GNOME 2
I finally got fed up waiting for the GNOME 2 packages to appear in Debian Sid (the "crypto-in-main" event is finally happening, when crypto-related software doesn't have to be in "non-US"), so I grabbed Garnome 0.8.
A full day of downloading and compiling later (this is a 550MHz P3 on a dial-up line) and I've got the GNOME 2 desktop for real! Excellent stuff guys. I've been running some of the applications at work but this is much better.
Now of course, I start filing bugs...
Books
I'm now reading 3001. 2061 was a bit of a let–down — as he explored life on Europa the concepts were good but it seemed that too much of it was just taken verbatim from 2001 and 2010. That ruined the feeling of "new territory" for me as entire chapters were familiar. Then again, ACC does acknowledge this at the end of the book. Also Heywood "ascending" to the same level as Dave and Hal seemed contrived, a bit hacky.
3001 is a return to form — so far (1/3 of the way through) it is an analysis of the current state of humanity, although Poole is about to go to Lucifer (né Jupiter) which will be fun. The tension is building as the last line of 2061 was "and the Monolith awoke for the second time".
London
This weekend my partner's father and step-mother came up to see us. As they have not been to London often (you don't really have the opportunity when you live in Plymouth) we went to London to do The Tourist Thing. Harrods, followed by meals in restaurants, then off to St Pauls Cathedral for a quick "oooh" and then down to the Millenium Bridge, sans wave motion. That bridge gets 9/10 from me, it looks really good and has an excellent view of the river. Then we wandered down Bankside and Southbank to the Millenium Eye (can you see the theme here yet?).
The Eye is really cool — I hope they keep it as a permament stucture. For a measly £10 you get a 30 minute ride which goes up 135 feet. The view is fantastic, even though the day we went it was cloudy. Amusingly enough we could see where our old flat in Crystal Palace, south London was, as there is the TV transmitter for south London about 500 meters away.