Home sweet home. Back today after a long weekend in Rome. Fabulous weather - sunny and warm without being too hot. Rome is an incredible place - so much history in one place. In fact, it almost seems like the history is holding it back a little. Like with English Heritage, I sometimes wonder why we preserve old stuff at the expense of new stuff. Maybe we should just keep 'stuff' that justifies its existence on it current merits?

Anyway, time for a mac update. Last time, I was being hassled by some niggly-first impressions. After a software update, everything now seems to be working. Now, software updates were what drove me from Windows - however, the mac version seems quite different. Firstly, they're much smaller, and the content is more usefully described - I felt much more in control.

So now Logic Express can handle the example song project. I also managed to connect my printer (attached to the old windows box - the mac couldn't find it, but pointed in the right direction, it seems to work now).

I've also sorted out Time Machine. This is the mac's rather awesome backup strategy. When running, it keeps a copy of your machine hourly over the last day, daily over the week, and monthly before that. This means you can resurrect a file (or setting, or the whole shebang) from anywhere in the history (a kind of repository for your machine, if you like). I have a ReadyNAS NV+ too, which after a painless upgrade to radiator 4.5, supports Time Machine - giving me a raided super-backup. I expect all this is possible under windows, but I never sorted it out - it was always in the too painful box.

The trackpad is better now. I changed the setting so you can tap the pad for a click, rather than push the thing in, and that makes me much happier. I need a bluetooth mouse though.

The only fly in the ointment now is no MediaMonkey. Not sure how I'm going to solve that one.

Summary - the mac is great, and I love it.

So the mac is here, and it's a thing of beauty indeed. I was hoping for the same feeling you get when you unwrap an iPhone or iPod - attention to detail through and through. And that's exactly what I got - for the unwrapping bit at least. Take a look - it's beautiful.

It's been a bit downhill since then unfortunately. I bought Logic Express pre-installed, and there on the desktop was a logic project "The numbers game". So I double-clicked it ( we won't talk about the trackpad yet - let's give it a chance) and hit play. The song started - good sounds through the keyboard speakers, more instruments coming through, song developing, and then suddenly...

"System overload" error box. Eh? That can't be right, can it? Either the brand new mac is not configured out of the box to play the example song project (attention to detail?), or the brand new fastest mac book pro available isn't up to the job (fairly poor choice for an example then). Either way, the sheen is a little duller.

After that, it was time to nip out for a swift diet coke with some other dads from school (good fun was had by all, even if I did have a rotten stinking sore throat, and a burning desire to get home and play with my new toy).

When I came back, there was a kung-fu panda dvd next to the mbp. I woke up the mbp, and was presented with the title screen of Harry Potter III, and a swirly rainbow mouse cursor (possibly the equivalent of the windows hour-glass). It refused to wake up properly, and since the dvd was full-screen, I couldn't access any behind the scenes trickery. Never mind thinks I, control-alt-delete to the rescue...oh. There is no delete key, and the alt key looks a bit odd too. I checked the beautiful, minimalist booklet that came with it, and eventually found the mac-equivalent key sequence: ctrl-option-esc. Cool, now where's the 'option' key...no key with 'option' on it, no keymap in the booklet. Sigh. A few random combinations later, and it turns out the 'option' key is also the 'alt' key.

That let me kill the dvd player, but then I couldn't eject it - as far as the mbp was concerned, the disk did not exist. Ok, I've had this before (twice, I think, in 20 years of Windows), I'll just get a safety pin, and ram it (carefully) in the hole next to the dvd slot...except (you're way ahead, aren't you?) there is no hole (perhaps it would spoil the beautiful lines of the case). A bit of googling, and it turns out this is a fairly common problem, with a variety of solutions. The one which worked for me was power-cycle with the trackpad clicked (obvious, eh?).

Writing this, I found ctrl-c, ctrl-v etc. use the cmd key instead on a mac. Something else to get used to.

I'm keeping my mac tips here. IT'll get better, I know it will..

Vista is being so mean to me, I've decided to punish it. For a long time now, it's been secretly downloading more and more stuff (no doubt I told it to, in a moment of weakness, egged-on by paranoia-inducing update service). Since Sunday, it's been trying to download around 50 language packs, about a gig each. I caught it trying to install Estonian (which I'm fairly sure I'll never need), and that set me off. I tried to cancel it, but no. It was having none of that. I waited for a bit, and it said it needed to restart (twice?). After the language packs, it said it could download a few new games and update to old games - 5 in all. Great. Might be worth. Kicked it off...20minutes to download/install 1 update to Texas Hold 'Em - just the normal MS thing. How could it possibly take that long?

Anyway, it's pushed me too far now. I can't carry on with that sort of behaviour. It's not even reasonable. It's time I taught it a lesson. So, I've ordered a mac. It's gonna be great :)

Oh yes, time for an update on Coward on the Beach. Absolutely ripping stuff, exactly my kind of book. Funny, very English, historically convincing, and intensely moving. I was really, really enjoying it, until I heard the author (James Delingpole) on Womans Hour today (long story). They were talking about who's better at bringing up kids, men or women. James, who sounded quite a genial sort of chap, as you'd expect from his work, made a comment about how some Dads sort of pretend to be 'new men' and put on an act about enjoying time with their kids when, really, they'd rather be doing something tedious instead, like mowing the lawn. What an odd view. I've been lucky enough to participate fairly fully in my family's development, and whilst I didn't relish changing hideous "I've been dipped in a barrel of chocolate" nappies any more than anyone else, it's all part of it. The idea that one sex is somehow better prepared for that kind of thing is absurd - sure, some people cope better than others, but to say that's down to sex is monstrous. Plenty of women are rubbish at child rearing, just as plenty of men are rubbish at bring home the bacon (as Delingpole put it). I shall continue reading his oeuvre in a new light.

Busy day today. Saturday morning footie, exam prep, and preliminary investigations into just what on earth we've been storing in our loft for the last year 8 years. Cute stuff mainly, but it's all got to go. In fact, it's not just the loft, I've been thinning out our book collection this week. 1 bootful to the library, who were a bit sniffy, and 2 bootfuls to the charity shop, who weren't. It's quite cathartic (I'd better check that in a sec, make sure it means what I think).

I had an interesting conversation today, whilst covered in grease and rust and rubber (rear puncture on the folder, before you ask). It went like this
"So can we talk about adopting a panda tonight?"
"Oh, ok. Why do you think we should adopt a panda?"
"Well, they're going extinct, and we need to save them, because they're great, dur!"
"Yep, they are great, but are you sure that sending some money to someone will help them? I mean, how will we be sure that they really are looking after the panda?"
"But we want to adopt one, not send someone some money. We'll be looking after it ourselves, dur!"
"Ah, I think we need to have a little chat..."

So we finished Mortal Engines last night. I kept them up far too late, because we all wanted to finish it (and anyway, Mrs Mumble was having a book-club evening downstairs, so there was no chance of sleep anywhere in our house). We knocked off the final 50 pages without stopping, and there was not a dry eye in the room. Tell you what, Philip Reeve doesn't seem to mind too much about killing off major characters.

I finished HMS Surprise last week. Luckily, to celebrate my 15,341st day on this mortal coil, santa brought me the The Aubrey - Maturin Chronicles: v. 1 read by Robert Hardy (whom I will always think of as Siegfried). What tremendous stuff that is. Proper stories about real heroes, read in exactly the right voice. Perfect :). To keep me going on the train, I've turned to Coward on the Beach - I'll let you know how that goes.

Transferred the remainder of my 2008 Delhi trip to here.

We went to a friend's funeral today. I always forget just how intense funerals are. Apart from a school friend 26 years ago, I hadn't been to one for my generation. A beautiful service, very moving; I'm glad we didn't take the kids though.

I've started reading Mortal Engines to the kids. They're 7 & 10 now - it's still ok to read them stories before bed, right? I'm not ready to give it up yet anyway. ME is my favourite 'kids' series, and I've wanted to read it to them for a couple of years. We did Northern Lights (another favourite) ages and they loved it - we timed it so we finished just as the film (which is good, but not as good as the book) came out. Before ME, it was The Princess Bride - a fabulous roller-coaster of a read; again, we watched the film after reading it, and again, it was good, but nothing like as good as the book.

I went to Delhi in March last year and May this year. I've decided to share my experiences, as recorded at the time, here.

Pleasantly uneventful flight from Delhi to Dehra Dun. A highly confident young man approached us in the departure lounge at Delhi airport - must have been around 9. He was off to Simla. Anyways, we chatted for a while (his English was great), and then he said that he really liked Rob's big, big hair, and whilst I was laughing, he quickly asked if I was Rob's Dad. That shut me up.

Yeah, so Kingfisher turbo prop to DD - about an hour's flight. Brilliant views of the Gangetic plain. DD is just beyond the first range of hills at the NE top of the plains north of Delhi. I think the mini-hills are Shivaliks. Taxi from DD's Jolly Grant Airport up into the hills to Mussourie - an old hill station from the days of the Raj. It's about 2km above sea level, which seems pretty high, until you look North from there into the foothills of the Himalaya - they're proper mountains.

Mussourie was ... excellent. It seems to be a very long high street, snaking along a flattish ridge at the top of the hill. Getting there involves a couple of hours of impossibly insane driving up endless switchbacks - but it's worth it. We walked from one end of the main road to the other a couple of times - took a cable car ride to the top of Gun Hill (where the Brits used to fire a gun every day at noon to mark time), which had the most spectacular views of the misty mountains to the North.

Monkeys. Human-powered ferris wheel. Tiny children rooting through massive skip-bins. Cows. Relentless beep-beeeep-beep of car horns (no traffic in Mussourie itself, this noise just floats up from the switchbacks below).

We stayed at a swanky hotel, just off the end of the Mall. I think Rob wanted something more authentic, but, as his Dad, I put my foot down, and went for unashamed luxury.

On Sunday morning, we walked forever to the Happy Valley. A beautiful morning, following another snaky road, overlooking wonderful wooded hillsides. There's a Tibetan abbey there - seems like the right place for it - so calm, so peaceful.

And then walk back to Mussourie, taxi back down to Jolly Grant, Kingfisher back to Delhi, and Vinod back to the Taj, just in time for a swim in the lovely lovely pool - marred only by the armed guard walking around. I saw the manager come out, and explain to the guard that it's no use wandering up and down the poolside - he'll get much better coverage of any invading gunmen by staying in the corner and sweeping across the pool. That sort of thing tends to take the edge off an evening swim.

Iddiyappam for brekkie again - yum yum.

I managed to sleep in the ride over this morning - quite an achievement given the "interesting" approach to driving here. Actually, I think it might be more efficient to drive like this (for the uninitiated, there are no rules; focus on where you want to go, beep your horn continuously, and drive there). They use the horn like bats and dolphins for echo-location - it may be possible to drive blindfold through Delhi, just relying on the constant bip..bip..bip.

A good set of 1-1s in the office, just a bit of tidying up to do, another couple of audios, and then the week is done, and I can start preparing for Dehra Dun and London.

Lighter breakfast today - another omelet this time (obviously) with a few slabs of watermelon, washed down with 1/2 pint of sweet lime juice. mmm.

Rob delivered a mammoth session on his app this morning to the Delhi team - covered loads of ground, and everybody (not least me) found it very informative. It's actually quite a good way of clarifying issues, and sharing information. A bit like a de-focussed "Cup Of Tea" - that's a meeting style I pioneered on my app, where we sit around drinking a cup of tea, talking about a specific area of the app - no plans, just an expert or two to guide us through the topic. We think we should re-import the idea to the UK - get a handful of people for the prism dev teams and make them talk about stuff.

One on ones with Ankit and Abhishek followed - very useful indeed. Not quite what any of us felt like after the meeting, but really useful I think. We covered past work, current focus, operating procedure, future plans. All good stuff.

Busy afternoon. Feeling pretty tired now. Managed to book some flights to Dehra Dun for Saturday - we'll take in the sights of Haridwar, Rishikesh, and maybe Mussourie, then fly back to Delhi Sunday arvo. I'm back to London on Monday; Robs staying til Friday.

Dinner in the "Orient Express" at the Taj. What a restaurant - top notch cuisine served in a replica of an OE dining car. Fabulously expensive - but we're worth it! I had chicken consomme, pistachio-stuffed quail casserole, duo of lamb, and apple/frangipane tarte fine with icecream. And a watermelon sorbet between courses. Oh yeah, and they gave us new knapkins before the desserts - I think it was a colour coordination thing.

I slept much better last night - must be adjusting to the timezone. Still very tired though - it's exhausting working here, non stop explanations, discussions, questions etc. I guess it's just more intense - I'm only here for a few days, so we need to cram in as much as possible.

Talking of which, we had a good 90 min session this morning with most of the Delhi team covering my app - partly random Q&A, partly talk about how we will adapt for future requirements, the drive for efficient storage (even not storing unnecessary data), and the move towards stateless calculation trains (thanks Rob).

We also trying to plan a trip for the weekend. We'd like to see Amritsar and the Wagah border, but there's a bit of unrest out that way. Shimla would be good, but it will be a lot of travelling. There's always Agra or Jaipur - but that doesn't seem so ... exciting? Maybe Mussoorie or Rishikesh?

Good discussion with Mitts about recruitment, and resource allocation. A welcome relief after any afternoon on the blower to London

Went to Sahara Mall in the evening with the team for light nibbles and beers. Luckily the original destination (a disco pub called the Lovely Obsessions Bar) was being renovated, and so we popped next door to Odyssey, which was much more my scene - relatively sedate and relaxed. Many thanks to Mitts for organising a super night out. I think we all got to know each other a little bit better - and that's always a good thing, right?

Back to the Taj after Odyssey, for a slap up lamb rogan gosht in the 24h cafe. Top quality, and relatively mild.

Up bright and early (although not quite as early as certain gym-obsessed people, obviously). Charming brekkie of omelet, beans and bacon. Left the Taj at 07:40 - hardly any traffic on the way, only 68 billion people crammed onto the highways.

Not sure what's happening with the London office. We think the normal PCs will have been swapped out for DR PCs; however, it also sounds like power problems have been sorted - but when will the normal PCs be swapped back? Will everyone be coming in? CS and Cradle have team meetings this morning...

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Good meeting (all things considered) with Ankit, Parvesh and Anjali covering RAROE for Leasing. With the turmoil of the last few weeks, the latest specs are hard to find, but we talked through the background, the business case, and the likely possibile solutions.

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Intense discussion about CVS to subversion migration, why we need to do it, as well as how. Ankit nominated as the Delhi svn point of contact. It's a shame the London dev servers are offline, since one has my test migration on it.

Abbreviated canteen lunch to make way for team meeting, which went much better than expected. Maybe because so many people were dialling in the audio was better - not sure.

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Intense afternoon of audio calls - BiPru, v12 recovery, 1-1s. Catchup with email, and admin.

Vinod drove us into central Delhi after work. We walked all the way round Connaught Place, I bought some more bronze (?) Indian deities for the family, and we ate at The Embassy on Radial 6 (mutton do piaza, peas pulao, garlic nan, mix raita) - all in, Rs1300 for both of us, which seems about right. No doubt we'll find out the real cost soon enough...

Back in Delhi again, with Rob. Good daytime flight yesterday, arrived 2300 local time. As we left the airport, there was a huge downpour - first time I've seen rain in India (which is much the same as European rain of course). Somehow, we're staying at the Taj Palace - I think the Leela Kempinski is much closer, and probably as nice. Good food so at the Taj so far - lamb dumplings and chickpeas for brekkie (of course, I slipped down to the 24hr cafe after unpacking last night for a quick murg biryani, just to see me through the night).

Vinod drove us in this morning. An alarm clock malfunction meant we hit the worst part of the rush hour - and some roads are closed due to the metro extension construction; all in all not a good trip in

However, once we're in the office, things got rapidly better. It's good to meet the team out here again - Mitts, Ankit, Abhishek, Parvesh, Ramneek, Vyant and Amit. There's some new faces too.

Had a good talk with Mitts whilst my PC was being de-bluescreened. We covered some of the issues around the plan and how we'll deliver it, and also some of the resource specific contents of the next version.

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Canteen lunch - chickpeas, rice, curried veg. From the (boiling, utterly boiling) terrace you can see the incredible pace of change around here. I took some photos from here last year - they'll make interesting comparision.

Some dial-in meetings back in London (we finally figured out how to use the phones - awesome), and then some email catchup, and meeting planning for later today/tomorrow.

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Eventually went through some recruitment process with Mitts. We looked through some CVs, and reviewed the local tech test; meanwhile London was suffering a major power problem, leading to the DR evac of our office. Honestly, we've only been out of the office for half a day...

Back to the Taj for dinner. In-hotel restaurant (Masala Art) - lamb patties, marinated chicken, then Lucknowi Bhuna and Kerali lamb dishes, with the phulka bread cooked at a mobile er, bread-cooking station. Excellent nosh.

Migrating from cvs to subversion is a fun way to spend your evenings. I'm trying to get a pre-commit check so that we can have path-based permissioning for specific users (or, ideally, groups). The subversion hooks are pretty flexible, but the example scripts are perl which is harder to install in my environment, and harder to modify since we don't perl...so I think I'll port the existing cvs commitinfo script - it doesn't do everything, but it works (in cvs land at least).

Then there's checking with JIRA at the same time - on some of our modules, you can only commit if you reference an open JIRA ion the commit log.

Then there's making fisheye complete its initial scan of the repository in less than geological time (ok, it's only been going for 2 weeks, is that enough time to evolve a better solution?).

The alternatives were horrifying, so I drove to a car park at the edge of Cookham. I headed off down the public footpath, following the top of Winter Hill golf course. The path tracks the Maidenhead / Bourne End railway line. The path dips under the railway, and out around the base of Winter Hill (a sharp hill, ending in a Thames flood meadow). I doubled back across Cock Marsh to the Thames at the Bourne End railway bridge (which I note is also a pedestrain bridge). I followed the Thames back towards Cookham, turned right (alongside the sewage works, although I didn't know it at the time), up the hill, back to the car park, and then home. 2.3 m, ~75mins, including photo stops. Maybe I can link to the My Map in google...