Okay so my current munchy reads Great ExpectationsGreat Expectations but those who’ve visited my Zen-like abode will have admired the un-Zen-like bedside tower of pulp that rivals the best Pisa has to offer in the way of leaning towers. For a few days Pip has been taking a back-seat to a tome of non-fiction…

One Hit WonderlandOne Hit Wonderland comes from the multi-talented and under-exposed British writer, musician and comedian Tony Hawks. When not appearing on TV and radio shows he takes to writing books that chronicle taking on unlikely bets in the hope of impressing a friend or, most lately, getting laid. This book, his latest, starts with such a bet made at a dinner party where Tony takes on the challenge of creating another musical hit…

I recently upgraded my aging and rather temperamental iPod, a 20GB G3, to a spiffy new color 60GB. My 20GB wasn’t full and my 60GB was positively bare. What can I put on it?

I’ve loaded every audio CD I own and spent over £100 at the iTMS and while there’s a few tracks I want they’re not in iTMS and I’m not buying an album full of junk for a single track. The few bands I enjoy whole albums of aren’t very prolific.

Our small island roads today witnessed the Oakley Charity Motorcycle Spin, an event to help raise money for a caravan to be located at Church Farm Holiday Park where ill children from Guernsey can enjoy some time away.

The was the dream of six year old Oakley Waterman tragically diagnosed with cancer and who passed away this Friday. I never had the fortune to meet the little chap but the local paper referred to him as a brave soul who didn’t let his illness bring him down and remained both cheerful and cheeky.

I recently splashed out on a Dell 24″ 2405FPW wide-screen display. With the 20% discount offer (Small Business site only!?), living in VAT-free Guernsey and shipping being a very reasonable £5 the whole thing came to a sound £588.

As I already own an LCD, the capable Iiyama 20″ E511, and my current Radeon 9800 Pro is equipped with just one DVI connector I was going to need a new AGP graphics card equipped with two or suffer blurry images.

My apologies for the second part taking so long to arrive here. I wrote this section a while ago before Zoundry Blog Writer threw it away. Doubtful I could write again with as much enthusiasm I left it but a series of questions has prompted me to write it again. It was better the first time, I promise.

We had left Disney behind us now, heading south-west to avoid the hot city streets of Paris and on towards Versailles. With high expectations of “the largest palace in Europe”“the largest palace in Europe” we arrived underneath a hot midday July sun amid a mass of tourists. This did not bode too well.

Well the Xbox 360 prices are out, and while they are better than the current rumblings for the Sony PlayStation 3, once again UK and European customers are getting the short-end of the currency conversion stick.

Now $299 USD = €249 = £169 and $399 = €324 = £220 at today’s exchange rates.

I’ve never realized but Google use your browser in such a way it tells them which link you followed out from the search results. Searching for “damieng” for example will show my home page as the first result. The browser window will show https://damieng.comhttps://damieng.com but click on it with JavaScript enabled and instead you’ll go somewhere like;

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A//damieng.com/&ei=yMf5QoHUJczcQr-YvfANhttp://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A//damieng.com/&ei=yMf5QoHUJczcQr-YvfAN

I recently converted some components on a project from VB.NET to C#, mainly for overloading and better tool support (such as ReSharper). Some of the existing code was generated from my own CodeSmith templates, so a small rewrite to generate C# handled most of that.

The remaining code, while not extensive in size, is a rather complex affair and the prospect of debugging this code when hand-converted was a little daunting so I decided to give the demo version of VBConversion’s VB.NET to C# Converter 1.31 a spin.

Yesterday, at St. Pierre du Bois Parish Church, my eldest little sister got married and I was fortunate enough to be the one to give her away. The ceremony was perfect and the newly appointed best man got everything spot on despite the one days notice. My little brothers even managed to perform their usher roles without supervision.

After the obligatory photos and confetti storm we headed to the beautiful island of Herm, just a 15 minute trip by boat, for drinks followed by conversation and a rather unusual but tasty mix of food in the specially erected marquee. We toasted the married couple and tried to put into words our own personal messages in their book while snapping the many photos that were filling film and memory card. My sister’s red trainers (put on for the reception, not the service ;-) were well hidden beneath her dress but will no doubt appear on some of the pictures.

Unlike my previous trips I had little access to the Internet while away and failed to take writing materials. Many of my observations and thoughts were lost but here’s what’s left in my mind:

Driving in France was less terrifying in my own car than in the left-hand drive rental cars I’ve used in the past. The run from St. Malo through Rennes, Le Mans and up to Paris was uneventful punctuated only by the unidentified random songs and the splatter of unfortunate insects emptying their stomachs onto my windscreen at 140kmh. I went through Paris, around the five lane ring-road several times and even drove along a section of road where I could see the fabled Arc de Triomphe, noted across Europe for being a top spot to avoid while driving because of it’s twelve avenue junction that surrounds it.