I’m sure everyone has one of these moments where they think they have seen it all before, but this morning at 8:30am it was my turn. I saw a horse and cart in Hyde Park, no joke, although I was as surprised to see it as you will no doubt be to read about it! I grabbed some photo evidence in case there were any doubters.

I’m back from the boat! On Saturady we had a superb sail, tacking close to the wind all the way down river to the mouth of the Colne and then in for the night to the Pyefleet where we were in fact joined at anchor by a number of our friends from the sailing club. A good force 4 pushing a force 5 had the toe rail in the water most of the way and provided exhillirating speed along with plenty of spray. While we didn’t break Burnaby’s speed record we came close.

Although dinner with friends on their boat at anchor didn’t quite materialise we made do on our own boat and with wine in hand were able to take in yet another fantasic sunset with the added bonus of the last night of the proms playing on our radio. It was a truely enjoyable night, and one that will serve as a good momento until the start of the sailing season next year.

Regular readers will note a distinct lack of photos for this trip; we were having such a good sail I didn’t really have much of a chance to take any, although I did catch a few when I got the chance, mostly of sunsets which are always amazing out over the water. Soon to come also in the photo department should be some shots of us under sail taken by our friends as they passed us. For all those who have been keen to see how Burnaby sails, stay tuned.

Our trip back to Tollesbury was equally enjoyable, but reduced wind levels afforded us the chance to try polling out the Genoa and relaxing on deck as a downwind course coasted us nicely home.

All in all it was a great trip and one that has left me ready to face Leeds and all the work that will invariably bring me.

Sad but true, this weekend I will be having my last sail of the year on Burnaby. We are sailing up the coast with a few friends in convoy as it were on their boat and stopping the night just down from Pin Mill near Harwich. I’ll try and grab a few pictures as ever, but I’m mainly going to be concentrating on enjoying the fresh air and freedom before getting back to work in earnest. It looks set to be hot with a good breeze so we should get plenty of speed and spray from the sea, not to mention a sun tan. For all those already back in Leeds ready for the new term, I’ll be seeing you all on Monday!

I setup a new Dell computer for my sister today and was driven so mad that I felt I had to write something here. On the face of it its a nice little machine, good spec, came fairly cheap, is well built and has a nice sharp 17″ flat screen. My gripe isn’t with the hardware at all though, its with what I was presented with on the hard drive.

The system came pre-loaded with Windows XP, which is fine and what my sister needs, but on top of that was a SHOCKING (and I mean shocking) number of needless programs. There were about 6 trial programs all setup to pop up registration/purchase reminders on start-up and on top of that there was an ugly set of internet trial programs loaded on as well. To get a “bare bones” windows install with just the dell drivers and a few other items my sister needed before putting her own programs on I had to remove about 18 applications and restart the machine 7 or so times in the process.

Then I found something that made my blood boil. A standard install leaves you with a C drive with all your data on it. You can then use an application of your choice to reduce the size of C and repartition the remaining space as you wish or leave it as is of course. This system however, because it came with a Norton Ghost trial was setup to have a “backup” partition, which as only a trial program was provided was completely useless and a rubbish size for anything other than taking a C drive image, which my sister wasn’t going to do. I had to use a 3rd party (paid for) application to fix this partitioning issue because Ghost wouldn’t do it either before or on uninstall. Given the number of trial programs I had already found I was shocked the machine wasn’t programmed to try and sell me a copy of partition magic as it sat smugly and watched my predicament.

Last but certainly not least on my list of gripes was the number of Windows updates that needed to be downloaded. I had to gobble up well over 250Mb of bandwidth just to bring the machine up to scratch, yet the machine had only been built a week earlier, and boasted it was SP2 ready. While it did have SP2, it didn’t have updates realeased at the same time as SP2. Go figure.

All in all I’m angry with Dell. Not because their hardware has gone downhill, it hasn’t - its still as good as it ever was, but for selling out to as many software companies as possible and serving their customers effectively ad infested machines rather than something that can be used out of the box. I used to recommend Dell as perfect for the novice to just get out of the box and use, but now you need a phd level education just to remove the trial pop-ups that insist on interrupting your work. Needless to say I shant be making such recommendations in the future.

I guess the small mercy is that automatic updates and the firewall came enabled by default. At least the newbies won’t be hacked while they enjoy their ads then.

Despite having lived at Clarence dock for 6 months right next to the Royal Armouries museum and having it on reasonable authority that it was a good place to visit, I hadn’t done so. Until yesterday that is.

As Hannah was staying I figured that a day our was called for in addition to have a modge around town and going to see where I used to live just a few months back, we popped into the museum. It’s a superb place with an amazing collection of warfare related items. Their collection of guns is particularly impressive with everything from the earliest weapons right through to WW2 heavy machine guns. One guy remarked to me that this was the largest and most impressive collection of guns he had ever seen and I’m very much inclined to agree with him. The armour and swords are also amazing to browse around, the size and brutality of some weapons making you flinch even just looking at them on display.

As with many museums we didn’t go round the whole thing, we couldn’t, it would have taken a good couple of days, but it is certainly worth visiting if you live in Leeds, and if you find yourself spending a day in Leeds from one of the surrounding towns and cities, be sure to spend an hour or two of your time at the Royal Armouries.

Yesterday I took another jaunt into York with Hannah, this time to meet up with James Flinders and a few other friends and we climbed up the Minster cathedral central tower. Amazingly it was the first time I had ever done this despite having been in York for over two years as a student. It was amazing what views you could see and how much of the city and surrounding areas I could recognise from the height. Hannah found it quite useful in seeing where all the streets were and I, as usual, got some fairly good photos.

After treking it up the minster we went to Betty’s tea rooms. This is another “must do” for all who visit York, but an added bonus for me was that I got to meet up with Alannah who I hadn’t seen in ages, over a year in fact! The great thing was it was like I had never left and we enjoyed chatting about everything and anything as we used to do in on a regular basis. We promised to keep in touch better which should be really good if we manage what with the busy lives we both lead.

The great thing about the day really though was the benefit it gave to Hannah. It seemed that meeting people still studying at York with different views, opinions and favorite things to me really cemented her wish and keen-ness to study at York and her confidence she would meet loads of great people and have an awesome time. This is brilliant and is certainly the best way to be approaching going to uni.

To finish the day off with icing on the cake as it were I caught a glimpse of an absolutely wonderful sunset over the river Ouse on our way back to the station. It was so beautiful that I’ve had to post it here rather than just leaving it in the gallery of the outing. A great and to a great day

RouterTech has announced the release of version 2 of its landmark AR7WRD firmware. Supporting more routers than ever before and providing lots more features with it, this really is one of the best firmwares you can be using on any compatable router. Full support is being provided in the forums. Stability is the best yet and a range of little tweaks have been applied to the firmware to ensure the best uptime possible for your home network internet connection.

I would like to take this opportunity to personally thank the developers (thechief and biro) who have worked tirelessly on this release for RouterTech; the whole project would be nothing without you.

I got a large dose of nostalgia today as I gave Hannah a tour of York university campus. It seems like only yesterday that I frequented its walkways and bars and sat by the lake in contemplation about something or other. In the course of the day we inevitably ended up in Halifax College and sat on a bench in Lindley court; those who know the college will know it well. It seemed so strange to be somewhere I was such an integral part of and yet now am simply yet another unknown outsider to.

One thing I did realise is that I had a really awsome time there and met some really superb people, and that if it wasn’t for a few unfortunate (and with hind-sight inevitable) issues it would have been about the most perfect time at university you could have asked for.

Being older and wiser now than when I first set foot in the city of York however makes me realise that I did need to experience the big changes between York and Leeds university. It opened my eyes that the world isn’t just a sunlit walk around a old and forever firm-standing path; that in fact sometimes there are gaps and you wander off of it. Not only that but you can also be oblivious to your own destiny if you don’t take a step back from it all. It’s only by finding yourself a long way from the path or without a path at all that you learn what life is really all about.

York showed me the path but Leeds helped me to get back on it again when I’d lost my way.

It would appear that cheaper living in Leeds has it’s downsides. Insurance for students for the past few years for me has been cheap. Really cheap in fact, usually not exceeding £30 a year for complete cover for all my things in the house. This year it seems that they feel I deserve a price hike, by about 300% in fact. I was quoted a little over £120 for exactly the same cover I had for my last house in York. You can guess where I told them (them being Endsleigh) to shove it. Theres always a remote possibility of a well secured house being robbed, but it seems there is complete certainty of daylight robbery by the insurance company. I’ll take my chances thank you.

I’m back from Farnham after having been to Dan and Rie’s wedding. It was a lovely occasion; the service was perfect, the weather held for the photos outside and the speeches at the reception were great fun. Some of the best moments included Dan deciding not to tell the minister how to pronounce Du Preez for fear it would sound worse than if he didn’t know how to say it at all, and the two best men explaining somewhat tounge in cheek how Dan couldn’t find a best man and so had to settle for two below average men instead. I also got the chance to chat to a load of Dan and Rie’s friends and of course members of their family which was really enjoyable.

My pictures weren’t as good as they might have been because I didn’t want to blind people with the flash too much (there were lots of cameras going off), and the official photographers needed the best positions outside the church for when Dan and Rie came outside, but I still managed to get a few good shots. You can see them here

It just leaves me to congratulate Dan and Rie on their marriage and wish them all the best for their future together. Feel free to add your congratulations as comments.