Sleep Interrupted

Over the last couple of weeks Louise and I have been out (minus the children) a lot more than usual: Jayne’s housewarming party, the Coopers gig, the FFL wake, and James’ thirtieth birthday party in Oxford. At each of these I’ve inevitably ended up mentioning some web site or other, so now I’ve got a few random links to disseminate.

First up, Chuck Norris Facts. I was sent this link by a colleague and it made me laugh out loud. A couple of pints down at the FFL wake and it had me in tears; I was unable to get through Chuck’s Favourite number 11 without creasing up. It’s the funniest thing I’ve seen on teh internets since Fatmouse.

I introduced Dave Estall to the concept of the LazyWeb. I may have just blown his mind. Or maybe it was the beer that did that.

Hmmm… That seems to be all. I thought there were more. Oh well, enjoy!

Louise is too shy to post about it here, so I will: One of her favourite shows of late, Invasion, has been cancelled at the end of its first season. If you’ve been watching it too and want to see more, you need to sign the petition now.

I’ve got a heap of things to post about but mundane tasks, like clearing our gigantic backlog of laundry, have had to take precedence. I’ll attempt to make time tomorrow evening.

The Coopers’ gig at Reading University was a blast! The important leason: Standing six feet in front of speakers that are taller you will probably lead to your ears still ringing 24 hours later.

But back to the gig… We got there in time to see the second support band, Metric, who totally rocked! It’s rare to see a live band who totally catch your attention the first time you see them.

The light was finally fading in the windows when The Coopers took to the stage to loud applause. By this time the venue was full but not to capacity, so it wasn’t unpleasant.

The band had a rough start after a technical glitch halted their set two songs in but Ben covered well with an impromptu, stripped-down, jazzed-up version of Who Needs Enemies that had the audience singing along — until he admitted forgetting the words. The crowd took it well, though and it all added to a good atmosphere.

With the glitch fixed they stormed through a set that contained many new tracks from the forthcoming album, sprinkled with old crowd-pleasers like Blind Pilots and (my favourite from the second album) New Toys. I’ve never been as far forward at one of the gigs before and the intensity coming off stage was amazing. Amazing too was the way they kept swapping tasks; I counted at least three lead vocalists and as many bass players during the set.

The closing number was a slow-building rework of Panzer Attack that doubled the overall mosh level in the crowd. There were boos aplenty when it became clear there wouldn’t be an encore.

Definitely worth the price of admittance. And the ringing ears.

The Coopers have released a new single, Damage, which you can download free of charge. (Hmmm… I’m all about the “free of charge” today, am I not?) This new track was still in my mind from from their Oxford Zodiac gig and it’s survived well the transition from live to studio. It’s much less self indulgent than their previous work; I genuinely hope it helps them pull in a wider audience. Go on, take a listen…

Update: I should probably mention that the band are touring at the moment and will play Reading University on Sunday. We’ll be trying to go along if we can organise child care.

So, Tim is thinking about starting a blog. Cool! Go for it!

My suggestion for anyone wanting to start a blog would be to head over to wordpress.com where they’ll host your blog free of charge. If you’re looking for a little more independence, they also have pointers there to other ISPs who will host a WordPress powered blog for you. Of course if you want to pay me, I’ll even set one up for you complete with your own domain name!

I’ve been getting into this podcasting thing in a small way recently. It certainly makes the drive to and from work more entertaining. My current favourite would have to be the Babylon Podcast. If you’re into Babylon 5 and want to listen to interviews with the cast and crew or analysis of episodes then you’ll certainly enjoy this show.

Wow! If you have a UK library card you can access Oxford Reference Online without charge! Thanks to Ross for the pointer.

For a long time I’ve been battling with the concept of round-trip engineering. It’s always seemed like overkill, because if you have sufficient design information to automate the code generation, you end up with a very cluttered model. In addition, none of the tools I’ve used have ever been able to capture sufficient detail; for example, sequence diagrams don’t even seem capable of dealing with simple constructs such as variable assignment. I know diagrams are nice, but aren’t you ultimately just swapping a text-based language for a diagram-based language. What’s the point of adding this extra layer to your process precisely?

Well, I think the final nail was put in the coffin for me when I read that the source code is the design. At least I know which side of the fence I sit on now.

By the way, this is the 100th post on Sleep Interrupted!

I went for my first run of the year tonight. This probably puts my goal for 2006 at risk and to be honest I was even contemplating not running at all this year. However, I did the longest run that I managed last year first time out this year, so perhaps not all is lost.

On the subject of goals, I could have sworn that somewhere on that list was “loose weight”. Well, I have — eleven pounds and counting — and no one is more surprised than me. The trick will be keeping it off, but it’s been steady so far, so I’m feeling positive.

While perusing the Firefox 2 planning wiki, I came across a link to Num Sum. Amazing what you can do on the web if you try hard enough.