Obviously

Today, being Hallowe'en is obviously one of the busiest days of the year for the Silver Vixen and her coven. Appropriately they have had an Open Day at the local centre - though they had the advantage they didn't have to do anything out of the ordinary in terms of dressing up. Their normal wear for these occasions was more than adequate.

Money

The Gorse Fox used to manage his personal finances with Quicken... until the Y2K changes and their eventaul withdrawal for UK finances. He then converted to MS Money which he found counter intuitive (little joke there for the cognoscenti) and at times obtuse. Now MS have said they are withdrawing support from 2011 - and GF is having major difficulties moving his existing data to his new computer.

In fact it is these migration difficulties that are the primary frustration that makes him think that this could well be the time to convert to a new personal finance manager suite. Well it would if there was an obvious alternative! GF has spent the last few hours looking at various programs but does not feel an overwhelming gravitational pull to any of them. He has now spent 15 minutes on the whiteboard and sketched out a data model and set of functional requirements and is trying to resist the urge to write one from scratch... or even to create a spreadsheet solution.

Tragedy?

The Gorse Fox notices the headline "Coyotes Kill Canadian Folk Singer".

Whilst not underestimating the sorrow this must bring on her family, he would observe that some forms of music should be limited to small groups of consenting adults - far from the tender ears of other human beings and wildlife. Folk music, Country music, and C&W music all fall into this category. He would assert that had these coyotes not taken matters into their own hands jaws, a call to the Canadian RSPCA or Humane Society would have been warranted.

He suspects the real tragedy here is that in this day and age, Folk, Country and C&W music are still practised and not consigned to the pages of history - like other medieval forms of torture.

AGM

Well the Gorse Fox should report back on last night's AGM. He would report that the expectation of fireworks was not realised and at best it may be considered that the masterful eloquence of the chairman headed off the crisis and left us with a (thankfully) damp squib.
The Gorse Fox was immensely pleased that the re-election of Directors saw no change in the current Board. They work so hard on our behalf and get little thanks for their efforts so it was good that the majority recognised this and voted them back in.

Hail to the Chief

The EU - whose accounts have not been ratified for years and seems to be riddled with dubious practices and expenses has been told by Gordon Brown (one of our parliamentarians who has had trouble with expenses) has that Tony Blair (who's idea of the truth is whatever the audience want to hear) would make and ideal President.

Well lets just say they all deserve each other...

The problem is we don't deserve them... why should we be punished.

Disconcert

The Gorse Fox was somewhat disconcerted as he walked into his meeting. There was nobody in attendance that he had ever met before. Despite this one Starfleet member said, as he shook hands,  "Ahh, the Gorse Fox!". That's not what it says on the id badge he wears, and he thought he travelled incognito (or sometimes by train)... but he he was recognised. Evidently infamy spreads like H1N1.

Lakes

The Gorse Fox finds himself in offices overlooking a wildlife reserve and some lakes. Most scenic. (He was also delighted that the journey was so trouble-free given that it involved a long section of M25).

Smack down

The Gorse Fox attended a seminar at Starfleet's headquarters. The subject was the proposed changes to the pension scheme and the meeting was intriguing, following the pattern of so many similar sessions:

• Attendees spread themselves out across the auditorium
• The presentation started and question were asked. The people at the back asked for the questions to repeated as they couldn't hear - good practise for the presenters, but they kept forgetting. The people at the back kept complaining, but were evidently unable to move forward to an empty seat closer. (The room was only half full).
• Every statement made was forensically examined and attempts were made to pick holes with hypothetical cases and situations. (It reminded the Gorse Fox of sitting in class watching the clever boys trying to catch out the teacher). There was a degree of satisfaction when they failed to find a case that hadn't been thought through already.
• The meeting over ran

But unlike most meetings - no mobile phones interrupted and nobody was tapping away at their laptops. The Gorse Fox would guess that people were actually interested in their pension provision. He expects to see a lot of very good colleagues leaving over the next few months.

Teleport or avatar

The Gorse Fox wishes that someone would hurry up and develop a teleporter. He has spent several hours on a teleconference which linked him in with a workshop being conducted in West London. It soon became clear that those present were spread out and would walk as far away from the phone as possible whenever they had something to say... the whole call seemed like a series of mutterings with occasional bursts of lucidity (mmm, sounds a bit like the Gorse Fox himself). A teleporter would have been useful, enabling him to dissociate his atoms and reassemble them in the workshop - or better still have a virtual holographic presence that could attend on GF's behalf and bring back the significant notes, actions, and messages.

Telegraph states the obvious

The headline in the linked story "Modern man had sex with Neanderthals" explains so much. It would appear that there must still be plenty of opportunity judging by some the sights that are seen on Friday nights around the country.

Battle Lines

This week sees the AGM for the owners of the Estate.

It is clear that battle lines are being drawn. Cheerleaders(*) for one faction turned up at the door checking the level of support that could be expected. The Gorse Fox answered truthfully that he felt fairly neutral on the subject. He expects, however, that this is going to be a fractious debate on Thursday - should we declare independence, build a wall and become a protectorate with biometric access controls(**) through electronic gates, or just carry on as we are with security guards?

(*) no pom-poms or batons were involved in this exchange.
(**) ok, the walls, the protectorate and the biometrics were an exaggeration

Leaves

The advantage of working at home is that you can be on hand to deal with any minor domestic emergencies. The call went up from the kitchen "The sink isn't emptying".

A cursory examination led the Gorse Fox outside where it was clear that the drain wasn't emptying either. A few minutes digging about with a long stick showed some improvement. It was not however the cure.

Opening the inspection hatch showed the problem to be further "downstream". Out came the stick again. A great wedge of leaves was dragged from the end of the pipe and within a second or two the problem cleared.

Emergency over, crisis averted.

Hyperbole

As the Gorse Fox prepares for another scintillating week he reflected on the news reports of previous few days. It occurs to him that if we are to believe what we read (which we perhaps we shouldn't) people have lost their sense of proportion. It would appear that in the papers:

• Irritation regarding some event or action is designated ANGER or occasionally OUTRAGE
• Disagreement over a principle is always FURY
• A difference of opinion among colleagues is a REVOLT
• The imposition of a regulation is a CRACK DOWN
• A few letters of complaint make an OUTCRY or STORM
• Speaking in public against some person or organisation is an ATTACK
• Embarrassment over some misdemeanour or peccadillo is SHAME
• Mild surprise is obviously described as SHOCK
• A change of mind is an HUMILIATING U-TURN

Makes you wonder how people survive with such extreme emotions being vented all the time. The Gorse Fox would love to read a headline: "Opposition Expresses Irritation at the Government's Stance".

Fall back

The Gorse Fox had trouble making use of the extra hour afforded by the overnight (ridiculous) clock change. He's not good at staying in bed and needs to get up as soon as he wakes.

The morning was spent doing Parish Council stuff - reading planning applications and preparing the answers from our questionnaires for printing. It was a lazy day with bits of admin, some football, and some cooking. Unfortunately the clock change did change GFs perception of time and by the time he remembered to call Cousteau-cub it was too late. She is now seven hours ahead and a call at 16:30 our time would not be appreciated on Koh Lanta.

Venta Bulgarum

Rain washed the southern counties as the Gorse Fox and Silver Vixen headed westwards. Traffic was slow, and the journey round the Noviomagus Reginorum was intolerable. The 90 minutes the Gorse Fox had allowed to get to Venta was evidently going to be insufficient. He was just considering suggesting a call when the phone rang. It was the Silver Vixen's sister and her cohort. They we having equal trouble in traffic around Bicester and it was evident we would arrive late.

In the scheme of things GF and the SV arrived first and made our way to the courtyard cafe behind the Tourist Information office. It was clear they were having a bad day. Whilst awaiting our coffee two or three people returned to the counter to complain... thoughts of having lunch there were quickly dispelled. The Buckingham cohort arrived and after a brief conversation we decided to eat first in the hope that the weather would break. We selected a Chinese on the roundabout by the King Alfred statue. It was empty and easily accommodated the rag tag party. The food was adequate but not great - but at least the company was fun.

Leaving there we strolled up the High Street for some window shopping. The Gorse Fox remained outside as there were various sorties into one shop or other. GF was more intrigued watching Hermiones, Jocastas, Jameses, Charleses, and Henrys as they wandered back and forth discussing the relative merits of Winchester fashion (tweed or twill and brogues).

We continued but it was soon clear that certain unnamed members of the party were already craving their next fix of tea. Rolling round by the Cathedral we stopped in their courtyard cafe for tea. Before we knew it our time was expiring at the car parks and it was time to say goodbye and get back on the road

Stone Age

It's been a strange week.

This is the week where we have heard more about the explosive growth of the world population and the challenge of feeding them... and that same week where the liberal elite have railed against GM crops and from their comfy homes near Waitrose would happily condemn the poor of the world to starvation rather than allow "scientists" to improve yields, improve disease resistance, and improve drought tolerance through genetic engineering.

This is the week where there was furore over the BBC (of whom the Gorse Fox is no fan) giving an elected politician a seat on "Question Time" and whilst our soldiers are fighting in Afghanistan to bring democracy and free speech - there were demonstrations and attempts to prevent him speaking here. The Gorse Fox utterly and unequivocally condemns what Nick Griffin stands for - but he has the right to his perverse opinion and he was elected based on that opinion. This peculiar exercise is in danger of turning him from a pariah to a victim.

This was a week where Starfleet is encouraging us all to improve our "Market Value Skills" and giving us a list of courses that may help. This is also a week when they have cancelled all training for the 4th quarter.

This is a week when Starfleet is talking about diversity and complaining there are insufficient numbers of women in top jobs. This is also the week they admit that only 9% of applicants are women, and and we have an 18% attrition rate among female staff.

This a week when Windows 7 is launched. This is also the wek the Gorse Fox finally feels he has got to grips with Vista, and it isn't that bad.

This is a week when satire could write itself.

ASA

Gorse Fox just lost it. He remembered a TV advert that he saw on Tuesday, and he lost it. He decided to write to the Advertising Standards Authority...

The advert was from Action on CO2

The Advert shows an adult reading a bedtime story to a young girl. The story is written as a frightening fairy story and talks of huge floods and destruction and boldly claims that "scientists" believe etc... 

I would assert that at best "some" scientists believe that human produced CO2 is contributing to global warming. Similarly there are many scientists that don't agree... and recently it has been shown that the data upon which much of this supposition is based has been shown to be fraudulent.

A34

The Gorse Fox had a meeting in Warwick. He likes Warwick, but from home it is an unpleasant drive invoolving the A27, M27, M3, A34 and M40 and given that the meeting was scheduled for midday, meant leaving home at the peak of the rush hour.

The journey was made bearable by the company of the Silver Vixen who GF would drop off at Bicester for some shopping - other than that it was a catalogue of roadworks, tailbacks, and trucks playing leapfrog. Depsite everything SV was dropped off in time, and GF arrived at Starfleet's Warwick facility in plenty of time for the meeting.

Whilst there he bumped into several old friends - each seriously shafted by the pension changes (each being a few years younger than GF). It is a sorry state of affairs when the promises made, and repeated year after year are suddenly turned to dust and the future you had planned is ripped away in the name of credit crunch, of affordability, and of "good business sense". The Gorse Fox should point out that Starfleet is still making significant amounts of money and is significantly out-performing the market and the industry. GF feels so sorry for these colleagues and is thankful that because of his age he is not so badly affected. Evidently all of the trite phrases regarding ethics and moral responsibility don't apply to the company's treatment of the staff on their expectations of the staff.

The meeting went well and GF was back on the road by mid-afternoon. The Silver Vixen was collected and we headed home. Nearly seven hours in the car, all told, for a 2 hour meeting.

Working at home tomorrow. Not expecting too much traffic in the kitchen or the hall on the way to the study.

Text

The Gorse Fox knows that the youngsters (anyone less than 40) have the art of sending text messages from mobile phones down to a fine art. Human evolution will probably develop another mutation over the next few generations with even longer and stronger thumbs and the inability of the mouth to form vowel sounds. It is with this in mind that GF noticed the efforts to which the Silver Vixen was going in order to respond to a text message.

Ripping off his disguise in a handy phone booth he swooped to her aid and set up her Skype account to handle external calls and collaterally SMS messages. It always seems so much easier to type on a real keyboard than fiddle about with a mobile phone for text applications.

Pottering

A quiet day of pottering through reviews and software catalogues looking for the best solution for the bid... meanwhile waiting to hear about another chunk of work whilst trying not to get committed to anything long-term in the interim.

GF ordered Windows 7 today. It comes a free upgrade to his new PC, so he put the request in and it should be dispatched on or after 22/10.

Twitter

Twitter is so interesting... it truncates messages to 140 characters and by the time you have a URL within the text you get some intriguing headlines. An example is one that just popped up from the BBC News site:

A date has been given when Wales' first minister will find out whether the public want more powers for the ass...

Seems somehow appropriate.

Admin

The day was spent buried in administrivia. The high spot was when the Silver Vixen posed a problem regarding the scaling up of a diagram for use as a pattern on her quilt. This got the little grey cells working furiously to try and find a suitable way of redrawing the pattern (which was like a two-dimensional double helix of wide ribbon) on the computer such that it could be scaled.

Inkscape was duly installed and fired up, but GF hasn't used for a year or so (in fact since the last challenge of the same type - though different shape). He fiddled about for a bit... and then thought "what about scanning it and then just scaling the scanned image" - the simple solutions are often best. And so it was that the scanner consumed the image and it was stretched to required size and printed.

Job done.

Good Evans

The Gorse Fox and Silver Vixen met up, as planned, with his sister and brother-in-law. The Mulberry, now that the kitchens have be restored after the fire, was a welcoming as ever. The food excellent, the service attentive, and the ambience perfect for an evening out.

Surf's Up

Well that's exciting. The Gorse Fox got his invite to join Google Wave (thanks to M4tt). He is not quite sure how useful it will be until friends, colleagues, family and collaborators are also on board... but it does look interesting.

Day was spent looking at various software distribution strategies. Just research... but amazed how complex people make it.

Planning to meet up with GF's sister and brother-in-law for dinner. This means heading up north as soon as GF finishes work as we are to meet and eat at Mulberry Grill up in the distant tundra of mid-Surrey.

Sport

The Gorse Fox notices that the Daily Mail is featuring the 50 greatest sporting photos of all time. What interests him is the photo of Maradonna's handball in the World Cup.
That is not a sporting photo.
That is a photo of cheating - not sport.

More peace

It has been another quiet, though busy day. Not a day filled with excitement and wonder, nor travel and awe. Just quiet research, reviews and write-ups.

At the end of the working day the Gorse Fox also had the opportunity to play with Wordpress on his private "meta-"blog on his new machine. This had been fine, but lacked the final touches that allowed GF to extract these blog entries and deposit them into the aforementioned meta-blog. He had trouble installing the Zend Framework and once that was sorted, he found a bug in Zend's Gdata app which provided the link to Google's blogger. Once that was sorted everything burst into life.

Busy, busy, busy

Not a day that would rate as interesting, but certainly busy. Now a quiet evening in front of the England-Belarus game.

Quiet (-ish)

The Gorse Fox had a day's vacation. The Silver Vixen had an appointment at the hospital and GF was determined he would accompany her. Being first thing, this meant an early start but also meant that all was over and done with by mid morning. GF was very impressed with the local hospital at Goring Hall - it was his first visit there and he was surprised by its size and the friendliness of the staff.

The Silver Vixen was heartened by the visit, and spent a quiet afternoon with her fabrics. The Gorse Fox returned to his keyboard. He thought he should look at producing a paper version of this blog. He had written some suitable extraction and formatting code a few months back so decided to give it a whirl. He extracted the entries for 2005 - and then opened them up in Open Office to edit them.

This is where he found two things:

1. He really should proof-read what he writes - there were far too many typos and spelling errors.
2. Maybe he shouldn't print it after all. (2005 would have run to 421 pages of A4). Maybe he'll just keep the pdf !

Workshop

Today saw the Gorse Fox in London to participate in a workshop that was looking at how various problems and failure conditions would be handled organisationally. It was a mixed day, surfacing several issues, and labouring several matters that seemed of limited relevance. GF believes the problem was that this workshop followed some vaguely democratic principles and that participants got to say what they would do and what they wouldn't do. He suspects that the subject needs a more didactic approach where the process is described, groups assigned roles based on their skill-sets, and then the documents of understanding adapted to meet this.

It was good to get away at a sensible time and catch the early evening train. GF was home soon after seven.

Eureka

It has been a real slog. (Ok in comparison to the 10-Tors race, or a Marathon, or bagging a Munro, or walking to the post-box it may not quite make the grade as a "slog"). Finally, after many hours GF has managed to complete the transition of his "metablog" to his new computer. This required some fleetness of foot and deft SQL (culled from the results of well phrased Google search). Now, all is up and running.

Still more faffing about to do - "sync" routine for blogs to be re-cut, MSMoney still to be migrated - and a final searchy of the old hard drives for anything useful!

Devices

The Gorse Fox has been left to his own devices whilst a squadron of broomsticks carry the Silver Vixen and her pals to Alexandra Palace for a big quilting show.

Email arrived from Parish Clerk - some suggested changes to the online survey that GF had prepared. Problem seems to be that Google is not playing ball and there appears to be a problem editing the from layout - i.e. it won't show the edit window properly. GF really does not wish to resort to plan B and re-build the form. For now he has left a question on the forum but expectation is low.

Dump

It has been a diverse day. Much of the morning was spent looking at BitNami's Wordpress stack, then Wampserver and Wordpress on their own. Niggling little issues kept cropping up that prevented GF from moving his Metablog across to the new machine. First it was BitNami's inability to acknowledge and act upon a change to its config to allow larger files to be imported, then it was the mediocre documentation that made it difficult to pull apart and correct. That was it - GF removed it and downloaded Wampserver. This installed perfectly (but then so did BitNami) and was working just fine until GF followed the advice to set the root password for the MySQL database - at that point everything became difficult again.

He went out to the garage to get the ladders - they may not help with phpmyadmin but they would help him reach the outside lights which needed new bulbs (and this, of course means the new low energy bulbs which give off the same amount of light as a comatose glow-worm - but hey we are making the politicians and the eco-mentals happy). Living by the sea means that everything corrodes easily. This meant that only one of the three lights was accessible - the other two were corroded shut. The Gorse Fox found that a crow-bar acted adequately as a key as he levered them from the wall and went out to buy replacements!

The usual episodes of dropping things, of loose connectors, and general cack-handedness followed but despite all adversity the Gorse Fox now has three working lights.

Meanwhile, the Silver Vixen was sorting out various boxes and who-knows-what in the garage. The Gorse Fox went to lend a hand and ended up with a trip to the local dump civic re-cycling amenity.

A good curry inside him, he is now making the most of "Strictly Come Dancing" - by not watching it!

And so...

Urban-cub is out for the evening (dinner with friends).

Silver Vixen is out for the evening (AGM for the coven)

The Gorse Fox is looking at a quiet evening surrounded by his keyboards and screens. Tonight's objective is to nurse Falcon back to life and move a very large blog across to Eagle. He has tried installing Wordpress using BitNami... which effectively treats the whole stack as a black-box appliance. So far it looks pretty good and certainly installed very easily.

The first attempt to export the blog from Falcon failed and locked the machine. The second attempt got no further - only exporting about a quarter of the blog. Fortunately he has several other plans to try... one of which involves opening a bottle of wine.

Frantic morning

The Gorse Fox has had a frantic morning. The problem arises when an incomplete spreadsheet is being used to provide indicative information and subsequent queries do not tie back to it because a) the spreadsheet has now moved on by 7 releases, b) the information was further adapted; c) other parties were using a different version because they were running behind schedule, d) the design was changing, e) the spreadsheet was an amalgam of multiple unconnected but related spreadsheets. He has now solved the problem and everyone is happy.

Time to stretch the legs a bit

Fellowship of the Ring

The Gorse Fox trekked up to London to meet up with his Sam Gamgee and penetrate Mordor and ultimately Mount Doom. As a Starship employee there are certain places that he has to brace himself to enter. Penetrating the Gates of Mount Doom he met with Solon and had a most constructive meeting.

With Sam Gamgee he paused for tapas before heading back to the train. The phone tweeted... there was a message. It was clear that there was some spreadsheet work to do once home!

Ssshhh

It's been a quiet day. iTunes has been serenading the Gorse Fox as he has pottered through his work. Tomorrow   involves stirring his bones and heading back up to London for the day.

Hedging bets

Mellors and his brother-in-law have arrived to treat the hedge to a haircut. It's a bit overdue, but he seems to be doing a good job.

Plumbing

Another day working at home. This is one of the great pleasures of the job with Starfleet... the Gorse Fox can boldly go without leaving his study. It was another grey and damp day so there was nothing to tempt the Gorse Fox away from the keyboard (with the occasional exception of the need for coffee or the subsequent need for checking the plumbing).

Pension

Blimey - Tory Conference looking to raise the retirement age from 2016! That was mighty close to catching the Gorse Fox. As it is it'll mean he gets his State Pension a year later.

All change

There's something depressing about the end of a holiday and the return to work on a bright sparkly morning. No fear of that this morning then! It was dull, grey and wet (much like living up north - but without the mushy peas).

Rubble

The Silver Vixen and Gorse Fox headed across country to Old Basing to spend the day with Betty and Barney Rubble. It was an interesting day catching up on family and friends.

Lunch was at Hogget's near Hook. That was well worth the visit and must make the effort to eat there again.

Blitzkrieg

Not sure if the Urban-cub has OCD, but once in a while she gets the urge to blitz the Gorse Fox's study. Today was such a day. The storm broke at about 10 am and she wheeled in the recycling bin from the garage, brought in some black sacks, a duster, a dustpan and brush and a mission in her heart.

Six hours later it was declared finished and the Gorse Fox was allowed to return to normal duties. He must admit the outcome was most successful and he has acres of spare desk space again.

Rights and Wrongs

The Gorse Fox noticed a large tour bus when he first arrived at the museum. He feared hoards of shouting school kids - but it was worse. Perry Mortem tours had brought a coach load of exhibits of its own. In most cases this was not an issue, but when we went for lunch we were amazed (though shouldn't be) at the brazen attempts to push into the queues and generally show bad manners to those around. The Gorse Fox has heard of Help the Aged, but he was thinking of setting up Deck the Aged.

Besom Buddies

As we strolled about the Gorse Fox noticed the showroom where the Stitch Witch and Gracie Fields and all their friends evidently come for their transportation, and to have them serviced.

Days of Yore

Set into the vast quarries was a railway, and a bus service that used antique vehicles to carry the visitor around among the exhibits.

The exhibits are manned by volunteers who enthusiastically explain the history and workings of their exhibit. Several old buildings have been demolished, transpotred and rebuilt here within the confines of the museum. The Gorse Fox particularly liked this garage... but there were also exhibits of old machine shops, printing works (where GF got into long discussions regarding the use of various typesetting techniques much to the delight of the volunteer); a pottery, a cartwright, several pump rooms, a bus depot (complete with a fleet of vintage buses)... and so forth.

It was really quite interesting and in the hall dedicated to the new fangled "electricity" they had some simple whimshurst machines generating small sparks, a Jacob's ladder creating larger sparks and a Tesla coil discharging 500,000 volts in huge purple sparks.

Didn't we have a lovely time

It was another super day - the sun was out and few, if any, clouds sullied the clear blue canopy. The temperatrure was down a bit on the last few days, but it was still very comfortable.

Just outside Arundel sits the village of Houghton, and just by the river crossing and railway stands the immense quarries that once provided lime for the area. They ceased working in the 1960s and stood derelict for 10 years before being re-opened as the Amberley Museum and Heritage Centre. The Gorse Fox and Silver Vixen have lived down here for over 10 years now, but never visited. Until today.

Moving bits

Nicholas Negroponte asserted that it was better to bits than atoms. The Gorse Fox has spent all day moving bits and it is both time-consuming and frustrating. The photo library and the music library took hours to shift. There was, of course, trouble with the printer sharing and trouble getting Microsoft Money to work on the recently moved files. Everything else was working fine, though Picasa's new face-identification seemed to loose the coordinates of the faces that it had already identified on the old machine.

Urban-cub is threatening Gorse Fox with another blitz on his study this weekend. That will involve moving some serious collections of atoms.