Quite a good day... Manchester United beat Southampton 3-2 in a very exciting and tense match, we actually arrived early enough to have something to eat and drink before the game started, and Saha scored on his debut...

I have decided to get another pair of headphones, and have taken the plunge bigtime : A pair of Bose Noise Cancelling headphones - A snip at onlt £275... Gulp... Ah well you can't take it with you... I suppose the DVD recorder will have to wait till later in the year now, perhaps my Xmas present?

Not too sure about Rubens album, a bit too much "Hip Hop" and not enough "Soul" for my taste... Can't win them all...

Good things come to those who wait... I finally have my 1 MByte ADSL connection, I have got my bike back home, I am going to Old Trafford tommorow to watch United play Southampton, and Opening night (MK II) went off without a hitch last night (Although the audience was only about 60% complete)

Amanda managed "Front of House" without incident and a reasonable profit was still made, in spite of the limited number of punters.

Remember I said my legs were killing me yesterday - I was wrong, that was just pain : Today they are killing me! And Finally I managed to write my first working application in VB.Net 2003. A simple One arm bandit type of game, but it worked, and it seemed quite straight forwards.

last night, my music of choice was "Clay Aiken - The Measure of a Man". Clay was runner up in last years American Idol, and it really is rather a good album... sort of like a male Dido?

Tonight, it is "Ruben Studdard - Soulful". Ruben was the Winner of last years American Idol, I'll let you know how good it is (or not) later...

The Good News : Opening night for "Cinderella" was not infront of an half filled theatre.
The Bad News : The show got cancelled, a total of 7 people turned up, audience, cast, crew combined... Tickets will be valid for next Wednesday instead.

I took the bus into work this morning...
The Good News : My bike was still there this morning, and the roads were fairly clear
The Bad News : The battery was too flat to start the bike. I ended up calling the AA out, and within a few seconds of the jump leads being connected, the bike started.

I have left it at work tonight, the roads are clear, but as usual our estate is still a skating rink. I'll get the bus in again tommorow morning, and ride back...

I had another 3 miles or so of walking on icy pavements today - my legs are killing me tonight.

Oh My God!!! Less than 10 mm of snow this afternoon, and the whole of Birmingham, the Hagley Road and the M5 (North and southbound) is gridlocked.

I managed to get about 1.5 miles on the bike before all the slush started to freeze - and that took about 1.5 hours! I have had to leave the bike parked up in a side road and walk the rest of the way (4 miles) - I finally got home at 19:40, exhausted and wringing wet with sweat. It wouldn't be so bad, but I had 30 minutes on the cross trainer at lunchtime!

All I have to worry about now, is how do I get to work in the morning - Will I be able to get to work in the morning? - and how and when do I go to get my bike back! Will it even still be there!

It's Opening night for Phoenix Productions first panto "Cinderella", I hope they are not playing to a half empty house!

Flippin' Heck!! 45 minutes it just took to install VB.Net on my PC... And I still have to go through it all again on the laptop....

It comes with a "Getting Started" manual, a large number of class description Posters and 6 CD's - Yes 6!!!

There is a Windows 2000 SP 4 disk, a 'Prerequisites' disc, 3 MSDN Library CD's and finally the VB.net CD. This has now swallowed approximately 2 GB of my disc space... Good job I have plenty available!

Now all I need to do, is a) find time to go thro' it all again on the laptop, and b) even more time to sit down with the book and work out how to use it. The one thing that is immediately obvious, is, it is very different to VB6.

better put the laptop on charge, I think I need a full battery before I start!

Did a little more experimenting with CSS on the webpage yesterday. On the Holidays page, I have replaced the table construct with more CSS. It looks the same in the browser, but should allow future changes of layout and/or colour scheme to be done far more easily. It also renders very quickly, and the page is smaller...

Well one of my new "toys" has arrived in the post this morning - VB.net Standard (2003 edition). I don't have time to install it at the moment, I am off to the Gym in 1/2 hour... All I need now is for Orange to call me to change the phone!

I have finally sat down and spent a little time playing with the Website re-design. I am attempting to use a Dreamweaver template and a .CSS style sheet to handle most of the work, leaving me to just cut and paste the actual data from the old site to the new one.

I am not sure, at this stage, how effective it will be but it seems OK at the moment. You can see the "Work In progress" here

I have decided to avoid a Graphical interface altogether at present. There are two reasons behind this 1) I am interested to see what I can do without using graphics, and 2) There is enough to learn as it is, without the complication of graphics.

The biggest problem I have using graphics: The background colour... If I change the colour of the background at any time, it seems to require a HUGE amount of work to regenerate all the graphics to look correct.

I have noticed, just how quickly the fwe working pages load and render.. Do I really need graphical buttons.... Uhhhhhhmmmmmmm

Boy, that was a crap course!! I have been down in Maidenhead for the past two days on a "Call Pilot Networking" training course at Nortel. Most of the exercises failed, for all four groups of students...

On the plus side, I went to the cinema last night... Runaway Jury. It was pretty good, quite accurate to the book (at least as I remembered it, wasn't it a tabacco company in the book?)

And I have finally finished the "Dark Materials" trilogy on Audiobook. That's one good thing about a four hour round trip in the hire car!

Still no Visual Basic, no Nokia 6600.... Not Fair:::: I WANT MY TOYS!

Double Doh!!

As if having to wait for my new cell phone wasn't bad enough, I've had an e-mail today from Amazon... My VB.NET is out of stock and it will be another week to 10 days!

I also had a e-mail from BT confirming my order to upgrade to 1MB ADSL, but they have got the full price on it..... Lets hope I get that sorted out before they start billing me!

Not a good day from a "Boy's Toys" perspective!

Doh! Another text message from Orange - STILL no 6600 in stock... I am starting to sulk now!

On the plus side, I have just ordered an upgrade to 1MB ADSL connection, the upgrade is FREE, and BT are doing an Employee special offer rate of £33 per month (£41 for normal punters), as my curreny employee offer has expired that means I only need to pay an extra£5 per month to get double speed connection.....

Now if only I could get my new phone.....

It's been a bit of a busy week, one way and another... Work has started to pick up again after the xmas lull, and I have spent about 7 hours finishing the Program for the panto.

Did I ever mention that my daughter, Amy, in a drama group : Phoenix Productions? No, well she is... Amanda has got the post of 'Front of House manager' and is responsible for Program & refreshment sales, and I got volunteered with designing the program. My own fault, I was very critical of the standard of the last one, and when asked "could you do better" was daft enough to say YES!

Finally finished it yesterday morning, burnt two copies to CD (Publisher 2003 & PDF format) and handed them over to the producer. The show starts in just over 1 week, so it was a bit borderline. However when things like the running order are still being changed with only two weeks to go, what can you do?

I bought a copy of Publisher 2003 specifically for the job, and I have to say - It's excellent. The last time I tried this program was version 3, many years ago, and it was awful. So there you are, some MS software DOES get better in newer versions, and it not ALL feature bloat.

I have already started on the program for the summer show, which is not till June. I fully expect that it won't get finished untill the last moment again, but I can get the 'Look and Feel' approved, and the basics in place now - or at least as soon as the Panto is finished in a couple of weeks.

I have been impressed with the Laptop performance too, 2.5 hours continuous battery use still 40% left. I finished the battery off by playing MP3's for another hour, so 3 1/2 hours on a full charge would seem to be realistic... Not too shabby!

On Friday, I went to a lunchtime Bodypump class, different instructor to my morning classes : My God do I ache today... I don't think I have EVER worked so hard (physically) in my life....

No news on the Nokia 6600 front, or at least no good news: I had a text message from Orange on Thursday to say that they still have no stocks. At least they are keeping me informed... always have liked Orange customer service.

Today, I have been playing with the configuration on my Archos MP3 player. Running Rockbox firmware you can save multiple configuration files to allow you to easily change everything about the player for different uses. For Example: I now have a Walkman and an In_Car setup. The In_Car config, sets a lower volume level, flat equalisation, flips the screen up-side down, loads a larger font and a simplified 'While Playing Screen'.

In the process, I managed to overwrite my Walkman WPS configuration, so having spent about an hour recreating it, I have 'Cut & Pasted' both WPS files to my Website. At least I can't loose them again!

I downloaded a copy of "BBC BASIC for Windows" last week, boy what a trip down memory lane. That coupled with the work I have been doing on websites recently (Home & Work) has re-ignited my desire to do some programming. I have now ordered a copy of VB.Net 2003 from Amazon - £87, not too bad, and that should be here sometime this week. I want to make my own Playlist generator as my first project, and maybe a version 2 of my Rockbox configuration prog, it's been 12 months since I last worked on that....!

Ohhhh! :-(

Lady from Orange did phone me, as promised, but they are out of stock of the 6600....! She will call me back in "About a week" when they have some more in. Hope it's not too long, I want it for next Thursday; I am on a course in Maidenhead (Again) and want the toys to keep me occupied during the evening!

Talking of toys, I got a Cassette adaptor for my Archos over the weekend and tried it out yesterday... it works a treat. When I first put it in, the sound was all distorted and totally un-listenable. I then realised I had got the volume on the car stereo at only 2... Normally too quite to hear, I then tuned down the volume on the walkman from 85% to 65% and it worked fine. I have now saved a configuration called In-Car, and another called Walkman so I can quickly switch between the two settings. Man, I love this Rockbox firmware...

OK, so the Gym hurt... My legs have been like lead all weekend. Not that it stopped me getting back to the Bodypump class this morning... Boy am I going to suffer tommorow!

Over the weekend, I have been playing some more with the re-design of my website, using CSS rather than tables. The test page is here... let me know if you get problems with it... ;-)

Went into the greenhouse yesterday, everything was covered with a grey fungus,,, I have had to have a major chop at most of the cuttings etc. to clear out the rubbish. I'ts amazing tho' some of the geranium cuttings are actually flowering. I have removed these, to give the roots chance to develop. and several of the other plants are budding left, right and centre!

Back to work today, it was was nice to have a week of doing nothing. Sometimes you just need to chill...

Have been playing with Access 2003, updating the CD database etc. All my Macro's have now been converted into VBA code, and DIGITALLY SIGNED!! Unfortunately this has re-awakened the desire to program, and I am now contemplating buying VB.NET 2003 (£87)!! Damn will this spending never end?

Talking about spending, I noticed last week, that the Nokia 6600 is now available on Orange pay monthly. I called Orange to find out what the damage would be... On my current Talk 60 plan : £240!!! However if I up my talkplan to 120 (Extra £10 per month), the phone is £120, Ok over 12 months its the same cost, but I can have more calls, and it's not all cash up front.

They requested a change to my talkplan, which comes into effect today. The very nice lady from Orange is due to call me back today at 13:00 to sort out ordering the new phone... Can't wait...

Took the laptop to Amy's drama group last night: I am doing the program, and was very impressed with the battery performance. I was up and running in MS Publisher 2003 for two and a half hours, constantly changing things around, saving, and changing again... and still had 33% left!!

One thing I did realise last night, there is a *lot* of politics in laying out a program... Costumes: Before or After "Front of House" etc etc etc

Never mind, its looking good now, just waiting for the adverts and photographs so I can get an almost finished version for aproval...

OK, I am now off to the Gym... should be fun...

Yesterday, I went to the Gym and had a much more aggresive work-out, and boy! do I know it... My arms and shoulders are very stiff today. Who said it was supposed to be good for you.

If I have loosened off by tommorow, I will go again... just a sucker for punishment I suppose

Just finished updating the Music listing on my website for last year. 38 CD's I bought in the 12 months !! I thought all this MP3 stuff was supposed to be reducing record sales...

As a matter of interest, the 38 purchases break down as follows :
New music by a 'New' artist : 9 (24%)
New Music by an 'Established' artist : 3 (8%)
Back Catalogue of an 'Established' artist : 17 (44%)
Audio Books : 1
Various Artist Compilations : 1

I do not really expect the large % of back catalogue to continue into 2004, and I have just about had enough of compilations; there are only so many ways to repackage the same 'couple-o-hundred' tracks...

The good thing is the relatively large % of 'New artist' purchases. Perhaps the reason that record sales have been increasing recently is the greater quality and variety of artists being released...

Got my copy of OneNote and Access 2003 from Microsoft this morning; I have installed Access on both Laptop and Desktop (allowed in the T&C's) and it works fine. Really don't see any differenec between 2003 and 2000 versions at present (except the obvious cosmetic makeover), but will use it over the next few days and let you know if I find anything. One Note, I have installed on the desktop, still not too sure what it's all about...

This is the first Blog entry to be done from the laptop... can you tell?

I have finally took the time to sort out recording to the Archos from the Turntable on my HiFi, and have spent a couple of hours recording some of my old singles to MP3. I am now recording a couple of Albums that a) Are not available of CD or b) I don't like enough to buy again, but don't want to lose.

Cinderella was absolutely brilliant... Julian Clarey was wicked without being too rude; the show was good; the acting was up to usual Panto standards (ie OK) but Dave Benson Phillips (Playhouse Disney's 'Big Dave') was brilliant, the Kids especially loved him - Oh Yes They Did...

We had front row seats, and I was picked on by the two ugly sisters right at the start!

The general feeling from all 50 people in our party was, can we do it again next year. Amanda has requested 75 seats for next years show "Jack and the Beanstalk".

The 'shopping' wasn't so bad after all, I suggested "The Trafford Centre" and off we went to Manchester. The traffic on the Motorway was light, the centre was busy, without being too bad, and we got everything we were after - including the coat! By the time we left, the local traffic was almost Gridlocked, and it too 45 minutes just to get back to the motorway, However from then on, it was a good drive back home.

I was in work yesterday, but with about 5 phonecalls and 3 faults between three of us, it was a pretty relaxed day. I suspect that next week will be a little busier, but I'm off so I don't really care!

I went to the gym, for the first time in three weeks, at lunchtime. Nothing too strenuous, just a nice relaxed workout designed to wake a few muscle groups back up. I intend to go two ot three times next week, with the aim of starting back to Bodypump on the following Monday.

Today, we are going to the Pantomime "Cinderella" at the Birmingham Hippodrome. Should be fun.

Happy New Year to you all.

Three days back at work, it was deadly quiet, so boring... there were only 3 of us in most of the time with about enough work for 1 busy person, or 2 if you wanted a really quiet day! On top of which I managed to pick up a cold sore on my bottom lip!

On the plus side, I have finished my on-call session, and am now free from that burden... No more taking my cellphone to bed hoping it won't go off at 02:00 am!

New years eve was spent at the Amanda's mom's with here family. The two kids have stayed there for a couple of days, giving Amanda and I chance to do what we want... So yesterday - Pictures! We started off the day with some shopping at the 'Fort' in Birmingham. I finally got my Trainers and a couple of casual shirts, Amanda failed to find a coat!. I then took her to see "Return of the King" at 'Star City'. I saw the film it just after release - She loved it, and I enjoyed watching it again. We finished off the evening with a meal at 'Ask', a classy Pizza and Pasta restaurant.

Now today, my cold sore is almost gone and the postman has just delivered 4 tickets for Manchester United v Southampton (Sat 21st Jan 2004 12:30) - North Stand, 3rd tier (a long way up!) level with the half-way line. Arthur Finikin and myself are going, of course, but our respective spouses are not available that day - damn! Barry's wife; Carol has been wanting to go to Old Trafford for years is now going, and I am asking around for a 4th person. Should not be too difficult... and if all else fails Barry has agreed to go.

We have also booked a weekend away in May at Llandudno (Wedding Aniversary) so Plenty to look forward to in 2004... Starting with a days shopping :-( an Amanda goes in search of a coat again.