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.