to a joke by John Prescott):</p>
<blockquote><p><a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/johnprescott" rel="nofollow" data-screen-name="johnprescott">@<strong>johnprescott</strong></a> My bill has not &#8216;jumped off at Edge Hill&#8217; if you care to read the order paper, it&#8217;s number eight on the list!!</p></blockquote>
<p>Something about this timeline didn&#8217;t seem right to me. That tweet was posted at 12:47, which is almost two hours since I <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/davorg/status/160318312067252224">first saw</a> the order of business without her bill. I assume the order of business was published some time earlier. The first hint I had that the bill had been withdrawn was <a href="http://kerrymccarthy.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/today-in-parliament-5/">this blog post</a> by Kerry McCarthy which was published just after 10am.</p>
<p>On the basis that the real Nadine Dorries would have known by 12:47 that her bill was not on the order paper, I called the new Twitter account <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/davorg/status/160349457123254272">as a fake</a>. But it seems I was wrong. People like Iain Dale confirmed that it <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/IainDale/status/160347271735681024">really was her</a> (and, yes, this is one of the few things I&#8217;d trust Iain Dale on).</p>
<p>All of which leaves us with a bit of a mystery. Either Dorries withdrew her bill or she didn&#8217;t. If she did then the first tweet on her new Twitter account is a complete lie. If she didn&#8217;t then we need to ask who did withdraw her bill &#8211; given that it&#8217;s only her who is supposed to be able to do that.</p>
<p>And even if someone else managed to withdraw her bill without her knowledge, something still doesn&#8217;t ring true. If she was expecting to debate her bill (no matter how tiny the chance) then surely she would have been hanging around in parliament all morning and I can&#8217;t believe that she didn&#8217;t see the order paper and notice her bill was missing. Or that one of her friends saw that it was missing and asked her what happened.</p>
<p>All in all I find it incredible that she could have got to 12:47 without knowing that her bill was not on the list. So how do you explain that tweet?</p>
<p>This is, I think, the third time that Dorries has joined Twitter. And with her first tweet she has already started people thinking that this time is going to be no different to the previous occasions. She will be ineptly trying to use it to promote her strange view of the world. And she will quickly make herself a laughing stock once more.</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> At 16:37 this afternoon, <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/NadineDorriesMP">@NadineDorriesMP</a> tweeted the <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/NadineDorriesMP/status/160400656581140480">following</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Just to make it absolutely clear and leave no doubt whatsoever, my Bill was NOT withdrawn</p></blockquote>
<p>Curiouser and curiouser. So, now we are left with two questions. 1/ Why wasn&#8217;t Dorries&#8217; bill on the order paper? And 2/ At what point did she realise it wasn&#8217;t on the order paper?</p>
<p><strong>Update 2:</strong> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/Welshracer">Welshracer</a> may have got to the heart of the matter <a href="http://twitter.com/Welshracer/statuses/160401551989555201">here</a>. He points out what it says on the official parliamentary web page for <a href="http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2010-11/sexeducationrequiredcontent.html">Dorries&#8217; bill</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>The Bill was not printed and so was not moved for debate on 20 January 2012.</p></blockquote>
<p>What do we make of this? One interpretation would be that Dorries didn&#8217;t withdraw the bill for debate, but that someone in her office forgot to get the bill printed so that it could be included in the debate.</p>
<p>But even in those circumstances you&#8217;d think that she&#8217;d get a phone call from the people who were planning the day&#8217;s business telling her what had (or hadn&#8217;t) happened. I still can&#8217;t believe that she didn&#8217;t know the bill wasn&#8217;t on the order paper when she sent her first tweet at quarter to one.</p>
<p><strong>Update 3:</strong> Couple more pieces of information came in overnight.</p>
<p>Firstly, it seems that the new @NadineDorriesMP Twitter account was <a href="http://tweet.grader.com/go/tweetingsince/user/NadineDorriesMP">set up two weeks ago</a>. It seems she resisted using it until goaded into it by John Prescott yesterday.</p>
<p>Secondly, the Independent managed to <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/diary/the-diary-dorries-doesnt-pull-out-at-the-last-moment-6292674.html">speak to Dorries</a> about this confusion. She says:</p>
<blockquote><p>The Bill is still live, but there was more chance of being struck by a meteor than getting it debated, so we told the Commons office not to bother printing a hard copy. What I didn&#8217;t realise was that if you don&#8217;t order it to be printed, it automatically comes off the agenda.</p>
<p>Of course I wouldn&#8217;t withdraw it &#8230; a lot of people had paid train fares to come and protest. It would have been churlish.</p></blockquote>
<p>So we finally have the truth (or, at least, Dorries&#8217; version of it). She knew it wouldn&#8217;t be debated so she decided not to have the bill printed. She didn&#8217;t know that would automatically remove it from the order paper. She didn&#8217;t withdraw the bill out of respect for the people who were coming to protest against it.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s also not clear to me in what sense the bill is still live. This was the final opportunity to debate private members bills before the end of this parliamentary session. Any unfinished business from this parliamentary session doesn&#8217;t get passed on to the next one, so anything that wasn&#8217;t approved is, as far as I can see, effectively dead.</p>
<p>You couldn&#8217;t make this up!</p>
<div id="crp_related"><h3>Related Posts:</h3><ul><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2011/05/social-networking-101.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Social Networking 101</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2010/11/conversations-with-cateymaxx.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Conversations with CateyMaxx</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2008/05/rationalism-4-superstition-0.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Rationalism 4 &#8211; Superstition 0</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2005/08/bill-hicks.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Bill Hicks</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2011/05/free-web-advice-virginmedia.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Free Web Advice: VirginMedia</a></li></ul></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/realdavblog/~4/n9zibOPngko" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Week Notes 2</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/realdavblog/~3/QSFygFaavqo/week-notes-2.html</link>
		<comments>http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/01/week-notes-2.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 15 Jan 2012 11:32:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dave Cross</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[week notes]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.dave.org.uk/?p=2438</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When I said I was going to experiment with week notes on this blog, I didn&#8217;t intend that the blog would only consist of week notes. But as we&#8217;ll see below, other things have been taking my attention this week and I haven&#8217;t felt much like blogging. Hopefully normal service will resume very soon. Health [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="plus-one-wrap"><g:plusone size="small" href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/01/week-notes-2.html"></g:plusone></div><p>When I said I was going to experiment with week notes on this blog, I didn&#8217;t intend that the blog would only consist of week notes. But as we&#8217;ll see below, other things have been taking my attention this week and I haven&#8217;t felt much like blogging. Hopefully normal service will resume very soon.</p>
<p><strong>Health</strong></p>
<p>This is the big one. A few hours after posting my last week notes I slipped down a small flight of stairs in my house and fell badly. Something went ping in my ankle and it hurt like hell. I shuffled onto my bed where I lay for twenty minutes or so before deciding it wasn&#8217;t getting any better and I should probably take myself to A&amp;E.</p>
<p>Four or five hours later I left A&amp;E with a diagnosis of a spiral fracture in my fibula, a temporary cast, crutches and an appointment to go to the fracture clinic on Friday.</p>
<p>I spent the week hobbling about the house on crutches and went back to the hospital on Friday. They replaced the temporary cast with a more permanent one in sexy black fibreglass which I&#8217;ll be sporting for the next five weeks or so. They also took another x-ray and confirmed that although there&#8217;s definitely a fracture, everything is still in the right place so there&#8217;s no need for surgery, pins of any of that nonsense.</p>
<p>Going back to see them again next Friday.</p>
<p><strong>Speaking and Training</strong></p>
<p>The downside of having your leg in a cast is the doctors don&#8217;t like you flying &#8211; the pressure in the cabin can lead to blood clots. So I&#8217;ve had to postpone the trip to Romania. It hasn&#8217;t been rescheduled yet, but I hope to get there later in the year.</p>
<p>Counting the weeks, it looks like the cast will be coming off just before my other currently scheduled classes &#8211; the <a href="http://learnperl.co.uk/">public courses</a> for <a href="http://www.flossuk.org/">FlossUK</a> and <a href="http://oreilly.com/">O&#8217;Reilly</a> at the end of February. If I don&#8217;t heal on schedule then I expect I&#8217;ll be giving the classes sitting down.</p>
<p>Incidentally, those lovely people at O&#8217;Reilly have arranged to give away <a href="http://www.josetteorama.com/training/from-perl-dabber-to-perl-expert-the-path-to-expertise/">one free ticket</a> to each of the two courses. Full details on how to enter are in an advert in the new issue of <a href="http://linuxformat.com/">Linux Format</a>. There are also runners-up prizes of copies of the <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596004923/davblog-21">new camel book</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Writing</strong></p>
<p>Having spent the week sitting around at home, you&#8217;d think I would have had time to do plenty of writing. But, to be honest, I just haven&#8217;t been in the mood. The most I can report here is that I&#8217;ve got an agreement write four more articles for Linux Format over the next few months. I hope to finish the first of these (which isn&#8217;t about Perl!) today.</p>
<p><strong>Reading</strong></p>
<p>I have at least managed <a href="http://books.dave.org.uk/">some reading</a>. I&#8217;ve picked up Bruce Tate&#8217;s <a href="http://amazon.co.uk/dp/193435659X/davblog-21">Seven Languages in Seven Weeks</a> which I started reading in August but never quite got to the end of. And I&#8217;ve started reading <a href="http://amazon.co.uk/dp/B0047T7FBW/davblog-21">Build Your Own Wicked WordPress Themes</a> because I can see myself getting deeper and deeper into WordPress this year.</p>
<p><strong>Gigs</strong></p>
<p>I had a ticket to see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ani_DiFranco">Ani DiFranco</a> at the Union Chapel on Tuesday. But my limited mobility mean that I couldn&#8217;t get there. I sold my ticket to the very lovely (and talented) <a href="https://twitter.com/kallavelle">Kal Lavelle</a>. Luckily there are lots of videos of the gig on YouTube so I&#8217;ve been able to at least see some of the show.</p>
<p><strong>Film</strong></p>
<p>I had a ticket to see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Lady_%28film%29">The Iron Lady</a> last Sunday afternoon, but I was in A&amp;E at the time. Later in the week I finally got to see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Bruges">In Bruges</a>, which I&#8217;ve been planning to watch for ages. Oh, and one morning when I was sitting on the sofa feeling a bit sorry for myself I watched <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Candles">Sixteen Candles</a>. Can&#8217;t beat a bit of Molly Ringwald to cheer youself up.</p>
<p><strong>TV</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_%28TV_series%29">Sherlock</a> was another ninety minutes of delight, of course. And I was pleased to see that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Wife_%28TV_series%29">The Good Wife</a> returned to More 4. VirginMedia have half of the fourth series of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Bang_Theory">Big Bang Theory</a> on their video on demand service, so I&#8217;ve worked through that and am waiting for them to add the rest. We&#8217;re working our way through a DVD boxset of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_%28TV_series%29">Lost</a> &#8211; we&#8217;re currently close to the end of series two.</p>
<p>But the big surprise has been <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Horror_Story">American Horror Story</a>. We&#8217;ve watched all of the first series. Sure, it&#8217;s a clichéd in places, but part of the fun is spotting all the references to horror films. We love it.</p>
<div id="crp_related"><h3>Related Posts:</h3><ul><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/01/week-notes-3.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Week Notes 3</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/01/week-notes.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Week Notes</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/02/week-notes-4-5.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Week Notes 4 &#038; 5</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/02/week-notes-6-7.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Week Notes 6 &#038; 7</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2008/03/arthur-c-clarke.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Arthur C Clarke</a></li></ul></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/realdavblog/~4/QSFygFaavqo" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Week Notes</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/realdavblog/~3/PYvKq8_vgo8/week-notes.html</link>
		<comments>http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/01/week-notes.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 08 Jan 2012 08:29:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dave Cross</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[week notes]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.dave.org.uk/?p=2434</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A new experiment on the blog this year. I&#8217;m planning to write a weekly report on what I&#8217;ve been doing. No idea how useful or interesting it will be or how long I&#8217;ll feel like keeping it going. So here&#8217;s what I did this week. Speaking and Training Didn&#8217;t give any talks this week, but [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="plus-one-wrap"><g:plusone size="small" href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/01/week-notes.html"></g:plusone></div><p>A new experiment on the blog this year. I&#8217;m planning to write a weekly report on what I&#8217;ve been doing. No idea how useful or interesting it will be or how long I&#8217;ll feel like keeping it going. So here&#8217;s what I did this week.</p>
<p><strong>Speaking and Training</strong></p>
<p>Didn&#8217;t give any talks this week, but there are a couple of things in the pipeline. I&#8217;m running four days of public Perl training courses in London at the end of next month and I&#8217;m starting to get into the marketing for that. O&#8217;Reilly have <a href="http://www.josetteorama.com/training/from-perl-dabber-to-perl-expert-the-path-to-expertise/">offered two free places</a> on these courses as prizes for a competition that has been advertised in Linux Format.</p>
<p>As part of my marketing campaign I&#8217;ve been working on a <a href="http://learnperl.co.uk/">new web site</a> about my training business. Currently I&#8217;m working on the content. The look will come later.</p>
<p>Probably the most exciting thing to happen in this area is that I&#8217;ve been invited to give a talk about Perl in Transylvania. I&#8217;ve been doing some work with some Romanian Perl programmers and they&#8217;ve asked me to go over and talk to their new Perl Mongers group in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluj-Napoca">Cluj</a>. I&#8217;m going over for a couple of days at the start of February.</p>
<p><strong>Programming</strong></p>
<p>Over the last few months, Linux Format have been publishing a series of articles I&#8217;ve written about Modern Perl. The third and final article in the series will be published next month. The articles are about writing a web application to track a reading list. This was to replace a bodged together system or Perl programs that I&#8217;ve been using to track my reading for the last few years. This week I finally put the replacement system live at <a href="http://books.dave.org.uk/">books.dave.org.uk</a>. If you&#8217;re interested, <a href="http://github.com/davorg/reading">the code is on GitHub</a>. At some point I should probably write an article about it on my <a href="http://perlhacks.com/">Perl blog</a>.</p>
<p><strong>General Business Stuff</strong></p>
<p>About a month ago I realised that I was tired of dealing with Nat West for my business banking. It seemed that they made everything far more complex than it needed to be. I asked for advice on Twitter and most people seemed to recommend using HSBC instead. So I applied for an account with them through their web site.</p>
<p>Well, it wasn&#8217;t anywhere near as easy as it could have been, but last Saturday I finally opened my new business account. With a new bank account and a <a href="http://myaccountantfriend.com/">new accountant</a> a few months ago it really feels like the business has started a new era.</p>
<p>People ask why I carried on with the HSBC application when it was all so painful. That&#8217;s because I still think they&#8217;re more efficient than Nat West were. It crystallised for me when I was thinking about the computer systems that they use. In recent months I&#8217;ve spent far too much time in Nat West branches watching the screen as an assistant tries to sort out a problem. Their internal systems are all running on what seems to be <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CICS">CICS-based</a> software from the 1980s. When I was watching the chap opening my account in HSBC last weekend it looked like they were running an old version of Windows from the 1990s.</p>
<p>So HSBC&#8217;s software seems to be about a decade more up to date than Nat West&#8217;s. But still twenty years behind the rest of the world. Surely banking doesn&#8217;t need to be so tortuous?</p>
<p><strong>House Stuff</strong></p>
<p>I spent a lot of last week finishing a decluttering exercise that I started after Christmas. I&#8217;ve shredded a huge mountain of old paperwork and for the first time ever I have every piece of paper in my study filed in the right place.</p>
<p>Our back garden backs onto a railway embankment and there are a lot of trees there. So we get a lot of leaves covering the back garden. Yesterday I went out and swept up several months worth of fallen leaves. One of the tree has nasty small leaves which get through the grills over drains and block them. So I lifted a lot of drain covers and pulled out a lot of muddy leaves. It wasn&#8217;t fun.</p>
<p><strong>TV Highlights</strong></p>
<p>I&#8217;ve been watching a lot of TV. The new series of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_%28TV_series%29">Sherlock</a> was an obvious highlight. But I&#8217;m also enjoying the Sky version of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Island_%282012_TV_miniseries%29">Treasure Island</a> and the BBC&#8217;s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Enemies_%28TV_series%29">Public Enemies</a>. One thing I didn&#8217;t enjoy was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_Law_%28TV_series%29">Eternal Law</a>. Despite being written by the same people as Life on Mars, the premise of lawyer angels proved to be just as silly as it sounds.</p>
<p><strong>Health</strong></p>
<p>The scales just told me that I&#8217;m almost three pounds lighter than I was a week ago.</p>
<div id="crp_related"><h3>Related Posts:</h3><ul><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/01/week-notes-2.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Week Notes 2</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/02/week-notes-4-5.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Week Notes 4 &#038; 5</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/01/week-notes-3.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Week Notes 3</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2012/02/week-notes-6-7.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Week Notes 6 &#038; 7</a></li><li><a href="http://blog.dave.org.uk/2007/02/perl-programmer.html" rel="bookmark" class="crp_title">Perl Programmers in London</a></li></ul></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/realdavblog/~4/PYvKq8_vgo8" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
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