Ahhhhh

Yes, ok, I confess, I did it. I hadn't planned to, but, well, I didn't have that much choice really. There I was in the wine shop - the same one I've been in a few times now, looking over the same twenty or so French wines. Some were £3, so I didn't imagine there'd be anything of value there. I've already tried the interesting looking ones. And then it leapt off the shelf, making a desperate bid for freedom. Not an Old Block admittedly, and not even a Blackwell. But it was a 2005 St Hallett Shiraz. Yes, I succumbed and bought an Australian wine for the first time since we've been here.

Normally I would try to have shiraz with a big juicy red steak. Perhaps it's even more important when it's a Barossa shiraz. And we were "only" having pork tonight. (Nothing wrong with the pork - except that it doesn't suit shiraz so well!) The scrambled egg didn't really help either. But there it was. And it took only milliseconds to put my mind at ease: my taste buds haven't been seduced away from the one true wine. That big oaky Barossa body and complexity was evident immediately.

Now I'm not trying to suggest that this is magnificant wine: it was not at all balanced, the acid being far too overpowering. Joanna could hardly drink any. She blamed its youth, but I'm not sure it has much longevity. I don't want to buy any more (although a Blackwell or Old Block might be a different matter). The point is only that there is something remarkably distinctive about big Australian shiraz that nothing I've tried so far even comes close to.

I still want to try more French wines, and I'm looking forward to visiting "La Belle France" at the end of the month, and seeing some of her better wines. If what I see of Australian wines in the UK is any predictor of the quality of Franco-vin, then I shouldn't be too surprised. A work colleague has suggested that French wine is twice the price in the UK as in its native land. So we may have to hire a trailer.

Well I suppose you think I have a one-track mind. But I don't: the Emperor concerto has just appeared (?) on the radio, so I'm off to do some air conducting. And before you draw any conclusions, I only had one glass.

Mindblowing coding guidelines

In their simplest and most common incarnation, coding guidelines seem to be religious dogma about indentation and line spacing.

It's hard to generalise about the über-rational end of the spectrum, because I've only come across one instance. Guidance about choosing variable/function names might typically span a page or two, and discuss capitalisation, word length, etc. Derek M. Jones allocates 90 (out of 1600) to this topic, and discusses memory factors, auditory effects, typing mistaeks, adjective order, and even eye movement during searching vs detailed reading. (Scroll to what Acrobat calls the 712th page, which is near page 304, for a list.) Another interesting discussion about developers, human sciences, probability, decision making, expertise, etc can be found between (Acrobat) pages 90-157, with a particularly interesting "Thatcher Illusion" on page 120.

It's hard to decide whether seeing such a comprehensive discussion is motivating (showing that it can be done) or the opposite (enormous effort required to meet the standard demonstrated). Perhaps it's both.

And now, why not wind down with some programming wit.

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL in w22n51.sys

The old laptop has had a few blue screens of death recently, with the above error message. They seem to occur in situations where there is a lot of parallel network activity. It took much longer than I had hoped to find a solution, which is why I'm writing about it here (although I should also write about it in pages with higher pagerank).

The answer was simple: go to http://downloadcenter.intel.com/ and update the drivers for the wireless networking hardware.

To explore, you might like to look at the device manager (Hold down windows key and press break, choose Hardware, Device Manager), select wireless networking, and drivers. You'd see the w22n51.sys file there. After the update, you'll find that the file is called w22n59.sys.

Decorating, Walking, Nagging, Bombing, Drinking, Bowing.

We didn't accomplish everything scheduled for yesterday - there wasn't much time left for swimming. The puppet show was fun, and the library visit productive. And we did manage to acquire a Christmas Tree with some bonus lights. We thought that the splashing might fit in today (Sunday), but we didn't manage that either.

We did successfully fulfil Stephanie's long held desire that we should all go for a walk along the cross country path near the school. There were showers about, but we didn't get wet while walking - not from above anyway. The track was very muddy, and in some places one had to step very gingerly to avoid boot submergence in the big puddles. We walked up Brockhill Lane, and then up another lane to the right, before taking to the footpaths and stiles. The stream was very babbly, and there were lots of contented sheep, and a cow and two calves enjoying the green green grass. Christopher's backpack weight added a little to the challenge on the way up, and over the stiles, but we all made it back to the school, where we explored the railway tracks and the duck pond, before piling into the car to go home. Hope the mud washes off all the trousers!

As soon as we got home, four of us turned around to go off to the best pub in the UK (no really), which happens to be in our street, just 150m up the hill, for lunch. We hadn't booked, and that was a Bad Thing, but they did say that we could use a table as long as we vacated it by 1:20pm. That was ok, even though there was a "Caution: Slow Food" sign on the wall. Helen's expectations were raised when she heard that sausage and chips may have been available, but dashed when the choice was reduced to roast pork/beef/lamb/veg, or fish pie. We chose one of each meat, and the yorkshire puddings were devoured eagerly - before any of the vegetables and meat, though. The girls didn't quite manage to finish theirs (the time pressure didn't really help), which meant that I had the enormous plate of steamed vegetables almost entirely to myself. It was delicious, but we almost rolled home down the hill.

The afternoon saw children playing on the common (more muddy/wet trousers), and some general relaxation around the house with reading, and then a Monsters Inc showing. I employed Google Maps directions to get myself to Evensong at Coventry Cathedral. The responses weren't Leighton - it was Ayleward tonight, with Howells in G Canticles, Bruckner Locus Iste introit, and a non-Purcellian Rejoice in the Lord Alway for the anthem. (There was no shortage of Howells around the Midlands today, with Collegium Regale at Gloucester's eucharist, and A Spotless Rose at their evensong, and New College service at Hereford's evensong.) Without taking anything away from the delight of the older Cathedrals, it was inspiring to see a twentieth century realisation: clearly not removed from the older themes, but certainly modern, and poignantly integrated with the remains of the older cathedral, damaged in WWII. The organ featured rather dramatically - almost like a concert hall. It was good to be able to repent to the clergy for having stolen an organist.

I can report on the latest wine: Perrin & Fils Côtes du Rhône Villages from Château de Beaucastel. The (50/50) Shiraz Grenache blend was certainly very smooth, and it slipped down very easily (finished the bottle in one sitting) although perhaps a little without being noticed. The acidity was not quite balanced by the fruit and tannins, but I suppose I'd probably be happy to pay the £8.99 again, until I find somewhere better than the local Threshers.

We're now practising Jota in preparation for Steph's performance for her class tomorrow. Perhaps we should have started before this evening!

Choir concert

Last night was the Colwall Community Choir's Christmas Carol Concert. We performed some mostly-Christmassy music in the first half, and audience joined in with Carols afterwards. I've been in various university choirs where drinking is high on people's priority lists. But I don't recall any previous occasion where the performers drank wine and beer before the concert, at interval, and even during the performance! It was rather informal, and I'm sure the select audience enjoyed it all. We're looking forward to the next term already.

The school's annual cross country race was held yesterday too. It seems that the two ballet teachers may have been indulging in a few too many christmas puddings. I'm told that last year they were a pantomime cow, and the previous year saw wetsuits and flippers. The suggestion is that I shouldn't mention any names, classes or subjects to identify these two, lest it affect their future careers... Stephanie ran creditably, even if she didn't enjoy it.

This morning, while Stephanie's at pottery and railway, Helen's visiting classmate Emma for a play. It's not very friendly outside weather - cold blustery showers, but I'm sure they'll find plenty to keep themselves amused.

Helen was an Olive Seller (late-cast, not having been here at term beginning) in the junior Christmas play. Joanna says it was enjoyable, and the kids' reports tend to agree.

Our rainy-day activities for this afternoon look like including the library, the Theatre of Small Convenience, and the Malvern Splash. We are used to swimming in December, you know. We'll also try to acquire a tree for the living room.

Speaking of trees, there's a lot of deciduous bareness. This is from Joanna's Mums Up The Malverns walk on Wednesday in the Gardner's Quarry area. It was rather cool and windy, so all the babies are warmly tucked away into their cocoons.

The lack of decent wine shops is having a noticeable impact on the cellar - it's empty. The Ledbury Wine Cellar is mail order only, and for variety, the Sunday Times seems to be well stocked. But mostly they seem to sell whole dozens, which isn't quite what I'm after. I'll keep looking. We might go exploring Birmingham and/or Coventry tomorrow - perhaps we'll find something there.

Get In Tune

I had some fascinating instruction into the methods of piano tuning today, courtesy of John Bishop from Get In Tune. I had intended to show him the piano and then go back to work leaving him to his, but plans changed. We explored how a broken tape would allow a jack to lean too far forward when the action was replaced, regulating the height of the keys, voicing the hammers, aligning the back checks, seeing how the felt wears in the bushes, nickel pins get loose, and twangs and slaps end up in strings. We saw how more corroded strings sounded (and looked) duller.

Even more intersting was discussion about tuning theory. Equal temperaments, as opposed to well tempered perhaps, requires sharp major thirds, flat minor thirds, listening to the slowing beats with descending major thirds - C-E, B-D#, Bb-D, A-C#, Ab-C, G-B). John tuned one note to a "perfect" major third for me, to demonstrate just how different the sound is from an equal tempered major third. There was one string that showed a detectable beat, even with its peers damped, implying that the string cross-section was probably not uniformly circular. He warned that learning too much about tuning might reveal too much about the imperfections, and that one might never enjoy piano sounds again.

We talked about octave stretching and the reasons for it - inflexible wire means that the harmonic modes don't have a "point" node in the middle - they have something more like a segment of finite length, meaning that the harmonic is the result of a slightly shorter length of string vibrating, so an octave harmonic is slightly sharp - meaning that to line a low note's harmonics up with the notes octaves above, it needs to be tuned flat (and high notes need to be sharper).

John must have detected the engineer in me - unlike just about every other piano tuner I can remember, his attitude was that any serious pianist should have piano tuning gear, and be able to fix up the odd note themselves. He left me a few spare tapes and a lot of encouragement. When his book comes out (in the Haynes series - more well known for DIY car servicing), I'll definitely buy a copy. So if you need a piano tuner in the West Midlands area (or wider), I recommend you Get In Tune.

Needless to say, the 1894 Steinway sounds orders of magnitude better now!

Place names

We all know that there are weird placenames in every country (except perhaps Ghana), and it probably won't be very amazing to hear the small selection that I have here, but I wanted to record them somewhere and tell someone, so here they are: On the way to Tewkesbury from Malvern, one drives past Shuthonger, then Twynings, and then the best of all, Puckrup.

The new laptop is back tonight, but the chequebook is £70 lighter. I've ordered a £10 USB thingy into which I can plug an IDE or SATA hard drive, so perhaps when that comes, I will be able to do the job myself. Of course, after the computer comes back from warranty repairs, I'll never need it, except when I want to recover data from my desktop HDDs. I was a bit grumpy about having to pay the full price, and the waiting around at school and the late night last night didn't help the mood much.

I'm trying to organise clothes etc at work so that I can ride to work, but the forecast for tomorrow includes heavy rain and gales, so I may take a "rain check?" on the riding. Or maybe if I get up early enough, I can go for a purely recreational (rather than functional) ride. But that would probably be a little too decadent.

Advent-ures

We had a home morning today - at least, after I got back from my ride. I'm suffering a bit from lack of exercise, and with my new weather gear, I was able to puff along in the drizzle without concerns about my visibility and vision. There were some rather heavy and blustery showers mid morning.

But we weren't going to stay home all day, when there was a chocolate opportunity. We called into Cadbury World, and had a fun tour of the place. I thought it was very well done, with a variety of presentation styles: some self guided through a spooky rainforest (first picture) reading little signs about Aztecs, listening to Mr Cortez bringing beans back to Spain on his boat fending off pirates, some sitting in theatrettes, some walking along looking at machinery, and a cute little kids train ride through a Cocoa Bean village, with all the beans in their daily life (from which these pictures come).


















We saw some fancy hand-made Christmassy chocolates being made, were able to choose our own mixture of add-ins to try to develop the next world-famous chocolate taste, and learn about the history of the company and the founders' Quaker philosophies. And the girls liked the playground as well. I think I'd recommend this visit to anyone between the ages of 5-12 and for those over twenty-something. The teenagers seemed to rush through without trying to take much in.

As soon as we got home at 5pm, I left for Tewkesbury Abbey, to catch the 6pm Advent Carol Service. I wasn't exactly sure where things were, but it wasn't too hard to find, and the campanologists were providing a wonderful change on the bells to help me find my way from the car park to the Abbey. The service was very well sung, and I'm glad that I have the opportunity (most years!) to participate in such things. For those interested, the program included, amongst the sorts of hymns you might expect:

• I look from afar (Palestrina)
• "O" Antiphons
• This is the truth sent from above (Vaughan Williams)
• The tree of life my soul hath seen (Elizabeth Poston)
  
• Peace be to you (Paul & Ruth Manz)
• Bogoroditse dyevo, raduisya, blagodatnaya Mariye (Rachmaninoff)
  
• Dixit Maria (Hassler)
• The Angel Gabriel from heaven came (trad)
• And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed (Handel)
• Voluntary: Final from Symphony I (Vierne)
  

And now the bad news: My new laptop has died again. It's not exactly the same symptoms as before - in fact they're arguably worse: I don't even get any options about whether to recover or boot safely, it just cycles. But I strongly suspect the same fault. I may ask the nice people at BITS if they can help me again (to save a set of about 15 photos that weren't copied onto the other laptop, and a bunch of downloads and bookmarks that aren't that critical), but even if that doesn't work, I'll action that warranty repair plan that I'd started. Misplaced optimism that it would be a once off - the BITS prediction was that the fault would probably recur. So we may have a slightly reduced blogging/skyping frequency over the next little while.

Eastnor

We did get to Eastnor this afternoon, and all the other things that I mentioned in yesterday. We're just home from the choir dinner, where the food and company were both fine, so I can't stay up too much later. I'll try to add a couple of photos sometime. Christopher found some tractors. I tried to make a seven-photo panaorama, but although they overlapped nicely, the software just wouldn't stitch them together properly. Maybe I'll learn more about it as I go.






But I wanted to mention, while I remember, that I found a proper wine shop: the Ledbury Wine Cellar. They are located next to Eastnor Castle, and they had a small store there, where I saw their catalog. They have it on the web too, so if anyone has any recommendations, let me know!

There were 6 different reds available at The Crown tonight, and I tried two: a Californian 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon "Grey Fox", and a Chilean Merlot (which I found barely drinkable). There are much better Cabernets around, so I don't need to remember too much, but it was ok.

Riding

I took the plunge and took to the pedals today. I've been for a couple of little rides around for amusement, but this time I rode to work. It's not far - about 5km - and flat enough. The traffic wasn't bad, so overall the trip was enjoyable - especially going to work. It meant that the others all went to school, and they were able to stay for assembly, which many parents seem to do. After that, three of them made it to British Camp - one of the Malvern Hills, where they went for a windy windy walk. (Yes, the path wasn't straight, and the air wasn't still.)

Riding home was not unpleasant, but it was dark and wet. I had a jacket, but it wasn't waterproof. (I think "fogproof" is the most complimentary term I should apply!) My jeans weren't waterproof, and neither were my work shoes. I did have lights, although I'm going to get a brighter one for the front. And I'll need some kind of goggles (it's hard for my fingers to type that word with a double g instead of a double o), preferably with wipers! I never went anywhere on my bike in Australia without sunglasses. I don't think it's an option at 5pm in this climate unless you're 106 miles from Chicago.

I'm anticipating a cycling accessories acquisition morning tomorrow. Stephanie's going to her first hobby (pottery), but the second hobby is cancelled, because of the school's Christmas Fayre. Then there's another Fair (Fayre?) at Eastnor Castle, just a few miles SW of here. (The Castle hasn't been open to the public since we've been here, so this will be a stickybeak opportunity.) Then we've another community choir rehearsal (normally they're on Thursday evenings), before we have an choir Christmas dinner at the local (Colwall) pub.

I spent another enjoyable part of the day (between road adventures) trying to come to grips with more quantum stuff, such as Multimode Interference beam splitting, creating entangled photon pairs, and electrically modulating photon polarisation. It mostly sounds believable, but I'd love to understand it all in more detail one day.

We didn't have wine tonight, but I have yet to comment on the 2005 St Emilion. As with so many of the wines, the label for the UK market doesn't give any more details of the pedigree (or should I say provenance - a word that I'm seeing more and more in information assurance circles). It was £11.95 at a local Threshers (where they, like most Malvern wine shops, only had about 20 different French reds), and was probably worth it. Only a Merlot, of course, coming from Bordeaux (see, I'm learning!), so it's behind from the start, but quite ok really. I'm half hoping that I'll start to like these wines, so that when I get back to Australia, I'll really savour those tasty Barossa Shiraz bottles stashed away in my secret, climate-controlled, hiding spot. Mmmm, I'm getting thirsty just thinking of the Rockfords, the Turkey Flat, the Leasingham Classic Clare (ok, not only Barossa), and the Wolf Blass Brown (or now Grey) Label. I'd better stop.