I am going to be joining the Rowans Hospice Moonlit Memories Walk this year, which is a 12 mile walk from Southsea Castle, along to Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, back via Old Portsmouth, along to Eastney and back – with a few wiggles along the way just for good measure. It will all be starting at midnight on the 20th June, so being late at night will be adding to my general lack of fitness! Having just got the pack I’m wondering what I’ve let myself in for, but it is for a good cause so I’ll crawl if I have to!

As many visiting here will know Dawn’s dad died at the end of January after a battle with cancer. His last few weeks were spent at Rowans and the staff and volunteers there do an amazing job.

I’ve known Geoff, on and off, since I was born, and he was the best father-in-law / grandad you could wish for, so I signed up for this walk for Dawn and Geoff. Since then, however, the memories part of this walk have taken on more meaning with the death of my mum at the beginning of April, particularly as the Rowans chaplain spoke at her funeral.

I very much hope that as many people as possible will give generously as Rowans is a very deserving and worthwhile cause, and if you pay tax do make sure you use Gift Aid to get the tax donated too.

Many thanks,
Paul

To sponsor / donate visit http://www.justgiving.com/paultansom, and if you have any problems let me know as I have been told some people have had trouble, although that may be down to the complete failure of the JustGiving Facebook application!

Earlier this year when I was chatting to a friend who lost their dog to having eaten something poisoned, which was thought to have been put down for foxes. That’s pretty unpleasant on both counts – somebodies pet was killed, and there seems little justification for killing foxes to me, but there’s no accounting for some people.

The first fox in our garden goes back a good few years now, and sadly we dubbed him Basil. There was a bit more to the name than simply being a fox though. When he first appeared I was doing some painting in the garden and he crept up and nicked my paintbrush!

There’s some shots that should convince most that foxes are loveable creatures in our family photo gallery.

Just after nine this morning I tried dialling the number that came with the the SIMs and got through to the automated service. First it asked me if I wanted a new number, no, then it asked me to confirm that I had an existing number I wanted to keep, yes. Next it told me it would transfer me to a customer operative. The message told me that Orange was committed to providing excellent customer service and then promptly cut me off! I tried again a few times, and then again through the morning (thankfully this is a freephone number) and got the same problem.

At around midday I decided to take a look round the Orange website for an alternative number. I found one for people wanting to join Orange so decided to try that. After following through the options to avoid Orange Broadband and get to the one to sign up with Orange I get told that I will be transferred to a customer operative. Oh good, but I won’t hold my breath. Well, actually I might as well because it wouldn’t have been for long. The next thing I am told is that the number I have dialled as not been recognised and I get cut off. That’s odd, because I didn’t dial anything, or at least not since I got through to their automated service! I decide to try again a few times, but each time I get the same thing.

This doesn’t bode well at all, but having already set up my wife’s phone with a new number on Orange I’ll keep trying – for now. Thank goodness the phone numbers are free!

Sorry James, but I’m afraid Studio 60 is no more. In fact it struggled to get aired to the final episode in the US. I think it took a break for Christmas, then stopped again in February, only just managing to air the final episodes with a change of night when it returned in May. I seem to remember hearing this and wondering whether I really wanted to get into another series that had been axed. I’m afraid I’m a little fed up with good series being axed while some utter rubbish that’s cheap to make gets similar or worse ratings and survives. I guess it is all about profit and the quality of the programme has absolutely nothing to do with anything. I think the show I am most annoyed about being axed is probably Firefly. That’s one of the best series I’ve seen in a very long while. Thankfully there was enough interest to manage a film to, sort of, finish off the story, but you could tell that there was far more story there that could have made a truly wonderful sci-fi series.

Ah well

Well that didn’t come out too bad did it? It could certainly have been a lot worse, after all some people come out as Wesley! Since the text appears to be missing from the link and image (unlike the others) I’ll add it – it could be critically important after all

Jean-Luc Picard An accomplished diplomat who can virtually do no wrong, you sometimes know it is best to rely on the council of others while holding the reins. There are some words which I have known since I was a schoolboy. “With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.” These words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie — as a wisdom, and warning. The first time any man’s freedom is trodden on, we’re all damaged.

The basic issue seems to be a lack of internal communication in the Inland Revenue itself. My P35 was filed electronically and the confirmation email was received on the 10th May. Unfortunately there seems to be a massive backlog of these, and the receiving department is not notifying the department chasing them which ones they have received. According to my accountant they have, on a number of occasions, had to print and photocopy all the documentation they have – including all the electronic filing printouts and emails – and then send them to the Inland Revenue. Not only is this more than a little ridiculous because they should be managing to communicate within their own organisation, but it also defeats the point of doing the filing electronically if you then have to print and photocopy everything to send in anyway.

Thankfully it seems that they have had one too many ear bashings and are happy to take my word for it over the phone – well, they are at the moment. I wouldn’t put it past them to forget I even phoned!

Anyway, the reason I started this post was that I came across a couple of pieces that I wrote in response to the management processes in use where I was working a few years back and thought I would immortalise them here for safe keeping! The first two are my own work and the third claims a much older author

TIME MANAGEMENT – The process of spending all your time planning what you would do if you weren’t so busy planning. A particularly impractical process since priorities have usually changed before the plan is finished, rendering it obsolete and requiring a new one – Paul Tansom, 1996

PROCESS – A set of rules/instructions that, if followed, render any task too complicated and time consuming to meet the business need. An efficient employee will totally ignore most processes, but be sufficiently articulate to explain how their work fits into any random process explained to them in time of crisis – Paul Tansom, 1996

REORGANISATION – We trained hard but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation – C Petronius AD67

All things being well I should add a few entries here once in a while, although past records may well indicate that it will die a horrible death due to neglect

So why did I choose Blosxom? Well there’s a couple of initial reasons. I first came across it whilst reading another blog from a fellow HantsLUG member Jonathan Hudson. I was basically trawling around the HantsLUG Planet (a syndication of RSS weblog feeds) to see what others were using. Jonathan’s was running on PyBlosxom, which had a reference to being a Python port of Blosxom. On investigating Blosxom I found it was written in Perl, so immediately had a tick in the desirability box (I quite like Perl myself). When it turned out to be a single CGI, very easy to install and configure and very, very much along the lines of my thinking with my own Perl scripts for wrapping templates around my other sites the decision was pretty much made

Adding entries is simply a matter of creating a new text file in the data directory, and since this can be done quickly and easily using SSH and VIM I was definitely sold. Now all I need to do is take a look around the ‘flavours’ so I can customise the look of the pages and I’ll be away. I think I’ll have to save that for another day now though

Right, last thing done for today and that’s to change the redirect on the Linuxlore index to direct to this weblog – I think this is as good a home as any for now, particularly as my Linuxlore domain has been kicking its heels for a good 5 years now!