We’ve had a late cancellation by one of our group meaning there’s a single ticket, flights, and share of a car to Ozora available.
The flight’s already booked, leaving on Monday 10th at 0950 from Stanstead, and the return flight is the following Monday at 13:25 from Bratislava.
The costs would be:
Ticket: face value
Flights: Ryan air charge £100 to change the name on the ticket – flight times would remain the same.
Car: no idea yet, but that cost would be split 4 ways.
If you know of anyone who’d be interested in coming, but hasn’t anything arranged yet, please ask them to get in touch – jonathan (at) downagain (dot) com
Last night I was bitching because the internet at home was going so slowly. Every damn page was taking an absolute age to load. I nearly gave up.
Then, after an hour or so of this, Jo commented that perhaps it was just Facebook being crap. So, I tried somewhere else; it was lightening quick.
Lesson learned tonight:
If Facebook becomes your yardstick for measuring the speed of your internet connection, you need to readjust your life. Seriously.
A week ago, I blogged about taking the positivity challenge. The idea is that you spend seven consecutive days looking on the positive sides of everything. I tweaked the concept slightly by putting in a restart clause if I lingered on a negative thought for too long.
First off, I’ll admit I had three restarts, including one this morning. They were because:
- A ridiculous family argument
- Mental funk/upset about the state of my stomach
- Disturbing dream
The disturbing dream was a silly reason – it seemed so real I woke up feeling quite upset and on edge, and wasn’t able to shift it for a few hours.
I tried reframing the stomach issues, and failed. I spoke to T about the idea (the seven day positivity thing) and she made the valid point, one I’d said in the original post, that not everything can or should be reframed, and that needn’t mean ‘failing’ the task.
So that’s what’s happened, but more importantly, what effect has the time so far had on me? Well, in bullet-point form:
- I’m feeling much better
- I’m smiling and laughing far more than usual.
- Conversations in group social situations flow more easily
- Time passes quickly
It’s been a thoroughly worthwhile endeavour so far, and I’ll be starting the seven days again from tomorrow morning. Here’s to a good week.
While I mostly come across as a sweet, fluffy, light-hearted ball of fun, it may shock you to find out that actually, I’m quite a pessimistic, cynical person.
I know, you’re stunned.
My line of thinking has always (in my adult life) been: assume the worst will happen then at least you’ll be pleasantly surprised more than you’ll be disappointed (and if you’re disappointed, it shows that the worst you assumed was off the mark – something to work on later.)
I’ve decided I’m going to take The Positivity Challenge. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to try re-frame negative things in a positive light in a concerted effort to improve my over all level of happiness and general well-being.
I’m not going to go nuts about this – if my house burns down, I’m going to be fucked off and upset, but if my toilet falls off the wall (again), I’m going to see that as a great opportunity to redo my bathroom (well, I’m doing that anyway, but you get the idea.)
Anything I struggle to re-frame in a positive way, I’ll post about and perhaps you can give me some ideas.
Remembering at the right times (ie, when someone pisses me off) may take some getting into, so I’m making a tweak to the program:
When ever I allow a negative thought to linger for more than a couple of minutes, I’ll restart the seven days from the beginning.
This should be fun. Who wants to join me?
At the moment my game playing life revolves around:
Prince of Persia is great, am enjoying the story, the amusing conversations the characters have, and, as always, the awesome acrobatics.
Resistance 2, the sequel to ‘Resistance: Fall of Man’, is very samey. Have played for a number of hours and it’s not evolving. Turning, shooting, turning, shooting. *Yawn*
Killzone 2: More of the same ala Resistance 2, except even the bad guys never change here. But it is far more challenging, and will be satisfying to complete on that basis alone.
I think, really, I’m just waiting for the next Half-life 2 to come along. That game, even though it’s years old, really set the bar high. Speaking of which, I should open my Orange Box and start playing HL2 ep2 – I’ve owned it for over a year and it’s still in the wrapper. Same with Civilisation: Revolution.
Making a comeback to the playing circle soon will be:
- Mirror’s Edge – Great concept, fun to play, haven’t see anything like it before. Awesome game, but sidelined at the moment for the above three.
- Fallout 3 – After an extended period of playing went back and focused on work for months and didn’t get back into it. Want to complete it.
In hand-held news, they’re making excellent progress with the Pandora. It’s shaping up to be a great machine, and I’ll be excited to receive the finished article. I think it’ll end up replacing my current hand helds (psp, ds).
After a couple of years’ consideration, I’ve decided I’m not going to get an extension to the house. A decision which means I can progress with improving other areas.
The plot I’m on is ideal for someone wanting to extend the house. There’s a separate garage to the side which could easily be brought into the house with another bedroom and en-suite bathroom put above – this would also allow almost doubling the size of the kitchen. But aside from a few days every couple of weeks, it’s just me who lives here, and while I often think about how much I enjoy having the space, I don’t actually use it. The dining area is rarely used, the smaller bedroom is rarely used etc, so having another bathroom, bedroom and bigger kitchen would be wasted on me.
Now having decided that, I can move forward with replacing the kitchen, bathroom and boiler/central heating system.
I’m tempted to do away with the bath entirely and have a large walk in shower area – I’ve not used the bath in 6-8 months or so, and whenever I run one, I end up showering afterward anyway (I’d make sure a bath could be fitted before I sold the place). And the thought of having a kitchen with all appliances in one room is very appealing – I currently don’t have a dish washer, or freezer in there.
Once those items are done, I’ll reconsider my living arrangements. Orpington, while great for raising kids full time, isn’t that good for someone who doesn’t have children full time. The temptation to rent out this house and then find somewhere closer to town is huge. I could even move around every 6 months to get an idea about a few areas before deciding on one to settle on – and then either sell the house, or maybe continue renting it out. The possibilities are endless.
But first things first: kitchen, bathroom, central heating.
I’ve been making slower than wanted progress with my project. The reason is primarily that I’ve not had the time I’d like to dedicate to it as I’ve been trying to focus on an exam I have to sit on Monday. A secondary reason is that a whole bunch of things have changed since I last used the Zend Framework (March 2008) so I’m pretty much learning it from scratch which is far slower.
I’ve a few questions I’m planning on posting to their mailing lists as I’d rather solve the problems I’m having by using ‘best practice’ than by hacking it (meaning it’ll likely break if/when ZF upgrades).
So far I’ve got it reading and writing the configuration tables using Zend_Form as the front end hooking into a back end comprising of a Data Mapper along with a Row Data Gateway to write to the database. The forms fields are being validated nicely too. Feeds can be added, edited and removed now.
Next I’m going to work on the data collection routines. Once those are working, I can revisit the front end and make it pretty.
At this rate I’ll have something worth putting online in the very near future.
For years I’ve favoured very baggy clothes. My t-shirts are all large or extra large, and my trousers are 34″ waist and very baggy around the legs.
Recently, probably related to some lifestyle changes, my trousers have been uncomfortable – I’ve had to put extra holes in my belts and even then they’re slipping down when I walk; it’s an embarrassing public flash just waiting to happen!
So yesterday I went shopping with Tina and got a few new items. I’m back to fitting in 32″ waist jeans (they’re actually a little large for me), and have gone for less baggy legs. I’m also back to wearing ‘medium’ t-shirts.
It’s going to take getting used to, but I like it. Buying these size clothes will be further encouragement to maintain my lifestyle and exercise properly.
I also purchased a watch on Friday. After an 11 year absence and a recent dislike of always carrying my phone on me, I decided it was about time (pun intended). After reviewing a few options online and browsing round the shops, I settled on a Tissot model. It fits me well, has the leather strap I prefer, and is comfortable.
I’ve been quite busy this week with various bits of PHP development both for clients and for myself.
The client’s project involves enhancing their codebase so it’s possible (easy, even) to fully test all parts of their sites. Currently, some key parts can only be ‘tested’ by deploying to live systems, and this is not desirable, and there have been a few problems recently where things haven’t gone to plan.
The cause of these problems are hard coded constants in the code which remain the same no matter where the tree is (dev, staging, live servers). So in the past week I’ve integrated Zend_Config from the Zend Framework so that appropriate constants are defined depending where the tree is hosted.
90% of that work is complete. Once they’ve tested the upgrade of ZF from 1.5 to 1.8.*, it’ll be good to see it deployed. As the changes impact every website of theirs, I’m looking forward to the deployment going smoothly.
I’ve also started work on my own project; my first personal project in years! I’ve been looking at ‘life streaming’ – where you take your activity across many websites and display it in a single location in chronological order – recently, and installed sweetcron on my domain. While the setup of the software was easy, there are problems. One example is that displaying different feeds from the same domain breaks it (ie, multiple youtube subscriptions). I eventually got it working on mine, but it required extensive configuration and theme hacks to get working – changes which will be wiped on any future upgrades. Not ideal.
So I’m designing and implementing my own lifestream software. It’s using the Zend Framework, and I’m learning the MVC properly as I go. I’m having fun coding it, and with some regular free time, I should quickly get it to a point I’m happy replacing my sweetcron installation.
Last night I arrived home to a letter from the local church.
It started talking about the power of prayer, and how the members of the church have found it to be helpful to them, and to others. They enclosed a prayer card and requested that I write on it anything I would like them to pray for.
So I’ve written:
‘I would like you to pray for all the people who think blind faith is a virtue.’
I hope I’m there to hand it to them personally, rather than them collect it from outside my door.
In the same situation, what would you write? If it’s good, I’ll print out more cards and give them a few :)
