Alex's Adventures on the Infobahn - ale

Tea Minus

2010-08-31T22:12:00+01:00

Today has involved physical introduction of remaining in-laws to actual parents. This was by way of a wandering cycle through town via the odd pub or two. Tomorrow is a fairly light day where I have to achieve a) a hair cut b) get some keys cut. The rest of the day can be put aside to ale quaffing with both fathers (and assorted Cambridge types). The heavy logistics kick in on Thursday, suits and ales all needing to be in their pre-allocated places. Friday I hand the metaphorical keys over to my best men and ride the wave in.

I have secured a 30-45 minute slot for back to back rocking out. I have the beginnings of an over populated play list which needs honing but any suggestions for classic rock material will get a passing notice from me. Hopefully.

Ale to the chief

2009-10-19T14:27:00+01:00

Had a good but slightly tiring weekend exploring some more of the pubs of Cambridge. I've made a few more discoveries that will be useful to remember for later although I missed out on the Kingston Arms which I shall have to visit next time I'm in town.

There was a lot of technology involved in the weekend with GPS enabled phones and shared maps in the Google Cloud informing us of potential places to visit culled from the Good Beer Guide. Latitude did seem to work quite well although one lesson learnt was to pay attention to the area circle around icons or you can end up chasing around a ghost position if people aren't updating via the more accurate GPS.

We also had visit from Rich and Al with Rosie and the local family in tow on Sunday which was nice. It was followed by the first Sunday lunch of the season at my parents with by brother and one of my cousins visiting as well. We enjoyed the post-meal digestion while watching the penultimate F1 race where Button claimed his crown. I've fallen out of favour with F1 over the last few years as it turned from exciting motor sport to a procession of cars with very little overtaking. However yesterdays race was exciting to watch and I think benefits from the uninterrupted coverage the BBC can give it. While I doubt I'll be going out of my way to watch every race it's certainly up in the rankings for those lazy Sunday afternoons.

Putting on my drinking trousers

2009-10-16T13:22:00+01:00

The drinking posse will be in town this weekend for Matt U's birthday celebrations. As the geek quotient is high I'm taking the opportunity to immerse myself in the magic Google juice that my new phone makes available. I've pondered the danger of getting too tied to Google before but I'm getting more relaxed about it as I go on. I'm now signed up Latitude so the orbiting mind control satellites will always be able to find me, and more importantly so will Fliss. The privacy controls are actually fairly solid and I'm not about to start publishing a public location badge. If I really want to go off the grid I'm going to have to turn off the phone anyway (and change car, go completely cash based and only ever access the 'net via Tor), it's a good job I'm not likely to ever be on the run from the state.

My address book has gone from my Palm through various phones I've owned to the "cloud". Luckily Google are pretty good about making it easy to export backup copies. As more of my documents are stored in the cloud (sans any important data like passwords and identity details) I thought it was about time I backed them up. I found a nice little python app that I can run on a regular basis to stay synced.

I shall probably be posing more about the phone later. However I've just upgraded to the latest firmware (sadly not yet the donut release) and as a result have to spend some time configuring the phone more sensibly. However I can generally report it's a lovely little phone and a very diverse platform.