Home at Last

I think I’d rather like to live near here though.

Made it home this lunchtime. Luggage got here in time for tea (not that we wanted to eat it).

The journey nearly managed a final twist though. On the way down to land the pilot said, in a rather whimsically Dutch way, “The cloud ceiling is only around 100 meters above the ground, so we might have problems seeing the runway. Anyhoo, we are going to have a go and see how we get on…”.

The alternative to landing at Hull was not actually piling into landscape at speed but an all expenses paid trip to Doncaster airport. I’ve used this line before – nice enough place but no great desire to go there just right now. Fortunately the ground came up to hit is in just the right way.

It wasn’t a fun trip, but it was considerably funner (if that is a word) thanks to the folks that I met up with along the way. With my terrible memory for names I’ve forgotten what you are all called, but I do remember that you were great company at a time when a few laughs was probably the best we could hope for. Hope you all got to your destinations OK.  And your luggage too.

Breakfast of Heroes

At least the breakfast at the Renton Clarion is colourful….

Flight into Danger (well, almost)

Not a bad place, just not where I want to be.

In a perfect world I’d be posting this from home, not the Renton Clarion Hotel  “Conveniently situated just minutes from Seattle Sea-Tac airport”. But there you are, and here I am.

Twenty minutes into our flight out we had a “passenger incident” which resulted in us returning to Seattle and the plane filling with burly men wearing Tasers and striking action poses. Most exiting. Less exciting was the “slow reveal” of the fact that we would not be flying out on Saturday, but on Sunday. I feel very sorry for the staff on the plane and those at the airport who had to deal with a nasty logistical problem not of their making. I feel even more sorry for anyone who fell asleep just after takeoff and then woke up fifteen minutes later thinking they’d just had the shortest and smoothest transatlantic flight ever.

Still, the system worked and I’m sitting here with my “Delta Airlines Meal Voucher” and wondering what kind of breakfast blowout you can get for six bucks.

We are taking off again at noon today. Then I get to enjoy a seven hour stopover in Schipol airport before catching my flight to Humberside a day late.  Good oh.

A Walk Round Bellevue

Balloons in the park.

It was a beautiful day today. Flight didn’t leave until late afternoon, so I had time for a wander around and breakfast in Bellevue old town. Anything in the US can be called old if it was built before 1975 apparently.  But it did look nice.

On the way  back to the hotel.

Telescoping Spoon

We spent the day today recording video material for the updated Windows Phone courses. Then we went out for a wander just before tea and happened upon a very posh camping store. This had everything you might want for the wilderness, and then some. Including a telescopic spoon.

Now, those of you who know me well have often heard me saying that the one thing I need to make my life complete is a telescoping spoon. I have this fear of someone looking me in the eye and saying “We’d like to take your spoon Rob, but there’s no way it will fit. If only it was telescopic.”

So, I bought one, and it works too. It goes from quite small to fairly small in one simple, sliding movement. And I can use it to stir my cocoa at night. Wonderful.

Geek Power

I was in the Union Shop today and noticed that they were selling a Top Trumps style game called “Geek Power”. Fortunately the card at the top of the deck looks nothing like me. Nothing at all.

Happy Anniversary Don and Jessie

Today we were invited to Don and Jessie’s fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration. I met up with a bunch of folks I hadn’t seen for a while and a good time was had by all. Thanks very much for inviting us.

Rob Miles is not on Kindle Yet

Who, me?

I got my new Kindle from Amazon today .  Of course, the first thing I did was search for myself in the Kindle store. Imagine my surprise when I found that I’d put three books on there and was charging over seven pounds each for them (that’s more than they are asking for Tony Blair’s memoirs – so they got that bit right). Either I’ve uploaded them and set the price in my sleep, or there is something strange going on here. I’ve asked Amazon to find out what is going on.

As for the Kindle  itself. It is a perfectly formed device that is going to spell the death knell for a lot of paper books. I got a Sony E-Reader some time back and quite liked it, but loading books was  a pain and the display was useless for anything interactive.

The Kindle fixes both these problems. You can even use it to browse to my blog and the pictures look strangely wonderful in grey scale. As a paperback replacement it is fantastic. It is ultra-portable (at the moment I’m using an A5 envelope as a case) and the screen is really easy to read. The integration with Amazon is impressive to the point of scary. I got the one with the built in 3G phone and stuff just arrives as though by magic. It also has WiFi which works fine at home but not on the university campus. This is because the Kindle doesn’t support the WPA2 Enterprise security that we use at Hull.

It is a bit glib to say that the Kindle will do for books what the ipod did for music. But I don’t think that it is far from the truth.

One reason for getting the Kindle was to experiment with page layouts that work best on the small screen. I’ll be putting properly a formatted version of the Yellow Book on the Kindle store soon.

But the ones there are the moment are not from me.

Pricey Filter

Just found this on Amazon. You’d better hurry, they’ve only got one left….

Hull Classic Car Show

Went off this afternoon to a Classic Car show in Hull East Park. The park is a fantastic place. Beautifully landscaped gardens, wide open spaces and, today only, a lot of very shiny cars.

A nice shade of purple

I used to drive a Mini. But it was never as shiny as this.

Now, that’s what I call an engine.

Never Ignore the SatNav

Nice view from the new flat though. Very suburban.

Drove down to London today to do some heavy lifting for number one daughter, who is moving flat. On the way down I did something that turned out to be very dangerous.

I ignored the SatNav.

She said A1. I went M1. At the time I thought nothing of it, and she didn’t say anything. But I’m sure that she started plotting….

Next route she sent us on involved a lot more “off the beaten track” than earlier ones. Twice we got sent towards roads that had six foot six wide gaps on them which the van couldn’t get through.  After a couple of hilarious (I’m being ironic here) U-turns backwards into traffic we started ignoring any suggested routes that didn’t send us towards dual carriageways.  And I’m sure we got sent through the same set of traffic lights at least three times.

Then, on my final route home there were loads of right hand turns onto busy roads with no gaps in the traffic, a long drive along twisty roads and finally, against my better judgement, I ended up on the A1 after all.

So, never ignore the SatNav.

Saying Au-Revior to Concorde

Now, that’s what I call a flight deck.

We went to see Concorde at Filton today. I always feel a bit sad when we go over there. The plane is amazing but it doesn’t deserve to be stuck on the ground. It really should be out there doing what it does best, and what nothing on earth can do any more.

This time the affair was even more poignant because as of later this year the plane will not be open for visitors at all, which is really sad.

Anyway, I took the big camera and a selection of lenses and tried to get a few shots.

Not surprisingly the team at Bristol is very busy at the moment as people take their last chance to see the plane for a while, but if you can get yourself down there you won’t regret the trip.

Rob and the Cube

I wasn’t looking to buy a new car. I never am. Particularly after just having had the current one serviced. But they had some Cubes at the Nissan dealership and I just had to go and have a look. And I think the Cube looks great. (Although opinions differ).

Inside it is a bit like driving a conservatory and I don’t think it will win any speed races. But I really like it. My definition of great car is “A vehicle that transports a really good SatNav and sound system around, along with space for gadgets”. The Cube does all that.  And it has a rear view camera. In colour. The plan is for some trickle down action, with number one wife getting my car so every body wins.

If you are looking to by something mini-MPV’ish with a really distinctive style (the only car I’ve ever owned that I would probably be able to draw a recognisable picture of) then there are some amazing deals on the Cube at the moment.

Jenny’s Abseil

Number one daughter did her abseil today. It got put back from earlier this year. If you sponsored her, well done and thanks very much.

If you didn’t there is still time:

http://www.justgiving.com/jennifer-miles

It was 450 feet you know…

Mystery Object Answer

Now it can be told. The tool is for making holes in network cables so you can attach a Vampire tap to them. In the olden days Ethernet networks were made of a single thick piece of co-axial cable (the same stuff we use to connect TVs to aerials). This had a terminator at both ends and the way you connected a station to the network was to drill a hole in the side of the cable and push a pin into the central conductor.  These connectors got the name of “vampire taps” for obvious reasons.

Getting the hole wrong (too big or too deep) was bad, as you only had the one cable for your entire network. So we used to use a device with a drill bit which had been cut to just the right diameter and depth in the tool you see above.

This was in the “Good Old Days” of networking,  10BASE5 style (this means 10MBits/second, baseband signals and 500 metre maximum segment length).  Nowadays we are up to 100GBits/second on some networks. That is  10,000 times faster.

The tool has rattled around in my desk for a while and I probably should get rid of it.

Having said all that, it does remind me of a Veroboard track cutter. I used to have one of those too. It’s a tool which lets you make breaks in copper tracks on circuit boards by cutting through them with a drill bit. So, I reckon that Dave G is a winner here and if he wants to drop by he can have is Windows Phone lanyard.

Perfect Afternoon

The finished product

I spent the afternoon eating chocolate and drinking tea while making my own Lego private jet and watching a naff James Bond movie in HD.

Perfect.

This is what Lego thinks the pilot uses to fly the plane. Right hand down a bit I reckon.

Instant Green

If you want to know how to get “green credentials” for your organisation do what the US Government does with its forms. They have the “Printed on Recycled Paper” logo on the bottom of all their PDF documents so anyone that prints them out is automatically eco-friendly.

Back to Work

Bellevue Movie Theatre looking good

..and today I go back to work…

Back in Hull

Got back to Hull today.  Nice to find the place just as I left it. There is nothing quite like not sleeping in your own bed.

I blame the jetlag.

Clothes Shopping with Jetlag

We got back to the UK first thing this morning, had a quick nap and immediately decided to go clothes shopping. As you do.

There was actually method in this madness, in that we were in Bristol, which is home to one of the few shops that sells clothes in my size. And they have a sale just right now. So it was off to purchase a whole bunch of outfits. Took number one wife with me to stop me buying anything purple or orange.