Every so often you just need to switch off, go somewhere else and get away from it all.

So we (me and her) are popping off to California and Texas for a couple of weeks of not being here. Texas is already planned (friend with water-front-condo + 7 days = batteries fully recharged). California on the other hand is proving a toughy.

I used to live in Mountain View (I arrived in town just a few months before the bubble did what bubbles tend to do) so I've seen quite a bit of California, enough to know that you can't fit California into a week (not by a long way!).

We're already booked up in San Francisco (in one of the Joie de Vivre Hotels for four nights) where I'm told we have to go to Alcatraz and drive over the Golden Gate Bridge. Not that I mind doing it again, I have actually been to Alcatraz around five times (on at least one occasion I selected a foreign language audio tour just to change the goal posts). 

I've been using a package called Knapsack for MacOS to start to get the inventory sorted out. So far far SFO we've got:

• Breakfast or Dinner at Top of the Mark
• Alcatraz ( and Angel Island if the Combo Tour is running)
• Telegraph Hill
• Helicopter Tour (I had no idea these even existed until I'd left CA)
• Seaplane Tour (the cheaper/maybe more romantic version of the above)
• Shopping (Apple Store, REI, NorthFace, Fireside Camera, Filmore St, Chesnut St, Somewhere else I don't recall)
• Alamo Square (To take another shot of Steiner's Painted Ladies)

• Twin Peaks
• Coit Tower
• Baker Beach
• Golden Gate Park
• And I suppose we'd better go to Fisherman's Warf (is the bush man still there?)

There's lots of other places I vaguely recall from 8 years ago, although I can't always remember the names of places -- that said, Google Maps has a great feature called Street View so I can navigate with street-level imagery, its so cool!

After our 4 nights in SFO, the jury is still out on exact plans. We've got a hotel booked in Half Moon Bay the evening before we fly to Texas (so we're close enough to the airport). At the moment  Knapsack looks like this:

Originally I'd planned to squeeze in a tour out to Yosemite, then over Tioga Pass to Mono Lake (which I don't ever recall going to) then down through Lone Pine and Bishop towards Sequoia and then over to Santa Barbara and up PCH. Then several things dawned on me:

• We spent a trip to Scotland a few years ago just driving everyday and hardly left the car
• 55 mph(!)
• Tioga Pass will so not be open by the time we're there (and I can't belive it can take two months to plough clear)

So the plan is to spend a day North of SFO, spend Tuesday head down to my old haunt on Tuesday (I need to pop into Frys -- luckily my other half was introduced to Frys a couple of years ago in Houston and it went down well!).

Then we'll be heading probably towards Morro Bay (Santa Barbara might be just too far) before a leisurely cruise up PCH. Hopefully will fit in  Hearst Castle and endless stops on the beach, its looking like Big Sur for Wednesday night, to be sure to get to Half Moon Bay in good time Thursday.

BTW I've been using Google Earth almost exclusively for finding stop over places (B&B's and Motels), the links to travelocity.com traveller reviews are indispensable.

Anyway if you have any ideas for a pair of thirty something Brits visiting CA to get away from it all for a little bit let me know!

I can't take credit for remembering, however today is kind of Solaris 2.0's sixteenth birthday, well at least its the 17th anniversary of Sun announcing 'the first shrink-wrapped distributed computing solution' aka Solaris. Actually I think Solaris 2.0 (along the same lines as the Star Wars films, 2.0 was first, and 1.0 was a follow-up!) was released until June 1992, but any excuse to celebrate!

I just hope you don't end up with Neil Sedaka's 1961 hit, Sweet Sixteen stuck in your head for the rest of the day, as I did last week when I heard the news. For that I can only blame former Radio One DJ Ed 'Stewpot' Stewart.

Roll on next year and I'll start quoting Beatles lyrics...

If you're wondering where I've got to, I'm still around just busy over here collecting and counting up the sponsorship money from our sponsored 100km hike we did earlier in the summer.

At the moment we're totalling somewhere just over our original target of £4000 (with the help of Sun Microsystems Foundation's Matched Giving scheme).

All our money is due with Oxfam by end of September, so if you owe us (or want to make a last minute donation) get in touch

This is my first post from my new MacBookPro (been waiting a long long time to make it back to an Apple) and I thought I'd just give this lunatic a mention:

This is Greg Packer he's first in line for an iPhone at Apples 5th Aveneue Store. Only 3 and a half days left to wait, hope no one jumps the line.

Hopefully the weather won't be as bad as when I was at the 5th Avenue Store in March:

This is a fairly blatant cross-posting to the other blog I've been penning recently.

My office-neighbour, John, and I recently cycled the South Downs Way, over 100 miles of off-road cycling, as recce (recon) of the route we'll be covering later this year as part of Trailwalker UK (an Oxfam/Gurkha Welfare Trust sponsored 30-hour hike, for which we've pledged to raise £4,000 between 8 of us!).

Read how we got on with the cycling over here

There's no denying it I've not been blogging for a little while; I've not been idle, I've just not been writing about it; sometimes I wonder if Web 2.0 is more suited to those with a laptop, a long commute on public transport and probably a flat data-rate on their mobile/cell contract; currently I've neither the laptop nor the commute and I opted back onto pay-as-you-go a long while back (even with an E61!).

I cycled to work for a while and then moved too far from the office to be able to safely/practically cycle in, so I figured I'd cycle to the local train station take the train and then cycle into the office. Almost the same week as we moved into our new house, the train company extended their cycle restrictions; from my local station they don't permit bikes on trains London-bound trains after 5:42AM and on trains leaving London between 4:34PM and 20:06PM. So when you're working a regular 9ish-to-5ish day, coming into work via the train on a bike is somewhat awkward to say the least!

I've come up with two alternatives; a folding mountain-bike or walking. A folding mountain-bike, I specify mountain bike as opposed to something like this Brompton cause they're quite expensive and they're not really built for cycling through Fleet Pond nature reserve. Instead I've opted for one line this with a proper saddle, a longer seatpost, and a Topeak Trunk Bag. The train company allow folding bikes on all their services, though I think I'll give it a miss this next week, I need to be in the office for 6:45AM, which means leaving home at 5:30AM if I'm cycling, as opposed to 6:20AM if I drive -- does this make me shallow?

The alternative to cycling is to walk. It's about an hour's walk at each end of the train journey, which would prove useful in preparation for this summer's major event, the Oxfam/Gurkah Trailwalker 60 mile hike. Read all about it at our team blog, subtitled 100km in 30 hours.

So that addresses the cycling-to-work question, now I just need to address the laptop question. Well, like so many others I was waiting for Leopard before buying into the MacBook Pro range (I guess it's okay for me to admit that, especially as we recently joined the Open Office MacOS X porting effort). For the moment I'm going to wait and hope that the WWDC keynote in a little over a month's time contains more than just the iPhone! It's nearly 10 years since I last had a Mac (my first was a PowerBook 100 -- it was so sweet!).

Seems some more features of the Apple iPhone emerged on last night's SNL:

• it plays 2 billion songs (billion, with a B)
• you can watch movies, whilst making a movie or watching the latest episode of The Office
• it holds 150 kabillion contacts
• you can watch the latest episode of The Office
• you can listen to your favourite U2 track
• it has a clock

Check out Steve Jobs showing off the Apple iPhone on SNL.

...and all over the United Kingdom, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, virtually no-one has been logging support cases, which is quite nice; especially for all of us who have been working today in the Technology Service Centre here in the UK (7AM to 7PM for me!).

So for those of you taking the time to read this, especially if you're working, Merry Christmas, Wesołych Świąt, geseënde Kersfees, 圣诞快乐, veselé Vánoce, glædelig jul, vrolijk Kerstfeest, hyvää joulua, joyeux Noël, frohe Weihnachten, kala christougenna, Krismas ki subhkamna, gleðileg jól, Nollaig shona, buon Natale, meri kurisumasu, Noela we pîroz be, sreken Bozik, god jul, C Pождеством, Nollaig chridheil, Chrismas joon wadhayoon, feliz Navidad, สุขสันต์วันคริสตร์มาส, Nadolig llawen, or just insert your winter holiday greeting of choice!

Hmm... wonder if Jonathan's blog is covering quite so many languages yet?

Yesterday I mailed an old friend (who sold me lots of Sun equipment when I worked in my previous job around 10-15 years ago). My mail client's address book is so old, it picked up the company's old domain name, and the email bounced back. Nothing unusual there!

As usual, for me, I only glanced at the Undeliverable mail and thought it was reporting that my friend no longer worked at the reseller; it was actually just telling me that the domain name was non existent. As it happens it wasn't relevant -- the end result was the same.

So being the inquisitive sort, I typed his name into my search engine of choice only to find this:

link to a justgiving.com webpage set up, in his memory:-( Mail servers aren't supposed to delivery this sort of message!!

Although we'd not spoken for sometime (he'd last been in touch when he'd sponsored me earlier this year) he was one of those low maintenance friends who always remembered more details about your life than you ever did his! So at the very least all I can do is remember him, and suggest that you don't lose touch with good friends!

RIP dppf.

PS: The chosen charity, CLICL Sargent is one dppf was keen to support, they are the UK's leading children's cancer charity, supporting children, young people and their families through cancer every step of the way. December is childhood cancer awareness month.

This next move is probably going to result in one of two outcomes:

• Realisation that the Statcounter code in my blog is fibbing big time
• Any good will I have left from the postroom boys going out the window - before my christmas shopping from Amazon turns up

but I reckon those two are mutually exclusive, plus the end justifies the means, so here goes.

Yesterday I got an email from a colleague to say that they would:

"Much rather donate money to Charity this year ... so, please don't feel the need to send me a [christmas] card"

This got me thinking, as at home we've already got lots of christmas cards ready bought and just waiting to be written (I know this because I hauled the five christmas boxes down from the loft on Sunday evening), how can I make a charitable donation and still continue to send and receive cards? It hit me when I was pulling off the M3 on the way into the office at 06h25 Friday morning (not much goes on up there at that time of day!):

For every card I receive at my work address, rather than sending a card back in return, I'll make a donation these charities:

• Home Start - the charity supported by Sun here at Guillemont Park via our reception area gift-tree giving programme. They provide support for families with young children in over 337 communities across the UK and with Forces families in Germany and Cyprus.
• North Hampshire Hospital's Early Pregnancy Assessment Unit (NHH Charities (EPAU)) - which does what it says really, but like most parts of the NHS is woefully underfunded

To make life interesting (like it needs to be!) the donation will depend upon where the card arrives from:

• Hand delivered/internal mail: 10p
• Received from UK: 23p
• Received from EU: 44p
• Received from rest of world: 50p

So apart from a nominal amount for hand delivered cards, the donation matches the postal cost to return a card.

Just to be crystal clear, this is lieu of you getting a card back from me in return, I don't want you taking me off your own christmas card lists!

Now for the not so small print: I don't have deep pockets and short arms, but I'm going to place a maximum donation of £50 (UKP) to each charity, but whatever the final figure, it should (if it's > $25) be doubled with the help of the Sun Microsystems Foundation Trust.

So if you work at Sun in the UK, I'm sure you can dig out my mailstop details. Otherwise, whether you're a Sun employee, a reseller, an existing, current or previous customer, a former work-colleague, a friend or relative(!) or an unrelated blog reader who's maybe received this permalink in viral form, please send christmas cards to me at our UK Head Office Address, and mark them FAO "ColinJ" -- don't forget the "J".

I'll be sure to keep you updated on how the postroom relationship breaks down!

Seasons Greetings (as per your locale!)

Recently one of my old bosses blogged about a BBC report around how we only give (web)pageloads 4 seconds before clicking elsewhere. Well, seeing as today is Thanks Giving Day in the USA and tomorrow is Black Friday (the day when our American cousins historically start Christmas shopping in ernest), maybe I can show you something to do whilst you're waiting for the status line to change from Waiting to Read to Done when you're doing your on-line present shopping, particularly if you'll be shopping on Amazon.

Ever find that you're not quite spending sufficient to qualify for free shipping/delivery? Well if you try one of these sites:

• http://www.filleritem.com/uk.html
  
• http://www.hotukdeals.com/amazon.php
  

Depending on what you're buying and how much the delivery charges are, it can be cheaper to buy something extra than buy just your item and pay the postage fees. For instance buy a electric toothbrush for £14 and you'd have to pay £5.88 P&P, a total of £19.88. But a quick search on one of these websites reveals you could buy Old-Time Cats Stickers: 24 Pressure-Sensitive Designs for £1.28, taking you up to the £15 threshhold. Yet you'd only pay a total of £15.28 saving over £4.50 and getting an extra Christmas present for some distant cat-loving relative into the bargain!

I heard about this website on the weekly Money Saving Expert email sent out by Martin Lewis, the man behind the excellent Money Saving Expert website. This is a great source of money saving tips on anything and everything by finding the best deals and beating the system. The site's honours include a Parliamentary Motion commendation!

Take a look, there's shed loads of hints and tips (almost entirely UK-biased I'm afraid), subscribe to the weekly email (it's free) and listen out for Martin's regular appearance on the Jeremy Vine show on BBC Radio 2 (yes it's true I listen to Radio 2, as well as Radio 1!).

For all of you States-side: Happy Thanks Giving, and try not to over do it!

Don't know if you've had chance to catch the latest Bravia TV commercial from Sony yet; okay I'm a little behind the times on this one. The Ad has been running for a couple of weeks now, although there was a huge amount of viral advertising kicking around including bystander videos. It's the follow up to the classic Bouncy Balls commercial, except this time the bouncy balls are replaced by 70,000 litres of paint and North Beach/Russian Hill, SFO have been replaced by Glasgow's Toryglen estate!

There's a write-up on in the Magazine pages of the BBC News site which goes into detail how they found a 60's Tower Block in Glasgow which was awaiting demolition, covered surrounding houses in (very) very large polythene sheeting, paid off the locals and then proceeded to explode those 70,000 litres of paint off over the shop.

I don't reckon it's quite as cool as the original Bouncy Balls ad, it's a little bit too British to honest! Don't know if the decision to avoid an ubercool, downtempo, voal/lounge/dub soundtrack was premeditated (Balls was dubbed with José González's cover of Heartbeats. Something like that might not have sat so well this time around.

Would it encourage me to buy a Bravia? Well I'd probably be encouraged to start looking once I'd seen the advert on someone else's HDTV. Start looking after Christmas that would be, and probably not at the Bravia "Engine" range (1) because they don't seem to do a 37" screen (I've been told we can have a 37" screen!) and (2) cause I think an engine in the living room would probably be too noisy, especially when you're trying to watch something good on telly!

It did leave me thinking though, what might we be able to do for a Project Blackbox TV commercial? Maybe we could enlist the Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson - he's renowned for having a bent for trying to destroy his most hated cars (and any caravan) by varying and increasingly more inventive means; he once resorted to targetting a Corvette with an helicopter-mounted gatling gun.

A few years ago Top Gear attempted to destroy a Toyota pick-up; they tried:

• drowning it in the Severn Estuary
  
• dropping a caravan onto it
  
• attacking it with a wrecking ball
  
• setting it alight
  
• dropping it into shot (must have been at least a 30 foot drop)
  
• driving it through the "production office"
  
• hoisting it 240 feet aloft another 60's tower block and having the tower block demolished from beneath the Toyota.

It survived all that and was still drivable (they allowed themselves to do roadside repairs where necessary, but no parts could be replaced and the only consumables they used were a few sprays of WD-40 and a gallon or so of diesel.

Hmmmm on second thoughts, maybe that's not sure that's quite the message we'll be going for with Project Blackbox.

I had been planning introducing my youngest to you all in more fun way (I was going to show you his entry on kittenwars.com -- yes, my youngest is a black'n'white cat by the name of Eric) but of course he had to spoil all of that this morning...

When I came down into the kitchen at around 6am this morning (enroute to the office to take over from the Solution Centre nightshift) I found the chicken my girlfriend had taken out of the freezer to defrost intime for tonights dinner, sat on the kitchen floor, ripped open and half scoffed.

There are two cat's in our household, the aforementioned and Lita (the big sister). Lita (so I'm assured) would never get up on the kitchen work surface -- in fact Eric's only been known to do it twice in his two years!

OK, make that threee times; so nobody saw him? Nevermind, I just use father's intuituion and came to a quick decision, given he was caught with a bird in his mouth at the weekend (and then propmtly made a run for it, with the bird, under the hole in the fence) Eric was clearly at fault! He was quickly and quitely shown the relevant evidence, and then quitely told not to touch anything like that again (I recall a little wigging of the index finger was involved) then he was put down and promptly tried to run out into the back-garden. Except the cat flap was still locked! Well it made me laugh anyway!

Eric, this is everyone. Everyone, this is Eric.

PS
Before you ask, Lita was named by my girlfriend after the WWE erm.. performer: Lita. Although she is often mistaken for being the namesake Reading FC's star forward Leroy Lita!

Eric, on the other hand, is named after Slowhand himself Eric Clapton.

Which ISP? Is that an age old geek question or what? Actually these days I'm not sure it can be limited to a geekquest anymore!

In the UK, the Broadband market has recently started to see a glut of free offerings, from the likes of Carphone Warehouse (mobile phone retailer), Orange (mobile phone network provider), and now Sky (satelitte TV provider and part of the Murdoch chain). As you'd expect all of these have at least as many strings as your standard apron, but as a Sky subscriber (I bought into Sky+ (PVR) when the UK PVR market wasn't quite mature enough) I can now choose from:

• 2Mb (upto) (capped @ 2GB) FOC (but with a £40 activation fee)
  
• 8Mb (capped @ 40GB) £5/month (activation fee dropped to £20)
  
• 16Mb (uncapped) £10/month (with no activation fee)
  
• 8Mb (capped @ 70GB) £17/month (but with activation fee back up to £40 eh?)
  

I've been a happy Pipex customer since around 2002 (I moved back to the UK from Silicon Valley where I'd had a fine broadband connection until the ISP went bust). In my time with Pipex, I've had to phone them only a couple of times and I've never had a problem with the connection. I only moved away from them once, when I moved to a rented property that was already connected to NTL for phone and cable, so I opted for them for my broadband (cable modem) and that too was more or less troublefree, and obviously wonderfully, for the day, fast at 700Mbps).

Currently I pay way too much for my uncapped 1Mbps service from Pipex (something like £23.99/Month!).

I'm sure looking at this in black and white you might think it was obvious to follow price, but as a customer of both Sky and Pipex, I know I've had no problems contacting or dealing with Pipex, whereas Sky, being significantly larger, are sometimes frustrating to deal with (like many large teclos); I've had many heated discussions over various issues with Sky -- do I really want to risk my broadband connection simply on the basis of price?

Doubtlessly overseas readers will be oh so eager to let me know just how little their local ADSL costs!

Thinking this through, I think I'd rather check out the ISP's taking part in the BBC's Multicast Trials and get a little more for my money;a static IP address might help too ;-) It's probably appropriate to invest some time looking through the excellent ADSLGuide.org.uk. And when I'm through with that, I'll start shopping around for new gas and electricity suppliers!