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One of the pitfalls of blogging (at least for me) is the "I really ought to make a post like..." then sitting down at the computer, and deciding I'm too tired/rushed for time to write such a post just now, so put it off till tomorrow. A week goes by, and no post.

So the long, detailed review of Continuum and the preceding holiday has been postponed indefinitely. Suffice to say that Continuum was great fun. If you were there, you knew that already. If you weren't you should have been. The week before the con we were staying just outside Wisbech, and visited many castles, priories, zoos, etc. in the area. On the way south, we stopped in to visit James, enjoyed a fine pub meal, a flying visit to Chester zoo (which is really worth a much longer visit than we had time for) and a birthday party. James' parents made us very welcome, and we will visit again as soon as we can find the time.

We returned to walk into a minor disaster - a friend being rushed to hospital, so we helped amuse her children till her return. Edinburgh zoo membership pays off again. Thankfully, she wasn't in hospital long, and it wasn't as serious as first feared. Since then, I've been catching up with e-mail and work. At the moment I'm still scarily behind schedule...

Well, that was a hectic couple of weeks. Claire and I are now officially on holiday, but our active approach to holidays means that I still can't find much time for posting here. Sorry.

Since the last proper entry, I've been busy, both with work and socialising. Marillion were brilliant - first half was almost the retail version of Marbles in order (only Drilling Holes replaced with the Damage) and second half a selection of older stuff, mainly bouncy crowd pleasers. Londoners can catch them in September, Europeans and North Americans soon after. Well worth it. There's also (just) still time to buy the new single (Don't Hurt Yourself - country-tinged acoustic pop, very catchy) and piss off Radio 1 by making them play Los Marillos in the top ten again. Hehe.

The rest of last week got lost in a morass of server moving. Open Source can be stunning - Apache springs to mind - but it can also be an awful way to create software. One of the worst examples is SLASH (the code that runs Slashdot, and unhappily Lokarnos). Given I was moving Lokarnos to a new server, I foolishly agreed to upgrade as well. The old Lokarnos was running on the latest official release, which is some years old now. The current release candidate (2.3.151!) is only available from CVS. Tarballs? Must be some other project. The documentation is almost non-existent. Most of what is there is out of date. The default site install crashed half way through, with no error message. Upgrading Lokarnos failed miserably - again not a useful error message in site. The code itself is poorly commented, and a wonderful example of Perl obfuscation. (One comment actually says "Do we need this bit?") Oh dear.

I took a break from the server for the weekend. Claire's father's birthday celebration on Saturday - long walks and a nice meal. Sunday a group of us went to the zoo (including two of the cutest little kids I've seen in a long time - probably since Wilfie mooned Eltham) then back to Ben's for a curry. The kids seemed to enjoy the animals (hunting dogs, tigers, monkeys, etc.) while the adults mainly found the otters cutest. Monday a similar group met up at Kai's, and Tuesday at ours. At ours we feed people Lasagne, burned garden rubbish (much to the children's delight) and watched Doctor Who. Wednesday we recovered... Finally, today is the cats' birthday. We haven't really worked out how to mark that, but the cats probably won't notice.

As I said, we're now officially on holiday. Tomorrow we head south, visiting a few friends and (hopefully) family before ending up at Continuum next weekend. We're not abandoning the cats totally though - a succession of friends are staying here to look after them. Although on holiday, I'm taking the lap top, and will have a small amount of time on the internet most days. I probably won't post here, but e-mails may well get a response. As part of the preparations for this, I've picked up a new mobile phone - a nice Nokia with a built in modem. Claire, not to be outdone, has picked up the cutest little Siemens, which sort of slides open, reminding me of the Original Star Trek.

So, I'll see some of you at Continuum, some tomorrow, and some when I get back. Take care!

Finally found time to post a short, silly post. Normally I don't bother with these, but Claire and I thought this one strangely accurate.

(Quick translation for non-live journalists : Eurmalian is Ben, Silverhippo is Claire, Blane* is Marie, and Lucifer* is Dave V.)

Tonight, we're off to the Barras to see Marillion. I believe there's still a few tickets left, if anyone else is feeling musically adventurous. Rumour has it that the show is in two halves - the first heavy on the stunning new album, the second a best of the last ten years. No Kayleigh, thank goodness.

As it happens, this morning I got a "crash course" Marillion CD in the mail. Probably something to do with the musical mystery competition I entered a few months back. Basically, it's a couple of god tracks from each of the last few albums (back to Afraid of Sunlight) and is intended as an introduction to the band. I've got everything on it, so I'll happily donate it to the first person to ask when I see them next. Not for existing fans - more for the curious.

I'm currently undecided about tonight. Do I stay in and watch the football, or head for the monthly Fading Suns game. The game is in the basement of a pub, so almost no chance of getting home without knowing the result, so there's no point in recording the match. I suppose I could go along to the game, and watch the match upstairs in the pub. My character's part in the plot has been vanishingly small, so I guess no one will notice if I vanish for an hour and a half. I mean, no one has discovered my dark secret while I've been there - they can't do worse without me.