Summer! It won't last.

Signed the lease for my flat today, I can move in next week thank the Higgs-Boson particle.
In a serviced apartment now in Cardiff Bay, a few years old, nice but in a sterile gated community. Glad I didn't end up in something like this.
One thing that annoys me about the UK is washing machines in kitchens. Why? What if you're cooking bacon and/or chips (as is the law here) and you have to get clean clothes out of the machine? Eeeww. Clean clothes on a dirty kitchen floor. Can't stand it. Washing my clothes in the kitchen as I type, its taken hours and they're still not dry. Give me a top loader in a laundry any day.

There are a lot of Torchwood freaks in Cardiff

Went for a wander around Cardiff Bay while the weather is so nice. British summer, it has been for the past 4 days, sunny in the high 20s. I know its not gonna last. The forecast is for rain Friday during the Olympic opening ceremony. Australians would be very disappointed if it didn't rain then.

So this is Mermaid Quay, Millennium Centre  and Roald Dahl Place and the bay, all at the end of my street.

Welsh Working Week

Llandudno

Started off the working week with a 4.5 hour drive to North Wales. Once again shouldn't have followed the GPS, it took me off the main roads, the route might have been scenic but it PDR in buckets the whole way. Got to the hospital we're working at Ysbyty Gwynedd in Bangor (ysbyty is Welsh for hospital) and finally met the some more of the team. They're great, and work is basically the same as at home.

We were all staying in Llandudno, a typical Victorian era beachside town, about 30 min away. My new workmates like a drink, I'm fitting right in.

Llandudno has a promenade along a rocky beach, a pier, lots of B&Bs, hotels and pubs. Rained all week and so cold. The town was full of pensioners on their seaside holiday, all dressed up for dinner. Mum and Dad would love it. There is a big headland called the Great Orme which has a cable car up to the top where there are tea rooms and British-type attractions (sort of daggy). Oh, its pronounced Clandidno.

People in this part of Wales speak Welsh, and they sort of whisper. Its a bit disconcerting.

ATTACK!

Seagulls everywhere, and they are as big as cats. And vicious. There's no point eating fish and chips (cod...yuck and greasy) on the promenade.They attack...seriously.

For those who remember the Guiness Book of Records from the 70's, the town with the longest place name in the world (according to them) was only 10 min from Bangor. Llanfairpwll....yada yada...goch. In reality just another little town, best part about it was the gift shop toilet. With this weather, I've been weeing like a racehorse.













Saturday drove to Oxford. I'd never been there, I was expecting university colleges, students on bikes, punting, you know like Brideshead Revisited. In reality its full of tourists and I'm over tourist towns. To be fair there were a lot of high school kids there on tour as the UK school year has just ended for summer break. You could go into the colleges, but they charged admission. However you could walk around the actual university buildings which was cool, I thought.

Coloured Punts -  Oxford

Sunday I caught up with Kath Egan at her brother's house near Hungerford. Great to see her. Her brother's place is in a village, a bit "Escape to the Country" . We had lunch, went to a pub in Marlborough and watched Kath's brother and nephew play cricket. English summer weather at last! It could actually get to 30C this week! That's too hot for here I think, none of the hotels I've stayed in have aircon.

Work stuff (only of interest to FFA people)

First, the basics. Phone - Blackberry, totally locked down and you can't get Gmail on BB apps anymore. Laptop - DellE6410. No webcam or microphone! Partitioned hard drive, Fuji VPN with security tag access, Notes, Office 07, still XP. Private side no Office. No VM workstation licences free, only 2G RAM, NO 3G CARD. No internet. Have to use wi-fi in hotels. Dieter would freak. Wi-fi is usually flaky so can't even download VM Player not that this laptop would be able to run a session. I will have to remedy this next week at head office, especially the 3G.
Just finished first week on site at Ysbysty Gwynedd, a hospital in Bangor North Wales, similar to Sunshine. There are 3 regions of the BCU health trust which is all of North Wales. This one is West which did have Insignia PACS, migration is nearly done 2 months early. Usual complaints coming from legacy PACS users. Superusers are nowhere to be seen. Unread study folders are a nightmare with radiographers reporting. RIS is a home grown product RadIS, on a par with the one in the NT, probably a bit worse. I really need Garry for some HL7 mapping to sort out these folders.
The big problem is the dictation. It is a British product G2. So far it doesn't handle group reporting, and doesn't have a spell check, or doesn't keep text format so typists won't use it. We can't go live yet, we have 10 days. Trouble is FFUK have to train and support it as per the contract. Big meetings next week, G2 have to fix it or trouble for us. Anyone want to come and demo Synapse DM? I've been singing its praises all week.
DEVO issues - of course.
BCU Central was on Synapse 321 and was upgraded, at least there is a PACS Admin, but lots of legacy folders, RPs and overlays I'm not to change. BCU East is later.
One central database, but only 2 dicom webs. Engineers (or integration specialists) are great and are experienced, esp Anthony who's been on site and in the pub with me all week. There are 3 other apps. Denise (who has  been driving 7 hrs to get to Nth wales from home) started at CR and had moved to informatics, Lyndsay who had done Synapse apps a while ago and just come back and Rob, former PACS admin but with Synapse 2.1! Denise and Rob have a working knowledge of 4 but have never had the benefit of Dieter and Chris H. I'm going to have to teach them a few things - imagine that! They don't know ESWAT or SetEdit at all, they have not be trained and are not to touch it. I've been in of course, but haven't made the changes I need to as its being monitored by the head engineer. It seems that the engineers do a lot of the config. I don't have access to D drive - yet. They haven't been using the test server. FFUK. There is a guy who just does the workstations. Finding little bugs in 4 on W7 but not XP.
I emailed Mike Smith and said that they work differently in the UK, he said it AUS that's different to the rest of the world.
We've all been staying in Llandudno which is a typical British beachside resort about 30 min from the site. Lots of pubs and restaurants. They like a drink. I fit right in.
Its at least a 4 hr drive to get here from Cardiff, no direct roads unless you drive back into England and up on the motorways. Long drives are going to be a fact of life. I don't have to come back here, Lyndsay and Rob are only about 2 hrs away. I have to start work on the West Wales projects soon, at least I am based in Cardiff and the sites are closer.
Office next week. Still in hotels. Have only seen Kirsty once, she's a bit isolated in Cardiff, she starts 3D set up here next week.
More later.

Welsh weekend

Saturday started with a sleep in then in the car up to the valleys of South Wales. A guy from work, Huw,  was playing in a cover band at a little festival for charity in a village called Deri, the festival is called Glastonderi, because some sound engineers who do Glastonbury give their time to this gig. I followed my GPS out of Cardiff, up the motorway, through a few towns thinking I was on the right track. Then the GPS took me left off the main road then up narrow lanes, then I was in the middle of nowhere on top of a hill surrounded by nothing but sheep. The sheep have tails here. "Something to hang on to" according to the locals. I would have taken a picture with it was Pissing Down Rain (now to abbreviated to PDR as I will get sick of typing it). Then my GPS went dead, while it was PDR on top of a hill full of tailed sheep. So I just headed down the hill and around a few corners till  I came to a village. Luckily it was Deri.

Local AC/DC covers for local people, same the world over.

The festival was how you'd imagine. Local cover bands for local people. Its a different world up there. Women from 16 to 69 took their fashion cues from "Snog Marry Avoid". Lots of pints were drunk in the tents which smelled of vinegar from all the chips and bacon sandwiched being eaten. I lasted till 6pm, the took the main road out of time for an easy drive back.
Today I drove to Bath to meet up with Rob & Liz and the kids. Great to catch up with someone from home, even though its only been a week. We walked around town with all the crowds of tourists. These tourist towns are shitting me already. Rob and Liz went into the Roman Baths, I went to the pub. When they were finished we all went to the pub. Cider.Actually sunny today, not PDR for a change.
Kirsty from Fuji Australia arrived today so I took her down the bay to gloat about my flat and have some dinner and catch up.

Queueing British national passtime

North Wales tomorrow, working at Bangor.

New Home

Today I met up with the property search consultant, Karen (a real Welsh stunner with a beautiful accent) and we drove around looking at a lot of flats in the Cardiff Bay area. There are lots of newish developments, and most of them were not very nice (carpet in the bathroom... yuk). We got a call in the car from an agent who cancelled one viewing but had another just listed so we went to this old part of Cardiff Bay and saw the Cymric Buildings. Big old stone building converted into flats. I was hoping that it would be OK inside. It was brilliant. Signed for it already but don't move in until 1 Aug. Lucked out on this on, big time.

Its 1 minute walk from the major attractions in the Cardiff Bay area, and from Mermaid Quay which is sort of like a Southgate on the water with lots of cafes, restaurants etc. Click here for the map
I went back gown there tonight and dropped into my soon to be local The Packet for a pint of Brains (local brew) met the locals (one bloke was called Bryn no kidding) and now I'm in a quiz night team.

This is gonna be good....

Caerdydd - Cardiff to you

Right now I feel like a zombie.
No sleep on the flight, but it got into Heathrow early and I was through customs in 30 min. Surely a record, Olympics or not. At 7am I was in the queue for a coffee at Costa (they have flat whites here now) and there was a man wearing a Fujifilm shirt behind me. I asked him who he was, it was Gary my new manager. Lucky, because I couldn't get my phone to work.
We got straight on the M4 to Cardiff. By 11am I wasn't making any sense so Gary left me at the hotel. I've had 4 room changes to get Internet access. Went for a walk, it doesn't look great so far, went to a theme pub, back to the room, turned on TV - Escape to the Country is on. Can no-one escape that show!
Signing off now....zzzzzzz

Brunei - retro travel

Brunei Intl Airport would have been cutting edge architecture in the 80's, but now.....

There are less than 100 people in the whole terminal, its small but its weird here. I'll take some photos if I can.
Back again, this computer keeps logging off and it's slower than my Dad's.
This airport has a Brisbane in the 80's or former Soviet republic kinda vibe. Background music sound like the call to prayer.
I got stung big bucks for being over baggage limit, and had to cough up over a grand. Everyone at check-in was hammered for excess baggage, it was brutal. Anyway they upgraded me to biz class to Brunei, which was nice, but there were only 4 passengers in there. They have refused to upgrade me for the longest flight because "we don't upgrade here". Unbelievable! I bet biz class is empty.
From the travel doco on the flight, Brunei looks like the most boring place on earth, it was all over the presenter's face. And you can't get a drink!
I'd better stop this rant or else I might get locked up. Get me outta here.

Last Post from St Kilda

Well, I slept in so I'm rushing around now. Last minute things to do, more junk to throw out. Had a great night saying farewell to all my friends last night, didn't really need to go out after for the cleansing ale but glad I did. Gotta go, being picked up now. UK on Tuesday.

The Story of Wales

I've watched the whole 6 episodes of the BBC's "The Story of Wales" which was on SBS in Australia. If you want the full story click here or read the Wiki version. So I think I've got a handle on the place.

Basically, it goes like this:
30000 years ago there were people in Wales and the Ice Age hit.
Celts lived there after that and made stone circles and those sort of things. They spoke Welsh.
Romans invaded in 43 AD and they were pretty cool with that.
They weren't cool with the Anglo-Saxons and still aren't.
After the Normans conquered the English pretty much took over.
King Edward 1 completed the takeover and called his son the Prince of Wales.
There was the odd uprising here and there lead by men with Welsh names.
Wales became part of Great Britain in 1707 around the time they designed the Union Jack, which is still popular on jackets, T shits and the roofs of Minis.
The Industrial Revolution hit in the 1800's and people moved from farms to those villages with terrace houses you see on TV. They went to church and began singing.
Coal mining and steel works were popular, so were trade unions.
The English tried to stop people speaking Welsh, but they couldn't. They still sing. And play rugby.
Coal and steel were good for a while but in the 1980's Maggie Thatcher closed those industries down. There were strikes, and things were pretty grim, but some good music came out of the 80's.
Now its all cool again. Wales voted to devolve from the UK and they have their own parliament and a TV station all in Welsh. Road signs are bilingual. Cardiff is supposed to be a happening city...

That's where I'm headed. In 2 days....shit...I better pack.

Still in St Kilda

OK. So in a couple of days I'm moving from St Kilda to Cardiff in Wales. For work, and for a change.
So, I thought I'd start a blog and see how it goes.

This is me in a cell in Alcatraz, not that it has anything to do with moving to Cardiff, just trying it out.

St Kilda

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