Clock went off this morning an hour early. The heating wasn't running either, so it was fucking cold. I got up, switched on the coffee machine and heating, and went back to bed. I was so tired, I went back asleep again... for an hour. But that was ok, the alarm clock hadn't been on BST, so I woke up in time to get to work. An eventful weekend indeed, with the whole new PC thing happening. It took me all of Saturday and Sunday to get it up and running, and still there are things I need to install.
Anna is back to Uni today, for the first time in two weeks. She's worried about catching up on stuff, but I think its going to be ok. Oh, and whatever time you think I posted this... its really 08:15. Have to fix that date function.

Did I mention that the new PC is stupidly fast? I think, in retrospect, I'll probably not go for another AMD chip again. I had the last one for a year or a year and a half, and while it was good, it wasn't brilliant. Case in point, you had to disable suspend mode or it would die when it tried to sleep. Case in point, shutting down didn't always work. Case in point, additional patches were needed for graphics cards. You get the idea. This new Pentium 4 works perfectly. I just installed Flightsim, and set ALL the effects / detail sliders up to maximum, and it still ran like a bitch. Ditto with Eve. I think I'm going to like this one :-)

I had to buy a motherboard and CPU today. My card just wouldn't work with my PC. So we went in to Tottenham Court Road and I picked up a nice motherboard and 2.4Ghz Pentium 4. All was well until I got home and started building it. The RAM wouldn't fit. So, back to the shop, where I picked up a gig of DDR400 RAM to fit the board. Got Windows installed and it was looking good. I made a mistake however, and installed two sets of graphics card drivers - the old one, and an upgrade on top of that. Bad mistake. Now I'm on the second install of Windows, and this time its looking better... so far anyway. If nothing else, the new beast is blindingly fast.

Concorde flew for the last time today. Three of them in succession landed at Heathrow. It looked, and sounded fantastic. A little piece of history has passed, and is now destined for the scrapyard.

Anna brought back a virus from Istanbul. Its a nasty one, and she has been really sick all week. Its only over the last day that she's starting to recover. I was getting worried yesterday that this would go on for weeks, but it looks like its clearing up.
The video card on my machine died last Sunday. Hugh's identical card, bought in the same shop, blew a month ago. Maybe they're faulty or something. Anyway, I ordered a new GeForce FX 5600 on Sunday, and it arrived on Wednesday. I fitted it, and it wouldn't boot into Windows. So I re-installed Windows and tried again. No luck. I eventually gave up and ordered a new card, this time an ATI Radeon 6800. Now I've learned that Eve doesn't like this card too much, so if it doesn't work I'm screwed. At that point, I go motherboard shopping.

Istanbul. If you read Jon Courtenay Grimwood, then you'll have a very specific image of Istanbul in mind. Think El Iskandria, and its multi-faceted shabby splendour, and you have Istanbul in mind. Its a city unlike anything I've ever seen before, full of strangeness, but in a way, strangely familiar. First day there, we had breakfast on the hotel terrace. The view was magnificent, overlooking the Bosphorus and its endless train of small ships fading into the hazy distance. The weather was great too, there was no need for jackets, and it was clear. First stop for us was the Sultan Ahmet Camii (Blue Mosque), built for Sultan Ahmet I by Mehmet Aga in the 17th centuary. It is fairly unique in Islam, in that it has six minarettes. At the time of its construction, this was seen as an affront to Meccah, which has seven. Each of the minarettes has two or three balconies where a Muezzin would sing Moslems to prayer each day. These days, they have been replaced by large loudspeakers, which takes away from the experience a bit. The interior was fantastic too. one hundred and ten thousand tiles from Iznik went into its interior, and it has to be seen to believed. I'll get some photos scanned soon and upload them here.
We were staying in Sultanahmet, right in the centre of the city. The Blue Mosque firms the backdrop for breakfast on one side, and the bosphorus on the other. One day, we took a walking trip around the city, and ended up on the Galator bridge and walked into Asia. Chalk up another notch on the belt for that one, as we hadn't been in Asia before. The scene on the bridge is chaotic; fishermen cover almost the entire length, with poles sticking out like a forest. The fish they catch are sold in the market on the asian side. We had lunch there yesterday, and although it was raining, it was incredible. Anna had sardines, and I had prawns. The freshness of the food, and the setting amongst Turkish fishermen, made it complete.
I had written pages of notes for this, and I'll post them later. Suffice to say, Istanbul was a fantastic holiday. I recommend it to anybody.

Damn, three months without posting. I do have a good excuse though... I changed the technology behind the Long Pink Cake, and then didn't get a chance to update the bits that have to do with the XML behind this page. But that work is mostly done now, so back to regular(ish posting for me. So, lots of stuff happening in the past few months. Anna has started Uni a couple of weeks ago, and she's loving it. I think she's not yet used to the amount of work that she has to do though, but she'll get there. I startd a course in German last week, and it lasts for a year, so there should be some improvement there. I'm still playing Eve, and this is one of the reasons why I haven't finished the web site. In fact, I play it every chance I get at the moment. I understand where Hugh is coming from when he says how good Evercrack is... Eve is the same. I simply MUST play. I also changed jobs, and moved to Marketing. This was a brilliant move on my part. I love my new job, and am back to getting a kick out of the work :-) Anyway, I have to hit the sack, more tomorrow... I promise.