I want to use Unison, the file synchroniser to move files between home and work, when my broadband comes; this means I can put files into a transfer space, and remove them either side: I won't have to clean up twice. There's a problem though: Unison can't restart an interrupted transfer. This is a pity because it uses the rsync algorithm and copies to a temporary file; it should be easy enough to restart the transfer. It effectively blocks using Unison over the (slow) broadband that I am buying, at least unaided. So I've written some scripts to copy and split files into small bits. I'll release them to the website in a few days time. Can't believe no one has done this before, but I couldn't find anything.

Decided to get broadband for the house; bit of a nightmare; there are so many variables that the different packages are hard to compare. Bulldog appears the cheapest at a tenner for 8Mb, but isn't available here. Irritatingly, they over a slower package for more. CarphoneWarehouse announced a new package today, but this involves the phone and has an 18 month tie in, and a 30 quid connection fee. Currently, tiscali appears the best, though. It's slow (1Mb), but cheap and uncapped, and seem to have good house moving policies. The only problem is that they don't do static IP's. I think I can get around this, with various NAT fiddlings, but it's not-trivial.

This is all a pain; there is too much choice here, too many options. This seems to be true in general for telecoms. The problem is that it's just too expensive at the moment, so people are actually forced to care about these differences. Give it another year or two and I think the prices in general (for non-mobile anyway) will come down enough, to where it doesn't matter. At least, I hope so.

Got a reply from the Business Directorate in my attempt to get a signed copyright waiver. I tried the technique of writing to the head of the department which seems to have resulted in a reply. Actually, it produced several replies, from the head, and the next down, and then the next down again. Fingers crossed we will be there soon.