A Grand Day Out

Apologies if I have used this title before but today certainly warrants using it again. The weather was great and we (Elaine and I) have been sailing at Durleigh. It was a pusuit race which meant that there was a staggered start and we were the 3rd class to start. Only a 1 hour race but we came in a respectable 5th place (of 10 boats) and won the "Best Newcomers" award. It really is quite fun racing as opposed to just pottering about so bring it on foe the rest of the season.

Came back home and repacked the tent ready for our few days away and then it was off to the pub for a couple of drinks before tea - nice...

I can see clearly now...

That I have my new glasses. They have made quite a difference too - much more than I thought they would, it just goes to show how your eyes deteriorate so gradually over time. It was the case that I kept getting really sore eyes amd headaches if read or looked at the PC for a long time but this seems much better now. Can't blame my poor eyesight on the "bad spellink" now.

The last few weekeends have been a scene of some activity around our trailer tent which I bought down from its winter storage in the Midlands a few weeks ago. It was in sorry state having been neglected for the past 2 years and needed a bit of TLC which it got. Now its fit for the road and we are going to use it in the next few weeks to spend a weekend near Branscombe (yes it's the place where they found the motorbikes on the beach)

Next weekend though its the Sound of Music on Frdiay night and as part of the weekend stop over in the city wer'e off to see the Renoir collection at the National Gallery, sorted the tickets out yesterday for that. Of course it's the Bank Holiday weekend too and I will be on duty as Assistant Boat Safety Officer (ASBO) which is the guy with the job of preventing the the SBO getting bored by providing useful and stimulating verbal exchanges - oh and helping to rescue people as well.

Finally got my broadband. Even at the time of connection there was a delay, I rushed home on the evening of the 16th April to discover that I wasn't connected and when I spoke to the tech support guy at Newnet he said the problem was that there was a mismatch between two servers on their system!!! I've heard that one once or twice before. Anyway they said they would fix it the next day and true to their word they called me at 09.15 am to say it was sorted. The new service (so far) is really great even compared with Nildram and the hatred and loathing of Sky is starting to be forgotten (almost).

Finally bought a book on Adobe Lightroom today to try and learn a little about Digital workflow management - doesn't get better than this eh...

Check out this photography Forum...

Just a quick posting to let you know about a site I have recently found martin bailey photography. I have been downloading the podcasts for a while but never got around to taking look at the site itself. The forum is quite good as you don't seem to get these pretentious, stuck up posters who berate everyone that doesn't agree with them or dares to challenge them. Try it out

And They Say Size Isn't Everything

24 Inches but I don't use it as a rule, which is true for my new monitor it's a Dell 2407 WFP and I just got it today. The screen is enormous at the moment but I am sure that I will get used to it, especially all of the extra desktop space with the 1900x1200 resolution. It does all of the usual things like twists through 90 degrees but the most amazing part is when you view an excel spreadsheet on it the colums go from A -AA!!!
Glasses due to arrive soon - but not sure if I need them now...

Job Hunting

It's been a short week at work this week for me at one end it's been the start of the Easter break and at the other (last week end) we had a trip to the Isle of Wight for a couple of days. Carol attended an interview at IOW council for a more senior job in HR and was offerred it, before we even got back home!! For a number of reasons she decided not to take it but at least she had the choice. Just need to keep on looking for something closer to home really.

The Easter break is a welcome one and so far - as I write this - the weather is really good. Carol is in he midst of revision for her final exam of what has been a challenging course in may ways, not least the academic level that is expected of the student and trying to fit the course around work too. It takes me back to when I did my degree, I used to complain a lot about the work involved and nobody really understands or appreciates it unless they have done the same themselves - they usually can't understand what the fuss is about, until they try it then they feel like they have been hit around the head with a cricket bat and keep getting beaten for the next 3-4 years. The sense of achievement is worth it though in the end and I am particulary proud and impressed how Carol has stuck with it over the last 3 years. I hope that her hard work brings the just rewards.

Anyway what that has meant is that I have been doing a few jobs, visiting the Gym and due to go sailing on Bank Holiday Monday. The longer days are great and really make you feel like doing more outside rather than vegging out in front of the telly. Still finding time for a curry and a pint or two though.

The broadband order has gone through now with a connection date of 16th April so not too long to wait. I decided to add a extra hard drive this week and it turned out to be a bit of nightmare. Windows refused to recognise it in explorer and then when I got it to see it, Windows couldn't format the drive. After messing around at 4.00 am on Thursday morning I finally got it to work and now the data is split across 2 No. 300 GByte drives. As there was no spare SATA port on the motherboard I had to buy a card from EBay that provided an internal SATA port, 4 USB 2.0, an IDE port and an external SATA port. It offers RAID too but I'm not sure how that would work with an external plug in drive!! The new drive sits on this card now though and at the moment it seems fine.

Finally not content to leave things working as they are I am considering the reinstallation of Vista on the PC. The reason is that I would like a clean image of Vista to reload in the future when the OS becomes bloated and in playing around with Vista over the past few weeks I have loaded software, drivers etc that really aren't required. In some bizzare set of circumstances that usually only happens to me I have the machine set up as dual boot with XP and while it isn't really a problem I would like to change that. Should be straightforward now that I know which programs work with Vista and which don't - but hey you have heard me say that before haven't you.

A Blog with a View

Continuing the theme of blogging from places other than my study, I write this short note from the Brewers Fayre Pub at Newport Isle of Wight. It's sort of serious for Carol as she is going for a job interview but for me it's the opportunity to take a day off and visit the Isle of Wight again. The weather has been quite good today and although it was probably going to be too windy for my little boat there were plenty of small boats around Yarmouth and Cowes. We return tomorrow afternoon and then its off to our neighbours birthday party.

Been a quiet weekend apart from the trip though but... and I hardly dare mention it but it would seem that I might have finally rid myself of Sky and have signed up with a new broadband provider Newnet. I got the line ceased on Friday thanks to a very helpful guy at BT - see they do exist, but in relatively smll numbers. Placed the order on Friday sfternoon and I am crossing fingers that the order will be processed without any fuss. Disappointed that I didn't manage to get my own back on Sky - but perhaps I will in August when the 12 month contract has expired. I have gone for the 8 MByte 25 GByte package and the report on the forums rate this company as being quite good - I hope that's true.

It's Easter weekend soon and with Carol revising I will be getting a few jobs done, visiting the Gym and sailing - same as usual really but quite nice really. No toys this month but the storage space on my data drive is getting low and rather than clear off the junk that I usually keep on there I thought I might buy another hard drive, however I don't have a spare SATA port so I have purchased a card to sort that out.

That's about it really look out in the future for a guest blogger...