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Musical fireworks

We (that is, myself, Paula, mum, dad and Chris) are off to a concert this Saturday evening: a “fireworks concert spectacular” at Cholmondeley Castle near Malpas. Nick was invited but politely declined on the grounds of musical taste (or lack thereof).

I mainly wanted to go because much of the music this year will be from Tchaikovsky’s ballets The Nutcracker and Swan Lake, which are both favourites of mine. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about ballet (“strewth, mate, there’s a bloke down there with no strides on!”), but I love the music!

It’s one of those “take a picnic” affairs, which is a bit of a shame as many people seem more interested in eating and talking as opposed to listening to the orchestra (if you’re gonna do that, stay at home and have a barbeque, for crying out loud). Maybe if we sit close enough to the stage it’ll drown-out the noise of the riff-raff!

I’ll get my coat…

I quit my job earlier this week. I’ve been with my present employer for just over three years, so it was probably time for a change: I was starting to get too personally attached to the projects I was working on, and this was causing some friction with other team members, which is rarely a good thing. That’s not my only reason for leaving, but my blog isn’t the place to air that dirty linen.

My new employer will be Moneysupermarket.com. You may have heard of them, or even used their product-comparison web sites. I’ll be coding in C#, which is the language I’ve been using for the majority of the past couple of years, so that’s good. It also looks like I’ll have the opportunity to learn about some areas of the .Net framework that I haven’t yet used, such as remoting and web services, which should be fun! I’m really looking forward to starting there next month.

Plus they have free parking for everyone! w00t!

Saving the planet with minimal effort

I’m not exactly a poster-child for saving the planet: I use a car instead of public transport; waste far too much electricity running various gadgets; occasionally put washing in the tumble dryer even on clear days… you get the idea. However, despite this I’m still the most energy-conscious person I know, which is kind of worrying (or maybe an indication that I don’t know that many people).

I recently read an interesting article on the BBC News web site, Lighting the key to energy saving. Apparently, a study from the International Energy Agency has concluded that “a global switch to efficient lighting systems would trim the world’s electricity bill by nearly one-tenth.” A linked article – Light bulbs: Not such a bright idea – basically proposes that governments should ban the traditional incandescent light bulb in favour of using compact fluorescents. This is such an obvious no-brainer that it almost certainly won’t happen, which is a real shame, but then again we shouldn’t be relying solely on our governments to legislate in order to solve the world’s energy problems: we should be doing more ourselves.

For example, don’t leave the TV chattering away to itself when you’re going to be out of the room for a while. Stop the automatic hand-dryer yourself when your hands are dry, instead of waiting for the timer to switch it off. No need to turn-on the lights when it’s a bright sunny day outside. All small things to be sure, but if everyone did them…

See? You too can save the planet with minimal effort!