Brimming With Pride

Pride invariably does come before the fall, so I do try to curtail that particular emotional mental state most of the time. Today, however, a little self-indulgence... Yesterday, on one of the most important events on the Somnambulist calendar - the Rugby Club end-of-season Awards - the mini-Somnambulists excelled themselves.

Not only did no.2 son win the U11 'Player of the Year' award (accompanied by rave accolades from coaches), but also no.1 brought home the highly coveted 'McNamara Trophy,' - awarded in memory of a young club member who passed away, to the U13 player displaying the most dedication, commitment and heart throughout the season...

mini-Somnambulist hero II & mini-Somnambulist hero I

Phriday Photo XXXVII

Spring has sprung and the eagerly awaited blossom is adorning the trees at the Applehouse. Dennis is a little late arriving, but that's fine, we'll wait in the shade with a picnic and a glass of cider.... What budget? What was it that I used to do for a living? A lifetime ago...

Spring sun in the Kent countryside :-)

To view previous Phriday Photos, click here!

Phriday Photo XXXVI

It was a great pleasure to see my Antipodean mucker, VB, over the bank holiday weekend. Not only did we get the chance to sink a couple of Spitfires, he even came bearing gifts - including a most excellent T-Shirt from that gentleman and scholar, Trywalker....

FX Traders' survival wear...

(pic above now viewable - thanks for the heads-up, Jay!)

To view previous Phriday Photos, click here!

Phriday Photo XXXV

It's Phriday. Jolly Good. The barbarian hordes are descending for the long weekend, meaning a marathon visit to the superdupermarket is unavoidable. An appropriate time, I think, to wheel out some of my favourite consumer products from around the world.

The Somnambulist's shopping basket...

To view previous Phriday Photos, click here!

Ramblers' Rest

Not, as you might expect, a blogging hiatus (UDH Boy will have already ascertained this from the specific location of the apostrophe). Instead, a minor addition to the income stream (more of a trickle really), in the form of first class, top-notch, super-value guest accomodation.

If you happen to know anyone travelling through the Kent area in need of a stupendously good night's sleep followed by a full-on, full monty breakfast, please direct them here...

(Regular readers of S.R. eligible for a generous discount... for Daddy Papersurfer, we even have an extremely large shed full of antiquey, farmy things)

Dennis Update IV

Despite the delays mentioned a few days ago, we passed a small but significant milestone this week: the first implemented code module. It was nothing more (and perhaps nothing less) than the registration-email-log-in component, but it's there and it works.

It prompted quite an extraordinary moment of realisation. After years of evolving the concept, months of analysis, design and preparation, and the consumption of a large wad of cash, seeing the Project Dennis team email arrive in the inbox, inviting one to log into the demo site, was like the first twitch of life in Frankenstein's monster's little finger.

They don't make 'em like they used to...

.

Phriday Photo XXXIV

There used to be a time when going to an art gallery meant looking at pictures. Nowadays it can be like stepping inside Salvador Dali's cortex...

Installation art or PD developer on his lunch break?

Alas, poor Dennis...

To view previous Phriday Photos, click here!

Dennis Update III

The frequency of posts here is inversely proportional to the Dennis workload... Since the last update, work on the preview of the Project Dennis alpha site has been completed and we have moved into the implementation phase, where the business rules layer is coded to integrate the database and GUI layers. This is done in a series of so-called 'sprints', where a number of related sections are developed as a group and then tested, while the next sprint is worked on.

Time has slipped away from us somewhat, and we are now looking at a probable alpha go-live at the end of April. Frustrating as this is, we believe that the hard development work being done now will save us much more time down the road.

In addition I have also been working on a top secret new blog "Dennis Lore," which will help our community of alpha testers learn more about the project and also seed the Help & FAQs section of the site. Back to work...!