Inspired by the sheer number of books Heather manages to read and has got through in the past I’ve bought a number of recommended reads from Amazon and had them shipped home so I can read them over Christmas. Reading fiction is one of the things I’d love to do more often its just that sadly in my ever computer orientated world I rarely find the time. Hopefully during the holidays I can work on putting this straight.

It struck me the other day as I was looking at the stats for RouterTech that we really are all over the web. Folk from blogs and forums are linking to us because they find our site and forum useful, and while each link doesn’t attract much traffic on its own it all adds up to spread the word.

Its all getting very exciting though and this month our hits look set to exceed 700,000. We’ve also got a lot of interesting stuff in the pipeline that should be ready in time for Christmas, including some brand new router and networking orientated software from our development team, further improvements to our firmware, more hardware reviews and guides not to mention of course updates to our website functionality, including a bug tracker for our open source projects.

We’ve also got a really cool announcement that we will be making in the near future so stay tuned for that. This is certainly a very interesting time to be a part of the RouterTech team and as ever my thanks are extended to all the team members who literally spend hours of their own time everyday making all of this possible, in particular the development team, thechief and biro - you guys rule.

When I first ventured out of the house on Sunday I was dreading braving the weather. It was raining and the wind was howling around the eves of the house to the extent I feared I might be blown clean off my feet once outside.

While the wind did make walking to campus difficult, there was something strangely beautiful about the way it blew the tree branches around, already with few or no leaves on them. I guess the phrase to use would be wild, and despite being in pretty much the centre of Leeds, for a brief few moment I was somewhere else entirely. Has to be one of the bonuses of wintery weather

On Saturday night I headed out with Matt, Sarann, Si, Michelle and Phil to go to the Hi-Fi club Boogaloo night. While I knew what kind of music to expect I hadn’t been to one of these nights before so it was a new experience. Matt and I necked a fair few gins to start the evening off and then hit the dance floor.

Its amazing how good funky Latin influenced music is to dance to and how quickly you lose yourself in it all. The DJ wasn’t superb and he crashed a few records, but all in all it was great fun and I’d certainly go again. Others in the group seemed to enjoy it too.

At the end of the night we decided to walk home and we had the amusement that is Matt slightly drunk. I have to say that he’s a brilliant laugh in this state, especially with other folk on the street etc. The walk back was one of the most entertaining I’ve had after a club night and Sarann and Si seemed sufficiently amused as well. His impressions of Andy Bulpit (our AI22 lecturer) will without doubt go down in group history!

When we got back home we didn’t feel like just going to bed so we whipped out a bottle of Plymouth gin and proceeded to cook steak and chips and make a fair dent in the bottle. You can always tell you’re living the student life when you actually think that cooking steak and chips at 3am is an entirely logical thing to do. We ended up staying up till about 6am just chatting about random stuff which was really cool. Certainly this is something that should happen much more regularly, it really adds the icing on an already excellent night out.

It’s been talked about a lot in the press and received a lot of criticism from die hard James Bond fans, but on Friday night I finally got my chance to view and in turn give my opinion on the latest James Bond film, Casino Royale.

At the start I was pleased. It had the characteristic beginnings of a bond film; an opening scene, colourful and well designed credits with animations and then a straight up start to the main feature. As the film went on I realised that despite my reservations about the slightly updated format and the new actor, Daniel Craig, in the staring role I was really enjoying it. Those mad crazy and yet still amusing moments remained and as ever the gadgets and high-tech stuff made many of the scenes that little bit cooler if I may be permitted to use such a word.

One slight disappointment was the notable absence of any character pertaining to be Q. A bond film just isn’t quite right without someone to dole out all the gadgets and such, not to mention the quips that always went along with the process. Without dwelling on this though there were some good character inclusions, the one most notable of which being Felix. A film isn’t the same without James’ CIA friend and it was great to see him in the movie playing the assisting role so well.

There was one point not too far from the end when I thought it was all going a little too close to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. He was getting rather close to the girl and for a bond film thats just not right. Luckily though (at least for Bond tradition, although it was a sad moment) she didn’t make it to the end of the movie, making way for Bond’s endless string of brief encounters with various women in future films which is always important.

The plot line was different enough to fit the slightly changed format but retained enough of the old style James Bond I have come to love to make me happy. While I don’t think Daniel Craig was the best choice for James Bond by a long chalk I think he carried off the role surprisingly well. It’s a difficult thing to do being Bond, and I think considering how favored the great Bond actors are amongst fans of the film I think Daniel made a valiant effort.

All in all Casino Royale exceeded my expectations and as such I’d recommend you see it. I don’t think anyone would be disappointed.

On 25th November Heather organised a day out in York for a group of friends to celebrate her birthday. It was a really big day to plan but everything worked out really well.

We did a number of really cool things. Firstly after meeting up with everyone at York station we made our way to the Shambles where we got a Victorian photograph taken of the group. This involved dressing up in traditional clothing, posing in front of a typically York background (the Minster Cathedral) and attempting to look as serious as possible. It wasn’t all that clear after it had been taken that it would come out so well but after it had been processed into black and white with that traditional Victorian look we were all very impressed with it.

After the photograph we had what became known as “free time” where the group slip up and spent a little bit of time exploring York. We took this opportunity to go and grab a coffee and talk about Christmas type things which were really nicely displayed in the various shop windows. We’d hoped to get into Betty’s but the queue was round the corner so we had to settle for Starbucks. The whole free time thing was quite amusing because for about a week before the trip I had been joking with Heather about how this term made it seem like we were organising a school outing. It turned out to be not far from the truth when we had to make a few phone calls to find out if people knew how to get to the restaurant and when we did a sort of head count outside, lol

For dinner we met up with the group again at The Slug and Lettuce which while a fairly generic place to eat turned out to be a really cool part of the day and a good opportunity to chat to everyone and get to know some of Heathers friends a little better. A little time was spent taking photos of each other and Heather unwrapping her presents from friends which was quite amusing because it involved Heather having to explain to me just exactly what the pig feat was! The food wasn’t half bad too with Heather and myself sharing a large duck platter with pancakes and plum sauce. Mmmm, tasty. After a slightly rushed desert we left to make sure we were in time for the ghost walk

The shambles ghost walk is famed amongst York students as being the best in the city and this time we weren’t disappointed. The guy who does the ghost walk is in fact the photographer at the shop past images, where we got the Victorian shot done. As a result of this he knew it was Heather’s birthday and proceeded to put he on the spot a number of times throughout the evening which was really rather amusing. What was so cool is that no one realised right until the very end of the walk who the guy was and how he knew it was Heathers birthday. The point of realisation was when the photo on the left was taken. Click it for a larger copy. Whats so good about the shambles ghost walk is the way the stories are told and how the audience are invited to participate - its one of the best things to do after a day in York, I’d highly recommend it.

After the ghost walk we headed to the Evil eye cocktail bar, not only the best in York but in my humble opinion one of the best in the country. The atmosphere is completely unique and the furnishings very quirky. Its always a good way to end a day. This time around they were serving mulled wine as well as the usual cocktail menu which was a nice Christmas touch. We ended up drinking down a fair few interesting combinations and taking some of the funniest photos of the day.

All in all everybody had a great day out and it was really great to meet some of Heather’s friends from back home. York is a seriously cool place and I can see us making many more day trips there in the future simply because a day is never long enough to explore everything there is to offer. I lived there for over 2 years and still don’t feel I’ve seen everything there is that is worth seeing.

A large number of photos were taken during the day out and you can see a large number of these in the photo gallery of the day. More will be added as they get sent to me. If you took photos of the day send them to me in high quality and I will add them to the gallery. Below is a small copy of the superb Victorian photo we had done. If you click on it you will be taken to a full size scan of the original photo.

NB: This photograph is only to be hosted here. If you want to tell your friends please link them to this post. If you wish to use this photo yourself or upload it anywhere else please ask myself or Heather for permission.