Another fortnightly “week notes”. But on the plus side I’ve written four other blog posts in the last two weeks.

Health

I went back to the fracture clinic on Friday. They removed my cast and x-rayed my ankle. The consultant was happy with the way it all looked so she has discharged me. I’ve still got one crutch which I’m using as a walking stick occasionally, but I’m getting around pretty well. I have an appointment at the bone densitometry clinic in ten days time – but I assume that’s just standard procedure for anyone who breaks a bone.

The biggest surprise was getting on the scales for the first time in six weeks. Given that I’ve spent the intervening time doing almost no exercise and eating far too much, it was a pleasant surprise to find I’d lost six pounds. The body works in strange ways when it’s traumatised.

Speaking and Training

I updated the course material for my intermediate and advanced Perl courses and sent them off to be printed for next week’s sessions. Because of the leg it’ll be a more sedentary course than usual. Hope the attendees don’t mind.

I’ve also had a email conversation about doing some more training in a couple of months time. Looks like the training side of the business is really picking up.

Writing

I completed an article to go in issue 157 of Linux Format. That won’t be out for a couple of months (issues 155 has only just hit the shelves). This was slightly unusual as it wasn’t about Perl. It was a simple introduction to database design and SQL. And there’s a sample application written in PHP. Developing that was quite an experience.

Technology

My new laptop arrived. I was hoping to get a few blog posts out of the problems I had installing Linux on it. But everything just worked. If anyone is interested, here’s what I did.

• Downloaded and burned CDs of Partition Magic and Fedora 64 bit
• Booted laptop using Partition Magic Live CD
• Resized Windows partition to free up most of the disk (I gave Windows 100 Gb of the 750 Gb disk)
• Booted laptop using Fedora Live CD
• Installed Fedora from the Live CD (I created a custom partition layout with two 250 Gb partitions – one for / and one for /home)
• Rebooted into Fedora – which all worked

Actually, I’ve had one tiny issue. I like to use TweetDeck for Twitter. And TweetDeck is an Adobe Air application. And Adobe have stopped supporting Air for Linux. And I’m not sure that they ever supported 64 bit Linux. So I’ve given up on having TweetDeck as a desktop application and have installed the application for Google Chrome.

For the first time ever, I’ve bought a laptop without a VGA  port. This is important as I’m often plugging my laptop into rather ancient projectors. I didn’t spot the lack of VGA port until the laptop arrived so I bought a Mini DisplayPort to VGA adaptor from Amazon. Bizarrely that’s not one of the extras that Dell try to sell you when you’re buying the laptop. I think they’ve missed a trick there to be honest.

Installing a 64 bit version of Fedora on my new laptop made me realise that I’d only installed a 32 bit version on my desktop machine. And I’d been quite disappointed with the performance of my desktop since I bought it eighteen months ago. As an experiment I installed a PAE version of the kernel and found that the system suddenly got a lot faster as it could access twice as much memory. The PAE kernal is only a halfway step though. At some point I need to reinstall the system completely using a 64 bit kernel.

But I suppose it’s good to be reminded that there are areas of IT where I’m just as clueless as the next person.

General Business Stuff

Bought some new business cards to hand out at this week’s training sessions. Bought them from Moo, of course (that’s a referral link – if you use it I get some kickback on you get 10% off your first order).

The cards feature the new Magnum Solutions logo that I’ve started to use. Need to redesign the web site to use it – but at the same time I’ll probably move the web site from Movable Type to WordPress, so that’s a project for another time.

Films

I’ve been rewatching old superhero films for no good reason – Catwoman, Incredible Hulk, Ghost Rider. The quality varies incredibly. The only films I’ve seen for the first time are The Disappeared (which I can remember nothing about), I, Robot (which I wish I could remember nothing about) and The Wrestler (which was ok).

TV

Watched a lot of TV on DVD. We’ve now seen all of the first four seasons of Mad Men for the second time and are very much looking to the new series next month. We’ve also got to the end of series three of Lost.

I’ve also seen the first episode of Grimm. It sounded like my kind of thing, but it turns out to be a bit obvious and repetitive. Might give it a couple more weeks to prove itself.

After series five of Skins I came very close to giving up on it. The third generation characters just didn’t interest me at all. But I’ve been watching series six and it seems that, slowly, I’m warming to them.

One of the ideas behind writing these week notes was that it would force me to write at least one post a week. That doesn’t seem to have worked. So here’s a combined post for the last two weeks.

Health

It’s four weeks today since I broke my leg. The leg itself feels fine; it’s just the cast that’s bloody inconvenient. I get around the house pretty well, but I don’t get out much. Last weekend we took a taxi to Blah Blah Blah in Goldhawk Road to celebrate various birthdays. Other than a couple of trips to the hospital that was the first time I’d been out since it happened.

I was considering hobbling down to the pub quiz tonight. But the snow has probably put paid to that idea.

Speaking and Training

I was supposed to be in Romania at the end of last week, but we’ll be rescheduling that trip for later in the year.

I’ve been spending some time preparing for the public Perl courses I’m running at the end of the month. Still a few places left if you’re interested.

Writing

I didn’t write anything new (not even a blog post) but the final part of my three-part tutorial on Modern Perl was published in issue 155 of Linux Format which went on sale this week. I already have an agreement to write another series for them later in the year.

General Business Stuff

I finished moving all of my domains over to a shiny new server. And then I spent a week or so fixing all of the niggling little problems that I found. There still seems to be one outstanding problem with the Mailman configuration.

I bought a new laptop. It’s a Dell XPS 14z. I say bought – actually I’ve ordered and it’ll be delivered in the next ten days.

Buying it was a bit of a nightmare. I ordered it on Wednesday using the HSBC credit card that I got when I moved my company bank account. But unfortunately the credit limit wasn’t high enough (I’d forgotten about a few other things I’d put on t he card) and the transaction was declined.

But the transaction wasn’t declined as I was placing the order. No, it was declined at some point in the following twelve hours. So Dell cancelled my order. They didn’t contact me to find out if I wanted to try another credit card – they just cancelled the order. They didn’t even tell me that they had cancelled the order. I found out as I logged on to my account and checked the order status on Thursday morning.

I spoke to them and gave them the details of another credit card. But apparently they couldn’t just reactivate my existing order, they had to start again from scratch. And for some reason Dell’s web site seems to change from day to day so it took them 24 hours to be able to replicate my order at the same price. But finally on Friday morning I got an email confirming that the order had been placed. For £4 cheaper than the original order.

I can’t help thinking that Dell’s systems are a little overcomplicated.

Films

Watched a few films for the first time. Candyman was terrible. 127 Hours was grim, but gripping. The Troll Hunter was a lot of fun.

I’ve been investigating Netflix UK and LoveFilm Instant. I think that LoveFilm have a slight edge as their application is already installed on my Bluray player. For Netflix I’d need to use my Wii. I need to see if I can persuade LoveFilm to give me a free trial – as a returning member that doesn’t seem to be their default behaviour.

Finally I actually managed to write a blog post that wasn’t week notes. That may well be my biggest achievement of the week.

Health

Still hobbling around in a cast and on crutches. Getting a bit better at it, but my upper body strength is still almost non-existent so I’m not going very far.

I went back to the hospital on Friday. On my previous visit it took about three hours. This time I did pretty much the same things and it took about half an hour. The doctor says everything seems to be going ok. They don’t want to see me for another four weeks. At that point they hope to remove the cast and replace it with a plastic boot.

Speaking and Training

Not much going on here. Still slowly building up to the courses I’ll be running at the end of February – which it now looks like I’ll be running with a plastic boot on, so there will probably be a fair bit of sitting down involved.

A couple of enquiries came in for training sessions later in the year. Looks like it could be a good year for my training business.

General Business Stuff

I host most of my domains on servers rented from 1 and 1. They’re not the best option by some distance, but they’re really cheap. At the end of last year I noticed that they had servers available running Centos 6. I rented a new server and have been slowly moving my domains over. This is a long and rather dull process. But I expect to be finished by next weekend.

Gigs

Anther gig that I couldn’t get to this week. This time it was Ed Sheeran at the Brixton Academy. Put the ticket on Gumtree and within hours I had a huge number of replies. Guess I set the price too low.

TV Highlights

Sherlock, of course. For the record, here’s my theory.

Moriarty had a Sherlock mask that he used when he kidnapped the children (which is why the young girl screamed when she saw Sherlock). Sherlock jumped into the back of the lorry that we saw, but at the same time threw off Moriarty’s body with the mask on. The cyclist that bumped into Watson also gave him a quick squirt of the H.O.U.N.D. gas so he saw what he feared most. Molly arranged to have the body collected and misindentified as Sherlock.

Of course, this is just a synthesis of many theories that have been going round on the web this week. And Stephen Moffat says there’s a clue that no-one has spotted.

Finished series two of Lost on DVD and made a start on series three. And we’ve started to watch Mad Men against from the start. Hope to watched it all before series five starts in April.

 

Hmm… doesn’t sound like I’ve achieved that much this week. But that’s probably an accurate reflection of how I feel.

When I said I was going to experiment with week notes on this blog, I didn’t intend that the blog would only consist of week notes. But as we’ll see below, other things have been taking my attention this week and I haven’t felt much like blogging. Hopefully normal service will resume very soon.

Health

This is the big one. A few hours after posting my last week notes I slipped down a small flight of stairs in my house and fell badly. Something went ping in my ankle and it hurt like hell. I shuffled onto my bed where I lay for twenty minutes or so before deciding it wasn’t getting any better and I should probably take myself to A&E.

Four or five hours later I left A&E with a diagnosis of a spiral fracture in my fibula, a temporary cast, crutches and an appointment to go to the fracture clinic on Friday.

I spent the week hobbling about the house on crutches and went back to the hospital on Friday. They replaced the temporary cast with a more permanent one in sexy black fibreglass which I’ll be sporting for the next five weeks or so. They also took another x-ray and confirmed that although there’s definitely a fracture, everything is still in the right place so there’s no need for surgery, pins of any of that nonsense.

Going back to see them again next Friday.

Speaking and Training

The downside of having your leg in a cast is the doctors don’t like you flying – the pressure in the cabin can lead to blood clots. So I’ve had to postpone the trip to Romania. It hasn’t been rescheduled yet, but I hope to get there later in the year.

Counting the weeks, it looks like the cast will be coming off just before my other currently scheduled classes – the public courses for FlossUK and O’Reilly at the end of February. If I don’t heal on schedule then I expect I’ll be giving the classes sitting down.

Incidentally, those lovely people at O’Reilly have arranged to give away one free ticket to each of the two courses. Full details on how to enter are in an advert in the new issue of Linux Format. There are also runners-up prizes of copies of the new camel book.

Writing

Having spent the week sitting around at home, you’d think I would have had time to do plenty of writing. But, to be honest, I just haven’t been in the mood. The most I can report here is that I’ve got an agreement write four more articles for Linux Format over the next few months. I hope to finish the first of these (which isn’t about Perl!) today.

Reading

I have at least managed some reading. I’ve picked up Bruce Tate’s Seven Languages in Seven Weeks which I started reading in August but never quite got to the end of. And I’ve started reading Build Your Own Wicked WordPress Themes because I can see myself getting deeper and deeper into WordPress this year.

Gigs

I had a ticket to see Ani DiFranco at the Union Chapel on Tuesday. But my limited mobility mean that I couldn’t get there. I sold my ticket to the very lovely (and talented) Kal Lavelle. Luckily there are lots of videos of the gig on YouTube so I’ve been able to at least see some of the show.

Film

I had a ticket to see The Iron Lady last Sunday afternoon, but I was in A&E at the time. Later in the week I finally got to see In Bruges, which I’ve been planning to watch for ages. Oh, and one morning when I was sitting on the sofa feeling a bit sorry for myself I watched Sixteen Candles. Can’t beat a bit of Molly Ringwald to cheer youself up.

TV

Sherlock was another ninety minutes of delight, of course. And I was pleased to see that The Good Wife returned to More 4. VirginMedia have half of the fourth series of Big Bang Theory on their video on demand service, so I’ve worked through that and am waiting for them to add the rest. We’re working our way through a DVD boxset of Lost – we’re currently close to the end of series two.

But the big surprise has been American Horror Story. We’ve watched all of the first series. Sure, it’s a clichéd in places, but part of the fun is spotting all the references to horror films. We love it.

A new experiment on the blog this year. I’m planning to write a weekly report on what I’ve been doing. No idea how useful or interesting it will be or how long I’ll feel like keeping it going. So here’s what I did this week.

Speaking and Training

Didn’t give any talks this week, but there are a couple of things in the pipeline. I’m running four days of public Perl training courses in London at the end of next month and I’m starting to get into the marketing for that. O’Reilly have offered two free places on these courses as prizes for a competition that has been advertised in Linux Format.

As part of my marketing campaign I’ve been working on a new web site about my training business. Currently I’m working on the content. The look will come later.

Probably the most exciting thing to happen in this area is that I’ve been invited to give a talk about Perl in Transylvania. I’ve been doing some work with some Romanian Perl programmers and they’ve asked me to go over and talk to their new Perl Mongers group in Cluj. I’m going over for a couple of days at the start of February.

Programming

Over the last few months, Linux Format have been publishing a series of articles I’ve written about Modern Perl. The third and final article in the series will be published next month. The articles are about writing a web application to track a reading list. This was to replace a bodged together system or Perl programs that I’ve been using to track my reading for the last few years. This week I finally put the replacement system live at books.dave.org.uk. If you’re interested, the code is on GitHub. At some point I should probably write an article about it on my Perl blog.

General Business Stuff

About a month ago I realised that I was tired of dealing with Nat West for my business banking. It seemed that they made everything far more complex than it needed to be. I asked for advice on Twitter and most people seemed to recommend using HSBC instead. So I applied for an account with them through their web site.

Well, it wasn’t anywhere near as easy as it could have been, but last Saturday I finally opened my new business account. With a new bank account and a new accountant a few months ago it really feels like the business has started a new era.

People ask why I carried on with the HSBC application when it was all so painful. That’s because I still think they’re more efficient than Nat West were. It crystallised for me when I was thinking about the computer systems that they use. In recent months I’ve spent far too much time in Nat West branches watching the screen as an assistant tries to sort out a problem. Their internal systems are all running on what seems to be CICS-based software from the 1980s. When I was watching the chap opening my account in HSBC last weekend it looked like they were running an old version of Windows from the 1990s.

So HSBC’s software seems to be about a decade more up to date than Nat West’s. But still twenty years behind the rest of the world. Surely banking doesn’t need to be so tortuous?

House Stuff

I spent a lot of last week finishing a decluttering exercise that I started after Christmas. I’ve shredded a huge mountain of old paperwork and for the first time ever I have every piece of paper in my study filed in the right place.

Our back garden backs onto a railway embankment and there are a lot of trees there. So we get a lot of leaves covering the back garden. Yesterday I went out and swept up several months worth of fallen leaves. One of the tree has nasty small leaves which get through the grills over drains and block them. So I lifted a lot of drain covers and pulled out a lot of muddy leaves. It wasn’t fun.

TV Highlights

I’ve been watching a lot of TV. The new series of Sherlock was an obvious highlight. But I’m also enjoying the Sky version of Treasure Island and the BBC’s Public Enemies. One thing I didn’t enjoy was Eternal Law. Despite being written by the same people as Life on Mars, the premise of lawyer angels proved to be just as silly as it sounds.

Health

The scales just told me that I’m almost three pounds lighter than I was a week ago.