Matt and Alexis' Wedding

Matt and Alexis looking ravishing seconds after tying the knot.

Matt and Alexis on Kew green

The bride and groom with the bridesmaids and page boy.

Matt with some of his family

Alexis and some of her family

Matt and Alexis on the back of a vintage Routemaster bus which was used to transport all the guest from Kew to the reception in Soho.

Matt's Mum and Dad with Akira and Junji

Traditional cheesy self service shot of Mr and Mrs Ports

Alexis and her daughter Tracy

The fantastic wedding cake made up of loads of tiny cakes

Matt and Alexis have their first dance as a married couple

Ali cuts a rug on the dance floor

Alexis opens the card from Lucy

Alexis and Ali

Matt and his Best Man.

Tom and Laura's Wedding

Tom poses with his Best Men, brothers Olly and Ben, before the ceremony.

The ceremony itself was beautiful being held in the back garden of Laura's Parents house overlooking the glorious Gloustershire countryside.

After the ceremony the normal festivities kicked off. Ian was looking particularly racy in his white suit.

The core of legendary band Sideburner. Al, Tom and Ports pose together.

Ports and Ali take a traditional self service picture.

The happy couple at the reception

He might be married but Tom is still a ladies man.

The traditional cheesy wedding band

Ali and Lynne compare shoes

Ali and Laura

Ali with the Happy couple

Matt's Stag Night

As my best friend Matt's Best Man I had to organize his stag night. The first thing we did was go for a superb champagne flight on the London Eye. Not only did a couple of glasses of bubbly make the flight more decadent but the other advantage of a champagne flight is that you get to jump the long queue. Even better the long queue of people get to see you jumping the queue.

Next up it was a trip to the excellent Benihana Japanese restaurant in Piccadilly. This is great place to dine as they mix excellent surf and turf style cuisine with with what can only be described as a performance chef who practically juggles the food in front of you as he cooks it on your tables personal hot plate.

The over to the The Comedy Store for some fine stand up comedy. Finally we all piled back to my place. I take my Best Man duties very seriously so this is how I had prepared the fridge. Full of Lager, Guinness and Wine with just enough room left for sausages, bacon and eggs for a fry up in the morning. (And a bit of friable Halumi cheese because Jason is a filthy vegetarian).

Jason looking in remarkably good health despite being a vegetarian.

Alex starts off with a Guinness.

And then in a rather strange move for a stag night - we start playing chess!

Chess might seem an odd way to finish a stag night but as you can see - the stag enjoyed it.

Matt Graduates as a Security Don

Completing any degree is hard work, but it is especially challenging when you are doing it in your spare time whilst also having a full time job. So I was very proud when my buddy Matt invited me to attend his graduation ceremony after gaining a distinction in his Masters degree in Information Security from Royal Holloway. Interestingly the degree is part of the school of mathematics rather than the school of computing. Here are Matt with his Mum, Dad and Fiance looking appropriately chuffed.

Time for the group photo. Matt is in the middle.

What could be more traditional that the Mortar Board (hat) throwing ceremony.

After spending 4 years earning his Masters, Matt decides to continue wearing his mortar board to the amusement of many passers by.

Tom's Stag Night

For Tom's stag night his brothers Olly and Ben first arranged for us to got to the famous Ice Bar where you are provided with a very fetching smock, locked in a sub zero room and plied with vodka cocktails. An interesting experience.

Stag Tom sits on his ice throne.

Obviously being a stag night we had to have a couple of ales.

Olly and Ben had also provided fine Cuban cigars and champagne outside.

Al is no expert on smoking cigars.

Ports has got the idea.

Back at the pub Neil and Ian plot strippers (not really)

Olly and Ben congratulate themselves on being excellent Best Men who laid on a cracking stag night for their brother.

Gadget Overload

I love a gadget me. I mean I really do. The problem is that there are so many of them but none of them are quite good enough to make the others redundant. This means that on any business trip I carry 5 gadgets. An iPod Touch, A Blackberry Pearl, An AT&T Tilt, a Samsung SGH-U600 and my trusty T61p Thinkpad laptop computer.

The iPod may be thought the poor relation to the iPhone but is it a better media player because it has more memory (32Gb) and is significantly thinner. Of course all the other devices can play an MP3 but they cannot sync with podcasts with anything like the straight forwardness of the Apple device. Also none of the others can so seamlessly integrate with my jalopy when I want to listen to audio books on long trips. Of course it has built in wireless networking so I can access my mail and calendar using the forthcoming Lotus iNotes Ultralite in Domino 8.5 as well.

Talking of email on the move, the Blackberry is very much the vogue for secure enterprise messaging and is indeed an excellent device for syncing with Lotus Domino mail. But the fact is that it isn't really a full PDA and despite what the fan boys say, the keyboard is a challenge for someone with sausage fingers like me. The real limitation for me is that it doesn't support wireless networking.

The AT&T Tilt (HTC TyTN II) on the other hand is a proper PDA with full Windows Mobile capabilities. Again I can access my Lotus Domino email and calendaring using Lotus Notes Traveler. Also it supports both GPRS or 3G dialup and wireless networking. Lotus Mobile Connect VPN software makes a pretty good job of ensuring the most appropriate (cheapest) service is always used. The slide out keyboard is also pretty good. The downside of this device is that it is about the size and shape of a house brick.

The Samsung may seem a little light in functionality compared to these super gadgets - but that is the point. It is my personal phone that I keep with me all the time and the most important attribute is that it is small and light so it can hang off my belt without making me look like a Star Trek nerd.

So my real challenge in life is not connectivity or functionality - its big pockets in suits!

When the impossible happens

There are some things that should just never happen. Some time lines that by all rights must be impossible. Normally strange intersections are reserved for Science Fiction. Just think Marty Mcfly fighting off the attentions of his teenage mother in Back to the Future when he visits his past.

But it isn't just science fiction - you may remember the story about the twins parted at birth who went on to marry before discovering the unpalatable truth.


Well a similar if not quite so serious situation has befallen me. For 31 years I have been supporting the mighty Manchester United football club. Some may wonder why I didn't support my local team of Hull City, but they were so laughably inept that there was no chance that they would ever play in the top flight. In fact their claim to fame was they they were in the semi final of the FA Cup in 1929. Beside which, Hull was really a Rugby town.

So how has this happened? In just five seasons Hull City have risen from the bottom division of the English Football league to being promoted to the Premier League! For many years Hull was famous for being the largest city in Europe to have a football team that had never reached the top division. Now they are up there with the elite. The dilemma of course is what do I do when the plucky Tigers are playing Man United? Do I root for the team I have always supported or do I hope the underdogs from my ancestral home will triumph? Very simple - I'll stick with ManU but really hope Hull beat Chelsea. And Arsenal.

The Preposterous Toyota Prius

I'm not suggesting that every tree hugging hippy who drives a Toyota Prius is a smug idiot. But people who follow Hollywood actors in an effort to be green might just want to consider if this is the best role model they can find. They might also want to consider if the Prius is the only car owned by Cameron Diaz or Leonardo DiCaprio (hint: no). It is true that by driving a Prius you get cheap car tax. However, is it really as green as these Eco warriors would have us believe?

For an objective assessment, let's have a look at what conclusion Jeremy Clarkson and the Top Gear team came to.


And here is a slightly more sober story from the Sunday Times showing a video comparing the Prius with a BMW 520d on a trip from London to Geneva. Guess what - the 520d is more fuel efficient when driven over 500 real world miles.
Click here for the story

I guess we should leave the last word to Jeremy.

Awesome Story

I have a number of points on my driving licence for driving marginally faster than the Police deem to be acceptable. Thus I was most amused to stumble upon this story from a little while ago. Even though I love my new BMW 520d Touring with leather seats and cup holders, I might have done better to get a Tornado F3 with Sidewinder Missiles. Unfortunately IBM's company vehicle policy isn't quite that generous. And parking it at IBM Southbank would be a bitch.

Clicky Clicky for bigger.

How an iPod integrates with a BMW

One of the things I was most looking forward to with my new car was the fact that it features "proper" integration with my iPod Touch. The idea that I could access gigabytes of music, audio books and podcasts on the go was very appealing. Fiddling with an iPod whilst driving is about as dangerous as using a mobile phone. Also on my old car I tried using an FM Transmitter to send the output from the iPod to the car radio using FM. It was rubbish. The problem is that there are no spare frequencies in London and if you go for a long drive the available frequencies change requiring constant retuning. All in all it made it impractical.

The new car features a combined 3.5mm audio jack and USB connector. The advantage of this approach is that it allows the sounds to be routed through to the cars Hi-Fi but also for the control of the iPod to be passed to the cars iDrive Control system. iDrive is far from perfect but is significantly improved since it has stopped being based on Windows CE and has moved to a proper real time OS.

Here we see the iPod Touch hidden away in the Drivers center arm rest.

Another advantage of the combined USB/Audio connector is the the iPod is also being charged when it is connected to the car. So no worries about a dead battery.

The iDrive control screen is in the center of the dashboard allowing either the driver or front seat passenger to operate it using the controller knob on the center console.

The iPod is identified as Audio Aux. As you can see, many of the iPod options are available including all your play lists as well as Artist and Album views.

It is very qucik and easy to zoom up and down these lists by spinning the control know and then pressing it to select.

You will notice that the Audiobook and Podcast views are missing from the menus - but this is not a problem because they are still available in the master list - so an Inspector Rebus audiobook I purchased from iTunes is listed under the artist/author Ian Rankin. Likewise the Russell Brand Podcast I subscribe to is listed under the artist Radio 2.

So it is a little different to the iPod interface but it really doesn't take long to get used to it and then the world is your oyster.

Since I found this information very difficult to find on the Internet let me also include a ...

Mini FAQ.
Q1: Do I need to specify anything when I order my BMW for this great functionality?
A1: Yes. You need to order the optional Auxiliary input port. It was a couple of hundred quid

Q2: Is that it then? I'm ready to rock?
A2: Nope. You will also need a special cable which goes from the iPod Doc connector to a USB and 3.5mm jack. This is where I got mine Cooper BMW on eBay. Should be about £35

Q3: Can't I just use an 3.5mm audio cable?
A3: Of course. But you will have to operate your iPod directly and it will not be charged.

Q4: Will this work for any iPod?
A4: Yup - as long as it has a docking connector. So not the iPod Shuffle. But then the whole point about the Shuffle is that there is no UI so it would be a rather daft thing to do.

Q5: There is loads of stuff on the Interweb saying that the connection is in the glove box and it is free.
A5: That is true - but it is much more basic (essentially the first generation of iPod compatibility from several years ago). To get the cool integration above you need the Aux/USB option.

Q6: Have you tested all BMW Models?
A6: Nope - just my own 520d. But this should all work with new BMW's with the iDrive

Q7: What else doe this Aux/USB port give me?
A7: Well you could do things like copy MP3's to a USB stick, plug it in and play those track through the car stereo. Pretty cool eh?

Q8: What if I have some inferior sub iPod clone?
A8: Dunno. I use and iPod Touch. But the documentation refers to MP3 players rather than just iPods.

New Car

I find it almost unbelievable how much stuff you need to take with you when you have a kid - especially if you are staying overnight. Push chair, Baby Bath, Travel Cot, food, clothes, nappies etc. So Lucy was a big consideration in choosing my new car, a BMW 520d Touring. It certainly isn't a particularly pretty car. Jeremy Clarkson said it looks like it is wearing Dame Edna's glasses. Obviously I don't agree but the front end is certainly quite distinctive.

From this three quarter view I think the car looks very imposing.

In it's Touring (BMW's posh name for an estate) form it looks particularly good from behind.

One of my favorite features is the split rear door which enables you to just open the window if you just need to pop a shopping bag in the back rather than open the whole boot. And also notice the rock star tinted rear glass which makes people think someone famous is in the back seat but really is so that Lucy won't get sun stroke.

Getting your gun off

For my 40 birthday present my brother in law Stew took me and a couple of mates for my first experience of clay pigeon shooting.

The ear plugs aren't particularly attractive - but very necessary.

I shot 19 out of 50 clays. Apparently that is "rubbish". It was a cracking day out though. Maybe these toffs aren't so stupid after all.