We’re counting the days and starting to panic ever so mildly at how much there is left to do: pack, tidy the house, finish writing instructions for those looking after the house and cats while we are away etc. Tim gave me a real scare this morning when he passed out, this happened in March and he hit his head quite badly. Today he got up with really ad pain in his shoulder and thought it might be a trapped nerve. Read more...

If you would rather not receive our e-mail updates regarding our tour of Europe then let us know by e-mailing tim(at)timandkathy.co.uk or kathy(at)timandkathy.co.uk.

I’m currently doing some work that involves CrossRef, “a collaborative reference linking service that allows the user to click on a citation and be taken directly to the target content”. All well and good, except that CrossRef play fast and loose with the standard we all know as HTML(HyperText Markup Language). Their site generates only 75 validation errors, which is by no means a lot. The worrying thing, though, is their use of made-up tags and attributes, like <csscriptdict>. Read more...

According to the BBC Bristol web site, Neil and Tim Finn are to play the Colston Hall in October. As a long-time fan of Crowded House (I went to see them in the slightly larger surroundings of Birmingham’s NEC in 1994), this will doubtless be a top night out. Of course, the Archos is allowing me to carry vast amounts of music around with me, including Crowded House’s four studio albums (Crowded House, Temple of Low Men, Woodfaceand Together Alone) all of which continue to delight and surprise me with their musicianship and intelligent lyrics. Read more...

I’ve just signed up for Del.icio.us, a "social bookmarks" service. It’s a great way to share your bookmarks between multiple computers (home and work, say) and also to share them with friends/fiends/random people on t’interweb. You can view my profile, if you want.

I’m coming increasingly to the conclusion that (a) second-hand iPods are overpriced, and (b) eBay is a living, breathing example of the power of a heady mix of capitalism and stupidity. You know, more money than sense and all that… I’ve been gathering data from eBay (manually) of the closing prices of iPods, which model they are and which generation. [Note for the uninitiated: the latest "All New!" iPods are the fourth generation. Read more...

Graham (Kathy’s second cousin) popped over to Bath last night. We had ace food at The Globe, then got a taxi into town. We thought we might go to the recently-opened JD Wetherspoon’s in Kingsmead, but we glanced in the window and thought that it looked a little…soulless. (Side note for trivia fans: it seems that a new record was set last Sunday on the pub’s opening in that it only took two hours for a fight/riot/disturbance to occur and the Police to be called out. Read more...

Keith (colleague) pointed me in the direction of BeliefNet, and their Belief-O-Matic questionnaire. Belief-O-Matic asks a series of questions, and then determines your compatibility with various belief systems. I am 100% Orthodox Quaker, apparently.

Install BBEdit Lite on my Mac. Install the mtgravatar" plugin on the blog. Spring-Summer-clean the Mac. Only 1.5 GB space left! Find out why people will pay over the odds for iPods on eBay. Actually, that could be trickier…

Woo-hoo! Looks like Bristol is going to be forging ahead with public WiFi: In a ground breaking collaboration of public and private sector services, Bristol City Council and Cityspace today announce an agreement to build the UK’s largest urban digital network offering outdoor wireless broadband access to Bristol’s residents, visitors and city workers. — http://www.cityspace.com/press/level2/releases/040722-PR-Bristol.asp It’s a shame that it won’t quite reach down to where I work, but I imagine that it might be expanded in the future. Read more...