Photos (from left to right): A weekend in Nottingham, Waterstones in Oxford now have a Google section…and an ebay section too.
I went to Nottingham for the weekend with Hussein, since he was driving up anyway. I got to see a number of friends I haven’t seen recently – Sid was the obvious example (I gave him a Flash card I’ve had sitting around for ages, sorry for the delay), but also Mel, Rowan, and the regular gang: Robin and Beckie, Jok, etc. I took some Belgian beer with me and discovered that, yes, it can be pretty pressurised if shaken well during transportation.
We went to Skinny Sumo on Saturday night, in a change from our regular Wagamama dining (it was jok’s insistance that did it really, so I blame him, but it was good). I had real sushi for the first time. I like it. But I might not like some of the weirder stuff – I need to try it some more. Last time I went to a sushi bar before this restuarant, I cunningly avoided any sushi whatsoever. We had Turkish food on Sunday.
More friends are moving away from Nottingham and I am starting to realise that I was infatuated with the situation we were in while studying, moreso than the place itself. I don’t need to be in Nottingham now, but I don’t mind visiting and reminiscing about times gone by (when I win the lottery we can all move back and have that lifestyle again if we want). I didn’t see Dave, but I will arrange to be in Nottingham on a regular term day sometime soon and pop in to campus. That’s all changed too – probably can’t even go in without an armed escort by this point.
I didn’t place the travelbugs so they need to find homes urgently – anyone going to a castle and want to take Merlin with them?
Trying to get stuff done, played with the blackfin devkit a bit recently (the kit is great, what you get shipped sucks – dudes, you don’t even ship a useable compiler for making a trivial hello world program – people don’t want to go through your hassely build process to add a new project, etc. etc.) – mostly to help someone else get up and running with the unhelpful stuff that came in the box – did other worky stuff. Was off sick today since I’ve just been feeling rundown and had a headache – so I’ll jig days around and try to compensate in order to avoid having the day as sick leave if possible – the main reason is that I am going away again in a few weeks and don’t want to annoy people.
I’ve confirmed my trip to the US and will be in LA around a month from now. I’ll probably take a routing via Vancouver and Toronto so I get 5 hours in BC on the way out, and a couple in Toronto on the way back. It’s silly money to get longer in BC on the way out – but it’s worth hours and hours of extra travelling to see it just even for 5 hours. Hopefully some of the folks I have been chatting with will be keen to meet up – so I might have to take a couple of internal flights to Seattle and elsewhere, if applicable.
This week features more deadlines and busyness. Proposals loom, work stuff, conference calls, and I plan to be in London for a few hours over the weekend for a play and some cycling. I am listening to more new music – bought a Garbage album at the weekend (why have I been under a musical log since 1995?) and found more Arrogant Worms too. Also discovered Jim Brickman when searching for something completely different. If you stay away for just two days, you get $100 duty free!
I’ll be in Oxford for the compsoc thing this week, might find a Novell event or two too, and am going to be in Cambridge in a few weeks for a meetup. Hopefully certain friends are around then. I am interested in hearing sensible suggestions for film themed party costumes.
For those interested friends and family, I am using gaim a little more these days. My MSN identifier is and has been for a while, my full first name (jonathan) at my domain name. I also have ICQ and Jabber accounts, for those who care. Mail me if you need help finding these other identifiers.
After writing the above, I was catching up on planet #nott and saw WoBL’s posting on WoBLand. Not to be outdone, check out my very own jcmland. You’ll recognise it as basically Canada in disguise, since they generally make good sense, but I reserve the right to be more liberal in places.
Jon.
P.S. I am informed by noodles that the Audioscrobbler XMMS plugin in Debian was fixed a while back. It was broken for me originally, but I have now configured it so you can see what I am listening to and will also find these statistics popping up over at planet jcm.