Been at my new job three days now. I have 2 22″ 1680×1050 monitors attached to my PC and I’m not quite sure what to do with all those pixels other than have a really wide Visual Studio editing window. Cambridge is nice, and there’s a Greene King pub and an Adnams pub within a stone’s throw of our office, and both seem to be frequented with almost alarming regularity by my colleagues, so things are good so far. Not really enjoying the commute so much, but that’s because I’m staying with my parents in Norfolk until we get our place nearer to Cambridge when Naomi moves down in a week and a bit; it’ll be much better when I don’t have to sit in a big queue on the A11 at Elveden twice a day, every day.

I’ve missed the countryside. Went for a lovely walk along a lane this evening and saw fields and trees and wildlife. It was wonderful.

It is with no small amount of pride that I note that my photos of the A56 Cycle Path of Doom have been recognised by the fine people at the Warrington Cycle Campaign and they’ve made it their choice for July’s Facility of the Month. Hopefully someone from Manchester City Council will be around to pick up the award sometime soon, which they can display for all to see, in a nice display case, right in the middle of the cycle lane.

I could say that I’m skeptical. I could say that it’s possible for God to work through all things, and that He works in all sorts of mysterious ways. I could say that I’ll reserve judgement until I see whether there’s a massive increase in people helping the poor and homeless, inviting prostitutes into their home (I mean, other than for the usual reasons), sharing their belongings, giving their money to charities, ditching their gas-guzzling SUVs, and generally being more loving, faithful, fruitful people, as one would expect if this really is a massive move of the Spirit.

Or, I could just link to this video of Todd Bentley kicking a guy with stage IV metastatic colon cancer hard in the gut and say nothing.

A few people have pointed out that I haven’t said why we’re going to Cambridge. There’s no big story to tell, really, other than that I got itchy feet and fancied a change, and what with our failure to buy a house last year, we sort of figured we were free to think about whether we wanted to stay in Manchester or elsewhere. So I started casting around for new jobs and a friend pointed me to one in Cambridge which I applied for but didn’t get; but I decided I liked Cambridge and so starting hunting for others. Plus, I’m a bit of a country boy anyway, and I’ve got roots and family in East Anglia so that part of the world makes sense. And it’s only an hour out of Kings Cross on the train should we feel the need to go and inhale some smog for a while.

So, I’m quite excited – I start in about three weeks and Naomi will hopefully be joining me at the end of July, assuming we’ve found somewhere to live. Lovely.

So, my birthday presents today have included a blood test and two X-rays. Hoorah! Fortunately, I also got a rather more conventional selection of books and book tokens, too, so that’s better.

Bit quiet around here, isn’t it? Insert usual apologies and things here. I don’t really plan to start updating again regularly, but I know a few people subscribe to my RSS feed so I figured this was an easy way to spread news.

So, yeah, we’re moving to Cambridge, which is quite exciting. I’ve got a month or so left at Transitive before I have to start packing our life into boxes and carting them down the A1 to the second furthest place south I’ve ever lived. I’ve been in Manchester over 10 years – the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere – and it’s not going to be terribly easy to let go, but I’m a bit of a country boy at heart and I quite fancy the idea of having a garden with wildlife other than foxes and pigeons in it. Plus I have a soft spot for East Anglia, flat and dull as it may be, and London’ll only be 50 minutes away on the train should I feel the need to inhale some smog and sit in some crowded public transport.

So this is all quite exciting, anyway. Hooray.

Yeah, so, with reference to this, today I discovered this. I’d say I’m surprised, except I’m not. And the WINE guys had this to say:

D3D9 isn’t even comparable to the very first out-of-tree patch Oliver put onto Sourceforge years ago. No handling for stateblocks or shaders, no proper texture handling, no vertex arrays, etc. The other libraries are in a similar state. D3DX has a few math functions implemented, but we have all of that already thanks to David and the other D3DX hackers.

Never mind, eh?

The former-Soviet shark has been well and truly jumped.

I understand you visited our city yesterday for some football match or other. I think one or two of you might have had a little bit to drink, and might have forgotten to take your empty bottles and takeaway wrappers back home with you, which meant that my journey to work this morning was an exciting gauntlet of broken glass, stale beer, urine and assorted other detritus.

Now, I know you all came to have a good time and most of you were quite good-natured despite having your arse handed to you on a plate by St Petersburg, but as it’s my council tax that’s going to have to pay for all this clearing up, and I didn’t ask for the match to be held here, I’m a little bit annoyed by it all. Of course, there’s the £20m that’s being “contributed to the local economy” or something that everyone’s bandying about, but as I don’t run a supermarket, pub, off-license or other alcohol retail outlet, I’m going to be seeing precious little of this massive boon to the local economy. I just get to pay for the cleanup.

Oh, and it’d be nice if you could pay for the back door to our office that you kicked in last night, too.

Of course, I got off lightly compared to a friend of mine who was pushed off the platform at Piccadilly by a mob of fans who, angry at being unable to all fit on the small local train they were waiting for, invaded the cab and chased the driver out. You can fuck right off, all of you.