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!

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..

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)

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

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

I've been going to donate blood for a few years now; it's a small price to pay for the knowledge that you are helping to provide an essential service — and you get free tea and biscuits!

Around the start of January (or possibly before Christmas; can't recall exactly) I got a letter from the National Blood Service about the possibility of giving platelets. These are the cells in your blood responsible for clotting. Platelet donations are needed for patients who have leukaemia and other cancers (as a result of their treatment) or those who have suffered serious blood loss sustained after injuries or major surgery.

The process of giving platelets is a bit more involved than for whole blood: they want you to go every month or so (technically you can donate once every two weeks); you have to go to a dedicated donor suite, and you're potentially there for nearly two hours.

The letter told me that, after some preliminary tests, they thought that I might be a suitable platelet donor candidate, and invited me to an open day where they would show me round the donor suite (in the John Radcliffe hospital) and take some further samples for analysis. I didn't really have any reason not to go; since I'm already giving blood it seemed like a small step to go and have some more tests to see if I could be even more beneficial to the blood service.

The open day was interesting and welcoming; much tea, and many biscuits and sandwiches were consumed, and my samples were taken. We also spoke to a few current donors about their experiences, and got a tour of the labs, where we got to find out more about how the donations are processed.

It turned out that my blood was suitable (in fact the phrase they used was "we like you!") and an appointment was duly made. A couple of weeks later, I turned up, filled in the usual tick-box questionnaire about blood safety, and listened while they told me a few more things about the process. They also asked me some specific questions about any drugs I might have taken recently (aspirin based drugs are a big no-no).

Platelets are extracted from you by a process known as apheresis, whereby the blood is passed through a centrifuge. After the required components (platelets in this case) are removed, the whole blood is then passed back through the needle into your vein. This is a little unnerving at first, but the parts of the machine that your blood passes through are part of a disposable kit which they fit to it, so your blood doesn't touch anything which isn't sterile. I found it difficult to picture this so didn't really realise how it worked until I saw them dismantle it after my first session: it's essentially a band of plastic, with leads at the centre, which is fitted to a spinning disk — obviously some sort of rotating joint is used at the axis. There are various channels within the band which contain your whole blood and the product.

These kits cost £100, apparently, and are fitted before you arrive. For this reason, they are understandably insistent that you give them plenty of notice if for some reason you can't make it!

After the initial mild nervousness, I found the process itself quite relaxing. The needle is a bit more scary looking than the whole blood donation needle (it has three lines going to it) but once it's in you can mostly forget about it. My blood flow rate when donating has tended to be quite low in general so I ended up having to make fists quite a lot.

The first time I donated, the (very friendly) nurse who did most of the work wanted to take a triple donation (i.e. the bag would be heat-sealed/split into three equal doses) but another nurse said that for the first donation they would take a double donation (they want people to give at least a double each time). At least I knew that at that point my platelet count seemed nice and high.

So, the relaxation. So far, I've been donating after work (leaving a bit early to fit in with the blood service schedules) and reclining on a couch and having as much tea and biscuits as you can manage brought to you, and reading a book, after a day at work, is just as good as it sounds! You get a nice LCD display of the progress of the donation (which takes between an hour and an hour and a half, depending on your count, and how much they're taking) including how many platelets have been collected, and how much longer you have to go.

Of course, it isn't wholly relaxing. Yesterday (the second time I've been) I ended up with a funny vibration feeling through my circulatory system, which I'd been warned about. It's caused, I was told, by the needle being close to a valve in my vein. For those who don't remember from GCSE biology, veins have one-way valves periodically throughout, to ensure that the blood flow remains towards the heart. Presumably the vibration was caused by the returned blood (flowing in the opposite direction to that in your vein) hitting the valve at some speed.

Other odd sensations include a sort of "fizzing" feeling caused by the anti-coagulant they add to your blood so that the donation doesn't clot, some of which remains in the returned blood. Even if you don't experience these effects, you're bound to feel a slight tingling near the site of the needle when the blood is returned (the "rinseback", as they call it). The cycle of extracting your blood and then replacing it happens about once a minute (you can hear the machine change tone, and it's displayed on the panel). The vibrating effect only lasted until a few minutes after I stopped donating, in any case, so it wasn't problematic.

Sadly, when I went yesterday, my platelet count had gone down so they weren't able to take a triple donation from me. However I did get my tacky "bronze award" pin (you get two, or maybe three ordinary donation "points" for an apheresis donation), and gave a respectable double dose. They said that the platelet count is related to stress levels — clearly I'd got complacent after feeling nervous at the first session, and was too relaxed about the affair the second time round!

So that's my story about donating. I'm posting it in case anyone feels moved to investigate it themselves as a result. You can read more about the process on the National Blood Service website. Do get in touch if you want to ask me anything about it.

We decided to go hostelling in Somerset and ended up visiting Cheddar, Minehead and Bath in sequence. Unfortunately this plan did rely rather heavily on driving, so the fact that our car was forced into the garage didn't help things (more on that later). However in the end we hired a Peugot 206 at a fairly reasonable cost.

I took the usual selection of photos.

Cheddar turned out to be slightly disappointing. While the main attraction (Cheddar Gorge and Caves) was suitably impressive (if hideously overpriced) the town as a whole was quite dull, especially in the evenings. We also went on a short bike ride from Cheddar (having strapped our bikes to the back of the car). The second evening in Cheddar we decided to go to Weston-Super-Mare to soak up the tackiness and find some food.

En route to Minehead we stopped off at Wells and Glastonbury to visit the cathedral and (ruined) abbey respectively; both were interesting.

We got to Minehead after a fun drive (forget any pretences of going anywhere quickly in Somerset) and made it in time to book dinner at the idyllic Minehead YHA. It is built on a hill and access to it is via a series of forest tracks. It is probably the most welcoming and pleasant YHA I have been to, and everything was excellent from the food, to the atmosphere, and the no shoes inside policy.

Next morning we were slightly delayed as Gillian wasn't feeling particularly well, but we made it to Exmoor National Park and embarked on a longish walk (made longer by us completely losing the path and spending quite a while tramping through long grass/heathland).

After a return to the car and cream tea we returned to the youth hostel having decided that the food was too good not to experience again.

The following day we went on a steam train on the West Somerset Railway (good choice, since it rained - the only time while we were there). Then we drove to Bath, got lost in Bath, found the youth hostel, and went to meet some family friends of mine for dinner.

Having committed to returning the car to the hire centre by close of business on the Friday we then had only a few hours to "do" Bath. We went to the Jane Austen centre for a well-presented exhibition, and some excellent tea.

Then we went to the (again, outrageously overpriced) Roman Baths, which, while good, was slightly rushed. We also made the mistake of "taking the waters" - don't be left under the impression that they taste at all pleasant!

Then it was time to make our way home, which we did, uneventfully.

All in all, a good simple week away.

The cycle leg was about 35km long, and took me 1 hour 27 minutes. I don't think I've ever actually cycled that far without a rest before so it was quite fun to do, especially with a plentiful supply of water... Luckily it wasn't too hot by the time I was cycling (though this did mean up at 6.30am to get there in time).

I took my ever-present GPS (on its nice new handlebar mounting bracket) and recorded the route, with which I've produced a nice map.

We had a bit of confusion during the cycle-run transition, however; Nick had the idea of me phoning/texting when I was nearly back so he could warm up; however, technology failed us and Nick hadn't made it off the grass where he was relaxing! This made for a rather lengthy transition of around 5 minutes...

After everyone had finished we went for a nice pub lunch in Wantage and then drove back to Oxford. It was all good fun. We got the results yesterday (we're down as "Hamnett Team Hamnett" if you're very bored and want to look for us) and we came 115th out of the 121 who finished the course (though most of them weren't a team — we were the last team to finish sadly :) I think we'd have been about 110th without the long transition...

Now I'm been badgered into the Faringdon triathlon with a 50km cycle ride.