Oh, and the move to Guildford went well :o)

As Neil pointed out at his birthday bash two weekends ago, this blog has been strangely stagnant since I left Cranleigh. The two main reasons for this are:

• I don't have web access at home in Guildford (and I really am missing ADSL!);
  
• I don't have time to keep the blog when I'm at work (you'll notice that today is a Saturday).
  

But hopefully, NTL or Zen might be able to fix us up with something.

Neil: "Two weeks"

Meself: "What? No, we're going the 15th"

"On the 8th"

"You're joking"

"Why...? Have you booked the wrong week off...?"

"..... Yes.... This is very bad. This is really bad!"

As indeed it is. It transpires that what I thought was the departure date for the Big Dubai Trip Part Two is, in fact, the return date. And the Big Rolling Grant Visit (which is pretty much the opposite of fun) therefore coincides EXACTLY with my holiday.

This would not be a problem if I wasn't supposed to be giving a talk to the visiting committee. But I am, so it is. It's the one time in two years when people actually do give a toss if you take your holidays. The Rolling Grant Panel Visit is pretty much the one thing you can't

Nadgers.

I'll have a crisis meeting (not often you hear that word used outside political circles) with the boss on Monday. Suspect the choice may be a stark one.

Right, it's about 1a.m. as I start writing this. It's been a very long four-day week (but productive on the MOSES side of things), I'm dead tired, I need a holiday, and I turned down an invitation to Micky-off-of-Newsbeat's birthday bash in the O'Neill's.

Why am I typing this, then? Well, it's a milestone night: my last in Cranleigh. Tomorrow I move to Agraria, possibly with the help of Mr Bridger, if I find out that my AX can't take all the stuff I brought over any more.

The room is only half-packed-away, as tonight (Matthew) I will be sleeping here. However, that'll all change tomorrow. All the bits and pieces (including this box) will be sorted semi-randomly into boxes and heaved into the car, and driven to somewhere where I don't think I'll be able to park in daylight hours. Bum. Must sort this situation out. Dunno how, yet. Parking at Gomshall overnight seems an option, just getting the train there each day. But seems a little extreme. (The council's webshite was out of bounds yesterday, but that could be associated with the electricity vanishing across a large portion of London. So I don't know how to get one of these blue-badge thingies, if that's even what I'm supposed to get. MANY questions have I for Abi.)

Seems a while ago, but certainly not almost a year-and-a-half, since I woke up early one weekday morning, the first week I was here, due to the fact that the entire outside wall of my room is double-glazed window. It's a nice feature, if you're not trying to sleep in, and I'll probably miss it a bit. Similarly I'll miss G&J, and the well-furnished flat and kitchen. But not sharing with pet rats (now rat singular, since last Friday).

I also twigged yesterday that it's a year since I was in Big Bear, on that fateful observing trip. My first and only visit so far to the country I want to work in for a few years. Must chase up that last enquiry about jobs, too...

I'm getting tireder now. Hopefully there'll be drinkage tomorrow night with Mr Bridger and Lord Dobke Jr, plus the new housemate! Yay!

Need sleep so I can get up about 9a.m., and thus stand a chance of getting everything sorted out tomorrow afternoon.

G'night all. G'night Cranleigh.

An anonymous irishman, calling me on the mobile at 8:01 am:
"I don't remember how I got in to work."
[other details have been removed to protect his identity.]

I think this is the funniest wake-up call I've ever received.

After playing about with RSI's own examples, I now have a widget whereby you can set slider to two positions by using corresponding buttons. It's about as complex as JavaScript can be.

Some way off from having something which will behave as I want it to (i.e. you put in certain known/fixed/ideal values, and vary/covary the others to help you understand the limitations of your instrument design), but every journey starts with a single step.

I make it nearly thirteen hours today.

Eurgh....