It was my birthday and I was to be wined and dined at the exclusive Rasoi Vineet Bhatia restaurant in London.
Our 2 month old son had just been properly dined (no wine here) and we were confident that he would be safe in the hands of my wife’s cousin.
A short drive to the restaurant and finding a parking spot right outside it gave hints of a very successful evening out; oh what a luxury.
The restaurant is renowned for it’s Indian cuisine prepared by a Michelin star chef.
Knowing that this was a once in a lifetime experience I went straight for the 9 courses Gourmand menu. The staff assured me that the sizes of the dishes were small enough to be manageable.
An explosion of flavours and colours was just a few moments away.
The restaurant offers a menu of 4 or 6 glasses of (fine) wine to go with the food and this seemed to be a worthy match.
A state of comfortable and comforting tipsiness was just a few moments away.
My wife wasn’t as brave (or hungry) as me and went for a measly starter/main/desert combo.
Just as the starters had arrived the phone rang and alarm bells went of. False alarm however, it was just a friend wishing happy birthday.
Two mouthfuls later and the phone was ringing again.
This time it was our impromptu baby sitter informing us that the baby was crying uncontrollably and he was not able to calm him down.
Cue my wife sprinting out of the restaurant and leaving me behind explaining to the staff that everything was fine and asking if possibly we could delay the dishes for a while.
I, or was it my tummy, had made the decision that once the storm was over my wife would be able to return, her appetite preserved, and continue were we left of. Little did I know that mothers with newborn babies do not work nor think like that.
One hour later she was back. Her hair just little bit out of control and no puke on her shoulder either so I assumed things were fine.
I managed to get to course 5 out of 9 when the phone rang again.
Our impromptu baby sitter was informing us that waiting in the car outside the restaurant has made the baby unsettled yet again and that he was forced to drive in circles around the block to calm him down.
This was the final straw on my wife’s back and the bill was asked for.
On the way out the person at the door mentioned jokingly that he had seen our car passing by a few times.
Forza azzurra!
I must confess, with all “my teams” out of the cup, it was hard to root for any of the finalists.
I thought I had hedged my chances by favouring all of Czech Republic, Sweden, Brazil, England and Poland. Unfortunately fate would not have it like that.
Instead it was France versus Italy in the 2006 World Cup final.
France started the cup in an unimpressive way but got a little better witch each game. Then they went on to beat Brazil in the quarter finals and it was ’98 all over again.
Italy were a strong team all through the cup and played a very good last game. They even managed to score 5 out of 5 penalties (something they did not do against Brazil in 1994 🙂
What will be talked about for years however, is Zinedine Zidane’s spectacular head butt and the following red card.
A football player that has been described as “God” by his country men, at the top of his career, last game of his career, last minutes of a World Cup final and he looses his marbles.
What an ironic last shot of Zinedine Zidane. Him leaving the stadium and the much aspired trophy behind.
Watching the Italian players running around with flags on their shoulders, silly hats on their heads and kissing the trophy… priceless.
WELL DONE ITALIA!
[via Kottke]
Still an Ubuntu virgin I am
I had this idea of trying to resurrect an old Sony VAIO laptop (PCG-Z600TEK) with a free distribution of Linux OS. The laptop is to be used as a wireless picture frame if all goes well.
The laptop had previously suffered from intermittent HD crashes and had been collecting dust in a cupboard for a good 2 years.
Weighing in at just 700Mhz and 256 MB of RAM, it is fairly weak by today’s standards and I had a feeling that the original Windows 2000 was too much for it.
Ubuntu is a very popular Linux distribution at the moment so I decided to follow the masses and give it a try.
The download was easy as can be but the problems started shortly afterwards because no matter what I did I was not able to burn a single distribution properly.
All in all I tried 4 distributions (AMD64 server/desktop and i386 server/desktop), 3 Cd/DVD authoring software packages, 2 CD-RW drives on two different PCs and about 10 different CDs (two different brands). None was successful!
If you are planning on giving Ubuntu a try, the first thing to check is the check sum of the distribution after the download. This is to ensure that the download was 100% successful.
On Windows you can use the free digestIT or MD5Sum . If you are using Firefox there is a MD Hash Tool extension available.
Compare the generated MD5 check sum with the official Ubuntu MD5 check sums. If there is a discrepancy re-download.
Second step is to burn the ISO distribution to an empty CD. Various CD/DVD authoring can do this, e.g. Nero burning Rom, Alcohol 120% and the free CDBurnerXP Pro.
Using slower burning speed (1-8x) should help towards a successful burn but it didn’t in my case.
Once burned, pop the CD in your CD drive, make sure to enable booting from CD/DVD (optical drive) in your BIOS and restart you computer.
Make sure to select “Check CD integrity” in the Ubuntu menu as a first thing. This is where it was reported over and over that my CD was corrupted.
I have posted a few questions on the Ubuntu forums and maybe there will appear a workaround at some point. Until then the Sony VAIO laptop will be collecting some more dust.
Heard on Slashdot: Ubuntu is an ancient African word, meaning “can’t configure Debian”.
Update
One more disc burned and tested on a third PC (Dell Latitude D505) and Ubuntu booted up properly. It appears that the Ubuntu 6.06 is very sensitive about hard ware being used.
From a quick tour of Ubuntu 6.06, Linux on the desktop has come a long way. It was responsive, esthetically pleasing and with all that Unix goodness.
Short lasting experience though. The Dell Wireless TrueMobile 1350 WiFi card is not supported natively and I was not in a mood making it work with the ndis wrapper.
A memory test on the VAIO showed severe problems so no wonders Ubuntu did not boot up on it.
His name is Earl
…and he has made us laugh for the last 7 days. We managed to watch almost 20 episodes during that time.
Earl is “that kind of guy who does nothing but bad things and then wonders why his life sucks”.
In a weak moment he realises that he has to change and sets on to a path of Karma: “Do good things and good things will come to you”.
We get to follow Earl, his bearlike brother Randy, his ex-wife Joy and the always chilled out Crabman.
Earl is played by the incredibly charming and down to earth Jason Lee and I dare to say that he transforms this small town, trailer-park comedy into a pure gem.
Catch the show on Sky. The show is in HD over in the US but on SkyHD there is only SD.
Hyde Park Calling with Roger Waters and Texas
I thought I would be telling you about how I was enjoying the Dark Side of the Moon being performed by Roger Waters but instead I will be telling you about how I didn’t. The story is just as good I believe.
My wife had purchased 4 tickets for Hyde Park Calling, 1st of July, long long time ago. We were under the impression that a) 2 friends would be joining us and b) we would find a baby sitter. Well a) the 2 friends freaked off on a belated honey moon and b) no baby sitter was to be found.
In addition Ticketmaster had failed to deliver the tickets (despite a £5 charge per ticket) so I had to head my butt over to the box office to pick them up.
Scalpers were buying up tickets for £5-10 and selling them for £40 so it was a pretty cut throat environment trying to sell the tickets off.
Due to having so much more class than any scalper, I managed to unload one ticket for £40 and one at £20.
The third ticket was almost sold but the girl was hesitant because she thought I was selling fake tickets.
After persuading her about the authenticity of my wares, she jokingly mentioned that if I only had a friend that would join her because going to rock concerts was no fun alone.
I was about to say sorry but when I realised that a friend was on the rebound and that this could possibly turn out to be a great story to tell the grand children.
A phone call and 10 minutes later the friend was on his way super excited about Dark Side of the Moon and fairly excited about the blind date.
Sometimes life is all about those spontaneous moments that make it diverge from the seemingly fixed path of faith.
I am very much looking forward to hearing about the outcome; no details spared!
Increase your bittorrent download speeds
With the latest “Windows critical updates” it is time to revisit the old Windows XP SP2 and Event ID 4226 issue.
With Windows SP2 Microsoft decided to cripple you network performance by limiting outgoing connections to 10 (from previous 60,000+).
You may have applied the popular LVLlord patch but make sure to check your TCPIP.SYS frequently as “Windows Critical Updates” have a tendency to restore/replace your TCPIP.SYS to the crippled one.
TorrentFreak has a good write up that touches many other speed optimising topics.
Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS and heart rate monitor watch review
The new Garmin Forerunner 305 is a GPS receiver and heart rate monitor in a single watch. It is a wonderful addition to any activity where you want keep track on distance, pace and heart rate such as running, cycling, triathlon or trekking.
Update August 2008
In a recent firmware update Garmin added the ability to add locations manually.
I find this very helpful when using the watch as simple navigation tool in a foreign city or country.
Say for example that you are travelling to Rome. Now you can enter a few favourite locations (hotel, restaurants, sights) on your Forerunner 305 and then walk or drive around Rome and being confident which direction you should go and how far it is left.
Not to mention always being able to find your way back home (hotel) no matter how lost or drunk you are.
End update
The unit features new design and new features compared to the older Forerunner 301. The Forerunner 305 is smaller, has better GPS reception, has a higher resolution display and better water proofness.
The watch shows time, pace, average pace, distance, heart rate, calories burned, location, course and much more. Choose to display the information on several default screen provided or create your custom screen to show the stats you want.
A few work out modes are built in like intervall training, heart rate zone, minimum pace, distance, time or against a friend’s stats for the same course. Due to accuracy issues I find it bit frustrating to use the minimum pace or heart rate modes and instead just do my own work outs.
While the older unit had the mini-USB port on the watch it self covered with a rubber cap, the 305 has 4 copper pads used for charging and data transmission together with a miniature cradle. This makes the unit completly sealed.
Triathlon athletes will especially like the new water resistant design. While the unit may survive a longer swim under water the reception would suffer. The triathlon community is recommending to put the watch in a ziplock bag and keep it under the swimming cap.
In the box you will find the Forerunner 305 watch, a heart rate chest strap, an USB to mini-USB cable, an extension arm band, a tiny cradle and the standard manual, Windows USB drivers and workout software.
The accompanying workout software (TrainingCenter) let’s you summarize various kinds of logged data and to overlay runs with maps. The strength of the software is analysis of captured data.
I was however not pleased with the accompining software and instead prefer SportTracks.
SportTracks is free (at the moment). It has a more intuitive interface, a more powerful integration with Google Maps and a one click integration with Google Earth.
You need to have Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 installed to use SportsTrack.
The Forerunner 305 can also be used while travelling. Be it to find your way back to the hotel after an ambitious sightseeing tour or to map a jungle excursion (open in Google Earth).
The unit does not have any maps so full fledged navigation is out of the question but you can leave a digital “trail of bread crumbs” while you are trekking and always be able to find your way back.
By using the latest GPS SirfIII chip the watch is able to be smaller and consume less battery.
The older model 301 suffered from bad GPS reception while being worn as it had optimum reception while being placed with display up (not ideal while running).
With Forerunner 305, by placing the GPS antenna on the bottom of the watch optimal GPS reception is instead achieved when the watch is worn normally.
A good place to purchase the Forerunner 305 in the UK would be at Globalpositioningsystems.co.uk (£ 240 inc VAT).
BBQ Boy
7 BBQs in 10 days; I am becoming quite the master of the fork and the sauce.
The mix of World Cup 2006, scorching hot weather and several visiting friends created a high pressure BBQ climate.
Make sure to have a decently sized BBQ to avoid disappointment among the hungry guests. A disposable BBQ will not do it. The Dual Deck Grill from Direct Design on the other hand is sized to deliver.
Meat is possibly the most important part of a successful BBQ and if you are in London I would recommend visiting the South American Beef website.
Good quality beef, amazing variety of cuts and decent prices. They even deliver to your front door.
Try the famous Picanha Brasileira cut or the Ponta de Contra File Argentino.
If you like to get your meat closer from home, then Waitrose has some very juicy Dovecote Park 6 rump steaks.
Add some portobello mushrooms, onions and wash it down with a well, well chilled rose wine.
Rinse and repeat!
[Pig BBQ from Pappa’s Grills]
FootieFox – Follow World Cup scores at work
Want to follow the 2006 Football World Cup in style? Then check out the FireFox extension called FootieFox.
The extension let’s you select your favourite teams and discreetly display scores from games in the FireFox tray.
When a team scores a box slides across the bottom of your screen to make sure you don’t miss it.
FootieFox is a great tool to be able to follow the World Cup and still being able to produce code (aka working).
They even provide a dynamic score board to display on your personal site or blog:
Father’s day
Yesterday was the best Father’s Day ever.
Laying in bed and reading an I love you daddy card brought tears to my eyes. Once again it made me realise that I am a father and all the joy and responsibilities that come with it.
As always I was showered with presents but none delivered the message as strongly as that I love you daddy card.
A picknick was arranged with a few couples from our antenatal class. Everyone was comparing battle stories from the labour room and the progress of their babies.
Baby acne, organic nappies, colic, sleeping patterns and all kinds of wondrous details were touched upon. I think everyone was relived to find out that they were not the only people in the world with their specific issues.
So you see, the big person on the cup on the left is me and the little fellow going Weeeeeeeeeeeee is my son.