I managed to finish my planned version of the corpus creation mini project. That's a good sign that I worked rather hard this week. Actually I still need to write the documentation and clean up the code but I'll try to do those at work, hoping it will not be a busy week. Now I must concentrate my efforts on Romania since we're still miles away from the usual holiday planning routine.

The difficultly I'm pondering upon at the moment is how to identify a full post in an RSS feed. There are some heuristics I can think of, but I need further research into this:-

• xx% of the items finish with ...
• xx% finish with a letter and no full stop (e.g. everywh</description>)
• Check whether the [CDATA tag helps in the identification
• Maybe total size of feed, but I think this can be dangerous

With all the hassle during the week I forgot to mention two important things. Last Friday we launched my most important system to date, to another 4 power users amongst which one outstation. At last things are taking a stroll forwards after the loads of bureaucracy and other banal stumbling blocks. The system main programming has been ready since December with the original launch planned for October; my God we're in the third week of May! A worst case project implementation. Despite this my soul is at rest because I was on schedule in all deliverables. There's little I can do if the project owner is more abroad than here, and the internal auditor has half a million other things on her mind.

Last month we squeezed the last ounce of ink out of our HP 710C until the cartridge ribbon tattered to strings. On Tuesday we brought an HP 5150 and more importantly a serious (PS like) Logitech joypad. I though this will pose a serious threat on my blog, allowing me to play Pro Evolution Soccer 3 as it is supposed to, but I had little time on my hands (and still kept blogging). I'd better remove it from my field of vision as I feel it calling each time I approach my PC. Let's wait and see.

In such a beautiful time of the year we are finding ourselves rather lonely because most of our friends are busy with exams. One of the worst consequences is our weekly volleyball game which is slowly fading away. At least yesterday night we returned to our good old Saturday night habits and held a bar-b-que in the wild. It was nice fiddling chicken in breadcrumbs by the fire. Having nothing better to do, today we washed our cars after about 6 months of filth gathering. It was nice so see my car white again. What's even more amazing is that I've borrowed a Vacuum cleaner and used it. This is a first for me.

Before this uninteresting special event, we went for the now habitual Sunday ice-cream. As soon as my aching bottom rested on the sea-side bench, I heard what seemed to be a duck. I turned at the sea, but before immersing in the blue I saw a most welcoming vision … a PUG!!!! I almost started hyperventilating with the obvious amazement of his proud owner. Needless say, my eyes followed the beauty throughout the whole promenade. To my good fortune few minutes later a man with a green Mercedes stopped for a few seconds in front of us and he had another PUG cutely staring out of the window. I'm getting Goosebumps … such amazing creatures.

Before closing I must say hi and thanks to Mega Volt who left a welcoming note in my BeBlog comment field. Your name wasn't new as I recalled your interesting anti-spam quests. I will delve deeper in your blog as it seems pretty appealing at first glance.