Brett Hutley's Blog

Today has been a pretty healthy day all up. Both Helen and I went for a run - mine was not as long as normal, just under 5km. We have also been eating a mainly vegan/vegetarian diet over the past few days. It's been a healthy start to the year!

Helen and I want to go vegan in 2018 - but only for one or two days of the week. I'm not sure how well we'll do at this, but we have tried some vegan cheese and some hazelnut milk, and we managed to survive! Let's see if we can keep it up for the year!

Last night we played Jenga and Firefly with Toby and Gigi. We were planning to go to Sidewinder to see in the new year, but ended up finishing off our epic game of Firefly and drinking Prosecco instead. We watched some fireworks from the upstairs bedroom at midnight.

Continue reading “Day One 2018”

Last night Helen's choir - Some Voices - performed Romeo and Juliet at the Troxy in Limehouse. It was a superb show - really atmospheric and the music was excellent! The show was based on Baz Luhrmann's version of Romeo and Juliet. The audience was divided into the Montagues and the Capulets. The Montagues were wearing Hawaiian shirts - surf-casual dress. The Capulets were wearing red and black, with a more formal Spanish gangster look. We filed in to the Troxy in different queues depending on whether we were Capulets or Montagues. The choir sung songs based on the movie and there were actors and dancers performing key scenes. It was a true spectacle!

We bought some wild mushrooms from a store in St James Street today while we were out on our afternoon constitutional. There were some weird looking blue mushrooms there (although they look purple now). They look so colourful!

I decided to try and make raisin bread in the bread maker. It turned out really well! I used the standard wholemeal recipe, but with about 90% wholemeal flour instead of about 60%. I also added in 3 tablespoons of milk powder, some whey (strained off from home-made yoghurt), about 1.5 teaspoons of cinnamon and about 200g of sultanas.

I finally took the plunge and bought a pair of Air Pods. So far I quite like them (although it's only been a few hours). I quite like the way that you can pause the track you are listening to simply by taking one headphone out of your ear. Playback resumes when you put it back in your ear. They are quite expensive though, and I'm fairly sure that I will lose them unless I develop a routine way of storing them.

I have both an iPad Pro and a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 tablet running Linux. Depending on what I am planning on doing on a day-to-day basis affects which device I carry around. Mostly I carry my Surface, as I have Linux installed, and it allows me to easily do development, remotely administer machines, or do general computing tasks. The keyboard on it isn't great however - it's kind of flimsy and doesn't work well if it's not on a firm surface. I can't easily use it on a train for example. It was perfect when we were in Australia for a month, and allowed me to both work and do University assignments. I can use it as a tablet for reading, but it isn't great for that.

Continue reading “iPad Pro versus MS Surface Usability”

Well, it's been a loooonnng time since my last blog entry. One of my resolutions for the new year was to do more blogging. Despite this, I haven't blogged anything for the whole of January. OK, so this stops now. As of today I am starting to blog again. Even if it's just a short and almost meaningless entry about how I'm going to start blogging again.

Last Monday we bought a house in Brighton. I wasn't sure it was going to happen. Genetically I'm predisposed to worry about stuff, and right until the last moment I was thinking of disaster possibilities. We were supposed to exchange contracts and settle at 2pm. We spoke to the vendors and they were saying that they couldn't possibly be out of the place before 2pm, so we decided to travel down by train and get there around 3pm. We got final confirmation from our solicitor that the settlement had happened at 3pm, while we were still on the train. We got to the house, and the vendors were still in the process of moving out. We grabbed some keys and went and grabbed something to eat. By the time we came back, the vendors had left and the place was ours!