Mark's Blog

Apologies if I haven’t been as effervescent as you would normally expect; a frankly horrible dose of “Man Flu” as the sisterhood likes to call it has knocked me for six over the past few days.

To add insult to injury my desktop’s PSU decided to transform its last jule of energy and expire earlier in the week. After a bit of fault finding and working out which component was actually to blame for this blackout of connectivity a replacement was ordered and has been fitted .

I’m slowly getting there, so please bear with me .

Well, just how close were we to the final. 120 seconds away from utter glory before the legs ran out and Spurs planted one in the back of the net to send them through. Lucky buggers…

It was a fantastic match both for the spectators and the general viewing public. Burnley fans exploded through the turnstiles not expecting miracles, perhaps a 1-0 or 2-0 scoreline would be good to say “we tried”. However, we got so much more than that .

I won’t go into epic details or generate a full match report, I’ll leave various other excellent sites to do that for me. Suffice to say we went from elation to desperation in the blink of an eye.

We should be proud, however. Continually we’ve pulled it out when it counts, and the players’ spirit on Wednesday night will be treasured for years to come. Those who went will talk about the time we almost had it for decades, while saying “I was there” .

Law enforcement Cuban style. To be honest I’m surprised the bike was working long enough for the officer to be able to pull the offending motorist over .

The search was long, the waiting was epic, however finally I’ve got my hands on the keys of my new bike (from February 25th at least, silly age restrictions… ) the Honda VT125C Shadow.

It really does look to be an utterly brilliant bike with very favourable reviews, a cruiser style which actually looks a lot larger than the 125cc it is. At over double the size of my existing Peugeot “mobility scooter” V-Clic it should keep up with traffic flow as well. It’s also amusing to think that I’ve had the V-Clic for almost a year now, how time flies!

Pictures will be available when I can take them during daylight hours .

Well, January looks set to be an incredibly busy month especially with regards to travelling off this little island of ours .

The 6th sees the first leg of the Carling Cup semi-finals, with Burnley fielding a team away at Tottenham. Hopefully we will be playing a little better than our recent run of form, two losses in two games isn’t a good thing by any standard.

The 14th brings the BETT trade fair, relating to IT in education. A team of four students, including myself, are going up to support and assist the Eduprint team; however more about that in a future post.

The 21st rolls in with the second leg of the Carling Cup semi-final, with Tottenham bringing up a team to East Lancashire to face the mighty claret and blue army. After this game we’ll know for sure if we’ve made it to the final at Wembley or not, here’s hoping .

Finally to round off the month the 24th is the Scotland phpBB meet, so I’ll be heading up to jump across the border. This one really isn’t to be missed if you are available and have an interest in phpBB; a number of team members will be there so it is a great opportunity to put usernames to faces and have a generally good and enjoyable time.

So as you can see, 4 trips away in 4 weeks; a very busy month all round .

To all readers of this little blog on the Internets I wish you all a very happy and prosperous New Year .

As we roll into the New Year I am genuinely excited about certain projects coming to the front of everyone’s minds and launching, re-launching or completing as may be the case . However, this should be saved for days when everyone is concentrating a little more than they are currently. For now, lets party!