Driving

Sioned woke me up at 0411 and said that she was suffering some pain and said that she wanted to call the hospital for an opinion on if what was being experienced was the early stages of labour. The result of the phone call saw us dressed, in the car and with the required stuff and heading for the A55 at 0431. After driving at speeds around *cough*, we arrived at the hospital a mere 15 minutes later (yep, I'm quite pleased with that). After heading to the required ward, we were put in a side room where examinations took place and the on-call Doctor gave us the two options: Sioned could delivery naturally, or they could start to organise a Caesarian section. Since there was a schedule for the section tomorrow, it'd take some organisation to get this ready in time. They suggested that, at this time, she was 8cm dialated. Between us, we decided it'd be best for a natural delivery. At 0705, Gruffydd Cynan Smith was born, weighing 7lb1/2oz. Head-toe length was 50cm, head circumference 32.5cm. Photos are at http://photos.gruffyddsmith.com, and video will appear shortly at http://video.gruffyddsmith.com. Sioned is fine, and now able to eat normally again. Baby is fine and seems to respond to stimuli as expected.

I'm going to be selling the GSXF600 shortly, so decided that it needs to be put into shape. The MOT is due on it, and it also needs some new tyres. Sioned's Dad also managed to put the brake light lens through, so a new one of those would be needed as well.

Saturday saw me heading down to Woods Motorcycles in Abergele, who usually do work on my bikes. I knew that this wasn't going to be a cheap job - tyres aren't cheap for a start, and the MOT is 30 quid. Maybe 300 total?

Monday brought a little shock - I should perhaps be expecting more around 550. Ouch. The current breakdown of costs is likely to be something like: o Tyres - £140 + VAT (but they're a decent pair) o Brake light lens - £35 + VAT o Fork seal (at least one will need replacing) - £15 + VAT each (potentially need two)

The bad bit comes from the fact that the front brake is going to need rebuilding as it's binding. So that'll be two new brake seals at £30 + VAT each. Add on to that the cost of the MOT - a little under 30 quid.

So, our running total stands at around £300 (give or take).

The rest - that's the labour part. At a mere £50 an hour. Oh dear. Around 5 hours labour, totalling £250.

Needless to say, I needed a little sit down after that one. I'm expecting to have the bike back sometime around the end of this week. So if someone fancies a nice 600cc sports/commuter bike, let me know. I don't think it'll need much doing for a while yet...

I've been utterly crap at keeping the blog up to date recently, so what better time to look back on the year, and also conveniently put everything that I've not put on here already, er, on here.

December is, as is now standard for me, panto season. It's been a little bit more busy this year as December also saw the first data return to the Welsh Assembly Government for the University. This was a little bit stressful as most of the providers had either forgotten, sent in incorrect data, or submitted their data late. Lots of late nights and whatnot, and it was in on time, and I'm pretty happy with what we've sent. I'm also working on some new stuff for the website which includes media management and a Health & Safety system. All of this will only be visible to the providers, so not something for the general public. This is all tying in to a presentation I'm going to be doing to the other University techies on what I've been doing for the past year, how it's all come together, how it works and whatnot. I've got a few ideas for the presentation, but not started writing it yet. Panto - I said I wouldn't take that many shows this year as I'm fairly tired, and also it's not really financially viable at the moment for me (I get paid less at the theatre than I can justify). So I only ended up taking 20 shows this year (I think I did about 40 last year). Sioned still thinks that this is far too much. Ho hum. Only a few more left to go, then that's it for another year. Christmas was spent at my Mum & Dad's, and was rather enjoyable this year. Sioned & myself received some very nice gifts, there was excellent food, and the company was good.

October and November saw me working on an interesting project for another department in the University which caused a hefty political argument, eventually seeing the whole project canceled. Fortunately, I think I've come out on the other side without too many battle scars.

The department within the University that I was seconded away from (Work based learning within the School of Lifelong Learning) has slowly been making more and more people redundant. The have a contract with the Welsh Assembly Government which is typically renewed each August. This year (August 2007) the renewal was, financially, much lower than in previous years. This put a large amount of pressure on to the department. As a result, in March, the department will begin the final wind down. Students currently on program will be moved to other providers, and remaining staff will either be made redundant, or, where possible, be re-housed elsewhere within the institution. What does this mean for me? The department I'm now working for (Canolfan Cymraeg i Oedolion) has funding for a further three years. After this time, we either get more funding or I'm looking at redundancy. We're in a pretty good position within the institution, and within the country as a whole. Hopefully it should be ok.

The summer saw Sioned finding out that she's pregnant. We're going to be having a baby in late February/early March. Sioned is feeling poorly pretty much constantly, and seems to have a pretty much endless set of appointments with various people within the medical profession.

Also over the summer, we got rid of the Saab and now have a BMW 3 series diesel. In some ways, I still prefer the Saab, in others (especially the economy), the BMW is a nicer car. Ok, it hasn't got the pickup that the Saab had, nor the top speed, but it's still just as nice.

March this year saw us getting married, and then heading around Western Europe in the car. Absolutely brilliant time, really enjoyed it. Germany is a brilliant place, especially the Nurburgring.

I've also started playing in the Bangor pool league - I've got a win rate of 50% which is pretty decent, I think, for someone who's only just started playing. We're a new team to the league, so to also not be rooted to the bottom of the table is pretty decent, too.

As posted on the blog, I changed from my slightly-long-in-the-tooth Nikon D100 to a D2X. I've used the new body in anger a few times now, and it's a joy to use. Over the last week, I did just over 1000 exposures in a few hours and the battery is still over half full. The images it produced, in quite a few cases, required very little processing/colour correction. It's a brilliant piece of kit, although as you'd expect, the noise at anything above ISO500 is noticeable. I gather this is well corrected in the Nikon D3. Hmm... ;-)

This year also saw the purchase of my Macbook Pro. I'm really getting on well with it now - there's quite a few shortcuts and the like which, once you get to know them really do increase productivity. The machine was, within a few days, my main development/production machine, and has since stayed there. It's a brilliant bit of kit. It's been dropped once and - as you'd expect, hasn't suffered any illness as a result of it.

I think next year is going to be a whole lot different.

No updates for a while, so it's time for one of those mega updates that come along every now and then. Working from today backwards...

Today has seen me moving the rack from its previous home upstairs in the office to somewhere else. This involved de-racking everything, taking the rack apart, huffing it all down two flights of stairs and then putting it back together in its new location. The UPS (3u APC 2.2kVA) weighs far too much. Managed to do it all in about 5 hours, which wasn't too bad. The reward, after sweating buckets was a nice bath, a glass of coke and a pack of marshmallows.

Yesterday we headed over to see Joel, Nicky and their kids for their summer barbecue. We needed to give the new car (see below) a run out - we'd also not seen them since the wedding, so it was good to catch up with them.

Last week, we took delivery of a new car. We'd sold the Saab due to it starting to become a bit impractical before the Eisteddfod, and since then I'd been borrowing a jeep from Sioned's Dad. Due to the miles I'm doing now, a diesel was required - so we're now the proud owners of a BMW 3 series diesel - photos here. This also involved seeing a couple of cars which... weren't quite up to scratch. I'd originally been looking at Mercedes C220 CDIs. Myself and Sioned's Dad went to see one in Bradford which was - for want of a better word - a bit of a shed. For the money, it had surface rust, knackered wheels and stained seats. Nice. We then went to see a BMW 3 series diesel in Nottingham. You'd kind of hope that a diesel engine (well, any engine really) would have oil in it. Not this one. Plus (bearing in mind it's a diesel) hadn't been serviced for around 30000 miles. Ouch. We walked away in both cases. I'm rather pleased with the one we finally bought.

I've been working from home a bit during the two weeks since the Eisteddfod, mainly due to being horribly knackered after it, and mainly because it had given me some good ideas about where I wanted to go with the website that I've been working on. Most of this has come through to fruition now, with a nice enquiries management/CRM bolted on which does some bespoke functions, as well as building in some other things which we needed. Pretty productive all in.

Over all, the Eisteddfod was pretty successful - and I rather enjoyed it, much more than I did the one in Swansea last year. I also did some followspotting work there, which involved actually sitting on the rig. I love doing work like that :-) The Internet connectivity didn't get much better during the week after my previous post - we were lucky to see more than half of the day with any connectivity, much less anything capable of uploading photos/videos. Whilst traffic shaping there was obviously a taken (since it was being run with ADSL as the backhaul), you'd still hope for some form of upstream bandwidth.

During the Eisteddfod (well, before actually - but I'd not been able to put my finger on what it was) the D100 suffered a shutter failure. It's not a total failure (yet?) - exposures faster than 1/320th see a black banding appear over the image. Fixation want £180 to replace this. In other news - Nikon have announced the D3. 9fps! 9! My god.

In other news, Mum & Dad are up this weekend - it'll be good to see them again. They're staying overnight as well, which means we'll be able to do a few more bits with them than usual.

I've been slack in my updating of the blog again of late, it seems, so an update on everything interesting (not that much then...).

Firstly, work - as usual, this is pretty high up on my agenda. In the past week I've been put on notice that I'm going to be losing a pretty big ongoing contract that I've enjoyed for nearly a year. In one way it was a bit of a shock, but in others there'd been signs that it was on its way out. This isn't something that's down to me, but the department that pays me has lost a significant amount of funding - there's going to be significant job losses across the board, and it looks very much like I'm going to be out. That said, the fact that the contract has lasted this long is frankly quite shocking. It's good that it's lasted this long. On relaying this information to Sioned, she said that I shouldn't worry too much as I'll no doubt manage to fill the gap quite easily. Still, I didn't think that it'd be as quick as having an e-mail some 7 hours after hearing the above news asking if I'd like to consider working on another contract with another public sector organisation around here. A further phone call today sees me scheduling the meeting for the middle of next week. Monday I've got another meeting to finally hand over a working version of a piece of software I've been developing for the last few weeks to a local SMC. It's been an interesting project as - whilst it's just-another-piece-of-software, it's been developed for use in a sector I've got absolutely no experience of. This is one of the nice things about working in the way that I do - I get to experience a lot of new things and constantly add to my knowledge. Next Wednesday sees me heading down to Swansea for a few days for a training course. The University are sending me down there, and I'm staying in the new SA1 development. I gather there's a lot of nice places to go out and intend to have a good mooch around the area whilst I'm there. If anyone can recommend good eateries that cater for vegetarians and any other places I should look at whilst I'm there, then let me know! I'm there for 5 days all in, so I've got a bit of time.

In geekery news, I've been giving the new Macbook Pro a hell of a hammering. It's been used to edit about 60 hours of video so far, done some audio recording (doing editing on the fly) under Logic, as well as doing a fair bit of work under Parallels. Frankly, it's been utterly flawless. I'm really rather pleased with it, although as expected, the video editing eats disk like it's going out of fashion.

Our car is up for sale. The Saab is going to be gone soon, and we're replacing it with a Mercedes C220 or C270. The Saab - whilst bags of fun to drive, is costing me an absolute fortune to run being as I'm doing so many miles at the moment. It returns a not-unreasonable 30mpg from a 2.0 litre petrol with a turbo behind it. That said, it's still a bit too low so we're opting for a boring-but-more-economic diesel next.

House stuff. We've pretty much decided we're going to stay where we are for now. Whilst our house is still worth a pretty respectable amount, we're now at the stage where we're close to being pretty happy with it. During the last week we've managed to finish off the new kitchen which has been a project going on for about 6 weeks. We've now got some rather nice new worksurfaces (black, of course) with funky new cupboards everywhere. We've also changed the format of the kitchen ever so slightly (moving the cooker a bit). Today has seen us taking the back garden apart - ripping the whole lot up in preparation for another change there. We've now got a skip full of crap just outside.

I somehow managed to end up being one of the few that were chosen to be offered tickets for Live Earth at Wembley this weekend, although we didn't really much fancy the line up, nor the trip down to London and ending up back here at some stupid hour, and besides - it wasn't exactly a cheap gig either (£125 for a pair of tickets?! Screw that) so didn't bother going. It's been a pretty reasonable decision, I think, as I've had far too much stuff to do this weekend (finishing touches to the software et al).

I think that's about it for now.

Yesterday Sioned & me headed over to the Trafford Centre in Manchester for me to coo over the new Macbook Pro lineup. I was undecided between the glossy and matte screen of the 15" versions (anything bigger would be too much for me - I like to be able to travel light when I need to and sling everything into a single bag). It came down to how much glare the glossy screen would give. I'll be going with the glossy screen and putting an order in through Procureweb, which gives an impressive discount for University people. The reason for the new purchase? My four year old Toshiba Satellite is now showing its age - depending on where pressure is laid on the keyboard, it'll simply switch itself off. This isn't a battery or power supply issue - the same thing will happen on either. I've taken the laptop apart to a reasonable level, but I suspect that it's a cracked mainboard.

The weather was also with us for the journey there (and back), with us having the top down the whole way.

Today I watched an the Canadian Grand Prix which, to be honest, was utterly storming. The first race win for Lewis Hamilton was well deserved, but it's very rare that we see such attrition in a race now. The fact that Robert Kubica survived such a large crash, as well as the others who piled it into the final corner shows how far F1 has come now. Interesting also that two were black flagged. When did that last happen?

I've neglected the blog a bit of late. I usually try to write the interesting (well, to me, anyway) stuff I've been doing. I've been feeling a bit "Meh" of late, and not really been up to much, and what I have done hasn't been that interesting anyway. Or, at least, it didn't/doesn't feel like it.

On the work front, I've toned down on what I'm doing with the theatre as I'm absolutely knackered. Having said that, a desperate (ish) phone call over the weekend is seeing me working there tonight. That, and I've got a few bits on the go at the moment (designing and implementing a client management/stock management system for a small trader near where I am, which should also entail some ongoing support for them), as well as some ongoing projects in the University. I was on an interview panel last week which recruited a new System Information Officer for my old post within the University. This doesn't mean an immediate end to the contract I'm doing there - if anything, it's going to ramp up for a few weeks whilst the new chap gets bedded in, and then will start to drop off in mid-August to September time. My other main contract with the University is term-time only, so will be coming up for a rest in a few weeks time when the term finishes.

I took a brand spanking new Mercedes C200 CDI out last weekend (ie not the bank holiday weekend) for a test drive as we've pretty much decided that's what we're going for (well, it'll be a C200 or C220 - there's not much in it. Same engine, just the C200 is chipped down). The toss up was between the BMW 320d and the Mercedes C200/C220 CDI. The Mercedes won it for us as they just feel that bit nicer. It seems to pull sluggishly compared to the Saab, but then the Mercedes is a diesel, and also doesn't have a turbo on it. On the subject of cars, the front left tyre on the Saab had a valve failure last week. Trying to park the car with half the pressure it should have (usually has 33PSi, but had 14 in it) was an odd experience. Turn the wheel and nothing happens.

We've bought a new kitchen! Delivery is next week (Tuesday). Sioned has been muttering for aeons that she's not happy with it. The arrival last week of a new Smeg FAB32NE4 pretty much cemented that we needed a new kitchen to go round it (how does that one work then...?) We managed to get the price down from a mere £1037 to £410. Again - how does that one work then?

This weekend (bank holiday - yay!) saw us have some friends over on Friday evening for the first barbecue of the season. The evening went on for a good while, before people left at around 2330. Ace. Sunday saw Mum & Dad up for the day and the traditional visit to the Llandudno Victorian Extravaganza. Unfortunately the weather had turned on the Sunday - up until then it was top notch, with Friday and Saturday (as well as the days before) nice and warm. Sunday was overcast, damp and drizzly. The original plan had been for another barbecue, but this wasn't to be, even after we'd spent 30 quid on food for said grilling.

Yesterday saw us shopping for a new telly. Not that we need one, but we thought it'd be rather nice. We're a bit restricted on how big we can go at the moment - the largest that'll fit in the gap being 32". Could we find something with a decent colour reproduction in that size? Hell no. Well, not at a sensible (ie <£900) price. We're not too fussed about 1080p at the moment, but even so - a contrast ratio greater than 1200:1 would be nice. Apparently achieving real black in anything 32" or lower is unheard of. Ho hum.

Fotopic moved house yesterday. I drove over to Wakefield and met up with Joel, Nicky and Keiron. After a couple of hours rest there before the driving and the work started, we left Wakefield at 1700 with Nicky driving down to London. Arriving at Docklands at around 2000, we headed for food at Pizza Express. Whilst here, Joel received a call from Clara.net, the current hosts of Fotopic asking what was happening about routing. Nice and on the ball. We left Pizza Express and went straight to GS1 and started de-racking the gear, getting it loaded on to trolleys and taken down to the cars. Small problems with paperwork not having been passed between people slowed us down, but no major problems. We left GS1 at 0030 and hit the road. Minor GPS problems involving tinted windscreens later, we picked up the A12 heading north at 0100, arriving at Fotopic's new home in Leeds at 0345 (a good run, those of you that know UK geography will agree *cough*)

Re-racking there, we didn't come across any major issues. I put in all of the network cabling and tried to keep things relatively sane, even though in an environment like that it won't last for long. Everything was back just before 9, and we left the building at around 10.

I decided that rather than getting some sleep at Joel & Nicky's that it'd be better to drive straight back and go straight to bed there, but only do a couple of hours sleep, instead catching up tonight. We'll see how well that one works out.

We actually arrived back home late on Friday, at just before 2000.

Distance travelled during the honeymoon: 2218 miles Top speed: 139mph Average speed: 72mph Total driving time: 28 hours 42 minutes Total spent: £1851 Total time away: 12 days 6 hours

The journey back was long, but the weather good. The E40 between Belgium and France was a real pain, with lots of delays. The GPS reckoned on 2 hours 10 minutes for that section. It actually took us nearly four hours. Dover onwards was absolutely fine though.

Why has it taken so long to get round to writing this? We needed a good rest.

For some reason, our stay in Hannover was rather cheap. Perhaps this made up in some way for the lack of things to do there. The drive on to Antwerp was going to be long. Very long. We'd estimated at least four hours, probably more. As we were leaving Germany today, I had my last bit of fun on the unrestricted autobahn and hit a new top speed - 224kmh or 139mph. We crossed from Germany to .nl after lunch, spent an hour driving across the Netherlands, then hit Belgie. It's worthy of a note that if you're looking for the Novotel in Mechelen, don't trust the GPS as it's not possible to drive to it. Instead of putting Van Beethovenstraat 1 in, put Guldenstraat in instead, and it'll get you to the car park. The Novotel is next to the Match supermarket - it's entirely possible to drive by it and miss it, so keep an eye out for the Match sign.

The area is absolutely gorgeous. We went and had tea at a place called De Kraanbrug which is rather top notch, before doing some shopping at the aforementioned supermarket, then spending well over an hour wandering around the streets. The Stella advert with that pub in it which looks like it's in a glorious part of southern France or somesuch? It's exactly like that. A warm night that we were able to just slowly wander around the area and admire the place.

Back to the hotel then for the end to a pretty damn good evening.

Tomorrow - we're probably going to head back early. It's about 2 hours to Calais from here, so it looks like we're going to do the whole lot in one fell swoop - from here back to North Wales. It's going to be a long slog, but with Sioned still being a bit under the weather, it'll probably be for the best.

We decided after writing the previous blog entry that Sioned wouldn’t be too good going for breakfast in the tower, so Sioned said that I should go on my own. I thought that some night time photography from there would be pretty spectacular. I wasn’t wrong. It costs 8 Euro to get in and it’s open to anybody. The lift takes you up to just over 200m. It can only be described as mind blowing. If you’re ok with heights, it’s one of the places you have to do. It’s the third largest tower in Europe and really does offer amazing views over Berlin. I’d done the balloon the previous day, and seen some other towers as well. Absolutely nothing on this place. I was up there for about an hour, just looking across Berlin.

Sioned was waking up quite a bit in the night – she’s worse today than yesterday, but that’s not all bad since we weren’t aiming to do much today anyway. It took about 2.5 hours to get from Berlin to Hannover – the A2 was pretty quick most of the way with an occasional burst up to 120mph. Once in Hannover, the hotel wasn’t too difficult to find. As soon as we got here, we had a look at stuff to do. I’ll be honest – there’s very very little. The only real thing that took our fancy was the Sealife Centre. We dropped some bits off in the hotel room and headed straight back out again and found that everyone else had the same idea as us. The queue was ridiculously long. That idea aborted, it was back again and have a google to see what else there is. The short answer: nothing. The long answer: still nothing. I decided to go and scout out the area to see if this really was the case and also look for somewhere decent to eat. This only came with one condition: absolutely no more Italian. I ended up finding the local bus station and passed about 4 non-suitable-for-various-reasons eateries on the way. Returning back with the bad news, we considered our options: A) Eat at the hotel B) Ask reception C) Pick one of the places we’d already discounted D) Get in the car and drive around randomly until we find somewhere passable.

We chose D. After about 10 minutes driving, we happened on what seems to be a Spanish and/or Mexican area of Hannover, with a couple of Tapas places, and a Mediterranean. We opted for a quiet little Tapas which left us absolutely stuffed for the princely sum of 33 Euro. Not bad. We asked the waitress exactly what there was to do in Hannover, mentioning we’d just come from Berlin. Our suspicions were realised: absolutely nothing to do. That said, it is quite nice to not have anything to do and just spend time with each other.

Tomorrow we’re off to Antwerp. Hopefully we’ll be a bit luckier in finding things to do.

1102 completed What a day. The hotel we're staying in - an Ibis - was incredibly noisy last night, so sleep was quite broken. After breakfast, we went to Tierpark Hagenbeck, which is a large zoo in a suburb of Hamburg. It's an absolutely huge place, where we spent a good 4 hours walking round looking at all of the animals, ranging from elephants to meerkats to giraffes. Over 60 different animals. Many of them were roaming freely around the park, so it wasn't unexpected to trip over a turkey. The camels were being walked around the park as well whilst we were there. If you're in Hamburg, it's well worth a visit. Sioned really enjoyed the zoo and kept running off looking at the different animals. On the way back from the zoo, we noticed that it was exactly a week since we'd been married. We headed back via a supermarket where we stocked up on crap (chocolate, crisps, drinks, and cheese to go with some bread that we'd, er, borrowed at breakfast). The evening saw us jumping on the U-Bahn to the Reeperbahn. An electric place which really comes to life at night - a very busy place. We're probably going to go back there tomorrow night as well. I'd decided not to take the D100 as we were slightly iffy about how safe the area would be, but it looks like it should be fine. The Reeperbahn is described in many reviews as the seedy side of Hamburg - which is probably a good description of it. Sex shops, lap dancing clubs and so on - it's a rather odd place to look around but there's so many different people there, it's worth a visit. Tomorrow we're going to go into the centre of Hamburg and do the sight-seeing things. The evening will see a cruise on the Elbe, before a possible revisit to the Reeperbahn.

Hamburg. Filthy filthy city. We arrived here after a fairly long drive, at around 1615. The journey was basically straight up the A1. Although there were lots of unrestricted sections, the road was fairly busy so the most we saw was 115mph, and that was only for brief periods. Lunch was at a rather top notch service area where Sioned ordered half a cow which cost about 4 quid, whilst I opted for the slightly more conservative cheese foccacia. After abusing the free refills of Coke, we were back on the road. Hamburg soon came in to view and the GPS took us right to the door. We headed straight out into Hamburg, catching a bus to the train station, then a train to Central Station. Jesus, what a place. It's got nothing on Kings Cross, St Pancras, Waverley. It's huge. Absolutely mental. We left the station and had a walk around the immediate area. Coming from Britain, it's quite odd how in-your-face the porn industry is here. There doesn't seem to be any concept of specialist planning permission for the sex shops - we're not even on the Reeperbahn and at least two fairly long streets dedicated to it. As I say, filthy place. We decided to head back to the hotel and have a meal there since we're both pretty tired. There's a lot to be said for having some bland food after lots of rich and varied stuff. Spaghetti bolognese for me, with salmon steak for Sioned. Really good to have something so run of the mill. Tomorrow we're heading over to Hamburg Zoo, and will be heading to the Reeperbahn in the evening.

They've got good curtains at the Chateau Du Lac. The alarm went off and Sioned got up to open the curtains to see what the weather was up to. Sunlight came streaming through the window and temporarily blinded us. Sight regained, we headed up the tower to have some breakfast, before taking a few minutes out sat in the bar where we sorted out some more hotels, uploaded blog entries and photos and so on, and generally sorted bits out. Sioned voiced reservations that the Etap hotels - the first of which we were going to be heading to in Koblenz shortly, may not be quite what we're looking for on our honeymoon. We headed out for a walk around the lake which gave us a nice hour-or-so long walk, before we headed back to the car and set the GPS for Koblenz. It wasn't long before we crossed the border into Germany and we soon found our first unrestricted Autobahn where we could open the car up. The roads were a bit busy, but we managed to see 190km/h easily. We stopped at services - they're nothing like Britain. Clean, cheap and the food is a hell of a lot better - especially the veggie burgers. The decor is also much nicer. Back on the road and the GPS took us to the Etap in Koblenz. It wasn't what we were after. Unfortunately, we'd paid by this point. We jumped back in the car and headed to the Nurburgring. We got slightly lost on the way and drove through some rather odd little village, before actually ending up at the Nurburgring itself. More people arrived - I saw a fair few Brits there and spoke with them about the circuit and also to see if they could recommend any decent hotels. Suggestions of Adenau were made, which I made a mental note of. I hung around and took some photos of the cars in the car park there. Soon, the track opened and many of the cars went out. I gave Sioned a quick run through on the camera to make sure she was happy with it before parting with 19 Euro for a lap and getting in the car. What a hoot. Stuck the hazards on and went out. Absolutely top notch entertainment. Got some very warm brakes and some tyre squeal on the way round. Sioned got some photos of the car on the pit straight. I came in and Sioned agreed to come out on a second lap with me. It really is well worth doing, although Sioned was feeling quite ill afterwards. We managed to get 120mph down the pit straight, which isn't all bad. We drove the short distance in to Adenau - although it's a very pretty place, we didn't really see anywhere that took our fancy hotel wise. We found one hotelier who seemed distinctly anti-Brit. Back to the car and a quick discussion later, we decided to bring our stay in Cologne forward. It'd originally been planned for tomorrow (Thursday), but the GPS reckoned on a 45 minute drive. 45 (or so) minutes later, we arrived at the Mercure hotel in West Cologne - complete with swimming pool, jacuzzi, sauna, etc. Not wanting to drive anywhere now, we looked around the area but weren't too taken with the restaurants around here, so opted to eat at the hotel itself. Once again, top notch food. Tomorrow we'll try to head in to Cologne as there seems to be a fair bit to look at, but we're also going to make use of the facilities here. A busy day!

The morning dawned with a fog across the gardens - it really did look good. As we arrived in reception to ask if a package had arrived, the postman walked in. Talk about timing! Breakfast, then we decided to go and have a look at Blenheim Palace. We'd noticed it was in Woodstock when we visited yesterday. The ferry had been shifted to 1745, so we had plenty of time to kill. As we drove through the gates at Blenheim, we found that it'd cost us around £25 to get in. Sod that. Straight back out again, and a consultation of the GPS told us that there really wasn't that much else to do where we were. It was decided we'd go straight to Dover at that time - we'd probably arrive at 1300ish, but we'd probably find more to do there than where we were. 2.5 hours later, and Dover loomed in to view. We headed straight for the docks so that we could try to change our booking yet again. We mentioned that when we called, the systems were down (which they were), so things might've got a bit confused. We ended up being put on the 1345 sailing. It now being 1305, that was absolutely fine with us. We drove round to lane 124 and waited to be called. On to the ferry, parked up, and walked up to the decks. The boat - Rodin only had two decks, and there's not a great deal to do aside from be ripped off in the shop, or ripped off in the bar, or ripped off in the restaurant. We paid £8 for a plate of chips, and a plate of chips and chili. The rest of the journey was spent trying to keep Sioned from being sick. Soon enough, Calais appeared and we made our way back down to the car to find the alarm going on it. It wasn't too happy about moving around as we pitched and yawed. First thing we needed to do was fill up with petrol. It was 77 Euro to fill it from almost empty, which is pretty close to what we paid at home, so no great saving, although that was the first petrol station outside Calais, so there's a possibility of variations along the way. That done, we hit the road for Brussels. Just over the border into Belgium, we passed by Nieuwpoort. We also saw an impressive crash happen on the other side of the road - a van went piling into the reservation which showered our car with bits of bodywork. Unfortunately we suffered a chip to the windscreen. It's nothing too bad, but will probably need sorting out back in the UK.

We arrived at our hotel at 1845 (after a missed turning) - and what a hotel it is. Beautiful, set on a lake (as the name - Chateau du Lac) would suggest. Dinner this evening was at a pizzeria a short walk away, which was obscenely cheap - 23 Euro to feed the both of us, including drinks. Fantastic service, friendly staff and well worth a visit. We spent the evening being typical Brits by watching BBC1. The room is luxurious, with the bed at least six foot wide (and I'm not joking. It really is). Tomorrow sees us heading on to Koblenz and the Nurburgring.

Sunday dawned bright and early. Too early. We knew we'd lose an hour due to the move to BST, so accounted for that when setting the alarm to get breakfast. Except the alarm was a bit too clever and accounted for it as well, so we wound up getting up an hour too early, and an hour too early (iyswim). We decided not to go back to bed, but instead sat and looked at some photos of the previous day.

Slowly, people joined us for breakfast. Ffion and Fran ended up going the other way timewise and were a bit perplexed when, at 1030, they thought it was 0930 and still had time for breakfast.

I managed to find where all of the suits had wound up, and gathered those together. I chucked the PA into the boot of the car along with all of the other bits - we then said our goodbyes to people who'd stayed in Plas Maenan with us as well.

We needed to head over to Gwydir Castle to pick up the case for the 70-200mm lens which'd been left there, then headed back to our house to meet Steve, Marie and Kev so that they could pick the clothes up that they'd left there.

From here, it was over to Sioned's Mum & Dad's place where we were joined by my parents, Laura, my grandparents, Sioned's Taid, and her Mum & Dad as well as Fran, where we opened our wedding presents. We were, quite frankly, shocked at the sheer amount of presents that had been given by people, and indeed some of the presents that had been given by people. Some of the things that people had written in cards were also extremely touching.

After we'd opened the presents, it was time for Mum, Dad, Laura and my grandparents to head off back to Leicester. After waving them off, I headed over to the theatre to return the PA. I then went back over and loaded the car up with the presents we'd received, before going back to our place to drop said presents off and load up with the stuff we'd packed for our honeymoon.

We were on the road for around three, and the GPS took us right up to the gates of the imposing Weston Manor Hotel in Oxford. We arrived there at around 1830, so a pretty decent run down. However, on the way, Sioned realised she'd forgotten something rather important. Forgetting her pill is, shall we say, pretty impressive. After a quick change of room to a much larger one with a four poster bed and a fantastic bathroom, we had a think about our options. We're due to catch a ferry tomorrow, so our options are: 1) Get them shipped to Belgium where they'd hopefully arrive in time. We later found out that exporting prescription drugs without a licence is a little bit illegal, so that one was out. 2) Call the surgery in the morning and get them to fax a prescription to a local chemist. There's an extremely slim chance of this one. 3) Er, pass.

So we'd go out on a limb and try 2. We headed out and ate at a pub about 200yds down the road - the Ben Jonson. The food really was top notch - anyone staying in that part of Oxford would be well recommended to go. Back to the hotel from here for an early-ish night. I made offers to drive back to our house to pick up the tablets, but Sioned refused - it'd be a 7 hour round trip, and tomorrow would effectively be a write off.

But still rather relaxed. I finished work at lunch yesterday and headed over to the suit hire place to pick up suits for myself, Steve, Kevin, Joel and Neal. Arrived, parked and was handed four suits. You may notice, as I did, that there was a problem. Joel's suit was missing. After bringing this point to their attention, it transpired that Leeds, where Joel had been measured, hadn't sent the details through to the branch I was stood in.

This is fine - they've got plenty of stock. They promise a call shortly once they'd got the details from the Leeds branch. About an hour later, I receive the call. Problem. Because of Joel's shape (same as me - tall and thin) they've not got anything in. Solution? They'll courier something over from Leeds, don't worry, it'll be with us tomorrow (Friday). Fine.

I then headed over to the theatre and collected various bits of PA equipment for the jukebox at the wedding reception venue. Nice and easy, except I didn't get as many speaker stands as I wanted. No major problem there.

Got home and spent the night putting the final touches to the jukebox - adding a few more albums, getting the database built, then making sure it worked properly. This caused some issues - the software - Nordbeat Jukebox is good, but has a lot of options. I ended up getting to bed at about 2330 after getting it all right.

During the evening, the harpist called and said he'd only that day received a piece of music I'd sent him which we wanted played as Sioned and myself walked back down the aisle after we'd been married. We were already aware of the fact he'd not received it, but it was only that evening that we realised that there was no way he'd be able to learn it in time, nor play anything in its place. A plan was hatched that I'd source another small PA which we'd use for the wedding ceremony itself.

Anyway, to bed.

Friday rolled around bright and early and saw me collecting a PA at 0845 in Bangor. Headed straight back home where I managed to get some breakfast before loading the car up with 2x PA, enough mains cable to sink a ship, a computer, touchscreen and two bags of clothes, two cd players, my laptop... basically, it was crammed full. I arrived at the ceremony venue at 2 and started setting up the PA there. Another small problem presented itself in that I'd opted for Kevin or Joel to operate the PA. Due to the layout of the room, this wasn't going to happen. Chances are, it would need to be Laura - my sister and also a bridesmaid - doing the operating. I called them, and they were still pretty far away. Estimated ETA before they left was 2. They were in Chester, and it was 1445 now. I decided to head off to the reception venue to start setting up there. I said to call me when they arrived at the ceremony venue.

I arrived at the reception venue to find a room set out with tables and so on. Great, except I could've done with checking I'd got everything to make the jukebox work. No matter, I've hopefully got everything - if not, Maplin is open till 8 tomorrow.

Sometime around then, I get a call saying that Mum, Dad, Laura, Grandma and Grandad have arrived at the ceremony venue and where-the-hell-am-I. I hot foot it over there, check Laura is happy with operating the gear then give a quick crash course in what pre fade listen is, how to cue a CD and operate a mixing desk. Happy with that, I then shoot back over to the reception venue and finish sorting stuff out there, including the worst hack I've ever done - bridging a GPRS connection over wavelan. Ick.

About then, Steve, Marie and Kev turned up. I took them over to the ceremony venue so that everyone was clear on where it was. On the way back, I had a call from the suit hire company. Remember that bit? It's now 1650 and the suit has *just* turned up. Instead of going back to the reception venue, we shoot straight over to Conwy to pick said suit up. From here, back to the reception venue for me to pick up my laptop and camera, before home for five minutes (literally). It was then over to the pub for a meal.

On the way, the company supplying the cars called us. Fantastic people - I've hardly had to do anything with them. It's all under control and they've upgraded Sioned's car to an S-Class. Ace.

Joel, Nicky, Ellie, Ben and Will arrived at the pub shortly after we did. It was quite nice to relax there, although receiving 12 voicemails from individual people once I arrived there was rather odd.

An interesting comment tonight was that this is, apparently, the most organised wedding and it's not even happened yet. We shall see. I'm happier now that Joel and Will are here - certainly, if any of the things that I was concerned (I won't say worried, as I wasn't) about are to go wrong, I know I can rely on them. Joel has a car full of stuff that will probably solve anything that might go wrong.

And now - sleep

This entry mainly serves as google bait because the problem was so bloody hard to track down.

The Saab has been making an odd noise for some time now, which nobody has really been able to solve. Taking it in to my tame mechanic and saying "It's broken, but I don't know why" didn't help. The problem manifested itself usually when under hard braking (think stoppie) or doing hard turns (steering wheel on the stops) - there'd be a clunking or occasional banging sound from the left passenger well. Also noticable was that the steering wheel was aligned slightly off middle (approximately + 10 deg). The wheels themselves are straight, weighted properly and the tracking is good.

So, what's the issue? I took the car to have a new pair of boots put on it recently and the tyre guy said "Hm, I think one of your bushes is knackered" and demonstrated his thinking: The wheel would move a significant amount (about 10 degrees) whilst the handbrake was on. Not good.

Over to my tame mechanic where this was shown. Lots of poking and prodding later, he decides that the stanchion arm was in need of replacing, including the bush on the end of it.

Now here's the thing. The stanchion arm (known as a radius arm to other manufacturers, part of the suspension system and also previously known as a bottom arm or lower arm) on the right hand (drivers side) on my car had been replaced - very recently. Possibly just before I bought the car. Theoretically, these things should be replaced in pairs, or there'll be more work for one side to do. It's entirely possible that replacing one side (instead of both) has caused a faster attrition of the side that's now knackered.

Anyway. Saab dealers quote about £131 + delivery + VAT for this piece of kit - part number for which is 4647004 for the left, and 4647012 for the right. There's a few places which I found after hours (literally) of googling in the UK which will do these parts for significantly less if you're prepared to go second hand. These places will guarantee them for between three and six months. Neo Brothers (01992 719280), Salvo Group (0115 9445644) and Saab Parts ASAP (0117 9406151) all had the part in available for immediate shipping for less than 50 quid all in. I opted for a new part from Neo Brothers for a mere £140 delivered - a saving of about 30 quid over the dealer prices.

Unfortunately I need the part now since I'm heading off to Europe in a few days - otherwise I'd have used one of the American parts dealers, such as EEuroparts who do this part at a significantly lower price.

In some cases, it may be applicable to simply replace the bush on the stanchion arm, which is far cheaper - probably about 10 or 15 quid. However, since the problem had been around for some time, it was felt that the entire arm had probably taken significant strain, and so it was sensible to replace the entire thing.

As a geek, I use my laptop extensively. It's with a huge amount of forethought that I decided my laptop had really had a hell of a thrashing over the last three and a half years. In that time, I've not once reinstalled the operating system (Windows XP Pro), instead carefully considering what was going to be installed and how it'd affect other things running on there. In that time, it's had a lot of abuse, having things such as QuarkXpress, VB .Net, Photoshop and many other intensive applications and suites installed, all of which have left their mark. So I decided to start again. A week on and things are pretty much back to usual. I took the important things out of documents and settings - my offline e-mails and so on, and took the plunge. I've not installed any of the software I don't regularly use (which did find me installing Powerpoint about 2 minutes before a training session was due to begin...) Other than that, the laptop does seem a lot happier, and it's a lot nicer to work on at the moment. I've pretty much got all of my sessions put back onto SecureCRT as well.

Last week we met up with the photographer (after our original photographer dropped us due to there being a number of pro-am photographers also in attendance). Nice lass, who's got a lot of good ideas. Looking forward to working with her as she's open to suggestion on what we want to do.

I went to Leicester on Friday night, primarily to sort some bits out hanging over from the IP regrade but actually ended up in the pub with Steve which was incredibly useful in having a sound off about all of the wedding guff. The people sorting our suits out phoned me today so that's one other thing ticked off the list as well.

We've been looking around at new cars recently after the revelation that we're spending about £250 a month on petrol for the Saab. We're paying huge consideration to a BMW 320d compact, which seems to return about 50mpg compared to the 25-28ish on the Saab at the moment. With the mileage I'm covering at the moment, it's a bit of a no brainer.

In other news, Formula 1 season starts this weekend. Yay :)

As we're heading over to Europe soon, I decided to start getting stuff prepared. First things first, I phoned the insurance company - Norwich Union. I'm insured fully comp with them, so figured I'd have something for Europe anyway, and it'd just be a matter of letting them know. I was sort of right - I only had third party cover for Europe, though. To change this to fully comp would cost me a further £26.

Next up is arranging European breakdown cover. Now, most places seem to charge an absolute fortune for this. Indeed, Norwich Union wanted a further £75 for it. The AA and RAC both quoted relatively high prices (higher than £75), with Green Flag coming in at a reasonable £61.

Top prize goes to a company called EuroRescue who do their top of the line European coverage for £50. But is it all about how cheap it is?

Some googling around suggests that it used to be a case of you get what you pay for, and it's worth reading the small print. If your car breaks down and you need to get it back across the water to Blighty, then some policies won't be able to help you. This can be a relatively costly experience, especially if there's a car full of you (four or five people) to get back as well. Some policies also have limitations on things like "You only get one hour of roadside mechanic time, after that you're stuffed" as well. I was slightly skeptical of the service that Eurorescue could offer for the price, but googling seems to suggest that it's good for what it is.

I'm also just about to go and get some new boots put on the car. My tyre fitter of choice (Nant Conwy tyres) is charging me the princely sum of £235 for a pair - whereas ATS Euromaster wanted £295 for them, and Kwik Fit a mere £312.

It pays to shop around.

Sioned & myself went off to see Hot Fuzz tonight at the cinema. It's been ages (well before Christmas) since we both we to see a fillum, so this was something vaguely different. Very good film, in a sit back and veg out way. Enjoyable, if only for the idea that they had to find a small quiet village somewhere that'd let them do handbrake turns in a Subaru. Got out to the car after the cinema and it wasn't happy. It started, but was doing odd things at idle. Gave it a thrash up the A55 for a couple of junctions (and subsequently found it can do 65 in second), but it seemed ok. Switched the engine off after pulling off said road, started it again, and it's still not happy. Hm. Got it home, did the same (engine off, back on again) and all is fine. There was a brief smell of petrol in the car, so it's possible that Shell sold me something sub-standard, or the car was just having a bit of a strop about something. Either way, I'll keep an eye. In other news, I decided yesterday to migrate one of my DSLs to one of Zen's DSLMax products. I'd previously been against this as I wasn't (and to some extent, still don't) like DSLMax for various reasons, but since the way the line is used probably lends itself well to it, I took a jump. I have to admit, it's good. Very good. Very fast at what it does. I'm not totally around to it yet - I'll be keeping an eye on how things pan out on the line for a while yet.

http://news.windingroad.com/etc/dinner-for-two-to-go-on-the-nurburgring/. Genius. Utter genius.

is what I said (amongst other things) when I saw "Check Engine" appear on the dashboard of the car, followed by the Saab-esque warning noises.

Ah.

I managed to pull it over immediately as I was pretty much on top of a layby. Engine straight off. Bonnet up. Hm. Nothing obvious there - put ignition to 2 and... it's fine.

Unsuprisingly, I'll be keeping an eye on that. SID (The Saab on board computer) didn't say anything, which I'd expect it to.

http://www.north-wales.police.uk/nwp/public/en/blogs/viewblog.asp?UID=2&CID=25

My God, what a fantastically stupid idea. Please - anyone who values their freedom, leave a comment. On the one hand, I hope this comes in so that I can buy a house in a national park (there's plenty in Snowdonia) and take my bike with me. Hell, I'll buy a whole fleet of them, and then fit barely legal aftermarket exhausts.

I'm still amazed by the sheer stupidity of this idea. Does the chap even live on this planet?

I'm home. Tired, but home. We got another recording in at the Eisteddfod quite late on, meaning we left the site at about 1630. After heading back to the car, which was parked miles away (on the furthest park and ride away), I needed to drop my colleague off as he is staying on for a few more days. This required dropping him off a bit further east on the M4 at Brigend. Now, I tapped in my postcode to the GPS at the park and ride site and it reckoned on 3.5 hours and about 180 miles to get home. Not too shabby all things in, and so we headed off to his new hotel.

About an hour later (!!) we arrived and I dropped him off. The GPS now reckoned on over 4 hours driving, and 258 miles. Good god. I really wasn't expecting that. Something much shorter would've been better.

I stopped for some food, and also used a slightly better route (in my eyes) than the one the GPS suggested, which saw me home at 2130, even after having picked up a works car from St Asaph.

Stopped at home for 45 minutes or so, then headed over to Bangor to collect the UPS for installation at St Asaph. This job went suprisingly well - the leased line gear all resync'd within about 5 minutes, and - as Barry Scott would say. Bang! The techie was gone!

I slept very well - it was very well needed. I think I'll head in to work in about an hour or so. I'll certainly need a few quiet days to recover from all of this.

I've not been to Swansea before - our digs are in Mount Pleasant (photos to follow - the decorative tastes of the owner are certainly eclectic). Swansea is an odd little place. I'm not really sure how to describe it. It seems to be quite poor economically and socially. Only having been here for a few hours I've already come across some quite open inhabitants. I don't think I'd be too comfortable living here, to be honest. I'll put it another way - I'm concerned that the car might not be there in the morning.
I've never seen hills like they have around here - driving from the Eisteddfod to our digs took us up a hill which on first look seemed almost vertical. Walking back from the pub just now left me out of breath - I'd certainly have some good muscles in my legs if I lived around here.

Life on the road certainly has its pros and cons. On the one hand, expenses are good. We spent 20 quid at the pub tonight which can all be claimed back. Depending on your own taste, never knowing where you'll be is either a good thing or a bad thing.

It used to be that I quite liked this type of thing, constantly flitting about up and down the country. Does it mean I'm getting old if I'd prefer to be back at home?

We ended up getting a couple of people recorded today, which is the reason I'm actually here. I'm quite pleased we've got at least something to show for our time. Hopefully we'll get a lot more tomorrow - another four recordings would be fantastic, but I think that might be being a bit hopeful.

I've checked out the route home and it seems far better. Longer (Just under 200 miles - the journey down was about 140, I think), but the roads certainly look a lot nicer - my route straddles the Wales/England border for most of the way.

I had quite a relaxing night. The guy I'm working with and myself went out and had a pub meal, and then found a Riley's snooker & pool hall, where we got 10 games of pool in. I have to say, he's a fantastic player, although I only just managed to scrape a win at 6-4.

Guess I should try and get a good night sleep.

Well, we're here. The GPS took us on some... interesting roads. I may have to investigate my options for the journey home tomorrow as it was certainly one of the more challenging drives I've had to do.

I'm currently sat in the office at the Bangor stand. I went around and took some photos earlier and also found that I'm able to use the press area if I need to, although that doesn't really offer many benefits, so I'll probably not bother with that.

I have to admit - not being Welsh, I'm (again) struggling to see the point of most of what goes on here. Fair enough with the competitions and so on - that's fine, but the rest of it seems just to be publicity for various relatively large companies, and also for public bodies and Government organisations. I've spotted a whole raft of people walking around with DVLA bags, and Food Standards Agency stuff - what's the point? Why do organisations and agencies like this need to be here?

Organisations like Universities, colleges, fine - student recruitment. Totally understandable, as are organisations like the BBC, and the Welsh Rugby Union.

The Eisteddfod is regularly having financial struggles, and have often said that they're considering their options as regards putting on the next one. If I wasn't working here, it would've cost me a tenner to get in - if I had an average family, it would've cost £30. Maybe it's just me not being Welsh, but that seems a lot of money for what's happening here - I'm certainly not getting much out of it. As I say, a lot of it seems to be a PR event for larger organisations - I certainly wouldn't want to pay to have adverts thrown at me. Maybe the entertainment in the Maes makes up for it...

Just after lunch on Friday afternoon, I left the office early and headed off to pick Sioned up. We spent the weekend in York to celebrate her birthday on Tuesday. After a brief diversion to one of the University offices where I spent an hour or so fighting against the Nortel phone exchange which seems to be fatally knackered, we headed off on our travels.

We were staying at the Royal York Hotel which is an absolutely storming location. We couldn't ask for much better, really. Arrived there about fiveish, and Sioned decided she'd have a bath and generally relax. Me not being one for sitting about and relaxing, I wandered off out into York to get some photos and scout around to see what we could do later on. I arrived back and we went down to an evening meal at the hotel.
I'll save the rant about the meal for another time (possibly tomorrow). The meal itself was fine, but it certainly gave me a good chance to form opinions on certain things. As I say, I'll save that one for another time. After the meal, we headed on out to a pub called Coopers, conveniently located next to the hotel at the train station. As railway pubs go, it's pretty bloody good, actually. Not too expensive, not too cheap, and plays good music. And not too smokey, either.
From there, we moved further into the city itself, visiting various places including the Hole In The Wall (I reckon it's a better place than BITE suggest), until we happened across a bar/club called Cert 18. As we arrived, we looked at the posters outside where we were accosted by a couple of blokes who asked if we "liked loud music" - if so, we *had* to go in. With such a glowing recommendation, who could turn down the offer? The place seemed to qualify as York's only metal/goth/emo bar. The music was good, although we decided not to shell out the xc2xa37 per person to watch the band who were playing in the other room. Perhaps, really, we should've done.
A wander around the city saw us heading back towards the hotel, where upon arrival we were well and truly ready for bed.

And there the problems started. The hotel had recently been refurbished. It's really been done quite well, but since the building is listed, putting in air conditioning can be a little tricky. That's fine, but the room was unbelievably hot. As in, laying on top of the bed (ie no covers) and the sweat was pouring from us. Needless to say, I was a little tetchy on the Saturday, which Sioned noticed more than once.

Saturday rolled around and I gorged myself at breakfast, before we headed out to do numerous touristy things. First on the list was the castle museum. I have to say, it was absolutely excellent. Well put together and certainly held attention for the whole time we were there. Some of the exhibits there really did entrance me for some reason. After that we had a wander around the Shambles, before we went for a cruise on the river which took an hour or so. By this time, it was after 3 and we were pretty hungry (we'd spent over 2 hours in the museum). Thing with York is, stretch your arms out and you're touching a pub or somewhere that serves food, so we just stopped at the first place that looked like it was capable of serving decent food. This happened to be Plonkers a wine bar by trade, but also somewhere that serves decent food, although the hen party that was in there at the same time were... quite vocal, unfortunately.
Sioned kept saying that I should climb to the top of the Minster, or go on the Yorkshire Wheel, but the cloud was too low which would've meant some relatively poor photographs, so instead we headed back to the hotel. I suggested that we go over to Joel's party in Wakefield instead. A minor disagreement later saw us both hooning down the A64 headed for Wrenthorpe.

It was absolutely excellent seeing people that I'd not seen in *far* too long. Caught up on lots of things whilst Neil cooked enough food to serve the whole of Yorkshire on the barby, Ellie told us she wanted Santa to visit, and Ben hooned around the garden on his car. Ace. We could only really stay an hour or so as we'd got more things that we wanted to do in York during the course of the evening, so we soon hopped back into the car and headed back to the hotel.

Short preparations later saw us trying the Hole In The Wall (see previous day) for food. Unfortunately we'd missed this, so went to a cafe on the corner next to the Minster. Nice food, all things said. From here, we headed over to a pub called The Golden Fleece, which was conveniently located just over the road from the club we'd be going to later. Out of all of the pubs we'd been to over the weekend, this one would probably rank last. It just didn't really click with me for some reason. After a quick drink there, we headed over to Fibbers, where we caught the end of AKP who were actually rather woo. Unfortunately, the club itself seemed pretty dead. We gave it an hour or so before giving up and heading off. Problem being that it was now 2330 or so, and nowhere was going to let us in. So we did the only thing we could - went back to the hotel.
A previous minor strop at reception (no, it wasn't a proper strop - I know that it's a hotel reception so just conveyed myself in a normal manner) saw the appearance of a couple of fans in our room which made a whole world of difference, so much so that we didn't wake until 0900 when the bells from the minster woke us.

A short breakfast later, and we packed the car up and we headed over to the National Railway Museum, primarily so that I could have a go on the Yorkshire Wheel, which towers some 50m over York itself. Some pretty ace views, although I still think the one in Manchester is better. After that we had a quick look around the NRM itself, before picking the car up from the hotel and heading into York itself. Sioned had spotted a fairground ride the previous day outside the castle musem which she wanted a go on, and I'd said I'd go for a walk around the top of Clifford's Tower which was next to it.
From here, we headed over to York Minster. Sioned decided to, for various reasons, not follow me up the 275 obscenely steep steps to the top of the tower (mainly she doesn't like heights). Even though I consider myself relatively fit, I was knackered at the top. Stunning views though. After a slightly more leisurely climb back down again, we headed for Betty's Tea Rooms where we found a huge queue which, in the midday sun didn't really bode well. On the way back to the car we happened across a mime artist - quite oddly, or a mime artist I got talking to him about some of the stuff he's done and is hopefully going to go. Quite a nice bloke.

The Saab went in this morning as I wasn't too happy about the left hand front suspension. It seemed to be doing odd things every now and then. Nothing to worry about - the wheel alignment is just slightly off (it looks like it wasn't done properly when the new tyres were fitted). Woo and yay.

Thought I'd better get it checked before I go putting 800 or so miles on it in the next week. Better safe than sorry.

I needed to pick up a new switch from a place in Birmingham (near the redeveloped Bull Ring). Tried last Wednesday on the way down to Leicester for Humph's leaving do but didn't have the required stuff to pick it up. Sioned & myself were destined for Leicester this weekend, so headed off at 1615 from her office in Colwyn Bay on Friday with the idea of getting to the place before 6. As we headed towards the A55/A494 fork, we found the A55 turn off closed. This didn't bode well. I drove by the J8 of the M6 at 1845. Waaaay too late to pick it up. Sigh. We headed on over to Leicester and got there by about 1930, which wasn't too bad. Dad was the only one in - Mum had gone out, and Laura was at work, so we got pizza and Chinese and had a quiet night in.

Saturday rolled around and I decided to head off to Birmingham to try and pick up the switch again. Arrived at 10 and... not a soul. I waited around for 45 minutes or so before giving up and heading home, quietly seething and planning out the e-mail I was going to write. Got home and found I was actually wrong, and the place was open 1200-1600 today. Bugger. I was due to meet Steve & Kev for lunch so did that, then headed back in time to go to Birmingham yet again. This time, I actually managed to pick the thing up. It's quite amusing now, to be honest.
On the way down there for the final time I noticed (how could I not? It scared me rigid) a knocking sound from the front left wheel which seems to indicate a bush needs replacing in the torsion bar. Fortunately a relatively cheap job.

The rest of the weekend wasn't too eventful. Stopped by at Grandma & Grandad's place after getting back, and then had a quiet Saturday night in. Me & Sioned went out for a meal with Mum & Dad at The Manor and then headed off. We dropped Mum off at the Chili's gig in Coventry, and then got caught in a huge storm on the M6 which saw parts of it flooded. As soon as we picked up the A55, the weather picked up again. The driving over the weekend left me feeling pretty drained and I was glad to get into bed on Sunday evening.

I've been pretty busy at work this week doing lots of data analysis for the managers for things required for next years contract. We're hearing quite a few negative things, though, which doesn't bode well :(

Sioned & myself decided we'd head to Leicester this weekend coming to see people as it's a few weeks since we were last there. Unfortunately (well, sort of) I received a message from Chloe on Sunday when I was working at the theatre saying that H's retirement do - which I'd known about, to be fair - was confirmed for tomorrow.

Arse.

So, due to that only being confirmed on Sunday, I'll be driving to Leicester tomorrow afternoon (and, due to a stroke of luck, picking up a new Cisco 2950 from Birmingham en route), going to this retirement party, and then immediately heading back to North Wales. Fun fun fun.

We've got a couple of house viewings coming up this week, too. One of them is a no-chain person, so that one requires a bigger push :-)

Pretty quiet in work at the moment - bits and bobs happening. The theatre have said they'll probably require me a bit more in the coming weeks as there's the WNO will be stopping by for a week.

Although not whilst driving, I hasten to add. 0621 yesterday morning saw myself & Merfyn getting on a train to begin a pretty hefty 8hr45min journey down to Penzance. We sampled train services from Virgin (not bad, it has to be said), Central (dire) and First Great Western (pretty good, although we were travelling first class here). Nothing was late. Which was nice.

We went and had a look around the car. Aside from one of the tyres needing a replacement, it's bloody nice. Spent this morning giving it a good clean on the outside, polishing, waxing and whatnot. The inside needs a good going over, but I'm intending to have a valet done on it shortly.

So - the car. My god, it shifts. 2.0l turbo under the bonnet. On the way home, we had need (well, not really, but hey) to beat another car off the lights. Put my foot down, and experienced the turbo for the first time. I'm surprised it didn't take off. I have to admit, it did scare me.

Performance wise we've seen 470 miles to a tank which costs £60 to fill.

The roof mechanism is rather woo as well - no problems at all.

Overall, I'm pleased, yes.

http://photos.garysmith.org.uk/saab for some photos.

Sigh. Never rely on things just working in the world of money. I went to transfer the money from one account to another so I had it available to pay for the car. Can I do a BACS transfer? No. Got to be a cheque. I'm picking the car up on Friday. Cheque will be cleared on Monday.

After getting that little problem out of the way, I had to get train tickets sorted out (to get to the car). Elected to buy them on t'interweb and collect them from my local station. Go to the station with my bit of paper with various reference numbers on. He looks blankly and says it means essentially nothing to him. Joy.

Got the insurance sorted today, though, which didn't go too badly. If anything else needs to go wrong, could it please happen tonight. I want tomorrow to be nice and easy, and Friday to be even easier, please.

My alarm went off at 0955 (it really smelt quite bad. Sorry, poor joke) waking me from a very nice sleep. I'd finally gone to bed at gone 3. The rail grinder had set fire to some of the wooden sleepers on the track, so it was rather eventful all things told, with the fire brigade and Network Rail there having a good shufty at things for well over an hour.

The washing machine was delivered and the guys had left by 1030, leaving me to install it. Washing machines are not light things, and subsequently I've done a muscle in near my shoulder. Bugger. Still, at least it's all done now.

I had a bit of a mooch around, before deciding to do some work on profile - upgraded various bits of software and decided to finally upgrade it to Apache2, something I'd been meaning to do for ages. This was not an easy job, something I'd remembered from when I looked into it. Think a maze of twisty packages, all alike. I have to admit, though, it was rather fun. I've only just (some 9 hours later) got everything checked out and done. It should've been far easier, but, well, I like to make things difficult.

Sioned's Dad came over and we had 4 frames of snooker over the road. I have to admit - I was playing out of my skin tonight. I was very pleased with my performance all in. My cue action seems to be coming on quite well.

Got home, and bought a car. I was rather shocked, all things said. A comedy bid on eBay seems me the proud owner of a Saab 9-3 convertible. Problem is, I've got to go to Penzance of all places to pick it up. That is going to be a hell of a long day - 8 or 9 hours there on the train, and then 7.5 hours driving back. Jesus. Mentalist. Sioned was rather pleased to hear it, although I'm still rather shocked that I've got it for the price I have (it's a *very* low price). The guy called me afterwards - he's a dealer and apparently messed up with the reserve price and is making a significant loss on it.

I really could do with getting to bed a bit early tonight. I've got another busy-ish week ahead, although I'll probably have to take Friday off to go and collect the car. Sioned is back tomorrow, so I've had a quick clean up of the house today - the kitchen was pretty filthy after the washing machine delivery (it was raining at the time, so lots of crap got trod into the kitchen). What a busy weekend!

I'm absolutely knackered. I set off from home at about the usual time this morning (0725) but instead of my relaxing train journey in to work, headed for Wrexham and NEWI, where there was a conference regarding the National Learning Network (specifically 'E-Learning') being held. As I mentioned previously, I wasn't sure, and indeed still have no clue now what this has to do with my current job, but the idea does seem an interesting one.
I received a phone call at 0905 (just as the conference was kicking off) asking if I'd be back in the office today, as I was required to do some data analysis. The person sounded rather panicky, so I hooned all the way back across the coast to Bangor to sort the job out, before leaving again relatively early to get home. Problem being it was an obscenely hot day, and I'd just done the best part of 220 miles without having eaten much at all, nor drank much. Ho hum.