I've just replaced a few of my DVDs with Blu-ray discs, so I'm selling the titles I've replaced (all region 1):
All are in mint condition and can be yours for just $5 each. First come, first served. Let me know if you're interested.
Satellite image of Tropical Storm Bertha at 2.45pm today, about thirty miles off Bermuda's eastern tip. Thank God this thing had weakened from a hurricane, or we'd be having a rough time of it. As it is, it's just a very rainy, blustery day.
After spending the last few weeks building an application to manage the bookings and admin for Mandy's swim program, this weekend it finally reached beta quality. Mandy is now using it for the bookings she's taking for August, so I'm hoping that there are no nasty bugs in any of my code that might cause any data loss.
I'm still struggling to come up with a good name for it though. When I wrote a similar application for managing the stock at Godet & Young I came up with the name GYPSUM, which a) sounded cool, b) was the name of something associated with a hardware store and c) actually stood for something (Godet and Young Product and SUpplier Management).
The best I've managed so far for Mandy's program in SIMS (Swimming Instinct Management System), but I don't really like it. It's not the name of anything associated with swimming, doesn't really sound that cool (needs more syllables, I think) and it reminds me too much of a crappy video game.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Had a nasty fright while we were washing up in the kitchen this evening, when I turned around and saw a centipede scuttling across the floor.
I'd heard about centipedes in Bermuda before, but this was the first time I'd seen one alive. Based on the ones I'd previously seen dead outside, and pictures like this and this, I thought that they were pretty small. But it turns out that all these were millipedes. This sucker was completely different - red and fat and about 6 inches long. It looked very similar to this.
While I was freaking out and wondering how to stop it getting anywhere near Aidan's room, Mandy grabbed a knife from the counter and chopped it into little bits. I really hope there's no more where it came from.
I'm taking this week off work to write a piece of software to help Mandy manage her summer swim program.
To speed development, I'm writing it in VB.NET, the same language I use at work. As the only licence I have for the full version of Microsoft Visual Studio (for those who don't know, Microsoft Visual Studio is the tool I use to write software, in the same way that Microsoft Word is the tool you might use to write a letter) is for an old version, I've opted to use Visual Studio 2008 Express instead. This is a free, but cut-down, version of the program, which hopefully will be enough for my needs. Unlike the full version, however, it doesn't include Crystal Reports, the tool I usually use to generate reports. Because of that I'm using SQL Server 2005 Express as the database (a free, cut-down version of SQL Server 2005), which gives me the ability to use SQL Server Reporting Services to produce reports instead. It also means I don't have to use Access as the database.
The downside of using all these free tools, apart from the lack of some features I'm used to, is that I'm not that familiar with them. In particular, I've never used Reporting Services to produce reports before, so there's a bit of a learning curve to go through. On the upside, the knowledge I gain could prove useful at work too.
The other problem with Visual Studio Express is that it doesn't support add-ons, which means I'm unable to use the excellent Resharper with it. This is a tool which makes the job of writing code easier, by providing some additional features not available in Visual Studio. I've only just started using it at work, but I'm already missing having to code without it.
Hopefully I can quickly get to grips with everything and have Mandy a working program by the end of the week.
When Mandy went to retrieve our car from No. 1 Shed this morning she found not a wheel-clamp, not a parking ticket, but just a single balloon tied to it.
Weird, but not unwelcome.
Twitter seem to be having a lot of problems at the moment. The badge in the sidebar that displays our twitters hasn't been working for a while, and indeed, I can no longer find the link that lets you set up a badge on Twitter's website. So I've removed it for the time being. The RSS feed should still work, however.
It's not often that you get to see somewhere in Bermuda that you've never seen before. But last weekend we did just that when we took a stroll over to the recently-opened Cooper's Island, Bermuda's newest nature reserve.
It's not really an island - it's the peninsula at the south-eastern tip of St. David's, just past Clearwater Beach, where the old NASA tracking station used to be. You can't drive down there - you have to leave the car at Turtle Bay and walk the rest of the way. Although the area is still littered with rusting and boarded-up buildings and other detritus left behind by the Americans, and the vegetation is a bit scrappy, it's worth visiting for its beaches.
There's one really nice, long beach on the northern side of the peninsula, a second on the southern side that wraps around a small bay, and two small beaches that have in character what they lack in size. Best of all, because the area has only just opened, and because you have to walk to them, they're still relatively empty. It almost feels like you have your own private beach.
There are plans to give the area a major overhaul, turning the old NASA mission control building into a museum and visitor centre, and offering environmental tours and water sports. I really hope that they don't overdevelop it though. Best visit now, though, just in case.
Bermuda is being invaded by millipedes!
I am taking part in the 21st annual Catlin End-to-End on May 3, helping to raise funds for Bermuda charities.
I’m actually only doing the Middle-to-End as I think doing the End-to-End two days before the swim season starts would just be asking for it! Please feel free to come join me on the walk, or, for you West-Enders, get your rear-ends out on the course with a chocolate bar for me (I mean apple – damn baby weight!).
If you'd like to sponsor me, please visit my online pledging page. Funds raised in the 2008 End-to-End will be dedicated to the charitable activities of The WindReach Explorers Summer Camp, The Adult Education School, The Family Centre, The Duke of Edinburgh Award in Bermuda, Greenrock, and Bermuda National Trust. Thanks!
When I order stuff from Amazon.com and send it to my ZipX account, I always say "Group my items into as few shipments as possible". That's because ZipX charge a flat rate of $22.25 for every package (plus duty and additional shipping), so getting multiple shipments gets expensive quickly.
So I when I ordered seasons 1 and 3 of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" from Amazon this week, I was careful to check they were both shipping from the same supplier. They were, and my email confirmation also stated, "order will arrive in 1 shipment".
So naturally I was overjoyed when Amazon then told me they were going to send them as two packages anyway. High fives all round.
I rushed to the website to try to cancel part of the order, but it just laughed in my face and told me they were already being prepared for shipment and it was too late to do anything now.
The really bullshit thing about the whole deal is that the shipping confirmation email for the first package said they were shipping this part of my order separately "to give you quicker service". The second shipping confirmation arrived 90 minutes later. Both packages arrived at ZipX at the same time.
I've emailed Amazon to complain, and suggest that perhaps they should warn customers before splitting orders into multiple shipments when "as few shipments as possible" has been specified. I'm not holding my breath, though.
A couple of months back, I complained about having to enter the cents when making a withdrawal from an HSBC ATM. Since you can only withdraw dollars, this unnecessarily increased the number of buttons you had to push to withdraw cash. Type A personality that I am, I found this very annoying.
This lunchtime I went to withdraw some cash to discover - glory, hallelujah! - that this has finally been fixed. Now you just have to enter the dollars.
I nearly withdrew $9000 as a result, but I'm not complaining.
People who stand in the "1-10 items" line at the supermarket, and then put 16 items down on the conveyor. And cashiers who ring their stuff through anyway, instead of giving them a ticking off and sending them to another line.
Grrr.
Digicel must surely be one of the world’s most amateurish cellphone companies.
Exhibit A: A logo that looks like it was designed by a 12-year-old using WordPad and a large font.
Exhibit B: The ridiculous upside-down envelopes they send their bills out in. Hold it so the logo and address are the right way up and the envelope opens at the bottom. When I first saw one of these envelopes I assumed it was just one bad print run that they were using up. But here we are, several years later, and they’re still sending them out. Don’t they realise how unprofessional it makes them seem?
Exhibit C: An inability to bill us properly. We’ve set up a direct debit with them, so every month they take what we owe them direct from our bank account. Last month our bills came to $40.50 and $41.50. They just took two lots of $40 from our account. This month, our bills show the deficit in the breakdown, yet the total amount due is just the sum of the new charges this month.
Hopeless.
Over the weekend I made some improvements to this site’s RSS feeds and email alerts.
Feed improvements:
The improvements also allow me to track how many of you are using the feeds and what news readers you are using.
If you currently use either of this site's feeds, to get the benefit of the new features you should drop and then recreate your subscriptions using the new feed URLs (this one for posts; this one for comments).
Email alert improvements:
If you are an existing email alert subscriber you should first unsubscribe by clicking the link at the bottom of the mails you currently receive. Then re-subscribe by entering your email address in the "Updates by email" section of the sidebar and clicking "subscribe".
PC: Mass Effect
Heavily story-driven sci-fi RPG. So far I think I've spent more time selecting dialog options in conversations and reading log entries than I have running around shooting things. It makes for a relatively slow paced game, but one that's much more compelling.
The Dark Knight
A fantastic movie, with outstanding acting by Heath Ledger as the Joker, although it probably goes on for a little too long. It's a dark movie though and definitely not suitable for young kids.
Thomas W. Phelan: 1-2-3 Magic: Effective Discipline for Children 2-12
The opening chapters take a while to get to the point, suffering from way too much self-promotion. Still, as long as it works, I won't complain.
Rachid Taha: Made in Medina
One of the reasons I love the movie Black Hawk Down is the music. I only learned today that this guy was one of the contributors. It's an energetic fusion of Middle Eastern and Western rhythmns. I bought it on the strength of Barra Barra (the track from Black Hawk Down) alone, but I think I'm going to love the rest of it too.
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