Saturday, April 22, 2006

Back from my holiday

No whinging or cartoon for this post, just a quick update on my jollies, it's mainly for relatives who didn't come with us ... We went to stay in a tiny Village called Ebberston, in between Pickering & Scarborough on the A170. I went with the in-laws and my family for a weeks "rest", and while there wasn't much resting, it was a great week away. Nemo On the Sunday we went to the Sea life Center in Scarborough, and while Matthew is still a bit young to appreciate it, the rest of us thought it was great. You can click on any of these photo's to see more. We saw the penguins being fed, and Matthew was convinced they were all Pingu. The sealions were a little dissapointing, and didn't really do much other than lie there, Matthew thought they were boring, and so did I. The sharks were better though, we got o watch them being fed, basically this guy skewered fish heads on a cane and stuck them in the water for the sharks to eat, that was pretty cool. I have a massive lump on my head after whacking it taking this photo of a jellyfish, the tank was above me, and as I stood up, something distracted me, and I forgot about the huge, water filled perspex tank above my head. It's fair to say that it hurt a little. On the way to Scarborough, we noticed a Point to Point meeting in a nearby village, Vicky's cousin usually visits these when they're in the North, and sure enough he was going to be at this one too, so we took the opportunity to go and meet him, and his family. I came away with 12 quid on the last race, and a few good photos too, Matthew had a whale of a time, saying Hello to all the horses & dogs. He didn't win any money though. Vicky's cousin takes photo's at these Point to Point meetings and makes them available to buy on his website A prett tiring day all in all, but Matthew still wanted to go swimming when we got back, he's really happy in the water, and doesn't need to cling to either of us. He's got arm bands and can really move when he wants to. We went swimming almost every day, Matthew loved the bubbles in the jaquizzi, and nearly fell asleep on Grandpa's knee. On Tuesday we took a train ride from Pickering up to Goathland, which is where the tv series Heartbeat is filmed apparantly. This was the only day that we had any problems with the weather, it chucked it down as soon as we finished lunch. I did manage to pick up some walking boots which will come in handy. WhitbyWednesday we had a trip up to Whitby, the day started off bloody miserable, and I had the strongest cup of tea for lunch, it almost stripped the enamel off my teeth. However, after lunch the weather cleared up, and I was able to get photo's like this!! We had a wander round Whitby for a while, had a look round a ship called The Grand Turk, it's been used in the TV series Hornblower and Longitude When we got to the beach, Matthew said "hello!" to the horses (donkeys) but refused to ride on them, he didn't like it at all, and after laughing nervously, decided he wanted to get off. Despite our best efforts he would only manage a few steps before wanting to get off again. Gandma bought him a bucket & spade, which Jon made full use of, and he (Matthew that is, not Jon) thought the sea was one massive puddle to be splashed in, until it started chasing him up the beach and he couldn't outrun it. What you lookin' at?On Thursday we found a farm where Matthew could go and meet some animals, he loves places like that. It was a little dissapointing though, only having 1 barn with animals, no horses or cows, and the hatchery was shut because of "bird flu scares" All in all we had a great holiday, and it's good to be back at work for a rest!

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Links for w/e 14th April 2006

Some crazy machines on display here, fascinating stuff. The Sheffield Flickr group have a new blog. Are you too rich for free email services? Then why not buy one of the exclusive millionaires24.com accounts at only $399 a month. As we all know "The Internet is for Porn"

Monday, April 10, 2006

Cute kittens are not as stupid as they sound.

It's about time someone came up with a new way of recognising that someone is human, and not just another script trying to register on your phpNuke website, I mean what the fuck is this supposed to say? You may have already seen this, but the guys at www.thepcspy.com have come up with a novel way to both check that the user is human and also female (or a Python developer) Now it might look like a ridiculous idea at first, but when you think about it it's not as daft as it first appears. At least with this method you don't have to try and decypher random letters from some garbled image, it much easier & quicker to see 3 cats in amongst squirrels, weasels & beavers, so it saves the user time. You could also customise it to say pick 3 company logos from random images in your product catalogue, or why not have it dislay 3 images of the sites author amongst historical figures? The act of having to actually click on the images too is another barrier to scripts, until this method becomes more widespread at least, then it's back to the drawing board trying to keep 1 step ahead of the spammers.

Monday, April 03, 2006

Back at the end of February, I made a post about my frustration at not being able to find a decent calendar application that met my needs. Well since then I've been spending a lot of time at my companies other location, and every time I'm there I have to shift from desk to desk to get some work done as I wait in between meetings. I suggested a laptop would help, but didn't want anything too bulky. I ended up with a Powerbook G4. I have never used a Mac before, save for a few brief tests on Safari in the designers office. It's taken less than a weekend for me to be totally converted. It has solved every problem I posted about, I can enter meeting requests straight from the mail client into the calendar, then sync that to my phone without any fuss.