Apparently it isn’t Christmas Day today - this Christmas on a Monday is all very confusing. Logic tells me it must have happened before but it doesn’t seem right somehow. I knocked off early to use up some holiday and everything (well everything I can be bothered about) is done. So have I used this spare time constructively? Of course not, I have played some jolly board games with the family (they say you aren’t allowed a spell checker when playing scrabble - luddites ) and have installed some old games on the laptop - 1st person shoot em ups in DOS, flying sims … Christmas, a time for nostalgia (maybe the carnage is not too appropriate though!)

I have also been reading those circular letters that tell you what grade in music your friends kids have reached Actually, although it’s fashionable to slag them off I rather like them. It keeps even a socially incompetent like me up to date with old friends and if you really don’t like them, you don’t have to read them. And if you are one of those who don’t like them just think yourself lucky you don’t get them on CD like my techno savvy friends send me. Pretty neat as they have short or long versions / pics / video / sound all in html so you can jump over bits you don’t like but if you a) think a circular letter is showy and b) find it compulsory to read every last word even though you hate them 700Mb could just ruin your Christmas spirit!

Anyway, in the words of Tiny Tim “Tip toe, through the tulips with me”  - Tiny Tim (musician) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia but if you have to explain a joke it probably wasn’t that funny in the first place ;-(

what I really mean is God bless us, every one

Is this a another internet first? Tom Stephens, the man being held in connection with the Ipswich Murders has a myspace page. Details from the site are being quoted by the media & presumably analysed by the police.

A green Christmas? Well it doesn’t look like snow, in fact you may need to be out mowing the lawn between the dinner and the queens speech. It could be normal fluctuations in seasonal temperatures or it could be global warming.

In any case I do worry about all the extra energy we are consuming. Bah humbug to Christmas lights? Maybe not entirely but I think we all know that some people really don’t know when to stop. Less maybe more in terms of tasteful effect but lots more seems to be still not enough when it comes to beating the neighbours.

Anyway if I can’t persuade you to ditch your fairy lights for recyclable paper chains at least check out

http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/dreaming_of_a_green_christ_15112005.html

(maybe a bit late for many of the ideas - sorry - but there’s always next year(*))

and think about powering some kit down for the holidays. Do those monitors really need to be displaying Matrix screen savers with no one in to see them? Do you really need all those hubs and routers powered on Christmas day? I for one won’t be working (though I appreciate some people are) and it’ll give you something easy to do when you get back in. Can you tweak the heating down for the holidays? If not maybe get a programable thermostat so you can!

(* there in lies the rub - will there always be a next year? At least one in the style we know it, unless we do something about our consumption?)

I’m integrating some old code into a new product (again). Wouldn’t you know the guy that did the new stuff has indexed all the data from 1. Obviously all the old stuff is from 0. Not that hard you say - but under certain conditions the we ignore the first one (or two) and last one (or two) elements. And of course it can be accessed two dimensionally - the old way, none of that
var[x,y]

when you can
var[x*maxy+y]

So I’ll spend the day randomly adding (or taking away) 1 (or 2 or 3) on to the wrong variables until it comes right. I’ve been here before and I know empirically (from too many times) that the random approach is quicker than trying to figure it out with any degree of logic. If it’s good enough for Darwin it’s good enough for me…