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No to a new Rolex

By the way I have just checked and Jane would not be impressed by a new (presumably fake) Rolex watch. So please all thise people sending my emails on the subject just go away. As for those of you who are trying to sell me things that I don't really want to talk about in public please go and spend your time seeing if they work for you.

Yes you have guessed right. Over well over 1,000 spam emails while I was away for 5 nights. Aaaarrrggghhh!

Trying to be a good boy ;-)

I have decided to try again at trying to get a bit better together. So little or no coffee with Caffeine, going to bed and getting up at sensible times, keeping up-to-date with essays, losing weight etc etc.

How is today going?

Well I have been working on my essay, due in on Tuesday. Making progress so it should be done, but it is very hard to do at a weekend with the kids around. Hopefully will not require too much in the way of late nights.

I have been to the gym today, not admitting how long since I last went.

Not eaten too much, maybe because the kitchen was bare after being away.

But some distractions ;-(

Went and looked at the HP Velotechnik Grasshopper pages as I feel that I do really need 2 wheels as well as 3 for ease of getting around town. I tried my old MTB now kitted out as a road commuiting bike for Andrew during our time at centre parcs and it reminded me of the nice bits of 2 wheels but also the discomfort. So a 2 wheel recumbent it needs to be and the grasshopper looks like a good option although definately not cheap. I went to Bikefix and priced up a fully specced version for winter use (Rohloff, hub dynamo etc) and it was over £3,000 so maybe not this week - or for that matter next week either ;-)

As the centre parcs place we were at was so good for sailing it reminded me how much I like sailing so I got distracted by the very nice Woods Sango. There is even one professionally built for sale. Oop's there goes some more essay writing time.

Then I spent some time catching up on all the blog reading that had stacked up in bloglines and got sidetracked into finding out a little about podcasting which looks like being a great way to go for Church Services and Bible Readings. That made me go and check on the NetBible as that sounds a good place to start for this. Turns out they already have an MP3 audio version for sale so maybe they won't be interested in allowing it to be put up on web sites for general download.

Over tea we caught up with critical TV programmes we had recorded. So it was Scrapheap Challenge which is gentle good fun that all here enjoy.

Since then I started a background download of Gentoo linux as I noticed that there latest (from July) version seems to support Firewire cdroms and good power management (which I need for my Sony Vaio).

Now everyone else is going to bed so I will have a little later night and see if I can crack the next bits of my essay. BACK TO WORK (that was shouting at me not you ;-)

Myghty - High Performance Python Templating

Another python html templating tool Myghty - High Performance Python Templating.

I noticed it in this email

From: mike bayer (zzzeek@gmail.com)
Subject: Re: Python vs PHP

View this article only
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
Date: 2004-10-27 08:59:42 PST

hi all -

might I add what I think is a valuable link to this discussion:

http://www.myghty.org/

it is my own application largely based around the model of Perl's
HTML::Mason. It addresses specifically the performance, architecture,
and template-flexibility issues of some of the other packages I have
seen mentioned here. I think its particular combination of strong
featureset, smooth performance and templating style makes it one of
the best things out there for building python-based dynamic websites
as well as content-generation systems.

From google

S5: A Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System

S5: A Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System is absolutely great. A superb option to consider instead of Powerpoint or OpenOffice.org presentations.

Thanks to Joel on Software - Wednesday, October 27, 2004 for the link.

Back home

Just got home from a few days away which is one reason it has been quiet here.

We went to a Center Parcs in the Netherlands at Port Zelande. Included the fast catamaran from Harwich to Hook of Holland on Monday and back today (Friday).

Had a great time, more later no doubt.

Life is Just a Tire Swing: Daughters want Sun Ray

Life is Just a Tire Swing: Daughters want Sun Ray someone else has the same idea for a home system.

Excogito: Blog: The Windsor Report

Excogito: Blog: The Windsor Report has a link to the full report as a pdf. This is the report from the comission looking into same sex unions. However, the report is essentially about how the Anglican around the world should behave internally, how it should seek Gods will and how it can/should discipline members.

The report is not about the views of the Anglican church on same sex unions but instead how to handle the differences and conflicts that have arison in this case.

As Robert says all churches will need to wrestle with the same sex debate. The only problem for Anglicans is that this is not yet that wrestling as it was not the brief of this comission and it simply holds to the earlier views expressed in 1978, 1988 and 1998 (I guess that it may well be discussed again in 2008 ;-)

Velorution - Dismantling the car economy, celebrating bicycle culture

In Velorution - Dismantling the car economy, celebrating bicycle culture: Spinning figures Andreas is commenting on a US report about cell phone use while driving. He comes up with one suggestion.

My problem is that the report has so many facoids taken out of context and related to each other in suspect ways that nothing can be concluded except that the paper has an agenda.

For example there is no comparison between hand held phone use and hands free. Surely there must now be some evidence from places like the UK to show whether this has had an effect (although you still do see a lot of oeople using hand held phones).

Andreas is totally right that if you are going to make statements about the value of human life then you need to show you are not simply plucking numbers out of the air. We all know that there is a valid need for such figures, they are used in many areas and they don't do themselves any favours in articles like this by not doing it properly and by being so dismissive about 2,600 people killed each year.

As cyclists I suspect that we should be 100% supportive of using accurate statistics and accounting to make decisions about the transport infrastructure - we have nothing to lose and everything to gain as so far as I can see cycling comes out better than cars in almost anything you could try to measure: safety, health, environmental impact, speed, quality of life, flexibility, community building, economic impact. The problem is that governments, individuals and business do not follow logic very much as we make decisions. Otherwise who would smoke or ...

Mind you I also want to put a much higher value on all human life than can be justified by any economic study, but that is based on theology, a form of reasoning that we avoid at very high cost.

Boing Boing: Copy files between thumb-drives without a laptop

What a good idea! The normal ones are really useful but this is even better. Decent capacity as well. Boing Boing: Copy files between thumb-drives without a laptop. Can't find a UK reseller so far and the website seems to put the wrong item in the shopping cart when you try to buy (maybe the "All Other countries" option is the problem.

WiFi option for SunRays

I have mentioned several times before that I think SunRays really need a WiFi option. Anyway after a little searching with Google I found number of options of which Misco complete business IT solutions - BELKIN_802.11G_WIRELESS_CLIENT_BRIDGE seems the cheapest at the moment at just under 40 UK pounds.

Still it would be nice if Sun added WiFi to the Sun Ray 1g Ultra-Thin Client.