Thursday, January 26, 2006

Aussie weather

Hi from Aus to all those left back in foggy London, it's been a few days now and we've got to enjoy the beautiful Aussie sunshine and my favourite part of Melbourne summer.. the cool change! :-) Was very amusing watching Cath experience for the first time when the wind starts blowing in and the temperature drops 10 degrees in as many minutes. She's heard me talk about it but never really fully grasped it. :-)

Oh should also say a bit about what we've done thus far, it's been mostly in Melbourne, we've been to the Australian Open (that's tennis for us unclued people), Squires Loft (fantastic steak!) and out to Healesville Sanctuary (where Cath finally got to see a Rock Wallaby and some Flying Foxes)... Will have to post up some photos quite soon, but that requires effort which is sorely lacking at the moment!

So hope everyone had a fantastic Australia Day, hope the beer was cold and the meat was cooked over a bbq!

B

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Big thanks!

Well it's been a few days since we've set up the website for the fundraising and have already received some sponsorships!! :-D So big thanks to those of you who are donating or planning to donate money to this worthy cause!

In other news we're about to be off to visit everyone at home, looking forward to showing Cath the wild untamed places of Aus! :-D

See you soon!
B

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Training Day

What were you doing?
On Sunday Cath and I (and a few others) went for a nice 'walk' around Epsom Downs (a fairly famous race course, but also a great spot for going for a ramble), and 3 hours later I realised several things:
  • I'm not as unfit as I thought :-D
  • But I'm no-way near as fit as I need to be :-(
  • Especially for a 10 day hike in the Andes mountains near Machu Picchu


What's this about Machu Picchu?
Well as some of you are aware I'm getting married later this year, and instead of going for the traditional honeymoon at a nice beach resort we've signed ourselves up for trekking through Peru for Cardiac Risk in the Young.

Come again?
Yep that's right we're aiming to raise over £4000 for CRY by putting ourselves through the gruelling endeavour of hiking through the Andes mountains in a Ten Day trek to Machu Picchu.

So how much actually goes to CRY?
Almost every cent/penny/lira/yen that you donate will end up in CRY's hands (and if you're donating from in the UK, 28% extra!), as we are paying the entire cost of flights, tour, food, accommodation ourselves. The only exception to that is Skyline (who are professional fundraising company) have a small administration charge that we will not be covering.

So how can I help?
Well the first obvious choice is go to our fundraising page and sponsor us! But there are other ways that you can help out as well.
  • Email us get a sponsorship form to help us get some more sponsors.
  • Spread the word, email around your work and friends about this fundraising effort and help us beat that £4000 goal! Point them to this post or straight to our fundraising page.


Thanks for reading and thanks in advance for helping out!
B

Friday, January 13, 2006

Apples and Oranges

Just a random fairly incoherent rant from the B man..

Was reading an IT security article today that was talking about Microsofts response time to Privately or Publicly exposed flaws in it's software... And this sentence struck me as being flawed in itself:

Microsoft took 3 months on average to fix issues privately disclosed to the company in 2003, a response time that shot up to 4.5 months in 2004 and 2005, according to the analysis. Yet, the company response to a publicly disclosed flaws has quickened, from 71 days in 2003 to 46 days in 2005.


The bit I particularly like is that last time I checked 71 days is around about 3 months (if it includes February it's over 3 months)... But mostly it got me annoyed that it's a fairly common technique amongst journalists that in order to sensationalize a topic they'll not compare 'Apples to Apples', instead there'll be something like an average over the previous year vs the worst days figures (with the tone implying that that single day is an 'average' day).

Anyways was something I'd noticed and thought I'd have a brief rant about, going to stop now and do some other stuff... Have fun!

B