Nick Gibbins

Who is Claire Sweeney?

mailed me last Friday to ask if I’d be interested in taking part in a television programme that was being filmed at Bath Uni on Sunday. The blurb that she’d seen said something about free food, which is always a bonus, so we said yes. The programme was an episode of Chef vs Britain, which should air on daytime ITV1 some time in May, and is a cross between Masterchef and Can’t Cook, with an amateur chef competing with a celebrity professional chef (Gino somebody off This Morning). It’s presented by Claire Sweeney (who is she and why is she… Read More »Who is Claire Sweeney?

House update

Found another plasterer to fix up the bedroom wall – seems like a reasonable chap, especially compared to the last one. He’s given us a lower quote, included VAT in the quote, doesn’t require payment in cash or an advance payment for materials, is in some demand (has a full order book until the end of April) and most importantly is a vintage motorcycle enthusiast (he phoned to say he’d be slightly late when coming round to give us a quote becuase he was expecting a delivery, namely a restored 1957 Triumph Bonneville). One thing he has asked is that… Read More »House update

Playing House

Progress on the house has been markedly less rapid since the Boy Laurence and left last Tuesday. The first niggle was that the plasterer failed to turn up.

Playing house (“Sparky Rides Again” and “They Came From Upstairs”)

Busy weekend at Gark Villa, which has been a welcome break from work stress (the EU bid I’ve been working on is into the home straight, and adjacent niggles seem to be sorting themselves out). turned up at about 10.30 on Friday morning (fresh from a mammoth shift of barwork over St. Patrick’s, if fresh is the right word), shortly followed by the Boy Laurence. Took their bags, then shooed them out of my office and told them not to come back until the evening. Finally finished doing proposal-writing things around 7pm, when the three of us retired to the… Read More »Playing house (“Sparky Rides Again” and “They Came From Upstairs”)

The house that Jerry built

and I have had a fairly easy weekend (not least because my work life has been stressful of late), and haven’t done much more than investigate various bits of the house. The results, unfortunately, are not entirely good. When we moved in, we found that one of the walls in the living/dining room had quite a prominent and painted rough blob of filler protruding from it. The previous owners had a picture hanging over it, so we hadn’t spotted it when we visited (next time we buy a house, we’ll be checking behind the pictures as well). This initially struck… Read More »The house that Jerry built

ADSL query

There are enough technically competent people on my flist for it to be worth me asking this question here. For the first time in a decade, I find myself in possession of a BT phone line. and I want a broadband connection in the house – which UK providers would people recommend? (important factors are no download quotas and a static IP – I’m currently wavering between Zen and Nildram)

Today’s rant is brought to you by the letters ‘B’ and ‘T’

£25.84 each year for listing both and my name in the telephone directory?!? Since when did BT have a license to print money? As one of my colleagues noted, why are we even listing ourselves in the phone book, since we’ll probably only pick up cold callers. And on a completely unrelated note, here’s something to scare the socks off anyone who did the software engineering group project at Warwick the same year as me (paging ).