Gary has kindly passed me the so called ‘musical baton’. I’m not quite sure what the purpose of this is, but I feel I should participate in one of these weird blog things once in my life. So here goes:

Total volume of music files on my computer:
26.0 GB (loads of CDs still not ripped - when will I find the time?)

The last CD I bought was:
I’m not really sure. I think it was The Original Musiquarium by Stevie Wonder, though it may have been The Best Of The Crusaders, by The Crusaders.

Song playing right now:
Nothing. Have been drinking a nice bottle of Wolf Blass (Yellow Label) Shiraz (2002) after spending a pleasant evening in the pub with my old boss and work colleague. The last music I listened to today was from the Quincy Jones album The Dude.

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:
Hard one this - it really depends on my mood. I like Miles Davis a lot, and can listen to tracks like Freddie Freeloader all night.

In the morning as I drive to work something like the Karelia Suite (Sibelius) is good, as is Holst’s Jupitor (The Planets). They’re quite uplifting and they help wake me up in the morning.

When I’m working there isn’t really anything I listen to regularly, but an album that goes on for a long time and doesn’t require much thought is good, so Marc Moulin (Placebo Sessions) or John Schofield (A Go Go) hits the spot.

When it’s late at night and I’ve had a few drinks, tunes like Hey Jude and The Fool on the Hill (The Beatles) manage to make me depressed for various reasons.

So there you have it - a list of music that very few people will have heard of!

Five people to whom I’m passing the baton:
Nobody - sorry

I nearly forgot all about it, but today is BritBlog’s 1st birthday! It’s been an interesting year, and I’m very pleased to have seen the site grow so well. Here’s to another great year. Cheers!

I’m really pleased to say that our new team of BritBlog editors are now getting to work! Perlworld has spent a lot of time last night and this morning testing out the editor’s web console and reviewing as he goes, and mmChronic has now joined in this afternoon.

I’m easing the editors in one at a time so we can make sure everything is working OK, and I’ll be adding some new features to the backend tonight.

I know I keep saying it, but I’m really chuffed that so many people want to get involved with BritBlog and I really appreciate everyone’s help. Thanks!

I’m pleased to see that the Ox is back - you should all pop over and say ‘Hi’

And I should also encourage you to visit Jim Downing’s blog. Jim is a good friend of mine and he’s new to the blog world, so I’m sure he’d appreciate it if you stopped by and said ‘Hi’ to him too!

I’ve just spent well over an hour (could easily be over two hours - I loose count) trying to work out why my session management stuff for somenew work is failing.

See if you can spot the problem with this pseudo code:

// on one page I store an object into session memory
$_SESSION['oStaff'] = serialize($oStaff);

// then on another page I try to get it back
function foo()
{
   if(!$oStaff = unserialize( $_SESSION['oStaff'] ))
   {
      return False;
   }
   return True;
}

This was always returning False. Can you see what is causing the problem?

No? Well, from what I can tell, it looks like PHP (my version, at least) doesn’t like the use of mixed case letters in session variable names! Bah! I’ve been trying to get this to work for ages, and I’ve got a headache now.

So when I replaced it with the following (renaming my session variable), everything seemed to start working:

// on one page I store an object into session memory
$_SESSION['ostaff'] = serialize($ostaff);

// then on page another I try to get it back
function foo()
{
   if(!$oStaff = unserialize( $_SESSION['ostaff'] ))
   {
      return False;
   }
   return True;
}

I was hoping to get my new Editor’s Console up and ready for the people that have offered to help with BritBlog by now. It’s mainly working now except for the authentication framework, which was what this is all for. It’s going to be a good few days before I get any more time to spend on this now

I posted a plea for help with BritBlog last week, and I’ve been amazed by the response I’ve had! The last few months have been great as the site has started to grow such a lot and I’ve had such a lot of positive feedback about what I’m trying to achieve.

Well, I’m just working on the editor’s admin console, so once that’s ready we can start to clear down the backlog of blogs that need reviewing (currently 283). Once that’s done I/we can start looking at new features and bug fixes for the site. I’ve got some other exciting news that I’m dying to tell you, but I can’t tell you about it just yet Watch this space!

Had a nice day trip to Avebury on Monday (photos). I met up with a friend from university and his fiancée, and we had lunch in The Red Lion pub before having a wander down to Silbury Hill and West Kennet Long Barrow. It was then time for afternoon tea, after which we went for a walk around the henge.

The pub was quite nice, but ordering food and beer took way too long.

Being surrounded by so many hippies reminded me of my student days. I studied Archaeology and about half of the students were hippies of one form or another. They were great days, and I have fond memories of 12 hour drinking sessions in the Union and around the campus!

Anyway, the hippies at Avebury let the side down a bit. Manners (especially when ordering beer and passing through doorways) were lacking, and I had quite a row with one chap who tried to jump two places at the bar! Bad manners really annoy me - it’s not hard to be polite and to have an awareness of those around you.

Anyway, I drove home via Stonehenge, but it was closed and an hour before sunset, so I didn’t hang around.

I popped into the RHS gardens at Wisley today to take a few snaps. I’m getting the feeling that if I go out to take photos I don’t really come up with anything that is especially interesting. On the other hand, I see loads of things that would make great photos when I’m out without my camera! Guess I just need to get my eye in more and practice. Time will tell…

In a similar vein, I was amazed at the number of digital cameras floating around at Wisley today. It seems that just about everyone has one these days! Although it means lots of people (myself included) taking hundreds of pictures of the same thing where in the past (film days) you would only have taken one considered photo, the advent of affordable digital cameras has done loads to boost people’s interest in photography again. This can only be a good thing, and with luck everyone (myself included) will take better quality photos and at the same time be more critical about those they do take (and consequentially publish!).