Dominic's Diary

Librarything

I'm now on Librarything and am cataloguing my (rather modest) book collection. Let me know if you're on there too!

Glasto summary

Ben Folds, Fun Lovin' Criminals, Estelle, Operator Please, The Duke Spirit, Edwyn Collins, Franz Ferdinand, Shakin' Stevens, Martha Wainright, Elbow, Hot Chip, Massive Attack, Joan Armatrading, Seth Lakeman, Flame Oz, Goldfrapp, Leonard Cohen, The Zutons, Groove Armada, Portico Quartet, Balkan Beat Box, Jeremy Hardy, The Blessing, to list only a small selection of the things I saw at Glastonbury Festival this year.

Photos? here, but Art's are much more worthwhile.

Best moment? Too many to choose from, but Flame Oz were fantastic.

Best gig? Probably Franz Ferdinand, despite having people stepping on my feet.

And yes, it hardly rained!

Okay, you win

Everyone who nagged me to go and buy a Glasto ticket once registration re-opened, I hope you're happy - I give in and bought one :)

In other news, I suppose I may as well blow my own trumpet about this post about my Movable Type packages. It really is overstating things, but it's nice to be appreciated.

Year in review

It's been a while; I keep on meaning to write entries about various things, but never do, like many bloggers I suppose. Still, I'm determined to write down a few key facts about the past year.

Obviously we got married (I mentioned that already). We went on honeymoon to South Africa, and were greeted on arrival by rose petals. The relatively uninteresting set of photos is here.

I also, a couple of weeks later, started work at OUCS (I also mentioned that briefly). Working at OUCS is very different to Black Cat, unsurprisingly, but generally good fun. It's good to be able to leave the office at the end of the day.

Only a few weeks after joining, I persuaded OUCS to pay for me to go to Debconf up in Edinburgh, followed by a train journey from Edinburgh to Castle Cary, and then onwards to Glastonbury 2007, my second. It was, of course, a muddy one, made somewhat worse by the idea of having to queue for a bus back to the station for two hours in the rain, at the end of the weekend. The sight of all the mud on the train (a specially laid on HST stopping only at Castle Cary, Reading and Padddington!) was very surreal.

Talking of rain... well the other main feature of 2007 was being flooded out of our house in July (again, see previous posts). We were very kindly housed by Wadham College, and then, once the students came back, David, whilst we waited for our management agents to sort the place out (mainly get a dehumidifier in, wait a long time, and redecorate). We waited, and waited, and waited, and finally, after the work slipped into October, we gave up waiting, and found a nice house in Summertown (or "Posh North Oxford", as it has been known). It's quite similar in many ways, and overall we're very happy with it. We finally had a housewarming party last weekend.

Christmas was again spent up in Glagow with the Hamnett tribe; although this year much of the time was spent looking after unwell people... there followed the tour of my parents through the rest of Christmas and New Year.

Here's a (very) belated Happy 2008, for anyone reading this who I haven't already spoken to! And no, I'm not going to make it a New Year's resolution to post more here, because my life seems to be far too full up to keep such a resolution, but expect to me to pop up just when you thought I'd given up for years to come..

Flooded

Sadly our house got flooded at around 8.45am this morning. We're fine, most of our stuff is upstairs or on high shelves, and we're staying with friends for a couple of days until we can get the management company to sort us out.

Photos at http://www.larted.org.uk/~dom/photos/albums/events/200707_vicarage_road_flooding/.

(Update 2007-08-02: moved photos to my normal photo albums)

Flooding in Oxford

I went on a tour of South Oxford and took some photos of the flooding.

We're fine at the moment, and it sounds like the water's going down now.

Palm Vx for sale

I'm selling my Palm Vx with accessories on ebay after upgrading to a Palm Tx. Will be sad to see it go - it's a lovely device.

Blog upgrade

I've recently upgraded the software running this blog, so apologies if this results in any exploding RSS feeds, or the like. I've also re-enabled commenting, as I should be able to manage spammers better with this new version.

Oh. And I'm married. Yay! You can see a handful of photos taken by people there at our wedding site. (more details and official photos to follow in a subsequent post)

New job

Yep, that's right; after nearly two years with Black Cat, it's now time to move on again. From the end of April (a couple of weeks after our return from honeymoon) I'll be starting with OUCS, working for the central UNIX services team as a Unix systems programmer (so says the job title). The lure of the University strikes again.

Which means we're definitely in Oxford for another few years to come :)

Nearly there!

In exactly two weeks time, Gillian and I will be celebrating our recent marriage!

It seems like it's been a long time coming, and yet simultaneously it's upon us without any warning. I'm now wishing that it was now, and not in a whole two weeks' time.

We spent a day today getting various wedding things done, which is good - having niggling tasks waiting detracts from the antipication slightly. I still have a speech to write, although I hear it's traditional among my friends who've got married (and, to be honest, most people I expect) that that's done very close to the wedding.

The honeymoon is all planned now - at least, the bits that need to be. The train line up to Glasgow is mended, and we're being teased (in the South) by nice weather. Seating plans, orders of service, menus, timetable for the day, gift list, all sorted, and almost fading into the past now they've all been organised (or that might just be that Gillian has it all under control).

It's worth us focussing on the fact that the only thing that we really need to happen is that we get to Glasgow before 4pm on the Friday, so that we can collect the marriage schedule (the document that, in Scotland, you sign to as the official record of marriage). It needs to be collected by either or both of us, in person, the week before the wedding, during office hours.

Now, back to that to-do list...