I took a short break in Cumbria, staying with Jill for a few days and then moving up to Solfest music festival for the bank holiday weekend

It has been a long time coming but last weekend RouterTech finally received a face lift. We are now sporting a new design, layout and a considerably more feature-packed forum, as well as improved navigation and a more intuitive page hierarchy.

Keen eyes will note very quickly that the site is far from finished but the whole team are putting in daily effort to bring site up to standard and we hope to achieve a finished look in the next week or so. If you are a regular visitor there is an area of the forum for asking questions about the site and raising issues and we encourage you to make use of this area if you spot anything amiss.

One of the big additions is that RouterTech now sports a blog which I was inspired to add through my own work with WordPress and my recent visit to WordCamp UK. I intend to write articles here concerning the world of routing and also my views on the direction of the project. As one of it’s founders I’m concious that I spend no where near enough time communicating with users and I hope that the blog portion of the site will go some way towards remedying this.

A big hurdle for us at the moment is the unwillingness of hardware companies to embrace the GPL under which they are supposed to release their software which in turn holds us back somewhat in our ability to make something available that budding developers can make immediate use of. We’ve been open source all the way but some of the companies out there don’t half make things hard. As I try to spend a little more time on the RouterTech project in the coming weeks, I intend to make this issue my main focus and will be sure to keep everyone updated about my progress.

I’ve updated my gallery again after off-loading some of my recent snaps.

A couple of weeks ago I headed out to the Windsor beer and jazz festival and was blessed with superb weather and a great collection of live jazz sets to compliment the pints of ale I consumed. The good weather brought the public out in force and I managed to take a few nice shots of people enjoying the day.

Last weekend I went for one of my many walks so far this year, this time with Julia and Chris, and we got as far as Avebury before relaxing over a pub lunch and a couple of pints before returning to Swindon. While I didn’t take many photos I managed to capture a superb landscape with a rather desolate looking farm building in frame that really seems to strike a chord.

I headed out for a 10 mile hike to Avebury with Julia and Chris

Matt Mullenweg muses about starting his own bank and goes into some detail about how the open source philosophy could work in this area. While WordPress development isn’t about to stop and financial investments start, it’s certainly food for thought.

As Matt said at WordCamp UK

For everything good in your life there should be an open source alternative

Open source banking is surely just another step along this road.

According to a technology article on the BBC, the connections made between mobile phones on the various cellular networks not only give an indication of our general state of happiness but can even have a stab at gauging our job satisfaction.

While some might be tempted to say that this is obvious, after all if you spend less time on the phone you might not know so many people and thus may not be as happy, but the research mentioned in this article goes a bit deeper than that and demonstrates some interesting results. What do your mobile phone habits say about you?

Before the weekend I went out for an evening walk around Coate Water and was able to capture a superb sunset. I took the shot below at just the right moment – the cloud formation and the passage of a single swan across the frame made for the perfect photograph.

I was shown the following photo in September’s issue of Practical Boat Owner. Just goes to show that cardinal buoys are there for a reason and you shouldn’t pass the wrong side of them! What is incredible is that due to the shape of the bottom of the keel, they didn’t tip over and were able to return and sail off after a full French lunch ashore – you couldn’t get more lucky if you tried.

I headed out to the Windsor Beer & Jazz festival with my Dad to enjoy some fine ales, sunshine and a spot of live jazz

I was sent a link to a BBC article the other day on a French literature graduate who wound up working for 8 years on the checkouts because she couldn’t find a job. She ended up writing a book on her experiences and it has already sold a huge number of copies.

I think the appeal of a book like this is the notion that it could potentially happen to anyone and it also offers a window onto how we treat other human beings in different circumstances.The comments on her blog (for those of you who would like to dabble in a little French) from others who have gone through similar experiences are also rather telling in this regard.

For anyone who fancies some light reading in French I think this could well be a worthwhile book to buy, although as the BBC piece states, an English version is coming out later in the year so those of you who don’t fancy reading in French you shouldn’t have long to wait.