On life and Halloween

Well, this is the first 'life' update for a while, and as is typical for me I haven't really done much :) I guess the biggest event was a family holiday at Butlins down in Minehead that was fun. Spent time with some members of the family I don't see much (my Dad, my step-mother and my brother, sister, step-brothers and their partners) and had a fun time. One of the more fun things I did was convincing Anita to allow me to spend out for the time on their climbing, hire-wire course thing (I have no idea what to actually call it, so it's a thing :)). Anita took some pictures of me doing this, and probably the best one was:

(hosted on my sisters Picasa gallery)

This was me making my 'leap of faith', where I had absolutely no faith and asked for the trapeze to be moved as close as possible. I didn't realise until I saw this picture just how close that was and how cowardly I was. All I can say is that up on the top of that totem pole, the trapeze seemed completely out of reach and I was worried I'd jump off into nothing!


So, that's my current life covered so onto future events. Anita and myself are going to a halloween party this weekend and have been told that fancy dress is required. We both have our costumes mostly figured out but I'm trying to decide on the last part of mine... what to wear underneath the mask I have (of some hideous ogre). My current consideration is to go as a cross-dressing hideous ogre and borrow a skirt and tight black top from Anita for the occasion :) I'll post pics up of my final outfit (and of Anita's, who is going as either a witch or as Susan D'eath depending on which she feels like explaining through the haze of alcohol) and if I don't chicken out, feel free to poke fun of me wearing women's clothing :P

Back on the road to reality

As happens every few months, I'm attempting to get my head around the content of 'The Road to Reality' again. This time I'm taking the more sedate approach though, reading it on the way to and from work and putting the book down when I find I'm getting distracted and not concentrating on the content. So I'm not reading it when I'm too tired, like when I tried reading it before sleeping at night (which also means I'm not getting odd looks from Anita :) ), and I'm not just looking at the pages without the content making it through to my brain as also frequently happens.

The result? I'm not sure yet. It's certainly taking longer as it can be 2 or 3 days before I get through a chapter, and as such I haven't yet really progressed beyond my normally familiar territory of complex numbers and the real number calculus. I think I have a better grasp of hyperbolic geometry from this re-read, and I also think I've grasped the explanations of power series and the like better.

I guess it'll be a little while before this style of reading pays off, but if it does then I may finally grasp some of the more interesting maths in a much more in-depth fashion. Whether this will be useful, I don't know but at least I'll feel like I finally learnt something more from this great book :)

Updates, updates, updates

Well, I forgot to blog at all last week... I think it's understandable though, as I'm still getting used to the commute from the new house, me and Anita were painting over the weekend and I'm working a few days a week now out of an office where I don't have net access (everyone else does, just I haven't been set up on the network yet :( ). That said, a missed week is nothing new in the world of Shared Illusions ;) (neither is a missed month, or possibly even a missed year...)

So onto the updates... well, the new house is slowly getting sorted and we have done a chunk of painting (well, Anita did the toilet and bathroom and we both did the kitchen). That's all we have paint for currently though so there's a break coming up.

I'm going to try and take up a martial art again. We've found a school close by, and I have an intro session on Friday. Should be fun, and I'll hopefully start to lose some of this weight I've gained over the last 6 years of uni and work :)

Me and Anita also saw Harry Potter last weekend. I have to say, I'm getting more and more disappointed with the films. This latest one seemed almost unintelligible with the parts cut out, and some strange additions into the film sequence that added nothing and took screen time away from sections that could really have used it for exposition. I'm very tempted once the last film is done (or 2 films as I've heard they are going to split it into two parts) to sit someone who hasn't read the books or seen the films down in front of them, get them to watch all the films and see if they end up with even an inkling of what was meant to have been happening :)

Moving, a psudo-final update

We've moved, we have furniture and we have a decent amount unpacked... it's starting to look like a home rather than a slightly (well, very) run down unoccupied house :)

I need a break though, and so does Anita... she is getting fairly ill from doing too much and my legs feel like jelly two days after the majority of the moving... if I ever consider a first story flat again, I'll shoot myself. I went up and down those stairs at least 100 times over 3 days, and there were 17 steps each way!

More moving

Well, the furniture arrived today, and pretty much all the hassle I mentioned earlier has been sorted out :) We have a decent collection there, just need to move some old furniture out the way to get the new stuff sorted.

Then just clean, finish moving all our stuff from our current place over the weekend, clean the old place, hand back keys...

Why is moving such a hassle? :(

Not really got any other news at the moment... work progresses as it normally does, life goes on and so on.

Oh, and our new broadband connection is connected up on Friday, which should mean we don't have a hitch in our connectivity over the move... can't ask for better than that :) We've switched to Virgin for phone and broadband... mainly because we get more bang for our buck (faster broadband and digital tv for the same price as just broadband with BT) and because BT wanted to charge £120 to get an engineer out to move the line, simply because there hadn't been a BT line at our new rental for 2 years. In a glowing recommendation for Virgin's sales team, when I told them that I then got free setup :) I can't guarantee it would work for everyone, but it just goes to show how important good customer service is.

Moving time

Well, it's getting close to the time when me and Anita are going to be moving out.

We've gotten the keys for the new place (with a truckload of hassle that's still being sorted), a load of furniture, etc. from Newcastle is arriving on Tuesday to fill the place up and our junk in our current flat is being moved next weekend, ready for us to clear out of here and put this small flat behind us :)

Oh, and in between this, I need to keep up on the work front, keep looking after the hamsters, help anita pack up this place and, somewhere, somehow, find some time to sleep.

Oh, what fun life is...

General updates

I should have posted this a while ago, but then I'm never the fastest at blogging updates in my personal life :)

First: I'm gainfully employed again. I have been since the Monday after I was made redundant, I just haven't updated here. More usefully, I have a pay rise from this new job and more importantly, I feel like I'm actually involved in everything again (which I am... there's only 2 of us and probably enough work to keep 4 people fully employed so I'm involved in book purchases, hardware purchases, I have an interesting and pretty sizable project all to myself and am involved in the management and testing of another one). I've been updating at Reflective Coder on things related to my new job (XML and Python stuff mainly so far. I'm planning a Pylons post soon).

Second: Anita and myself are moving... finally! We've been stuck in our small, 1 bedroom flat for the past 4 years and finally found a new place that's worthwhile - a nice three bed semi-detached house out in Wythenshaw - and within our rent budget.

That's pretty much the important news from the last couple of months. Also of note though, I'll be at the first DrupalCampUK tomorrow, which could be interesting or at the least have some decent loot to bring home :)