Sunday morning. About to be evicted from Dutch soil!

The writer of this blog will arrive back into the UK today after her extravagant weekend jaunt to Amsterdam where no doubt she will subject you to reading what a wonderful time was had by all.

Meantime, an issue more important than weekend breaks...the website.

Discussions at this stage suggest its development at being around 4 weeks. (Raises an eyebrow with some dis-belief). Following on from this will be a further two weeks worth of testing in an attempt to ensure whatever glitches are in the system are extracted. So in theory, Six weeks from now the website could be in place and running...... I wonder what the world's record is for holding one's breath??? Anyone know???

With hindsight (thanks to the previous escapades) and putting my doubts aside, the guys who have now taken this on do at least project an air of knowledge in both what it is the site demands as well as a level of expertise which to-date has been sadly missing.

Now with the best will in the world things could still go wrong, there are probably still going to be areas which spring up to cause concern but for the moment it's a time of entrusting the development to these guys whilst keeping fingers crossed things run smoothly. (Is there a world's record for fingers crossing???)

The first port of call for them (so they advise) is to work on the clock counter, followed quickly by the bidding system. The problems with both these aspects are the users method of internet connection. It would seem (much to my surprise) that dial up Modems are still prolific and it's this method is going to present the site with its biggest problem.

Put simply, a page refreshing via a broadband connection occurs in a split second whereas Dial-up is painfully slow. Their idea is to try and allow users with Dial up connections to actively take part. Me.....ever the cynic believes this is highly unlikely but for now will go along with whatever suggestions they have in this area.

I am also unsure at this stage if it's their plan to allow people to take part using hand helds such as PDM's and of course relevant mobiles. I guess it would be nice to think so but if not, at least the automatic bid function will be in place for times when individuals can't be at their pc....

Hopefully over the next few weeks and using this blog, we will be able to inform everyone of the progress being made....(again I begin to wonder about that world's holding one's breath record!).

Thankfully, if not today then at least tomorrow, normal service will be resumed on the blog though I suspect you will at first be bored to death having to read about her latest escapades in Amsterdam......What can I say? I guess it will be a little like those times you're invited round to a friends for what you think is a dinner party, only to find out the 8mm projector is all set up on the dining room table and you're there to suffer two hours of "Wish you were here" Holiday snaps..... Good luck is all I can say.