The Blog... Paul Wallace

The big rescue cranes were onsite at the school by about 4am this morning, and by first light they were setting up to make the lift. Rumour had it that they were coming from Belgium and Sweden, but turns out they had only travelled up from Dartford near London.

 
The main lift was to be carried out by the crane on the right, capable of lifting 300 tonnes, with the chassis being steadied by the crane on the left, rated at 200 tonnes. Once started, the lift itself was over fairly quickly, and the Quinto was back on the wheels by 8am.

They let me round the side to catch some more pictures, and you can see how solidly the Quinto is made - the only damage I could see was a broken light, even the windows were fine, and Homer Simpson was still hanging on. The shed came off rather worse, and the counterweight left a big crater in the playground.

The children were all very excited, especially when a small bear was spotted in the rigging!

 

Only it didn't end quite so well! They couldn't start the engine, which meant that they couldn't get the stabilisers out, so they couldn't fold the arm down, and there was some debate about what they could do next without power for the hydraulics. They finally got the engine started about 2pm (just now) and have almost folded down the arm on the Quinto.

Updated 8pm: Once they had sorted the engine out, the thing just drove away! OK, so they didn't just drive it all the way home, they drove it onto a low-loader, Health & Safety probably not going to risk anything until they had checked it over! Oliver the traction engine showed up and hooted (with laughter?) but I didn't get a picture, but you can see him here.

 

(I meant to post this earlier, but was busy until lunchtime. Also, I'll post the 21st Century Global Summit info later)

Category: Personal

 

Last Wednesday, they had a lucky escape at the school, when a 74-ton crane toppled over in the playground. It narrowly missed the school, and could easily have wrecked a neighbour's house. No-one hurt in the accident, school and house were empty at the time. The only damage was to a crushed storage shed, a broken tree, and a small crater in the playground - although the driver was somewhat startled.

       

I'll post some updates here of the progress to sort out the mess. Word is they will bring in two extra-large cranes, and will have to tear down a hedge, more trees and the adventure playground - as well as isolate the power cables for the operations.

Category: Personal
Edited on 14th Sept to move pictures to new location

Just a short note to thank everyone (both inside and outside Sun, you know who you are!) for their support over the last few months. My last blog was a long time ago, and it's been a while!

Category: Personal

I often have discussions about what kind of PDA or laptop or phone I use, there is something about the technology industry which seems to equate personal status with the gadgets you seem to carry around. My own preference is to stick with stuff that works for me. For the record, I've posted "My Rig" here:

• Laptop: Toshiba Tecra M2
• PDA: Palm Tungsten T
• Phone: Nokia 6822

Laptop: For a recent open-source event, I re-installed the laptop with Solaris Express Community Edition ("Solaris NV 5.11 b35" to be precise) and OpenOffice 2.0.2, FireFox and Thunderbird. I used to have Java Desktop System (JDS2, based on Suse) but swapped for Solaris 10, now the one from OpenSolaris.org. Gives me Wifi, VPN, USB, Sound, etc but I would probably prefer a smaller form factor, provided it had WiFi and video output. Also runs Firefox & Thunderbird.

PDA: My trusty old Palm Tungsten T, used mainly for Mail, Calendar, bit of Google for company searches - and now drafting Blogs! I switched to SnapperMail recently, which has a better security features on email. It's not SyncML, maybe the next one. Next PDA will have Wifi *and* BlueTooth.

Phone: Until recently, I had a plain old 6310i. very solid, but the Nokia 6822 has greatly improved data throughput to link through to the PDA. Good enough for Google, BBC, Ananova, MetCheck & paying for my parking at the station. recently started trying out Mobyko for SyncML backup. I like playing with the latest fancy smartphones, but I still prefer separate phone and PDA. What I really need is a phone which acts as a secure mobile router, while I am away from a WiFi PoP.

Category: Personal

I have another blog inside Sun, entitled "Medieval Theme Park" where I post other pseudo-random thoughts, but the name deserves an explanation.

So why "Medieval Theme Park?" The phrase came from a review meeting with a customer CIO. It was a fun meeting, lots of ideas, and he was talking about mutual friends in East Anglia, North of London. As soon as you cross the border into Suffolk (he said) it's like entering a medieval theme park, with windmills and tractors. Living (as I do) next door to a windmill in Darkest Suffolk, with tractors, horses and steam engines often trundling past the window, the name stuck.

It's just a fun name, but there is a hidden message there about how the digital divide is not just a geographical one, I'll expand on that later.