Tag Archives: Blog

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A Very Civil Partnership

Phil and IhsanIt turns out that 2006 is a big year for weddings. I got married in April, a friend of my wife got married in May and my friends P and I had a Civil Partnership Ceremony yesterday.

Despite the poor weather, it was a great day for everyone. They tied the knot in Wandsworth Registry Office with nearly twenty people present. It was a short but touching ceremony. They said their vows and exchanged rings.

As I’s Best Man said, in general they’ve had a fairly private relationship which made such a public occasion all the more special. It was great to see so many people there in the evening helping to celebrate their commitment to one another.

Congratulations to both of them!

Oh, we were slightly amused (or is that bemused?) to see a sign behind the registrar defining that a wedding is between a man and a woman. We weren’t sure whether some people in the council objected to same-sex marriages or that they’ve just not moved it since it became legal last year.

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Major Site Update

If you’ve been to ZX81 before you can’t fail to notice that we’ve had the second major redesign in our history. This time we’ve moved over to using WordPress, the unfortunate consequence of which is that some of the old links might have stopped working. I’ve tried hard to maintain things, but there may be some problems. Let me know if you find them!

[ Edit: Some people are using my pictures on their web pages, in most cases this is both uncredited and without permission. This is an infringement of my copyright. As you might imagine, I have made no attempt to maintain links for these people. For a short time this may also inconvenience people coming from Google Images. ]

The other thing you’ll notice is a lot of new posts. That’s because I’ve decided to consolidate my two most active websites, that is the largely technical zx81 and the more personal stephendarlington.com. The reason for this is twofold. Firstly maintaining two sites is just significantly more work than one. I guess I should have seen this coming but keeping them separate seemed like a good idea at the time. The second reason is that the division between the two is somewhat arbitrary and not entirely useful.

People with registered accounts at stephendarlington.com should find their accounts present here but it may be necessary to reset the password.

Let me know what you think of this new site and whether you think merging the two together is a good idea.

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Changes

This year has seen a lot of changes for me already and another one is in the process of happening right now. A few weeks ago I resigned from my job and in a few more weeks I will be starting a new one.

I don’t change jobs every year like some people I know, in fact this is the first time for exactly five years. There are a lot of parallels too. I resigned from SAIC on the 14th July 2001 and started at Anvil on the Tuesday after the August bank holiday. Similarly, I handed in my notice on the 14th July 2006 and will start at Aleri on the day after the bank holiday. They are also both small software companies that specialise in products for investment banks. I will even have pretty much the same job title.

But the reasons for moving are very different this time. I couldn’t wait to get out of SAIC. The hiring manager hadn’t been entirely honest about the role and then refused to do anything to rectify the situation once I pointed this out after I’d been hired. Two layers of management above him stuck their fingers in their ears and sang “La la la” when presented them with the problem, not the kind of behaviour you’d expect for a company with an ethical policy. Anvil was my escape and, in my mind at the time, was supposed to be just a short-term fix to that problem. I never imagined staying there for nearly five years. That’s a testament to the culture and people there.

Anvil is in a better shape now than it has been for as long as I’ve known about it, however for my own personal career advancement it became clear that I needed to move on. After looking for alternatives on and off for the best part of a year I came across Aleri, interviewed and ultimately accepted their offer.

It’s inevitable that after so long in one job that I’m a little nervous, however I think there’s a lot of potential there and I’m excited about the possibilities.

Blog

The mince pie and the ewok

What does a two year old mince pie and an ewok have in common? The answer, it turns out, is “wedding cake.”

Huh?

Let me explain.

Wedding cakes have a bit of a history for us. Americans tend not to be very keen on the traditional British fruit cake, which was a bit of a problem since I got married to a Californian in New York! Even the hotel concierge could only track down a fruit flan which is not what I’d call traditional. In the end we had to make do with less conventional but still delicious “normal” deserts.

We didn’t think much more about it until a month later when we were in California for B’s best friends wedding. She had a big wedding, including nearly two hundred guests. I’m not sure if this is normal, but they had two cakes. One, from the groomsmen I think, was shaped like a burger. The other was more like what most people would imagine at the suggestion of a wedding cake. Except for one small detail. Hiding underneath the top layer, behind some marzipan foliage, was a tiny ewok. The groom is a serious Star Wars fan, and the theme music at the end of the ceremony was not enough to keep him happy!

But back to the fruit cake saga. For our party, my sister-in-law wanted to make one for us but, unfortunately, started getting together the ingredients a bit too late. If you’ve every tried to make one you’ll realise that it takes at least a few days. Kudos for the attempt, though!

My father-in-law wasn’t going to allow the short time-frame to thwart his attempt. The cunning use of long forgotten boxes in dark cupboards was to (nearly) save the day.

Iced mince pieA couple of years ago B brought a Harrods Mince Pie back home for Christmas. It had been placed in a cupboard, then in storage while the kitchen was remodelled and then back in a dusty corner. Now was its time. He unboxed it and, using tinned frosting (icing), transformed it into… well — let’s be honest here — an iced mince pie. Most people refused even to try it, but the few brave souls who did said that it wasn’t as bad as it looked. A valient effort.

Fast-forward a couple more months. It’s now two weeks before our UK wedding reception, a cruise down the Thames, and we’ve just started thinking about cakes. I wonder if my mum would make one for us. I don’t like to ask. It’s quite hard work to make one and then she’d have to carry it two hundred miles south on the day.

Eventually I decide to call and ask.

After some small talk I edge up to the subject. “Would you mind… um… you know…” Well, it was something like that. In fact, she wasn’t going to say anything, wanted it to be a surprise, but she had put one in the oven only thirty minutes previously!

So on the day we finally got a proper, British wedding cake. Everyone was very appreciative. A few people asked if my mum had really made it as it looked so professional!

Thanks mum!

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Thames Cruise

1 Comment

This last weekend we hosted our wedding reception. Actually, it’s probably our second or third depending on how you count it. But we’re not keeping track as we fully intend to celebrate for as long as we can get away with it…

Rather than book a hall and get people to sit next to almost total strangers for a couple of hours, we decided to hire a boat and cruise down the Thames for a few hours. In the end thirty-two guests turned up in the rain to help us celebrate. We sailed west towards Westminster, then east as far as Greenwhich and back to Temple.

I think a good time was had by all. This was certainly helped by my mums great wedding cake.

One of the disadvantages of hosting an event is that it’s difficult to get behind a camera. I only have a few photographs and none are as good as those you’ll find on B’s blog. Check out the pictures of our cruise.

Thanks again to all the people that came along. It was a special day for both of us.