"Put down that wrench!"

The garklet has managed to outdo himself this morning by taking a small swig from ias's bottle of Chanel No.19. Not the eau de toilette (which is relatively cheap at ~£60/100ml) nor the eau de parfum (which is slightly more expensive at about ~£80/100ml), but the little 7.5ml bottle of the parfum, which works out at a staggering £850/100ml. We don't think that he managed to drink much, since it's quite bitter - maybe 0.1ml, which is still enough to make his breath reek of No.19 - but he then managed to tip half the bottle over the dressing table.

My hands now smell of nothing but No.19 (which is pleasant, but I'd rather smell it on ias), and the bedroom is rather over fragranced.

On the plus side, I now know what to get ias for Christmas...

It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegonethe Gark household.

Actually, that's a lie. Got back from Luxembourg on Tuesday night, fortunately with my luggage this time (made sure that I was checked in for both legs, and that my luggage was marked as priority). Also, to those folk who suggested that I carry everything as hand luggage, I checked the maximum size for carry-on on the LUX->CDG leg, and it was barely large enough for my not-overly-big laptop bag.

As it turns out, losing my luggage was a blessing in disguise. My case turned up while I was at Monday's meeting, so I had clean clothes for Tuesday. Lux Air gave me a nifty overnight bag with such practised ease that I suspect that lost luggage at CDG is commonplace. The bag had pretty much everything you'd need if you'd lost your luggage: shampoo, conditioner, body lotion, shaving cream, deodorant, eau de toilette, razor, hairbrush, cotton buds, cotton wool pads, sanitary towels, spare socks, a t-shirt, laundry powder and an LED keyring. My soon-to-be-departed colleague gave me a bit of a ribbing, and pointed out that he travels light with only carry-on, containing a fresh shirt and clean underwear, the necessary toiletries, and his laptop. Of course, he wasn't laughing quite as heartily when he managed to throw a glass of red wine down his only trousers the night before the formal review. Fortunately, due to my foresight in losing my luggage, I had a convenient sachet of laundry powder...

Realised too late that the terminal at CDG that I like is 2F, not 2E (which is hateful), and that the SOU->CDG flights now go into 2E. I may need to rethink my preferred flights from Southampton, especially since the catering in 2E is abysmal (€3 for a 250ml bottle of water and €6,70 for a sandwich is extortionate, even by airport prices).

Wednesday night was out for drinkies and a rather good Keralan curry with elseware and ex-workmate Jon., who now lives in Bristol. Thursday night saw a flying visit from Neil (who we're seeing quite regularly now that he works in ECS, even if he still lives in Edinburgh), who left us a rather nice-looking bottle of a 14yo single malt from Scapa - I never knew that Scapa had a distillery.

Friday was rather more sombre; Adam Rutherford, one of our first year computer science undergraduates, died suddenly this week, and I attended the funeral with my course leader hat on. Good turn-out from the students which rather overwhelmed his family, who I think were worried that he didn't have any friends at uni (he did - lots of them). Very touching eulogy from his elder sister Claire, also a student at Southampton, and a message from the SOWN folk.

Today was supposed to be productive, but the garklet is down with a stomach bug. Still cheery, except for the bit when he toddled into the kitchen and threw up over my shoes. Hopefully he'll be able to keep some food down today, but it looks likely that we'll have to juggle childcare on Monday rather than send him into the nursery.

This has been a pretty good weekend, all things considered. After losing last weekend (and my chance of getting to Eastercon) to an utterly futile assignment for the HE teaching pgcert (I have not the words to explain my complete disdain for the common-sense-dressed-up-with-needless-jargon school of pedagogical theory that seems to be the fashion), I've managed to be quite productive.

Saturday was a massed invasion by marklesuk et famille, plus andre_powell, ruthj and hywel_w. Managed to nip out to B&Q beforehand for timber, about which more below. The garklet had a whale of a time romping with Lottie and Thea, and it was great to catch up with Ruth and Hywel, who we hadn't seen in a while.

To bed, and with one lousy night's sleep (thanks mostly to the garklet, it was time to get on with the DIY.

ias is currently partway through a major programme of work on the garden. Since we demolished the second old shed last summer, she's uprooted the sapling by the herb bed. The end goal is to dig over the space where the shed used to be, cut the herb bed down by half, and use the resulting mega-bed (18' by 6') for vegetables. We've a surfeit of soil, so these will be raised beds (twenty-one 2' by 2' square beds). To do this, we need to move the current compost bin. This has served us marginally well so far; being one of the plastic cones it's actually pretty awkward to turn the compost, so it's not cooking as it should, and we've a bit of an issue with it being too wet. We've a small annex at the end of the megabed, roughly 4' by 3', which used to be the bean patch, and which before that was home to the Palm of Doom. ias had been looking at wooden twin compost bins (for ease of turning), but most of the ones she'd found struck me as a) expensive and b) flimsy. I reckoned that I could custom-build something better, so after a bit of Googling for ideas and some head scratching, I came up with something that I reckoned would suffice.

The cost has been a bit more than I'd originally estimated, coming in at around £120 (still cheaper than the ones ias had been looking at), but this has been mainly due to creeping featurism. We've now got a twin-bin built from 1"x6" timber on 2"x3" posts, with a removable slatted front and a two-part hinged lid. The lid isn't quite finished yet - I need to felt the ply and fix the hinges - but the rest is complete. The big problem is that I built it on the patio (because it's flat), and it's now too heavy to move. I certainly can't move it by myself, and I doubt that ias and I can manage it between us.

It probably would have been cheaper to scrounge pallets, but I would have spent a lot longer faffing around with those than this has taken (besides, where does one scrounge pallets?). What has helped greatly is sideshow_al's mitre saw, which has more than halved the build time. I owe him much beer.

Didn't have time to take photos at the time, so will try and do that tomorrow. If there's any interest, I'll draw up the plans and post them.

Next up, raised beds.

Now that the garklet's first birthday is out of the way (see ias's journal for an account), we've started putting up the decorations. Himself seems to be rather taken by the tree and its adornments (in his words: dah!), and I've managed to stop himself from electrocuting himself by sucking the fairy lights.

We've decided that our living tree of the past two years is really looking too sorry; it was charmingly crooked when we bought it, now it's charmingly crooked, marginally taller, and rather the worst for wear. Think of it as the Steve Buscemi of the tree world. In a few years it'll have developed enough character to make a statement, at which point we might let it back into the house. For now, we have a young, fresh tree, a bit on the short side, but nonetheless attractive. Think of it as the Thora Birch of the tree world.

Regarding decorations, I thought I'd add a few new ones to those that we've built up over recent years. We didn't have something for the apex of the tree, so I've added a jaunty cameo of a middle-aged Isaac Newton, which I've complemented with these hanging decorations:

Thanks to everyone that came to Alex's naming ceremony yesterday - we had an enjoyable, if hectic, time, and we hope that you did likewise.

The only downside to the day was that we'd forgotten to put the freshly-charged battery back in the camera, so we have no photographs of our own - if people could stick full-sized images online and send us a pointer, we'd be much obliged.

Not the best of weekends, or at least one with an inauspicious start. Met up with surliminal for an after-work drink on Friday. As we left, ias complained of feeling queasy. Soon after we got home, this progressed to full-on vomiting. Not good. Did my best to look after her and clear up. Poor night's sleep, thanks to the garklet being restless and wanting four or five feeds (we've been led to believe that he'll get better - we wish he'd hurry up and do so).

ias was feeling a fair bit better the next morning, if not completely Well. She went off to work (Saturday duty in the Library), leaving me as the baby-wrangler for the morning and awaiting the Boy Laurence WINOLJ who was due to turn up around midday. At this point, I started feeling really grotty - nauseous, gippy bowels, fever. Spent most of Saturday in a daze (at one point, ias measured my temperature at somewhere above 39C) and feeling quite wretched. Started feeling a bit better by teatime and managed to get some food into me. Missed surliminal's barbecue, alas.

Today much better. Did a few little jobs around the house - put iron-holder on utility room wall, changed glass in picture frame, vacuumed downstairs, sealed clothes in vacuum bags and made an attempt to declutter the library. The Boy Laurence and ias cooked dinner, and then I drove him to the station. Feel like I should have done more, though.

The fan on our main PC has been misbehaving for the past couple of months (buzzing intermittently), which is a fairly good indication that the bearing has been going. The bearing seized completely within the past few days, but I'm not exactly sure when it happened.

So, time to replace things. The last time this happened (over a decade ago, on my machine of that time), I replaced the fan, which seemed to do the trick. This time around it looked a little more tricky; I'd have to unsolder the old fan from a very crowded circuitboard in the PSU. Discretion being the better part of valour, I decided that the easiest option would be to just buy a new power supply, and get one that was a bit quieter than that on the old machine.

So, hippety-hop to Maplins, and back again with a new PSU. Removed the old one and fitted the new one, being careful to ground myself before doing so. New PSU is indeed quiet, and pulls air through in a way that the old PSU no longer did...and the machine as a whole is dead. Doesn't boot, doesn't even get as far as the BIOS prompt. Looks very much as though, despite my precautions, I've just killed it.

And this is why I'm a computer scientist, and not a computer engineer.