v8villager

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2011-03-03T15:04:00.001Z

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Milano and Bergamo

2011-02-16T10:25:00.001Z

Its been ages since I last posted a blog post. The main reason being that I came to realise the main people I'd really been creating it for weren't actually reading it, so it all seemed like a lot of effort for no gain. However since then, things have changed and I discovered others were reading it and I have been told that some colleagues like to see the pictures and hear the stories of my travels however dull they may seem at the time!

So here goes... some pics first and I'll add stories later...

Post from Shanghai

2009-12-13T04:42:00.002Z

I've finally arrived in Shanghai. Its an immense city. Glad to be here after such a long flight. It was however a very comfortable one. I did 4 hours work, plugged my lap top into the powers supply provided. Had a delicious meal and then had a good 3 hours sleep in a bed!

It feels very remote here. The internet is OK in the hotel, but many of the social sites I use cannot be reached, so I can't Twitter, Facebook or blog. However I did discover that using a trick we use at work, I could tunnel through to Blogger. I suspect that this could be frowned upon so won't do it much... it didn't work for Twitter or Facebook though which surprised me.

I can however send SMS to the UK Twitter number which then posts content onto Twitter and Facebook for me. I can't see any twitter responses, so will have to save those until my return. I can however see Facebook responses as they come to me via email - so please say hello!

More to come as I get time.

Friday 13th Club walk

2009-11-14T20:45:00.008Z

Its been a good few months since the last Friday 13th, and now there isn't another until August 2010.

A few people who wanted to come couldn't make it for work related reasons, though very unsure that was true for Paul "I'm too busy" Tremlin as we saw him out with his dog as we headed off for the day... Excuse Paul?

Apologies were received from Paul T, Simon S, Doug S, Jasper A and Mike B - no show from the rest of the crew... despite this 6 showed for brekky at my house. Bacon was provided by the superb Bacon Wizard - Jasper Ackroyd at http://www.baconwizard.co.uk.

===

Here is what Jasper has to say about the 6 samples he left us:

They are all cured without the use of nitrates at all, and are
finished in oak, such as would occur in wine-making (and once upon a
time, bacon curing)

1) Elsian's Cure. A herbal bacon, along lines of pancetta in flavour,
but English. Elsian was my Grandmother

2) Mr Dunn's. More breakfast-friendly. A Tudor recipe which I was
taught and have since adjusted according to a more recent translation
of the names of ingredients

3) Bishopstone Black. Mollasses and spices involved here. Especially
good for larding poultry, but try it with melted cheddar or lancashire
with oat-cakes!

4) The Tom Sladdin. As Bishy Black, but oak-smoked. Seriously strong flavour.

5) Jasper's Original. This is unfinished.. I am continuing to work on
the recipe. it is apple-smoked, but I personally feel there is an
after taste there which it could do without. It's a result of trying to
cure without nitrates :( let me know what you think of it please
guys.

6) Bloody Mary. Well, it was indeed cured in Bloody Mary. The result
is interesting, a slightly oriental feel to it I think.. I might leave
the oak out if it next time.

===

A full English breakfast was had before we set off. Liz helped when it got a bit too much for me alone. I think the food was OK, the bacon was great. My favourite of the tasting session being the Bishopstone Black.

Over breakfast we decided we'd head broadly in the direction of the Ridgeway and then pop down to a pub off the path at lunch time. Above are [left to right] Robin, Keith, Neil, Andy and me.

We decided as we headed up the hill to the Ridgeway to call in on Jasper and thank him for the bacon, but he wasn't home. He lives with as little impact as he can on the planet. He's one of the fantastic eccentric folk that live in and around Bishopstone. This is where he lives... In a Ger (Yurt to the common folk).

Looking through the window we note he has a TV and a bath! Note TV aerial on the post.

From the Yurt we headed cross country from Starvalls Farm up a little used track and came across this wonderful old Shepherds cabin. I've lived here a long time now and never seen this path or cabin before yet have been within a mile of it many hundreds of times.

I spent a chunk of the rest of the walk contemplating restoring it and having it on the drive as a getaway for those times when the teenagers get rowdy... seems like a good plan to me. Wonder how much its worth?

We carried on up to the top of the hill, walked across the top to the Uppler Ashdown Woods, down past Ashdown House (showing the muggles what a Geocache is along the way) and over Alfreds Castle back into Ashdown Woods and across the B4000 towards the Ridgeway. We headed diagonally towards White Horse Hill eventually reaching the Ridgeway around 1.00pm. We dropped down the road to Compton Beauchamp where we decided to go to Ashbury instead of Woolstone as we knew the Rose and Crown pub there was open all day whereas the White Horse closes at 2pm. Also as Keith pointed out the bus runs from Ashbury to Bishopstone every couple of hours so we could have a few beers and catch the bus home.

The last 1.5 miles along that road was the hardest of the walk... wet, hard and quite a few cars, vans and a huge night soil truck that drove us well off the road to avoid the spray. The smell was foul. Imagine driving that all day...

Seeing the pub was a great feeling. The Guiness which followed on entry, hardly touched the sides.

We had a great value lunch. After breakfast at least 2 of us couldn't finish the good sized servings we had. Suddenly it was time to leave and we quickly put coats and boots back on and rushed to the bus stop only to discover we'd missed it. Neil had the last laugh as he felt it was cheating to catch the bus and decided to walk while we waited. He got back before us! Eventually Andy called Karin and she came and fetched us.

A day in Seattle

2009-10-20T02:39:00.007+01:00

View Larger Map

I've been in my hotel room for most of the day, working on a some material for a workshop session I am presenting on Thursday. The Google map above shows the actual room I am in centre of the picture on the first floor.

These pictures were taken looking back towards my hotel. Its a pleasant place.

I did pop out for lunch though and met up with a couple of the Organic Exchange folks for a bite to eat. We wandered up to Pike Street which has a big fish market and lots of small cafes and interesting shops. It reminds me a bit of somewhere else, but I've not been able to think where yet...

I saw this lovely market stall selling these wonderfully coloured chillis just outside the fish market.

Later on Ashley arrived [last time I saw her was in Porto last October - but it seems more recent than that and I can't believe the time has passed so quickly since then]. We are presenting a workshop together on Thursday and we met up to discuss it and put the world right over a coffee and sort of a mulled non alcoholic apple juice which was billed as "Hot cider" [nice but not what I expected...]

Walking back to the hotel from the cafe the sun was setting. Here I am looking old and tired with the sun setting behind me. Its quite cold here now and I could do with buying a jumper!

My journey to Seattle, USA

2009-10-19T17:48:00.007+01:00

I've not been good at posting to my blog for sometime. Partially because I've been incredibly busy and not had the time and partly because I've not really been anywhere interesting. Work and home have been so busy I've not had time to casually post content here. Anyway - being away from home for a week with a lot on, its time to post some content again...

I'm in Seattle in the state of Washington, USA. I'm here for a few days at the Organic Exchange annual conference (http://organicexchange.org/globalconference.php) to present a couple of workshops on our traceability system. We're now probably the biggest provider of traceability anywhere in the world and most of the biggest companies in the world use our services in one form or another and are gradually using them more and more. As a consequence my company is increasing in size and spread and its been a hectic and fun time.

I started my journey here at 4.30am on Sunday 18th October and got to my room at around 7.30pm Sunday 18th October. Doesn't sound like a huge journey. But with the 8 hour time difference and the flight going via Houston, Texas it was something of a marathon, taking 23 hours in total (if I've worked out the time differences and flight times correctly).

Here are a few pictures from the journey and the story so far.

The day started at 1.30am when I left Paul's 50th Birthday party. Liz and the Cheesehouse Band were playing a gig there and it was a late night. Too late for my age! I got into bed at 2am and had to be up at 4am. At best I reckon I slept an hour, constantly conscious that I may oversleep and not hear the taxi arrive.

It seemed like hours between 2am and 4am as I tossed and turned waiting for the alarm. Sneaking out of bed at 4am I readied my bag and waited a few mins before the Taxi arrived dead on 4.30. By 5.45 I was in the airport at Heathrow Terminal 4. While checking in, I thought I saw someone I recognised but dismissed it as one of those odd coincidences. I was wrong this time and it really was Richard Acreman who I last saw 8 years ago when he worked for me at eZoka. Small world.

We sat together and chatted about who we'd seen and what we'd been doing since while waiting to board the same plane to Houston. He was off to Mexico on holiday with a friend. Lucky chaps...

The flight to Houston was a long one, over nine and half hours! But the seat was comfy and there was enough leg room. However the lady in front fully reclined and I could barely even open my book to read let alone do any work on my computer which I had hoped I'd manage to do. I watched 3 films and read a bit. American Graffiti, the new Dan Brown film (can't remember its name) and Bullet (Steve McQueen).

We were served lunch at around 9am which seemed very odd. I didn't fancy it at all. It was some sort of soggy chicken with a sauce. It smelt stale and the salad it came with was limp. Not good. In fact I think the worst food on any journey to date. NOTE To Self: Continental Airlines don't do good food. This was the taste of everything to come. Complete shite food for the whole journey and poor choice of juices to drink.

We arrived at Houston slightly ahead of schedule and everything was fine. My bags had arrived and I checked in for the next flight to Seattle with 2 clear hours to spare. Houston has a lovely new clean airport. One of the nicest I've been to I think. Good clear views of the runways from the waiting areas and lots of shops and food outlets.

I felt small in Houston. I'm a large fella in England. Clearly Texans are big! Very BIG.

I found a small bar and bought a local beer. Shiner Bock beer. It was a lager and cold and hit the spot.

The next flight from Houston to Seattle was absolutely packed. I was in a middle seat between 2 large Texan ladies of indeterminate age. I was smaller than them and squeezed into Seat B. No leg room, no arm room. Horrible. Its a 4 hour flight from Houston to Seattle, though the ticket made it look less due to the time differences. First time in a while I really hated flying. That was a long long 4 hours. Half way through they brought out cheese burgers (a sandwich) for us. I have never seen or smelled such revolting food. I couldn't eat it. The beef looked like it had never been near a cow and the cheese was like some sort of sticky paste. At least the salad had a good strong dressing with it and was crisp.

Eventually we arrived at Seattle. Flying over the city it looks fantastic. My bags were there and before long I was in a CNG powered taxi heading to the hotel.

Checking in I discovered my credit card wouldn't work... need to transfer more funds to its balance! :-( However that hurdle over I headed for my room and crashed out after a quick shower for a good sleep. I awoke this morning to see the view below from my room. Very pleasant. Had a good American sized brekky and now to work...

A few days off

2009-08-27T20:15:00.012+01:00

I've not had much time off this year yet. A few days here and there, mostly to do something important, fix things, attend funerals and so on. So when the time came to grab a few days something cheap, relaxing and different was required. Liz booked the whole family into a youth hostel in the little village of Golant near to Fowey in Cornwall.

We arrived after nearly a 3 hour drive from my parents house where we'd broken the long journey overnight. We had an hour to kill before we could check in and explored the gardens. Before long the little children had found some chickens to play with...

Once checked in we examined our room. All 6 of us in the same room. The little ones thought it was brilliant, but the teens the exact opposite! As expected...

I've not stayed in Youth Hostels very often, but this was a great experience. It was a little run down, but cheap and clean. The food was superb. We all had a big meal and enjoyed some local Cornish beer. Under the youth hostel logo in the lobby was this wonderful message.

Day 2 we planned to spend the morning on the beach at Polkerris and then head off to the Eden Project as its free for children after 3.30pm and they have a beer and curry evening special for just £6 a head.
Here is Polkerris. A lovely little beach at the bottom of a very steep hill! Right on the beach is a fabulous cafe called "Sam's on the beach". It's sited in the old lifeboat house. We ate there and although the service was very slow due to it being absolutely packed, my Thai Mussels were some of the best I've ever eaten.

With help from Mabel, Millie and Liz I made this scary monster to leave behind on the beach.
After lunch we headed off to the Eden Project. We'd seen pictures of it before but they are nothing compared to seeing the place for real. Its really stunning.

We gift aided our tickets (so the Eden Project can get our tax back) and got free access to the place for the next year. I would like to go back and spend time there without 4 children. Going through the Geospheres there is so much to see and read, it was impossible in the time we'd allocated. A great day out. We got back late and crashed out in bed after a few games of pool.
Next day we decided to spend the day in and around Fowey. It was Regatta week which it was the last time we came here 24 years ago!
As we walked about the tiny streets, out of nowhere came a flock of Michael Jacksons and Bubbles.

After lunch we booked up for a river trip in an old steam powered boat. Fabulous. We wandered about watching multi coloured yachts racing on the river. Millie got stung by a wasp and the skies turned rather black!

The weather brightened up just in time for the trip. What a great little boat it was. Apparently the hull is nearly 100 years old, with the boiler and engine being somewhat newer. I didn't establish exactly how new.

Along the river are some fantastic properties. The first picture is the house where Daphne du Maurier used to live. The last is at a place called Pont. This is National Trust property and can be rented. What a place that would be to have a quiet break.

After the trip we jumped back into the cars and drove 3 hours non stop back to my parents. A good but exhausting break!

HF grows again and is hiring

2009-08-20T14:13:00.002+01:00

In 2 weeks time my team grows again. Thankfully. We've been stretched as far as I feel comfortable with and a bit beyond in recent months with new service offerings, large numbers of new customers and big brand projects. So my tech team will have doubled in size in the past 2 months which is great. It will get bigger again before long. Once the dust has settled.

Meanwhile one of my colleagues in India is coming to work for HF here in Europe and so we are recruiting a new country manager for India. Details here: http://historicfutures.com/images/stories/Country%20Manager%20India%20Job%20Description%20180809.pdf. So if you know someone in India who would like to work for my company please let me know!

Its been a long time coming

2009-07-17T21:11:00.005+01:00

I've not had much opportunity in the last few months to sit down and think and be quiet enough to get out a computer in my spare time and write down what has been going on.

The last few months have been totally frenetic with a growing business to deal with, 4 children to look after and guide [aged from 2 to nearly 17yrs old] and my wife working a couple of nights a week and all day on Saturday.

Its been fun but I do feel a desperate need to slow down and have a holiday. This week I've started work at 7am four days in a row and not been through till 10pm. I started this business 7 years ago in November after being made redundant and often wonder if I'd have done it if I knew then what I know now. That said we now have 12 employees world wide and work with many of the world's leading brands and when I reel them off to people [which I do several times each week to prospective customers, partners and employees] I have to pinch myself to be sure its real. This has been brought home to me several times this year and made me realise why I do what I do and make me sure I did the right thing.

Some time ago now we started working with Tesco to help them gather data from their supply chains to assist them in understanding where the cotton comes from in their clothing and home furnishing lines. This was directly to support their stance on not sourcing cotton that comes from Uzbekistan. Since then many leading clothing brands have started working with us on the same issue. Its really been an amazing journey for me to see all this happen. Best of all, it would seem that this has had an effect on the Uzbeks who are now looking like they may start to abolish child slave labour. Would this have happened if we hadn't had a system to help? I don't know, but its good to think we had at least some influence. Here's what the Guardian had to say about it in May. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/may/24/retail-ethicalbusiness

Last year we worked with Walmart on a project to create a range of fully traceable jewellery which is traceable to mines of known origin. That was a fabulous project which resulted in the creation of one of the best selling lines of jewellery at Walmart. More about this project can be found at http://loveearthinfo.com. The legacy of that work is that we have a fantastic public example of what we can do to show prospective customers and I am in no doubt it has helped us as a business a lot over the last year.

Yesterday Walmart announced for the first time in public something we've heard snippets about for a while. They have launched something they call a Sustainability Index. This is a bold move from an organisation the size of Walmart and I really hope it gets the support it deserves from their tens of thousands of suppliers. They recognise that to be successful over the next 10, 20 and more years they have to do something to make their supply chains sustainable and transparent. Its great hearing this in public. Its something we've been talking about for at least the last 7 years and finally hearing it from the biggest retailer in the world cements that belief we are right. Not only that one of the key presentations mentions the project we worked on for the Love Earth Jewellery.

Leslie Dach, EVP Corporate Affairs & Government Relations, discussed the company's mission, the importance of Sustainability and their 2009 Global Sustainability Report in this video. http://walmartstores.com/Video/?id=1378. About 7 minutes and 28 seconds into the video he started talking about the Love Earth Project. Hearing him say things like "The issue of traceability in our products is one of the most important" and about the service we developed "not only does it work great, but the product sells great" made me raise a hand and shout "YAY" in a very un English manner!

All this sort of thing makes me sure that I am doing the right thing work wise.

Out side of work has been busy too. I've kept up my veg growing, and twittered about it quite a bit. See the feed at the side, but not had time to write much. I have photographed interesting bits as they have happened though!

On and off over the past few months I've spent several hours a week learning to Morris Dance with the BUMMS [Bishopstone Union of Morris Men - http://bumms.info]. This is something which has been a huge amount of fun and we've performed several times. Sadly in recent weeks there's been a bit of a ding dong between the BUMMS over a donation to the church fete which we danced at. I hate bad feeling in anything, and really hate it when its around something which is morally right to do and I'm on one side of the fence and friends are on the other side. The whole episode has shown something in me that I didn't realise was there. I've lain in bed awake worrying about it which seems daft when I analyse it in the cold light of day, but its caused an emotion in me that I don't understand fully. I was prepared to walk away from it all if the decision had been not to make the donation. I love the fun of the practice, the beer and the live performance and would have given all that up. In hindsight I probably should have kept that to myself until the decision was made. Thankfully, despite my rants on the subject the right [in my opinion] decision was made, a donation was given and I'm trying to put it behind me. If any of the BUMMS are reading this. I love you all!

The summer school holidays are upon us, and for the first time in my life [as far as I know] we're not having a holiday. That feels crap to me. With Liz working and us not going to Herm as we have done for the last 7 years it suddenly feels like it is only winter that lies ahead. I so want to take a break, but didn't book anything and all my colleagues have booked up all the available time off. We'll take some long weekends I hope and have day trips but its not the same some how.

I want to end on something optimistic and will do. The veg garden looks great, and we've had more gooseberries and rhubarb this year than we had in the whole of last year. This year's bean crops are nearly ready to start harvesting and it looks like there will be more than ever before. I'm planning a bit summer curry night with colleagues from work coming here for a big veg nosh up. We're probably about to buy a new car, and I'm getting a bike to cycle part of my journey to work. Oh yes, I also took up GeoCaching [http://www.geocaching.com] which has been great fun and the only activity I've ever found which gets all 4 children, Liz and mother out all walking together. Highly recommended.

Holiday activities

2009-02-20T15:33:00.007Z

It's been a busy half term week. I've spent more time than intended fixing my car which I dented in a skid on the ice some weeks ago. But its done now and it passed it's MOT today with only a couple of advisory notes on tyre wear (and a nail in one of them).

Here's the completed front end rebuild. I've even washed it since this was taken.

Mabel has been away for a few days at my Mum's and we met up at Stonehenge to pick her up. Its been many years since I stopped and went around it. Its much more commercial now, but very low key. Last time I went I am sure you could go up to the stones so it must have been a long long time ago. There were many people there considering it was a cold dark and misty day in February.

We walked right around the ancient construction and marvelled at how it must have been made. Why did they do it, how long did it take, how did they plan it and convey to everyone what needed to be done? Many questions. It must have been built for a very good reason.

It feels quite spring like today. I spotted the first signs of life on the clematis that climbs the fence in the back garden today as it starts coming back to life.

I went on an epic walk on Monday with Millie doing about 8 miles with her on my back. Millie was getting a bit cold and fed up by the time I took this. I don't look too happy either! The dog chased a herd of deer across some land for a good half mile or so before giving up and I've ached ever since! My back is so painful. You can just see the deer in this picture, and some white patches of snow in the background.

Scooby progress

2009-02-15T16:16:00.007Z

Had a bit of a disappointment earlier as I was hoping to get a Haynes workshop manual for my Legacy, but the only one available is via Haynes' on-line store for the USA model which is quite different from the UK model. I took a trip this morning to Halfords to buy one before I'd discovered this to be the case.

Meanwhile I removed the front bumper and nearside undamaged headlamp so I could see how the mounts should look. I was quite surprised just how much the offside had crumpled when I saw the undamaged side. A few bangs with hammer and pulling with mole grips should see it all straight again. Nothing too drastic, thank goodness. I'll need to paint a bit as some paint has peeled on the damaged metal.

Here's the undamaged side.

And the damaged side for comparison.

After straightening things up, I then offered up the replacement wing and bumper and loosely fitted them, just to check everything is aligned. Thankfully its all coming together. With the extra fog lights that came with the replacement bumper, it will look better when done than it did before.

Replacement bumper loosely fitted.

Fogs fitted.

Wing on, looking so much better now.

Fixing Scooby Doo

2009-02-14T17:31:00.004Z

I finally managed to get some time today to start getting my Subaru fixed and back on the road.

Last night Kev came around to my house to pick up the replacement panels which I'd managed to track down through eBay (thanks Andy). I didn't expect them to come back painted quite as quickly as they did - amazingly he prepped and painted them and brought them back ready to fit after lunch today!

So, I set to work this afternoon carefully removing the damaged panels. It was harder than I expected it to be as the bent bits covered some of the places where bolts needed to be undone and some had rusted up and some of the plastic screws were damaged. Grrr. Old cars.

Once I'd finally managed to get the wing off the car I sadly discovered that some of the mounting panels were also bent, the plastic undershield is shattered and the inner parts of the headlamp are completely smashed.

More expense. Getting a second hand headlamp should be easy enough, but the plastic underwing mudshield I suspect will have to be bought new from Subaru. Bet that isn't cheap.

You can see the plastic mudshield here sitting on the wheel. Its big and extends under the front of the car in front of the wheel. Getting the bumper off looks like it will be easy enough - that's a job for tomorrow.

We're tough in Bishy

2009-02-09T13:46:00.001Z

http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/search/4106770.Dad_takes_daughter_to_school___in_a_tractor/

We take the kids to school in tractors when the snow gets too much!

That's because it is a 3 cylinder engine Sir.

2009-02-09T06:52:00.002Z

I've got a hire car at the moment as my Subaru is off the road being fixed. Pretty horrible it is too.

When I picked it up last week, something didn't seem right about it. The engine was very rough. So I phoned the hire company and said:

"This Vauxhall Corsa I hired from you earlier today, something isn't right with the engine. It feels like its only running on 3 cylinders".

The guy on the other end started laughing.

"That's because it is a 3 cylinder engine Sir".

I was very embarrassed.

It's a rubbish car to drive. Truly the worst car I've ever driven. Even worse than a Trabant.

Still at £13 per day I can't complain. 1Car1 is the company I hired it from, and very pleasant to deal with.

Snow in Bishopstone

2009-02-06T12:50:00.008Z

Its been a strange week. Unusually for England we've had some serious snow. Enough to close the schools and stop me getting into work.

Here's some shots I've taken around Bishopstone over the past few days. Scroll to the bottom and you'll also see a video of Liz on a sledgey sort of blow-up thingy... Plus some video from Mike Barrett skiing.

Liz, Mandy and Lorna having a laugh.

Morris Men Movie - the next big cult?

2009-02-05T10:17:00.001Z

Its February

2009-02-01T05:15:00.003Z

I had a very busy January. We've been going through a bit of a re-organisation at work, and my shortish (4 months) venture into leading the customer services side of what we do has thankfully come to an end. Its not that I don't enjoy that type of work, it just isn't what I really wanted to be doing and what the business needed me to be be doing. However we had a hole to fill and I jumped in to do it. Meanwhile the technical side of my work which I really love had slipped and I am struggling to get back into what has been going on. 4 months in a tech company is a long time and a lot can happen.

In addition to that, the world seems to have suddenly realised that knowing where stuff comes from is very important and we've been inundated with massive new projects from a number of global brands so all in all superb news. Plus we're now well funded and ready to launch some very good new technology to our entire user base in the next few days. I'm very excited about the future, and the good we seem to be doing.

Outside work, things have been busy too. Having 4 children takes up lots of time. I seem to have been constantly having to leave early to go to parents evenings, award ceremonies and so on. I've even missed a few BUMMS meets due to this.

Over the past couple of years I've travelled a lot, and this year finally looks like I won't have to do so much. I've been to most countries I wanted to visit now, just a few more which I'd volunteer for if the opportunity arises.

The past week or so has seen me re-visiting some work I did about 6 months ago on helping plot the big organic cotton farming projects of the world on a map. I've even visited some of them, so its great seeing that gradually come to life. Over the next month I'll be doing more on that and soon the site will be officially published.

The above gives a rough idea of what it looks like, but it will also be searchable by crop and not just be for cotton.

Dangerous driving conditions

2009-01-08T14:38:00.002Z

I'm a sensible driver (mostly), and am well aware of how to drive on bad roads, snow and ice. Last night though I crashed my car, spinning a full 360 degrees and hitting a small tree in the process and was powerless to avoid it.

On my way home in the dark last night on a notoriously dangerous blind bend (I was going less than 25mph) I span out of control and went sideways down a slight slope managing to hit the only tree in sight on the near side with the offside of the car and then span right around so that the car was again pointing in the correct direction. It shook me up, but I was unharmed and the car seems to have come out of it with fixable damage too. Phew I was lucky.

On my way in to work this morning I stopped to photograph where it happened in case I make an insurance claim, and discovered several other cars had crashed there since my incident last night. There was evidence of at least 3 other cars judging by the bits of number plate different coloured paint scrapes and assorted broken body parts and lights.

Boxing Day up on the downs

2008-12-27T14:32:00.004Z

Clearly I've been over doing everything for way too long. I couldn't believe how old and haggard and overweight I looked when I saw this photo (taken just after Christmas day lunch). In a few days time, there will be no food left in the fridge and a healthier way of life will start. Hopefully a photo of me this time next year won't shock me so much.

To kick it off I took Nelson on a good long walk. He didn't get much of a look in on Christmas day with 8 of us here, just getting a brief walk around the block. Both he and I needed a lot of fresh air. 2 O'clock bushes is right on the top of the downs above the Ridgeway (called that because apparently from Bishopstone the sun is above the bushes at 2 O'clock). It was above them when we got there... but a good deal later than 2 O'clock.

Up on the top of the downs the wind was pretty strong and biting into my thin jumper and shirt. I wished I'd worn gloves and a coat. It was quite invigorating though and after a few days of slothfulness really woke me up. On the way across the fields on the way back Rob Selbourne drove up to see Nelson and me in his 4x4, it was good to see Rob up and about again, as I've not seen him driving around his land for ages.

As we headed back it was gone 4pm and the sun was going down. The wind chilling and the day ebbing away. I took some photos as there was a weird sort of orange light, but that didn't come out so well on the mobile phone camera. The Ridgeway was deserted except for the odd bit of farm machinery and a few hares and rabbits crossing.

I wish I had time to head up there everyday, and that I wasn't always up there on my own. I've seen some lovely views and interesting sights up there. Sharing them after is much harder than sharing them at the time. My camera doesn't capture the moments as well as it might.

Here's to a healthier and less stressed 2009.

Early morning walks and Jews Ears

2008-12-19T22:35:00.002Z

Over the past week or so I've been getting up a bit earlier than usual so that I have time to take Nelson out for a walk before I head off to work. At this time of year its still dark at almost 8am so its been lovely seeing the sun rise as I near the top of Nell Hill to the Ridgeway.

On Tuesday it was a lovely fine and bright morning and on my way back I walked back down the edge of the valley where many of the Hawthorn and Elder bushes are. By chance I noticed that the rotting branches of the Elders were absolutely covered in Jews Ear fungi. Quite why they are Jew's Ears I am unsure, but they really do look like ears. I picked a good jeans pocket full and have used some in an omelette and some more in a Chilli I made tonight. They are a bit chewy but full of flavour, and reminiscent of those mushrooms you get in Chinese food...

I gave some to Mabel to take in to school as they really do look just like real ears.

And just because I love this picture, here's Mabel and Millie looking up information about them on my laptop computer.

Winter in the new woods

2008-12-14T20:49:00.002Z

It's been ages since I've posted. It's not that nothing has happened. On the contrary, I've been too busy to have much personal life to report on and the work stuff is confidential.

Anyway today I got out in the wet and cold for the first time in a week or so with Nelson and Mabel.

We walked down the Drove Road to the new woods and everything is so different now from how it was back in the summer. The woods were flooded - I hope it doesn't cause any damage.

It was getting dark as we headed back home. This was at 3.50pm ish! Currently the sun doesn't bother putting his hat on until "Sunrise 08:05 (GMT)" and goes back to bed at "Sunset 15:58 (GMT)" according the the BBC Weather site. Thats just 8 hours of the day when the sun is up. Actually its more like 7 given the wet gloomy weather we've been having. No wonder I feel down. Another week or so and yay(!) - the days start to get longer again.

A shout out to a local chocolatier

2008-11-23T13:11:00.002Z

I mentioned in an earlier post that I'd bought some chocolate from our annual craft fair. This comes from Coco Amano - a local chocolate company only 2 miles from Bishopstone. http://www.cocoamano.co.uk I'm not a massive chocolate eater which is why it had remained untouched until this morning.

I've just had some. Its the best Chilli Chococolate I've ever had. So, so spicy and bitter and sweet all at the same time. I'm salivating.

Follow the link and buy some local produce, that originatess from a good source. At least so she says!

That was a heck of a week

2008-11-22T15:26:00.003Z

Its been an odd week. Loads of stuff to do but not much happened if you know what I mean.

On Tuesday I went to Plymouth by train with a crazy idea that it would be a good way to get 6 or more hours of undisturbed work done on the train. But sadly it didn't work out as the good old British railway companies make sure every seat is full by shrinking the length of the trains on the less popular routes. Thus I had very little space to work and despite being in one of the most developed countries in the world, I only had a mobile signal that was usable for my phone / internet on the computer for about 10% of my journey between Bristol and Plymouth. I needed access to some data and didn't have a connection long enough to get it! Ended up being a bit of a wasted day.

To make the day worse I had a pasty at lunch time that disagreed with me and ended up in bed with bad guts and feeling sick in the evening. It was a good experience and I now know not to try that again.

On Wednesday the Woodburner was in and running. What a difference that has made.

Thursday night was the annual craft fair in the village hall. Its amazing what local produce there is around here. I ended up buying some delicious chilli chocolate for myself and cranberry chocolate for Liz.

On Friday I had to go to London for a meeting with a customer to review progress on a project. That went well and was followed by a lovely lunch in the Union Cafe on Marylebone Lane. I had calves liver. Delicious. Then rushed back to Swindon in time to get home to pick up Mabel and take her to ballet classes.

I've just heard that Bryan Hickton's funeral is next Wednesday, so have booked the day off work to give him a good send off. I still can't quite believe I'll never see him again. I'd like to gather some of the funny stories and pictures of him together and put them here. So if anyone has something interesting. Please let me know.

Next Monday I'm meeting up with Mogs to put together a plan to display loads of old photos from Bishopstone and Hinton-Parva here on-line. Watch this space.

Back boiler "For Sale"

2008-11-15T14:41:00.002Z

When we removed the Victorian style cast iron fireplace from the chimney we discovered an old Redfyre R200 back boiler. Its a lovely device in what looks like serviceable condition. It would be a real shame to not see it used.

I've advertised it on eBay...

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&item=270303327538

Fireplace progress

2008-11-14T21:27:00.002Z

Nearly there now. At least in terms of rebuilding the chimney.

Woodburner project progress

2008-11-13T20:47:00.003Z

An earlier post showed our old fireplace for sale. With luck I've got a sale, lots of interest in it on eBay.

Here's the progress so far.

The old fireplace in situ.

What was behind. The remains of the back boiler and supporting brickwork still in place. Originally there would have been a cooking range in here. You can see by the height of the concrete lintel that this clearly wasn't a normal fireplace.

All cleared out and the metal work in place to support the new brick arch. Lots more work to be done. But getting there.

We'll have a lovely brick surround and a woodburner in place by next week.

Work being done by Johnny and Matt of course (he of the red mohawk hair that did our attic conversion a couple of years ago and the kitchen many years before that).

Out with the exokans and sad news today

2008-11-13T20:29:00.007Z

Blimey its been years since some of us met up and ate together.

On Tuesday night this week after a couple of swifties in the Walkabout we headed next door to Ashoka curry house and had a superb curry.

Here's the chaps. Great to see them all again. Thanks for pulling it together Rhys.

Marcus

Darrell

Paul

Rhys

We all met for the first time at the pub next to my house - The True Heart pub, in 1999/2000. At the time I was CTO of eZoka.com a company I co-founded in 1999. We built the software and established the company in the back room of the pub. A year later we had I think 15 people working in there, and 53 people in total in London, Milan and Zurich.

I'll never forget asking my good friend Brian Hickton (landlord extraordinaire) if I could rent his back room to start a ".com". He was so supportive, and we shared many good and hard moments together as his and my business went through good and bad times.

Sadly I've heard that Brian passed away today. My fellow exokans and I were only discussing his health on Tuesday and I'd heard he was getting better. I can't quite believe its real. I know several people read this locally, and many of the exokans will be sad to hear this news.

Selling Victorian Style Cast Iron fireplace

2008-11-09T21:18:00.006Z

Here's our Victorian style cast iron fireplace which is for sale on eBay at:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270300367439

Starting bid £125.00

We're replacing it with a more efficient wood burner in next few days... Project pictures to follow as it happens.

Nice one Fiat...

2008-11-06T22:18:00.003Z

I've always loved the impossibly small Fiat 500 of the 1960s. Not long ago I saw my first new Fiat 500 and wondered if there would be a hot Abarth version like there used to be of the old one. And sure enough I just stumbled on one...

I bought one of the new Mini's when they first came out (had it for a couple of years and nearly got what I paid for it when I sold it!), after having wanted one ever since I first saw the design sketches. Now I want one of these too... With the sensible one doing over 75miles per gallon - maybe it would be worth it and save me money. I could always imagine it was the Abarth version.

In my dreams. Silly man. I forget you have to put these things on, rather than get into them, and I am not really small enough...

Globe Artichokes at last

2008-11-02T20:35:00.002Z

I meant to publish this with my other veg pictures yesterday. I finally got some decent sized Globe Artichokes from my plants. I planted them very late, but they did produce flowers and Liz, Mabel and I ate them last night. Very good they were too.

I was unsure if they would stand the frost, so picked them now just in case. Are they hardy plants that will grow again next year bigger than this? I do hope so. The flowers this year were a little small, but very tasty.

Salsify and making dried apple rings

2008-11-02T08:40:00.005Z

I've just harvested some of the Salsify I planted earlier in the year. Here is how it looks.

Its on the small side, but I'll clean it up and put it in the stew we'll eat for supper tonight.

I wrote the above a bit earlier. The stew is well under way and the Salsify has been cleaned up and chopped into the stew. It tastes good.

While cooking I decided to use some of the rapidly softening apples I've been storing and dry them into apple rings. To do this, core them, peel them and slice thinly then put on a slotted tray of some sort - I used one of Liz's things she stands bread on when it comes out of the oven - and place on the top plate of an Alpha/Aga or equivalent for new fangled devices.

Turn the slices every 20 mins or so until they are dried out - but not too dried out or they are a bit chewy. I've had to do several batches as the kids keep coming in and nicking them!

So, that will be something good to put in their lunch boxes next week...

Bishopstone Pumpkin and Artichoke Soup

2008-11-01T15:01:00.004Z

Every year I use the remains of the pumpkins we make monsters from to make some soup. This year was no different.

Here is how I make it.

Chop up 2 large onions into small pieces and fry off to a golden brown colour in some good olive oil, taking care not to burn them. Make sure they are well caramelised though. Meanwhile chop up the remains of the pumpkin flesh in to small pieces and put to one side.

Dig up a bunch of artichokes (a good armful from the garden will do!). Fartichokes we like to call them. Peel and dice them and put in with the chopped pumpkin. Chop up 4 parsnips and put with the rest of the veg.

Now add the vegetables a small amount at a time making sure it doesn't burn and stick. Juice will come out of the pumpkin and it won't need any extra water at this stage. Add a teaspoon of salt, some black pepper and a tablespoon of sugar. Keep adding the vegetables until they are all in the pan and let the mixture simmer in its own juices for a good 20 minutes in a heavy pan with the lid on.

Add a little water and blend it to a rough consistency (not too much or it gets all gooey). Add a tub of soured cream. Put it back on the heat and add a little water to get the consistency of a good thick winter soup.

Meanwhile fry up some chopped up pieces of smoked back bacon to a crispy consistency. Once done stir this into the soup. Serve with good hunks of homemade bread.

I just served this to my family a little earlier. Even my 16 year old daughter and her friend loved it and had seconds.

Millie who is 18 months polished off a whole bowl of the stuff.

It was delicious.

Some monsters from last night!

Mabel.

Martha.

Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross

2008-10-31T21:31:00.002Z

Read that using words Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross in blogs dramatically increases traffic. This is a test...

Sorry - nothing to say on the issue here. I didn't hear it and haven't read what they said.

That said, I cannot stand the Jonathan Ross show and when I saw him interview Russell Brand I had to leave the room.

Thanks for visiting.

Grandma's new toy

2008-10-31T09:35:00.002Z

Grandma has a rocking horse now. Mabel and Millie love it!

Making Sloe Gin

2008-10-29T05:45:00.005Z

Here's how I make Sloe Gin...

Firstly one has to pick enough Sloes to half fill 2 bottles of Gin. Why 2 bottles - well, you need at least 2 bottles because when you half fill the bottles with Sloes the Gin you tipped out won't fit anymore... (assuming you bought a new bottle of Gin for the process and didn't drink any of it first!).

I usually then freeze the Sloes overnight (somewhere I read that one should only pick the Sloes after the first frost) as it is usually so late in the year now that we get a frost that they have dried up and fallen from the bushes before they have had a chance to split. The reason for freezing them is two fold 1) to replicate the on bush freezing which I suspect alters the sugar content and 2) to get the skins to split. Once well frozen take the sloes and plunge them into boiling water. This causes many of them to split and expose their fleshy insides.

Pour out the Gin from the bottle into a suitable container. Then pop the sloes carefully into the bottle (having a little helper is useful here - Mabel is great at this!). Fill the bottle just over half full with the Sloes.

Then fill the remainder of the bottle with caster sugar. Give it a bang to settle the sugar and refill to the top.

Having done this now carefully pour as much of the Gin back in as you can. It will take time to settle, and percolate through the sugar and Sloes. Eventually the bottle will be full again. Put the lid back on and put it in a dark cupboard.

Once a week until Christmas, take the bottle out and turn it upside down to mix the Sloes, sugar and Gin. Before long the liquid will take on a lovely deep purple hue and all the sugar will dissolve.

Wait until Christmas, invite some friends over, serve in small glasses with Mince Pies. Yum.

Organic good stuff

2008-10-28T05:55:00.003Z

Living in Bishopstone its very easy to forget that the whole world isn't farmed organically. I just love this "Organic Mud" sign warning drivers that the road is muddy. (You can click on all images on this blog to get them full size if you didn't realise).

Every year we visit Helen Browning's farm and see the pigs, cows and fields by tractor with the little children who really need to know and understand where things come from. Living amongst it all we take it all for granted really. But the good thing is that it has become part of the life of the children. They are involved in growing vegetables at school and know that milk comes from cows etc.

Over the course of a year we also regularly forage for food, finding berries, flowers, nuts and mushrooms etc that are edible that can be gathered for free from the hedges and fields. Most of the land around here is organically farmed so I guess that means this goodies are also organic by default.

Yesterday was one such gathering day. I have the week off so Mabel, Millie (in her pushchair), Nelson and I set off down the Drove Road in search of Sloes (and the few remaining blackberries). Along the way we tried some Hawthorn Berries which are now very ripe (must make some more fruit leather this year) and discovered that if you suck them through your teeth you can get the insides into your mouth without the big pip in the middle and slightly bitter skin. Even so - its not a particularly pleasant berry right off the bush.

We also tried Sloes straight off the bush. Very, very dry, enough to make you gag and spit! My son Huw used to eat them by the handful as a baby from the backpack as we gathered them... perhaps that explains a thing or two... It was Sloes (or Fasts as we call them) that we had set out to find. My Mum had taken my previously collected hoard last week to share with my sister and make some Sloe Gin so we needed more to make some of our own.

Last year I discovered a superb spot to pick them, which I don't think anyone else has noticed yet, as there are always loads low down to pick, so even the children can get involved. We collected a food bag full in about 30 minutes, plenty to make 2 big bottles of Sloe Gin. I'll show how that is done in a future post.

Darkness all around

2008-10-26T07:58:00.002Z

I don't know how many other people feel like I do this time of year, but I know I am not alone. From around mid October every year I start feeling lethargic and a bit depressed. As the nights draw in I find myself driving home in the dark and unable to go out in the garden in the evenings and just sit in the evening sunshine. Then suddenly the clocks change and a brief change to the mornings occurs with it being light again for a couple of weeks when I set off for work. Gradually it gets dark in the mornings too and I find I am only ever driving in the dark to and from work, never seeing my garden in the daylight until the weekends.

I'm not sure if its the wet and damp we've had this year, but somehow it seems worse than usual for me this time. I sat in the kitchen having breakfast just now, realising its actually an hour earlier than it normally would be due to the clocks going back to GMT from daylight savings time. Looking around me, it all seemed very dark and I realised over half of our small spotlights have failed. Earlier in the summer I replaced some of them with some brilliant new Fluorescent spots which use a fraction of the power of the normal halogen bulbs and if anything they are brighter.

Here's where I get them from, and they deliver very quickly, so if you have similar bulbs and want more light I can certain reccomend them! http://www.lightbulbs-direct.com/. I've just ordered some more and hopefully they will give me a boost in the dark mornings and evenings that are upon us.

Truffles in the garden of Bishopstone School

2008-10-23T21:26:00.000+01:00

The children at Bishopstone School found truffles growing in the school garden while I was away. Here's a photo from the Evening Advertiser which shows Mabel (left) and her friends looking at them.

See http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/3769707.Pupils_unearth_a_gormet_delicacy/ for the original article.

Apparently the story was also reported very inaccurately in the Sun newspaper but so far I've not been able to find it online...

Farewell Ashley, here comes RFD

2008-10-22T21:01:00.000+01:00

On Wednesday the HF crew headed to the Lamb Inn in Burford. I have to say this is one of my favourite local hostelries. It has stone floors, open fires and is several hundred years old, serves a super pint of Old Hooky and smells of wood smoke, good food and real ale. It also has loads of comfy old chairs and small rooms to sit and relax in. What more could you want?

It was time to say goodbye to our American Intern Ashley. Its hard to believe 6 weeks has passed since she arrived. But it has and I hope she got a good taste of life in England and working for an amazing small but global company.

Here we all are... Ashley is second on left. Our overseas colleagues were sadly not present.

For food - I had a starter of Scallops on Black pudding with a superb mash potato and gravy. YUM.

The celebration was also for the launch of our new RFD feature in String. This will have a dramatic impact over the next few months... watch this space.

In Porto with the OE Crew

2008-10-19T21:33:00.000+01:00

Saturday evening was spent cruising up and down the river with the OE crew, chatting, eating and drinking with some of the best people on the planet.

Anne, baby Taylor and Anne's mum.

About to "set sail".

LaRhea.

Superb views of Porto.

Me (left) and Brendan.

The evening ended late for me as Rebecca, Andy, Jens and I found a bar and chatted and drank till 1am. I was seriously jet lagged and ready for bed.

Here's the OE crew! Almost all of them...

The next day started at 8am and I left the meeting at 2pm for my flight home.

An afternoon in Porto

2008-10-18T16:59:00.006+01:00

Soon after arriving here today I made contact with my colleague Ashley and we met up for lunch. Someone suggested that we should try a place down on the coast and scribbled the name on a piece of paper. We presented it to a Taxi driver and before long we were down by the sea eating Calamari and Mussells. Ashley's mussels were a bit odd tasting so she didn't eat many, but my beer and calamari was delicious.

We sat and chatted about the previous weeks events, with me in Dhaka and most of the rest of the the HF team here in Porto. There was lots to catch up on.

When we finished fixing the world of sustainable textiles we strolled along the road until we reached the mouth of the river, stopped and bought and ice cream and watched the world pass by for a bit.

Then carried on up the river hoping we'd find a taxi back to the hotel soon enough.

Along the way there was plenty of interest to see.

Lots of the houses were covered in glazed tiles and very pretty.

There were long abandoned boats high and dry out of the river.

An hour or so later we were still walking. Eventually we decided to pop into a cafe and ask where we could catch a taxi. The owner kindly phoned for one for us. It was a long walk and I can see now when I look at the map of where the taxi picked us up from compare to where we started along the coast.

View Larger Map

It's been a lovely afternoon. First time I've had a chance to relax and walk without feeling that I'm overheating for a week. Its good to be out of the Dhaka heat and in some fresh air again. Porto seems to be a lovely city. I reckon it's got to be worth coming back to one day.

Arrived in Porto

2008-10-18T12:26:00.004+01:00

That was an exhausting couple of days. But finally I have arrived in Porto and checked in to my Hotel the Porto Palacio (5*) - quite swish but not as swish as the Westin in Dhaka where I stayed the last few nights, but much nicer than the awful Sheraton Heathrow I stayed in last night.

Here is the view from my window. I've a few hours free time now before meetings this evening so I'm off to explore to keep myself from falling asleep.

And here is where it is on the map

View Larger Map

Seriously rattled

2008-10-17T22:30:00.002+01:00

I left my hotel in Dhaka this morning at 7am to get to the Zia International Airport by 7.20am. The roads were quiet for a change in Dhaka and it prolly took less than 15 mins to get there. However as on all previous occasions that I've been there, huge crowds milled around outside the departure area seeing loved ones off to some distant land.

That was the start of a very long day which is about to finish. I arrived in Delhi around 11.30am and had to wait until 2pm for the flight to London. Not quite so good as my flight out but pretty good all the same. Eventually we landed in London UK time at 7pm. Its about a 9 hour flight from Delhi with a good wind.

More than 2 hours after that I arrived at the Sheraton Heathrow. Prior to that I had been back to my car in the shuttle bus and dropped off my clothes so that I could manage with just hand luggage and then back to terminal 1 to catch the Hotel Hoppa to the hotel. I just missed both outward buses having to wait nearly 30 mins for each. Grrr.

After a quick call home I headed for the restaurant for some food (I won't write much about the food - it was a not at all bad Mushroom Risoto). I sat down next to a couple I'd guess in their early 50s and a conversation started up between us. I liked the look of what they had ordered and asked what it was. Before long we were finding out why we were in a Heathrow hotel and the fella told me he was heading to Korea in the morning on a business trip, and it was first time he'd been.

Then they asked me what I did, and the next couple of minutes seriously rattled my cage. After I'd half explained what I did I was told in no uncertain terms that I was wasting my time and that big businesses didn't give a damn about where stuff came from, especially the likes of some of the companies which we already have as customers. This fella was so opinionated I couldn't believe my ears. He said "I know big business, I work with them, they don't give sh*t". At every attempt to explain he talked me down in a loud voice which I am sure must have been audible across the restaurant. Its not often I take an instant dislike to someone, but I did tonight. Maybe it's because I am so tired. I decided to just shut up before I got cross and let him keep his opinions. Underneath I was seathing. The only bad egg I've met in months and months. That has to be good.

Anyway, I'm back in my room now, ready to sleep. I have to rise at 4am to catch the 6am flight to Lisbon and then another flight onwards to Porto. What an incredible 48hrs of travel it will have been by the time I get into bed tomorrow night.

Its an odd place this Sheraton - there's a bed in the corridor just down from my room...

The final day and supper in the Rose Garden of Old Dhaka

2008-10-16T18:31:00.004+01:00

Today was my final day in Dhaka, I leave tomorrow morning. Its been really hard but interesting work here this week. My final presentation this morning being the best I've done all week I feel. The outcome was that more people signed up for the paid for version of our service than any of the other sessions, and more people said they were going to, despite the internet behaving badly.

After the presentation Naushaba took Farhan and I to a lovely Indian restaurant just down the road from the office and we had a superb meal. Food seems to dominate my blog when I am away. This was a very good curry indeed. More mainstream than the one at Tommy Miahs Heritage but good all the same, spicier which is great for me.

We walked back to the office in the blistering heat (must have been nigh on 40C I would guess) and then settled into mashing names and emails to make sure we had everyone who had been to the sessions ready to roll. Surprisingly time consuming and manual. By 6.30 I was ready to drop. We walked back to the hotel a few mins away but I was dripping wet by the time we arrived. If anything it was hotter and more humid than earlier.

Naushaba's father had arranged a party for some friends in the recently renovated Rose Gardens in old Dhaka. Naushaba's driver picked us up and we zig zigged our way through the back streets and over crowded manic roads of Dhaka city. It was amazing to see the mass of rickshaws, CNGs and pedal all competing with trucks and buses and taxis and private cars for the narrow dusty space called a road. I love this place, its so full of energy and exciting sights.

Eventually we reached the old Dhaka narrow roads, barely wide enough for a cycle Rickshaw let alone a car and we wound our way around sharp corners having no idea what we would see next. Suddenly there it was in front of us - a palace amongst the back streets. An amazing sight to see. And this was where we were to eat.

Here's Naushaba and her husband on the steps of this mini palace.

I was introduced to countless people, including the owner of the palace. He told me of its history and how it had come into his family through his grandfather. He and his wife were lovely and had a little 18 month girl with them. Made me think of Millie back home and I wondered how she was getting on being looked after by Grandma Jan...

Later someone introduced me to (may be I misheard this) the French Ambassador to Bangladesh - he was certainly speaking french to those around him. It was all very lovely and seemed somehow very surreal in the middle of Dhaka.

Then the most bizarre thing of the night, we were invited into the scene of a film set in the downstairs of the house where a Bangladeshi Soap Opera was being filmed. We were allowed to watch for a few minutes and then told that dinner was served. It could only happen to me.... (Farhan caught it on video - please email me it Farhan and I'll post it here)

We had a lovely Biryani, a simple curry of meat and rice. Very filling. We drank coke served from plastic bottles which seemed so odd in such a setting and drank water labelled "Contains no arsenic". Another memorable night in a memorable city.

The head of the sourcing office then took us back to our hotel in her big 4x4 Lexus which impressed Farhan and I. They are expensive cars in the UK I am sure. Now I'm writing this and loading data at the same time.

Something new to eat

2008-10-15T19:08:00.001+01:00

I've had Korean food once or twice only. That was many years ago now when I was doing eZoka in London. The CEO was a Korean woman who took us occasionally to a little back street but very good restaurant off Edgeware Road.

So when Naushaba pointed Farhan and I in the direction of a Korean Restaurant we just had to try it. Never being one to miss some new culinary experience I dived in to the menu. We had little idea what to order... so the waiter helped advising a table top BBQ followed by a rice dish. It proved to be a lot of food - more than we could eat.

Here's the table top cooking. Superbly delicious beef and chicken cooked right in front of us. It was in a red coloured spicy sauce is all I can tell you.

For the rice dish I had chopped squid with spicy rice. Yummy.

Do you know where cups and saucers are made?

2008-10-15T14:23:00.008+01:00

I've never given much thought to the things I eat my food from. But today I got to see how the plates and cups we use everyday are made. The company I visited makes them for some of the big home furnishing names of the world, judging by the inspection area names I saw today.

A 2.5 hour drive down an often crowded and poorly made road out of Dhaka took me to the wonderful factory that belongs to a man I met yesterday. This is the fascinating side of my job. He's the director of his family business which is 3 generations old, and employs over a 1000 people on this site. We sat and chatted in the back of the Mitsubishi Pajero taking us there (sounded like it had a V8 and was a 5speed manual for those who know about these things). On the way he told me what a fantastic job the military government in Bangladesh is doing. He was concerned that after the elections in December there would be a return to corruption in politics. I just listened.

I had no idea what to expect of a porcelain factory and when I got there, it wasn't really what I thought it might look like.

It was a huge open warehouse type room with high ceilings and open walls. 2 enormous kilns run almost the length of the room with conveyor belts running through them. Huge shiny pipes take the heat away for use in the drying system both underground and overhead. Very little to be seen really. The whole lot is powered by natural gas. Apparently Bangladesh has huge natural gas reserves only just under the surface, and its very clean burning which is what you need for bright white porcelain. You'd expect it to be hot in there, but it was cooler there than outside due to the building design which allows the air to flow freely.

Looking down the conveyor belts I could see the glow further down where at 800C the items are baked (is that the right term?)

Did you know this is what your cups and saucers are made of? Neither did I.

The crystals are crushed eventually to powder in several stages and mixed with the feltspar stone and china clay in various proportions to make different types of product. This is then put into big drums and churned and churned with water to make a liquid clay.

This is then squeezed dry in huge squeezy things which create enormous discs of clay.

These are passed through something which extracts lead and cadmium somehow and then turned into large sausage type tubular sections of clay.

People then cut them into smaller disks, put them in a mould and a machine turns them into a cup. Amazing.

They then enter a drier, and then get checked and cleaned and smoothed before going into a furnace.

Then they are glazed and furnaced again.

Inspected for quality and put back through the procesess if anything is not quite right.

Even the rejects get sold. Nothing is wasted. I was given a set of 6 mugs to bring home. Very nice. I now know exactly how and where they were made.

Connecting with Primary Producers

2008-10-15T06:00:00.002+01:00

For Blog Action Day - Poverty.

Most of us have lost contact with where the stuff we consume comes from. I am constantly amazed by how little we know. Kids don't know that milk comes from cows, that vegetables come from the ground, and for things such as clothing most of us have no idea at all where they come from. I recall being asked by a US Immigration Officer when attending an organic cotton conference "Doesn't cotton grow on sheep?".

It is however possible to reconnect consumers with primary producers using technology. Some brands are making a big effort to do this. Made-By (http://www.made-by.org) brands are showing their customers where the cotton in their clothes comes from. In particular this connects consumers to some of the poorest primary producers in the world. All of this is made possible using a simple technology called String from Historic Futures Ltd.

If a brand that uses this system chooses to, it can show its consumers the origins of the products they buy. Furthermore because the consumer can see who made their products in theory it is possible to have a direct effect on the lives of the poor primary producer.

In my dreams I imagine the consumer being able to pass direct support via some sort of micro credit mechanism back to those poor primary producer communities cutting out the huge overhead of the supply chains, the fair trading mechanisms and other currently inefficient and lossy donation schemes in an efficient open and transparent transfer of funds.

Who will be the first to try and do this? I'd love to hear from you if you want to try or think this is a great idea.

Eventually you stop seeing the poverty

2008-10-14T18:23:00.005+01:00

Dhaka is an amazing vibrant buzzing city. Brightly coloured and decorated cycle rickshaws intermingling with every sort of cheap Japanese second hand car you can imagine. Many with huge chrome bull bars, and at night with loads of extra coloured flashing lights on top, under and in every crevice.

Most of the time I've been insulated from this by the posh hotel and the chaufeur driven car that picks me up in the morning for the 500 metre drive to the other hotel where I've been working, and from there to the office where I am working another 500 metres away.

Tonight though Farhan and I joined the crowded streets and walked to Tommy Miah's Curry Heritage, one of the finest curry houses in the world I believe. We met up with an old colleague of Farhan's from the days when he worked for a huge textile mill in Karachi, Pakistan. Here they are after our meal.

On the way there beggars pestered us for cash, and I was shocked for the first time in some years by poverty. Coming towards us half naked was a little dirty girl. She was not much taller than Millie my 18month old daughter. She was probably 3 years old at the most, but already begging. Her clothes were just rags. Never before have I seen such a sad sight. I'll dream about that tonight I am sure. As I crossed the road a huge Mercedes Benz with blacked out windows beeped angrily as I struggled to get out of the way without being mown down. What a contrast.

Its odd. By the time we'd had a curry and chatted I walked back past the same beggars and peddlars and didn't notice them anymore. The sight of that little girl made the rest of it seem OK. They were doing OK.

Thats why I do this job. Today more companies signed up to provide information about where the cotton they use comes from.

There are still places in the world where the government forces children to work in fields picking cotton. Children like that little girl have no value or place in society in such places. These companies want to stop stuff like that and its good. I like this job very much even though doing it causes me to see stuff that shocks me from time to time.

I'm glad I came here. I feel more sure than ever that I have everything I could ever want.

The story so far

2008-10-13T17:13:00.005+01:00

Monday breakfast at 8.15 was hurried. I was up at around 5.30am checking everything was ready for the day and the presentations were complete. I found a few typos as I went through everything again but missed a few which I spotted in the presentations during the day.

At 9.15am Farhan and I were picked up by car and taken to the meeting venue where we met up with our customer's merchandising team. We spent the morning talking them through what they need to do, and getting ready for the afternoon session.

At 2pm only 2 of the 40 or so people had arrived. Apparently this is not uncommon. However our host was not amused and phone calls were made all over the place, and soon we knew everyone was on the way. By 2.20 we were underway.

My presentation went well, then all the lights went out in the basement room we were in, along with the aircon. A few seconds later they were on again but no aircon. I didn't notice at first as it had been a bit too cold. But by the time I finished speaking 20 mins later I was roasting and my shirt was sticking to my back. Yuk.

We stopped for a coffee break and then everyone came back into the room and signed up for the service we've been promoting. A good outcome, and my sticky shirt didn't seem to put them off!

By the end of the day I was mentally exhausted. I've been building up to this day for weeks, and as soon as it was done my brain shutdown and I just couldn't function properly. So I went to bed and have had a good sleep. Feeling much better and refreshed today. 2 more sessions to do this week, one today and one on Thursday, a day in the office on Weds and several meetings to arrange before I fly from here to Portugal on Friday via Delhi! What a mad life this is sometimes.

My journey and views of Dhaka

2008-10-12T16:44:00.004+01:00

I flew here over night from London on a Jet Air flight. It was one of the best flights I've ever had. Instead of the quite common 3 4 3 layout this was 3 3 3 which gave more width in the seats. Much better for me.

The food was superb, the red wine was good, the staff very friendly and the plane immaculate. I'd fly Jet again thats for sure.

I'm now here in Dhaka. I'm on the 11th floor of a very nice hotel. Here's the view from my bedroom window.

I've stayed in this hotel before, its very posh. Huge baths, big "heavenly showers" as they describe them...

Huge bed. Good food. Quiet. Close to my customer.

On arrival my credit card wouldn't accept on the check in desk. Minor panic - they have let me stay anyway, assuming I'll sort it out. Then just as I was running a bath there was a big "POP" and all the lights went out. I was plunged into darkness. I called reception. One of the bulbs had blown and tripped out the entire room. Fixed within minutes.

I've had supper with Farhan, done a quick demo to him and now I'm off to Befordshire, for a fine trip into the land of nod.

Testing in the airport

2008-10-11T19:11:00.001+01:00

I've never done this before, actually acceptance testing in the airport before getting on a plane.

I have broad grin on my face as I type this. When I left home, there were a few loose ends hanging about on the development work from the past few weeks, and I was nervous. On the way here my colleague Tim phoned me, we laughed, swore and cheered! Everything done and working. I've just tried a good chunk of it myself and it does indeed seem to work. I have to board a plane in a minute, but I can do it now, knowing I've enough bits and bytes in my laptop to make next week a joy rather than a nightmare.

I'll sleep well on that plane.

Thank you all of you who worked so hard to make this real. And thanks Abi for having faith in us getting to goal before the deadline.

The fruits of hard labour result in global travel...

2008-10-11T13:17:00.003+01:00

After several very tough weeks of superb work by my development team (in particular Simon C who stayed up several times until 3am and beyond working in this past week) the product is finally ready. I'm heading off to Bangladesh to train the first users and share with the suppliers of one of the worlds biggest retailers how to provide traceability on-line so the retailer can find out where the cotton they sell comes from. This is the start of a big change I feel. Thanks so much to the wonderful team we have, we are about to make a difference.

Later today I fly to Delhi in India, and from there to Dhaka in Bangladesh. I spend a few days there, then fly back to London Heathrow, stay a few hours in a hotel (no time to get home) and then fly off again to Lisbon in Portugal, then from there to Porto to meet with the Organic Exchange team at their global annual conference.

By the end of next week I will be ready for a break.

As I type this the final touches are being added to the product, the timescales are much tighter than I'd have chosen, but once again it looks like we've delivered what we said we would. And I love that.

Next post will be from somewhere on my journey... not sure when.

Wonderful addresses

2008-10-08T01:45:00.003+01:00

We deal with some wonderful data at HF. Just now I've been loading up hundreds and hundreds more supplier accounts into our traceability system as we move further and deeper into more and more supply chains.

I just had to mention in passing some of the address type information I saw today. It was something like this...

Nazar Ahmeds Farm, Near the 2 Blue Gates, In the back of beyond, Somewhere remote, In a country ending in 'stan'.

Quite amazingly these are real addresses in this form. I came across something similar in India last year where an address was defined by how far it was from a river crossing or a post box or similar landmark. Makes our mandatory requirement for a postcode look a bit silly now! Glad we could drop it when it makes sense.

I love seeing this real world data being squeezed in and knowing that products on the shelves of some of the biggest retailers in the world originate in these tiny places. Hopefully soon, more of this data will be published and these farmers and primary producers can gain recognition for the wonderful job they do.

Like a different planet

2008-10-06T22:48:00.002+01:00

It's amazing here in England what difference a week can make to the weather...

Last week we were in a balmy Indian summer. This morning as I crossed the River Thames on my way to work the ice alert on my car warned me that it was 2C! That's pretty cold for the begining of October.

Another Manic Monday... but hey that's fun!

Love this acoustic version. Reminds me of seeing them in Milton Keynes Bowl when I was 20.

Bishopstone Harvest Happening

2008-10-04T22:41:00.010+01:00

Last night at 7pm Mabel and I headed off to Bishopstone Church to the Harvest Happening (Liz was already there to receive the puddings). An event put on every year for the past few years by Jane McCutchan and a band of helpers. This years theme was the history of Bishopstone. There's so much history here, the church dating back nearly a 1000 years and all sorts of stuff has happened here over the years. It was cold, wet and very windy. As we got to the church it was floodlit (well done Doug) and as we turned the corner we could smell the pig roasting.

For the first hour we queued for food (pig and pudding) and chatted. There were so many superb puddings to choose from, all delicious. There were over 100 people there I believe.

Then the main event started. I recorded most of it on my mobile phone and have placed it here for you to enjoy. The sound quality isn't brilliant, but should give you an idea of what it was like. Its an hour long - so if you want to listen make sure to leave plenty of time!

http://villages.co.uk/downloads/harvesthappening.mp3

Right click and "save as" to save the file on your own computer to play it.

Am I surprised?

2008-10-03T21:36:00.003+01:00

Earlier I posted a comment via twitter that I'd not seen a single positive comment from any of the Americans I follow via Twitter on Sarah Palin. In response I got this.

--
JoeLectual @swarrick see my earlier post...it's that twittots are SF welfare losers, and hence want Obama in.
about 14 hours ago from Election 2008 in reply to swarrick
--

I dug a bit further and discovered that this same person believes that the opinion of anyone outside the USA has no value.

--
all non US citizens pls stop from commenting on Palin... your opinion does not count.
about 14 hours ago from Election 2008
--

Ah well.

So apparently everyone I follow is an SF welfare loser, and how the rest of the world may interact with the top brass of the USA makes no difference in how people will vote.

I wonder how widespread that sort of view is? Interesting..

Bishopstone Harvest Happening reported in the Swindon Advertiser

2008-10-03T13:28:00.001+01:00

http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/3724488.Harvest_fun_in_Bishopstone/

Liz has been involved in organising this event (I believe the pudding competition). She was last year's winner of the covetted Wooden Spoon.

I'll photograph and record some of the goings on tomorrow night... at which we'll roast a pig at the church and hear some 16 stories going back a 1000 years of things that have happened here in this wonderful little village.

Everyone is welcome £8.50 a head, £3.50 for children.

A crazy week of work

2008-10-03T10:13:00.004+01:00

I went in to work on Monday expecting what we had internally billed as "Manic Monday". We're working on a big change to our systems at the moment which will I believe transform the way in which information flows in supply chains. Monday was the day all the new bits of code all the development team had been individually working on would be stitched together and for the first time we could see what we'd been planning for months.

That alone was enough to make it a manic day. However mid morning a phone call came in which transformed the next 3 days for me. It went like this "Hello Simon, is there a problem with email?". I investigated... and 30 mins later was in a state of shock as one of the disks on one of our oldest but still quite busy servers (used mainly by small businesses we know well and friends and family) decided to pack up and the course of events became set for me to get the data back on-line as quickly as possible. This machine was pretty dated not even being a RAIDED disk machine unlike every one of the other servers we use.

What's worse... is that as the disk was failing a full backup was in progress. So, given that we are paying for a professional backup solution I assumed the previous full backup would have to be used and we'd have to layer on the incrementals... However what the support engineer told me next nearly made me fall off my seat. The full backup overwrites the previous full backup! Yikes! That meant no backups either for this server. I swore quite a lot at that point.

Being a professional sort of person, who worries about this sort of thing I used to have my own set of backups in place before we started paying for a service. My backups were however only partial, and just of the data that mattered to my company, not of emails for friends and family that also use this server...

As the day unfurled my worst fears gradually subsided as the superb engineers at UKFast managed to somehow recover the disk, build a new machine and put the "fixed" disk in an external enclosure attached to the new machine so I could pull off everything needed. Phew... No data loss, everything was recoverable. I think we lost a few emails as the server started to fail - but thats all. Very lucky. I believe that changes will be put in place at our backup service provider to ensure such an edge case failure is catered for in future.

It took me the next few days to get everyone back online and everything back how it was before, even down to the same usernames and passwords. I worked through to 1am on Monday night, starting again at 7 the next day and kept going until it was all done. I need to learn some lessons from this, as do my service provider.

If anyone who was affected by this is reading, please accept my apologies once again.

The rest of the week has been spent catching up what I didn't do on Monday and Tuesday. And now I am exhausted having failed to catch up and have decided to take today off in lieu of the night I worked.

Its sunny outside and I intend to make the most of it, get a haircut and get and new tyre to fix the puncture I had yesterday on my Subabru (a nasty incident where I nearly lost control at over 60mph when the front tyre blew out).

More tales from the Ridgeway and gathering Conkers with the kids

2008-09-28T18:10:00.008+01:00

Once again another super Autumn day today. So soon afternoon breakfast (a couple of strong coffees) I headed off with Nelson to my favourite haunts on my bike. Varying the route again, we veered off towards Ashdown House across the fields crossing over the Lambourn road and up the hill into the woods to the south of the Ridgeway. I've never been this way before, so it was all new.

I rode and Nelson ran ahead of me for a couple of miles down new green lanes we'd never tried before, running roughly parallel to the Ridgeway. Soon the lanes ran out and we had to turn left to take a track back towards the Ridgeway. A group of scouts passed by with tents and back packs. Must have been a great night to spend out here.

Another hundred yards or so and I came across this little haven.

It was a garden, with a mown lawn for a long since gone tiny house. The base and foundations of it still present.

Wow! What a place to live. I think this could be heaven on earth. Having thought about living up here yesterday, I couldn't believe it when I found this place. BUT why is the grass still cut like someone lives here? Very odd. Under a wooden cover I found what looked like a filled in well.

If only I knew who owned it. It would be a super place to pitch up for a few days in the summer and camp. Maybe I'll find out somehow. I GPS tagged the photos and will examine the map and see if I can figure out which farmer it belongs to.

Should post the "Blur - A country house video here"...

By the time I got home I was worn out!

Later though we headed out again, this time with the 2 little children in search of Conkers. Its been some years since Huw was interested in Conkering, so it was lovely to be out chucking sticks up trees to get them down for Mabel. Here's what we found...

Some whoppers - sure to win! My thanks to Polly Bee for suggestions on how to ensure victory! Vinegar... I recall thats what we did as kids too.

On the Ridgeway in the Fog

2008-09-27T17:44:00.000+01:00

Saturday started with a heavy misty heat hazy sort of fog. The water droplets were visible to the naked eye, and all the spiders webs were suddenly visible. Are they there all the time and we simply don't see them I started wondering?

Not the best pictures in the world, but some from the garden and some from the Ridgeway.

As I headed up the hill from Bishopstone on my bike the sun was just breaking through, and once I reached the top every now and then I could see that I was above the clouds. A lovely feeling.

Before long I'd reached Wayland's Smithy. I normally ride on by, but today decided to have a look. The first time I've been in there for over a year I'd say.

I took a few photos on my phone and headed on my way, until I reached the sight below. The fields were holding the mist and emerging from the distance were small stacks of straw. It reminded me of a time gone by. The same sight must have been seen for decades up here. I'd love to live up here somewhere in a little Romany Gypsy Wagon with a woodburner and solar panels to provide power for the internet!

On the way back I took a detour off to the left and over to the woods at Ashdown House, and back through the fields to the Ridgeway. I'm gussing that makes it about a 10 mile round trip.

I've Gone back to Windows XP from Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04

2008-09-25T18:02:00.004+01:00

After a good try to see if I can live without the M$ operating system I finally conceded defeat and have re-installed Windows XP on my laptop replacing the Hardy Heron Ubuntu 8.04 I'd been running.

I've not gone back to Windows due to any fault of Ubuntu. It really was great, but there are simply too many tools that I need to use that don't have a direct replacement in an Ubuntu environment. They must also remain compatible with the same tools my colleagues and customers using Windows rely on.

In short the applications that tripped me up were

- GoToMeeting
- Macromedia Captivate
- Internet Explorer 7.x
- EMS PostgreSQL SQL Manager

Sadly I was unable to find any direct replacement for these.

So I am back in a clean Windows XP environment and it actually feels very good. Everything works, and is there just as I remember only it works better than I remember and seems more seamlessly integrated than the packages under Ubuntu...

Wonder how long I'll see it through rose tinted glasses?

Lunch time at the brewery

2008-09-23T21:36:00.005+01:00

At lunch time today I visited a brewery just a few miles from work (http://www.cotswoldbrewingcompany.co.uk/). One of the other residents of our office building Charlie - introduced me to Richard who runs the Cotswold Brewing Company. What lovely chaps they both are.

Anyway...me and a few friends are considering starting a microbrewery in Bishopstone, so this was a bit of a fact finding mission. Richard was so helpful even offering to teach us to brew in his brewery running our own brew through his vessels before we fork out any of our own money on equipment. Some discussions to be had I am sure.

While we were there we sampled a lovely wheat beer. Now I am not usually a fan of fizzy lager stuff, but this was good...!

Check them out. This is good stuff.

Autumn on the Ridgeway and in Bishopstone

2008-09-21T14:39:00.006+01:00

Every year I find the end of the summer a bit depressing. This year more so than normal as we had such a dreadfully wet one. More often than not though September throws a quick splash of warmth before the dull cold grey skies of winter set in. This year has been no exception. Its been been really lovely to be here over the past couple of weeks. With temperatures back in the 20Cs and and the sun out all day. I love it like that in the Autumn.

Yesterday I set off with Nelson on my near weekly cycle ride to the Uffington White Horse some 5 miles or so from Bishopstone along the Ridgeway. It was a bright warm and sunny Saturday morning and loads of other people were out and about on the path too. Sometimes I can cycle for hours and not see a soul but yesterday I must have passed 50 or more people in that short distance.

A new sign post has been put up since I last passed that way (or maybe I just didn't see it before...).

It has a lovely description of the area which I love more than any other place I've been in the world. So here it is. Seems that the human race has liked it for more than 6000 years! And I can see why.

I took a few shots of the path and the fields, and I think you can its Autumn from the light alone. I'm not sure what it is, but the sun seems to shine differently at this time of year, on a hot day its less bright, and more glowing all round.

Meanwhile back in the garden the fine weather is bringing on fruit and vegetables that had until now failed to deliver. I've loaded up a final picture of my ruined cabbage and broccoli, the caterpillars have finally abandoned their site of the great feast and gone thank goodness.

I don't hate all caterpillars equally. I love the Red Admiral ones, they eat nettles. At school when I was 10 or so, I did a project on the Red Admiral butterfly life cycle. Ever since then I've been very fond of this not so common butterfly.

Every Autumn they come to this bush in my garden to feed. They are so vividly black, red and white. One of the prettiest British butterflies I think.

Elsewhere in the garden are some lovely Gourds of various types just ripening off. They will make superb Autumn decorations. In 2 weeks time the Harvest Happening takes place at the church and maybe some of them will make it into the decorations there.

The apples have been particularly good this year. Look at these whoppers! They taste as good as they look too. I only wish I knew how to keep them for prolonged periods of time. Sadly many just fall to the ground and get wasted as we can't eat them quickly enough.

The Figs too are ripe. We've already had several and over the next few days will be cooking some with some Gorgonzola. Yum!

The last crop of Rhubarb was pulled today too. We'll be having it for pud tonight after a big leg of Pork. I'm salivating, just thinking of the crackling and then the "bub and custard".

While poking about down the end of the garden I came across this beautiful coral Fungus. It fell off a bit of wood as I was clearing some weeds...

We had planned on going on a Fungal Foray this afternoon. But Millie decided not to sleep this morning instead requesting her bed around 2pm which has scuppered the plans. Never mind, theres always next weekend...

The Great Bishopstone Onion Theft

2008-09-17T23:41:00.003+01:00

I find it hard to believe I missed this story. It's been front page news on the local newspaper and I didn't hear about it until tonight until our Morris Side had it's weekly practice (beer drinking) session.

http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/3667365.Kids_teary_eyed_at_onion_theft/

Its an amazing story and just shows what low lifes visit our lovely little community.

There is an allotment on the island in the middle of our village pond where the school children grow vegetables. I even showed our American intern Ashley down there on Saturday morning. Sometime in the days running up to the annual veg and flower show someone stole the onions that the children were going to enter.

I quote from the article above...

" CHILDREN were close to tears after their prized onions for the village show were pinched from the school allotment.

The Bishopstone Primary School youngsters, who harvested the vegetables themselves, have made posters appealing for information about the onion theft.

Ten-year-old Ryan Sutton said: “The thief should own up before he eats them.”

The onions had been grown especially for tomorrow’s garden show in the village.

About 30 onions and a dozen shallots were left on the bed to dry out when they were swiped.

Headteacher Sue Walton said: “We are flabbergasted that anyone should do this. We have always left the allotment open as we have always been able to trust people. The children were really upset.”

Even though the theft took place 10 days ago, no leads have sprouted regarding the onions’ whereabouts.

Gardener Adrian Dent, known to schoolchildren as Top Turnip, said: “There have been no rumours yet and all is quiet in the local pub.

“It was a wonderful crop and the children would have won a prize at the show.

“I think it was an inside job as whoever did this knows their onions.

“We should catch the culprit out, as the children have done some good posters.”

Some posters show weeping onions, while another displays an adventurous vegetable heading into the distance with a rucksack on its back.

Sue said: “We are going to put the posters up around the village and hope someone will own up.”

The children hope their efforts will eventually peel back the layers of the crime.

Nine-year-old Molly Barratt, said: “The people who did it should give them back because if they enter them into the show, we will find out.”

Fellow pupil Charlotte Cunnington, 10, said: “We worked really hard to make the onions and then someone took them without permission.”

Sue said: “The children's parents were indignant and all said they couldn’t believe it.

The produce is for the children in school and anything excess is sold to raise money for the allotment.”

They school hopes to enter some of their other produce into the Bishopstone Gardening Society show instead, which is due to take place at 3pm tomorrow. "

When you're 16

2008-09-14T13:09:00.003+01:00

I remember being 16, hard as that might seem for some of the family to recognise!

Martha was 16 this week and chose this weekend to celebrate with her friends. Earlier in the week we'd had a family meal of a takeaway curry which seems to be the food of choice for the kids birthdays at the moment. I heartily approve of course...

Anyway, Saturday night was Martha's night and she'd chosen to have a tent party in a farmers field a hundred yards or so out of the village. I didn't really think it was a good idea, based on my experience of a tent party when I was 18... but Liz insisted it would be fine and she'd handle any problems that arose.

I took the Subaru across the fields to get their camping gear there and I left a bunch of happy teenagers putting up tents on a fine autumn evening.

Apparently around 15 or so boys and girls were expected and we'd said we'd just pop by every now and then to see if they were OK. Liz did, I didn't! The last check she made was at 2am by phone to tell them to be quiet as she could hear them from our house.

This morning at around 11am I took Nelson out across the fields and found them all lying around feeling rough after a late night and rather more alcohol than I suspect they should have had. Goodness knows how they got it, as we didn't provide any and I'd be horrified if the parents provided it. Nevertheless it didn't meet my worse expectations and it would appear the night passed without serious incident.

Well Done Martha. Thank you for being sensible (ish!)... and all of your friends for tidying up so well.

Sorry folks of Bishopstone! Hopefully they didn't keep you awake.

An organic day

2008-09-13T20:41:00.000+01:00

Living in Bishopstone its hard to be unaware of the organic trade with Helen Browning Organics being based in the village and her farm Eastbrook occupying much of the surrounding land. Friends work on the farm and for the Soil Association providing auditing services. At times the whole world around me seems to be orientated around huge amounts of activity in the Organic farming sector. At work some of the biggest customers we have are retailers and brands using Organic Cotton so its in my life each and every day. Today was no exception.

At work we have an intern with us at the moment from Colorado who has been heavily involved in organics for some time. Helen Browning held one of her farm open days today and it seemed like a good plan to ask Ashley to come along for the day and look round. Also on today is the annual village Flower Show which I normally submit some of my fruit and veg to. However my garden didn't deliver anything worthy.

Elsewhere nearby was the Coleshill Organic Food Festival; another must visit event. So the day ahead was packed with plans.

We kicked off with some of my home made organic vegetable soup, headed for the Royal Oak pub and farm shop where we picked up some free organic sausages and then to the Cues Farm Stables where we jumped on the hay bales in the back of a livestock trailer to head for the fields and a close encounter with organic pigs. We squelched through the mud in glorious autumn sunshine and watched piglets chasing each other through grass and huge muddy puddles.

We took the first tractor back and whizzed off by car to Coleshil for the superb food festival.

The food festival is set in the beautiful grounds of an old house with stables and barns and dovecotes.

I bumped in to some friends, and someone who learned cheese making from Liz a long time ago. Sampled beers, ciders, perrys, cheeses, honeys, chutneys and ice cream! I purchased some local perry, and a fine presentation set of local real ale. I also managed to get Liz some vintage balsamic vinegar (not a cheap purchase!).

Ashley met someone who lives in a sort of tee pee on site and we saw an old romany gypsy wagon with a solar panel and wood burning stove.

It looked lived in, and I realised I'd actually quite fancy living like that too. It would be nice to have so little that you could live in such a simple manner.

I had a good chat with the people that run Coleshill Organics about organic cotton and told them a little about what I do. Must follow that up... as I am sure there are interesting stories to tell there.

Lovely day out.

Eating your own dog food...

2008-09-08T23:34:00.003+01:00

I've spent the entire evening picking through tons and tons of data instead of making jam. Hopefully the berries I picked which are soaking under water will be OK until tomorrow in the fridge...

One particular project I am working on at the moment requires country of origin data be present for all batches of a product. It's been fascinating digging through the data and checking out which batches contain product from which countries.

Doing so though makes me think there must be a simpler way to find the data. The problem is the declaration could be made at any of 'n' levels deep in a supply chain. The closer to source it is made, the more authentic the data...

It's given me some ideas tho..

HF in Fortune Magazine

2008-09-07T23:15:00.004+01:00

My company got a mention in Fortune magazine a few days ago. Hits are up on our website with people searching by company name and location rather than a direct link - so people do read these mags after all!

http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/03/news/companies/gunther_gold.fortune/index.htm

We're on the second page of the article near the end.

I quote from the above:

"It is here that Warren Buffett makes a cameo appearance in our story. The Richline Group, a unit of Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, manufactures gold jewelry for Wal-Mart and other retailers. After consulting with Buffett, Dave Meleski, the president of a Richline division called Aurafin, tried to figure out how to track Wal-Mart's gold from the mines and refineries to Richline's factories in Providence, the Dominican Republic, and Bolivia, and from there to a Florida distribution center and Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores. "My first reaction, like most everybody in the jewelry industry, was that the hurdles were bigger than we can deal with," Meleski says. "Who the heck knows how the jewelry can be traced?" He found the answer in a small startup company called Historic Futures in Gloucestershire, England, that specializes in supply-chain traceability. Historic Futures built a web-based system to track serial numbers etched on bullion that enables buyers of "Love, Earth" jewelry to track the history of their gold bracelet or necklace (at loveearthinfo.com) to its origins."

Whilst we get a mention - the reporting of what we actually did isn't very accurate! Clearly the numbers on a gold bar are no longer there once the bar has become jewellery! There was quite a bit more to the job than that.

Blackberries, Crab Apples, Stinging Nettles, Doc Leaves and a photo from the past

2008-09-07T20:26:00.008+01:00

Mabel, Millie and I went off down the "Green Lane" again today. It was very soggy under feet. Mabel had her new red wellies with hearts on. Millie her new ones with cats on and me, my old cheapo green ones that have been unused for months and gone all hard. Inside I discovered a snail and several spider "shells" as I checked them before fitting.

We were on the trail of Blackberries and Crab Apples and I know just the perfect spot for these. Next weekend is the Bishopstone Flowershow, and my veg is poor this year, so I have to at least submit a decent jam. I never do well with Jam. Liz often wins something with her cakes, and I usually get something for my figs. We'll see this year. Maybe nothing.

Mabel, Millie and I had a lovely time picking (and sampling). Once out of her push chair Millie soon figured out what you have to do. She loves Blackberries (and red ones, and squashy ones and even ones with stalks on). I've never seen a 1 year old blackberrying before. I laughed and laughed. Poor little soul. I recently picked up a link from another local blog which I have very much enjoyed reading at http://pollybathe.blogspot.com/. I think the author will identify with this! Thanks Polly.

On the way back home Mabel was stung by a nettle. And for those city folks who don't know... Nature is kind enough to provide on the spot remedies for these little things. I'm glad my kids will grow up knowing this stuff.

Simply crush some Doc leaves (Burdock) and squeeze the juice onto the rash left by the nettles. In no time at all, all was fixed and forgotten.

Here the rash, the nettles and the Docs.

Later this evening as I sat to write this post an email came in from some old friends who I've seen once since college days (we really must fix that Rob and Nicky!) with this picture attached of me.

I have no recollection of it being taken or why I was dressed up! I suspect some of you will laugh. I do know that it was taken in the back room of my student house (which was not that unlike the house that the Young Ones lived in). In fact we were a bit like them, probably a bit worse. I recall trying to catch a mouse by burning newspaper under the cupboards in the kitchen while a fellow resident stood by with a golf club!).

My Dad's birthday party

2008-09-06T16:57:00.006+01:00

A few weeks ago my Dad was 84. The first chance we had to get together to celebrate was last weekend. I went with Mabel and Millie to Mum and Dad's for the do.. Mabel had already been there a few days and my sister Lucy arrived on Friday to help with the cooking.

Sunday morning was frantic, too many chefs in the kitchen, too much to do and everyone running around. Before long my Dad's infamous Champagne cocktail was being made (a couple of sugar cubes, a few drops of Angostura(sp?) Bitters, a capful of Brandy, a squirt of Cointreau filled up with Champagne).

Millie was a hit with Mum and Dad's friends and Mabel was the perfect little lady.

Towards the end of the party my Dad starting talking about his distant relation, an Italian called Giorgio Manley. His portrait is the first thing one sees when entering the hall. As a consequence some of his friends started calling him Eduardo instead of Edward (Ted) at the end!

Here he is showing off his Aplini Mountain hat presented to him by some Italian army mountaineers he trained years ago on Monte Bianco. Something I remember well as I traveled in the back of their army truck with them as an 8 year old.

Later on I took Nelson across the fields and came across this lovely old piece of machinery. It has Dyson on the cast brass bearing caps. Anyone know the origins? I suspect it was last used as part of a farm trailer, but probably was part of a truck once.

Looking for Grails/Java developer

2008-09-03T14:10:00.001+01:00

Hello All ! Anyone know any good Grails/Java developers?

Please tell them we are looking for one!

For more details please see here: http://grailsjobs.com/view-job/44

Cycling to work

2008-08-28T21:18:00.011+01:00

On Wednesday I found myself without any motorised transport to get myself to work, so after a lot of thought I decided to cycle.

Its about 26 miles to work. A long way, lots of hills (up and down) and bumpy country lanes.

I managed to go 22 miles or so to the bottom of the hill by the Fox Inn in the Barringtons before accepting the offer of a lift up the hill from my colleague Paul. After 2hrs and 45mins I was ready for it!

Here's part of the route I took, recorded on my Nokia N95 using the SportsTracker facility. I created a little Google Maps application which I've loaded here to show where I went. You can zoom in and see the roads in quite some detail. It was a lovely ride.

If you can't see it embedded here - the page is at http://villages.co.uk/maps/cycletowork.html. The KML can also be downloaded and viewed in Google Earth from here http://villages.co.uk/downloads/W20080827063539.kml, you'll need to right click - "Save as" I suspect and then load it from local file.

I then worked all day and cycled about 8 miles towards home before Liz picked me up in the car. My bum is not used to the hard seat! I don't feel any worse for having done it, and if summer were just coming I think I'd try and do it once a week or so...

Wheat in the fields and specials at the Uffington White Horse Show

2008-08-25T21:21:00.006+01:00

I was up on the Ridgeway on my bike with Nelson at 8.30am this morning. We cycled out close to the Wayland's Smithy. The first warm, fine morning for sometime. I realised when I was up there that it has been at least a month or more since I was last there. My last ride was when the wheat was just turning gold which I reckon must have been early July. I recall thinking that the next time I cycled there the harvest would be in when I got back from my holidays.

Today the wheat was still in the fields. Much of it looking worse for the wet weather with some of the ears turning black. I don't recall seeing it in the fields this late before, but my memory is short. Here is a photo to remind me for forthcoming years. It is GPS tagged too - so I'll know exactly where I took it (from the water trough at the top of the hill from Idstone looking out towards Swindon!).

Later in the day I went with Doug over to the White Horse Show at Uffington where he was judging the stinky engine display again. Not many engines there this year, the bad weather I guess must have put many people off. The ground was very soft under foot.

On the car show side, there were however a good few decent and unusual vehicles to see. Over the past couple of years I've become increasingly interested in British specials. These pre date the American trend for building Hot Rods and tend to be lightweight body shells built on tuned chassis from medium sized performance saloons, or really lightweight stuff like tuned Austin Seven's with tiny alloy bodies.

Here's just the sort of thing I mean. An Austin Seven special. It looked like the original article, some 70 years old I'd guess. SUPERB. I could just imagine whizzing along in that with a flying helmet and goggles!

Is this a special? Not sure. I didn't know Vauxhall made such a car. Either way its very very cool. The rear end had a dickey seat with its own screen. Note the nautical style air intakes on either side of the bonnet near the screen.

For me this car just made my day. A 1935 Riley special. Built on a Riley 1.5 Twin Cam chassis shortened and narrowed and fitted with an all alloy body. Worth around £15K I guess. Currently fitted with a Rover 2litre Twin Cam while the 1.5 is rebuilt with all the performance bits possible. I spoke with the owner who intends to spend time with it on the track in the coming years. Lovely.

Wow... an easy to implement helpdesk/support ticketing system

2008-08-24T17:27:00.003+01:00

In the next couple of weeks I am taking over the lead role in supporting our customers around the world. Looking into what we do now made me realise we didn't have a good way of tracking how many requests individual companies had made. It felt like things could fall between gaps in human processes and I felt like I couldn't fill the gap left by my superb colleague Susannah.

While looking for something else I stumbled upon a Helpdesk system called Zendesk (http://zendesk.com). It fits very well with other Web2.0 tools we use such as Highrise (http://www.highrisehq.com) which we use for CRM and Basecamp (http://www.basecamphq.com) which we use for Project Management and JIRA (http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira) our bug and development tracking system.

I had it up and running in under a day. Fingers crossed it will make it easier for me over the coming weeks.

Devasted by Cabbage White Caterpillars

2008-08-24T16:46:00.006+01:00

Some of my best garden vegetables have been destroyed by the Cabbage White (large and small) Butterfly caterpillars. I knew I had some problems with them, but in the course of a week they have totally stripped the Purple Sprouting Broccoli plants bare, eaten every single Nasturtium leaf and started having a go at my Purple Cabbage. I think I may have caught the worst of the infestation on the purple cabbage which we have been so looking forward to eating. And with luck the leaves on the purple sprouting broccoli will grow again before spring when it sprouts...

I've not found a good way to get rid of them other than manually. I don't want to spray poison on them, as they are good food for some birds, the toads and frogs in the garden and I'd rather control them in a more natural manner.

Today I was heartbroken as I discovered they've eaten holes into the hearts of some of the purple cabbages which were looking so good. I decided to take drastic action. Using an old spray container which used to contain bathroom descaler I mixed a potion of tea tree oil and washing up liquid. I then liberally sprayed this over the plants and caterpillars. Within minutes they were keen to get off the plants and drop to the ground. If they could run for cover they would have done! Bloody animals...

I gave them 15 minutes or so to enjoy their bath and then got the garden hose out, blasting them from the plants. Using this technique I reckon I've removed 95% of them. But they keep crawling back from the ground. On and off this afternoon I've been out checking and removing any that I see by hand, chucking them over a neighbours fence.. Sorry Charlie, but I know you don't have anything except weed in your garden...

Over the next few days I will keep up the vigil and hope I've done enough, otherwise no Broccoli or Cabbage for us.

Here are a couple of pictures I took earlier this month before the beasties set in. You can clearly see some of the eggs and some young caterpillars.

And now today! Look at the leaves. Just skeletons.

Curry for 15

2008-08-20T23:30:00.002+01:00

On Wednesday evening I provided a meal for all my HF colleagues. I'd been cooking every evening till around midnight for 4 days to put together enough dishes for everyone.

With Muslims, Hindus, Christians, vegetarians and those who eat anything in the crowd it was quite a challenge. The best thing for me was everyone seemed to find something they enjoyed and at least 3 people told me it was the best curry that they had ever eaten.

Here's what I cooked:

Halal Beef in a rich, dark Fennel flavoured sauce
Tilapia (fish) in a yoghurt, coconut and mustard sauce
Avial (a mixed vegetable curry in a yoghurt sauce)
Dry potatoes (cooked with 2 different types of cumin seeds, mustard seeds and curry leaves)
Okra (actually Martha and Natalie cooked this - thanks girls!)
Runner bean and gourd (from my garden ingredients - superb one of the best dishes)
Cheesey peas (Paneer cooked with tomatoes, petit pois and soybeans)
Mushrooms (cooked with coriander, onions and tomatoes)
Popadoms and pickles
Chappatis
Naan breads
Saffron rice

An amazing array of flavours and totally yum.

A few pictures of us all follow. 2 nearly the same to get everyone in.

From left to right: Seema, Farhan, Dave B, Paul, me, Tim, Suse, Simon C, Dave C, Pranathi

Missing due to other commitments: Heidi, Carmen, Miles, Liz (taking the photo!), my older kids

After the meal we took a tour of "The City" and "Dingle" in Bishopstone to walk it all off.

This is the first time I've cooked a curry for Indians and Pakistanis and they seemed to enjoy it all! I was pretty nervous serving them their own regional cuisine, but needn't have worried.

You know you're global when...

2008-08-18T15:08:00.003+01:00

Your company appears listed on an Iranian government website...

HF Summer BBQ

2008-08-17T19:05:00.001+01:00

On Sunday 17th August HF held its annual BBQ for staff at the HF HQ. Here's a few pics. Not had a chance to write much about it yet...

We all had a lovely time, everyone brought their families and the weather stayed fine (almost all day).

Bye, bye Unwin

2008-08-16T22:07:00.005+01:00

After several years of ownership and the last 2 sat on my drive unused I've finally sold my 1958 Austin A35. It hasn't gone far, only over the road to a friend. A few weeks ago he knocked on my door and asked me if I was interested in selling him.

I'd been intending to do him up and fit a more modern 1275 A+ engine, plus MG Midget gearbox. I've already switched the front brakes over to discs, they just need the calipers bolting on and plumbing in. Ah well, I really don't have time to finish him and I really do need the money. So all in all a good solution I think

Here he is sitting on the drive at his new home.

It must be a year or so since I last started his engine and after several minutes of turning it over and over he eventually started. Off I drove on the handbrake only a couple of hundred yards to my friends drive. I felt quite sad saying good bye. I must have done 30 to 40,000 miles in him. These pictures make him look a lot better than he really is.

This may be a more realistic one!

Wind, Wheat and Windmills!

2008-08-16T03:58:00.001+01:00

Great footage of the local wind farm from a fellow enthusiast! Glad to know there are other nutters like me who love wind turbines.

A walk with the young ones

2008-08-14T21:54:00.000+01:00

I've taken a couple of days holiday to spend some time with the children. The weather this summer has been very poor apart from a week or so when we went away. So it was great yesterday to have a fine day and a chance to go off with the 2 little ones and Nelson.

In the morning Mabel had an opportunity to go and help one of our neighbours with her horse. Mabel has recently decided she loves horses and everyday asks me if we can buy one. I somehow manage to avoid saying "no" outright and she carries on dreaming...

On our walk she told me about her morning experience and came out with a wonderfully descriptive expression about how happy it had made her. "Daddy, I was so happy this morning it felt like my heart was smiling." Wow. That knocked me over.

We walked on down my favourite local track (The Drove Road or Green Lane as we know it) noting the fruits that were nearly ready, avoiding a dead rat, squashing dock leaves to fix a sting from nettles, picking the odd stray ripe blackberr y that was ahead of the crowd until we reached a big field full of flowering clover. I dropped the back pack with Millie in to the ground, extracted her from the device and the girls ran full on into the field and threw themselves spontaneously into the flowers. A lovely sight to see.We sat in it and made Clover chains (like Daisy chains but with Clover...)

We sat and played for a while and enjoyed the moments. All this is free and was one of the best times I've had in ages. On the way back we stopped off at the newly created woods and spotted loads of ladybirds (Millie was fascinated by them) and a baby frog or toad hopped by. A lovely afternoon.

A day in London

2008-08-13T20:34:00.000+01:00

I rose at 5.30am on Wednesday to go to London. Any later and it becomes hard to get a parking space at the railway station. Madness - people commute from Swindon and further to London every single day. I'm so glad I live and work in the country.

I had a couple of meetings to attend, one with some investors and one with an old colleague (and customer) from eZoka days.

I got to London before 8am which was great. No rushing around and it was a warm morning. My first meeting wasn't until 10.30am so I took it easy getting to near where it was and finding a Starbucks for that first good caffeine hit of the day. The meeting was a few mins walk from Vauxhall so I took the tube and found a Starbucks right outside. Ordered by triple shot Mocha and sat out on the pavement watching the world go by. Across the road was the MI6 building and the river Thames. After my coffee I wandered across the road and had a closer look at the spy HQ. I imagine that lots of people must work there as its a bug building. But in the whole time I was there I only saw a handful of people go in the gates. Very odd. Perhaps they teleport in...?

I walked around the front of the building that over looks the Thames and watched the boats go by. A few barges and tugs pulling waste, some water taxis and a water Police boat. It was very quiet. A security guard in an unmarked flak jacket with an earpiece appeared from no where and walked past me slowly as I lent on the guard rail at the edge of the Thames... I imagined all sorts of things, and noted that there were security cameras everywhere I looked!

My phone rang and I snapped back to the real world, Tim had arrived and was looking for me at Starbucks where I'd text'd him to tell him I was waiting. We met up and walked to the first meeting with our investors. A good one.

Later on after lunch I headed north again and met up with Evelyne who runs Pretty Pregnant (http://www.prettypregnant.co.uk) a chain (how many needed for a chain?) of shops for pregnant ladies. I used to work with her years ago at eZoka and have kept in touch as she and her husband have built up their business. We provide their web hosting for them. Our hosting business has a few really big users and they are suffering from the traffic that the bigger guys get slowing their site down. So we discussed the way forward. Its good to see them doing well.

After that I headed back to Paddington and home. To get there I used the newly installed Google Maps feature on my Nokia N95. First time I'd done this and it was brilliant. I opened it up and within seconds it told me where I was, I typed in where I wanted to walk to and it told me the route and showed me the map. Keeping it open all the way I could see my progress. I knew I wasn't far from Paddington, but had no idea which direction it was, and couldn't have walked it without this device. The wonders of technology.

Love Earth really is in store

2008-08-08T21:31:00.005+01:00

A few weeks ago I posted about some work we've been doing with Wal*Mart on traceable jewellery for their Love Earth brand. Since then I've had a couple of people go into Wal*Mart stores in the USA looking for the displays to no avail. I was surprised as I had thought this had rolled out into every Wal*Mart.

Today however a friend who lives in Florida (Thanks Heide!) sent me a picture of the display in her local Wal*Mart. Hooray! Here it is.

Just to remind everyone, this is as far as we are aware is the world's first 100% traceable jewellery (jewelry for the Americans amongst the readers) which can be traced back to the mines that the gold and silver came from through all the manufacturing processes. We worked with the entire supply chain to train them to use our systems (String) and get the data in to make this possible. A big moment for us at Historic Futures when it was was done.

To find out more visit http://www.loveearthinfo.com and use the code "SAMPLE".

Problems with my Alpha Cooker cutting out

2008-08-06T13:10:00.008+01:00

We have a wonderful device called an Alpha in our kitchen. At least it is wonderful in the winter. In the summer I hate it. It provides us with hot water, central heating and cooking facilities all in the form of an old fashioned looking range type cooker. Its powered by oil and is horribly inefficient I am sure.

In the winter we leave the cooker on low all the time and the huge cast iron device radiates warmth throughout the kitchen, so much so that we don't need any other heating in there.

Inside it is all high tech modern burners from Italy, electronics and so on. Its simple, and easy to maintain. All the bits are available to fix it, and several times I've done simple maintenance jobs. I did one of these last night and felt it worth writing about as it is a simple fix and could save you a couple of hundred quid for a service engineer to do the job.

Symptoms of this problem were as follows.. On starting the oven up, all the usual pump sounds happen, but the run light never comes on and it goes into "Lockout" - i.e. the red light comes on and the reset button is active. No amount of pressing reset has any effect...

Last time this happened I fiddled around and took things apart as I couldn't understand if it was a problem with oil not getting through, oil not igniting or something else. During this process I removed the burner and discovered a piece of metal debris lying across the place the igniter lights the oil. Assuming this had fallen down the chimney onto the burner, I removed it and refitted it and everything worked again. The same thing happened again last night.

So here are a some photos that show what I did and what I found (same as last time a metal bracket of some sort). I further investigated and discovered the source of these metal brackets!

This is the view of the burners through the inspection panel.

You need to removed the 2 nuts holding the burner to the "flame box" (no idea if that is the right term!) This is the burner for the oven and hot plate.

The burner drops down from the hole in the flame box and can be tilted to see inside.

Here is what I saw! A metal bracket, exactly the same as the last time. Thinking this odd, I investigated further taking a photo up into the flame box...

In the flame box I can see a bunch of asbestos or similar tiles held in place by the self same brackets. For some reason, one by one these brackets are falling off.

We'll contact Alpha to see what can be done to stop these brackets from falling off and replace them.

Some pictures from our holiday on Herm

2008-08-03T07:08:00.004+01:00

Liz on the final day. She hates this photo, but I think she looks fabulous in it. OK, she's wearing my old pink t-shirt and we'd run out of clean clothes...

Here's the little cottage we rent each year.

Millie just loved the streams than ran down to the sea on Shell Beach.

Mabel mastered snorkling for the first time. Now she can swim without arm bands she was well away.

Milli covered in sand after rolling down sand dunes with Mabel.

It really is that beautiful on Herm.

On one evening there was line dancing in the Mermaid Tavern. Millie picked it up right away!

Holidays on Herm Island

2008-07-25T11:12:00.003+01:00

Its our 4th day here now. It seems to rush by so fast even though the whole of every day is spent doing very little. We creep out of bed when Millie wakes, usually Liz or I then bring her down for a little breakfast, then Mabel wakes about 30 mins later, followed by Huw at 8am ish and Martha no earlier than 10am!

We've been very lucky with the weather. Its been superb and once again today there are clear blue skies, even though the forecast said rain!

Each day we've been on the beach, swimming in the ice cold sea and making sand castles and searching for crabs.

Millie just loves the little streams of water than run down from the beach into the sea. I've got some lovely photos to post once I get a decent connection to the intertubes.

For anyone interested Herm Island has a web site at http://www.herm-island.com and you may see us on Web Cam 1 - we will write our names on the sand one day!

BUMMS in learning

2008-07-20T21:15:00.002+01:00

Over the weeks we learned to Morris dance I kept a few videos...

Here they are, starting with Neil learning on our very first session.

Sorry Sue! For the public record.

A few lessons on and we're getting there.

And finally we were ready.

Bishopstone Barn Yard Bonanza and Bishy Union of Morris Men

2008-07-20T10:00:00.011+01:00

For the past few years the the wonderful Bishopstone CofE Primary School in the village has laid on a fund raising event sometime during the summer. I am always completed astounded just how wonderful these are. Something crazy and fun every time. This year was no exception.

Some months ago, my wife came home after a FOBS (friends of Bishopstone school) meeting and told me I was to be a Morris Dancer for the event. Initially I didn't want to do it, but after the first practice with 7 other Dads I was convinced it would be fun.

Over the past few weeks we've been practicing once a week (sometimes twice) and only on 2 occasions did we actually manage to all meet together. So it's quite remarkable that it worked out at all. Our teacher, Sue Tremlin was superb. After each session we ended up in the pub and we've become well known through the village.

Adrian put on a top hat and tails and borrowed one of my waistcoats and collected over £140 in his hat just wandering around the folks watching us. Thank you everyone for donating so well.

Yesterday both The True Heart and The Royal Oak pubs provided complimentary free beer to us and a great time was had by all. I love the top picture - read the writing above the bar. One can barter for Ale and food by bringing in good local produce... Nice one!

We aquired a name - The Bishopstone Union of Morris Men. BUMM. And here we are...

Simon and Richard, and Tom who so far has refused to join us... but he did buy a round of drinks! Thanks Tom.

Real Ale and hats with flowers on. Thats what its all about!

Back we went to the Royal Oak for some excellent beer and a sing song.

Paul getting ready to strut.

Guess how many ballons in the tractor? Not sure who won, I guess 42 but was probably way out.

Liz made 18 loaves of bread and some superb tasty butter for potatoes, pasta, fish etc. Sold out of all the bread in minutes.

It helps to have on hand an award winning Squezzy Box Thingy champion in the crew...

We taught the locals how to do it too...

If you have more photos or video of the day, pls let me have a copy!

Alice Cooper - School's out 1972

2008-07-18T16:09:00.001+01:00

Bet this will be played a few times today!

Traceable Jewellery

2008-07-15T21:20:00.004+01:00

For the past few months at work, we've been working on a big project with Wal-Mart and their suppliers which went public today. I am very pleased with the results which can be found at http://www.loveearthinfo.com.

You can enter the code SMPM88 to see the route an item of jewellery took from "mine to market".

A quick Google for Wal-Mart Traceable Jewelery will show news of this has been widely spread. Most of the PR doesn't mention the technology that makes it possible. But that's how it should be, this is about the products and the companies that made them...

I'd particularly like to say a big public "Thank you" to Simon (Java, Jetty, Grails) Crossley who worked so hard to get the Stringviewer to the superb position it is in today, supported fantastically by Dave (CSS, XHTML, visual wizard) Boon to get the thing looking just right. I'd also like to thank all those who helped trawl through the thousands of lines of complex spreadsheets to get everything ready in such a short time. We will automate this, I promise...!

Progress in the veg plot

2008-07-05T11:15:00.006+01:00

I took the day off work on Friday and did some long over due gardening, including tending to the vegetables.

The runner beans are at the tops of the poles, well in flower (white, pink and red varieties this year) and I've put some extra poles up for them to run along. Small beans are already starting to hang.

The first batch of french beans are nearly ready to pick. I love them lightly boiled, cooled and served with a salad.

The broad beans too are nearly ready. Later than previous years, but a different variety from that which I normally grow. These are red broad beans. I hope they are as delicious.

The underground fartichokes are 5ft high now, a bit bashed by the wind. Sadly the globe artichokes haven't done well and are still just a small thistle like plant no more than a foot tall. Maybe they will yet bolt and flower.

The red cabbage is getting leggy with no sign of cabbages developing, but I'm not familiar with how they grow so I watch with interest.

The purple sprouting broccoli is a jungle and looks like will produce a good harvest in the spring.

There are some lovely globe courgettes just getting big under huge orange flowers.

The rhubarb has given us many loads of delicious puddings, and we've had the first batch of gooseberries with many more loads to pick.

The 4 apple trees all have a heavy load on them and even the potted tomato plants look like they will do well. The fig tree is laden down with more fruit on it than I've ever seen before.

All the herbs are thriving. I hope to be able to pick and dry some for the winter.

A bumper crop all round by the looks of it. It all tastes so good fresh from the garden, and brings such a simple and lovely reward from a little hard work.

I've not used any pesticides, or herbicides this year and have inter planted flowers to draw in the bees and flies to pollinate. It seems to be working!

Swindon Music Infant Festival

2008-07-03T22:08:00.000+01:00

Liz and I went to watch Mabel perform in the Swindon Schools Infant Music festival on Thursday evening. Mabel has been practicing her songs for many weeks and I know them off by heart from bath time sing alongs!

The theme was World War II evacuation songs. So they all dressed up as war children being evacuated with names on big envelopes around their necks, head scarfs and so on. Not all the schools entered into the spirit quite so well as our little Bishopstone school. It was lovely to see the teachers dressed up too. Ours were in bolier suits and head scarfs.

It was a lovely evening marred by the stupid policy that Swindon seems to have adopted which prohibits photography and video at such events for "child protection". I fail to see how that has any material affect on child protection and all it has done is make me feel cross with the council that I cannot share the experience with the rest of the family who couldn't be there. I booed loudly, but probably not loudly enough when the announcement was made. It makes my blood boil.

May be biased here, but I think the Bishy parents were the most enthusiastic too. We were the first to stand up and dance in the rows as the songs came round and set off the best Mexican wave! A fun evening for all.

Ubuntu - a few days in

2008-07-03T14:03:00.003+01:00

3 days of no M$ now. Well almost..

As I mentioned I have a dependency on a couple of things which only seem to work on windoze namely IE7 and GoToMeeting. IE7 I'm not worried about as I will always need to ensure that the work I am responsible for is supported in all the major browsers, so its a good thing I still have access to it. However GoToMeeting is proving a bit harder to solve. I've not come across a Linux equivalent yet. I tried a couple and they were really rubbish.

So problems so far: very few to be honest.

The main issue I have had is getting SSH Tunneling to work. We use this technique to access services on remote machines that have only got the SSH port exposed through the firewalls. This is a very neat and secure means to configure machines. On windoze we use Putty but it doesn't work properly on Ubuntu as it fails to create the tunnels. The built in gSTM tool works very well, but doesn't "keep alive" and has no way to store passwords/key phrases. I'm using it for now, and hope that I can find something that will send "keep alives" as our network connection isn't always brilliant.

Other issues I've had were the display driver is not as good as it could be for my machine and doesn't support dual monitor use. It just clones the display rather than allowing me to spread the desktop across the 2 monitors. Not a big problem but a shame...

Battery management doesn't seem to be as good but there may be other options I've yet to explore.

Other than that everything else is as good if not better than Windoze and I have no regrets yet.

Being able to run a Windows VM is essential tho for me. I really am dependent upon it at the moment. However I now no longer use M$ Office and it's horribly bloaty software packages. That saves a lot of money and time. Now I use Google Docs where possible and for offline work Sun Open Office. Not yet explored whether Google Gears allows me off-line on Ubuntu...

Cold Turkey - no more M$

2008-07-01T15:50:00.002+01:00

I took the plunge today and zapped my laptop. I've had it about 18 months and the old M$ Windoze XP was starting to creak at the seams and slow to the point it was taking 5 mins to start and shutdown. Crazy.

So I've spent the morning backing up all my files that I need and decided to install Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04. It took less than 40 mins to be back up and working again on a new fast zippy operating system.

Sadly I have a couple of dependencies on M$ and have had to install a copy of VMWare Workstation and build up a virtual Windoze machine inside the Ubuntu build just to be able to run the few things that require M$ still.

So far the experience is a joy. We'll see what happens over the next few weeks as I go cold turkey on M$. The things I need still in Windoze are in the process of being converted to work cross-platform so it won't be long and I won't need M$ at all.

Comments on my blog

2008-07-01T06:25:00.006+01:00

To all the people who read my blog, I thank you all for all the comments you leave. I don't publish them all. But I do read them all. Some are from friends, some from people I have no chance of ever knowing and complete strangers. Several have been from long lost friends and many have been constructive criticism. I enjoy all of them.

Just lately though I have been getting lots and lots of spam comments which makes publishing and moderating tricky. Especially when I am away from home. I get the notification of a comment via email on my mobile phone, and can then publish the comment directly from there. But when I have 10s or more comments from spammers it become hard to do via the phone. So I apologise if it sometime takes time to publish or review a comment.

Just now I published a new item and within seconds over 10 new comments came in. All of them complete rubbish. Sorting the good from the bad isn't always easy. Grrr!

Sometimes I publish directly via a text message from my phone too - so if the contnt is a bit squiffy that could be why!

Strawberries and Steam 2008

2008-06-29T20:00:00.004+01:00

Every year I look forward to this event which I think is a fine example of Englishness. Fred Dibnah would be very proud.

Near to us between Wanborough and Swindon is a Strawberry Farm. Here once a year some of the fields are turned over to a bunch of Steam Engine, Stationary Engine, Classic Car and Bike enthusiasts along with supporting side shows of old fair ground machinery and a splatter of Cockerels, Hens, Ducks and other farm yard animals. It is a very low key event, so laid back it's almost horizontal. There's an obligatory beer tent selling warm real ale, a tent selling honey, a couple of ice cream vans, a demo of an old engine driving a saw to cut logs, smash rocks etc. Usually a brass band or 2 and a bunch of big fat blokes in oily old boiler suits tending their beloved machines. I love it.

Last year due to the horrendous weather we had the fields were under water and the event had to be called off so everyone seemed to have made double effort to be there this year. There were more steam engines than I ever recall seeing before.

I took over 50 photos and videos as I wandered around, so here is just a tiny selection to give a flavour of the event. I took Mabel and Millie with me in my old 1962 Rover and we had a splendid time. Millie seemed fascinated by the old steam engines, their whistles and puff puff, chuff chuff noises.

Mabel riding on an old fair ground merry go round.

I loved this little engine above. It was almost streamlined. I wish I knew more about Steam Engines. If I am ever rich, I will find time and buy one and just potter around with it. Perhaps go to the shops on a sunny afternoon, just for a gas.

Many of the engines towed little day vans behind them. These are like old fashioned caravans with everything you need. A bed, a small wood stove and room for some beer.

The smoke stack was so high on this I had to step a long way back to get it in the frame. I wonder why it's so tall?

This was Mabel's favourite. Maybe it was the shining brass that did it for her...

Another fine little day van.

There were 15 or so miniature engines there. All totally hand built and amazing feats of engineering. For me though this miniature stood out. Truly outstanding in my humble opinion. If memory serves me right this is road legal and had a tax disc and number plate too. Many of the miniature engines did! How crazy would that be to drive out on the road!?

Last day in Kampala and homeward bound

2008-06-28T09:06:00.003+01:00

The final day of the conference was just a half day of formal sessions and the afternoon had a trip to the source of the Nile billed. Sadly my flight times meant I couldn't go on this so I sat for a couple of hours in the sun at the poolside of the lovely Hotel Serena in Kampala.

I also managed to fit in a Skype conference call from my room before I was booted out for the next person to come in.

The final day of the conference was summed up beautifully by the Ugandan Minister for Trade, Industry and Tourism (I think that's an accurate description of her title, but don't have the agenda to hand). There was a common agreement that Africa needs to get it's act together and connect the disparate groups to enable an increase in production and local value addition to take place. So much cotton is grown here, and just exported with no value add.

While I was in Uganda "second hand clothing" was raised as an issue many times. Not something I'd ever considered before. BUT must find out more. It seems that a massive proportion of clothing sold in Uganda is second hand, recycled, refurbished, repackaged from the left over stock that doesn't sell and the clothes banks we all put our old clothes into. I'd never considered the effect that this has before. Apparently it undermines the local apparel industry, undercutting the prices by a considerable margin and making it nearly impossible to build a local market for new clothing. Wow. That was an eye opener.

After my 2 hours in the sun I took a leisurely Taxi ride to the wonderful Entebbe airport on the shores of Lake Victoria. Once through check-in its really not much more than a couple of open spaces, some small over priced souvenir shops and a food/bar. I really like the look of Uganda, not that I've seen much from Entebbe to Kampala. The 2 taxi drivers I had were both a credit to their country and spent lots of time answering my questions about everyday life. 95% or more of all the cars on the road are refurbished secondhand imports from Japan and South Africa (where the Mercs and other Euro cars come from). I was surprised to learn that the Mk2 Golf I sold recently in the UK was a highly desirable car here and very expensive... (Told you it was a classic Martha!)

My flight left on time to Nairobi. A packed plane. I chatted to an American ophthalmologist while we waited. He'd been in Uganda on a mission doing minor eye surgery in rural areas. He was saddened by the number of people blinded by cataracts that could be easily cured if the equipment existed. Instead they live miserable lives. He said just a 10 minute operation would restore their sight in the US. A sad statistic indeed.

I had a 2 hour wait once we got to Nairobi for my flight to London. Another strong coffee from the Nairobi coffee bar and my next flight was on time. This time I had 2 seats to myself, the food was good and the in-flight movie worked. I watched "There will be blood" starring my distant relative Daniel Day-Lewis. It was remarkable how much he looks like my Dad in some of the shots of him.

Eventually the long night passed with a little snooze crunched up on my 2 seats and we arrived on time to London. I passed quickly through immigration and headed for baggage claim, where my first bag was already on the belt. I waited and waited for the smaller display stand to come. After an hour, nearly everyone had gone and no new bags were coming through. My first baggage loss I thought. I had a quick scan around the belts and discovered someone must have taken the bag off and put it aside. Damn. A wasted hour, a lesson learned and the coach missed.

I'm typing this now as I have a 2 hour wait for the next bus to Swindon. Having landed here at 6.10am this morning, I'll not be home till at least 1pm. That's nearly as long a wait as the flight from Nairobi!

Bloody revolutions, sweat, Organic Cotton T-Shirts and cheap perfume

2008-06-26T19:33:00.005+01:00

What a fascinating and mentally exhausting day!

At 7.30 my alarm clock rudely woke me from a deep and troubled sleep where I was trying to figure out how to save money on my daily commute and for some reason was in the back of a truck laden down with sacks of something very smelly...

I had a quick brekky of some mushy mushrooms and some weird fried bananas and baked beans, plus a carafe of good strong coffee. Coffee powered I headed to the conference and listened as a lively debate followed between government and business leaders.

The morning session done I headed for the lunch venue and dispersed the last of my handouts and met a South African with many opinions on the world. Minutes later I sat next to a chap from Zimbabwe and listened in horror to some of the things he was saying.

After lunch we jumped on some buses to a factory run by a now elderly Japanese man. I liked him very much and he had some wonderful stories to tell. He's been making garments in Uganda for over 40 years. He managed to stay through the Idi Amin rule and avoid being classed as Asian and kicked out. He became a legend in his own life-time by saving many Ugandans from death. And now he makes and sells Organic T-Shirts! His company died several times and was raised to the ground. Revived again as Phenix he showed us around what he calls his "Bonsai" factory which takes in organic cotton bales and produces lovely Organic Cotton garments.

I videoed his story and its in a number of sections which I need to upload to You Tube. He wants everyone to know what he's doing to help Uganda! Lovely man.

We were presented with one of their T-Shirts at the end of the tour and I will wear it with pride. On the way around the factory one of the senior managers approached me. A fella from India. A few years back he ran the factory that belongs to the folks I was with in the hills of Tamil Nadu in India a few months ago. Small world. He recognised a logo on the T-Shirt I was wearing and knew many of the people I do.

After getting back to the hotel I freshened up and popped downstairs to the bar, not having made any arrangements for the evening. I had no idea who'd be there and what to expect. So I ordered a bottle of Nile Special (brewed with water that really does come from the very source of the Nile). I sat and "people watched" and what a strange world unravelled... I don't think I will write down some of my observations as I'm unsure what was going on...

Anyway - I went off to eat on my own in the end. I had another Nile beer and some Prawns in a coconut sauce, followed by cheese (Stilton - all the way from England!).

I'm now back in my room and ready to crash for the day. Lots of photos and videos to post but the intertubes are so slow here, I'll have to add them later.

Sadly tomorrow is my last day here. I feel like I've scratched the surface of a fascinating place. I wish I had more time to explore and see some more and meet more people. Unfortunately my plane leaves too early for me to take the planned trip to Lake Victoria and the source of the Nile tomorrow afternoon. Another time maybe.

Everyone I've spoken to really like Uganda. It feels like a friendly and very positive place to be.

Organic fashion in Uganda

2008-06-25T22:11:00.014+01:00

Today was my big day. I had a plenary session presentation to do around 11.45am. As the morning progressed the overruns progressed too. Soon the last two slots before lunch time were well and truly squeezed. Lucky really, as I'd probably not prepared enough material for a full 45 mins session and as it turned out what I had prepared filled the available time more or less perfectly.

I didn't feel that I presented as well as I have done in the past, but all the same lots and lots of people came up to me afterwards wanting to know more. I even did a 5 minute interview on Ugandan NTV! Not sure if it will be possible to download at some point - but there is a first...

I always find conferences totally exhausting, trying to keep on top of emails and things going on back at work in the sessions that aren't directly relevant to my work as well as picking up relevant points that are. In between the sessions its always a crazy scrum as people struggle to all get a word in and ask something. I take their business cards, optimistic I'll remember the face associated with the name and always miserably fail at that. Today was just one of those days. I didn't stop talking all day. I feel quite hoarse now.

There is usually some sort of "do" at these things, last night there was a poolside reception which was relaxed and fun. Tonight an organic cotton fashion show at a popular restaurant called Faze 2 in Kampala. The food wasn't very exciting, but was good and there was plenty of it, and the red wine was excellent.

I've never really enjoyed fashion shows. Usually a bunch of impossibly thin women wearing clothes you never see people wearing, but this was more main stream and the women weren't as skinny as usual. The men wore pretty normal looking things apart from one or two who wore sort of long cotton t-shirt type material stripy dresses. I'd wear one myself if I could find one. I imagine they would be cool in the heat of summer.

Here's a few shots from the evening and a video. It's worth listening to the end of the video. On the stage were assembled people from farmer to fashion designer and representatives from each part of the supply chain.

A good and relaxing evening out after a long hard day.

Uganda - the journey and day 1

2008-06-24T20:10:00.008+01:00

I left home around 2.30pm on Monday 23rd June. Liz and Millie gave me a lift to the bus station, and I really felt sad after having said "Goodbye" to them both. It's likely that Millie will take her first proper steps walking this week and I'll miss it. Though I did get to see the first attempts. I didn't even see the other 3 children to say my farewells. It's not all fun going off on trips.

I had a fine journey by coach down to London Heathrow. I sat next to some girls who had just finished A-levels and were heading to Ibiza for a party week. They went to the same school as a friend of Martha's who had been beaten within seconds of his life by hammer blows to his head while he was at her school. Small world.

I got to Heathrow on time and checked in, whizzing through to terminal 4 in no time. I then had the best part of 2 hours to kill before my flight departed. Now Terminal 4 is not a good place to sit and rest. Very few seats, lots of shops and no where I could just sit and drink a fresh fruit juice unless I wanted to sit in a bar with music playing. I passed by the folks trying to persuade me to part with £20 to win a Ferrari on the grounds I couldn't afford to drive it even if I did win it and it was way to ostentatious for me anyway! Didn't stop them trying to sell me the tickets several times though. I just said I didn't want to drive a red sports car as it wasn't me...

Eventually the time came to depart and I joined what seemed like thousands of others heading for Nairobi. Seems that a large contingent of Methodists from California were heading for Kenya to do "some good". I ended up sitting next to one of them - an accountant by day, and learned that 40 of them were off to the back end of beyond on some mission. On my other side was a medically trained man working for a wildlife NGO who left me feeling a bit depressed after he told me the wildlife population was dying as it had become intoxicated by the by-products and excretions of generic prescription drugs in the Western world. Oh joy. Apparently even tiny amounts of common drugs like paracetamol can change a bird's song so it can no longer find a mate...

We left on time and headed for Africa. All seemed well. 10 mins in and the entertainment system still wasn't working in our row. When I say "row" I really mean penned in bunch of people. I've never known seats so close together in a long distance plane. I couldn't even open my computer screen to be able to see it. Several hours in to the flight food was served. Way too late as it was nearly midnight local time. By the time the trolley reached me only Salmon was left. Having seen the row in front get that, I wanted something else. It was cubes of white fish and smelly and stale tasting at that. Yuk. The vegetables were like bits of mushy rubber. Not good food at all. I was feeling fed up by now. The seats were so packed and despite Liz booking me a window seat I was in the middle. Grrr. A restless night followed until we reached Nairobi.

Once off the plane I tracked down where I needed to go to next, via the Gents. Unfortunately no loo rolls! Damn. After the fish the night before that didn't help. I held on until the next plane. An uncomfortable experience.

Right next to the gate was a lovely coffee bar - so a double mocha helped keep me awake.

Eventually the time came to board the next flight from Nairobi to Entebbe. I had 2 seats to myself and fell asleep before taking off. First thing I knew was I was being woken for breakfast which I didn't want about 10 minutes later. An hour later we landed in Entebbe. Whizzed through customs, even the bags came quickly and I headed for the taxis. Sure enough there was a man "currying" a sign for the hotel. There were several of us heading the same way. I seemed to get the dodgy looking car, but it was fine. The driver was very pleasant and told me a lot about Uganda on the 40Km drive to the hotel.

The drive was pleasant through suburbs where people sell fruit and beds at the side of the road. All common sites all over the world I am learning. Eventually we reached the built-up areas of Kampala and here there were small businesses stitching cars together from different halves of smashed ones, adding pick-up backs to bare chassis and so on. Everything here is renovated and re-sold I was told. There were places selling every metal object you can imagine. All ordered and busy. It all seemed quite clean. Not too much plastic blowing about.

View Larger Map

Sadly the Google map is obscured by clouds. Here's a link to it on Yahoo. http://maps.yahoo.com/#mvt=h&lat=0.318795&lon=32.586978&zoom=17&q1=0.318795%2C32.586978.

Soon we reached central Kampala where the hotel is located. I was stunned. It is huge and magnificent. Apparently the Queen stayed here recently. I checked in to my room and found a bed big enough for 3 or 4 easily, and a wonderful balcony view over the grounds.

I had a quick shower and a buffet meal from the restaurant. I had steamed bananas (must find out the proper name) with a peanut sauce and some prawns. Very good. A bottle of Nile beer and returned to my room to work. Feeling very tired I set my alarm and lay down for a planned 10 mins. Not sure quite what happened, but I didn't hear the alarm and 3hours later I woke up. Maybe I just set it wrongly. Anyway it left me under pressure to produce a presentation in record time.

Eventually I finished and headed off to register and find out where the HF stand would be tomorrow. Back to my room for a bit and then to the evening welcoming reception. I've just returned after having a fascinating evening talking to some Ugandan farmers, a Ginning machine maker from India, and some people who run organic cotton production companies. Now it's time to sleep properly and get ready for tomorrow.