English Over The Sleeve

On boat, heading for weekend in London.

Blogged from the maersk delft, somewhere in the channel.

We’re in Vienna. That is, the whole family is in Austria. Will Austria survive?

From a blackberry in an austrian castle.

For various reasons, I have to go to Vienna, Austria, in April 2008, and in a spirit of economy, I chose to fly with Niki. Niki being low-cost, they don’t give you a paper ticket - you just get an email.

Imagine therefore my surprise when I received a large envelope from Austria this morning - when I opened it, there was, without a word of explanation, a rather large Niki-branded blow-up aeroplane.

My question is, do I have to present it at check-in? And if so, does it have to be blown up?

The only use for it that I could see was if the plane had to land on water - I could float away to safety. There are just two problems with that: one, the thing specifies that it is not a safety device, and two, there isn’t really much water between Paris and Vienna anyway.

Anyway, I’ll put some photos up here if/when I get someone to blow it up round to blowing it up.

Interested parties may like to note that my tickets cost me less than €100.00 return.

Sorry, this is a bit of an inside joke. Either you get it or you don’t… (not the actual humour, just the ’spooky’ bit )
Click here.

My girlfriend is in graphic design, and she got me to put up some of her work in my gallery. Take a look - it’s worth it!

There’ll be more no doubt…

Have a look at the photos of my new toy. Hehe.

What’s more important, electricity or internet?

Because I’m moving at the moment, and I called my ISP 24 hrs before I did my electricity company… That probably says something about the state of the world.
(Actually, I think that that says something about internet - I could subscribe online to my ISP, but I had to call the electricity company. I can’t see why I had to call, but I did…)

My ISP (should be offering to install FTTH within the next few months, for no extra money… Here’s hoping!

I wasn’t going to blog about all this, but then I got guilty… Damn - I thought I was over that!
I’ve moved to the Paris region (no, not here…) because that’s where my job is. I’ve found a flat that I should be getting into within the next few weeks, so all is well on that front. Photos may follow.

The job? Buying lots of toys. No, really!

What else? Nothing really much - except that Yaxlich (well worth a read, btw) has been talking about me - well, about what I (and 500 other people) did on New Year’s Eve. Original is the kindest word that can be used for this activity…

The car has been driven more than 400 000 km since first rolling out of it’s German factory - raise the roof for Audi, and long may it last! (In unrelated news, some er-person rammed me just before Christmas - no injuries, thanks for your concern, but some damage. Grrr.)

To come, a short story on the Paris Police, who ‘offered me hospitality’ for a short while on my first day in the office - when I stop feeling embarrassed about that particular piece of stupidity on my part.

As you may have realised, I quit my job in June last.

Well, i’ve got a new one… We’ll have to see how it goes, won’t we

• What do you think of the new header? Credits to the GF…
• I’ve installed Picasa for Linux, that you can get if you go to http://picasa.google.com/linux (If you’re not in the USA, use an american proxy, or you’ll get a 404 - I used www.hidemyass.com - EDIT: you don’t have to use a proxy any more…). It’s quite a good app, based on Wine. I don’t know if I’ll keep on using it though…
• Over the next few months, blogging is going to be even less regular than usual: I have 2 1/2 camps to prepare, so I’ll be rather busy. I’m also and concurrently moving. Email is still working, though…
• I’ll be up near Preston for a month during the summer (see item above).
• The website was AWOL for a half hour last night. I know, and I apologise. I was trying to integrate PHPWebgallery and wordpress, with a plugin called Photon, but it all went horribly wrong. Luckily, I had backed up.
• This is a fun link
• So far, May has the largest average of visits per day. Hello to all you new visitors.
• I’m looking for English speakers who want to do some paid work for a couple weeks in August, on a summer camp for French 11 to 14 year olds. Speaking French is not necessary, but some knowledge is a plus. You can reach me here
• I’ve written a new script, called jpgshrink, that automagically reduces all the jpgs in a folder by 50% and renames them using a suffix. If anyone’s interested, you can get it here. It’s very modifiable: just open it in your preferred text editor, and change size, image type, previous file extension…
• This point is pointless - but “Ten points to consider” sounded better than “Nine points to consider”.