December 2005 Entries
It's my last day at work today before I go on maternity leave. The floor in the utility (which we thought we could lay in a weekend - stupid us) was finished last night, and I can finally take a deep breath and relax a bit. Of course, since the floor took so long to lay, we've had no time to write out and send any Christmas cards this year, and I'm feeling particularly guilty about this, so to everyone who has sent us a card, thanks ever so much - we've had so many cards this year it's been...
Two words that don't traditionally go together - pregnancy and comfort. Especially at this stage, when I'm in the third trimester (eek - less than 8 weeks to go!). Clothing really doesn't help here; while there are some great maternity clothes available, i'm just reluctant to keep going out and buying things that'll only last me a couple of months. Still, with a huge heavy bump in front of me, and just one pair of comfy trousers, and one comfy skirt, I've been getting somewhat frustrated with finding stuff I can wear around the house and don't mind getting a...
One of the last things I've been asked to do at work before I start my maternity leave is to do a short presentation on .NET 2.0 one lunchtime next week. Something, anything, on .NET 2.0, for the benefit of those developers who've not seen much about it yet. That's about as specific as saying "just talk about development". I've vaguely tied it down to talking about ASP.NET (I figured that, since I co-wrote a book on the subject, I should know something about what I'm talking about), but there's still so much stuff in there that deserves to be...
While James and I took our seats for the recent A-Ha gig that we went to, we had a look through the upcoming events list on the NEC Group flyer on the seats, and noted that the Ben Folds gig would be well worth going along to... imagine my surprise when I managed to win a pair of tickets to the gig, thanks to the Vic McGlynn show on BBC 6Music! This would now become the last gig we'd go to pre-baby.
So, last Monday we dashed home after work, grabbed some food from the Birmingham Christmas Markets, and headed over...
A couple of years ago, James and I (plus some friends) saw A-Ha for the first time at the NIA, and they were so absolutely fantastic live that we were determined to see them again given the chance. That chance came recently when they played at the NEC area as part of a tour to promote their new album, Analogue.
A-Ha, for those who haven't been paying attention, had some excellent chart success in the 80's with songs such as Take on Me, and The Sun Always Shines on TV. If, like me, you stuck with them for the many years...
Over the past month, I've been lucky enough to have been to see three different bands in a variety of venues. The first of these was the Mitch Benn and the Distractions gig at The Mac theatre (just opposite Edgbaston Cricket Ground). A small and slightly intimate venue, and we happened to be sitting right on the front row!
Mitch, for the uninitiated, is an extremely talented comedian / songwriter who crops up quite frequently on The Now Show on Radio 4,on It's Been a Bad Week and Jammin' on Radio 2, as well as occasionally on his own show on...
There's a debate on Slashdot at the moment about the usefulness of Ajax, following a spoof article,"Why Ajax Sucks (most of the time)", on Jakob Nielsen's site... while the article itself is really just a search 'n replace hack of his "Why Frames Suck (most of the time)" article (replacing Frames with Ajax), it's interesting to note that quite a few of the comments in there do ring true today.
On my current project at work, and indeed on most projects undertaken at this office, the content we provide customers for websites has to be as accessible as possible, hence...
Just spotted a fabulous post on my friend Alistair's blog about the Encarta Instant Answers service available via MSN Messenger. I was keen to try this for myself, so I tried asking several questions, including:
Chris Hart says:
are you self-aware?
Encarta Instant Answers says:
Sometimes I think I might be, sometimes not.
Perhaps the funniest response came from "I want to see a map of the moon"... what appears doesn't exactly include the sea of tranquility! I highly recommend trying this for yourselves:
Chris Hart says:
I want to see a map of the moon
Encarta Instant Answers says:
Moon, name given to the only natural satellite...