OK, first things first – that’s a nice recovery on the weight front today.

And next, you’ll quite possibly be surprised to learn that I managed to motivate myself to get out a little bit early and walk to work. Last night, I had a lift home[1] and as we drove over the Tyne Bridge, which I haven’t been close to in quite a few weeks, I noticed that the repainting job that’s going on involves surrounding the lights in some quite interesting bits of scaffolding and sheeting, which I thought would be interesting to photograph. And as it was a nice morning – a bit of sunshine, some interesting clouds, quite mild – I did the walking thing.

I went straight up Coatsworth Road, then across Windmill Hills, where I saw this lovely sign that Spring has indeed sprung:

Spring has sprung

before reaching the Tyne Bridge, where I found that the footpath I normally use is closed for the painting works. So I wandered down Bottle Bank, and up the Side and Dean Street to get to work, taking a few more pictures on the way.

But that’s not all! At lunchtime, I went back to the Tyne Bridge, walked across to Gateshead using the path that is open, then went through the Sage, over the Millennium Bridge and once again back up the Side and Dean Street. Pictures were taken and will appear soon.

[1] Hi Aaron

As I’d finished removing all the links to Gallery last night[1], I decided it was time to bite the bullet[2] and remove the Gallery tables from the database that sits at the back end of the site. Some of the tables in that thing were quite large, so I thought it would make sense to slim down the database.

While Dreamhost do regular backups, I have my own running daily[3], which emails me a compressed copy each morning. Yesterday’s compressed file was 7.8MB. Today’s is 2.7MB, which is a great deal more manageable.

[1] And I have backups, of course
[2] Not literally, of course
[3] In the event of a server failure, I could replace the file structure reasonably easily. Replacing the database would be near enough impossible as to make no difference…

…this annoys me, too

xkcd - click to see more

Though I’m slightly less obsessive about it…