Simon Rumble’s blog

We're moving house tonight. It's been a bit of a drama so we're technically homeless for the next month or so.

We had found a brilliant place in Baron's Court, but that fell through from the landlord's dodginess. We'd already given notice on our place in Willesden so now we've had to make alternative plans.

We'll be staying at John and Anne's in Blackheath for the next week, moving house tonight and tomorrow. Then we're off to Oz for three weeks. When we get back, we'll start looking for a new place to live.

If anyone knows of any places going in the Barons Court, Earls Court, West Kensington, Shepherds Bush or North Fulham areas, lettuce know.

Well if you've been following this, I've been brewing some beer recently. I now have something like 60 litres of beer conditioning, and another 20 litres fermenting at the moment.

The first two batches are just now getting to the drinkable stage. They'll continue to improve over time but they're pretty fine right about now. Yum!

On Monday night I put another batch into a newly aquired keg. Should be a nice little treat for Christmas, I think. It's a nice dark one called Norfolk Nog. Yummy!

If you're reading this and I missed you from the mass mailout of our xmas card, I apologise. Here's what you should have received.

Well the beer's in the bucket and on its way. Looks good! Mmmmm.

Last night I started my first solo batch of homebrew beer with a yeast starter. The yeast were bubbling away this morning, multiplying like mad and looking good. I'll chuck the kit in the fermenter tonight, bottle in a few days. The hardest part, of course, is waiting...

Next kit will probably be a Coopers kit, for that taste from home. Might even buy a keg to make it in, then blow the lot at a party in a few months or something.

Also, the CPU fan in my computer died so no email just now. Just got me a very good and hopefully quiet new fan/heatsink combo so should be back on the air tonight.

We had a housewarming/birthday party on Saturday night. Had a fabulous time with loads of good friends. Such a good time that I forgot to take any photos.

London's transport system causes an interesting phenomenon with parties in the suburbs. Parties tend to start pretty early compared to Aussie parties, and people tend to turn up on or close to the notified time. That's pretty different for Australians who turn up to an eight o'clock party around ten or eleven.

Just before midnight, there tends to be a mad dash for transport as people rush off to make the last tubes or buses. Anyone staying after midnight is committed to staying through the night, or spending a large amount of time or money getting home.

It's an interesting dynamic. Most of the parties I would go to in Sydney occur in a pretty small geographical area. You can walk or cycle home or catch a relatively inexpensive taxi, so the leaving time is much more flexible.

I guess the upshot is that you can work out how successful a party is by how many people are still around after midnight. Then again, woe betide the host who wants to sleep before seven in the morning when the tubes start up again...

Well it looks like I'm an uncle again. After a protracted labour eventually requiring caesarian, Holly's sister Sam gave birth to Alfie early this morning. Mother, baby and dad are reportedly all well.

My second hard drive failed on Saturday in the major hot spell. It really is rather annoying how much heat hard drives put out these days and how poorly their design dissapates that heat. Worse, you can't seem to buy low-heat and potentially lower-performance but higher-reliability drives. Annoying.

Anyway, that means my email is currently down until I get my new one. Yes I'll look into better cooling.

My email is back up and running. Due to a failed backup CD, I lost about month of emails... Grrr... Time to work out a better backup system.

Well it looks like summer has finally hit here in London. It's a beautiful sunny day outside. Last night we slept with all the windows in the house open. Great, except for the annoying fly buzzing around me this morning while I was trying to sleep.

I'm going to my first London Critical Mass tonight. Hard to believe that I've been here two and a half years without having been to Critical Mass, but there you have it. Looking forward to it!