When I bought my current laptop (a Compaq Evo N200) I told myself that if it lasted 3 years and I made reasonable use of it then I could justify buying another one. 3 years have passed and while I'm still very fond of my N200 it's getting a bit long in the tooth. Aside from the fact the batteries are going (I used to be able to get 4-5 hours out of it, now it's very temperamental and can die without warning), the lack of memory expansion options (192MB is the max and that's how it came) is annoying and has been so for a while now. In addition it would be nice to have built in wireless/bluetooth.

So, I've been looking around for a replacement for the past few month in preparation for this. Originally I'd been quite keen on the look of the HP TC1100 Tablet but it was pointed out that they're actually quite bulky. Laptops Direct has a neat comparison feature where you can limit by things like weight, so I tried that. It seems that I can get a 12" screen these days (the N200 is 10.4") without that much larger a machine, which might be nice. Currently I'm leaning towards a Toshiba Portégé R200 which has built in wireless/bluetooth, 512MB RAM and seems generally quite funky. It'll probably be discontinued next week knowing my previous luck.

Anyway. Windows. When we moved in 2+ years ago one of the things the survey flagged up was that the windows on the back of the house needed replaced (very visibly so). The front had been double glazed, but the back was still timber frame single glazing. We've been putting it off and putting it off since then. So I decided that I needed a carrot/stick approach - until the windows are sorted, I can't have a new laptop. However we've now had 4 quotes, selected a company and signed up. Survey happened on Saturday, so hopefully within 6 weeks the house will be fully double glazed (and I can have a new laptop). Yay!

Why didn't I cotton on to the incredible usefulness of l (filter index list) in mutt before? I've been using it a lot recently, but for the first few years of using mutt I'm not even sure I knew it existed. Really useful when dealing with huge mail boxes and trying to find stuff.

Rather scarily it's become apparent over the course of this evening (with Burly and Rachel, people who've known me for years) that I've lost a year of my life. Specifically, my Upper Sixth year. I don't remember writing a handful of articles for the school magazine, I don't remember debating the bust up between the Head Girl and her best friend and I don't remember breaking the unbreakable power supplies in Physics. Er. I'm sure there's even more I've forgotten. If anyone who knows me from that period wishes to regale me with tales of what I got up to feel free to email...

You know, no one wished me a happy Sysadmin Day, let alone provided me with gifts. Bastards.

I've seen a few queries about multicast recently and I know the BBC are heavily trying to push it (no doubt so the next time something goes up in smoke they can try to shift less than 10Gb/s of traffic), so I decided to investigate further. While the Linux kernel has support for various bits and bobs it seems the userspace routing tools required to actually run a multicast network are sadly lacking. The only maintained code I can find is Xorp, which falls down because a) C++ for core code scares me and more relevantly b) it doesn't support OSPF. While various people seemed to have asked about it in connection with Zebra / Quagga there doesn't seem to be anything recent (I found some code from 2000, but it has large warnings all over it). Pointers welcome.

I'm not quite sure there's a whole lot of point in multicast yet anyway (not that this will stop me trying to sort it out - I'm a keen supporter of IPv6 even though it's not really there yet either). With the ADSL system in the UK there's no saving to be made across BT's ATM network, or even into the central pipes at the ISP end. Maybe that'll change and BT will do some sort of evil PPP stuffing magic. Cable modems strike me as more likely to get the facility first though, given they're a broadcast domain under the control of a single provider already. It'd be really neat if the new NTL Video on Demand was a multicast system, but I suppose that doesn't work with unique start times.

Oh, and while I remember, see Madagascar. I'd feared the penguins wouldn't be in it enough, and they're not, but it's more than I expected. The monkeys are good too.