[dropcap cap="B"]een pretty quiet lately, probably due to the fact that I've got no broadband yet and I'm waiting until next week to ship in an engineer to sort it out(As all is reported to be working by BT so could be my internal wiring). But on the upside, it got me figuring out how to tether my iPhone to my mac last night - and use it's connect to the net. I even VPN'd into my Dev box at work so that's pretty OK(albeit it somewhat sad, got messengered by the US fir my troubles. Serves me right). 

Started reading a new book about writing Linux device drivers - I'm 4 chapters in and it's pretty interesting as it brings a new appreciation to the handling of time within the hardware of your PC but until I write an interface to one of my hardware devices, it's remain just that. It's pretty amazing and I've recognised it now, how broadband and the Internet keeps us busy and for me, sometimes I think now, leaves me with a sort of empty satisfaction and time place holder. That said, I've completed much of the preparation for my next Java module in March/June(I think) probably exclusively because I'm not 'hanging' about online. 

With my tethered connection, I enabled my spam filter on Stuartmathews.com as it stopped when the box restarted and I was recording email left right and centre. Also installed usermin which gives me an interface to report email as spam(among other things) and thus train the spam system. Boring. But it checked a few boxes I had unticked.

Also, I've not returned to gym to train, other than use the net at the club on one Saturday last week. I'll be looking to return to normal programming next week as it's starting to bother me now.

On the work front, I had an interesting day yesterday, well interesting to a developer :-) as I produced a recursive XSL transform to create a sitemap (Many levels of data) from an XML that holds visited sites by the Http Spider I've written. Woah! Yeah, Geekazoid.

Been having a lot of defects in my spider lately due to a bit of laziness in unit testing and lack of requirement specifications for the functioning of the spider but it's bugging me so I'm figuring out how best to counter that in the future, efficiently. Bottom line is to prove your solution but creating tests. This is probably to our new QA exec we've got to improve quality. Now it's a competition to eliminate all bugs before it goes out to him(a good thing)

Also been pretty blown away about the beauty working in London city, recently really enjoying the architecture and modern style blended conservatively into long standing buildings. Im still pretty stuck on liking the scale and design of the buildings around where I'm working and indeed the one I'm in.

Still trying to finalise stuff from the move almost two months ago - winding on too long and too late now. 

Heard that my mother has started writing again, which is great. Dad is pretty much like me, working through technology and enjoying it - story of our lives really but all seem to be enjoying life as certainly I am.

Ever conscious of the time flying by and anxious to make the mist if it and remember it in the future. 

Apart from that - it's all good in the hood. Life is fantastic![/dropcap]