On Saturday night, just as we were putting Galen to bed, water started leaking into our kitchen.

I raced outside, looked behind the house, and was shocked to see a huge river of water streaming past.

With all the rain we’d had, along with the soaked fields and some blocked drains, most of the water from the hill behind our house had decided to divert towards us. There is a bit of a slope down to a drain on the track behind the house. The drain couldn’t cope. The water started pooling, then, as it rained more, streaming past the house.

I went to check the drain and the water was above my knees.

Soon after this I went back inside and the water had started coming into our sitting room.

As quick as we could we took as much as possible upstairs (some things had already been damaged by the water), and with buckets, mops, towels and sheets, did our best to get rid of as much water as possible.

Unfortunately, with all the water outside, it was more or less a losing battle until we could stop the water from pooling behind the house. Andrew (the farmer) came over and built up a bit of a dam up the track which helped, but it still took a while for the water level to drop back down.

By this time there was 2-3 inches of water in our sitting room, and plenty more in the kitchen. I removed somewhere between 50 and 60 full buckets of water from the house, and Sherry removed plenty too.

Eventually everything settled down and we were able to mop up the last of the water, look down at our sodden carpet, and get some sleep.

On Sunday morning we ripped out the carpet and started packing. We have a house to stay at until our place is liveable again, but things are pretty manic at the moment.

We’ve had windows open and the fire going and the dehumidifier on. Hopefully the floor and walls will dry out quickly so that we can get new carpet in and the house back to a state where we can move back in. Of course, we can’t do this until we can guarantee that it won’t happen again. Hopefully we can sort out insurance stuff, arrange to have a wall or something put in behind our house to stop water pooling, and then go from there.

We’re all fine at least.

I’ll be in London from Sunday afternoon on the 26th of October. I don’t know what I’m doing or where I’ll be staying, but hopefully I can catch up with at least someone.

The appointment at the Passport office is at 9:50am on the Monday morning. I’ll be catching a bus back to Taunton whenever that has finished.

To everyone who sent a card, letter or present to us (and Galen!) on the momentous occasion of his birth, I’d like to say thank you.

If you haven’t yet received a thank you card in reply, I apologise. You will get one eventually.

But in the mean time, this little man says thank you.

Also, that little man is now an Aussie. I’ll be going in to London in a few weeks to get him a passport.

He’s a real, moving, noisy lump of adorableness.

Finally, after a wait of a couple of years, I have an iPhone.

When the original phone was announced I was working at IMG, and though none of us knew for sure, we had a fair idea that it was probably our hardware powering the graphics.

The cost to begin with was quite prohibitive, so I had to make do with my ancient Nokia. When the 3G iPhone was announced this year, with GPS and a much cheaper price tag, I could finally justify getting one, so I waited eagerly for the UK release, constantly glaring at my clunky old phone that only did SMS and calls.

It took me a while to get my hands on one. With work, and Mum and Nick over here, it wasn’t really feasible to spend hours waiting in line outside an O2 store. Whenever I was able to make it in to Taunton they’d already sold out, so I had to constantly check their website, hoping that their stock would be replenished when I was able to make a trip in. Finally, last Wednesday, they received a delivery, so I left work early and raced in to pick up my new 16GB phone.

Am I happy? Oh yeah. I love my iPhone and everything it can do. GPS. Google maps. Internet and email everywhere. It really is an incredible machine. I was surprisingly impressed with just how nice the phone sounds when making a call.

But the key to the phone is the internet and all the available applications.

I have a huge number of RSS feeds in NNW on my desktop. Being able to read them in NNW on my phone is amazing. Waiting in line now is actually fun.

I use Twitter a lot, and Twinkle is a great client. I use Twitterific sometimes when I need a certain piece of functionality that Twinkle doesn’t have, but so far Twinkle is faster, smoother, and easier to read.

The iphone isn’t all play though. I’ve started working on my own application, and soon I’m going to begin development on a game. It’s a great device to develop for, and I’m really looking forward to spending some time doing non-Filemaker development, and being able to dust off some OpenGL ES.

I’ve also been playing around with the camera a bit, so expect to see an occasional random photo uploaded to flickr.

If you’re thinking about getting a new phone, please at least consider the iPhone. It’s a game changing device, well worth at least a thought, plus I’d like you to buy my software when I finally release it.

(this post was entirely written on my iPhone)