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Well, instead of doing all the things I should have been doing, like writing overdue emails and hanging out the washing, I’ve added a new feature to this blog thing.

If you look down the bottom of the right hand side bar you’ll see a summary of the books I’m reading or have stacked up on the shelf waiting to read.

I haven’t got all the related pages looking quite as I’d like them to yet, but it’s good enough for now. Changing other people’s code is always fun. It’s all done with a nifty plug-in to the blog software I found on the net called now-reading, which means I can stop work on doing the same thing!

The plug-in even runs off to get images and information from Amazon based on the ISBN code, so I don’t have to do any digging around. All good.

A nice surprise in the post today. My citizenship application has been approved! So I’m almost a real native then! That was pretty quick and painless! A lot faster and easier than all the work permit dealings with the Home Office, anyway.

Still a final hoop remaining though. I now need to go to a ceremony and give an Affirmation of Allegiance to the Queen and whatnot. Should be fun.

Then I can sort out a passport and be able to travel again… Though that doesn’t sound like it’s a long involved process, thankfully.

Every year I get really surprised by how quickly the summer fades here. The days get noticably shorter every week, and we start pulling the curtains earlier and earlier, giving up on the last bit of sunlight that we’d normally try to grab through the summer.

I don’t know why it catches me by surprise every year. I’d think I should be used to it by now, but no. Every year it still gets me.

I think there is a bit of a deliberate block in my mind though. You know once you start getting to this time it’s not too long before the real slide into the long, dark winter sets in. All I can hope is that the winter this year is as mild as my memory tells me that last year’s was.

Maybe I’ve been away too long, but I don’t remember feeling like there was quite the same marked change in seasons in New Zealand that there is here. I guess one day I’ll be able to see again.

When I was looking around the other weekend for games to fill in an hour or two I came across FreeCiv. It’s a free version of the Civilization strategy games, and got a bit hooked. Unfortunately it was just a bit hard for me to see what was going on, and finding help and up to date guidance was a bit hit and miss.

So I ordered a copy of the latest commercial version, version IV, of the game. Cheap, from Amazon.

It does look a lot nicer, and has a lot more bells and whistles then FreeCiv, which is in no way surprising. FreeCiv seems very close in game play, but if I’m going to be staring at a game for as long as I suspect I will be with this, then I do want pretty!

The game itself is a strategy game where you have to grow a civilization (strangely enough) by carefully using resources, building military units, using diplomacy etc. Just like the real world. Kind of. You can play multiplayer over the net too, but I suspect I’ll be just playing the computer for a while until I get the hang of it all.

When a game comes with a 224 page manual, and it’s all in English, then you know things are a bit complicated! But I like that. Should keep me going though the winter, anyway!

I finally gave in and upgraded my main Windows XP box to a bigger, faster system disk. When I first put that box together I thought that I was going to have heaps of space on a 15 odd Gig drive, and so I made the main system partition only 6 Gig big, and made another couple of partitions for data and other programmes.

Mistake. BIG mistake! HUGE!

I have no idea what fills up all the space, as I make sure I clean it out of all the stuff I can, but it’s always getting close to the limit now, and I think that disk is getting a bit old anyway, so both to be safe and to give me more room I thought I’d upgrade to something a bit bigger. Like another 250Gig drive. Just a small difference in space!

I thought that this could be a bit of a pain in the butt to do, as Windows seems to be a bit fussy about where things are etc, but in the end it was a breeze! I used a “live-cd” (a whole operating system that boots and runs off a cd) of gparted, which is a small Linux system soley geared towards disk partitioning actions. This meant I just had to copy the partitions across to the new drive, resize them, change the disks over in the box, removing the old one, reboot a couple of times, and hey-presto! New disk works fine!

And for a bonus, a fun bit of this was using a small business card CD for the first time. I’d been left a few but never really found a use for them, but the whole gparted image fits easily on one. I don’t think I’ll start carrying it around with me in my wallet, but it’s definitely part of my PC toolbox now.

A bit of a relief that it went fine, but also a bit of a bugger on a long weekend! How to fill in the rest of it!? I guess I’ll just have to break something just to fix it…. or spend the time pampering the other half – now that sounds like a plan! (Hmmmm. I think someone added something during the proof reading process….)

Well, Megan, I found something other than a grumpy old man rant to post today (though that is still brewing, I think).

A while ago I thought the chilli plants had basically done their dash for the year. There seemed to be no more flowers appearing and so I suspected that once the chillis had all ripened on the plants they would have to be found, erm, another home in the big green bin (hope they don’t hear me say that!!)

But since we re-potted the smaller Ring of Fire plants into big new pots they’ve found a new lease of life, and started to flower again. The Habaneros still have lots of chillis, but no new flowers appearing.

All of this is still a bit of a mystery really. I’m still not sure just how long the plants are meant to flower for, how many chillis you get off a good plant, or how long the plants last. But I’ll take all the chillis I can get, while I can get them!

I know you can over-winter the plants, but I suspect they’d best be taking the dive to a better place and new ones started for next year. I’m looking forward to trying some of the other varieties I got at the chilli festival a bit earlier. I hope I have the same success with those as I’ve had with this year’s efforts!

It’s been pretty grotty out this weekend, so we’ve pretty much stayed in and tried to entertain ourselves. Not that easy! So I thought I’d dig around and try to find a couple of new computer games for the Linux to spend a few hours on.

Got a really nice surprise when I did though! Someone has made a multiplayer version of Scotland Yard for the PC called London Law! We used to play it all the time as kids, and it was nice to have another go at it, all without having to worry about where the counters were, etc. It seems to play absolutely the same as in my memory too.

The game is set up as a client/server game. One computer acts as a server, and others can connect as a client. In theory they can be anywehere as long as there is an internet connection. And it runs on all sorts of systems with a little bit of work setting things up. Windows, Linux, OS X, etc, etc.

The current version needs at least 2 people to play, but it looks like there is AI support being developed for future versions.

Kept us entertained for a couple of hours anyway!

Today was harvest day. Thought I’d better lighten the load on the plants by removing the ripe ones…  I think some will have to end up in the freezer, as I can’t see us using all of these in the next week!

Finally got around to putting in my application for UK citizenship on Thursday, with the help of the Nationality Checking Service at one of the local council offices.

Now I just have to wait and see how long it takes to work its way through the corridoors of the Home Office. Hopefully it will be quicker than the 5 month standard waiting time having had the help of the NCS.

I hope so. I’ll let you know.

Sometimes it’s nice to get your handy dirty, without getting them actually dirty. Tonight was “put new bits in a PC” night. Always a fun and rewarding time. As long as I’m home alone when I’m doing stuff like that! Being interrupted when things aren’t going well, and I’m trying to remember where 4 different cables are meant to go does not go down well!

I’d finally got sick of running out of space on my Linux desktop box, as I’d re-used an older small drive in there while I was “just playing” with Linux a while ago when I built that box. Now that that machine gets turned on far more often than the windows box, I thought I’d better add some more space. (By shifting the home directory to a new drive, for anyone geeky enoughto understand that!) But I thought I’d add it in a removable drawer so I can rip it out easily and…. Do something with it, I guess! Not that much harder than adding a normal drive, but a bit more fiddly.

And while I was planning to do all that I thought I’d fix the case fan that used to start up so loudly that you could hear it from downstairs. As sure sign that something is really not right! But I think that I could be on the start of a big long slippery slope because of that. The only fan that size that my usual supplier (i.e. the one that generally has enough is stock that I can get things delivered the next day and just get on with it) was one that had cute blue lights in it that make a nice glow up the wall now.

I know there is really no need for all sorts of lights in a PC, but I reckon they have to go faster if they have lights. A bit like a racing stripe on a car!

Luckily today everything went fine, the patient lived, and the box ended up better, faster (I wish), and more prurdy than before!

And, like usual when delving into the belly of a beast, I came away with a sense of satisfaction. And relief!