When an email has made it through the initial human and digital filter the first thing I do is look at the raw headers. It’s something I’ve always done, I like to know what I’ve actually received and quite often I find an interesting new header field.

One of the emails that landed in my inbox today was a surprise, both in terms of its body content and its header. The body I’ll come to later, but the reason the header was a surprise was that it contained mostly addresses that I didn’t recognise.

Given that I didn’t want to consider the content right now, I decided the best way to deal with this troubling email was to obsess about the header instead. Firstly it’s a group email and it wasn’t BCC’d so not only could I see all the recipients, they could all see me. Normally at this point the sender would get a sharply worded email from me, detailing my displeasure at their use of my email address in this manner but given the nature of the email perhaps public and communal dissemination was appropriate.

Having exhausted that line of reasoning I examined the header itself; sadly nothing interesting here it was pretty bare bones as you’d expect from Hotmail. Yes, I know somebody with a Hotmail address – so last century; I don’t think he can even claim to have chosen it “ironically”, but I suppose I won’t hold it against him.

What about the other recipients? I was clearly going to be the only one with my own domain; I gave myself an imaginary “air tick” of congratulation. But wait, I wasn’t there were others with their own domains – interesting. That was balanced with a number of hotmail, yahoo, live, gmail, and other generic ISP mail domains. There was even one AOL email address. I was already building up a picture in my mind, a doubtless wholly inaccurate and unfettered with facts one, but a picture nonetheless.

However try as I might I couldn’t spend any longer avoiding the important part of the email, the body itself. Essentially it was an invite to a wedding party. I was surprised to be invited, I know the groom in so far as I’ve worked with him before. Actually that’s not quite right, I’ve been employed by the same company – we never technically worked together as such. I’ve met his fiancé once at the Bloomsbury theatre, ostensibly for all of 10 minutes; i.e. exchanging a few words before and after the show. I was pretty sure I managed to come across as grindingly awkward and hence the perfect stereotype of my chosen profession. So again, why on earth would I deserve an invite? – I was perplexed.

Now I’m quite aware that an invitation to pretty much anything short of your own execution should be considered as either an endorsement of you by the inviter, or an act of obligation. Clearly I’m not related to anyone at this event, nor do they owe me anything which might constitute them using an invite as some sort of payback. Still confused then as to why two seemingly rational individuals would invite me; I mean I wouldn’t invite me.

Perhaps this train of thought was just deflection from the abject terror my subconscious was conjuring up in terms of how many and varied ways I could make an idiot of myself in mixed and as yet unmet company. The last couple of wedding reception/party‘s I’ve attended have left me with the distinct desire to stab myself, metaphorically at least, repeatedly in the head. Not that this reflects in any way on the hosts or guests of said events whom were all delightful, just that my perceived social ineptitude both irritated and depressed me and tends to lead to extensive mental deconstruction after any such event.

The usual parental advice, apart from “don’t talk to strangers” “eat your greens” and “study hard at school” is “that most things aren’t as bad as you imagine they will be”. I know I should probably just suck it up and accept their gracious invitation. I notice there are a couple of my old work colleagues that have also been invited, which oddly makes my decision harder. I reason this way, if I was going to know nobody at the event then I’m pretty sure I’d chicken out of going, express my deepest regrets and concoct some plausible excuse about a scheduling conflict. But as there will be others there I know I really feel I ought to make the effort, I just need to man-up and send the damn reply.

I realise this is all hopelessly self-absorbed drivel, but then it is my blog so quite what else you’d expect I don’t know...

Ever since the spectre of ID cards and the horribly invasive ID database flared up I’ve been mentally preparing myself for a time when my passport expired and not wanting to feed the ID beast I would be left without valid documentation and therefore unable to leave the country; legally at least!

My passport is due to expire fairly soon, I think from memory I’ve got about a years’ worth of validity left. However somewhat fortuitously and much to my delight it seems the new coalition government is set to repeal the ID card bill that was brought in by the previous administration. Currently the bill to do so is going through parliament and should be passed sometime in December. Now I’m not foolish enough to be quaffing celebratory champagne, metaphorically or otherwise, until I see the final form of the bill I won’t be completely satisfied. But without wanting to count my imaginary chicks before they’ve hatched I did find myself wondering today where I might travel to with my possibly new-found freedom.

Having avoided one lot of unwanted government intrusion, much as I enjoy the US as a country I’m becoming increasingly unwilling to put up with their ridiculous security paranoid and the utter rudeness and contempt that many INS staff show visitors (nay paying tourists) to their country. As if this contempt cake wasn’t elaborate enough, the US government in their less than infinite wisdom have added a giant rosy cherry called the “Travel Promotion Act”. This utterly absurd piece of legislation is designed to piggyback the already cumbersome ESTA and add, wholly against the spirit of unfettered capitalism, a $10 charge to enter the country. Now compared to the amount of money I would likely spend in the country and indeed spend getting to the country the fee is statistically irrelevant, but principle shouldn’t have a price tag and my objection is principled.

I visited Switzerland once, and by visited Switzerland I mean skied over the border from France jumped on a chairlift and returned to swiftly back to France. I repeated this particular trick several times during the week, but I never got to see much of the country other than their excellent skier locomotion infrastructure. So maybe the land of Cuckoo clocks and chocolate should be the first country on my list.

Every time I visit the Bloomsbury Theatre I forget where it is. I know roughly where it is; I mean I’m not wandering aimlessly around Paddington or the Embankment. But depending on which direction I approach from I always imagine it’s to the left when it’s actually one road to the right and vice-versa. Today I thought yup, it’s to the left of the Welcome building. Wrong! But I suppose the extra steps are probably going to do me no harm.

I was here to see Richard Herring and the AIOTM crew, which according to my ticket was due to start at 7:30pm. I decided that rather than catch the tail-end of the rush hour, as it was a pleasant enough day I’d turn up early and mooch around. I picked my ticket up from the box office, then armed myself with the urban warriors’ weapon of choice a bottle of water and headed off to find a little green in which to lounge.

Clouds tootled across the sky, a multiplicity of humanity paraded past and I was even visited upon by several of our feathered friends. I had no food on me at all, so I felt a little bad when a blackbird baby hopped along the path looking and flapping expediently in my direction. If that wasn’t bad enough, a baby robin whose breast only had the slightest hint of redness appeared too, to peck at my conscience. He hopped onto the bench where I was sitting and then hopped closer until he was considerably less than an arm’s length away. I pulled my best apologetic face and he flew away, I imagine, in disgust.

Mr Herring, as he is known to those of us that like to keep a respectable distance from celebrities, attracts a certain crowd; he’s commented as much on many occasions and while undoubtedly humorous it’s also very much true. The vast majority of the crowd waiting outside the theatre were “portly geeks”, a group which I’m a proud member of. Admittedly, I’m not so mad keen on the “portly” badge, but I wear my geek credentials with pride.

Anyhow, the first half was Richard Herring alone doing a preview of his “Christ on a Bike” show that he was taking to the Edinburgh Fringe later in the year. Unsurprisingly this delivery was missing a little polish, but I thought the material was amusing and well observed. Certainly from my experience I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the show; if I were attending the fringe I’d certainly like to see the final cut.

The second half was the headline act, Richards’ self-penned AIOTM (AIOTM!) As It Occurs To Me; a mixture of stories that have “occurred to him” and other more abstract sketch based material. He’s joined by Emma Kennedy, Dan Tetsell and the comedy musical styling’s of Christian Reilly. I don’t really know how to adequately describe this part of the show, other than it’s a series of sketches often with characters or references to earlier “episodes” of AIOTM (AIOTM!). My advice would be to seek it out yourself and give it a listen as it is freely downloadable as a podcast.

All too soon the performance was over and the audience collectively trooped out onto the street. It was at this point that it, rather ironically, occurred to me that I hadn’t picked up a programme. Damn. But I did make a donation to charity anyhow, so I guess maybe I’ve got some karma in hand!

It turns out today that I am down one god-parent. You may be surprised to find an atheist even has god-parents, but they were bestowed upon me many years before I was able to make such a decision for myself.

I’ve never thought of them as god-parents, but rather the poor unfortunate souls who were duty bound or at least socially obligated to take some more active part in my upbringing in the unfortunate event of the death of one of my parents. They collectively pretty much dodged a bullet on that one because my father waited until just before my 18th birthday to die by which time (if you’ll excuse the cooking metaphor) I was pretty much baked at least in the eyes of the law.

I’d last seen Brian, which was my god-fathers name, in the hospice earlier in the week. It was clear he was gravely ill, but he still managed a joke. I spent most of the time propping up the wall, thankfully his wife and my mother were there too so my unease wasn’t front and centre. It wasn’t the dying which made me uncomfortable, it was the conversation. I’m awful at making polite inconsequential conversation with people who are able to fully participate, but as he was very tired and drifting in and out of consciousness I was hopeless. I kept pretty quiet and smiled in what I can only imagine I hoped was a reassuring way when he looked in my direction.

As is usual with such things, those closest feel the keenest pain and as such I hope his wife has all the support she needs at this time. Me, I’m once again contemplating the oddness of permanent absence.

Well this evening started quite well, leisurely drinking in quiet pubs. Then all too rapidly in my mind the wheels on the wagon became decidedly wobbly. Don’t mistake my metaphor there as relating to alcohol for it most certainly wasn’t, my rising ire was because I don’t particularly like being bait and switched.

I’m generally not overtly rude, actually I’m very rarely rude; passive-aggressive is usually my response of choice. Things in my mind can be categorised in one of three ways; like, dislike and neutral. As a person if you fit into one of the last two groups I’m going to ignore you insomuch as I can within the rules of relatively polite society. If you attempt to engage me I won’t blank you, but I will do everything I can conversationally to limit the extent of our interaction. I believe that I can accomplish this with the requisite decorum that enables us both to back out of a situation that for one of us and therefore by extension both of us is undesirable, without losing face.

Every once in a while I come across someone who seems unable or unwilling to comprehend these rules, either because of a social/cultural/intellectual mismatch or because they’re a sociopath. I certainly didn’t meet any sociopaths tonight, but I did feel a disconnect within the group.

Anyway for counterpoint I suppose I should say that it was good once again to meet with my erstwhile colleagues. The curry was pleasant and relatively uneventful, with the galling exception that one of the group thought it a good idea to steal a wine glass. Not a cut-glass antique or a rare branded example, just a simple dime-a-dozen blue wine glass. As tempted as I was to very loudly point this out, I bit my tongue and made a little mental note.

I idly speculated that the best way to ensure you don’t see people you don’t particularly want to is to arrange a gathering yourself; it’s not really the done thing to complain about the guest list if it isn’t your “party”. So I know by arranging another get together as I suggested I won’t get anyone attending that I don’t want, but the bigger question is will I get the ones that I do?

Yes, this is somewhat rambling and in the cold light of day may seem unnecessary but right now I felt like I need a note to myself and as such this is it. It is also 1:47am and bed is beckoning.

Today I was up and rolling quite early, both for me and indeed for a Sunday, it feels like the last time I was driving at 9:30 on a Sunday morning was when I stuffed my car in the freezing rain. My reason for this uncharacteristic show of weekend purposefulness was a desire to reunite myself with the simple computing joys of my youth, and drop into the nearby Lego store as a side-effect.

The National Museum of Computing, housed in block H on the Bletchley Park site, was holding the UK’s first Vintage Computer Festival. Firstly let me get my grumbles out of the way; not enough time to see all the talks and exhibits in one day, and Sophie Wilson’s talk was sold out.

The first bit of the VCF I happened across was the Commodore marquee, which had played host on Saturday to the “launch” of the AmigaOne X1000 which I got the impression was a little underwhelming. But it was good to see the “enemy” from the days of yore.

A substantial contingent of Sinclair and Acorn hardware was assembled in the main house. BBC model B’s, one was running Chuckie Egg but sadly no Frak in sight. Most interesting to me I must admit was a Beagleboard running Risc OS 5, now obviously I don’t need physical hardware to run Risc OS but having seen it I’m quite tempted to invest in one. I’d never seen a Sinclair Multimeter before, but I have now. It wasn’t a product I realised they made, although given the companies heritage I suppose it makes sense.

The other part of the Sinclair encampment was in another marquee at the other side of the site. It was here that the much Twittered ZX Spectrum running a Twitter client connected to the outside world via an Ethernet card with an edge-connector was setup. The Spectrum NIC was an impressive piece of work and an excellent example of “just for the hell of it” engineering.

One piece of accidental good luck, as I was meandering around the site waiting for one of the talks to start, I happened across the Bombe being run. It was fascinating to see a computing device, with an oil drip pan, and if you think fan noise in modern computers is loud that’s nothing compared to the clattering of an electro-mechanical computer. After all that though, I missed the talk I’d intended to hear.

That wasn’t my only fail of the day, I also managed to arrive a couple of minutes late to Pixelh8’s performance which I’d invested five of my hard earned pounds in seeing. However the doors were already closed and I’m not one for ignominy of a late arrival so I slunk away.

One last note, I spotted a couple of internet celebs in the flesh in the form of “the Internet’s Dave Green” and Leila Johnston from the Shift Run Stop podcast.

So I got home sunburnt, exhausted, and clutching a bagful of Lego; my head filled with happy memories of simpler times both in terms of computing and otherwise...

[Amended to remove my accidental conflation of The National Museum of Computing and Bletchley park, also added links]

For quite some time I’ve been a big fan of chilli and watercress sandwiches. Really that is exactly as it sounds, I take a large handful of watercress and a diced chilli or two and place them between a couple of slices of good quality brown bread; delicious and not wholly unhealthy I’d imagine.

Given my fondness for watercress it comes as no surprise that I’m rather partial to watercress soup too, my recipe of choice consisting of :

• 1 Onion
• 2 Pints of Chicken Stock
• 2 Potatoes
• 2 Bags of Watercress

Simmer the diced onion in a little of the stock, until softened. Add the peeled, diced potatoes and the remaining stock and bring to boil. Simmer until the potatoes are soft and finally add the watercress for a final few minutes of cooking. Liquidise and serve.

Well that’s the recipe I’ve been following for the last few years and I really enjoy the taste. Why though I thought have I never tried adding chilli, so I did. I dropped in a largish Scotch Bonnet chilli just before liquidising the soup. Now make no mistake the soup now has a really spicy kick, but at the same time it adds a real depth of fruity flavour.

This stuff is my new food crack; I’ve just bought an extra 6 bags of watercress so I can whip up a giant batch and put some in the freezer.