Yesterday evening Anne-Marie and I went to see the new Transformers movie at the cinema.  It’s a film I’ve been looking forward to for a while now, remembering the original cartoons and the toys I had, so it was always going to be interesting seeing how that idea was interpreted for a modern audience.  I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting much in the way of plot, there isn’t a huge amount you can do with it, but from the trailers the graphics looked like they were going to be pretty awesome.  I wasn’t disappointed!

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Yesterday evening I went round to my friend Aaron’s house so we could fit new lower ball joints to Neddy, having replaced the upper ones previously. In case I hadn’t already said elsewhere, Neddy has been making a rather disconcerting clunking noise when accelerating, and I had thought it was the upper ball joint, but replacing it made no difference. So Aaron and I did the lower ones too. And did it make any difference? Not a sausage.

It’s kind of a hard noise to describe really, especially since we’re not entirely sure where the noise is coming from. You can hear it when inside the car, but not really from outside because of the noise from the engine. This leads us to suspect that it’s not to do with the suspension or anything on the sides of the car, as you would expect to be able to hear something like that form outside. It’s a sound akin to clicking your knuckles, and happens when pulling away from stationary, or accelerating hard in first or second gear. It sort of clicks three or four times before settling down.

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If you haven’t heard (and I hadn’t until I was told by my Mum this morning), Gloucester and surrounding areas are flooded. And by “flooded” I don’t mean a centimetre or two of standing water. We’re talking major widespread flooding of vast areas of land, both agricultural and of roads and houses. I watched some of it on BBC News 24 this lunch time. Not good. What’s doubly not good about it is that my fiancee is right there in the middle of it.

So far Ellie has been coping ok with it all, and managed to get more stuff done for the wedding, but it has not been without its difficulties. There is now no running water, following the flooding of the water treatment plant, and according to the report I heard this lunch time they don’t expect water to be back on tap until Wednesday at the earliest. They have to pump all the water out of the plant first, then drain all the contaminated water out of the system, then let the water go through the system again before it can be pumped back out to houses. I suspect it may take some time to clear the main water pipes too, so it could be several days before houses have clear drinking water back.

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For some time now there has been an odd and disconcerting clunking noise coming from the front of my Mini when I pull away.  I had come to the conclusion that it might be the upper ball joint on the driver’s side wheel (the passenger side upper ball joint had been replaced about six months ago), but without a ball joint splitter or torque wrench I wasn’t exactly feeling confident attempting to sort it out myself!  Thankfully I didn’t have to do it on my own, thanks to that wonderful community that is Colchester Mini Club – Aaron came and helped me this evening.

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Finally, a non-computer-related post! It feels like it’s been a while since I’ve just blogged about random stuff happening around me. Apologies to anyone I’ve bored recently!

The gas man came today to have a look at our dead boiler. For those who don’t know, our boiler was condemned a couple of weeks ago after a routine gas check showed that the readings just weren’t good enough. Granted, the boiler is nearly as old as I am, but it has still been an inconvenience not having hot water, as you can imagine. It’s not been too bad, we do have an immersion heater so we can still have the odd shower here and there, but it’s an expensive way of heating water and not exactly convenient.

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Today, on a whim, I opened up my old Camino browser to test something, and was pleasantly surprised to be informed that I was using an old version!  Yes, the folks at Camino had quietly released the next major update for the web browser, including the latest Gecko rendering engine (as used in Firefox 2).

Before Firefox 2 was released, I used Camino as my primary web browser.  It used the same Gecko rendering engine, but housed it in a native Mac app, which made it faster, more functional, and used the pretty Mac widgets instead of the ugly PC-like ones that Firefox bundles with.  But when Firefox 2 came along Camino was left out in the cold, as it was still using old technology.  Firefox was still slow, but it had fewer bugs in the rendering.  So I’ve been using a mixture of Safari and Firefox, Safari for quick loading of pages and Firefox for web development.  Now that looks set to change, with Camino providing the power of Firefox in a sleek package that actually looks at home on the Mac.

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It has been said that “a good workman never blames his tools”.  While this is true in many cases, when it comes to design I am very much of the opinion that good tools can greatly contribute to the quality and success of the finished product.  As a web designer I am constantly on the lookout for anything that would make my life easier, and from a design point of view anything that looks good and works well generally puts me in a good creative mood, which has clear implications for a well-designed web site.  Since migrating from PC to Mac I have tried various different programs, some free, some not, and after a recent discovery I have been prompted to think again about the options available.

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This, rather than me sharing something amazing with the world, is actually more of a rant / feature request.  I have just spent some time searching the interweb for a contacts address book application that displays all my contacts on a map, allowing you to see graphically where everyone is.  Sure, there are plugins and stuff that allow me to click someone’s address and have a map pop up showing where that one person lives, but it would be really fascinating to just show a map of where everyone is, all at the same time.  So far, no one seems to have done this.  Maybe it’s just that I’m the only person who might possibly find this interesting or at all useful, but I’d have thought what with the Google Maps API available someone would have done this by now!  Surely it can’t be all that difficult, especially since you can overlay custom content onto a Google Map.  Is it really that much of a stretch to ask for someone to embed a Google Map into an address book application and link it into the addresses stored for people?  If anyone has found anything that matches my hazy description, do let me know!  Even if I don’t end up using it, it would be interesting to know if something like this exists.

Of course, the obvious solution is that I actually sit down and write the application myself, but that involves programming, and I swore never to do that again after I finished my degree…

Today I have done no work whatsoever.  At least, not of the web design kind anyway.  Today has been almost entirely devoted to moving house, which has proven to be an exciting yet tiring experience (I’m not the only one moving, it seems – Phill and Phil recently finalised their contract and have a shiny new house to move into, but they’ve done it the scary way and got a mortgage).  First thing this morning I was up and ready to collect a van I’d hired for the day.  Not a huge enormous thing, just a short wheel base Transit van, but it was plenty for our needs.  It was very different to driving a Mini though, as you’d expect – it was higher, longer, wider, slower.  I was surprised how quickly I got used to it though, using the diesel engine slightly differently and even managing to successfully reverse into a drive using only my mirrors!

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Today I decided to start sorting out some of my junk in preparation for moving house.  Over the past few years I have steadily acquired various odds and ends and failed to get rid of very much, and as a result I have a plethora of either obsolete or unnecessary possessions.  Now, it’s worth pointing out that I am not a compulsive hoarder, but at the same time I don’t like getting rid of things that I might potentially find useful at a later date.  However, with storage space at our new house being decidedly on the diminutive side, I decided that now would be an ideal opportunity to scale back on the excess baggage.  Here, then, is a list of what I’m getting rid of – if there is anything here that you think might sit happily on your desk or in your cupboard or whatever, let me know.

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