Today I had the day off as it was time for the second ultra-sound scan for Baby 2.0 down at Frimley Park Hospital. Whilst we usually try to get appointments at either the beginning or the end of the day, this time the only slots available were late morning, and knowing the usual timekeeping, I figured that we wouldn’t be done by lunchtime.

My guess proved to be well founded. Unfortunately like pretty well every hospital they schedule appointment slots for the time they would take if everything goes according to plan, unfortunately this morning they had had some sort of crisis, and by the time we got there were running almost an hour late. Bearing in mind that we also tend to come early because of the twenty minute adventure of finding a space in the car park made doubly annoying this time thanks to the piles of snow in the car park that fairly obviously hadn’t been taken account of when the barriers counted vehicles in and out.

Anyway, when we got in, thankfully this time the ultra-sound operator didn’t have to chase the baby around to get the required measurements, indeed it was exactly the opposite in that the baby was quite comfortably in one position and really didn’t seem to want to move. However the operator got a good look and was actually able to stop and show us the heart beating away, and we saw bits of rib cage, and arm and leg bones. After trying various ways of having Beth positioned, he resorted to poking in order to get the baby to move, and finally got the last measurements. The still baby also gave him a good clear view (if you know what I mean) to identify that our midwife at Finchampstead still has the touch, as she said from listening to the heartbeat weeks ago that it was a boy, and the operator here also said that it looked like a boy – of course they are never totally sure, so we’re going with probably a boy, and keeping a girls name or two in reserve just in case!

As Beth hasn’t developed Gestational Diabetes this time around, this will probably be the last scan – although there is another diabetes test in a few weeks to confirm. Whilst it’s nice to get all the extra scans, as Beth says, she gets mighty bored sitting in the waiting room at the hospital. ETA for the new baby is still some time in early June.

Now does anyone want any girls clothes…

Today was the eighth annual(ish) gathering of four hundred of the Microsoft Development community for a day of free technical training. Once again it was spectacularly over subscribed – sold out faster than Glastonbury (all the places went within fifteen minutes) and with no Microsoft speakers had the usual mix of sessions, some of which [...]

I thought I’d just provide a little update to my previous post about the less than pleasurable experience of upgrading to Sky+ HD.
First off, Sky themselves have refunded our £60 installation fee. I e-mailed in a complaint saying much the same as my previous post here (but without the Simpsons reference) and to their credit [...]

We now have Sky TV in glorious HD, no thanks to Sky themselves – this song from the Simpsons seems appropriate to describe the quality of the install… (words here)
In the past I’ve had one or two issues with Sky installers, generally a drawn out discussion getting them to run cables where I want them, [...]

It was with some interest that I came across O2 trumpeting their win in the ThinkBroadband awards yesterday. I should probably nail my colours to the mast before I start and say that despite knowing a number of people who are quite happy with O2 broadband, when I switched over before Christmas I lasted a [...]

This year was the first white christmas I have ever experienced. Looking around the area things all looked pretty much like your average greetings card picture (or the atypical English winter depicted in The Holiday), so we got some nice pictures of the church thanks to Richard Owen who brought his camera along with his [...]

After tweeting that I was going to hear Baby 2.0, thanks to the sheet ice on the road, Beth went on her own to the surgery, and I only got to hear the recording.
However they do say that live is always better than recorded, and that was what we got today, with the first specialist [...]

This is another one of my note to my future self posts, that might be useful to somebody else, so skip past if you don’t know what WCF is…
Anyway, if you’re still here, I’ve spent the past day or so trying to track down a problem in some WCF code. Essentially the problem has been [...]

This morning, Robert Scoble, who is currently at LeWeb in Paris published this picture to his Flickr stream.
It is a shot taken by him of the audience, and is the answer to a simple request, for people to hold up their iPhone – just take a look at the full sized shot and count quite [...]

First thing this morning, pretty well fresh off the plane from Canada, Beth had an appointment at the hospital. This is a picture of the reason – Beth is pregnant, with the baby due sometime in late May or early June next year.
Anyway, all three of us took a trip down to Frimley Park Hospital, [...]

Most times when a Geek Dinner is announced for London, it’s really not practical for me to attend. What with a journey of around an hour by train into the centre of the city, and then often a need to take the Underground to wherever the dinner is being held it’s really not practical to [...]

So today Lucy reached the milestone of her first birthday. She has definitely developed her own little personality over that year, and is pretty clear what she does and doesn’t like (although that does seem to change from day to day). For example yesterday she seemed to have decided that she didn’t like peas – [...]

Much as I’m sure British Airways are keen to promote themselves in these difficult times, I do think celebrating their ninetieth birthday today is a bit rich.
The actual anniversary today is of the first scheduled international flight from London to Paris, run by a company called Aircraft Transport and Travel. The company had been formed [...]

The collective principle asserts that… no society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means.
You cannot failed to have noticed that there is a bit of a debate about healthcare going on in the US at the moment. One of the key Obama election promises [...]

One of the things about having a relatively new house, is it costs relatively little to heat, thanks to the modern insulation. The downside of course about being so well insulated is that in this weather, once heat gets trapped in the house, it is very difficult to get rid of, usually requiring windows open [...]

Now maybe I could understand not being able to pull the printed version of the summer arts guide that was published yesterday. But I do think the Independent could have shown a little tact and diplomacy in rewriting the online version, which currently is highlighted on their front page right alongside a report about the [...]

With the change in broadcast date, and a busy week last week, I’m only now getting around to sitting down to write about the final of the Apprentice.
First off – and nobody is more surprised about this than me – after correctly predicting the final two, I also successfully predicted the winner as well. Not [...]

Last weekend was the second Affirming Liberalism Day Conference in a rather wet Oxford. As with the first conference I went along both as an interested participant, and also with a technical hat on to record the two sessions.
I uploaded both sessions to the website earlier in the week, and thanks to Dave Walker we [...]

It comes up every year in the Apprentice at the interview stage. Every year without fail, the interviewers take up the references, they check out the CV’s, and as Yasmina discovered tonight, if you’ve got your own business they’ll pull a copy of the published company reports and accounts.
Perhaps the grilling that Lee McQueen got [...]

We found out in the opening of the Apprentice tonight that the shopping channel task is a favourite of Sir Alan – certainly I have to agree. The annual trips to Peterborough really do produce some amusing episodes, and often really shake things up. They also produce some surprises, this time being no exception.
The established [...]