I’ve been a fan of home automation for a long time, and whilst still living at home with the parents, I’ve been able to experiment with X10 with great success. Thankfully, the house is all on one level, with loft access. So far, it’s been decided that I’ll be running Cat5 cable to every room – maybe not the bathroom, but there’s still potential for that if I can justify it – along with speaker cable and possibly two or three HDMI cables.

I’ll have an automation server running Homeseer as a backend to the house, which will pull together pretty much all the tech in the house. My main media server will run Windows Home Server, serving up audio and video to Windows 7 PCs which run Windows Media Center.

Broadcast media will arrive in the house in a variety of different ways: 2 Virgin Media boxes will provide cable TV to either the TVs directly, or to the Windows 7 boxes to be played out via WMC; at least one Freesat box (there’s already a satellite dish feeding into the house); and regular old council telly – Freeview.

My studio equipment will live in its own room, herein referred to as my studio. The studio PC will live in the loft along with the servers so I can reduce the equipment noise in the studio itself. Monitor and keyboard/mouse will arrive in the room via an Adder standalone KVM box.

I’m sure there will be all kinds of pitfalls along the way, but with the help of the folks over at Automated Home, I’m sure things will go pretty well! Stay tuned for more news on the tech house. I can’t wait!

So what’s all this volcano business about? Personally, I think it’s just a misunderstanding on the Icelandic government’s part. We, in the UK and also The Netherlands, got stung when Icelandic online back Icesave went under, and we’re now looking for that money back. We asked Iceland to “give us cash”, and well, I guess they misheard or misunderstood.

So, the result is a massive cloud of volcanic ash, containing rock and glass. It looks a bit like this:

Image by Árni Friðriksson. Used under licence.

The effect this has had on the UK, Europe, and to a lesser degree, the rest of the world, has been huge. With UK and European airspace essentially closed since last Thursday, the whole world has pretty much ground to a halt. With no planes in the air, holidaymakers are experiencing huge problems either getting to or from their holiday destinations, children and teachers have been unable to return to school for the start of the new term, air freight is waiting around in airports, and fresh fruit and flowers are rotting in warehouses. You see, we rely so heavily on air travel in our every day lives, that when we find that planes can’t get into the air, we’re affected in ways we’d not ever considered. You don’t need to be trying to get on a plane to be impacted by this problem. You just need to try and get an orange from the supermarket.

As I write this post, there are tweets flying around on the Twitterverse suggesting that the other volcano in Iceland has erupted. At this point, it looks like this may not be true, but if it is, we may find ourselves noticing the impact of the eruption in something other than the hypothetical.

Maybe now is the time to look at our lives and investigate how we can be more self-sufficient. Not in a living-in-the-woods Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall kind of way, but we can maybe try not to rely on as many imported goods. Try sending an email instead of a letter. That kind of thing. It can’t be that hard, can it?

One of the most bizarre news stories to come out today was that British Airways has asked the EU and UK Government for compensation for the lost business due to the closure of UK and European airspace. Seriously, BA? You’re really asking for compensation? Is this because your insurance company won’t pay out due to an ‘act of God’? You asking for compensation for closed airspace is like me asking for compensation from my local council when they close a road because it’s dangerous. Your test flights and those of your competitors didn’t actually fly at the height you usually fly. Those that did (KLM) flew directly into an area with no ash – how are those proper test flights? You’re all saying there’s no danger, but NATO have already damaged a couple of F-16s by flying proper test flights.

I’m sorry to say it, Willie Walsh, but it’s things like this which show up weaknesses in your industry’s business model. A lot of your competitors are ‘staring bankruptcy in the face’ if you believe the news reports. Well, that’s just the business world. If you can’t afford to pay your bills, you go under. Only the fittest survive. The Free Market’s a bitch, eh?

Twitter is broken. Instead of worrying about it, why not kick back and head on over to The Fail Whale Fan Club. Unless you’re seeing this post via Twitter, in which case, it’s fixed.

Bye.

The lovely Emma and Barry were both serving, and you couldn’t ask for better service – very attentive, keen to make sure you’re having a good time, got enough to drink, etc, so Jen and I were both happy. If we thought the service was good, we were in for a real treat with the food! We decided to go for a main course and a dessert. I had the Chicken Supreme, which is chicken breast stuffed with black pudding, wrapped in bacon with sauteed potatoes and a whisky sauce. Jen had the Haddock Supper, pretty self explanatory – battered fish and home-made chips. Great stuff.

After we dispensed with the mains, we moved on to the important business of dessert. We both opted for the Chocolate & Orange Cheesecake. Oh. My. God. Sara Lee can suck it. The Lansdowne’s cheesecake is amazing! I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. The person who tweets for them is also a fan of this particular dish. Oh, and did I mention? They serve it on an actual slate:

The food at The Lansdowne is out of this world. Follow them on Twitter at @lansdownespy, visit the website and visit them in person. You’ll not regret it!

We wandered around the upstairs one-way system for a while before we found the bedroom section. They’ve changed the layout, don’t you know? We had a look at a few different beds, toyed with the idea of getting at mattress too, but eventually picked the bed we wanted. We picked the Heimdal bed frame. We really liked the look of this bed, and we REALLY liked the look of the price. £55 for the full kit. I took a note of the aisles and locations of the various components of the kit and proceeded to collect everything. It turns out that Ikea sometimes don’t put things where they tell you. The slats for this bed, specifically. However, I eventually found them and moved on to the checkout. Ikea are more efficient and taking your money than they are at putting things in the right place, it would seem. Now, off to the car park.

Rather than trying to get the (very large) trolley over to the car, I left Jen at the pickup point with everything until I went to fetch the car. No problem. The car’s all parked up, the back seats are folder down and the boot is open. Now, in with the kit. Oh. Wait. Hang on, I need to tweet about this:

Shit. Do I await the advice of the Twitterverse, or do I come up with a plan of my own? Well, knowing some of the people I follow (Alan Ogden), I’m expecting less than helpful replies, so I need to come up with my own solution to this. It’s time to phone my sister. Her fiance Robert has a bigger car than me, and access to a van if required. Great. He’s on his way. While I wait for him to arrive, I get the smaller stuff in the car and check what delights Twitter has offered up in reply to my problem:

Great. Alan’s replied. In a fashion which was expected. Not to worry though, the cavalry has arrived. Robert’s here! We get the oversized bed part into the back of the car and head home. That reminds me, I’d better get Robert some beer for digging me out of this hole. We manage to unload everything into the house and Robert heads home.

After that, it was just a simple case of chucking out the old bed and building the new one. A relatively simple process, and one which didn’t take too long! We had the bed built and ready for use in half an hour! Buying the bed and getting it home took longer than actually putting it together.

Maybe Ikea should consider giving the measurements of the packaging as well as the items within. It could save a lot of heartache in the long run.

After drifting in and out of it during this period, I’m now properly back on Twitter. I had fallen away from it for a while, just as I had with the rest of social media. It feels good to be back though, I missed being plugged into the Matrix. There is one problem though – it is full of Apple disciples and Big Brother fans, so at certain times of the day or month, I will lay low until the dust has settled from whichever Apple or Endemol launch/scandal has happened on any given day. So for that reason, I will probably be a ‘floater’, dipping in and out of Twitter as it suits me.

I can’t believe we’re almost into February too – is it possible that due to all the issues with snow and cold weather, January has just passed us by completely? Possibly. Were we all too distracted in our efforts not to slip and break our necks to notice that Burns’ Night was approaching? Definately. Thank God Steve Jobs was on hand to snap us out of it by tempting us all with an iPad. He’ll be launching the more discreet iTampon in the summer.

By the way, I had a beta version of the iPad a few years ago. Back then though, they called it an Etch-a-Sketch.

It’s always interesting starting a new job. Meeting new people, remembering their names, finding out what they like/dislike… just being sociable in general. Luckily, I’ve gone full time in a place where I have been temping. Same department, different job, and different location, so the transition from old to new hasn’t been the upheaval it might have been if I’d switched employers. By and large, I’ve managed to hit the ground running.

I appear to have found a niche in the work that I do, but I’m not going to allow myself to become to comfortable. After all, this is only a 12-month contract. I need to push the boundaries and go beyond my comfort zone if I want to pick up new skills. New skills which may help be find a new job if, after 12 months, this temporary position isn’t made permanent. Intertwined with that, I need to start studying again. I’ve been talking about it for long enough, but it’s time that I actually got that Microsoft certification I’ve been planning. I’ve got all the training materials – I just need to start using them.

I’ll be tough not to let this diminish my other interests. I’m still a keen photographer, and I really want to forge ahead with some radio work. After all, the long-term goal is to move abroad with the missus where she can get a nursing job, and I can proceed in radio. However, I need to pay the bills now, and the IT industry is paying. Radio is not (for the most part).

So that’s about it from me for the moment… I’ll try to write again soon, but as you’ve already seen, that may be a problem for me.

I’ll leave you with the video on the right. Courtesy of @RadioPaulo.

Today, I’m calling on the readers of my blog to help a charity which is very personal to me: No Strings Attached (Scotland). The reason I’m using my blog to promote this charity is because I’m trying to drum up enough votes to enable them to be appointed as the official charity of the Glasgow Twestival. What’s a Twestival? It’s a Twitter Festival. Basically, there will be an evening of music and fun at a venue in Glasgow city centre which will hopefully raise lots of money, and I’d love for No Strings Attached Scotland to be the recipient of the proceeds. It’s a very worth charity.

No Strings Attached (Scotland) aims to help children and young people with asthma better control their condition through playing wind instruments like the flute, clarinet, etc. It helps increase lung capacity and stamina, and I know from personal experience that it works. They also aim to educate children and young people about their condition, and steps they can take to help themselves.

Please vote for No Strings Attached (Scotland) here, and you can listen to my personal plea on the charity’s website here.