niq’s soapbox

… the gooseberries appear in one of my regular shops (mmm).

So many delicious summer fruits and berries have artificially-extended seasons that the presence of raspberries and strawberries has become meaningless. Not to mention those that are already in the shops though not yet in season, like blueberries and even blackberries. But the gooseberry season is still genuine, and availability has become woefully intermittent in recent years.

Today I have the first gooseberries of the year, along with other seasonal delicacies. Need some cream to make a fool with them, so I went to Somerfield and bought it, along with a couple of other things. Cash running low, so I ask for cashback, only to find my debitcard declined without explanation. OK, no panic, paid by other means and tried a building society cash machine: also refused.

Good thing it’s lunchtime, then, and the local agency for my bank is open. They tell me the card should’ve been replaced for (nonspecific) security reasons, and I should’ve received a new one back in February. Ahem … noone told me, and my existing card is only one year old and has another two years on it! Anyway, I took out fifty quid cash and they ordered a new card.

So a minor annoyance. But if that had happened when I was away from home (even out of the country), or even just at the wrong time of day/week, it could’ve been seriously annoying. I don’t want to use the creditcard for cash[1], and there are very few people I could borrow from without huge embarrassment even if they happen to be around.

[1] Cash withdrawals by UK debitcard are free, but the same thing with a creditcard incurs high charges.

Since the Sun box arrived, I’ve been struggling with the logistics of my workspace.

Clearing the desk for the shiny new 24″ monitor was straightforward enough. But how to deal with two computers: both the new Solaris box and the existing Linux one? A remote desktop isn’t an option, because I want to be able to work at either computer while the other is powered down. For a day I perched the old box’s monitor on the corner of the desk, but the stiffness of my neck after an hour working at it told me clearly that’s not sustainable.

Well, that 24″ monitor has two inputs (digital and analogue). The Sun came with a digital lead, and I was using analogue on the Linux box. Plugging both in works, and under normal operations the monitor can be switched between them. A solution therefore appears to be to plug both computers in to the one monitor. But can the Linux box be configured to recognise the Sun hardware and use the full 1920×1200 display, as opposed to a a distressingly small subsection? The Sun hardware is too new for the system to auto-recognise and configure. And the Solaris box doesn’t even have an xorg.conf from which I could copy relevant parts.

Well, yesterday I fixed it, with a bit of help from the good folks on IRC (thanks arreyder, yango et al). Two computers, one monitor, and both computers giving a great display! Now I can retire the old monitor.

Still a few downsides. I can’t share a keyboard&mouse the same way, so I have to swap them around and regularly find myself typing at the wrong one. And I miss the sound on the old monitor - the new one has none. But nothing that’s a showstopper. And, not least, whereas the old monitor was selected for (among other things) its low energy consumption at about 40W, the new one is rated 90W.

I’ve also just come to appreciate the value of USB. With the Sun box to the left of the desk and the mouse at my right hand, that’s an awkward connection. But the Sun keyboard rides to the rescue, with two USB ports in the back, so I only have to plug the mouse in to the keyboard.

I guess it’s a sign of getting older, when someone I’ve known all my life is reduced to a name on a memorial bench on the seafront at Hove.  The parents told me about it, and now I’ve seen it for myself.  But not sat there: it was occupied when I passed it.

Philip was one of my family’s oldest friends until his death a couple of years ago.  A colourful character, as might perhaps be expected of a jew who escaped Germany to England as a boy in the 1930s, losing all his family, but retaining a strong accent all his life.  His twin daughters are my age: I wouldn’t say we grew up together (it was more in parallel but in very different environments) but the family are probably my oldest acquaintances outside my own family.

Requiescat in Pace.

So, back in Blighty after Apachecon.  Once again, the journey on the overnight ferry was very pleasant, though alas they’ve closed the highest level of the deck to passengers, which makes it less fun.  Up there with no shelter got very, very windy: the boat’s forward motion ensured that, even in conditions of perfect calm.  Weather was very nice for the crossing, and remains bright&sunny but quite chilly for April, with occasional sharp showers (much as it was in Amsterdam).

That’s the last work-travel I have to do for the foreseeable future, barring things that may crop up.  There are still things I need to follow up on from last week, but mostly I can get down to routine (and of course fun) stuff from my customary workspace - the one an estate agent would describe as the main bedroom in my flat (where I sleep being the small bedroom).

Wonder how long I can keep myself in a getting-up-early timezone, from the one-hour NL/UK difference.  I don’t suppose it’ll last the week.

It’s 07:50 on my body clock, 23:50 here in silicon valley. And after no proper food all day, I find all the restaurants in this area closed at 9-10. Best I could find was a late-night corner shop of the kind you find in rundown suburbs of any city, where I was able to get a couple of tired-looking but nice pieces of fruit. I thought El Camino Real should translate to something like Royal Parade, but it turns out to be some dreary suburban main road full of parking lots and chip/grease shops.

And then there’s the sleep. Or rather, next door room’s telly making it a challenge. And the roar of next door’s aircond, which is probably why they’ve got the telly on so loud. Heh.

Update: tuesday morning, and I feel much better after hotel breakfast. This’ll probably bear a morning timestamp, as it seemed to get lost last night in the hotel’s intermittent wifi.

I’m on the point of accepting a job offer. This is the culmination of several months discussion and negotiation, since $bigco first contacted me on September 9^th last year, indicating their interest in recruiting me. For the first time since 1997, I’ll be on a payroll other than my own.

Accepting this means I’ll be earning quite a lot more than I’ve sustained in the past, though naturally less than my full charge-out rate (peak earnings) at WebThing, or indeed some of what’s been dangled in front of me. Indeed, I didn’t even try to haggle over money, but concentrated instead on things I care about: working from home without some ghastly commute, and retaining the right to maintain and continue specific existing work without $bigco claiming ownership. Anyway, I’m very happy to replace intermittent contract-work earnings with a regular salary, which is exactly what’s happening to my finances.

Apart from retaining my freedoms, the other good news is the work itself, which will continue to be dominated by Apache development. My level of commitment to core development work will not suffer, and could potentially even benefit in some areas.

For the forseeable future, WebThing will continue as-is, with the important exception that I’ll no longer offer paid consulting and
support work. For existing/past clients, I will of course honour existing commitments. If you have followup issues, I will of course do my best to help, with the proviso that I can no longer commit my own time to you.

Much more on this subject to come!

I’ve never understood the distinction between a cold and ‘flu.  AFAICT there’s a continuum between a sore throat/runny nose and being flat out.  How do you classify something in the middle?  Answer: coin a new expression that enables you to get a dig at someone.  Hence “man-flu”, which pokes at the only sex we’re allowed to have a dig at in these politically-correct days.

I’d describe what I’ve just had as a cold - probably picked up on my long train+bus journey on Tuesday.  But yesterday I was shivering under my warmest duvet, and struggled to sit at the computer for an hour or two (whereas in current weather I’d normally find that duvet a little too warm).

Could I have gone to work if I worked in an office?  Last week, yes, no problem (and - alas - like most professionals, I’d never have dared take the time off).  Weekend, I think yes with difficulty, though I’d have been utterly unproductive for about two days.  Not that that matters in .co.uk - it’s the bum onna seat that counts. And I’d have been spreading germs to all my colleagues.

I did excuse myself choir on Thursday ‘cos of germs, though symptoms then were still very mild.  I wish more people would make an effort to isolate themselves when they’re likely to be infectious.

And it’s a reminder of one of my reasons for working at home.  Well, some though not all of the offices I’ve worked in have been germ-exchanges.

That shiny new cordless optical mouse has given somewhat patchy performance, mostly OK but sometimes playing sillybuggers.

This evening it gave up the ghost altogether.  I thought at first it might’ve been the computer, so I rebooted: it worked for half an hour, then stopped again.

So I tried a fresh battery, and it worked.  That’s a battery life of less than two and a half months, during which I’ve regularly turned it off at night.  The dead battery is an AA-sized alkaline jobbie.

So much for going cordless.  Methinks the next mouse’ll be summat more traditional.  Bah, Humbug.

I’ve been caffeine-free for 72 hours!

Caffeine is the only known addictive drug I take far too much of, and feel unwell if I withdraw (I’ve been known to chew instant coffee granules just for a fix).  So going without for 3 days is indeed going cold turkey, albeit a very easy process compared to what one hears of withdrawing from some other drugs.

Why?  Well, I went down with a lurgy last week.  One of the symptoms of that is going right off my cuppa tea (my staple drink, of which I normally drink several pints per day).  My last cup on Thursday made me feel much worse, so I stopped altogether and moved to the purely herbal teas.

Now on past experience, going cold turkey means about 24 hours of mild headache and general lethargy, after which I’m fine.  That is to say, the symptoms are a subset of those of the lurgy itself.  On Friday, I was indeed down with those symptoms.  On Saturday, the lurgy was well on the way to clear, and I had milder symptoms with a craving for caffeine.  Today the craving is much reduced, too.  I might just declare the body cleaned up, and allow myself an espresso if I feel like one tonight.  Perhaps a small one rather than the usual double.

The original Savitri was famous for her encounter with Death, when she persuaded him to return her husband to her.

Now her present-day namesake name has starred in another fine romantic tale, when she was dramatically rescued from captivity. In true fairytale tradition, her rescuer was a fine young hero she’d never met before. But he instantly won her heart, and eloped with her to a new lovenest.

Holst’s short opera tells the story of the original Savitri. Now we almost have another plot

Read the story here or here.