Sunday October 31, 2004

Two nice walks this weekend...

Hoping to walk off some of the extra weight I have put on after our brief holiday in Barcelona we planned two four mile walks this weekend.

The first starting at Waltham St Lawrence where the local pub the Bell is one of a few pubs owned by the village itself. The landlord rents the pub off the village. The walk was a new one to us but took us on many familiar paths we have been on while doing other walks in the Waltham area. My interest in walking off some of the excess of the holiday was put on hold as we stopped off at the Royal Oak in Shurlock Row to see if we could book ourselves in for evening dinner. In the process of doing so I ordered a rather tasty sausage baguette which I enjoyed very much...

Back to the walk, the leaves are really falling off the trees now and mistletoe is now visible in the trees. I have heard it is making a comeback after being under threat for many years. There is plenty around here that is for sure. During the walk we are taken by a 14th century church at Shottesbrook Manor "St John the Baptist" part of the only manor in Berkshire to remain intact after the Norman conquest. It is said the architect on completion of the church in 1337, climbed the spire to toast his work with a glass of wine and fell to his death and was buried on the spot. As you walk around this area you get two lots of planes overhead. Jumbo jets doing their final approach or having taken off from Heathrow and also light aircraft doing circuits from White Waltham airfield which is nearby to Waltham st Lawrence.

The second walk was a new area to us. The town or village of Sunningdale in Surrey which is near the busy A30. We got there by going through Ascot. The racecourse is being redeveloped and thankfully the ugly old stadium is being pulled down. The walk soon got us away from the busy A30 and into Wentworth where I think some big golf matches are played. Meantime in the grounds of the course is an estate with some pretty impressive houses to see. Of course a walk across a golf course is not always a good idea with golf balls flying over your head..

Later on the walk through another estate again developed with nice housing and grounds that looked like Capability Brown had had a hand in their design. The walk was also good for another reason - despite having rained heavily recently the paths were easy to walk on having a good foundation of gravel bricks etc..

How to make planes leave on time...

While sitting in Barcelona airport after our short holiday in Barcelona I heard a familar line over the PA: " Would MR XYZ please go to gate 123 where he is holding up the flight ABC to destination DEF".

On my boarding pass it says be at the gate thirty minutes before departure. I am thinking the airlines should really get serious about this thirty minute rule. I know if the 'lost' passenger has checked in baggage it has to be removed otherwise that can causes problems. Also people DO get lost in airports but that can be fixed too.

Here is my plan:

Anyone who has not got to the gate thirty minutes before departure is taken off the flight. No announcements beforehand and no appeal. The airlines will know who has not got to the gate as your boarding card is checked in there.

The baggage is put into metal boxes that are loaded into the plane. ( on big planes ). If you keep track of what baggage goes into what box and where that box is loaded into the plane, removing baggage should be easy to do. This should take place at the thirty minute deadline.

If you get lost in an airport you should make your way to special bright red phones which are installed at regular spacing in the terminal buildings. Make the call and the operator will know where you are and assist you in getting to the terminal. This recovery phone system might be open to abuse so this needs to be checked.

This all sounds radical but like banning smoking in public places most people would agree this is the way to go.

What would have happened if Sun had ported Sun unix to the early intel platforms..

I remember well when I had a Sun 2 running Sun Unix 2.0 when an early IBM PC landed on my bosses desk. It had no window system and was pretty basic. Even then the Sun had sunview windowing , networking, NFS, NIS and more.

We all know what happened next the PC nearly grew up and got Windows on it. Even then it was not a truly multi tasking environment. Sun sold a x86 box - the Roadrunner and put Sun Unix 4.x on it.

The question is what would have happened if when PC's came out Sun had done a port of Sun Unix to the x86 platform ?

It is a moot point and the important thing is we sell Opteron desktops and and servers and an operating system with features in it to impress all I reckon. Add to this the JDS productivity enviroment and its game over !