nevill.net

So I’m never happier than when I’m creating a cheeky Nant script to automate our database builds, deploy to test, etc…   Now my ruby skills are improving I’m hoping that Rake will be my ruby Nant

If you’re having email problems on your iPhone make sure to check that 3G is enabled under settings-general-network-enable 3G.  It might be that your email problems are due to you turning off 3G and forgetting to turn it back on… 

So finally got the bike in the car and did some mountain biking in the Mendips this afternoon.  As usual I picked the wrong route up the hill so ended up walking most of it but did find the main route down the hill which was good fun.  The top of the mendips always looks a bit god-foresaken when I drive over it on the way to work and it didn’t dissapoint today.  

One of the only guides I found on the internet suggested it would be soggy and it was almost too soggy to pedal through on the flat and uphill sections. Time wise I got up the hill in an hour and down in 10 minutes… the 10 minutes being the fun bit ;-) 

If you fancy having a go here is the Mendips Trail Map pdf from the Mendip Hills AONB Service. 

Ouch! Just had the O2 UK bill in from my recent week in Ireland.  Even though I followed the recommended ways to minimise my data costs I still racked up a 36 quid bill in 7 days.  

How O2 can charge this I have no idea and brings fond memories back of using my trusty 7290 Blackberry around the world in 2006 where it would eak out full-time email for pennies a day instead of pounds.  

So here’s what I did, maybe you can suggest where I went wrong: (1) Turned of 3g, (2) set data roaming to off (3) when needing data I’d switch roaming on, get the data, then turn it off!  

So not only do you have to nanny the thing you still get a chunky bill, though not as large as some other iphone roamers.

The best week of motorsport each year is the Dakar Rally, covered by Eurosport in the UK.  Today’s route went through some amazing scenery in Argentina and showed quite how difficult taking the Race Touaregs up near vertical dunes can be.  Tomorrow sees the competitors head up over the Andes and towards the Pacific coast.  They should go over 4000m, when we were travelling I felt distinctly dodgy at 2500m so it will be interesting to see whether the altitude affects the drivers and cars.

So I thought that at least one day this week would bring decent driving conditions but no chance… Monday was a combination of water and ice particles, Tuesday brought frozen cow muck in the farmyard (a new type for me), yesterday was fluffy snow and today was back to the plain old mendips sludge.  I think I can conclude that Somerset has mostly poor road conditions ;-) 

Daily mendip weather update: Lots of drizzle and plenty of mist.  Back in the fast car so enjoyed the drive even though the roads were soggy.

After a year of my daily cross-mendips commute I thought I’d start recording the ‘lovely’ Somerset weather I enjoy on the way to work.  It’s always a bit of a challenge so by noting it down I thought I’d get some perspective into just how much of a challenge. 

Today’s pre-Chrimbo weather consisted of slightly damp roads and plenty of fog.  Driving up through the Combe was different today as the 350Z was in for a service so I got to drive a Nissan Note.  It was less driving and more a process of charting a course in the good ship Note.  Performance was none-to-speak-of and cornering a bit like a football.

It’s a happy day when a product you wished for is delivered, and for free! 

One such app I’ve been hankering for is a Sonos Controller for the iPhone.  Our Sonos system is our favourite gadget in the house and even with 2 controllers there’s always times when you need to skip a track and the controller is downstairs.  From today the iPhone app store has the Sonos Controller for download, sweet!

Confluence is my favourite wiki product, having used it for a couple of years at clients and also with the free personal version.  Although it’s a great application there is one issue, the price…  implementing it in smaller dev shops is just not viable so I have been looking around for a suitable replacement.

Xwiki caught my eye on http://www.wikimatrix.org/ and I’ve been trialling it for a week or so.  Downsides are it’s a java based solution but once you get over that it does a very good job.  Proper user, group and space funcionality complement the very impressive wysiwyg editor.  So far so good… will update how it pans out in the long term.

 If Atlassian provided a small company license that was affordable it would be good but they obviously don’t care for that market and only focus on the Entreprise users, shame.