Prey

There are things that you don’t often see… and watching a sparrow hawk swoop into the front garden, try to perch on a rose bush (and fall off), then strut across the lawn before swooping off low and fast, is one of those.

Grindstone

GF is back at work after the Bank Holiday and has been enjoying the challenge of coming up with a solution for the new project and crafting it into the ever evolving spreadsheet.

More dilithium crystals Cap’n

One of the external drives that contributes to this West Sussex data centre has failed to spin up. Lights were on, but nobody was at home, so-to-speak. A little debugging and cable swapping got the Gorse Fox to the point that he has isolated the problem to the power supply… and by switching with an older drive’s supply has now got both running again. New power supply ordered from WD, but obviously this is a problem as it is the second time this has happened.

Cloudless

Bank Holiday Monday – a cloudless blue sky covers the south coast. A gently breeze sighs in the trees. The only sound is that of the waves rhythmically stroking the shoreline. The sort of day that makes the soul soar.

Spanish Gravitational Anomaly

It is clear, watching “la Liga” (the Spanish Football), that there is some form of gravitational anomaly that stretches from Santander to Mallorca. It appears that as two humans approach each other near a ball one or both humans are likely to fall over and clutch various parts of their body (dependent, no doubt, on where the gravity was greatest).

(Where are Billy Bremner, Dave Mackay, Nobby Stiles and Stuart Pearce when you need them).

Incisive Comment

The Gorse Fox is watching Spanish football with the Silver Vixen. Barcelona are looking impressive and David Villa has just scored. We are getting incisive comment from the Sky commentator.

“That’s the difference. If that had been Ibrahamovic he might have missed that, or he might have scored”.

There are times when the commentary and analysis is just so insightful!

Legal downloads

Why is it so difficult to find a source of legal downloads of TV shows and even movies?

The Gorse Fox wanted to watch a show that had been recommended to him – and whilst many versions can be found online, the only one that he has any real faith is “legal” is that provided (at a small price) through iTunes. All the other versions seem to be p2p downloads or streams. GF wants to be able to go to something like BBC iPlayer – select ANY episode (not just recent ones) and download a show or movie which he can then watch as often and for however long he wishes (i.e. it does not expire). He also want to be able to view it on his PC, his phone, or his TV depending on how the mood takes him and whether he watching alone, or with the Silver Vixen, or whilst travelling.

For now, he has capitulated to the evil Skynet Apple, and downloaded from iTunes.

Makeover

The Gorse Fox thought, that after nearly 6 years of this blog, it may be time for a makeover. So he’s switched the background themes and screen layout. He may change it further, but thought this would be an interesting start.

George and Dragon

It has been a lovely day – the weather was bright, sunny, and warm and the company of Betty & Barney Rubble exquisite as usual.

For lunch we headed to the tiny village of Burpham and the”George and Dragon” where we had a very, very good lunch. The menu provided a wide and mouth-watering choice of dishes and the service was friendly and attentive but not obtrusive. After the meal GF lead his companions on a short walk round the village before we returned to the car and home.

Visitors

The Gorse Fox and Silver Vixen are expecting visitors. Betty and Barney Rubble will be making their way across from the wintery steppes of Hampshire to the sun-kissed beaches and rolling chalk landscape of West Sussex.

Lunch is booked in Burpham and good day is expected all round.

Stealth

The Gorse Fox has made up his mind and ordered his new car. Looking at the spec, and the predominance of dark tinted glass in the panoramic roof, rear windows and rear screen it brings to mind some form of stealth fighter. As it is build to order, GF is not expecting it any time soon.

Mile High

The Gorse Fox made his way to town. The rain was not as heavy as forecast and the journey was trouble-free. He made use of the time reviewing nominations for awards. Only one more to go before he submits his evaluations.

The morning was spent immersed in getting to know the details of a new project. Not rocket science, but interesting, nonetheless. The afternoon saw a meeting with some potential partners from a company in Denver (Mile High City), who were eager to explain what they can do to help. This was followed by a further meeting with potential partners from Basingstoke who, in turn, were eager to show where they could fit in. Looks like it could be an interesting jigsaw… and as the state of chaos and anarchy continues on the main project, this was a welcome distraction.

The meeting meant that GF was later leaving the office than usual – and this meant that he missed his usual train. The later train was an absolute zoo – packed from the off, with people standing all the way down to Hove or Portslade. GF was lucky to have been on of the first on and managed to get a seat.

Cowering

Despite a fabulous start to the day, the south coast is now cowering under dark clouds and driving rain. This is a meteorological error and should not be happening in this location. The Gorse Fox will not repeat previous comments regarding where this sort of weather belongs, but would just alert you to the fact that we do not have an area known for its lakes nearby, nor do we need to wear flat caps and talk funny.

The day has been spent, as usual, split between GF’s two clients and some reviews of some of Starfleet’s recent technical achievements – GF being one of the evaluators for some forthcoming awards. GF must admit that Starfleet has some clever troopers scattered around the UK and Northern Europe.

GF experimented with the spreadsheet that has been the focus of his recent “day job”. It now exceeds 11MB, so he opened it up in Open Office and saved it back in the native ”.ods” format – 11MB dropped to a smidgeon over 1MB… and everything still works as before. Impressive.

Back up to town in the morning – briefing for another project.

Burning funds

It was a strange day as the Gorse Fox headed up towards the western part of London to spend the day on the client’s site. Why there? Well, just in case they finally agreed to the meeting we have been trying to arrange.

As it happened (and as expected) they were still no nearer making any meaningful progress or decisions – though it goes without saying that their internal politics are hugely active and Starfleet is merely a pawn on the edge of the board.

GF spent a couple of hours on the phone listening in to a clarification session with another client – at least this one is making progress.

The journey home was made more interesting by meeting with a neighbour and catching up on the trials and tribulations of his house improvements.

Firehose

The Gorse Fox has been on a conference call… well maybe broadcast would be a better choice of words as the leader of the call was an output only device and left the Gorse Fox with the distinct feeling he’d been standing in front of a fire hose for a couple of hours.

Virtually There

The Gorse Fox has been looking at various options for Virtualisation on the home PC. This will allow him to run further “systems” without needing further hardware.

He has VMware Player and Virtual Box and has tried out various options from Bitnami for images or appliances… however they seem to favour Vmware – and GF wants to concentrate on Virtual Box as his hypervisor.

It seems strange looking at hypervisors from these companies given that Starfleet built their first hypervisor for hosting virtual machines back in 1967… and GF used to be the country specialist for the systems in the 1980s and enjoyed several internships with the development labs at the time.

Talking of virtual presence, we managed to get a good Skype session with Cousteau-cub. The weather there is improving, but it is still low season so she has more time on her hands than normal. Bruno, the dog, is smelling sweet after a hot shower and shampoo and the Coventry Hobbit was preparing to talk with his family.

Type cast

The Gorse Fox notices that the BBC is reporting that “John Prescott warns Labour Party faces Bankruptcy”… well there’s a surprise. They bankrupted the country and it seems entirely appropriate that they have now found they can’t balance their books either.

Ah that’s better

The Gorse Fox and Silver Vixen presented themselves at the desk of the nice man from VW. As arranged a new Passat CC was waiting and a few hours of test driving were on the schedule. The weather was grey, miserable, wet, and basically inclement but the Gorse Fox consoled himself that one day he may need to drive up in the North or in the Midlands so the test was still valid. It is better to be sure!

The comparison with the test drive of  Thursday was a case of chalk and cheese. The engine and transmission in this was so refined and responsive – and the fuel consumption clearly better. Still a long lead time on the build to order option, but GF needs to get something on the books.

Final decision in the next few days.

Rounding off

The week rounded off with a series of slides and accompanying animations for a client event next week. The laws of the Universe, being what they are, dictated that the other client also wants the attention of the Gorse Fox on the same day, at the same time. GF’s view is that it is first come, first served so he has resolved that.

Afternoon work was punctuated by the sound of aero engines as planes headed for Shoreham to participate in the airshow this weekend. Unfortunately the cloud was so low that GF couldn’t see what they were, but hopefully he’ll see some of them at the weekend.

GF managed to exchange messages with Cousteau-cub during the day. Isn’t instant messaging a boon? All is well in here corner of Thailand, though they are still getting some impressive storms overnight. Both she and the Coventry Hobbit have been teaching Divemaster courses so have been busy with plenty of diving this week.

Coincidence

The Gorse Fox notices, coincidentally, that 2 days ago someone searched on Google for “Tom Cruise lives in Kingston Gorse?” and arrived at this blog. What can he say?

He understands the confusion, but confesses it is not Tom… it is just the Gorse Fox.