Australia Day...?

Apparently it was Australia Day last Thursday, so I'm wishing everyone a belated "Happy Australia Day". Why? I have absolutely no idea. I never celebrated it back home, so why I'm expected to celebrate it when I'm on the other side of the world is beyond me. Several people asked me what I did, and were surprised when my response was, "Nothing".

I couldn't think of anything worse than going into a "Walkabout" on a normal day, much less than on Australia Day! Someone told me they were selling Aussie "goodies", such as Caramello Koalas and the such, at an overly-inflated price. When I asked what Aussies beers they had available for the special day, guess what response I got? "Fosters". Sounds like I missed out there... NOT! We had a better range of Aussie beers here at our house on Christmas Day!

In other news, I managed to get my good mate Stuart a job at British Land, doing my old horrible job. "That's nasty!", I hear you exclaim, but the fact of the matter is that he will now be earning 3 times what he was earning at his last job. It's also about 200 times more interesting, and Regent's Park isn't a bad place to be working either! It's funny though. The two of us used to work together back home at Open Windows, and now here we are, on the other side of the world, working together again. Should be a laugh though, that's for sure. Welcome to the dark side Stu! :-)

What else...?

Spent a lovely weekend with my girlfriend Renae, after a corker of a night in Farringdon, at a place called Beduin's. After a bit of a leaving do for a work collegue at our local pub, we headed down to Farringdon with Shaun and Kieren, and partied the night away to some awesome House music till the wee hours of the morning. Probably the most decent House music set I've heard since arriving in London, and a great club to boot! Will definitely be paying that place another visit sometime in the near future... Spent the rest of the weekend in Renae's company, doing some shopping, going out for dinner, having a giggle at some 70's Soul music - typical "couple" type stuff that is truly groan-worthy, but loving every minute of it. Pathetic, isn't it? ;-)

This coming Saturday sees a return to Farringdon for a night out to a club called Turnmills. I'm in for a bit of shock music-wise from what I've heard, but I am keeping an open mind. After all, I have been to "Heaven" for "Trance Nation", and that wasn't too bad. Dare I say it, I actually enjoyed the night. I'm sure it won't be too long now before some of my old Techno mates from back home turn up on my doorstep and drag me back to Melbourne by my ear...!!!

Damn, it's cold!!

Alright, so it's not that cold but it's cold enough...

This photo is of my backyard at my house in Stratford in East London, and was taken 2 days after Christmas. Sort of annoying because we were hoping for a White Christmas, but it came 2 days too late! Was still cool that it snowed in London though. It was the first time I had seen snow in my whole life, so it was quite exciting (even though it only lasted about 10 minutes...).

I've gotten used to the whole "London layers" thing. This means wrapping yourself in several layers of clothes to block out the cold. You don't just put on a jacket to go outside. It doesn't work.

You usually need to put on the following to go outside:
* Jumper
* Scarf
* Jacket
* Beanie

That usually doesn't do the trick either. If the wind is blowing, the wind chill is usually about -10 or below, so it blows straight through whatever jeans or trousers you're wearing. Frozen bollocks have become a problem, but there's NO WAY I'm resorting to wearing long-johns!

All that being said, it really isn't as bad as most people make out. Just about every person I've ever spoken to who's lived in London has a whinge about how cold it gets here. I just don't understand it. Sorry, but it's really not that cold...

March 10th sees my first trip to the snow. Going on the "Snow Train", which leaves London Friday night and takes you to the foot of the French Alps overnight, where you go skiing or boarding for the day, then hop back on the train to be back in London by Sunday morning. Should be a hoot! All I need to do now is learn how to Ski or Snowboard! :-)

"Me 'Orse!"

Well, not mine exactly, but I hear about him so much that he's starting to feel like mine as well...

Introducing, "Herbie" the Horse, otherwise known as "Me Boy", "Me 'Orse" or "Erbs". This lovely hunk of horse meat belongs to my boss, Sarah.

Ever since I have known Sarah, I have had to endure countless stories about Herbie. Well, I say "endure", but some of them are quite entertaining. For example, I now know that this horse is a bit of a bully, which doesn't surprise me, considering they say that pets usually take after their owners! ;-)

So obsessed is Sarah with her "Boy", that when she bought a horse box (in Australia known as a "horse float"), Sarah had a competition in the office to find a name for it. Of course, I won the competition with the name "Oscar" (which has now been shortened to "Ozzie"), but am yet to receive my prize for winning that particular competition! (Hint hint!). The other confusing aspect is that she refers to both her husband and Herbie as her "Boy", so when she came in one morning ranting about her "Boy" having to go and see his lawyer in Ireland, Shaun and myself were quite confused. We never knew horses needed their own lawyers...?

One day soon I shall meet this legendary 'orse, and I might even have my first ever horse ride! Yay!!!

Gmail...

It's time for my 1st rant. This has been bugging me for some time now, so I thought, what better forum to have a whinge about it in!

Since I joined Gmail, I've had nothing but praise for it. Less clutter, easier to use, well-organised, etc, etc. I've also convinced several other people to join up because of how "good" I thought it was. Well, I still think it's good, apart from this one nagging little thing...

I know there has been a lot of stink kicked up lately about e-mail attachments and their associated risks with viruses etc, and we're all aware of the dangers of opening "certain" attachments. (Well, most of us with half a clue that is!). However, Google have taken it upon themselves to decide what types of attachments I am allowed to receive in my Inbox. Recently, a friend of mine tried to send me a ZIP attachment that contained an executable. He got a bounce back saying that the "Attachment type is forbidden". Today I tried to send a ZIP file to a friend, but it wouldn't let me attach it because the ZIP had an executeable in it.

Now, I know it's a free service and all, but shouldn't I be allowed to decide what e-mail attachments I can receive in MY F***ING INBOX?!? I've searched for an option to "allow attachments of type X....", but that option doesn't exist now, does it???

I'm bewildered as to why Mr. Google has decided that we're not intelligent enough to use our own e-mail properly. Why provide a service, then hobble it? Has this gotten under anyone else's skin? Please let me know. Perhaps we can start a "Free My Inbox" campaign? :-)

AJAX

Well, I did say that I would be posting "nerdy" stuff on my blog, so here goes.

I've recently started a new project at my work where I have full creative control over the Architecture and Design of the system. As it is going to be an Enterprise application, we've had to think about performance quite a bit. Enter AJAX.

Basically, AJAX improves performance of Web Applications by reducing the number of post-backs to the server on dynamic web forms. It does this by moving a lot of the work that is usually done on the server, to the client. Pretty nifty eh?

As I'm just getting started on this, I can't claim to be an expert, so here's a couple of links to AJAX Frameworks that I'm currently investigating. Oh yeah, I'm talking .NET here, so these links relate to AJAX in the .NET Framework.

Atlas: A control library that provides the AJAX functionality via .NET user controls. Seems to be quite extensive and powerful, but I'm not sure if it's at full release just yet.

AJAX.NET Professional: There is versions of this for the 1.1 and 2.0 .NET Frameworks. Uses a HTTPHandler module to direct the calls to the AJAX.NET libraries.

I'm sure I'll add to this list as time goes on.

Stay tuned!

Doughbear

I never made any promises about my posts being interesting, and this one is far from it.

This picture was taken on Friday after a trip to Selfridges on Oxford Street to visit the Krispy Kreme doughnut stand. I had only ever heard about these "legendary" Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and it has taken me 9 months to finally sample their doughnutty goodness. All I can is, WOW! They are the yummiest doughnuts that I have EVER tasted, no doubts. As you can see, they are so nice, even one of Renae's bears couldn't resist the temptation... (Yes, you guessed it, it was very boring at work on Friday...).

Whilst at Selfridges, we also sampled some of the culinary delights of the Square Pie Company. This place has a selection of pies (square of course) that you can get in a box (square) with your choice of mash potato, mushy peas, whole peas and/or gravy (none of which are square). Once again, very yummy. Really gotta love working in Central London, even though it does get rather pricey.

Made my return to the gym today after a week of non-attendance due to illness. All I can say is, OUCH! After only 1 week, I struggled to lift any weights and nearly died after 20mins on the bike. I've since realised that this is how the bastards make money off you. You have to keep going back, constantly! It's like an illness. An addiction. Once again, the bastards are making money off people's addictions!

This is the world we live in I guess...! :-)

Ok, so I finally crumbled...

For those of you that know me well, you know that I said I will NEVER get a Blog. So why the sudden change of heart?

Honestly? I have no idea!

I have no idea why I set this up, I have no idea how to use it properly, and I have no idea how often, if ever, I will update it. I figure it is probably easier to update this once or twice a month (or if I decide to drag my butt out of London and travel somewhere!), instead of sending out ludicrously long emails that no-one has the time or patience to read. (I bore myself proof-reading them sometimes!). It might even give me something to do of a night-time instead of hogging bandwidth downloading games I will never play, and movies I will never watch.

So, check back every now and again. You never know. You might be surprised! I might even figure out to link my flickr account to it. I might even use it to blog nerdy stuff, like, development ideas/experiences/etc. Scary stuff...!

How do you sign these things off then?

"Toodles", perhaps?