3 November 2002
Finally settled down to some serious writing. As usual, am aware that I don’t know \ can’t remember half the information I actually thought I did. Looks like the first version of the first draft will be somewhat gappy to be redone in between some useful research. Writing the first draft of a chapter is very similar to taking a mock exam before the real thing. It puts into context a lot of the things you knew and how to express them, but makes you aware of wha you need to revise. I always liked mocks - the end papers were very encouraging. So’s this first draft attempt.
Made the 200km trek down to Ipswich for our monthly meeting with Damien. Seems he’s a little disturbed by the size of the spec for UDDI v3. Fortunately, v2 hasn’t been put into wide use yet, let alone v3. Same can be said of quite a few new developments really. Who can tell what impact XML 1.1 will have on web services for instance. It might well be unicode friendly but it isn’t backward compatible with XML 1.0.
Scott Short’s book pointed me to a like-minded book blog being written by Jeff Prosise.
7 November 2002
Almost finished Chapter 1, which is nice. Actually, there have been quite a lot of unique things so far this week. I recorded my first demo session on Tuesday with a local band, 22 Over 7, I’m happy with the way the book is going is general, and yesterday, I watched the darkest, strangest movie of the year so far, Donnie Darko, came home and then had to try and prove I don’t have an eating disorder to my housemates by going to the supermarket and having some pizza for my tea. As Ozzy might say, I love them to bits, but they’re all a bit mad. Finally, had the pleasure of picking up the new Jean Michel Jarre album, Sessions 2000. A departure from the norm and no quarrel about it. More an exploration into jazz than electronica, but a good one nevertheless.
13 November 2002
Visited parents along with laptop and take advantage of the peace and quiet to finish first draft of chapter 1. Also to hint in best ’poor writer voice’ that they might like to get me some trousers (so I can actually put my hands in pockets without having to sing soprano) or a coat (before the hole the back of my current jacket grows so large that people wonder why I’m wearing it back to front) for Christmas. Discover one of my very first guitars in the spare room. Still sounds mellow but the strings are so old you can’t actually tune them any more. Neglect is a sad thing indeed.
Watched latest Harry Potter movie with a tear in the eye at the knowledge that this was Richard Harris’ last role before he died earlier this year. Chamber of Secrets is a fantastic film and better than the first, but I can’t help wondering how many people will stay away because of the large spiders and snakes in it. Even Kenneth Branagh does a good job. Must try and organize some of Harris’ back catalogue for some sort of retrospective. Aside from A Man Called Horse which has probably the most vicariously painful scenes known to man in it, I know very little of him except his sworn statement that every film for the last ten years was to be his last (until the next one anyway). Farewell Richard. I can’t imagine who else could be Dumbledore.
15 November 2002
Chapter 1 is finally at bloody last. It is by far and away the longest thing I have written since my degree thesis back in 1997. I think it’s also the best and it’s still only in first draft. Hope MSP agrees with me. Now to catch up the hours I haven’t been sleeping before I slip off to Chichester for the Guerilla Web Services course that Developmentor are holding. Maybe just one or two films as well. Possibly three. And Harry Potter needs revisiting again. And The Fellowship Of The Rings Extended Cut has come out so that’s needs watching too. Actually sod it, who needs sleep anyway?
Looks like SOAP 1.2 may get ratified quite soon after all.
18 November 2002
So here we go. After several weeks of gulping and buying earmuffs to block out the sound of my wallet screaming, I’m finally at the Guerilla Web Service course. Located in Glorious Goodwood near the south coast. Actually, I’m not sure if its Glorious at all. With or without a capital g. Drove down last night at about 30mph because the fog was so thick, I couldn’t see the turns in the road let alone anything beside it. This morning is clearer but as the sessions are in a room that is totally curtained in so we dont have a notino of the actual time except for a minscule clock on the wall, I still cant comment on the country side. Main lecturer is Aaron Skonnard - he’s the guy that writes the XML Files column for MSDN Magazine amongst other things. Great to note that in between all the code there’s a trailer for The Two Towers on his laptop as well. Grin. Doesn’t matter who you are...
Interesting
19 November 2002
Day 2 of course. Haven’t seen the sun since Sunday afternoon thanks to 12 hour day in a curtained room and 4 hours follow up work afterwards. Reckon I probably won’t see it properly until Saturday at this rate. Little disappointed. Aaron, Simon and Kevin are as good as you’d think they would be, but we were promised a supply of strawberry bootlaces and have I seen a single one since getting here? No. Still, we have looked at XML, Namespaces, Custom Http handlers and clients, asp.net webmethods and the web services base profile in a pretty intense day, but does an unlimited supply of Pepsi really make up for the lack of red roots? I think not
20 November 2002
Three days and thirty seven hours down, two days and twenty hours to go. Brain custardization occurred sometime before dinner. Ability to pay attention to alarm clock went sometime last night. Fascinating stuff though. Schema and Serialization today. Latter somewhat like custardization but implies you can actually get the data back on request. Will need a day of quiet before things start to solidify in my head.
22 November 2002
End of course. Bibble. Who needs mind-expanding drugs when you can just not sleep for four nights.
26 November 2002
Have finally managed to re-set custard brain back in head after last weeks excesses. Wish book chapters had an attribute called [write_self] that I could attach to them. Trouble is those handlers would probably have a lot of overhead to actually get that running. I don’t have a millions monkeys and an ice age spare. Come to think of it, I don’t need the complete works of Shakespeare either, so I might as well just get on with it by self.
While I’ve been away, nothing of interest has happened at all. Depressing. Last time I was away, Bush decided to bomb Iraq because his dad didn’t finish the job a decade ago and our fire brigades decided to start striking. The closest thing to excitement last week was the regurgitation of ’Black Rod’ jokes caused by the state opening of parliament (again).
New James Bond film should be renamed ’Died Another Death’ - unhappily it has become just another hollywood blockbuster kept afloat by tradition and a forty year legacy that is slandered with each new film. For a better film of a different kind, try Michael Moore’s ’Bowling for Columbine’, proof as if any was needed that everyone in the US should be on Prozac at the very least
4 December 2002
Jeez. It’s been over a week since I lasted posted something here. So much going on, so little time. MS now have 200 pages of the manuscript to look at, the names of a bunch of people kind enough to take a look at the rough draft and part one of our advance to pay. Wires have also been crossed and the final deadline in our contract switches between the date for either our first or our second draft to be handed in and we can’t tell which way it’s going to land yet. At this point, I’m not tense, just terribly, terribly alert, as a friend might say, and getting over the inertia of the next chapter which is easy to write once it’s started but it’s easy to remain in the cozy feeling of research and not do anything about it. Of course, the more research you do, the more you realise you need to put in, and therefore the more you put it off. There’s a certain pattern here....
Thanksgiving has passed and Christmas is coming. The turkeys that sought asylum from the killing sheds of the states in the UK are coming to realise that they really wanted to go some place that doesn’t celebrate Dec 25. Come to think of it, exactly what do turkeys have to do with the birth of Christ anyway? I don’t remember the gospels mentioning that they bowed their heads with the shepherds in the barn. Actually I don’t recall bunny rabbits handing out chocolate on Golgotha during the crucifixion or the period after the resurrection either, but it hasn’t stopped those cadbury’s creme eggs appearing in the shops five months early either.
12 December 2002
SNOW!! Thought it was cold. The telltale signs of frozen ponds and steamy breath were spot on as usual then. Deadline looms again and writer’s block has hit. Just not sure how to start Chapter 5. Grr. “Once upon a time there was a happy interface named little red IHttpHandler“, probably won’t make it. It probably doesn’t help that new version of Musicmatch includes support for the new, smaller mp3Pro format and my desktop comp is finally back from the shop. They seem to have replaced pretty much all of its innards, wiped all my stuff and reinstalled it with Windows Me. On the one hand, this means I have double the size HD to store music, but on the other, I have to start recording it all over again. Which again is not helping me write a chapter.
16 December 2002
Christmas party season has begun. One of the housemates got absolutely wasted this weekend spewed forth vomit in biblical proportions in the downstairs loo, on the floor, window sill and sink. The mistress of understatement was heard saying ’I don’t feel well’, sometime later in between gagging again as she cleaned it all up. Had a nice small gathering last night with a few friends and some red wine. Would have been mulled but none of us had the first clue how exactly you do that. Something to do with warming it up and adding some spices. Oregano I suspect is not one of them.
Six years to the day of it being recorded, I finally got a copy of Sepultura’s live CD, ’Under A Pale Grey Sky’. Massive memories came flooding back of possibly the most intense gig I have ever been part of. Such a shame that the day after this was recorded, Max left the band. Neither he nor the rest of the band have produced anything like Roots since that time. Sigh...
18 December 2002
Term is over and so is my course for the year. Part one of the MIDI assignment is over. The tale of Rommel and his desert rats in two minutes of synthesized aural garbage is more likely to baffle the examiner than get me a distinction, but then again I’ve never really been into drum and bass. Part two has me remixing the theme tune to the Peanuts cartoon but I can’t find samples of Charlie Brown’s arrrrrghhh as he flies through the air having missed the football or Lucy shouting ’You Blockhead’. Need to sample my DVDs at Xmas therefore.
Xmas spirit here and so is the season for giving smaller presents than usual thanks to the advance from MS. Register.com tried to renew an old domain name I didn’t want for $90, my Christmas shopping is done, and I’ve been invited to a friends on Xmas afternoon handily located in the centre of, and I quote, ’the one way system from the seventh level of hell.’ Should be interesting. Wonder if I’ll pass hell’s server room on the way.
20 December 2002
Christmas is upon us and once again I’m reading Spider Jerusalem which means that I’m not only pissed off with the world in general, I’m almost totally enraged with my lack of progress which has been put off for days with the ’T’ word. No prizes for guessing what that is. Kerrang put a job for news editor out to the public and true to the ’well I probably won’t get it anyway spirit’ of things, the cover letter began, Oi Bird, rather than Dear Mr Bird. Still, I have but two months of this write to go and I feel abuzz with the next creative surge nicely building up. The words shall spurt forth as soon as I go home I have no doubt.
The end of term as a freelancer is a lot different from that of a paid employee. There are no Christmas parties, no affectionate ’Enjoy yourself, but don’t forget you’re back here on Dec 27th’ letters from the boss, no cards from workmates (just the friends that remember you exist). In fact, pretty much just nothing really. Sigh. My first anniversary of going solo and all I want for Christmas are some work colleagues that aren’t on the other end of a net connection.
Signing off.