27 October 2000<\/p>\n
Woohoo! After four, yes, four<\/b> months of waiting, we’ve finally Would you buy a used car from this man? Of course you would \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n The long wait is finally over: Last Christmas Abi gave me the first three Harry Potter books. I zipped At one of our local Waterstones<\/a>, As I read the blurbs, I discovered that there were two series: a Victorian Can I just say, “AAARGH”<\/b>.<\/p>\n The Northern Lights<\/i> and The Subtle Knife<\/i> are just stunningly So, for the last nine months or so, I’ve been eagerly waiting for The Amber But now it’s finally here. I picked it up yesterday evening, and I’m looking After having been a “temp” MCSD (two of my qualifying exams expired Fifteen weeks down, twenty-five more to go. Abi is just starting to show, or Well, more like yet another set of upgrades to the old one. Frankenstein, To go with the motherboard is a new AMD<\/a> At the same time, I also decided to give up my treasured Linux project. All of the above had been in my original plan for yon wee Linux beastie I figure I’ll probably end up with a Linux machine somewhere inside More soon,<\/p>\n -Martin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Car! Books! Stuff! 27 October 2000 Woohoo! After four, yes, four months of waiting, we’ve finally got the car we won in July. I went along to Abercromby Toyota last Monday to pick it up. I think the sales people were a bit confused when the first thing I asked was, “will you buy it … <\/p>\n
\ngot the car we won in July. I went along to Abercromby Toyota last Monday
\nto pick it up. I think the sales people were a bit confused when the first
\nthing I asked was, “will you buy it back off us?” They got over it, though,
\nbut the price they offered wasn’t quite the price we were hoping for. So now
\nit’s on the open market<\/a>.<\/p>\nBooks!<\/h3>\n
\nThe Amber Spyglass<\/a> by Philip Pullman is finally out in hardback. This is the
\nthird book in the “His Dark Materials” trilogy, which started with
\nThe Northern Lights<\/i> and carried on in The Subtle Knife<\/i>.<\/p>\n
\nthrough them in a matter of days, and found that I was thirsty for more
\nyoung adult fiction. (For the last few years now, I’ve had an idea for a YA
\ntrilogy of my own bubbling about in my head, but it hasn’t emerged onto paper
\nyet. I was hoping to stir up some more creative juices. Hardly surprisingly,
\nit still hasn’t happened yet.)<\/p>\n
\nin the YA section, I found a pile of books, all apparently in the same series,
\nthat caught my eye straight away. The name of the author: Philip Pullman.
\nThe book covers were colourful and moody, the lettering of the titles bold and
\nsublty ornate, like a finely crafted sword. Whoever came up with the design
\ndeserves an award–they are some of the finest and most inviting covers
\nI’ve ever seen.<\/p>\n
\ntrilogy (The Ruby in the Smoke<\/i>, The Shadow in the North<\/i> and The
\nTiger in the Well<\/i>) and the “His Dark Materials” trilogy. At the time
\nI didn’t realize that only the first two books of this trilogy were available.<\/p>\n
\ngood books. They may be targeted at a youthful audience, but any adult will
\nbe equally bowled over by them. The characters are engaging, the world Pullman
\nhas envisioned is wide in scope, filled with genuinely innovative fantasy ideas
\n(like Lyra’s world, where everyone has a personal daemon, a kind of animal familiar
\nthat is almost part of one’s soul), and the adventures portrayed are gripping,
\nfast-moving, and filled with tension and action. Plus, they introduced us to
\nTokaji wine \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
\nSpyglass<\/i> to appear. Fan sites originally said it would be coming out around
\nApril, but the release date was set back to November (although it’s out already).
\nSome rumours say that this was to avoid conflict with the launch of the fourth
\nHarry Potter and the Goblet of Fire<\/i>, others say that Pullman delivered a
\nlarger than expected manuscript to his publishers, and that it required extensive
\nediting to bring it down even to the eventual 550 pages of the UK hardback edition.
\n(I suspect the former, myself.)<\/p>\n
\nforward to some long and pleasurable hours over the weekend. Once we’ve finished
\nlaying a new floor in our loft, that is.<\/p>\nMicrosoft Certification update<\/h3>\n
\nthree days after I’d achieved got my MCSD), I’ve now upgraded myself to
\npermanent MCSD status. The dreaded “70-100 Exam” (Analysing Requirements
\nand Defining Solution Architectures) turned out not to be so hard after all,
\nand I passed it with a modest 99%. No, really.<\/p>\nB!<\/h3>\n
\nmaybe she’s just getting fat. (Ouch–stop hitting me!)<\/i><\/p>\nNew PC!<\/h3>\n
\nwhich was build from scratch from individual components back in 1995, has now
\nshed its last original part–the keyboard. And that was only because it had
\ntoo large a connector to plug into my brand new
\nAbit<\/a> KT7 motherboard. Mmmm….Donuts…<\/p>\n
\nDuron 800 chip, which is a serious eye-opener after my old K6-2 400. I can
\nnow finally run Deus Ex<\/a> at an acceptable
\nframerate–even on my old Voodoo Banshee video card. Okay, so it’s only
\nrunning at 640 x 480 resolution, but that’s just fine by me. It still looks
\ngreat. (And as for Quake 3, can we say 79fps? Sure we can!)<\/p>\n
\nI like the idea of Linux, and I love puttering around with it, writing little
\nscripts, hacking around with CGI and perl. I don’t<\/em> love having to
\nspend several days trying to figure out how to get my modem working, how
\nto set up the drivers for our wireless
\nethernet cards<\/a>, how to configure Samba to serve up our MP3 collection,
\nand how to configure a proxy\/firewall to allow both Abi and me to share
\nour internet connection.<\/p>\n
\nin the corner. But when I can reformat the hard drive, install Windows 98
\nand WinProxy<\/a> and have the machine
\ndoing all of the above in under two hours with Microsoft software, then
\nit really isn’t much of a contest.<\/p>\n
\nthe firewall, and maybe I’ll mess around with it occasionally. I hack
\naround with computers all day for a living; when I get home, I really just want
\nthings to work first time. Unfortunately, Linux just doesn’t cut it
\non the ease of use and configuration front yet.<\/p>\n