Gidley Gossipings

28 Sep, 2004

I am currently addicted to startopia - I got it for £5 in game after reading a review of it somewhere. It is one of the best PC stratergy games I have played for a while (not as good as the original civilisation obviously!)

It is surprising addictive if a bit short and easy. But for £5 you can't go wrong.

23 Sep, 2004

I haven't really got a clue as to what to put on here.

So I think I will probably put nerdy random comments and also random events that take my interest.

For example http://www.ukbbnet.net/ seems to be trying to organise a school reunion for various Gloucester/Churchdown schools. Which may be fun. I lost touch with most of the people from school after Uni. But other hand no one I know is currently going. I think I will wait and see!

20 Sep, 2004

I really wanted to see Postgres on Windows - to my mind this is one of the most important developments in Open Source databases for a long time.

Postgres has sat on Linux being declared superior to MySQL for years and now finally they have released a beta windows installer. In short it now does work on Windows. On 2 of my PC's it works ok - on someone elses however it will not work at all for no obvious reason. It does seen to be ok - it is more reliable than the copy of Oracle on my laptop (though that is not saying much).

The only obvious windows glitch is with the service handler - if you reboot without letting the service stop it leaves a PID file that stop the service starting - not too good - but easy to fix. In short I think it is good enough now to develop against and should make it far easier for me to look at using it as the database for a project - as we can now develop against it easily.

I am very impressed with PGAccess 3 as it is just what I want from a DB tool (Oracle - I don't want a web enabled enterprise manager that uses 500mb of ram just to startup). It is lightweight and works and does not cause problems with the system.

20 Sep, 2004

If you want IT News I suggest

www.theregister.co.uk - News
www.alterslash.org - Slashdot without the junk
www.cw360.com - Reasonable version of Computer Weekly on the net

20 Sep, 2004

Just got my car back from Smart of Oxford and they seem to have done the job well. I am quite pleased I am using them instead of Smart Of Beconsfield.

One odd thing struck me about Roadsters is the auto mode on the gears. The loan roadster they gave me drove very differently from mine on Auto - so it must be possible to change its behaviour. It reved a lot more - and often would wait until into the Red before changing. On mine it stays well clear of the Red on auto mode.

Oh well - I still really like the padel stick changers - they are fun!

19 Sep, 2004

My Smart Roadster is due for its first service soon - so it is going in on Monday.

I bought the car from Smart of Beconsfield but have found them such a pain to deal with it is going to get services at Smart of Oxford who I have found a pleasure to deal with (though not as good as Octagon Toyota in Slough)

It is a shame that Smart's dealer network seems to let them down. Looking at the various Smart related forums I am not the only one who seems to have had problems with the various dealers.

19 Sep, 2004

I seem to have been nominated for a BCS award for the work I did at the IPCC.
See the BCS web site for details of the awards.

19 Sep, 2004

19 Sep, 2004

Well once again an attempt at a blog.

How long will this one last?