Thanks for dropping by. This is the inaugural message on this, a new website made by me. Eventually this will have a portfolio of images, designs and music by me, as well as other gripping stuff of universal relevance including (but not limited to) the following: what I'm having for dinner, what films I've seen, what the weather's like and in-depth scholarly reviews and essays on all the major questions of our time. Please tune in to see what happens. There'll be pictures.

The war drums beat faster, and beat louder...

Things are moving on apace. Finally got around to doing some more of this webpage development. You can now register as a user (use the link in the page footer) and login to add comments to nodes. The code to do editing, creation and deletion of nodes, stories and comments is going to be there soon. For the moment, I use a separate php file to do all this stuff, and it isn't exactly user-friendly (so I don't do it as much as I feel I aught to). For the time being, you will find a few links that don't behave as expected. I've also implemented a new system for controlling the visibility of the nodes (the + and - signs in the orange bars), so this might have some unexpected side effects.

The wedding plans are progressing well too. I only have five weeks left. My best friend Thom is going to book half a dozen strippers for a lesbian sex show for my stag party. Bought the rings, they are the most beautiful things - 24ct white gold, and unplated so they are slightly less white-chromey looking than platinum or normal rhodium-plated white-gold rings. Very beautiful indeed, they have a heavy, simple significance that is very beguiling. We have got them made for us from Clarksons on Victoria Street in Edinburgh. This is a great family-run jewellers, and the people there were brilliant, helpful, friendly and just really nice and personable to deal with. I love shops like that.

Also, have booked our honeymoon in San Francisco, which I am very excited about and really looking forward to. 9 nights.

I need to get a suit. I saw a really nice brown tweed one in the window of Walker Slater, which is a nice little tailors, also on Victoria Street, but they were last seasons, and none in my size. I was going to get one made up, but with the fabric I wanted (this tasty brown wool herringbone weave) it was going to be too expensive. A real genuine shame, I was inconsolable for days. I'm looking off-the-peg now, since time-wise, that's my only option. My boo has bought her dress.

Wedding / Honeymooning

It's all over! The honeymoon anyway. We got back from San Francisco on Friday afternoon, a bit tired and very folded-up, but none the worse for wear. Our honeymoon was ace! Thanks to everyone who helped us pay for it - your pounds went a long way in the US! Also thank you to Pat for getting us the cake, and John for transporting it, and for helping with the taxis. Thanks to Thom for being my best man (and best friend) - I'm sorry you and Lucy couldn't stick around for longer. Thanks to Laura and Susie, for being so helpful and helping Wife on the day, and for all the DTTO gang for giving us our amazingly gift. Doing-up the room at Tigerlily was such a great surprise and showed such attention and thought that it broke my heart. Thanks to everyone for coming all this way to see us get wed: It was grand to see you all.

Here's some excerpts from the journal, with some pictures.

Day 1 ... Got married yesterday - weather was off and on, but the ceremony was dead good, and Miss looked incredible, then became Mrs. Looked even more incredible. Thom said some great things and it was nice to meet people I had heard so much about, but never encountered personally (Lucy; Frederique). We'd booked a room at the Prestonfield for lunch, and that was grand - the food was ok and the wine went down nicely. The cake was great, I just wish we'd had more guests to eat it. I think everybody had a good time - I certainly did anyway.
Got up early, had Eggs Benedict for breakfast in the hotel, then taxi'd back to the flat to dump small bags and pick up big bags for the honeymoon. John was already there, so we rushed about like idiots, then he kindly (once more) gave us a lift to the airport and bade us our farewells. We had this plan to try and get upgraded, but the damn automatic check-in machines didn't respond to my sweet-talk, so we got what we were given. As it happened, we had a whole row of four seats to ourselves on the 11 hour flight, so we could stretch out. Watched Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer on the telly: It was really bad. I don't know what I was expecting. Also most of Spiderman 3, about 4 times.
This day lasted 32 hours, which was interesting, so we got into our Japanese-pop-culture-themed hotel (TOMO!) in SF at about 6.30pm, which was actually 2.30am back in Edinburgh, so we had an early night. Zzzzzz.

~

Day 2 ... 9.45

L: Woke early. It’s a hot day! Walked to Van Ness and California to get the cable car. Stopped at Staburcks for some light refreshment, much to Sandy’s distress! Nice maple bar though!
S: Starbucks, schtarbucks. Lots of bums here. Reviewing maps. The weather suits bums at the moment – such hot sun! We are planning an assault on the visitor centre, via cable car.
19.05
S: Hot day - been round Fisherman’s Wharf – it’s like Blackpool. Been on the cable cars – hanging off the sides is fun. Been on F-Cars – they are old 1950s street cars, all modern glass light fittings and windows with round corners. Feet are doing ok. Overheated though. I’m sure I’ve burnt!
Lunch: In N Out Burger - great, Dinner: Mum’s "Home of shabu shabu" - this is the restaurant attached to the hotel: Japanese. I had some kind of udon noodle thing, which I found too miso-ey. I'm not sure I like japanese food at all. Also saw quite a few people eating shabu shabu, which is that big plate of thinly sliced raw meat that you cook yourself in a boiling pot of water on a camping stove. We were too cowardly to try it.

~

Day 3 ...13.00

S: Visited Palace of Fine Arts – nice part of town (Marina). Didn’t want to embarrass myself by having to fight the kids at the Exploratorium.
L: Not as sunny as yesterday, but still good. I have developed a fear of heights, which is useful in SF. I’m working my big butt off climbing hills.
15.45
S: Climbed Coit tower, navigated crookedest street, ate bagels. Just in Café Trieste in North Beach – having the best ever cheese and ham toastie – with a big massive portion of dressed tomatoes – very good! Wife – not hungry, but helped eat anyway. Foggy out in bay today. We are heading to china town next, for a look.
Lunch: Café Trieste, North Beach. Dinner: Ruth’s Chris Steak House - corner of Van Ness and California. I had a unforgettable ribeye steak here - fat and juicy, really phenomenal. Quite expensive, but then I guess good steaks are.

~

Day 4 ... 19.00

L: Eating tacos at Mijita Cocina (Ferry building). Small but tasty! Very crunchy chips.. Just got the ferry from Sausalito. Not as cold as I imagined, and good view of the city. Sausalito was very pretty, but a bit dull, like Harrogate really. Wine tasting today… Feel I know a bit more about wine. Trip mainly with Americans, who were nice and friendly. Scary driving near Muir woods!
S: Had an awesome “tri-tip” sandwich at Cheese Factory in Sonoma Square. Grilled, shredded beef, with barbecue sauce – yum. Just seen the Critical Mass 15th Anniversary bike ride go past. Wine tasting was ok – bit too many different kinds tasted to make sense of anything though. The second winery was best: “Homewood” – spoke to the owner/wine maker there, and saw the vats of grapes fermenting outside under the canopy with just a board over the top. A wasp went into one! Bzz! Muir Woods was beautiful, but a bit generic to be honest – the drive there was the best bit – all hairpins, and no crash barriers. Nice people on bus!
Lunch: The Cheese Factory, Sonoma. Dinner: Mijita Cocina, Ferry Building.

~

Day 5 ...

L: Got up late today and got the bus down to Haight Street. Currently at The Grind on Haight Street for breakfast. Scrambled eggs and toast, yum! Sitting outside as it’s a nice sunny day with a cool breeze from the bay.
S: Haight Ashbury was rubbish, predictably, lots of places and people trying to seem cool and counter-culture, but just actually being really cheap. Wife said "Like Westgate Road".
Got some lunch at MOMA, but didn't actually go in to the museum proper. They had this industrial fan set up in the foyer, hanging down and blowing itself around about a foot above everybodies head. It was great! I didn't think a fan would produce enough gust to get moving that fast, but it was actually quite alarming! One of these things where it seems like it's coming right for you, then swerves off at the last moment. Got a big crowd of ducking people.
Went to Alcatraz in the evening though, that was great. Their famous audio tour was narrated by the actual guards and the inmates – pretty effective. Also gave the impression of being in a first person shooter slightly too, you'd get these instructions "Go through the door to your left and look at the first panel" in your ear. Also the setting was very FPSish. The island itself is a pretty dilapidated industrial ruin. Though I like industrial ruins.

Lunch: Cafe in MOMA. Dinner: Fog Harbour fish restaurant, Pier 39. We had a view out to Forbes Island at the end of the pier. That Forbes Island restaurant is the tiniest little restaurant, and you get to it in a little launch that ferries people back and forth. I suspected there was something very sinister indeed going on here, possibly involving slavery and almost certainly involving debauchery, since every woman who when there was really, very hopelessly drunk - possibly drugged - stumbling down the ramp to the launch. Wife advised that she thought the ramp was simply difficult to walk down in heels. I prefer my conclusion.

~

Day 6 ...

S: Took it easy today– took the bus out to the far west, had lunch at Cliff House bistro. Sutro Baths used to be here - a big salt-water swimming baths, when the whole of this area was a fairground. Amazing views out over the Pacific, fishermen catching big fish on shore & hot, hot sun! The lunch had a starter of Yorkshire pudding, with butter! Bizarre! But delicious. Ate a wee bit too much and took the bus back for a snooze. I visited Walgreens and got stuff – put films in to be developed– and then came back and napped! Ordered out for burgers from this "Order Inn" service that does room service for hotels that don't do room service. It's just a front-end for a network of order-out places around the country. Took 2 hours to arrive. I was very cross, as well as soundly asleep by then.
Lunch: Cliff House. Dinner: [please do not] Order Inn

~

Day 7 ...

S: A long day of shopping today - department stores and commerce a-go-go, with some effect on wardrobe and bank balance. A lot of the things to buy here are the same price in dollars as they are in pounds, which is nice considering a pound is worth two dollars - half price everything! But bad because it makes me resent the high price of everything back home even more. Had an awesome dinner at Elite Café on Fillmore – I had shrimp and green onion johnnycakes with roasted pepper salsa and lime mayonnaise, then pulled pork with slow-cooked greens and rice and beans. Proper melt-in-the-mouth fabulousness - Mmmmm!
Lunch: Basement of Macy's - awful. Dinner: Elite Café, Fillmore Street - Outstanding!

~

Day 8 ...
S: Happy Birthday wife! Going helicoptering today!

This trip was great. We were picked up from town in a bus and got driven to SFO airport, where we transferred to our helicopter. We got this great flight up over the city, circled round it a bit, and went dead fast, under, then twisting over the Golden Gate Bridge - quite hair-raising! We landed just near Sausalito, where everybody except us got off, and we took off again and continued up to our lunch appointment in the Napa valley. It was really cute - a little picnic table and a parasol was set out, with sandwiches and salad and fruit for afters, and wine. It was actually on a golf course, and now I find it on the map, it looks surprisingly close to towns and roads and buildings and things, but once you're there, it was so quiet and peaceful with only a faint whunk every now and then, and the odd bird tweeting to itself. Very romantic and Wife enjoyed it. Really nice, and good, clear, hot day for being ferried around. We got flown back to Sausalito and driven back over the bridge. It was operated through San Francisco Helicopter Tours, and I can't fault them on anything.

Went to the India Palace on Fillmore for dinner - it was quite shit. Never seen less interested staff, the food would have been completely forgettable, if not for big chunks of fatty, chewy meat.
Lunch: Picnic in Napa. Dinner: India Palace - avoid.

~

Day 9 ...

S: It's our last night. We went shopping and looked at St Mary's Cathedral - it was really grand - concrete majesty. Great dinner at Café Kati on Sutter - dead good kinda oriental fusion stuff. Yum. It's been a nice, good time. Had it's challenges - but this has been a great honeymoon. Nice town! Had to buy a new bag! Bon Voyage!
Dinner: Café Kati

~

I'm going to get the train down to Newcastle and cycle my bike back up. I'll be camping en route and am very excited about the whole affair. I'm setting off from Newcastle on Friday 27th June, overnighting in Kielder forest, the Lammermuirs and home to Edinburgh on the Sunday afternoon.

The first part of the journey I've done most of before, partly following the Border Reivers NCN route, but I'll be striking north where the route heads south, then will be roughly following the direction of the A68 upto Jedburgh, then to Kelso for lunch on Saturday and north again just before Duns to pitch up somewhere near Whiteadder reservoir in the Lammermuirs. Exposed, apparantly, but I'm sure I can find a cosy spot. The third day is a 35 mile coast up to Musselburgh, then turn left and head for home.

I've got Thursday off to prep my bike. It hasn't seen the road for about 5 years or something, so I'll be surprised if it doesn't need some new somethings or others at all. Wish me luck.

You should see my back end

Hi everyone, I got a new job as a computer programmer, and before I started, thought I'd better swot up on what I'll be doing, and decided to rewrite this website as an object-orientated one. Now, it probably would've been better to have done this once I'd been taught how to do it properly, since the first bits I did, way back in November could have been so much better, but hey ho. I rest easy in the knowledge that should I want to go back and iron out those early creases, it will be pretty easy to do so. My ISP is moving over to PHP 5 soon too, so that gave me double impetus to rewrite. This site is currently running on a copy of the database, in the ISPs experimental area.

You will have noticed that nothing much has changed. Well, that's because the only things that haven't changed is the css and the database. I am happy about that.

The code now generates it's output as pure XML, and I have written a big XSLT screed that transforms this XML into XHTML. I needed to learn a lot of stuff for this, and am very pleased with how I did. It all worked out swell! I didn't really hit any roadblocks, and while there's a few things in the design that don't entirely fit in with the general policy, it all works, and it's all pretty clear.

New features are all in the management side of the site: the creation of all types of segments, nodes and stories is linked to in-page for those who have sufficient privileges, and editing of those records is also just as easy. The only thing that isn't sorted out through the interface is user editing (changing access rights, resetting passwords). Users can also have a thumbnail attached to them now (if the thumbnail is in the images database), but this is still a bit clunky. Good enough though, for sure.

One caveat has been introduced in terms of segment text (this stuff you're reading), and that's that it needs to be well formed if it includes tags. Also XML entities need to be properly escaped (that means &s need to be "&amp;" and < needs to be "&lt;", etc). HTML entities can be put in as <ch:entityname />, or just as normal and they'll get converted the first time they're saved.

So if you were hoping for more exciting stories and incisive commentary, I am sorry to disappoint, but then you won't be surprised by that. However, the new functionality built into the site will make it so much easier to add stuff, so perhaps there will be a newly invigorated stream of banality heading your way soon! Thank your lucky stars.

I was ironing today, and hooted with laughter when I discovered that one of my shirts was hanging on a huge coat hanger. Like really gigantic. It is about like, two foot long. I can't even imagine what clothing would hang on this behemoth - only that suit that the dude in Talking Heads wears, I think. It was ridiculous, and comical, and I only laughed harder when I turned it over and saw it has "small" written on it.

I've just moved to a new hosting service - UK2.net. It's actually the company that I originally registered euphy.co.uk with all those years ago, so it's quite sweet to have a homecoming. I decided that I'm going to want to host a few different domains in future, and do some fancy-dan server-side stuff too, and plusnet are pretty lame for anything that it's just about supplying broadband. So I'm reducing package with them to do just that, and moving onto uk2 for everything else. I am thinking of register a business soon, to develop thiswayup.

Watch this space!

I've been looking to get a new monitor for years, and kept on looking at my bank balance and reluctantly deciding I couldn't justify it. Because I want a good one, see, a big one that's good for graphics. So anyway, during one of my periodic bouts of window shopping, I noticed a little buzz come out of it. Well, imagine my triumph. Got a pay rise too, so decided to go for it. A 24" HP LP2475w dropped into my basket. I wanted a big screen for plenty of space for spreads and toolbars and stuff, and went for an IPS panel because sitting so close to such a big screen, I didn't want to deal with contrast and colour shifts when I looked around it.

But then I realised that with 1920x1200 pixels to fill instead, my graphics card was going to struggle. Discovered that AGP cards are now few and far between, looked at new motherboards, realised I'd need a new processor and memory and a modern power supply and before I knew it I'd embarked on a full-on total body replacement. The old one was also quite noisy - oddly the Zalman "silent" PSU was the biggest offender.

So, I've upgraded to a Asus M4A785TD-M Evo micro-ATX motherboard in a rather fetching Antec Mini-P180 case with a Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro 550W PSU. Plugged in are a AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition 3.2GHz with a massive Scythe Mugen 2 cooler, 8GB of DDR3 RAM (could've got away with less) and a Sparkle GeForce GTX 275 graphics card.

I admit I'm not totally blown away by it's ball-smashing performance, but then I wasn't really that displeased by the old machine's performance either. It was noisy and grinded royally, but that's probably down to the aging xp installation on it rather than much else.

However, this does everything in 1920x1200, and smoothly too, which is champion. I got Bioshock to test it on, and it gobbled it up without missing a stride, in full resolution and maximum quality. I could only run it in 800x600 previously, with jerks.

The motherboard has a built-in ATI 4200 graphics card, and before I installed the GeForce, it was beautifully quiet - I genuinely couldn't hear if it was on or not in our living room. However, my optical drive is noisy-as and doesn't seem nearly as well behaved as on the old machine (spinning down etc), and the GeForce card is noisy too. The default setting for the fan on it is 40 and that's a bit noisy for my liking. Down at 25 (the lowest it'll go) is much better, but I'm not sure how to set that as the default idle rate. I set it to 25 last night and started playing bioshock, forgetting to put it back onto automatic. Worked ok, but the fan kept on trying to speed up anyway, and then being throttled... I switched back to windows to see the temperature of the GPU was at 99 - and only 99 because it doesn't go into three digits. Put the fan back on automatic and invoked a whirlwind! Whoops.

Anyway, the relative silence of this machine has highlighted the fact that the NAS box that sits on the desk too is noisy. Part of it is the fan, but the actual HD itself isn't as silent as I thought it was. I'm thinking again of hiding it away somewhere. I'm also thinking of putting a different cooler on the Geforce. There's plenty of airflow through the PC case, so a larger, less-fan based one would do the trick I think.

Never say I am behind the curve, because this site is now available as an RSS feed! Huspag! There's a link to it at the bottom of the page, or here.

So now not having the time to visit the site is not a good enough excuse not to do so.

At the moment it consists of just the top segment from each story, exactly what gets displayed on the homepage, but I'm going to make it show the top 10 most recent segments, or something like that in future, so one of the slots isn't taken up by stuff like music, that literally never changes. Though I was tinkering in cubase the other day. Was fun. Bore no fruit however.

I suddenly seem to have proliferated e-shops. Well, there are two anyway. Shapeways has a little space just for me right now, where you can order rings in any size, with any message, custom made in stainless steel and posted right to you, for between $10 and $20 each. Bargains! Bargains! If you can think of a good eight-letter swearword, then you can even make them rude. I've opened this shop simply because they made it easy and I am quite impressed with the shapeways gear I've had made and I want to get my name out there.

The other is an Etsy shop, that I'm using to sell my Angry Robot card model kit. A hardy soul saw pictures of this card (none of which were on this site, I think) on my flickr page and asked if they could buy it anywhere, so I was like, buy?! what the? ung!! So I sent them the files I had from ages ago, and also put up a listing on Etsy for a printed kit, and then before I knew it, someone had bought one! Six kinds of awesome. My first paid gig. The kit costs $12 if you want my to send you it printed on bonny card, or $6 if you just want the PDFs.

I've kind of settled on Up To Much as my (shudder...) brand. It just fits quite well I think. It's vague enough that it doesn't really pertain to any particular object, it's forward and upward. It literally means something good. And the domain was free for www.uptomuch.co.uk.