The pictures say it better than I ever could:

What would it be like to lose everything you own? I can’t imagine. More pictures are here and here. You can donate money to help the relief effort here. Boing Boing are also doing an excellent job of covering the aftermath, as well as providing excellent information on what help is needed.

I wanted a quiet computer, so we installed a ninja fanless heatsink. I can’t believe how big it is. I’m scared it’s going to fall off, ripping the CPU from the socket in the process. It makes my case very quiet indeed, though

I was just falling asleep when there was the strangest noise outside my window. The best way I can describe it is like a yipyip kind of sound. I grabbed my glasses and looked outside, but it is too dark to see anything really. I am sure it is an animal, and I figure it must be a bird with the speed it is receding now. But what bird would be making noises in the middle of the night? All I can think is that it is an escaped pet or something - maybe a love bird? I have never heard anything like it before. Right, had best get some sleep. Hopefully this emailed entry will work this time. I have deliberately avoided apostrophes as they broke it last time…

In a move that I would guess heralds a move to an ad-free browser, Opera is giving away Opera licenses to anybody who asks for one in the next 24 hours. As a matter of interest, the majority of greasemonkey scripts are compatible with Opera without alteration, so that’s a bonus for Firefox users. So go get it…Can’t hurt to try it out

I’m always worried about seeing my favourite artists give live performances. I suppose that it’s far easier for them to disappoint than to impress, given that I like them already. I’m very happy to say that Katie Melua didn’t disappoint one bit Her voice was just as beautiful as on the album, and she came across very well between songs.

The concert was at Kenwood House in Hampstead, which is a stately home with very large gardens, and a very pretty location for a concert. The stage was across a lake from the seating area:

I think that higher priced tickets would have put us in the roped-off area with deckchairs, but I don’t think there would have been much point. The seating was on a slope so our view wasn’t obstructed at all, and we could spread out on the grass more anyway. Ed and his friend Anthony spotted an excellent spare patch of grass next to a horny middle-aged couple (I suspect they saw little of the concert) at which point we realised we’d come woefully unprepared. Everybody else had blankets, drinks, food…We had, well, some jumpers. Happily (and very cunningly) stalls on the main path were selling said items, along with large picnic hampers if you were feeling profligate. So we grabbed a blanket and something to drink.

I’d been hoping to take some photos with the telephoto lens, so played around figuring out settings for a while. The warm-up act was…umm…I forget. James Lawson, perhaps? He seemed slightly taken aback by the setting, but sang well enough and was quite amusing. Fifteen minutes later Katie came on stage, to loud applause:

I think she sang everything from Call Off the Search and quite a few others, most of which were likely from Piece by Piece. Some songs were with the band, others by herself.

I particularly liked a song that she described as ‘about things being more complicated than they seem’. She said she’d written it a while back, and it referred to the Iraq war. It wasn’t, however, the standard ‘war is bad’, but a much more thoughtful piece. More along the lines of ‘I hope you understand what you’re doing’, with a chorus speaking of black and white piano keys sounding far more colourful inside your head. I really liked it, anyway.

I took a large number of photos, but made sure to listen to the music too! It rapidly got dark, making the telephoto shots much more challenging. I tried my old trick of taking four in rapid succession and hoping one of them would come out sharply. At one point Katie said she’d seen a bat fly across the stage, then turned to a comment from the band and said ‘not Mike Batt, a bat’. It made me laugh, anyway (Mike Batt wrote Closest Thing to Crazy, amongst others.)

She finished with Closest Thing to Crazy, then took a bow and left. A few minutes later, she was back for an encore. When Lynsey and I saw Will Young in June there was no encore, and to be honest I’d forgotten they even happened - this was a nice surprise! She sang four more songs, ending with an Eva Cassidy cover (the name of which I’ve been trying to remember, but it’s fallen out of my head.) She was on stage for an hour and a half in total, I think.

As she walked away, fireworks launched from either side of the stage and continued for five minutes or so.

I had an excellent evening - thanks very much to Ed for organising it and inviting me!

Sigh. I’m still ensorcelled.

I’ve spent the day upgrading and reworking our home network, and everything’s finally working. My old computer has become the office server and I’ve transferred all my programs etc. to my new machine. As ever, there are teething problems. As of right now the two major annoyances are:

• ACDSee isn’t displaying .jpg images. Every other format works, mind. This is Just Weird.
• The NVIDIA firewall is corrupting downloads, which is utterly nuts. I’ve doubled checked and that’s definitely the cause.

Other than that, things are running nicely. And with that said, I’m going to sleep for a week.

There’s an interesting debate brewing over Adam Curry’s Podshow Network. Podshow is an organisation devoted to promoting podcasting. Anybody can put their podcast under the Podshow banner and gain access to the advertising benefits of the service. It also makes it much easier for listeners to find podcasts they like. On Friday Cory Doctorow posted on Boing Boing about the requirements of running your podcast under the Podshow ‘label’:

The problem is that in return for access to PodCast music, you agree to a license that prohibits you from referencing “software piracy (warez, cracking, etc.), hacking, phreaking, emulators, ROM’s, or illegal MP3 activity” or saying anything “deemed unsuitable or harmful to the reputation of PodShow or the Licensor.”

This is pretty nuts. Since when does the guy who provides the music to the radio station get to dictate what you’re allowed to talk about? Is the price of commercial music in a PodCast that you have to yield unlimited, arbitrary editorial control to a music label?

I’ll be interested to hear Adam Curry’s response to this. I’ve been listening to his podcast for a few months, and I know he’s a strong advocate of the music-sharing culture and is certainly no fan of the major music labels. If he’s gone with the conditions Cory reports, I would think he’ll have a reasoned reply. I’ll listen to the Daily Source Codes over the coming week and report on what’s said.

I’ve finally finished uploading all the photos from last night. I’ll write it up later, but you can see the photo set here, or as a slideshow here.

I don’t know where this came from originally, but I like it:

There was a young lady from Slough
Who developed a very bad cough
She wasn’t to know
It would last until now
Let’s hope the poor girl will pull through

I sent a post from the train this afternoon but have just discovered it didn’t work (argh), so I’ve re-inserted it in sequence below.

Having a great time here in London. We just got back from the Katie Melua concert at Kenwood House:

She was absurdly wonderful, and I’m completely in love with her this evening I took 152 photos! Many more to follow, but we particularly liked this one.

Ed and Simon are having discussions about adopting gay penguins…I think I can talk them out of it. Their flat is very swanky, I like it! I shall buy it from them and move down here…what do you think?

Woohoo!

{swoons}

This is a very pretty venue

Note: this was sent from the train, but didn’t display properly for some reason. I posted it later in the evening and have inserted it in sequence, so apologies if you missed it first time round.

Just heading to London for the afternoon to see Ed and Simon. Couldn’t be bothered to drive so I’m on the Marylebone train, listening to the Skepticality podcast and happily relaxing. We’re going to see Katie Melua in concert this evening and I’m really looking forward to that - she’s my favourite
It looks like I’ve got a mortgage sorted out. We looked at various options and eventually contacted an agent online. After a few hours he emailed through the payments etc. without any details of the companies involved. One of the fixed rate schemes he found was great, so we paid him to get all the details and it turned out to be from the halifax. He now handles all the paperwork and I received all the documents to sign this morning. It cost

I’ve mentioned that I want to have a serious go at writing. I’m intending to take part in the National Novel Writing Month, which is November, and have been planning the best way to go about it. Call me useless, but I can’t write unless it’s quiet. The non-murder mysteries I’ve written recently were completed at weekends when nobody else was around, and most of my short stories happened on similar evenings. As the house doubles as an office, and Mum and Dad usually work well into the evening, it’s always busy. Not to mention other daytime distractions. So what’s the Big Exciting News? I bought a flat in Stratford-upon-Avon!

Last Thursday evening I walked into the office and Mum said “I’m finding you an apartment”, which surprised me somewhat! I hadn’t really thought about moving out, but Mum happened across a flat while looking for houses on behalf of my sister, and figured it would be perfect as somewhere to work during the day. We went looking at new two-bedroom apartments last Friday, and they were great. We saw one that came fully furnished, including sheets, towels, crockery - pretty much everything you’d need. It was on a new estate, and was perfectly nice…but I just couldn’t get very enthusiastic about it. I started looking for something older, and on Friday afternoon I spotted a one-bedroom flat in the centre of Stratford for a good price. I called to ask for a viewing and booked for 1130 on Saturday morning. By 1230 we’d put in an offer, and at 1300 we heard that it had been accepted!

We were originally looking for somewhere to work, but it’s so perfect for me that I’ll be living there. From the details on the advert it could have gone either way, but I walked in and it just felt right. I’d been worried that a three-room flat would feel terribly small, but that wasn’t a problem. There’s a lot that could go wrong before I officially own it, but I can’t resist sharing some details: it’s a first-floor flat about ten minutes walk from the centre of Stratford. It has off-road parking(!), a loft, a fitted kitchen and a communal garden. It’s Just Wonderful Stratford’s only a 25 minute drive from here, so popping back won’t be a problem. There’s apparently no chain on the other end, so moving in should be as fast as it takes to sort out the paperwork - maybe four to six weeks.

Speaking of paperwork: holy crap. I was expecting stamp duty and surveys, but not mining activity searches, environmental home reports, extra work and fees for leasehold properties…I’m currently sorting out mortgages and figuring out budgets, and am seeing scary amounts of money dropped on solicitors’ charges etc. It’s fascinating to see all the work that goes into buying a house, but somewhat daunting.

This’ll be a major topic for the foreseeable future! The flat and the computers are occupying my every waking thought currently, and I imagine will be for the next couple of months. I have a very large list of furniture / utensils / General Stuff that needs buying (including a car!), the most important of which is most definitely this.

It’s a big step for me, and I’m excited, a little scared, and very nervous indeed.