James in a Bed / Weekend

Had a fairly quiet weekend - played two games of hockey - on Saturday for the 3's and Sunday for Peter Westaway's 50th Birthday - where it poured with rain. Felt absolutely shattered on Sunday evening - and my right knee has been pretty swollen - so need to be careful I don't over do it. Hockey on Saturday was particularly good as I was playing up front with Martin again for the first time in years just like the old Chalfont days!

Monday morning Jamie wandered into our room to say Good morning, which was ok - except he'd climbed out of his cot - so we had to convert it to a bed last night - and he was over the moon - though he was on the floor by the morning.

Vista Permissions

Bloody Vista, its a hinderance to working efficiently. I've got a load of duplicated files on my 1TB external HDD and trying to move them round - i've now got to go in and update all the permissions to enable me to do so.

So unnecessary....

Need to acquire another monitor so I can set up my linux machine i'm getting ready....

Something else broken

Not that I like dwelling in my own misery (right) but we were delighted on Friday that Sarah had her car returned after its broken starter motor. It starts better than it ever has since we bought it - Sarah has mentioned that this was a problem and the Knotty Green Vauxhall garage just said it was normal for a diesel vectra.

Anyway, I'd almost got home on Friday to view the car in the drive - and my clutch packed up - so it is now taking the spot in the garage round the corner - previously occupied by the vectra.

We went swimming Sunday morning in Amersham, and I noticed the back tyre was looking a bit flat - further inspection revealed a rather large screw through it - great - so the Vectra has to have yet more cash spent on it... for goodness sake.

Apart from that it was a relatively pleasant weekend playing hockey, swimming and general domestic chores and working....

Ad:Tech Google

Went to an Internet advertising exhibition yesterday with one of my customers - specifically we had a 1 to 1 appointment with our Google Account Manager which was quite interesting. Learnt a few things - we are along the right lines but a few areas to tweak and improve the overall listing.

After the show we went back to Marylebone via Kensington Park - I'd never been through it and was a very pleasant walk indeed.

I've absolutely mountains of work / things to do on my plate at the moment - just finished last month's invoicing today!

Everything breaking again?

Had a pretty good weekend again - mowed the lawn with my hover mower which took a long time - the petrol one has broken down again. Sarah was stranded at Newland Park after hockey as her car broke down - starter motor we think. Ironic really as we were talking about bump starting diesel's the night before in the pub.

r & j love going to the swings in Chalfont St Giles - so went along there again which was good - a beautiful day.

Walked them both to nursery and school this morning (after we'd changed rebecca's clothes after spilling milk all down the original) I was amazed at the amount of dog poo along the way - what is wrong with people - there must have been plenty of kids who managed to trample through it on the way to school - disgusting.

Played hockey myself on Saturday for the 2/3's. It was only a friendly but I was rather appalled at the behaviour of one or two of our players. Constantly moaning about decisions (and they were invariably wrong in their opinion and the umpire was right) leading to a yellow card for constant verbal then the Captain refused to sign the opposition umpires card to say he'd umpired for level one recognition - I was gobsmacked - for a start it is not up to our captain to decide whether he was good enough and secondly he was absolutely fine as an umpire just our bunch of whingers decided he wasn't. Very poor form. It made me wonder why i'd bothered turning out for a game in North London at 4.30 - after working hard all week I want a competitive but enjoyable game of hockey - its fine if the opposition are winding themselves up - but not ourselves - in a friendly too. Absolutely absurd.

Shorting Stopped

I've watched this week with great interest - BBC Business pages have been constantly open and on refresh! As per my blog on Wednesday - the government have stopped short selling - and the shares have rebounded strongly. Which is good as I bought some HBOS shares near their bottom during the week.

I have a busy weekend coming up - i'm actually playing hockey this weekend - well i've replied to say Yes anyway - though away against west hampstead for the 3's late in the evening.

I've been trying to upload our holiday photos to facebook - but it keeps crashing / erroring which is really annoying - I think its their new system they have got.

I wonder who Crystal Palace are going to lose to this weekend. The Championship is looking really strong this year and I suspect even more closely fought that last year. Good job we seem to be losing most of our best players - don't worry - we've got Scowcroft...hmm. I was thinking about the Championship this week and came to the conclusion that a lot of UK players are now playing in this division because of the influx of foreign players to the top flight who are better and probably a lot cheaper! So the strength of the Championship has also been increased by default - just not at the same rate as the Premiership. There is also a lot of good managers in the league.

Financial Markets

I cannot quite believe what is happening at the moment with the financial markets in what appears to be domino meltdown.

Llloyds TSB and HBOS have announced they are talking about merging - with customers of HBOS reportedly starting to take their money out - what is the matter with people? The speculators who are shorting the stock are the ones causing this - and after HBOS they'll target the next bank to make their mega millions - i'm amazed that the government aren't imposing some sort of short term restrictions on this - probably impossible though I guess.

Had a very relaxing and enjoyable weekend - thanks to Annie and Wardy for having us over for dinner :-)

Just trying to upload my holiday photos to facebook at the moment.

Tomato Blight

For the second year in a row - its been so wet in my greenhouse, the tomatoes have gone rotton on the vine - very frustrating as the few i've had have been very tasty. Had to strip them all out already... The cucumbers have slowed up a bit out of the greenhouse as well.

The rest of the garden is going well though - at the weekend Warren and Zoe came round for Sunday lunch and we have sweetcorn, caugettes, runner beans and french beans out of the garden to eat.

St Giles Show and Blackberry Picking

What a fantastic and busy weekend we had. First up I cycled off to hockey on Saturday morning - bearing in mind i've hardly moved off the sofa since I was ill back in March - so it was a bit of a shock to my system to say the least - enjoyed it though.

Then we pottered off to the St Giles show where we met up with the rest of Sarah's family and had a very good and enjoyable few hours there. Fortunately the clouds held off long enough for it to be a dry afternoon.

On Sunday we had Warren, Zoe and co round for Sunday lunch and then went blackberry picking / a walk round the NSE. R & J always enjoy it and they end up eating loads of fruit lol. As you can see we managed to collect quite a few - which are now in the freezer ready for a pie later in the year!

All in all, a very enjoyable weekend.

Rebecca Starts School

Somehow I managed to hold myself together this week when Rebecca started school for the first time. She didn't take too well to the first drop off but is really enjoying it and now just waltzes in - which is good news.

She looked ever so smart in her new uniform and already seems to have grown up a little bit since leaving nursery. James I think is a bit bemused about Rebecca not being in nursery any more. He went on Monday with Sarah to drop Rebecca off and he tried to go in with her and had to be removed kicking and screaming.

Trees on the A40

I've noticed recently whilst driving between Gerrards Cross and Beaconsfield just how many dead trees there are - masses of them - especially near Wapseys Wood dump. All very strange.

They are also the majority of the way through the new service area off Beaconsfield M40 roundabout - well the road amendments anyway - and it is amazing how much green environment they've had to rip out to upgrade the roads. I'm still surprised we actually need a service area - still if you pay enough money you win the appeals I suppose.

I still think about when the sports club tried to get advertising hoardings up round the ground yet it was objected to by the parish and chiltern council. Yet GX Golf club (who also used to have members on both councils but never declared an interest) manage to get huge great silos up and Wilson Bowden massively rip up countryside installing larger roads, massive (still empty) office blocks and dumped huge amounts of spoil on a green field at the old British Alcan place but were all granted ok.

I'm back on the astro project again - so will be looking forward to being blocked at every turn again as we haven't got people in the right places.

Rebecca's Last Day

What a sad day - Rebecca's last day at nursery today. Off to school in a couple of weeks - which is a whole new world for her. We are also wondering what Jamie will make of it without her being there - as they are very close.

Had a busy but great weekend last weekend. We were off to Odd's Farm on Saturday morning for a birthday party which was very good as usual - then we went to Eastbourne to see Mum and Dad. Rebecca has been wanting to go to the beach / sea most weekends every time we say what do you want to do she always says beach. It was a bit cloudy but mostly ok - James and Rebecca played really nicely there -
James loves throwing stones in to the sea. From 1pm there was also a Red Arrows display which Jamie absolutely loved - excellent display as it happens.

I found an old family album at home as well - so gradually uploading a load of photos to my Facebook space.

Been extremely busy this week - feeling a bit rough today as it happens very sore throat. Looking forward to the weekend though - I've got blackberry picking on agenda if the weather is half decent :-)

Fun Weekend and Busy Week

Although the weather was wet again - it seems to have been raining non stop this 'summer' - we had a pretty good weekend. On Saturday I managed to fix the front guttering round the porch so it stopped leaking - though there are loads of other leaks to fix I noticed - and on Sunday removed the shrub root on the patio outside the back door - with the chain saw and axe - good fun. We also went out to a bar-b-q where rebecca and james had a good time - there was a sunken trampoline - it was a fantastic idea - they were completely wiped out by the time they arrived home though!! Fortunately the weather held for the bar-b-q all day which was nice.

Been really busy with work again recently. Had trouble with a couple of domain names I now manage and used to manage. Bit of a palava. Also been sorting out some CSS menus which has been interesting.

IIS on Vista

Now i'm only a basic web site designer so why on earth do I want to set this up on my Vista machine. Well if you run .asp files then you have to upload them to the web server to see what you've done. So in the past on xp i'd set up a local server to preview them.

Anyway, I couldn't see how to do it simply like on XP (of course) but just so I can remind myself in case I need this again - I need to :

• Go to Control Panel
• Load up Programs and Features
• Left had bar go to Turn Windows features on or off
• Add as many Internet Information Services as possible (I think you'll need to do a reboot here as it didn't seem to work straight off)
• Then to go run and inetmgr
• Then add the virtual folder you want to - fine turning where the physical site is (ie where you actually hold the files)
• Then assign an IP address as if it is on network
• Then you can now view the .asp web site

I know this will probably be blindingly obvious to some of my mates but hey ho might not be if you've come across this on a google search... now to get actinic working on it!

Having a good weekend - as you can tell!!

Chris off to Australia

My old friend Chris from Connexe Peripherals dropped round on Wednesday evening for a meal and to say farewell - as he is off to Australia with his partner Pete at the weekend.

Chris is an I.T. god and also very good at photography - so i'm sure he'll have no problems getting a job in Australia - he already has an interview with the top software company. A very pleasant evening was had talking about photography and what his plans are and what he's been up to.



Maybe when r & j are a bit older we'll pop over and see him. Quite a few of our friends are moving or have moved to far away lands. What is wrong with this country?

More Wildlife - Muntjak and Bat

A very rare treat at the end of our garden on Saturday morning was a Muntjak - i've only ever seen one once before in our garden. I took a number of photos from the house and this is the 'best' one.


I somehow managed to catch this bat in mid flight during the pitch black of night - it isn't a great photo as i guess the flash just bounced straight of it. Still it was lucky to pick it up at all!

Messenger United - Windows Live Messenger

This is quite an interesting link - combining facebook and msn messenger.

I guess that now MS have bought a stake in the company they'll be looking for various ways to tie up - with an ultimate goal of somehow loosening the Google stranglehold on the Internet...

Busy Busy Week

Wow, what a week we are having. It started last weekend when Rebecca had her birthday and we had the family round and Auntie Annie. We went for a lovely walk to the picnic table at the back of the NSE - and had a picnic - James and Rebecca loved it - great fun - lots of pictures on Facebook later tonight.



This week i've been flat out with work and about the place. Suspect I'll be clocking up about 60 hours in five days - got to be careful not to overdo it though.

Sarah's mum and dad popped round tonight as they are having a new kitchen put in and we cooked for them - hopefully we are getting our new hob and second hand oven put in early next week :-) Hopefully out at Cape Fish tomorrow night in Chalfont St Giles with a couple of good friends. Did I mention we were at Charlie and Annalisa's for a Bar-b-q last weekend as well?

Odds Farm at the weekend where Rebecca will meet up with a lot of her nursery friends to properly celebrate her birthday. My old college friend Ash and his family are down this weekend too which should be good fun.

Wrote a 4,500 word report today on a web site I help with and how to get to number one across their search terms! Created a new web site yesterday, fixed another one earlier in the week as fasthosts seem to have mucked up their Windows server scripting - i'm guessing via the php upgrade they've done.

Lots more going on which I can tell you about when I finally get down the pub!

Human League on BBC Breakfast

The Human League are embarking on a steel city tour in the Autumn with Heaven 17 and ABC and to promote it they appeared on BBC breakfast this morning.

I was amazed that they clearly had underaken absolutely no research on the topic - the lady presenter asked if they had ever bumped in to the other two bands and had some rivalry when they were in they hey day in the early '80's - which is a surprising question because Heaven 17 and the Human League were the same band until 1980 - until they split in two - so that was a genius of a question....

Greenhouse Progress

Good progress in the garden overhaul, with the greenhouse leading the way. We picked our first tomatoes today - Rebecca loved her one - Jamie gave me back his one - i'm sure mid July is quite early for me to be harvesting them already. Had quite a few cucumbers already as well which is good.

The veg patch is looking pretty good - picked the first french beans yesterday and had in a chicken risotto with some home grown broad beans - very tasty.

Yes, that's a green tomato James...thank-you...

Feeling Very Sad

I just dropped off Rebecca for two hours at her new school - and she didn't want me to leave at all - not seen her that upset for a while.

I'm feeling very sad about it - i'm absolutely sure she'll be fine though.

*** Update *** All fine - she loved it :-)

Fantastic Weekend

I've had a great weekend - I was looking forward to it after quite a hard week working.

On Fri night Sarah was out, so I carried on working until midnight. I've got so much to do and learn at the moment I need every minute really. Saturday morning we were up early and after watching another round of Mary Poppins, we messed around in the garden and about the house.

Saturday afternoon was the highlight - Catherine was unbelievable and held a fantastic bar-b-q and put on some special things for the amassed children to do. The food was unbelievably tasty as well.

Saturday night I went off to Penn Street beer festival with Chris and Charlie - and was drinking some 7.5% + cider they had on. Sunday morning I didn't feel great - but did have a lovely evening.

Sunday has been very relaxing and pottering around the garden getting a few jobs done which is good - and a really nice sunny day - which is always good :-)

A really busy week coming up - including a parent's evening for Rebecca's new school - Sarah has also collected her uniform already. I cannot believe she is going to school in about 8 weeks - makes me want to cry that time is speeding past to fast - but at least it is really good fun with the family.

Catherine's fab party:


Cake Making with Mummy:


More images coming soon on Facebook...

All going on.....

Sometimes lots of little things seem to happen all at once - and start getting on top of you. That seems to be happening at the moment with us...

Mum and Dad came up over the weekend which was very nice. They babysat for us on Friday night whilst we were at Pilch and Emma's engagement party in London. It was a very pleasant evening catching up with a few people we haven't seen for a while - most of whom were on very good form indeed.

We then did some gardening on Saturday morning - I even picked the first of the season's cucumber which was good - picked another one yesterday as it happens. Mum and Dad were like whirlwind round it and achieved more than I have in the last few months!

We then went off to the Little Chalfont village open day thing - Dr Challoners girls - where Sarah went - and the rest of the village - we only really caught the end of it though. Rebecca and James were pleased though as they got an ice cream!



Then on Sunday our oven packed up as we were about to do a Roast dinner for everyone, fortunately Sarah is brilliant and improvised and we had an equally tasty meal. We were hoping that the cooker / hob would last a few more years until we can afford to have a new kitchen. We still have a gassy smell in Jamies room which is rather annoying - i'm not quite sure what to do about it - we have someone popping round on Thurs to look at it. Jamie also had an allergic reaction to something over the weekend and developed urticaria - so Sarah took him to the Doctor who said it was nothing to worry about - and it has almost gone this morning thankfully.

I also heard that my Uncle died yesterday which is very sad - only 60! I hadn't seen him for a long time but still...

So anyway, best get on with some work!

BBC NEWS | England | Hampshire | Caretaker wins ladder fall case

BBC NEWS | England | Hampshire | Caretaker wins ladder fall case

This kind of story makes my blood boil - how absurd.

On a different note - I noticed yesterday whilst I was crawling through the village in a traffic jam that a substantial number of people seem to think wearing a seatbelt is optional these days...

Local Wildlife

We've been encountering quite a lot of wildlife in the back garden recently. There has always been plenty of birds there - including a black bird that is breeding for a second time next to our porch and some blue tits who have breeded twice this year.

I caught on camera just outside my home office a chaffinch with a beak full of food for some young i assume as you can see below.



At night i have seen a fox wander round the front of the house at about 10.30pm. This evening by the back door I found this dead bat - i've never seen a bat close up before - we can see them flying around the house at dusk but they are too quick to see. I was surprised at how small this was. It was surrounded by mice droppings which isn't great!


I also remembered what the rare tree was in Foxdell wood - well I think I have its a Wild Service Tree - i've never heard of it!

Gardening / Winds

They said it was going to be a windy weekend - and my plants didn't take to well to it. Whilst the greenhouse is already much more productive that last years dismal effort, outside isn't doing nearly as well - i don't suppose it helps that I was very behind because I was ill for so long and couldn't do anything.

The runner beans are not really bothering to grow this year, the french beans are being blown over, and the caugette plant decided to lose 90% of itself in the wind. I did have my first ever crop of broad beans at the weekend though - the ones in the ground were poor but the ones in pots are very good.

We had a very nice weekend - fairly quiet after the busy week we had - r & j are so tired after a week in nursery that it is good for them just to chill out a bit. I didn't take any photos of the weekend either so nothing to post here. Aunty Fatty and Uncle Crispin did pop round with Olivia and William which was very good entertainment.

This is an interesting article from HMRC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7468863.stm if I am reading the figures correctly and the article is correct, so far this year receipts from stamp duty are down about £9 billion. Surely that cannot be correct as the government was spending £40 billion more than it earnt last year - so this would be a massive hole in their finances and the BBC would have picked up on that in the article - especially as the figures are only for 5 months.

Whipsnade Zoo and Swings

What a splendid weekend - though I am really looking forward to sleeping this evening.

Monday night went down the White Hart for a pleasant evening, then spent all day with R & J as Sarah is revising for an exam. We went to the Chalfont St Giles swings at the cricket pitch - they are so much better than any of the ones in St Peter - I guess as they are all in one place.

Rebecca and James on the climbing frame - which after some aprehension they soon got the hang of!


I also managed to do a little bit of gardening done on Saturday - mowing the lawn and planting out some more things in the veg patch. I was going to reclaim another flower bed that has gone wild - but there are a few frogs living in it so cannot really do that at the moment.

Here is James helping me to mow the lawn!


James and I were also given a tour of Foxdell wood which was very interesting - saw some rare trees that are still quite young, badger sets and much more.

Sunday we popped along to Whipsnade Zoo - I haven't been there since I was a very small boy I guess, and it was a great day out - it was a party for one of Rebecca's friends who was 4. We left the zoo at about 6 and they / we were all thoroughly worn out. It was a great place to visit though - so much better that the Zoo we visited on holiday in Spain.

James was fascinated by the Otters:


A busy week coming up - plenty of work and things to keep me busy.

Welcome Back from Spain

Back from our first hot holiday since we went to Drew's wedding in Italy about four years ago. Click the headline and you will see where we went - one of my customer's villas.

We actually spent the first night in the Hotel Ayalaya as we forgot to take the villa keys with us. Which was quite nice as it happens as the hotel was well stocked and had a great pool. Breakfast was also very good there.

We then lost all our credit cards, which forced us to go to Estepona and r & j loved the beach there.

We also visited the Zoo - where the photo of them having a lolly was taken. Some close ups of tigers, rhinos, cheetah and more. Rebecca's favourite was the Peacock though!

The villa itself was absoultely fabulous.




I'll post up some more pictures on Facebook when I have time.

Bank Holiday Weekend

Had a great weekend last week for the bank holiday. We decided as I am sort of mobile again to do a bit more and be a bit more interesting for Rebecca and James. So we went to Sarah's mum and dad's boat - a bit of a surprise as we didn't tell them we were coming! Had a lovely time though it was quite windy so we couldn't actually go anywhere....

The rest of the weekend was pretty wet though we did venture up to the Chalfont Fair at St Josephs School - very wet and windy there though and very empty as well - very few people compared with sunny years!




Been pretty busy with work recently as well. Launched a new updated web site for The Stapling Company, Abbeyfield Chalfont, TES as well as continuing to work on Trading Depot and CSE's web sites.

Still getting a load of grief from my body unfortunately - though i'm hoping i'm finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for this bout...

Gardening

I've been rather immobile recently so unfortunately for R & J we haven't been out much at weekends. So to keep them entertained, they planted a whole load of seeds for me the other weekend - and they are now flourishing. These photos are from them planting and the the inside of the greenhouse. They are now quite keen each evening to go in the greenhouse and see how they are doing each evening - and they are all doing very well.

Driving in my car

For the last two fill ups i've been driving my car rather slowly and carefully - mostly due to my dodgy knees and now right hand. I normally get 220 miles out of a tank - the first careful fill up I managed 280 and the second one 307 - that's almost 50% more - a staggering amount. Makes me wonder how much money i've wasted - but then again its pretty dull driving like an OAP.

I'm almost feeling a bit better today - i'm rattling with the amount of pills i'm taking - 10 this morning! The cortesone injection seems to have done the trick though - for which i'm grateful as I've been agony for most of the week.

Not got much on this weekend - so I have bought a whole load of garden seeds for us all to plant and watch grow - should be a lot of fun. Some of the tomatoes in the green house are already knee height and the broad beans outside are in full bloom.

I've got a Vista problem which I cannot find the answer to on-line anywhere. Everytime i open a new window up - for example on Messenger, it always goes top left above the viewable screen - i can move it ok but it is really irritating having to do it every time - anyone know how to fix it so it doesn't keep doing that...

Here's a photo of the family at the weekend at home in the joys of spring that has finally arrived. Lovely week this week.

Good news and bad news

Well i can walk again, both knees are now movable. Its a shame its now switched to my right hand - agony!

Visit to Bekonscot

Welcome back!
Been rather busy with work and trying to repair my immune system recently. Today is the first day that I can just about walk ok - though i'm still hobbling a bit. I have an appointment at the hospital in 10 days so its bound to be better by then!!

Looking forward to a quiet weekend this weekend - not really doing anything - so the garden might receive some welcome attention. Planted a few broad beans out in the garden that have been in the greenhouse and some growbags now have tomatoes in them.

My parents and sister and clan came up last weekend - and we went to Bekonscot in Beaconsfield. Here is a photo of Sarah and R & J on the mini train they have there. It was a freezing cold day!



Below is a photo of Uncle Martin who brought round a football goal and mini football for James's birthday.

Quiet Weekend

A quiet weekend was had - well relatively - as I couldn't actually walk as both knees are so swollen - so spent most of it on the sofa - eating anti inflammatory drugs.

Aviation spy revealed as airhead - Management Today

Aviation spy revealed as airhead - Management Today

This is a great story - made me laugh out loud - whilst sitting here with red hot knees which are sweling up radidly....

BBC NEWS | Technology | Gates hints at Vista 'successor'

BBC NEWS | Technology | Gates hints at Vista 'successor'

This is amazing - they haven't even got Vista to work properly yet.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Gates hints at Vista 'successor'

BBC NEWS | Technology | Gates hints at Vista 'successor'

This is amazing - they haven't even got Vista to work properly yet.

Still labouring

Still labouring under my body attacking itself - been a week since this started. My neck glands are ok but my left knee is struggling now d'oh. Feeling very very tired still as well and sore throat. God i'm dull.

Anyway, something to look forward to is Jamie's birthday which is in the next week so we'll be celebrating this weekend and next weekend! Good job it is going to be very cold and snowing!! Saying that - he'll love to be in the snow if it does snow.

My plants are not exactly bursting through in the greenhouse - despite the fact i've put an air heater in there to keep them frost free. I was going to go down the garden club this weekend and buy a load of grow bags and compost for the garden - but think i'll postpone it until next weekend...

Ipswich / feeling rough

We were in Ipswich over the weekend seeing my old college friend Ash and his partner Debs and two children.

We had a very relaxing time - visited felixstowe and went to the beach and also on a walk to pin mill just round the corner from them. Here is a photo from the beach:



Unfortunately my old - i've been working too hard so body gives up problem - has come back again - neck glands are really hurting, temperature, tired etc etc.

I forgot to post about James and his speech. We've started looking back on this blog as it is quite a reliable way of seeing progress with r & j - and James's speech is really coming along. Being off for a few days over Easter we really noticed how many words he has in his speech now - and he's almost stringing a few together in phrases.

Rebecca is doing really well as well - she can now almost write her name and is really keen to learn - always pointing out letters wherever they may be. We also learnt which school she is going to from September (I can't believe it) and fortunately it is the one we chose.

Trading Depot Finally Launched

The web site i've been working on for over a year now has finally been launched - Trading Depot. Featuring over 6,000 electrical, plumbing and similar products each with its own unique photo taken by the team - it is fully integrated in to the back end erp software for seamless web trading. Here I am with Mat - the project lead minutes after launch:

Velvet Revolver

I was in Brixton last night for Velvet Revolver with Charlie. As usual I can hardly hear this morning (a result of listening to my walkman way too loud when I was a teenager) - the gig was superb even through the distortion my ears put on it - full on rock and roll! They even played some guns n roses tracks and stone temple pilots which was a very pleasant surprise. The whole of Brixton Academy was jumping when they played 'its so easy'. The support band was also pretty good - Pearl.

Quite handily, they had shut Brixton tube station - so we had to get a nightbus to Elephant and Castle and just made the last train from Marylebone with seconds to spare.

Superb evening though :-)

New Vista HP Pc

What a complete palava. I finally decided to upgrade one of my office machines at one of my working locations and its been nothing but problems. Firstly I ordered the wrong RAM for the machine, then i tried to put the graphics card in - tried really hard to put it in the first PCI slot and wouldn't go was trying for ages - gave up and tried in the next slot down - straight in not a murmor. The instructions were hopeless - like a photocopied sheet - very poor for HP.

Now vista is playing up and it won't boot up very easily - I looked around the Internet and it could be my graphics card drivers not quite compatible. It also goes to sleep and i cannot get it restarted again - without turning it off. Probably what caused the Outlook 2007 error below...

And i've just set most applications up and Outlook now appears to be corrupted and won't load up. I was having problems with it when I did test server settings it just kept bombing out.

I didn't know my Password for my NTL email - so I asked them to sent it again - to that email address - now if i'm setting it up how am i going to get the password!

Then tried setting up a new site in Dreamweaver 8, went to open up a location for the web site files - and it just bombed straight out - so had to get round it another way.

This is a right pain it really is.

Phew that was a close call

My PC is taking ages to close down at home - its on its last legs really. So Thursday night i was really tired and thought sod it and just switched it off - what could be the worst thing that could happen...

Switched it back on on Friday evening to do some work and it just kept rebooting and throwing out a whole load of error messages. By this point panic had ensued and wondering when i had last taken a complete back up - recently of course .... Fortunately I remember I have a second hard drive in it which also has windows on it - so rebooted the system from that - and did a tools | scan disk on it and left it running over night.

Fortunately Saturday morning it all worked fine again ... phew....

Hockey, Walks, Gardening and more

I had a really enjoyable weekend this weekend. I was feeling pretty knackered from the week so stayed in on Friday night and caught up on some sleep and saying hello to sarah. On Saturday morning it was quite a nice day so Me, R & J went out to the garden playing on the bikes and fed the horses.

I went and played hockey again on Saturday - against British Airways this week - quite a friendly game though the umpires were making quite a few odd decisions. We were 3-0 up and almost threw it away by having a couple of our players sent off again so we hung on to win 3-2. Managed to nick a couple of goals myself which was good. After hockey we spent the rest of the day at the club which was good.

The evening was spend designing a mother's day card for Sarah! I was also reflecting on my first ever speeding points which I did pick up going down to Eastbourne ggrrr.

Sunday was very pleasant as well - Rebecca, James and I made a Delia trifle and prepared a Roast chicken for when our guests came round. We also went for a walk across some nearby fields to burn off some of the calories. Then round to Sarah's sister for Mother's day celebrations there.



All in all - a very enjoyable weekend.

A busy week this week and Sarah might be away for some of it.

Two Games of Hockey???

Played on Saturday against High Wycombe - we lost 5-2 I think but that didn't reflect the game - we were 3-2 until the last couple of minutes. I thought it was the best i'd played in a while - felt fitter. Then played in Kent on Sunday - we lost 4-2 I think - they were camped in our 25 for the first 20 minutes - then we scored a break away goal - very embarrassing. Its a shame we didn't have another girl - we could have won - we heard Annie was rather ill though... lol

Not a lot else going on really...

Two Parties, The Beach all in all excellent

I had an excellent weekend last weekend. I played snooker with martin and charlie on the friday night - and I won which was even better. Then straight down to Eastbourne on Saturday morning for Harry's birthday party at 11 - not so great I think i was caught with a mobile camera on the A23 just past Gatwick.

The party was great and we stayed there until Sunday lunchtime - we also went to the beach which R & J love doing - though it was bitingly cold.



Then back for Eve's party on Sunday afternoon - they were pretty tired by the end of that though as can be seen here where they are content to look after Anna. It wasn't the best nights sleep ever though either.



The week has flown by - i've been covering Cater For You this week - its been enjoyable though getting back involved in the day to day business again - and its so much busier than this time last year. But i've been balancing that with my other work as well - did over 12 hours yesterday. The largest amount of work I can talk about is I've almost completed a brand new section on CK Tools on the CSE Buy online web site. I think that'll be a rather good seller - i fancy some of the kit myself!

Still feel ok today - but next week i guess i'll be paying!!

I've had loads of web site enquiries recently as well which has been a bit odd - they tend to come in flurrys though.

Playing hockey again this weekend - though not particularly looking forward to it - High Wycombe - and i've a hacking cough still - had it for three weeks. Might also be playing on the Sunday as well.... maybe.

New Computer, Microsoft Expression, Google Crawling

I haven't posted about technical things recently so thought i'd update things a bit.

I'm looking for a new PC at the moment - i've had one of mine well over 4 years now and is really struggling to cope. I went on to the HP web site and it is recommending a xw6400 or something like that - the range of chips i was offered was staggering. I've no idea which one is best. In the past it has been quite straight foward, it was a 386 (my first ever), 486, P1, P2, P3 or P4. Now i had a choice of dual cores, quad cores, xeons, celerons, centrinos - and a mass of options underneath. I just want one which will run Adobe things and then stick about 4gb of RAM in to it and a lock so it can't get nicked from the office it'll be based in.

On my new PC if I ever decide which one to buy i'll be putting Dreamweaver on for new and recent web sites and Frontpage for old legacy ones. Microsoft Expression just drives me up the wall. I'm sure it does the fancy dan stuff pretty well but the basics of cutting and pasting or even just selecting text it just cannot do as well as any other programme ever written for Windows. Dreamweaver by comparison is just absolutely sublime and magnificence personified.

Google is now the absolute dominant force on the web - the majority of my web sites show referral traffic at 75% or more from Google - so ever other source only refers 25% - staggering. Therefore I was surprised Yahoo rejected Microsoft's overtures (also formerlly the name of their marketing arm for sad SEO geek's) recently - Yahoo is going down very quickly. I do some Yahoo marketing for clients and i'm not 100% convinced it is good value for money nowadays - i have of course mentioned this to my customers - but they are happy to carry on.

Mentioning Google - they seem to get some things remarkably quickly into their search engine index and I can usually jump it in - all very cleanly i hasten to add and how they like it - quality content etc - however, I updated a 'deep' page a couple of weeks ago and its still not showing as changed. Matt Cutt's made an interesting point on his web site the other day when he said expectations have changed from the old 6 week cycle everyone used to hold their breath for - his web site is a brilliant read if you have a few minutes to spare on a Friday afternoon - seems like a genuinely top chap.

I've been hesitating to move over to Actinic v8 from V7 - not least as it'll be a huge jump for me and my clients - and also because it never seemed completely stable - there seemed to be constant updates. Anyway, I received an update this morning (as did their forum) that V9 is now in Beta - so I think i'll just wait for that and develop new sites on that - my first venture on V9 will be a web site for a new company down in Eastbourne. I don't actually do many new clients any more - I haven't the time with existing work - only ones I really like the look of and I know will interest me. :-)

London Eye

We had a fabulous weekend - celebrating Sarah's birthday. We played some hockey on Saturday as normal - Rebecca and James enjoyed playing at the Sports Club with everyone there.

On Sunday we drove up to London to go on the London Eye as Sarah had never been. It was thoroughly enjoyable and as you can see some great views of the town and could even see hills at the edges of London - amazing.

I was surprised to see loads of other things going on on the river bank - lots of entertainers and mime artists etc - I think the best one was a Charlie Chaplin impersonator. It was great seeing some of the famous sites as well - whilst trying to dodge which lane to get into..





I think they had the most fun in the play area outside which was quite amusing. As soon as they got in the car at about 2.30 they were asleep so I guess that means they had a good day of it.

Pancakes and Birthdays

Here are a couple of lovely photos from my recent birthday and also from Pancake day.



James and Rebecca are as usual wonderful - James's speech is coming along nicely - though the answer is always no at the moment. Rebecca is finally shedding the terribly 2's we think and is being fantastic - just as James enters them!!



Also Sarah's birthday recently and we are going up to the London Eye on Sunday to celebrate - taking Rebecca and James with us - I hope they are ok going in it - especially James!

I think i'm playing hockey tomrrow - at home - Sarah is definitely playing.

Been in meetings most of the week - which is a bit unusual - ano