This year, after 12 months of trying, I have finished my ESCape. With my new-found freedom I shall be separating files. I expect my husband Rob will be rebelling after his year of SUBstitution as he too attempts to ESCape. Still, at least I’m not 100000_b yet.

…Slim ShadyDaniel Silverstone.

I just thought I’d take this opportunity to back Martin F. Krafft up on the point of names and IRC. Those of you who know me on IRC know me as Kinnison. There exists exactly two people in this world who I tolerate calling me that in real-life. One is my husband and the other knows who they are. The main issue is that my brain works very very oddly and as such I don’t actually recognise the sound of ‘Kinnison’ as someone trying to get my attention. Plus it takes a conscious effort on my part to link that name to myself in anything other than realtime online communication.

So, along with Martin, I’d like to raise the point once more that unless you’re actually speaking to me on IRC or a talker, please remember, my parents gave me the name ‘Daniel’ and surprisingly I quite like it. Also note, I am not ‘Dan’ ‘Danny’ ‘Dannster’ ‘Dan the man’ or any other irritating diminutive or cutesy variant.

</rant>

…or “How much does it cost to fly to Argentina? Fuff that!”

The Ubuntu developer summit (UDS-Intrepid) is in Prague this year. The Debian Developer conference (Debconf) is in Argentina (at Mar del Plata) this year.

Flights to Prague are ca. £100 for two people, return tickets, from Manchester, at convenient times. Flights to Argentina are ca. £700 – £800 per adult, return tickets, from Manchester, not particularly convenient timewise. Or around £1700 for two people, return tickets, from Manchester, at convenient times.

So, basically I have to spend less than £1500 on the accomodation and the Ubuntu conference becomes cheaper than the Debian one to attend. As such, I’ve sent an email to the Ubuntu guys travel agents and we’ll see what they say. I doubt Debian can offer me £650 each for myself and my partner in order to bring the costs thus-far into alignment. Pity really since I love Debian conferences.

(Oh yeah, and not to forget the Lua workshop this year, Washington DC, mid July. Best flights I could find for that were around £600 each also, so no Lua conference for me :-( Not that I’d fly to America right now anyway given the supposed issues with taking any form of electronic medium through customs. At will, they supposedly can take copies of any media you have with you, including USB sticks. So even though my laptop and USB stick can individually be stolen and not compromise my key, moving through US customs might force me to revoke my digital identity. So not happening.)

My cat appears to like cola and also twiglets. Did I get a defective model?

If you happen to have my landline number (starts 0161) then it’s important to know that it has changed.

In order to know the new one, either ask me by email, ring me on my mobile phone, or follow these instructions to mutate the old number:

1. Split the STD off the front.
2. Split the number into a three digit section and a four digit section.
3. Subtract 27 from the three digit section.
4. Subtract 8000 from the second section.
5. Add 724 to the second section.
6. Reassemble the phone number.
7. To verify your result, the digits of the phone number, including STD, should add up to 29.

1. Who is to say how large a potato can be?
2. Does this koan have the budda nature?
3. If a monkey falls from a tree, can a fruitarian eat it?

Kthnxbye,

Daniel

Today I started fencing again. After a year of swimming I felt that I could end my nine-year-long gap with a chance of not dying horribly in the first five minutes. Indeed I lasted almost fifteen before I had to stop. In two hours I managed a small warmup/stretch, a ten minute hit about to get the feel of the weapon again, a short fight, which I lost 5–2, but to be frank, that I got two points was going well by then. And then later, once I had caught my breath and the burn in my legs had gone down, I had a short following/simple-movement lesson with another of the fencers who was kind enough to provide a body and prompts. I chatted with various of the people there, volunteered to help with the Ashton Open which is coming up at the end of the month, decided to join the club, got volunteered to help look after their website and ordered a jacket in OMG-HOW-BIG-ARE-YOU?!?! size. I really enjoyed the evening, and it is scary to once again realise how close-knit and friendly the british fencing community is.

My quadriceps really need a lot of work, they’re where all the burn is/was, so I guess I’ll be practicing standing en-garde and lunging. My balance is way off as well, but that will come back with time and practice. The two people who helped me this evening both commented though that I appear to have retained the finger and wrist technique, so as soon as I can marshall my elbow and shoulder into behaving properly again, I stand a chance of actually being able to fight more effectively.

I really must go and get my eyes re-tested though, I fenced without my glasses this evening and it was quite difficult at times to judge distance, despite not being terribly short-sighted.

Still, all in all an excellent experience. So I’ll be heading back next week.

You know who you are, oh yes. Perhaps you’ve forgotten to email. Perhaps you posted something instead of emailing, perhaps you’ve lost the info sheet (you idiot) and haven’t quite gotten around to getting the common sense together to email me about it. Whatever the issue is, I need to know now!

I spent a lovely weekend with my family, unfortunately I was informed that the party’s rsvp address was not being flooded with responses. Indeed we did some maths and worked out (excluding family since that is kinda being handled out-of-band) that of 32 invites sent out covering 47 invitees, we have received only 14 yes I’m coming messages covering 18 (including a +1 we hadn’t expected, and lacking two +1s we had been expecting) people. We have received four ‘no’ responses covering 7 people (fortunately we’ve managed to have a mini party for five of those up here in Manchester) so that’s a mere 18 replies to 32 invites.

This isn’t just poor-showing, it’s causing problems. I can’t invite more people who perhaps weren’t on the first list because of space, without knowing whether or not people are planning on turning up. My parents (to whom the reply address goes) can’t book catering, plan for the bar, etc, without knowing who is coming.

I know some of you just don’t know yet, but a mail saying “I want to come, I’ll be doing ‘foo’ and will be able to tell you for sure by ‘bar date’” helps a hell of a lot.

If you’ve lost the inlay sheet, either email me and I’ll send you a PDF, or else find me on IRC.

At this rate, there won’t be much of a party :-(

As a reference, people who still haven’t replied include: a couple who used to (and presumably still do) own a cute orange snake which loves belt loops and pockets. An angry young man who lives near a Zebra. A chemist/astronomer’s namesake. Someone who owned a launchpad long before Mark did. An Audiophile. A brit in america with an american who is a brit at heart. Someone who simply doesn’t know. The suckee. A frenchman in spain. A Cambridge educated walker in London. La Femme, et sa Femme. Leif’s parents. An ex-uni friend of mine who works for the dark side. A release manager and his wife.

If you recognise yourself in that list, please email in your reply NOW.

To head off this question (already been levelled at me umpteen times)...

It feels exactly the same.

Yes I now wear a ring, but then again, I did before from time to time. Yes I have a bit of paper saying it’s all legal, but then legalities never meant much to my relationship before so why should it now?

In fact, the only thing that’s different is that people keep asking me if I feel different, which makes me feel slightly irritated :-)

My mother out^Win-law has put up a blog posting all about yesterday.

It has only just begun.

Today, myself and Rob Kendrick got married^Wcivilised^W^Wentered a civil partnership.

(What it slipped my mind I can’t be sure, but it made it fuzzy)

I was pondering this morning about names. It struck me that even eleven years on from when I left that particular set, I can list my entire class’s surnames from when I was in years 7 to 11. I can probably tell you the first names of most of them, but I can’t be sure on a couple.

Yet I cannot, for the life of me, tell you the surname of my first crush, nor my second crush, nor indeed the surnames of most of my fencing or clubbing friends from before I went to university. I can barely remember the surnames of those I was friends with at university, indeed only those I’m still in contact with do I really know properly.

So, if you’re Sam, Liz, Sarah, Joe, Russell, Ian, Dave, Steve, Jeff or Andy, and you remember who I am, perhaps you should remind me of your names; it’s bugging me now.

Seen tonight on a talker I’m on:

mouse       :my mate is having problems with Vista. Is it usually crap?

Now, that just says it all.

Sometimes I get to think of myself as my own person, independent in thought, word and deed.

Then every now and again, I’m reminded that I’m part of a braincell collective which controls my mind. As an example, here’s something which happened on sunday with a friend of mine while shopping for lunch…

Daniel: <thinking>mmm cranberries and macadamia nuts</thinking>
Lesley: mmm cranberries and macadamia nuts
Daniel: Stop giving voice to my inner thoughts goddamnit!
Random other shoppers: <intense-confused-stare />

And then something else occurs which just reinforces that actually we all live in the matrix and nothing we do is our own independant activity. Specifically I discovered that not only am I re-reading the same set of stories as my father right now, but when we discovered this, we also discovered that we’d both just finished exactly the same book in the series. ARGH

For those of you out there who share our sad and unusual fanboying of Matthew Garrett there is now a chance to learn more about our favourite angry person over at http://www.angryfacts.com/ where the truth will out. (Or something)