A week off (by alaric)

I took last week off of work, to recuperate from the house moving and to spend some time setting up my workshop. That sounds like more house moving, but it's without deadlines, and it's taking time to sort out my own space the way I like it. So it's relaxing and settling! I did a few other things, too. I chose the Half Term week for my holiday, as no work AND no school runs would mean I didn't need to get up in the mornings, and so I could spend more time with our children. Sarah's teenaged (well, 12 and 14) cousins visited for half term, too, and were eager to help out with interesting DIY projects!

• We laid concrete in the fireplace, to bring the base level with the rest of the floor so we can tile it to make a nice hearth. We mixed the concrete by hand, and leveled and tamped it into the space, then checked back on it over the next few days until it was hard.

• We laid mortar along a messy and dirt-accumulating crevice in the workshop floor, to level it. This was fairly similar to the laying of concrete, except using sand rather than all-in ballast as the aggregrate.

• Painted most of the workshop floor with the special concrete floor paint I bought from the excellent and helpful Bailey Paints. We can't paint over the bit we laid mortar on until it's cured sufficiently, which will take a few months, so that bit can wait.

• Constructed and arranged the furniture in the workshop. Shelving had to be assembled, and my famous double-deck electronics desk put back together!

• Mounted my tool board on the workshop wall. It's happy in its new home.

• Mounted and wired in the Caffreys sign. Years and years ago Sarah and I, with my friend Matthew, witnessed a pub being redecorated, and the illuminated Caffreys sign was being chucked into a skip. We asked if we could take it, and it's followed us ever since then, being used as a rather unweildy novelty lamp; now we have a place we can mount it properly to the wall, so it's mounted on the outside of my workshop, with the cable run properly through the wall so it can be plugged in inside.

• Mounted and wired in the router, power strip, switch and UPS. We have a nice new cupboard under the stairs, built for us by Sarah's brother David. I've mounted the "core network" devices directly to the inside wall of the cupboard, and will mount one of my patch panels there when I run CAT5 to sockets around the house (and a trunk to the workshop, where my second patch panel will be installed in the comms cabinet - when it's bolted to the wall; we bought the bolts for that, but didn't get around to it).

• Gone climbing (with Jean and Sarah's cousins) at The Warehouse in Gloucester, which has excellent facilities for children and young folks. Everyone had a good time.

• Worked more on my scripts to migrate the massive amount of data from my current hosting setup, love.warhead.org.uk, to the new hardware. Love currently runs on a pair of servers, fear and infatuation, whose responsibilities will be taken over by one, just called love. This will be a simpler and more reliable setup, which will be easier to migrate in future, and will (touch wood) crash less. Oh, and it gives us much more disk space.

The love migration scripts were about the only stuff I did with computers all week. I'd have liked to have done more (I have some Ugarit, R7RS, and Chicken Scheme TODOs), but the presence of teenagers who would get bored if they didn't have exciting DIY tasks to do meant I focussed on things I could do with them. This isn't a problem, as in only one week I couldn't do ALL my projects; even focussing on DIY, we didn't get it all done 🙂

However, I think I need to take time off to relax like this more often. Mainly because, despite not needing to be up in the morning, I kept waking up at around 6am and not being able to get back to sleep. And once I woke up from a nightmare that I was neglecting all my responsibilities and everyone who depended upon me was being let down. These are not healthy signs...

Notye (by sarah)

SO I've had this idea of making Alaric pose as Gotye for photos but then this week I've had my younger cousins staying and the result is that we made a video of it!

It is a spoof of this Gotye song with elements of this cover by Walk Off The Earth. It is made with the laptop which had limitations but I think it's pretty good as a first film/music vid 🙂

Poetry and Art and Science-Art (by sarah)

This last week has been quiet busy for me as far as my 'work' is concerned. First off I had a meeting on Saturday about taking part in another art exhibition like In Braille with Centre Arts in order to raise many for the visually impaired. I'm aiming for another piece of three dimensional textural science art.

Then on the Sunday I was performing (though briefly due to sick baby) at Art Tournament in Gloucester, a monthly event which is becoming a regular thing for me!

Then I have mostly been writing science and tech poetry as part of this years WoPoWriMo challenge. This involves actually checking facts for a start!

Then there has been organising supplies for Alaric's Cub pack so that they could practice sewing badges and buttons on.

And then I got a peak at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival programme and yeah! Look Look! I'm in it! (running kids workshops).

Then (yes there is more) I've been preparing for a Poetry Dragon workshop at a school in Cheltenham - thanks once again to Cheltenham Poetry Festival. (This has been a bit of a challenge as everything is still not unpacked!)

Then I have been designing a new craft writing workshop!

Knitted Alaric's Valentine present and am half way through little presents for the girls (we go for the concept of Family Love rather than Sexual Love for this holiday)

Tonight I am going to deliver a flower made of hearts painting/collage to Centre Arts along with some knitted hearts and other various craft bits of a valentines day nature. This is for their Valentine Exhibition which is on Friday 10th at 12:00pm until Thursday, February 16, 2012 at 5:00pm.

Then tomorrow I run the workshops.

And this weekend holds just as much arty fun plus it looks like my cousins are visiting for the half term 🙂

Oh and I finally managed to not only play F on the guitar but then to change to C7th and back again! W00t! Playing nursery rhymes to the girls is paying off!

Tax returns (by alaric)

Many years ago, around 2000, I formed a limited company. A bunch of us wanted to rent a rack in a data centre and host our servers there, and it seemed wise to have a separate legal entity to sign the contract with the ISP for the rack.

This cost me some money here and there in fees, and I had to take the time to keep books and file annual reports and accounts, but it was bearable.

Then a few years later, I became a freelance software engineer, and as the company already existed, it made sense to operate through that. Making a profit rather than being propped up by cash loans from me meant the company's tax returns became more complex, so I paid an accountant to do those, and that was fine as the saved money in using the company paid for his fees.

So all was fine until 2007, when a flood destroyed our home (and my placed of work).

I had to keep working to support my family, so I went to London to borrow space to work and sleep in, and did what I could to keep cash flowing. But this meant I wasn't spending much time at home where my paperwork was, and had little time to deal with book keeping, and my post was arriving into a building site back home.

A year later we were able to move back in, to try and pick up the pieces. But life was harder than it had been, and Sarah was sicker, and it's taken me until 2012 to catch up.

But last week I submitted my last personal tax returns. Towards the end of last year, my last corporation tax returns. Earlier that year, my last VAT returns. And the good news is, I seem to be eligible for some tax back. I'm happy about that as a friend leant me a thousand pounds in 2007, and I've still yet to pay him back; my tax repayment will cover that, plus some interest and a little left over... I'll pop it into the savings account and wait a few months in case HMRC change their mind, however.

But having all this done is a huge weight off my mind, one that had hung over me for about for years. Right now I seem to be in a phase of shedding burdens and finishing things; the only big thing I have left hanging over me now is migrating my servers, then I can start relaxing a bit and get on with my projects for the year!

Moving house (by alaric)

I hate moving house. It's a lot of work, for a start. It's a period during which all your stuff is packed away so you have to make do continually. And you have to tear apart the home you spent years building, while remembering all the fun times you had in the cold, empty, rooms you are carrying boxes out of. It feels a bit like burning your own wedding photos...

...but soon, it will be over, leaving just the mild frustration of living in a home where many of your possessions are still "in a box somewhere", but at least then you're on the upward path of things continually getting better as you unpack things and find them new homes, slowly customising your new space.

I'm looking forward to sorting out my workshop. It's currently just full of things all over the floor. I'm taking a week off of work to recuperate from the moving, and to sort it out. I'm going to pile everything at one end so I can paint the floor and finish painting the wall, then move everything to the nice end so I can finish the floor and walls in the other end. I'm going to set up my desk, my electronics workbench, and my welding bench. I'm going to run Ethernet into the house so I can get network connectivity. I'm going to set up a 12v power distribution system for fun stuff, such as a Raspberry Pi in a box driving an LED matrix display and a USB hard disk (as a Ugarit distributed storage node) and crazy future home automation experiments and LED lighting in the nearby shed (it's hard finding stuff in there in the dark). I'm going to fix the leaky roof and the draughty eaves so it's warmer and dryer in there. I'm going to rebuild my furnace and experiment with casting aluminium bronze. I'm going to build my wife a radio telescope. I'm going to build my wearable computer and continue my project to bring about my own technological singularity. I'm going to make time for myself to turn some of my unrealised ideas into beautiful things.