The monitor arrived at work today and so this evening I have been putting everything in place. The screen is fantastic and fits perfectly into the space. The PC itself is slightly wider than I had hoped leaving very little room for air circulation on the right hand side. I'm not sure this is a problem though as the machine doesn't seem to run very hot and it does run very quiet!

HTPC in place

The OS choice was going to be Fedora 6, but the torrent I was downloading failed and being impatient I had to install something I had already. I used the Linux Mint 2.2 (Bianca) disc I had because it comes already wrapped with the "windows" codecs and DVD playback support. After a little playing to get the nVidia drivers installed correctly the screen was blessed with its full res of 1680x1050. The only thing that's slightly annoying is that I can't seem to get digital out from the non-optical jacks, and I only have one optical cable. This means that it's either the PC or the Xbox with digital sound. Easy fix for that though...

I was quite impressed at how easy it then was to get Beryl installed, and some fantastic 3D desktopping going which the machine handled pretty damn well considering the video is an onboard solution and it was trying to cope with displaying a spinning, semi-transparent, cube with various application windows on each face and a video running over a corner being viewed on it's back-surface through the semi-transparent rest of the cube. At 1680x1050. I have enough trouble thinking about it, let alone rendering it at 30fps. As I said - impressed.

Back to reality, Monday turned out pretty well. The sun came out and Mike and I took the longboards out around Exeter and spent some time partaking in a bit of parkour. Haven't been out on the boards for ages and it was really good to ride again. Monday evening, I watched Spiderman 3, which isn't as bad, IMHO, as everyone keeps saying. In fact might even be pretty spectacular on the big screen.

pics to be added soon, but i wrote this ages ago so might as well post

Rosie's trip seems to have started well, with after a 22 odd hour coach journey they arrive in the middle of nowhere halfway up a mountain, 6km from any town, with no Rep to meet them and the Emergency contact number for the Rep closed for the Bank Holiday and in the freezing cold.

Sound's like fun... Apparently today is better.

So most of the components arrived today, in that I now have everything but the monitor. This means of course the machine is useless because I can't see what's going on at all... Rather frustrating, but on the other hand the case does look pretty sweet and I think it'll fit in with the rest of my kit nicely.

The Innards

Oh well, I guess I'll have to build it on Tuesday. Meanwhile today was quite nice and we went out to Wagamama's for dinner (which I will never get tired of). Tomorrow we hope the surf will be good and that it'll be worth a trip.

I'm sure it will be.

Perhaps I'll even take some new picture to liven up this rather text-based-at-the-moment blog.

Update: 26 May 2007

No surf... this morning, so we have done nada as yet.

So, I haven't posted for a few days, been pretty busy what with work and organising selling our house, and looking for one to buy and some residual Polar Race work, etc...

However I have been keeping my spirits high with thoughts of builing new PC. I managed to sell my trusty old shuttle and the 17" monitor, so that's effectively making the cost of this new one vastly reduced.

It going to be an Antec HiFi seperate sized case, with a nice Abit motherboard with good HD support and DVI output. Oh, and of course I'm getting a nice LG 22" widescreen Monitor (1680x1050, with HDCP support) which looks very cripsy.

Well, it was a good weekend in all. I heard from a friend from Uni that I hadn't seen for a good few years, who had been sailing a boat round the south coast of Devon for a week. He start and finished in Dartmouth and just wondered whether I might be about.

Good call too, as Rosie and I had nothing planned for the Saturday night and it was really good to see Tim again (and Tom and Helen, who I didn't know quite as well, and certainly weren't expecting to see!) and a merry time was had by all as the liquor flowed.

But as the title of this entry may suggest we have started looking for a new house. Rosie got confirmation last week that she has her job for the next academic year and so we have decided to start the move process. We have already seen a fairly nice property, which we now need to see from the inside, but it's the boring process of actually putting ours up for sale and all the tape that goes with it that I'm not looking forward too.

Still it gave us an excuse to tidy our house and chuck out loads of 'stuff' that has just accumulated of the last few years...

So I can't believe I haven't taken a photo yet, but I made chilli a couple of days ago and we have been eating burritos ever since. They are really quite something.

I'll get my act together and next time we eat some you'll get a photo.

What else have I been doing? Well not that much, although I seems like I'm really busy... What with working 9-5 and still having little bits to do for Polar Adventures, whether Polar Race or London 2 Paris related, and so not much else has been going on. In fact I generally just feel shattered at the end of the day, lucky to have the energyt to crash on the couch and watch the latest Heroes - which was great (again) - or Lost (tonight) or whatever. Rosie has been borrowing and re-watching pretty much all of Sex in the City, so I am watching more than my fair share of that...

Of course I still haven't found time to finish of the sections of this site that are missing, nor upload all my photos to the gallery. I'll get round to it...

Of course I knew that I would have to go back to work eventually. It was just as to be expected.

OK so enough of that crazy talk, how about the fact that I am now officially addicted to 24 - just like so many others - and am now 1/3 of the way through season 2. The good thing is there are 4 more seasons after that, but the bad news is that I will have to spent about 3 and a half days solid watching the TV to get through them all...

Home made mcMuffin

More excitingly Rosie and I went up to Saunton on another surfing trip on Sunday. The waves were much better than Saturday and I really felt my legs getting the feel back again (right before the sea knocks that arrogance out of you...) and we even caught the same wave at one point and were surfing along close enough to each other to reach out and touch! Very cool feeling!

So the picture in today's blog is the fantastic fried egg and cheese mcMuffin that Rosie made me at 06:45 on Sunday morning before we set out into the driving rain - it was pure fried gold.

Finally, the first weekend of my return to England has landed and Rosie and I got out surfing, down at Harlyn bay. We employed our new surfing trip technique of "get up at a reasonable time in the morning and actually get to the spot still at a reasonable time" which seems to be working quite well. The surf reports said mostly blown out most places and so Harlyn seemed like a good bet as it's pretty sheltered.

Paper Vs. Scissors

Surf was pretty dumpy but when headed into Newquay later and it was completely white water in less sheltered spots.

On a totally different note, I saw this design on a t-shirt and thought it was funny. Looking up the image on the Internet I find that apparently it has caused outrage - in Australia! Of all places... Anyway, Mambo refused to pull the design as it is "renowned for its quirky, often humorous and topical T-shirts that provoke reaction".

I took the train back to Exeter yesterday, and had a chance to watch a good deal more of 24 on the journey. Having waited so long to actually watch it, I am impressed it's as good as the hype. But anyway, I got back to Exeter and made my way to the Imperial for a drink and to meet Rosie.

Back Together

Then back home, a nice takeaway from Wagamama and some well needed rest. It seems now that I have stopped, my body is catching up and now feels rough - probably just tired from the random hours I've been sleeping and the lack of it I've had over the past few days - so I'm taking it easy today. I don't wanna be unwell for this weekend and my first chance to get surfing this year!

I've got a feeling that now this Arctic business is over there might be a whole lot less to talk about in this blog. I'm sure I'll find something to ramble about in it's place though.

Jock and Charlotte in Ottawa

We made it to Ottawa on the 5th and pretty much immediately dropped our bags and went out into the town for he "after-race" party - as is traditional. This turned out to be a very enjoyable evening and Jake, one of the racers, knows Ottawa pretty well and directed us to some good places and good beers. Much fun was had by all and there are some pretty embarrassing photos to prove it, but none of those will appear here...

The following morning, I got rather brutal reminder that you forget what a hangover is like after 5 weeks with almost no alcohol... Needless to say I was not 100%. So much of our day in Ottawa was spent walking around the city, and looking at the buildings, parks, markets, etc... Quite a pretty town to be fair. Then myself and Tony decided that we didn't really want to move too much and so sat down outside one of the town's many Irish Bars and had the hair-of-the-dog.

Then boring flight, followed by pick by Nancy and brief trip to see Thomas - who is almost walking now and has grown up a fair bit in the 5 weeks I've been away - and then home to try and stay awake, to stave off the jet-lag.

So, now I'm back in Hertford, and have just sampled to the new Thai-Restaurant-cum-Pasty-Shop (which used to just be a pasty shop) and was well impressed with the food. Just what the doctor ordered. However I think the doctor also ordered about 14hours of sleep so I'm going to bed now and looking forward to actually reaching home, in Exeter, tomorrow.

When I posted a while ago about the longest day, I was sadly underestimating the tight schedule we'd have on the last day of the race.

I was awoken at 6am on the 4th of May, to get a weather update from Team Refuge at the North Pole. That being acquired, we then spent the entire day trying to get the flights sorted to get the racers and checkpoint crew (who were still at the third checkpoint) out and back to Resolute. So, finally at about midday, we get a plane in the air to pick up our checkpoint crew, and we continue to check on the state of things for getting the racers out. By 9pm we had ascertained that although we needed two planes to get all the racers out, it might be a problem making two trips because the pilots have limited air-hours they are allowed to fly.

At around 23:00 the first plane landed at the pole and broke a ski! This was actually a blessing in disguise as it meant that another plane had to be sent to help recover - meaning we could get all the racers out and home safe. Finally, at around 01:00 the first group landed and about 03:00 the second group. All were happy to get back (understatement!) and the day had just begun...

Following this was a frantic equipment check-in and organise for storage until next time, so we could leave South Camp by 05:00 to fly back to Ottawa. However there was more plane trouble and we ended up having to detour via Nanucivit and arrived at Iqualit too late to transfer to Ottawa. So we had to stay the night. This was at about 16:00 and I had been awake for 34 hours. So we transferred to the Hotel, and had a shower, some dinner and more importantly a few beers!

By about 20:30 I was getting a little tired and so went to bed after a 38 hour day. I slept like a rock for 12 hours solid!

Hopefully, we'll get to Ottawa today...