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.

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.

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.

A few weeks ago he made his first almost-successful attempt at crawling. He lay on the bed, on his stomach, and pushed himself across the bed with his knees and his face.

He hasn’t done much movement like that since, but he’s now got enough strength in his arms to hold his head up. It’s only a matter of time before he’s racing all over the place.

He also likes using my Macbook Pro.

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)

I hadn’t seen either of them since February 2006, so it was great catching up having them here to meet their grandson/nephew.

As well as getting to know Galen, we wandered around the farm, walked around Dunster, played some golf, saw Lynton and Lynmouth, had a day in Bath, followed me to cricket, and just enjoyed spending time with each other.

We also played a bit of Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit. After three games of Trivial Pursuit, Nick, Sherry and I had each won two games (playing in pairs). I’ll leave analysis of these results to the reader.

Bath was gorgeous. My favourite part was seeing the curses that people had scrawled onto pieces of pewter and thrown into the hot spring. Some of them were written backwards so that nobody would be able to read them. Ultra tricky crypto.

oT eht norsep ohw elots ym trihs yam eh yaper sih emirc ot uoy ni doolb

They watched me play cricket three times. The first time I scored a reasonably decent 30, including a nice 6 over long off. The next two innings I got out for a third ball duck. Ho Hum!

And then, on Saturday, just after Mum left, I went out and made my first every 100 (100 not out, which included 2 6’s and 14 4’s). If either of them come back for an extended stay, I’ll have to make sure they stay away from my cricket matches.

Sadly, Nick was only able to stay for 10 days. Mum stayed on an extra week and is now touring Eastern Europe. She’ll be back soon for another couple of weeks.

My Handsome Boy

My Smiley Handsome Boy

Trying to lick my hands

The view over Dunster from the top field of the farm

Almost a cricketer

Action shot!

The main Bath in the Roman Baths in Bath

Mum, Nick & Galen

More pics on my Flickr page.

I don’t sleep as much as I used to. I’m way better at changing nappies, and I have mastered doing up and undoing the little popper things on his clothes.

He was 9lb 15oz when he arrived, and he continues to put on a good amount of weight. On Friday he was weighed at 13lb 9oz. An impressive little lump.

Birth = 9lb 15oz / 4250g
9 days = 10lb
3 weeks = 10lb 11ozs / 4860g
3 1/2 weeks = 11lb 5 1/2 ozs / 5140g
5 weeks = 12lb 1oz / 5460g
6 weeks = 12lb 8ozs / 5660g
7 weeks = 12lb 13ozs / 5880g
8 weeks = 13lb 9ozs / 6140g

We get loads of smiles and laughs, and it’s only a matter of time now until he’ll be sitting up and moving around properly. I think I’ll have to wait a bit longer though until he’s driving a cricket ball through the covers.

Originally we’d planned not to use dummies, but blimey they were a good buy. Particularly early on when he was feeding every couple of hours and wouldn’t really settled down at all. The other thing that has been a massive help was this mobile, which he adores and really relaxes him, especially in the evenings.

In other news I crashed my car the other night doing about 20mph (there are some pictures over at Flickr. Our track was a bit slippery and I slid off it, across the field, and into a large boulder. The car had done 203,000 miles and we were planning to replace it this year anyway, so it wasn’t the end of the world.

He weighed 9 pounds, 15 ounces.

He and his parents are doing great.

I’ll update this post eventually with more information about the birth. Too tired at the moment.

I’m slowly adding more pics to flickr

Books I recommend

There is a simple caveat to such a list. When I recommend something normally, I take into account everything I know about you. The following list ignores such information.

• Catch-22
  Hilarious.
• American Gods
  There was something about it. I don’t think there was anything specific to like, but it evokes wonderful thoughts and feelings.
• Foucault’s Pendulum
  The first paragraph is fantastic, especially when spoken. Difficult, but thoroughly worth making it to the end.
• The Picture of Dorian Gray
  All Oscar Wilde should be read.
• Cryptonomicon
  I’ve now read it 4 times. It would be wrong to call it anything but my favourite book.
• Slaughterhouse-five
  Love Vonnegut.

Books I should read

The following are on my “list”. Should there be more?

• On the Road
• Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything