I have no real excuse for not posting.  I’ve been busy, but not too busy.  I just haven’t had the inclination really.  I seem to get in this mood for a few months every couple of years.  There’s lots I could blog about, but the motivation just isn’t there.  So, here follows a collective update, without form or structure and in an almost free-associative manner.

I’m absolutely loving my new phone.  the major update to it (commonly called Cupcake) came out last week, and its looking great so far.  It comes with an on-screen keyboard which is pretty cool for short messages or text entry where you don’t want to flip out the keyboard.  I like the auto-orientation feature; turn the phone on its side and the it orientates sideways.  Turn it back up, and the orientation changes likewise.  Its awesome.  This works on any screen apart from the main screen (default screen?  top page? home screen?  Not entirely sure of the terminology), which makes sense even though I’ve read complaints about it on teh internets.  Widgets are now allowed, and some of then are just cool.  I’ve downloaded some brilliant apps for it so far, such as a travel planner for the German transport system, a shopping comparison package (scan the barcode of something in a shop and see if it really IS cheaper than the place down the road), and the Google maps tracks app.  That one lets me set the GPS to record, and then allows me to track where the phone has been.  For example, we went on a trip to the Englisher Garten last weekend, and then to one of the museums.  That trip was recorded and is documented here.

I still have to get my bike repaired.  I buckled the back wheel back when I fucked up my finger, and haven’t done anything about it yet.  I’ll get that done soon.

I’m doing physiotherapy about three times a week at the moment.  It hurts like hell, but is starting to pay off.  I can move the last knuckle on the finger again, which is very cool.  I have to remember when I’m doing the proscribed exercises that I need to concentrate on extension as well as flexion.  Apparently if I don’t then the finger could end up in a permanent “dipped” state, which would obviously be bad.

Tickets for U2 have arrived, and July 18th can’t come around soon enough.  I’ve also scored some tickets for Bell X1 next week.  I don’t know that much of their stuff, and may have to look out for some over the weekend, but it promises to be a good gig.  They are being supported by Duke Special, who I also haven’t heard before, but whose website produced some interesting sounds.

I have Windows 7 running now on both my laptop and one of the desktop machines.  The release candidate is incredible.  It has a stability and speed that frankly leaves Vista kicked face down in the dirt.  I’ll do another blog post on it later, but if you don’t have it already then download it from Microsoft.com.  Its free to use until march 2010.

I shouldn’t have tried to install Windows 7 on the spare laptop.  I’ve porked it, as I knew I would.  There just aren’t good drivers for Windows for that machine, so I’m going to re-install linux and… hmm, I’ve just had a VERY interesting idea about what to do with it.  It’d be in addition to what I was using it for with linux a couple of days ago – to monitor some specific chat rooms for news about Android. I could use it to handle the nzb files that we process.  There’s a pretty good handler for newzbin files for linux that might just do the trick.  Have to look into that more…

I have an idea for an app I should write.  Its for Android, and its just an different implementation of something that exist on that platform.  It exists in such a way that it is cumbersome and unwieldy I have to say.  I know how it can be done better.

London was dirty.  I’ve been here in an almost sterile environment for the last year, and getting back to London was a touch of culture shock on a couple of levels.  Firstly, there’s soot on everything.  Its a lovely old city, but the operative word in that phrase is old.  Many of the buildings haven’t had their exterior cleaned since the industrial revolution.  You know what I mean… the old red-brick buildings where the soot and car exhausts have left the red covered in a thin layer of black smoke and soot.  Its horrible, and I forgot just how pervasive it all is.  I had also forgotten what it is not to have to walk around and constantly look at the ground to avoid things like dig shit.  Secondly, and nothing to do with dirt, I realise that the feeling I get when talking to people here is fear.  When I am required to talk in German, although I can mostly get along, it is a frightening experience.  I don’t mean scary frightening, but it is definitely something that I prefer not to have to do.  I didn’t have that in London – I was able to go in to shops and simply ask for stuff. 

The sushi in London is awesome.  The rice underneath a piece of salmon nigri (for example) was exactly the right sweetness, texture and moisture that it should have been.  Here in Munich for some reason (that might have something to do with living two hundred and fifty thousand kilometres from the nearest ocean) the fish never tastes as fresh as in London, and the rice is always a little crumbly and more bitter. I miss sushi for lunch every day. Each time I pick up some here hoping for something that meets my taste expectations, I am disappointed.

We ate in the first Wagamama that I have ever been in that had windows in it!  Its down by the Tower of London, go check it out.

Today, Deutsche Bahn was on strike.  The trains were all delayed and running on alternate schedules.  They still ran very regularly though, and the schedules for each affected line were posted in an excel spreadsheet on their web site.  Awesome doesn't even begin to describe how cool it was to see it all in action.  Back in London, if there was a tube strike then we would have to use alternative methods to get somewhere because the trains would run irregularly and infrequently.  Today the service was depleted by 50%, but they still ran on schedule.  The schedules were posted to the minute, and the trains probably stuck to them too.  I didn't find out though, wasn't on the train today. 
We met Sylvia and Al on Wednesday - which was Re-Unification day in Germany.  Its the public holiday that celebrates the day that the wall came down and the East joined the West.  Actually, it may be more symbolic and not an arbitrary date at all, but I haven't done any research into it. Anyway, it was nice to see them after so long :-)

So long between posts, which isn't really that unusual for me, but the reason is.  We have moved and are getting stuff setup.  We signed the lease contract on an apartment today, and picked up some temporary mobile numbers (email me and I'll send them on).  We also have a bank account setup.  For all the bureaucracy, it is actually a hell of a lot faster than it took to get the same things done in London.  IIRC, it took me about a month to get bank accounts setup in London, despite our building being right in front of the bank.  So we filled out the forms, and cards and codes have been arriving for days now!   Whatever about the efficiency, it has also been frustrating.  Not knowing the language is turning out to be a real pain in the arse.  More so than I had expected, or anticipated.  I can get along because I'm married to someone who speaks the language, but can someone tell me how the hell do immigrants without a compatible language manage to do this???
So, as and from today, we have somewhere to live!  It is cheaper than we were paying in London, for something cleaner and far more modern.  Damn, when I think about it, it is a lot nicer than that place in Richmond for 1200 quid we looked at last year, and far bigger too.  Its in a place called Daglfing, in a complex built in the 80's (I think).  I'll get some images online as soon as I can, though I won't really have access to my stuff until mid November, which is when we move in.  Its still six to eight weeks until we can move in, but I guess that's a good thing too.  Our landlords want to put down new parquet flooring in a couple of the rooms, and it'll need cleaning up from the previous tenants.  Its large though; 70m2 with a balcony.  That's about 210 square feet for all the English out there.  (UPDATED : 70m2 is actually 753 square feet.  Thanks Scally, I was half asleep at the tine.!)  It has a spare room for guests / PC etc, a garage and a huge basement storage area.  The view from the balcony is of the central grassy area, and out the back windows all you can see are trees.  I'm too tired to finish this now, so I'll post it and update tomorrow...

10am. Are we done with London and ready to go then?  Well, I guess so.  We've been running around for a while getting everything sorted, running through checklists and just Getting Things Done.  The post is supposed to be redirected from today or maybe even tomorrow.  It doesn't help that some came through the letterbox today from the dentist we had requested our records from and closed our accounts with.  There's a minor panic was just averted in the other room when we discovered that we had too many clothes to bring with us and not enough suitcase space.  We're going to be overweight on that flight to DE I can tell you. Nothing we can do about it though, our stuff is not going to get there for about a week, maybe two and we simply have to have enough stuff to last us through.  It may be even longer than that too - everything we have is going to be stored in Anna's parent's basement, and we might be able to leave it all boxed until we find somewhere to live.  
17:53. It seems like the end is in sight.  I kept the PC and server running and they're all that is left now, apart from the laptops which are coming with us tomorrow.  I have to disconnect the speakers, which means moving all the furniture so I can take up the carpet so I can get the wires.  The line from my DSL router to the socket runs under another piece of carpet around the wall and that has to go too.  The server needs to be taken down and disconnected (and I have to go through the disks in the array and make sure they are secure.  I never managed to get hold of an HDD shipping case (the kind that manufacturers would ship them to OEMs in) so I'm going to leave them in the server and write "FRAGILE!!!" all over it in luminous radioactive poison.  That's about it I think.  Power strips and cables are all that remains I think.
This is the last post I will make from this flat.  That is really only starting to sink in. I have been so busy with the logistics of this move that I may have forgotten to be excited about it for the last few days.  Wow.  Last!

Last week was punctuated by two hangovers. Wednesday we went out to the Porterhouse for some leaving drinks, and for some reason I actually drank a lot of porter.  It was remarkably like real porter too; about halfway between Guinness and Murphys. It was very tasty, and of course very hangover inducing. If that wasn't enough, I seem to have been way more drunk than I expected or wanted to be on Friday night. Oh well. Then Saturday we were out for dinner with some friends, and there were coctails and beer. Luckily it wasn't enough to cause any harm so the night was nicely tame. Like I said though; a boozier week than usual, and hard on the body afterwards. Interestingly enough, I don't think I have ever had a hangover from German beer before, and I have several times been stewed on the stuff.

I seem to be running an average of one post per month here.  That's not up to my usual standard.  So lets see, what has been happening?  Well, Anna got a first as you've read.  Her graduation ceremony is in September, and her parents are coming over for it.  We are still living in Stockwell, though I have been working on that more of late.  We looked at appartments out in Richmond recently, and came across an absolute gem... but it was smaller than we have now, and lots more expensive.  There have been and will be more interesting developments in that area though.  More about it when something concrete happens.
I was in Texas about four weeks ago.  We flew over to Austin to see an OEM, and it was far better than I had expected.  Several years ago I was in Houston, and it a very boring city.  By comparison, Austin rocks!  There's a street called 6th Street, which is the main party street in the town.  At 10pm every night, the police shut the street down to traffic and it becomes a padestrian route.  It is full of bars and clubs, and a great place to party.  Played shuffleboard (have pics, will upload them sometime), drank in Coyote Ugly (yes, the movie was named for it) and got a little drunk :-)
Three weeks ago we went to Munich for the end of the world cup.  We stayed there for a week, and enjoyed the sunshine.  The athmosphere at the third place final (Germany v Portugal) was incredible, and even more so because we watched it in a beergarden in Ismaning.  The weather was lovely too. We had the same kind of temperatures as in London, but the air was fresher, as you would expect from somewhere close to the Alps.
Last week and the week before my sister was over for a conference.  We hooked up for dinner a couple of times, and took in Pirates of the Carribean II.  The movie was seriously long... too long in fact for something whose only purpose seems to have been to setup the third movie.  Still, it was good to hang out with Emma for a while :-)  She reminded me the night before my dad's birthday that I should call him.  Of course I forgot :-(  So, Happy Birthday again Dad, sorry I forgot it.  (Note to self: Wedding anniversary is on the 5th.  Be ready!)

There were more bombs in London today.  Nobody was hurt, but the tubes are fucked it seems.  I may have to work from home tomorrow, we'll have to wait and see.
Dave sent me what has to be the best quote about the events so far :
Sky is reporting breaking of the seventh seal, seas turning to blood, horses eating each other. Thousands dead, trillions injured.
The BBC is reporting that some tube stations have closed.
I love that, it sums up Sky perfectly.  Oh, photos of Budapest are up.  Comments to follow.

Seems like an age since I've updated this, and in a way it really is.  Anna went away for her dig in Arizona, but ended up coming back ten days early because she had a shit time.  She got sick, and it was so bad that she had to come home.  So we had to cancel our holiday, and take the hit on the money we had already spent.  Luckily, my travel insurance should cover the cost of the flights, which is a good thing.  After she came back, we decided that we still needed a holiday, so we flew to Budapest for a week.  Budapest rocks!  I hadn't been expecting the kind of city that it turned out to be, and I was very pleasantly surprised.  I was thinking that it would be mostly communist era drab grey buildings, but the architecture is really nice.  The people were nice too, I guess they haven't been spoiled yet by the hen and stag party shit that happens to nice cities.  
So, London had its first suicide bombs.  We were away when it happened, but saw it on the news.  I'm not sure what to say about it really... it sucks, horribly, but I feel slightly dissociated from it because I wasn't here, and everything had pretty much returned to normal when I got back.  I saw the first spam today about it - a chain mail telling everyone to stay off the tube on Tuesday because BAD THINGS were going to happen.  Disgusting.  London had a two minute silence yesterday, and we were all out on the streets for it.  I'd love to have seen it from above - it must have looked fantastic.  Hundreds of thousands of people showing solidarity in their resistance to being terroriesd.  One thing you have to say about the English is that they refuse to be cowed by anything.

We were in greenwich yesterday, as it was such a lovely day.  We took the camera with us and came back with a couple of gems, some of which I have added to the "Out & About in London" set.

"The Sky is on Fire"

We just had a fantastic meal at a Turkish restaurant called Özer :-) The meal was about 12 different small dishes of typical Turkish food, served with large chunks of bread. Service was great, wine worked, and the desert rocked! Anyway, later we were talking, and I discovered something that I hadn't known before... when we go to Regensburg in Germany, Rainer keeps giving me Glühwein which has a shot of schnapps in it. Apparently everybody else knew that there was schnapps, except me. And I typically have 6 or 7 of these every time I go there. No wonder I spend most of the time in a cloudy fog ;-)