[ from the retro-fitting-older-entries dept. ]
Random Stuff
Today I am on a train currently passing through Leicester on route to Nottingham. I had an interesting morning and got a delayed 12:05 train from Reading which was up to the usual excellent standard stereotypical of Virgin Trains – overcrowded so that I had to sit in the corridor next to the broken toilet and help rescue another female passenger who could not escape. Remember there are reasons people are not persuaded to use public transport.
This weekend I am off to a family wedding in London and am staying in what would appear to be a reasonable hotel on Friday and Saturday night. Next week I need to look in to this long European weekend I keep meaning to have somewhere like Brussels. Need to find out if any friends want to go too. Probably would be a good excuse to get a digital camera I suppose. Hmmm… Back to the present and this train should be in Nottingham soon so I can meet up with jok and tom for afternoon tea and supper.
I went swimming again last night and did the weekly weighing. I admit that I am still over what I should be – but I am just under 14st. now which is an improvement that I am aim to take further over the next few months. Eventually I want to weigh 12.5 or 13st and balance out my diet and exercise.
Hacking Stuff
The room setup has made little progress over the last week. I still have a bunch of machines which are clogging up the dining room and which need to be moved in to the new racking. Perihelion is pretty damned sweet running Debian testing now and I have to say Windows XP has nothing on this machine. The addition of an Ultra on my desktop would make the second monitor more useful though I now have more than I have room for (15″, 17″, 19″, 21″, etc.)
I have been debugging the Linux 4xx TLB handling over the last few days. The code is pretty simple and not SMP future proof, and of course differs in every release you come accross depending upon which tree you chose to use today. Would somebody please consolidate in to the next 2.4 release? 
. The PowerPC 405 is a funny thing really. The more you use it the more quirks and more interesting it becomes – I think I should have been a hardware engineer in another life or something. Anyway interest aside I am pretty comfortable with the work I am doing now (somewhat debug intensive now).
Reading the combinational logic design section in the Digital System design with VHDL book. Getting some more SCA disks for the Sun machines at home – probably time to pick up an Ultra soon given they are now available on ebay for under 50 quid.
Miscellaneous Stuff
Another day and more people calling me about recruitment. I seem to be averaging several mails a week now although I am as always driven by interest. Money is also a useful resource but not as important as doing something interesting this side of 25. Of course later I will have a zillion commitments, a flashy sports car and a geeky girlfriend…or just a lot of commitments to geeky technology. One or the other, you can guess which.
I find the work that the Embedded Systems Lab at Leceister are doing is both interesting and fits in with the kind of stuff I dig right now. There are various application forms sitting in an Inbox somewhere which I should fill out and get in to the pipeline.
This diary and website needs a complete overhaul.
Just arrived at Loughborough. Not far from Nottingham again now. TTFN.
Jon.