Life of Wiley

Not had a very good weekend for broadband connectivity this last weekend. On Thursday and Friday I took a couple of days off work so that I could redo some wiring in the spare bedroom where the computer equipment is located along with the DSL point; this involved moving the light switch, adding a new double socket and replacing a single socket with a double. To do this I obviously had to turn all the equipment off.

The rewiring went fine (makes a big difference when you’ve got the right tools, like a wall chaser!), but we needed to let the plaster dry so the electricity had to stay off. What I’d forgotten was that I’d volunteered to trial some new software for my Effecient Networks DSL router some weeks earlier and BT chose this day to be the day to phone me up and ask if I could let them install the new software.

So we let the plaster dry off a bit more and after lunch turned on the power and all was fine. I turned on the equipment and all was fine (fortunately the router’s power supply didn’t go pop this time!), and after a few minutes I saw that the router was being rebooted. All went well and was fine.

On Saturday I noticed that the router had been disconnected from BT’s ATM network and couldn’t reconnect. I spent a few minutes on the phone to Demon Support and as we were trying to diagnose where the fault might be it managed to reconnect!

Seemed to work okay on Sunday, though I was out most of the day. Then today at around lunchtime I noticed I could no longer see my mail server from work. Unfortunately Louise was ill and wasn’t answering the phone so I couldn’t find out what was going on. But when I got home Louise told me that BT had been installing new telegraph poles down the road and had reconnected our line (in fact they’ve taken a line away that wasn’t being used). So that explained the outage this afternoon. But then this evening the router lost it’s connectivity again. Logging in using the BT test login didn’t work but rebooting the router did, so I’m beginning to suspect that the new software on the router may be a bit buggy. I shall tackle BT about this tomorrow so watch this space.

In case anyone reads this that is using an Effecient Networks Flowpoint DSL Router, the new software revision is 5.3.175 (which you’ll see on the connection page by pointing the browser at the IP address/name of the router).

I was shocked to learn on Sunday of the death, on Saturday, of Steve Freckleton, bass trombone and chairman of Langley Band. Steve had been playing for his band and then Enderby Band before retiring to a pub for a drink and well earned break, whereupon Steve collapsed and, despite paramedic attention, later died in hospital.

I don’t know Steve or his family at all but would like to offer my sincere condolences and prayers to his family, friends and members of Langley Band.

It has come as a great shock to the whole of the brass banding community and a “book” of condolences has been opened up at the MouthPiece for people to leave their own messages of sympathy.

So, on a couple of recommendations from friends, I thought I’d give OpenOffice a try. So far I’m very impressed; it’s able to open and correctly display a presentation I did with PowerPoint 2003 complete with animations and sound effects, and it has no problems with the Word or Excel files I’ve thrown at it. User interface still doesn’t seem as user friendly as MS Office, but perhaps that’s something I need to get used to.

I’ll give it a bit more air time before I install it for the other users on the PC; Louise’s needs are fairly basic word processing so she should find it okay, she might not even tell the difference. Euan doesn’t know how to type his name yet so he’ll take whatever he’s given without knowing any better (or worse).

Must get my own swimming pool! We all went down to South London for a birthday party at one of Euan’s friends granddad’s house. The reason was because they’ve got their own indoor swimming pool, and very nice it is too. The pool was massive by private indoor pool standards (we had 4 adults and about 6 childen) and it had a diving platform and slide as well as a hot tub and sauna alongside it.

The scary thing was that, although we don’t take him swimming very often, Euan’s very very comfortable in a pool. So much so that he had absolutely no hesitation in using the slide and jumping off the diving platform (2m above the pool) At one point I thought he was actually going to dive in! Makes me wonder just what he wouldn’t jump off. The funny thing was he was egging one of the adults to jump off it and the man was making a play (or so I thought) of being scared, but it turned out he was, but he wasn’t going to be up staged by a three year old!

It was definitely a great party and well worth the drive down to south London for the privilege.

Last night we had our cornet sectional rehearsal for the contest. It worked out very well; Martyn took us as a group altogether for the first 15 minutes and worked on the section producing the same rounded sound throughout and good legato. Kenny our 2^nd trombone player arrived and as he’s the MD at Ware Brass, he took the back row and worked on some specifics with them whilst Martyn worked on some specifics with the front row and sop. All in all a good session for about 45 minutes.

We had a great rehearsal on Partita as a band; it really does seem as though things are beginning to gel, particularly the difficult rythmns in the lower brass in movement III. I think the biggest think we need to work on now is the very end of the piece as to my ears it’s a bit ragged and too loud in the places where it should be quite quiet. I suspect the trouble lies in the fact that the band is pretty tired by that stage and so things are a bit harder to control.

I’ve been meaning to post something on this for the last couple of weeks and for one reason or another never got round to it but…

I’ve been pondering what the job title and description is of the person at Kellogg’s who has to come with new ways of packaging cornflakes. What’s prompted this is the change in the box design to allow folding the top so that it resembles a house roof. This is a further modification designed to keep the contents fresh for longer, which is just as well for me, as it’s now taking me at least twice as long to get through a box!

Question is: Is there a limit to cereal box modifications?

Also, I “discovered” a new beer today, Frambozen Raspberry Brown Ale, delicious. From the packaging you’d think it was a Belgian beer, at least I did in the pub this lunchtime, but it wasn’t until I googled for it that I discovered that in fact it is produced by the New Belgium Brewing Company in the US! Yes, you heard it here first, a decent beer from the US!

Let me take this opportunity on my blog to wish my newphew and Godson, Jacob, a very happy 6th birthday as of yesterday. Tis the season for birthdays as we’re off to a birthday party tomorrow and it will be Euan’s birthday on Tuesday when he’ll be four.

Oh well, that didn’t last long. In fact the snow had stopped about 10 minutes after I’d posted the last post and by the time I came out of church you could barely tell it had snowed at all. No snowmen today then.

Woo Hoo! It’s snowing! Not too heavily at the moment but it may develop. The forecasters have been promising this since Friday and it had seemed that everywhere except Watford was getting it. Maybe I won’t be able to get back from church; doubt it though as it’s already starting to ease off:(

I’m preaching tomorrow morning for the first time in ages. With all the swaps I’ve done with other preachers in the circuit I’ve not preached since the third Sunday in Advent. It’s a pain when this happens because it takes me longer to “warm up” to it, so it seems harder for me to put together a service. If I have a few services all on top of one another I get into a groove and everything clicks into place quite easily. I suppose it’s a sign that I’m really still quite green at it.

Anyway, it’s the first Sunday in Lent and the title of my sermon is “Jesus is Lord” based on what Paul teaches in Romans 10. Ironically, with the release of Mel Gibson’s film the Passion of Christ, I’ll be referring to that other controversial film, The Last Temptation of Christ.

Yay! It’s been confirmed that I can have a trumpet for my upcoming birthday. I’m probably going to get the Conn International recommended by my former tutor and playing partner. I need to investigate whether to get it from Phil Parker or from a retailer in the States given the value of the £ against the $ right now. Trouble is I doubt I could wait for the shipping if I got it from the States and I’m pretty impatient when it comes to things like this.

Had a good practise again last night. Didn’t practise for too long, maybe 30 minutes but I did manage to get a nice clear high C#. Couldn’t get any further and could only just squeak out one of the high Cs in Buster:( Spent quite a bit of time on Partita, the test piece for band. Did quite a bit with a metronome too so I hope Martyn takes at the metronome markings, otherwise I’ll have to watch:) I think the hardest bits for me are going to be the mp crotchets in the first movement as they need to be nice and legato with no airiness about them; and the sudden dynamic change from f to p in the quick quaver feature in movement 3. Everything else is down to stamina and tuning I think.