One: Transport For London's web site has a good journey planner. I mean really good. I told it "Liverpool Street to London Bridge" and it offered me two tube routes, the quickest bus route, and how long it would take to walk. Armed with the knowledge that the quickest bus is the number 47 from bus stop K, off I went to work. At the bus stop a quick look at the very clear route maps told me that most buses here took the route I wanted (which is basically "along the big road"), and more importantly, that the bus already here was one of them. On I jumped, and stood upstairs. The joy of the new buses is that upstairs you get a fantastic view of the bicycles weaving their way down the bus lanes, and the hordes of City workers marching over London Bridge. Surprise number Two was that getting the bus (even when there is a strike so it would be busier) is quicker and easier than the tube.

Screw the tube, and kudos to Ken Livingstone for pushing the role of buses in London -- they really do kick arse.

Why can't people who market software count? Windows 1, 2, 3, 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, 2000, XP. Java 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 aka 2.0, 1.4 aka 2.0, 1.5 aka 5.0. It appears that the defining attribute of open source software is a predictable versioning scheme (even if it is a little odd at first, as in Havoc's experiment with the Fibonacci series as version numbers for Metacity).

NP: Simple Things, Zero 7

The woman serving me nearly gave me a decaf espresso. Yes, a decaf espresso. Obviously she should be taken outside and shot for that alone, but it actually gets worse. They put foamed milk on my espresso without asking me, which turned a lovely strong coffee shot into a strange small-cappuccino-with-a-kick. I'm not entirely sure why anyone would want to put milk (frothed or not) onto an espresso in the first place, and I suppose it is good that the option is there (for the same people who ask for a diet Coke with a Big Mac, I presume), but I asked for an espresso. I think they'll find most people consider an espresso to be sans bovine juice. Finally, the flapjack looked like oats which had been left to soak in left-over cooking oil and then chopped into squares, which isn't a great surprise considering the usual ingredient of butter (or margarine if the manufacturer is being cheap) was replaced by vegetable oil and "hydrogenated" vegetable oil (whatever that is). End result: tastes like the cheap syrup you accidently make when dissolving sugar cooks too much, without a hint of oat. I now feel slightly queasy, like I'd eaten a small stick of lard.

It's not long now until the wedding -- only 3½ weeks left! The plans are slowly coming together: hopefully no-one else has left the band, we've finally picked two readings (The Promise and The Owl and the Pussycat), the bar license if off to the magistrates and we've changed the reception colour scheme again. It does seem to us that either people are ignoring the gift list we spent weeks arranging, or are leaving it until the last minute: despite nearly 100 people coming to the reception only 10 have selected a gift. C'mon people, the good ones are going fast! And we want that new kitchenware! :-)

We also finally had most of the replies back, so we sorted through them and updated the attending numbers. Originally I thought that a 75-capacity room for the ceremony would be big enough, but obviously not. So far we're at 74 and we've still got a few unconfirmed members of family. Luckily we're not having the ceremony in the local registry office which I believe only holds 60-odd people: then we'd be forced to pick from family as well as friends...

Sometimes the arranging of the day overtakes the reason for the day, so I have to sit back and think about why we're doing this. That puts a smile on my face, and despite worrying about what could go wrong (a trait of mine I'm not particularly fond of) I'm pretty confident the party will be wonderful. How could it not be?

NP: Nothing. Damn minidisc player broke.

NP: Bebel Gilberto, Bebel Gilberto.

Of course, pictures speak a thousand words, so here are some provisional mockups.

Observant people will notice certain similarities with Totem... So, that is my aim for the future of SJ, once I've figured out how best to use the GNOME 2.6 audio profiles library of course (hi Thomas!). Comments are welcome (as long as they are positive).

NP: Tanto Tempo, Bebel Gilberto

Once I'm in Croydon I think I'll do my lunch shopping before I go to work, the local supermarket has a wonderfully air-conditioned cheese and meat section. Aaah the relief.

In totally unrelated news, this week I did a Matt and bought two albums from hearing them on the Beeb. Bebel Gilberto was on Jools last week with some funky modern bosso nova, and Murcof (minimalist classical with house influence and sound textures, apparently) were mentioned by Matt yesterday. They have a funky Flash based site and three streams to download, which are great mellow pieces. Perfect for deep-hack-mode background music.

There are still issues: sadly Mozilla won't render the page to a window without the window being visible on screen. Maybe a lower-level API would allow this, but for now it does the the job rather well. Well done Matt. My hacked copy is available here.

NP: Liquid Swords, GZA.

The flapjack is made from oats, syrup, butter, sugar and honey. You know -- like you'd do at home -- but nothing like what you get in the shops usually. This cheered me up no end (being partial to a good flapjack[1]), and indeed it was lovely, until I noticed my coffee...

It's perfect. Good temperature, a solid crema, and nicely strong. The only downside is that it comes in a whacking great paper cup, but I'm sure I'll live with that. I've a feeling this could be the end of me...

[1] Of course true "good" flapjacks don't have chocolate bits, fruit bits, sugared bits or any other bits added, nor have they been dipped in another of the above.

Just remember folks: this is comedy.

NP: Worldwide Undergroud, Erykah Badu

Some people may claim to have seen me declare version 0.5.12 in the Changelog a month ago, and some may even go as far as brazenly stating that I even declared 0.5.13 in the Changelog and configure.in last week. These people are no better than child-molesting Nazi's, and are probably Commies too. If you know of these "people", alert the authorities as soon as you can. Thank you.

• Translate the example track/album strings in Preferences (Mariano Suárez-Alvarez)
• Close the Prefs dialog when the WM close button is pressed (Mariano)
• Monitor the strip and eject prefs for changes correctly
• Add %tN-%tA-%tT as a file pattern
• Use a sane drive if the one in GConf doesn't exist (Bastien Nocera)
• Better error messages when the disk is full (Bastien)
• Mark Eject for localisation (Stephane Raimbault)
• Don't crash if the files exists and the user skips every track
• Make the Help button work (Brent Fox)
• Add double quotes to the set of characters to strip when sanitising paths
• Handle the GStreamer 0.8 error callback prototype (Christophe Fergeau)
• Stop building with SJ 0.7.x
• Add colons to the Prefs dialog
• Update libbacon

NP: Tourist, St. Germain

• Add an action to set the window type atom (Olivier Andrieu)
• Add an action to set the decorate window hint in OpenBox (Vaclav Lorenc)
• Watch all screens for events, instead of just the default

Downloads are in the usual place, a tarball is here. Debian packages will be prepared tomorrow, I'm going to bed now. The tarball has a spec file, so rpmbuild should work.

Yesterday Russel (great bloke, my boss and our wedding photographer) came up to look at the venue for the wedding ceremony and reception to see how the light falls, where to take what shots, etc. Whilst doing this obviously he took many photos and when we got home I kept a copy when we were looking at them.

These are taken in the Rose Garden behind the registry office. It's a small circle of bushes with a rose arch and little stone seats. All very nice and romantic.

Me looking remarkable happy at finding a tree.

"Hey Russel, I've magicked a door from Ross' pocket!"

After Vicky's magic trick we went to the Cloisters at the registry office, where every photographer has a field day playing with their flash guns to get good lighting on the arches.

(we were weeding, okay?)

I practise eloping and marrying the Invisible Woman:

Ross and Vicky, circa. 1850.

Ross and Vicky engaging in their little known pursuit of Shakespearian theatre.

This is Little Hallingbury Village Hall, where we are having our reception. To the right you can just see the large garden behind the hall, where we will be having a barbecue. Inside we'll have a jazz band for the evening entertainment.