Currently, I'm on a bit of a fitness kick. There is a motivation for this, which is a monetary one, and will be explained later, once the level has been met. This has been helped no end by having a cottage to stay in during the week instead of staying in hotels, which means I can eat properly and not curry and weiss bier all week! I miss the evenings with the team though, and I've not had curry in weeks!

Off for dinner tonight as it's our friends 30th birthday today, he's 30 going on 50 but my suggestion of slippers and a pipe as a present didn't go down well. Some people have no sense of humour!

Well, that was a hectic weekend!

Friday my wife was arriving to our little place in the midlands, and as I had some time to spare I did an Ikea run to Coventry, picked up the things we forgot last time we were there. Which means tea lights, another beside lamp and a foot stool. The place is looking good, just needs a few pictures up to make it feel more homely. Popped out to the pub to meet up with some friends in the village, and the scientific result is that there is a pub equidistant from both places, a massive 10 minute walk. Which is handy!

Saturday morning a bike ride on the Grand Union Canal was planned, which runs from behind the village from Birmingham to London. We didn't go that far, but it's a fantastic place all of 5 minutes ride from the front door. Back in time to watch the qualifying for the GP, before heading to Stratford with friends to see Hamlet, with David Tenent and Patrick Stewart. It was superb, long but once you tune into what's being said it's very enjoyable. Not my usual thing but would go again. Stratford itself is very pretty, obviously a lot of money there! Dinner was in a very nice place called Lambs, on Sheep St. People in Stratford obviously need to work on the naming of things!

Sunday was a bit lazier, bit of shopping and the GP, and then over to friends for a Sunday roast and wine, and a little celebration as it was 2 years since the now wife and I got engaged. Time flies...

Would seem I'm slipping again...

So what changes in 10 days? Well, in the grand scheme of things, not that much! Work's moved on to the new module, which is moving along nicely. Healthwise is a worry, been getting solid headaches most days which the doctor is putting down to tension headaches. I put it down to peering at the laptop screen, so I'm trying not to do that! Seems to be getting better though and not anything more serious. Family health worries no doubt don't help. These things are sent to try us though.

Good result for Scotland last night. I had fears, Iceland is never an easy place to go, but with a bit of a makeshift team the right result came out. Norway at home next, a game you'd think we should win as they only managed a draw with Iceland at home.

Still, it makes better reading than that farce of a Grand Prix result. Amazing race, superb driving skills and very exciting, the best last 5 laps this century even. And then the FIA try and f**k it up by deciding the Lewis cut the chicane and gained an advantage. I'm fed up with the FIA interfering with races in a manner that is not consistent, and nor fair to the viewer. If F1 is a sport, let them race. If it's entertainment, let them race and not become pantomime.

Anyway, an interesting thing came my way about Canon cameras. Turns out, some bloke has worked out how to hack the humble IXUS. The genius bit? It runs on the SD card. Take the card out and the camera is factory fresh. I'll try it out next time I've got my camera nearby. LINK

So just back from a wet holiday in the UK. A few days walking up round Hadrians Wall was certainly very interesting. You forget that there is also so much other Roman stuff up there to look at as well as just the wall. They were also so very clever with their engineering. For example, they built every fort in the same design as visiting soldiers would immediately know where everything was. That's very logical. They were big into the baths, and you can see the same design for the heating of the water in the forts near the wall as we saw in Crete and Cyprus, with elevated floors for the hot air to get underneath. They also had to build water storage tanks and to get the flow right, they built them at the exact height and size to maintain a constant flow. That's genius, and I know plumbers here who could do with looking into that...

A couple of days in the lakes followed, which has some amazing scenery. It's just a shame that so many people go there, it was mobbed in the towns every day, but quietened down in the evening. If you wanted to park and go walking you had to be there by 10 which wasn't an issue for us. The walking is very good though, really enjoyed it.

All in all, a good week, relaxing and nice to avoid airports for a change!

Went to Ikea last night to get some stuff for the new cottage. Why is it you ALWAYS have to buy candles in Ikea? We've still got about 500 tealights (and that's not an exaggeration!) left over from the wedding in a combination of colours, but apparently that's not enough! We usually burn 4 at time, so that's going to take us 125 days to get through that lot. Which is a long way away yet!

The new Verve album comes out next week, but they've put it up in full on MySpace so while I've been writing some slides I've been listening to it. It's epic. Proper old school music. It's good to have them back.

My car is in for an oil service today, so I've got a Mini Cooper Clubman for the day. It's good fun, and the interior is still as classy as ever (although I think there were aspects of the old interior that looked more expensive - a fair amount of plastic in this one on the center console.) It's slightly underpowered for me, I drove an old Cooper recently and it was a real rocket compared to this. But then it does have a lot more doors and no more interior space. It's quite funky though, so if I was in the market for an impractical small car, this would be it :-) It does have some very nice alloys on it though - powder coated black JCW special edition wheels, which are at least £1000. I'm so careful parking it, but why on earth would you fit them to a loan car!!!

Todays news is that there is no news!

Apparently we are moving desks in the office. Now, I have a nice desk in the office as it gets lots of natural light, which is brilliant. I'm apparently moving to a desk which has no natural light whatsoever in an area where you can't open the windows! Deep joy. But with my current date it's only for two weeks so will see. I'm not really sure why we are moving tbh, people want all the module team together but it's a bit late for that. Ho hum, I'm sure our great and wonderful leaders know what they are doing.

My car is going in for it's service tomorrow, so I'm being loaned a brand new 3 series saloon which is going to be interesting as it's an option for when I eventually replace my current car.

Holiday soon, so plans are afoot for some walking in the north of England for a few days which should be great so long as it's dry! After the honeymoon we decided that we'd probably flown enough this year on holiday so staying local is the plan.

A good weekend, Saturday was spent discovering the local area where the new cottage is. Ended up watching some Olympics on the new TV (it's SO nice!) with some friends who were cooking us dinner on Saturday night. On route we have to pass 4 pubs. We know this as we tried a couple, and have worked out a nice route for one lazy Saturday, which will end up in the Indian at the end of the route. Perhaps one for the forthcoming holiday!

Sunday was spent at Silverstone watching the GT racing. It was a good race, plenty of action with the Ferrari just beating the Viper who ran out of fuel on the in-lap after the race. Morale victory to Aston no 42 though, who was leading for 90 minutes until the driver change and never came back out as they couldn't get insurance for the 2nd driver and of course, no insurance brokers for race cars are open at the weekend. Which is surely a bit of an error on their part! Highlight though was the VW race, where any VW can enter. They are then equalised by weight, so you get a brand new Golf GTi competing with a Jetta, Beatles, Polos and perhaps my favourite, the Caddy van. Hilarious.

So today my wife gets the keys to the cottage that will see us no longer staying in hotels and eating out every night in the week we're away. It's going to be great! The place is ideal, in the village we are looking to move to when we eventually sell up. And perhaps most excitingly, it doesn't come with a TV which means I finally get to buy a big screen LCD TV! So a 32" Panasonic is on the agenda for tomorrow which will then be plugged into the Wii for some big screen Mario action!

I see that one of the North Koreans has been stripped of his medals at the Olympics for failing a drugs test. Which made me wonder - what drugs does someone who won medals in air pistols need to take?!? I assume it's something to stop him getting itchy trigger finger but the last time I did air rifle shooting I was awesome and hit anything and everything I was aiming at, so how hard can it be!!! And it was snowing, with gloves on, so hardly ideal conditions. Olympics? I could have been a contender ;-)

Fuel

So with the increasing fuel costs I've been keeping track of my fuel usage (ah, spreadsheets :-)) for the past couple of months. It's interesting reading, as it calculates average MPG and miles per tank. On average, I put in 48 litres per fill, and get 338 miles from that, which works out as an average of 33.9MPG. Not fantastic, but for a large fast coupe it's almost respectable! Not that long ago 30MPG was considered excellent! What is scary is that since the 14th June I've paid out £580 just on fuel, most of which I recover from work as I do very little private miles these days, but it makes you think.

Of course, I could change the car and get a diesel, however no amount of MPG improvements will get me in one as I'm just not convinced that they are any better for the environment than petrol as the particulates are just too unknown. Plus, the additional cost of buying a diesel car and the extortionate cost of the fuel itself would mean any savings are pretty marginal. As such, I'll take a car that sounds great, gives me reasonable MPG and drives better - who wants to change gear at 4000rpm anyway?

In saying that, I'm driving my car a lot more considerately recently, and you know what? It makes nearly no difference to the MPG I get! How crazy is that? Madness to me....

So, I've not posted on here in a long time, sorry but things have been manic!

Summary since April? Well, got married (all went really well, had a brilliant day!), went on honeymoon (which also went really well, amazing scenery and animals in Botswana, and amazing food and beaches in Mozambique), went back to work and all back to normal!

Been keeping busy at home with some DIY as the aim is to still move away from London, but the current economic climate may make that tricky, so will see what happens. However we've managed to do all the little jobs to the flat that we've been putting off for a while, so it's all good really.

Family - not seen my folks since the wedding, so we're planning a wee trip up there sometime, soon hopefully.

Work, well it was all going well but the project seems to be taken over by accountants and as such, isn't the place it was. There is a very weird atmosphere at times and it's not conducive to what was a very enjoyable place to work. It seems client knowledge isn't valued anymore, and some very good people have left the project, which is very disappointing. It will be interesting to see what happens, as I'm only covered for another 3 weeks. Can't really say too much more, but work itself is a bit of a disappointing place in general which is having an effect on morale.

Anyway, will try and keep this going again, since I got my new phone (Sony C902) with a cracking data deal, I should be able to do it remotely!

Right, back to the grind...

Well, last post for a wee while as I go off to get married and then honeymoon. The weather is looking like it might just hold for us and everything is in place.

Can't wait.

I'm knackered! Yesterday I drove up to Worcester for the last time before I get married. Pleasant enough drive, usual hatefulness of a Monday morning in London though. I'm sure it takes people till Tuesday to engage their brains round here. Anyway a good days work in a quiet office and then a gym trip before heading to a local pub for dinner. However, plan B was quickly engaged as they had just shut the kitchen! So we went next door to an Italian I've driven past for 2 years but never been in. Turns out to be a find, with good traditional Italian food, simply cooked and all fresh stuff. Just what you want!

A good nights sleep was interrupted at 6am by the lorries emptying the bins in the street. Rather than waste the time, I got up and headed to the gym for a workout.

So today I'm feeling slightly virtuous but still knackered! Still, last day in Worcester for 4 weeks is always a pleasant feeling :-)

Bit of a schoolboy error this one. Driving the only Aston Martin in existence for the new Bond film, the driver drops it on a bend and ends up in Lake Garda.

Now, you can picture the poor guys dilemma.

I'm on an Italian lakeside road. There are lots of great corners. There are mountains all around to rebound the sound. Maybe I'll just nail it the once. Arrg!!!!!


Bet he's gutted. And very wet.

Photo cube

Take one set of photos, take one template, add a sprinkle of good inkjet printer, and you too can make your own photo cube!

http://blog.flickr.net/en/2007/11/05/cube-a-rific/

Mr Amazon has let me down.

I ordered two new ipods last week for myself and my future wife. Duly dispatched, I checked my order today to see when they would be delivered. Apparently, they were delivered yesterday by the hugely useless Home Delivery Network. So a call was placed to Amazon as you cannot phone HDN directly. Turns out they had been left on the dorstep. 300 quids worth of ipod left in the street. Is it any wonder they went walking? That's if they were even delivered.

My Amazon apologized profusely, and a case will be opened against HDN and the driver. My new ipod will arrive next week now, first class registered post with no questions - Amazons customer service was brilliant. Frustrating as I will now struggle to get it all setup as I wanted before the wedding, but still, better than nothing.

Now I don't want to get ahead of myself, but it's looking great for another Aberdeen European adventure :-)

A mighty win at Celtic park keeps the dream on track, just when the season was beginning to look flat. The one real benefit of working away from home is that I have easy access to hotels and bars who have SKY sports and Setanta sports, which means I can watch the games!

Now, just need to beat Queen Of The South, who are sitting 4th in First Division in the semi to setup a likely final with Rangers. As they are going to finish 1st or second, we'll get a euro place for reaching the final.

It's important to do this, as the club are planning a major restructuring this summer so European football will be a draw for us, plus the money is always helpful. And as Scotland are so high up the world rankings now, we'll have less pre-qualification to do for the cup as well, which means group stages will be potentially easier to reach.

It just gets better and better!

Busy weekend of wedding activity. Saturday was spent in Brighton, shopping for various presents which went very well. Brighton seems to have a cracking feel to it, I've been there only a few times but enjoyed the atmosphere every time. Lunch was had in Food For Friends, which is vegetarian but don't let that put you off! I had an amazing frittata while the missus had a very good parsnip and goats cheese tart.

Sunday was up early to head to Kingston to buy our honeymoon luggage, as we've only got 15KG each, including hand luggage, for the trip. This will seriously affect the packing! So a lightweight bag has been bought so we can squeeze in those essential extras. It's actually been an interesting experience as we've had to look at everything we are taking with us and how heavy it is, so the camera is much lighter than the other options, same for binoculars and even walking boots! I don't think that I'll need them on the beach, but while out on safari I don't fancy walking in elephant poo in flip flops!.

The rest of yesterday was spent doing wedding paperwork which is very dull but essential. Nearly done though...

A trip to the nations capital today, with the aim of cracking on with various pieces of work. So a meeting room was booked and an early train caught.

So far, all is well, but it amazed me that the office was still dead by 8:45. I'll need to bear this in mind for the future when I can never get a desk! Still, at least the trains were consistent as there were no seats to be seen anywhere. It scares me sometimes that there is an 8 carriage train every three minutes from my station to Waterloo, and yet in the morning every carriage is rammed, every seat taken and people standing up all the way. Usually me. Where do all these people go? Where do they all work?

One for another day to ponder.

So, I've spent a lot of time recently suffering from work overload and personal life overload. It really can grind you down!

Work is mad, trying to get project stuff sorted out, and then on top of that there is the admin. In all my time I swear it's getting worse. This year I'm trying to get a promotion. To do that, they seem to have made it as tedious as possible to put people off. You have three documents to complete, all of which are long and cover essentially the same thing. And you just know it's not going to be worth all the time and effort, the sleepness nights.

Wedding plans are coming on, guest lists still cause grief though. That's the single biggest one just now!

Had a great birthday weekend last weekend, which included my stag do in Edinburgh. It's always nice to catch up with my mates as I don't see them all that often, and they were all on good form. It starts the eternal pondering, why do I live so far away from them all? The answer? So I can get good work on projects (which are great) and complete the mundane paperwork. Which drives you mental.

On the upside, it's less than 7 weeks now until the wedding and I'm getting a bit excited by it now - there is light at the end of the planning!

Right, now back to the paperwork...

A busy weekend that, I'm still recovering!

Friday night was spent in John Lewis, doing gift list things - sounds fun, is actually hard work! So many decisions to make, not helped when your trying to furnish a house you don't own yet (we'll move this year - definitely!). Saturday was spent in London, doing present shopping before heading up to the British museum to see the Chinese Terracotta Warriors. While it was very busy, it was well worth it and really gives you a sense of the scale of what Emperor Qin was up to. You also begin to wonder how many other finds there are in that field in China as they keep finding more and more, the latest being some terracotta musicians and wild birds to keep him amused in the afterlife.

Sunday was spent finishing the gift list which threw up a new object of desire. It's far too expensive to put on a gift list but the sound is incredible and the styling is superb. If you want the ultimate sounds and style for your ipod in the house, this is it: Link Might be treating myself when we do eventually move house for that bad boy! The bass is awesome.