This Christmas and New Year has seen a serious push in development for WoWScrolls,
so much so that I've simply not had time to blog about it

Suffice to say that I'm due for an end of January release, providing I can find a
web designer to beautify the tech

An excellent use of Scrobbles if this all comes through, the prototype has worked
well and now I'm just doing those fiddly things that need doing in order for people
to be able to use the website

Then I need to start thinking about integration with existing services, xml-rpc posting
to existing blogs? Pushing/pulling data from GamerDNA? I think so...

Started the new job about a month ago now, and I'm quite enjoying the actual job itself,
the people who work there (and the money they pay).




One thing however, has taken a huge hit. I was often asked by a friend of mine how
I managed to get so much stuff done when juggling personal projects with a full time
job. The answer has become clear since doing this "real person" thing of commuting
and spending standard hours at work. My productivity has absolutely plummeted, I come
home too tired to do anything computer related at all. I have ended up either collapsed
onto my bed listening to music, or spending time with my newly acquired girlfriend
Jo (bad timing, but not complaining). This is not because I do more work at work,
but because I'm actually having to travel into work and get up early to prepare, I'm
suddenly devoting thirteen hours of my day towards the job instead of the normal seven
or eight hours.




I shall resolve to do something about that soon, I can't afford to not be working
on my personal projects, Scrobbles or otherwise if I am not putting things out there
on the internet, if I am not creating time to learn new technologies then there is
little point in being a programmer at all.




Today however, I am working on Scrobbles, my work ethic has not gone anywhere and
I have resolved to cross a few things off the list, as pointless at it is in light
of the above.





Url re-writing is now done finally, and I'm going to push forwards with getting the
rest of the things ticked off as much as possible. And I'll keep you all informed
with my coping strategy for developing personal code when faced with the Real World.
I think I know what my solution is, but I don't want to talk about it until I know
if it is going to work.

Still knackered after this weekend, so I'll keep this one brief (which means I'll
probably end up rambling and it will end up long, but we'll see).



Friday




On Friday, Jo and Ed turned up at my house with Alan (a guy I know from the British
Sea Power crowd) who had kindly offered to give us all a lift up to Tan Hill for British
Sea Power's idea of what a festival ought to be.




Friday was absolutely sublime in every way. We got to Tan Hill early evening, set
up our tent, and went to watch The Witch and the Robot. Their set came complete with
the expected shaving foam madness, but with the addition of a lovely video of snakes
and a background video of wonderful TWATr style rambling on about witches and nothing
in particular. Our favourite paper maché headed man came around with a vacuum cleaner
while balloons with lovely phrases were handed out to the crowd along with badges
and free albums. A bunch of guys with white suits came out and we took turns to draw
on them with marker pens. The music was fairly damned good too (as expected of them
by now!!!).

These were followed by Silvery who created fine fine circus inspired music, followed
by possibly the best British Sea Power set I have ever witnessed. B-sides and rarely
played tracks all over. Incredibly chilled out stuff. Grabbed a set list to take home
too. It was especially pleasurable to hear North Hanging Rock played at last, just
epic.




We didn't stay up too late past this and hit bed early. A fine fine evening though.



Saturday




Saturday was a day of potato rolling, tug of war, falconry (I GOT TO HAVE A FALCON
LAND ON MY WRIST!!!), and I totally won the Welly Wanging competition (at the cost
of a pulled muscle in my back). Beer was drank with a spoon, and crackers were scoffed
mercilessly by our adopted team mate Andy the Gonzo Journalist. (Class act). Ed made
a fine attempt at eating doughnuts without his hands, but sadly this was not to be.




I missed a bit of the music because I was just too tired for it, I did however watch
a bit of I Like Trains and caught Matt Eaton and the Modern Ovens before going for
a walk with Jo across the hills in the setting sun. It was a fairly amazing afternoon
once we had gotten away from the hustle and bustle of the bar :)








The ensuing British Sea Power gig was just sublime, although I think the tracks could
have been ordered better. It was delightful to hear some of the Decline Of tracks
and OMG WOOOO WOOOOO, they played Hearing Aid!!! Well, it made me happy anyway, they
made it sound just as it should too, and they ended it brilliantly.




After this epic set, we went outside to watch some fireworks which people had brought
with them (I had donated towards a big pack organised by the members of the BSP forum)
and sat next to a bonfire with Jo and had a chat with Scott and his wife Dawn. It
was quite beautiful really. This was followed by more music from BSP and anybody else
wanting to join in. According to the press the Arctic Monkeys and the Klaxons were
involved, but to be honest I think they were too drunk back in the bar (yes, they
were there too).




A late night on Saturday night, but a happy one nonetheless.



Sunday




Sunday we spent the entire morning chilling in the tent, only surfacing at around
1-30pm for some lunch before the afternoon activities. We ate lunch and played granny
racing with somebody whose name I cannot remember and then went for a walk across
the hills and sang songs. We returned cold and wet to watch the film Man of Aran,
with a backing sound track played live by British Sea Power. That was sublime, so
beautiful and settled a discussion Jo and I had been having about the meaning of the
word "Bleak".




Being freezing cold, I headed back to the tent to warm up and was soon joined by Jo,
who turned up just as the sun was setting, so I took some photos of that. I then read
her an excerpt from my new book "Beautiful Code". I don't think she found it all that
entertaining however so she was probably relieved when Ed turned up and turned our
attention to chips. At about 11pm, Jo and I left the tent (and Ed, as he had fallen
asleep) and went to get some mix cds from the lucky dip cd exchange, and a hot chocolate
from the bar. It was probably the warmest part of the weekend sat there and I felt
quite content at how everything had gone down.







Monday




An early night for us all and then a drive back the next day. 'Nuff said.




Thanks for everybody who was there for making the weekend what it was. Thanks for
Ed persuading Jo that it was good idea to come on the weekend. Thanks to Jo for agreeing
with Ed and giving up GenCon for a weekend of the raw northern outdoors (a big change
from the poncy south). A MASSIVE thanks for Alan giving us a lift there and back.
Thanks to British Sea Power for hosting such an event. It went down very well and
I'd definitely go to another one of these if it ever happened!




An apology to the BSP regulars, who I managed to pretty much avoid all weekend despite
saying I'd make an effort for a change. I don't know what happened there!!

Full flickr set can be found here: http://flickr.com/photos/robashton/sets/72157607055798896/

Ploughed through some stuff last night, so here is that to-do list with a few things
removed, and the most recent items dealt with. The client is so much more stable now
I've tweaked the connection string to turn on some options to deal with the ferocity
with which the client can push/pull data from the cache. Also added a few new services
so data can be submitted in nice little compressed batches, speeding things up to
no end. On a train a while ago I wrote the SDK for .NET and I'll be duplicating that
for PHP when I get the chance. The Wiki is actually halfway to being populated but
I've had some ideas about that elusive graphical snippet designer so perhaps it won't
be needed as much as I thought. We'll see.

Core Scrobbles

• 
  Friendly URLs
  
• 
  Referal system for 'earning' queries
  
• 
  Compressed Raw Data Queries
  
• Compressed Batch Data Submission
• 
  Registration System
  
• 
  Arbitrary Views (using Snippet System)
  
• Automatic Data Submission (Scrobbles App)
• 
  Security/Validation of All Existing Forms

Third Party

• 
  Online submission of WoW Data
  
• 
  Heatmaps (location tracking)

Community

• 
  Wiki
  




• 
  SDK for PHP
  


• 
  Service Documentation
  


• 
  Snippet Documentation
  


• 
  Family/Key/Value Documentation

After getting a fewsilly, randomthings exorcised
from my system, I sat down last night and set to work on the Scrobbles client and
libraries, as these have been neglected while I have been working on the core server-side
stuff.




Last time I left them, I was dealing with some problems to do with the situation where
the user upgrades the Scrobbles client, and that client uses a newer database schema
for the local cache, or the web services change so data can no longer be submitted
the old way. This is quite a rare occurrence, but it just so happens that in my latest
overhaul a couple of months ago I completely changed the web services and now have
500mb of unuploaded data sat on my hard drive needing migrating one way or another.
And if I'm going to do it nice, I may as well write a system that can cope if I have
to change things again in the future rather than just doing a one-time migration on
my computer alone.




I had a few options to choose from, that I could think of.

• 
  When a new version of Scrobbles is installed, do an in-place migration from the old
  cache to the new cache


• 
  Keep the old web services intact and add newer ones seperately, with migration happening
  server-side per submission


• 
  Write an adapter for each new schema, mapping old data into new data before passing
  through any new code

Each of these had its own pros and cons, chiefly to do with the resources that each
method would require from either the client computer or the server, but also to do
with the maintainability and reliability of each method.

• 
  Doing an in-place migration would require that it be capable of migration from any
  previous version to the modern version, and potentially have to migrate across several
  hundred thousand rows - this is hardly a background operation and would be prone to
  problems if migration was cancelled by the user.
  
  
  


• 
  Not breaking older clients wouldn't give users an incentive to upgrade, and the server
  would have to start having to do quite a bit of work to translate older requests into
  newer ones, and having resolved to make these web service calls as thin as possible
  this would go against that.


• 
  Adapting the data client-side moves the burden of translation from the server to the
  client, and while translation from any previous version would still be required, not
  being done in bulk would mean this could be a transparent process.

All the above would require that the client would have to be capable of dealing with
there being multiple cache files present, and be able to find out the version of each
cache file. Initially this was going to be achieved through naming the cache file
by its version, but I've never been one for naming conventions having been completely
previously disgusted by the heavy reliance of them in Lionhead's The Movies. I instead
added a Metadata table to the cache database and set a version in that. This means
this can be checked for with a simple query on opening the cache and the relevant
actions chosen.




I decided in the end to go with the final option, of creating adapters around existing
code, mapping various methods and classes through a common interface. It involves
a bit of work anytime I have to change the data structure between storage and uploading,
but it means not having to modify existing code that already works when upgrading.
It also means that each client can deal with software that uses older versions of
the client library to create old cache databases.




It doesn't strike me as the best solution because it doesn't feel as elegant as I
generally like things to be, but it shall suffice as I don't expect to be changing
things too often anyway!!




In other news, I have resigned from my post at the University of Reading, and have
taken up employment elsewhere. This saddens me slightly, but the new company does
look like it's going to provide some interesting times. Because it's a real job with
a scary looking contract, I'll refrain from mentioning who they are until I know what
their blogging policy is. I don't want to get in trouble by suddenly becoming googleable
to those concerned.



Anyway, onwards to a great deal more money, and to a more structured day - it should
be interesting (at least, until Scrobbles makes me a millionaire.. ;-))

This weekend I headed up to Kendal and had myself actually quite a good time, despite
the gallons of mud caused by a downpour on Friday night. There are many complaints
to be had about the organisation and the price considering the actual acts being put
on, but I don't care about any of those things cos there was plenty of entertainment
to be had nearly all hours of the day if you just loosened up and enjoyed the chilled
atmosphere.




Friday




We arrived on Friday evening, and immediately set up the tent because it had stopped
raining. No sooner had we finished doing this and got ourselves and stuff inside the
tent then the heavens opened up and started soaking people outside still trying to
put their tents up. The Friday night lineup was appalling so we just sat in the tent
drinking and listening to the ambient sounds coming from the main tent which we'd
parked our tent just behind.








Saturday




The previous night's downpour left us with a field full of mud, so after failing to
find wellies that fit me, I just went bare foot and enjoyed it.













I ended up stripped down to a pair of shorts and was soon frolicking in the mud for
pleasure. Later on while watching the guys photographed below (no idea who they are)
I realised I was pissing blood from my foot after cutting it on something, but the
mud and crap soon acted as a clotting agent and put a stop to that...









Photos end here as I was getting a bit drunk and I wasn't going to risk falling over
in the thick mud and getting the camera dirty. A good evening though, slightly ruined
by the Super Furry Animals being a crap band, but only slightly as the local Kendal
talent during the day made up for that.




Sunday




Sunday the mud was getting a lot firmer and after grabbing breakfast I settled down
in my favourite tent to watch some folk covers of some awesome songs by Johnny Cash
and Steve Earle by the Wild Wood Band (known also as the Wyrd Strings when doing their
silly stuff). Talented guys. That tent was lovely too, lots of straw to lie down in
and a really chilled atmosphere to boot.









The sun was coming out and straw was being provided for people to relax in, and people
started making mud sculptures out of the now rather substantial mud.













It was nice to see people enjoying themselves so I spent a couple of hours just wandering
about, flitting between the various stages and getting the occasional cup of tea from
my other favourite tent (a cafe serving five bean chilli and doing their own little
DJ set).













Next up I met up with some of the delightful people from the bsp crowd and partook
in smuggled cider and... another other questionable liquid. It was nice to see some
familiar faces and I sat outside my favourite tent with them until it was time to
go see The Witch and the Robot (one of my favourite bands at the moment). They were,
as expected delightfully odd and a pleasure to watch once more.













Eamon Hamilton was on straight after and was another of the very pleasant acts on
this day.





After this, we packed up our tent and after getting a photo of the festival flag in
action, I put the camera in the car for the rest of the evening.









On arriving back into the festival site, I headed down to the dance tent where it
was probably about time for EMF to be performing. For the novelty value they had to
be seen and I was lucky enough to turn up just as they started playing "Unbelievable"
and left straight after. Timing or what?!





British Sea Power were as always a delight to watch, and I met up with some fellow
flag makers who I spent the rest of the evening with along with some other people
who I had met during the day. Having people to help wave mine and Jo's massive flag
was a real bonus, and by the end of it my arms were absolutely dead.





I had to spend an hour posing with people and the flag whilst they held on to me for
support in the thick mud and I sank deeper and deeper... but I'm hoping at least I'll
find a good photo to use in the competition.





A good weekend all in all, although slightly marred by the day after where my grandparents
made me go to A&E for the aforementioned cut in my foot. They scooped out all
the crap, x-rayed it to make sure nothing else was in there, bandaged me up, and put
me on antibiotics while getting a telling off from the cutest nurse I have seen in
a long time - I was not complaining. (Hey, if you're reading this get in touch yeah?
;-)).





Trains on the way back were cancelled and I ended up getting a taxi from Birmingham
to Reading courtesy of the rail services. Say what you like about our public transport
but at least they look after you when things go wrong! 

With the success of the artwork we presented to The Witch and the Robot a few months
ago ( see here ),
when British Sea Power announced a festival flag and bunting competition I decided
to re-enlist the help of the vaguely talented Jo to add a touch of class to the entry
I wanted to put together.




That was over a month ago now.




After an initial three hour design session where we discussed concepts and bored the
hell out of Owen with our ramblings, we came up with a vague plan involving a bedsheet
and fabric to create a lion and a bear with some beer, and whatever else we came up
with during the creation period.




A trip was organised to the rather excecllent Fabric Land to pick up materials and
equipment to perform sewing and cutting activities with, and a bed sheet was procured
from Woolworths.




Somehow, from this pile of material, Jo managed to craft a brilliant resemblance of
the Lion from the third battalion pin I possess, and a really good attempt at the
bear from Open Season, BSPS's second album. Owen cut some leaves out, in the style
of the leaves from Decline Of [bsp] (BSP's first album) and I... made some stars and
the pint of beer. The easy stuff because my fingers don't generally do what I want
them to do and the hard stuff would just come out wrong.




All of this material had to be sewn onto the bedsheet by hand, and I've calculated
that we've put well over thirty hours into this over the past month. Nevertheless,
it has turned out quite well, so thanks to Jo for being a good little creative director,
and thanks to Owen for his leaves as I don't think fabric and sewing were really his
thing... he looked bored to death, bless.








Now to use the rest of the fabric to make a daft costume, and the rest of the thread
to tie Jo up once we're done, she must not be allowed to fall into the hands of the
competition.

That weekend in Alicante left me interested in using photographs to show people the
way I see things in this world.




I can't draw, I can't paint... generally anything I do with my hands is pewp, and
when I wielded the camera I felt a bit of power, so I've borrowed Ben's rather nice
DSLR for a bit so I can learn how to take photos.




I've been using the manual modes on the camera, doing everything in my power to make
each photograph look like what I'm feeling and seeing in a particular scene.




I've spent a week with it now, and I bought a photography magazine and learned all
about all this malarkey to do with the setting of aperture size, the exposure times
to go with that, and the iso rating of the ... 'film'? And what it all means.




I quickly realise that actually, this photography thing is a very neat fit for somebody
like me, because it suddenly all boils down to numbers and knowing what those numbers
mean. This is why I get on with programming so well, so I feel at home setting up
the camera to capture shots.




Now, I owned a camera once, when I was 7. It was one of those simple film jobbies
which I used to do what thing that everybody else does these days with their mobile
phones, taking simple shots of whatever it is you are looking at.



I don't want to do that, I want to capture the essence of a scene, to take a bit of
the soul home with me and show it to other people so they can understand what I found
beautiful about something.




So, without further ado, some pictures from my first weekend of learning with the
camera. I am quite pleased with some of the results, especially as this is my first
go with a camera since that one I owned when I was 7.

Attempt Two: Switzerland and France



I hadn't read anything yet, so I was mainly winging it from fiddling with settings
and working out from hearsasy what they were all about. I wish I could go back and
take some more with just what I've learned from the past couple of days!




The full set of Geneva shots can be found here.



A lamp in France








It was quite dark, as the sun was setting, and I noticed the sun was throwing light
through the orange of the lamp and onto the tree behind it. I took a few shots of
it with different settings, and this is the one that came out best. Perhaps a different
angle would have worked better, but it was the first shot that came out that gave
me any level of satisfaction.




F-stop: f/5.6


Exposure time: 1/60sec


ISO speed: 400




Had I had the tripod with me, this would have worked a lot better with a lower exposure
time, and flipping the ISO speed back to 100 where I didn't get such a grainy picture.
Ah well - live and learn. This was before I bought the magazine for education and
inspiration.



Olives in the Market






We visited the market and I thought it would be a good chance to try and get some
colourful shots of some goods on display. The olives were a no-brainer, and the cloth-stand
one came out quite well too.




F-Stop: f/8


Exposure Time: 1/160 sec


ISO Speed: ISO-400




Wtf? ISO 400? That was an accident, and by using the light-meter I compensated by
upping the speed of the shot without really thinking about it. Whoops. Had I known
about aperture at this point, I'd probably have taken a few shots with different layers
of olives in varying amounts of focus. Still would have probably chosen this shot
though.



Attempt Three: Campus


Okay, so I read a magazine on the plane, and some articles on the internets. I'm an
expert now right? Okay, joking aside, after spending the day at home working, I walked
into campus and took a few nice shots and they made me happy.




The full set can be found here



Woodland Trees








Having learned that I can get quite a range of depth of field by using a small aperture
size, I took this one by bringing it down, and upping the exposure time to a decent
length of time. Sticking the camera on the ground on the tripod, and using a timer
so I don't have to touch the camera and blur the photograph. It's quite dark under
the trees too, so it's sort of necessary.




F-Stop: f/10


Exposure Time: 2 sec


ISO Speed: ISO-100




As much as I like shooting from the floor, it would have been nice to use a proper
tripod in this shot and take it from the vantage point I had personally.



Woodland Floor






The floor is quite a pretty and overlooked place as people stamp all over it, so I
got down and dirty and took a shot of the undergrowth. It turned out ok, despite the
darkness under the tree canopy.




F-Stop: f/11


Exposure Time: 1 sec


ISO Speed: ISO-400




I upped the ISO earlier because I was taking pictures of some moving animals under
the canopy, and forgetting to turn it down again the exposure time wasn't quite as
long as other shots. It didn't make the shot too grainy thankfully. I should have
used a much smaller aperture size I think, and upped the exposure time, this was quite
early on and I hadn't quite worked this out yet.



Woodland Floor






Another shot from the floor, but this time looking at the overall scene. Really narrowing
the aperture size so I can get a good focus on the entire thing. This meant an obscene
exposure time, but I think it turned out ok.




F-Stop: f/16


Exposure Time: 6 sec


ISO Speed: ISO-100




I think I've got this sussed, and decide to go home. I'm looking forward to learning
more, this is only my third outing and I feel as if I'm getting the hang of it already.





I know a few of you actually take photographs as a hobby, have you any hints to give
me from looking at the above? Am I making any stupidly rookie mistakes? I wouldn't
be surprised if I was...

Fine fine fine, the weekend as it happened.



Friday




Friday was my birthday, although I like to keep this hidden from most people so I
don't feel forced into any sort of celebration, take things as they come.




I had organised a meetup of some old friends that night (Dave, Luke and Stears), although
the fact that it was my birthday was entirely coincidental, it just being the first
Friday night that people were free to go for a few quiet drinks.




This started off as one of those evenings where we sit down over a few slow beers,
and talk about geeky things like code, our mobile phone and OS preferences, what we're
doing at work, and our recent hijinks, as we rarely see each other there is generally
a lot to catch up on.




At about 10pm, we had moved into the territory where bad jokes start getting told,
and the conversation becomes normal enough for non-programmers, so I called up Ben
and grabbed him, and texted some students to make sure they were in the metal-bar
across town before we began the trek.




As we had hardly been drinking enough to really justify three hours dancing wildly
in a metal bar, it was decided that we would catch up with ourselves by going through
Back of Beyond's more than adequate supply of Sambuca. Rounds were bought with 2-3
sambucas each in them, and at least five of these were purchased.




It was safe to say, that this was the turning point of the evening.




Somehow, we made it to Facebar, were we rendevouzed with a horde of "people that I
know". I don't remember much about Facebar, only that it was a lot of fun and that
I kept falling over. Somebody suggested doing some strawpedoing and apparently I managed
to succeed in this for a change. Probably not good in the long term however. Somewhere
between here and home I managed to pick up a facial injury which is a bit embarassing
- but oh well these things happen!




At about 3am, it was decided that we would head back to Dave's, and drink Jägerbull
as he had a lot of Jägermeister at his house. So we set off, resolving to pick up
a large supply of Red Bull from Murco's, our trusted all night petrol station in homeward
adventures. We head back to Dave's for Jagermeister and The National, everybody is
happy so at 5-30am we retreat to our homes for a good night's sleep.





Or rather, a few hours...



Saturday




We get up at around 10am and resolve to a day of chilling and possibly even a chilli
in the evening. Given that I got my face damaged the previous night, I sacrifice the
vegetarian stance I've been maintaining (for variety rather than ethical reasons)
and set up some bacon and brie sandwiches, buying some really nice and well looked
after bacon for this brief lapse. Ben pops around to the house and Stears him and
I decide to spend a day down at the cinema, and head down at about 15:30 for this
purpose. I get some replacement glasses from specsavers and we go to watch Kung Fu
Panda. The woman who sells us the tickets mis-hears us and we don't realise until
we're at the screen that actually, we're going to watch Hancock. Ah well, it was entertaining
I guess.




We head out for a coffee, and discuss plans, perhaps it would be funny to go fly somewhere
on Sunday and grab lunch, possibly Greece, or Italy. This idea is investigated on
Stears' phone a bit, and then we head back to the cinema to watch Wanted. Absolutely
hilarious movie, recommend it to anyone.




We arrive back at my house after going via Tesco, at around 10:30pm and I decide to
look at some flights. Greece is too far away, and Italy is too expensive. At 10:50
we decide "Hey, let's go to Spain and grab some spanish food". AWESOME.





Ben runs to get his passport from his house, and Stears and I feel smug that we keep
our in our laptop cases. I book three tickets to spain at 5:40am, and we RUN to the
train station to catch the final train to the airport which leaves at 11:34pm.




We spend the morning pissing about at the airport, drinking coffee and setting our
Facebook statuses to comical things like "Gone for lunch"




We are relieved on checking in, to find that I have booked our flights correctly and
that in a few short hours, we'll be at Alacante drinking beer and eating Paella.



Sunday



We arrive into Alacante and grab a taxi to "the beach". The beach it is and we
are amused at how our random adventure has gone so far.




We buy some shorts and towels, and head onto this beach to do some... lounging around
and perhaps a bit of sleep. Ben and I go for a swim and are pleasantly surprised by
how warm the water is. At 9am, the ambient air temperature is 25 degrees Celcius,
so we know we'll be in for a hot day.




I realise I've left the country without bringing a bobble to tie my hair back, and
after not showering for 24 hours and in this heat, my hair is going to stick to my
face and make me incredibly irritable (I want to do murders where I'm irritable),
so we set about looking for a shop that sells bobbles. In this overly-religous country
however, the entire town is shut down because it's Sunday morning and everybody is
at church.




I improvise by tying my tie around my head like a bandana, and feeling like a prat
for the rest of the day. Oh well, I looked like a prat wearing the tie in the first
place, so this is probably an improvement.




The rest of the day is spent just pissing about, drinking beer, eating paella and
swimming. Ben and I play with his camera and use the long lense to 'snipe' random
passers by doing their general activities. We spent the entire day drinking beer,
and slowly learning the local lingo. We have an awesome time, but it's one of those
awesome times that is hard to put into words because the good time is being generated
from just being there and talking nonsense over beer whilst people-watching.


















12 hours later, we're a bit worse for wear through tiredness and beer - and in my
case almost drowning and we say goodbye to the city and make our way home.




We arrive back in Reading 6am, having left 36 hours beforehand. We're dead on our
feet. We've witnessed the sunrise from Gatwick airport twice in a row and are getting
dangerously sober.



Monday




A few hours sleep is had, getting up once more at 10am to fix the boiler, and get
some work done. Life is back to normal but photos need uploading. What a weekend eh?

The un-edited photo set can be found here.


The flickr set can be found here