Month: September 2007

On 2nd week since the long holiday in August, came back last Tuesday.

We went up to Scotland and stayed near Dunbar. Cheated this time because the weather had been so bad so we stayed in a static caravan. I took Jon to see the Foo Fighters at the fringe in Edinburgh. Supported by a band who said their name too quick and Nine Inch Nails, who were very loud and impossible to understand the words. I enjoyed singing along with Dave G, but it did’t give me the excitement that I had hoped for. Jon found it a bit noisy.

We fitted in a day at North Berwick and walked around the headland at Dunbar golf course, which was really nice and the sun shone for once. Also bought Jon a skim board and he spent a lot of time falling off it.

Came back for just long enough to pack Deb off to Guide camp and go to Bala for a weekend with the Canoe Camping Club folks. Dan showed us is photos of his holiday in Norway. Said he was glad he had done it but did’t want to go back to somewhere where it rains 360 days a year!

Rosie spent both days on Bala lake, day 2 sailing back in Da’s canoe. I managed to get to the Tryweryn for one day and then took Jon to the beach at Barmouth, after spending over an hour failing to find anywhere to park we went about 2 miles north of the place and found a really nice public beach over some dunes. It was a bit of a slog to cart the gear but OK. Jon finally mastered his skim board (ish).

Tryweryn tired me out; still lacking the fitness I used to have. But never mind, it’s coming back slowly. 

Then back at work. The CEO has agreed that I can go to the Rails Europe conference in Berlin and I’m getting quite excited about it. I also feel like writing a white paper on how not to design an external interface because of some of the interfaces I’ve been working with over the last month or so. It begins with: Do not use SOAP to send XML – use it to send structured objects, goes by way of always return consistent outputs to your users and finishes with use the framework properly.

I wonder if their ears are burning?

Just give the proceeds to charity, like those from Mein Kampf are given to Jewish charities. It’s not hard. I also wonder if the books were written to get close to children, or simply because it is something he is good at and he wanted to make some money. It’s good that his awful, criminal life, has produced something of merit – the rest of us should take it from him and use it for what it is.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6979731.stm