Ricky Moorhouse

Machine-readable?

Sun, 28 Jun 2026 10:31:11 +0000

Applying metadata standards and formats to improve the readability of my blog for machines of different types.

MCP Ponderings

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Agents are only as good as the access they have to accurate data and business functions. LLMs have a cut off point as to what they know - they're trained on a set of data and anything beyond that is unknown to them - therefore to build useful agents you need to provide a way for them to access data beyond that corpus. This could be more your own business data or just more recent information. To enable this Anthropic introduced Model Context Protocol (MCP) as an open standard to build these connections to data-sources and tooling. Since then, MCP has exploded into the most common way of providing tools to AI Agents.

Weekend project

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Weekend project making a bag based on the pattern for the Rough Cut Kit Duffle, but significantly reduced in size.

Wed, 27 May 2026 14:33:42 +0000

Finished reading: The Rose Field by Phillip Pullman 📚

A great final chapter to the book of dust trilogy with lots to consider in how things had changed

Securing Sensitive Payload Logging in API Connect

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Unintentionally logging sensitive customer data (PII, financial info) is a major compliance risk. When deploying APIs, ensuring that this data is kept out of your logs requires robust, layered controls. Whilst developing APIs that will deal with this sensitive content you will often need to see what is being passed to ensure that everything is being handled as expected. Very often in a development or test environment you will be using a dummy payload to ensure the API is working as expected so it is key to ensure it is reflected at the different stages of processing as part of your test suites.

Sat, 09 May 2026 11:29:20 +0100

hello

Sample Title

Sat, 09 May 2026 06:39:45 +0100

thats better!

Sat, 09 May 2026 06:30:48 +0100

Quick post app should make these short posts easier

Thu, 07 May 2026 08:14:42 +0100

Finally got round to building a micropub endpoint for my Hugo blog

Thu, 07 May 2026 08:13:32 +0100

Micropub test of creating a basic h-entry

Cheriton Circular

Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Lovely way to spend the bank holiday on a circular walk around Cheriton. The route picks up a section of the Itchen Way around Cheriton, joining it into a circular walk with paths around the surrounding fields with gorgeous views across the landscape.

We parked near the village store in the centre of Cheriton and started off along School Lane until we saw the footpath signs to head off along the path between two fields - this was initially quite enclosed and narrow, but soon we turned right onto a wider path along the edge of the field. We continued along this path until we reached Broad Lane where we headed up to where it and Hinton lane joined. We followed Hinton lane up further to Prite lane where there were lovely views across the fields and down into the town.

Sat, 02 May 2026 21:59:02 +0100

Local utils server is working

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 18:30:00 +0000

Copenhagen

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 10:20:00 +0100

API Versioning is a Contract Commitment, not a Technical Choice

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Teams spend a lot of energy arguing about whether to put the version in the URL, a header, or a query parameter. That debate usually misses the point. The real question is: what is your change management discipline, and how do you protect consumers from breaking changes?

Taking a step up from the versioning question - how are you managing changes to your API contract? Ideally this would be transparent to consumers unless there is something they are looking to take advantage of in the new changes. If your API is designed well it can abstract any internal requirements and technical limitations from your clients such that you can update the implementation internally and their applications will continue to operate without even needing to know about it.

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Local publish script working with password retrieval from keychain

Observability as a design requirement

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Observability is a design decision, not an afterthought. From the platform team to API consumers to AI agents, knowing what is happening across your API — and building that in from the start — is what gives you confidence when things go wrong in production.

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Trying Drafts as an editor for simple updates to my blog

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 08:32:20 +0000

exploring building an agent memory system based on how corvids use memory systems around their food stores

Designing for Multi-Region API Deployments

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A practical guide to designing multi-region API deployments - covering data consistency, auth dependencies, traffic routing, and failure modes, with real-world lessons from IBM API Connect SaaS.

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Finished reading The Summer Guests by Tess Gerritsen 📚 - enjoying this series, love the characters

The SRE Mindset in API Architecture

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

How my SRE experience with sizing, observability and SLOs shapes the way I approach API architecture - planning for reality, not hopes.

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 15:05:19 +0000

Well I won't be heading to India next week any more

Sat, 21 Feb 2026 16:05:03 +0000

Combined my AI agent with some simple functions to post to my blog

Building an AI Agent: From Inspiration to Implementation

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I've been fascinated by the idea of AI agents for a while now - programs that can not just chat, but actually do things. A few weeks back I came across Clawdbot - now called OpenClaw and it clicked something in my brain. This had a great potential for proactive workflows with a regular trigger to identify things that needed doing and the ability to extend itself with additional code and updates to it's own configuration. Very powerful, but also very risky if not controlled. I set this up intially as it's own user account and then fairly soon moved it into an isolated VM.

I really liked the potential here but wasn't comfortable with the complexity of the code and the power I was giving it or would need to give it to do more interesting tasks - I've still not let it access calendar or e-mail for example. However if I could build something I could read all the code for and understand - with my own selection of controls and tools that are limited according to my own sense of risk level.

So rather than just using someone elses platform I embarked on building something smaller and more personal that I could tune to the things I wanted it to do. This became a great learning experience in understanding the basics at the core of what is needed in an Agent but also how this can get much more complex as you start to deal with things like memory and control.

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 19:33:42 +0000

Finished reading: Everyone on this Train is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson 📚

Found this a bit tough to get into as it is a bit meta, but got into it and enjoyed it as it developed.

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 20:05:00 +0000

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Has been a great day at the Integration User Group Nordics - has been good to share the story around API Connect v12 and lots of good conversations.

Stockholm

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 09:55:00 +0000

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 08:15:00 +0000

How to build an agent - from last year but a good insight into what the core things that make up an AI agent are.

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 19:33:42 +0000

Finished reading: Wool by Hugh Howey 📚

Enjoyed reading this book after seeing the first two seasons of Silo which are based on it - can’t decide whether to read on or wait until after seeing the remaining seasons of the show.

My Blog

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

My site is powered by Hugo and lives on GitHub. I use GitHub Actions to build and deploy the site to BunnyCDN.

Hugo

After previously using a self-built blogging engine and then Wordpress for a while, I decided that I didn't want to deal with running a database backed dynamic site any longer and that a static file based site would both perform better and be simpler to keep running. I looked at a number of different static site generators and played with Jekyll and Pelican but in the end decided on Hugo. This was primarily as I have been moving more to building things in Go and the templating system and site structure felt like a good fit for my needs.

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 14:26:24 +0000

Improving my photos layout to move away from just showing square photos - now need to add more photos!

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 20:44:45 +0000

New blog design live and telegram bot up and running to post to my microblog

Style Guide

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Blog Style Guide

A reference for the colors, typography, and design tokens used in this blog.

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 07:15:00 +0000

Just testing the new microblog section! This is where I'll post quick thoughts, links, and updates that don't need a full blog post.

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 21:43:00 +0000

Got some great workflows going with my new clawdbot based assistant

Lune Aqueduct

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

2026 Reading Log

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Summer Guests - Tess Gerritsen
Wool - Hugh Howey
Everyone on this Train is a Suspect - Benjamin Stevenson
Belle Sauvage (Book of Dust #1) - Phillip Pullman
The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust #2) - Phillip Pullman
The Rose Field (Book of Dust #3) - Phillip Pullman
Talon (Talon Saga #1) - Julie Kagawa
Rogue (Talon Saga #2) - Julie Kagawa
Soldier (Talon Saga, Book 3) - Julie Kagawa

Global Deployment with API Connect - Serving APIs Worldwide

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Why Global API Deployment Matters

If you have customers around the world, serving your APIs from a global footprint significantly improves their experience by reducing latency and increasing reliability. With API Connect's multi-region capabilities, you can ensure users call your APIs from locations closest to them, providing faster response times and better resilience against regional outages.

In this guide, I'll walk through deploying APIs to the 6 current regions of the API Connect Multi-tenant SaaS service on AWS. At the time of writing, these regions are:

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 21:32:00 +0000

Product Academy for Teams - San Jose

Wed, 13 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the three-day Product Academy for Teams course at the IBM Silicon Valley Lab in San Jose.

This brought together members of our team from across different disciplines - design, product management, user research, and engineering. It was fantastic to spend time face to face with other members of the team that we usually only work with remotely and to all go through the education together learning from each others approaches and ideas. The API Connect team attendees were split into three smaller teams to work on separate items and each was joined by a facilitator to help us work through the exercises.

Mount Tamalpais

Sun, 10 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I headed up from San Francisco to Mount Tamalpais State Park to explore the area and see some of the sights before heading down to San Jose. I drove through the spectacular scenary of the State Park heading up above the clouds and winding round the mountains to the East Peak car park and then heade out along the Verna Dunshee trail around the peak - the views were amazing and the scenery was spectacular. I then decided to head up to the top along the Plank Walk trail to see the views from up by the fire lookout at 2571 feet.

Sat, 09 Aug 2025 16:14:00 +0000

Chapel at Castlemartin Range

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 17:32:10 +0100

Green Bridge of Wales

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 16:56:17 +0100

Carew Castle

Tue, 29 Jul 2025 10:53:35 +0100

Barafundle Bay

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 10:31:53 +0100

Freshwater Beach

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 11:41:03 +0100

API Connect Quick Check

Sat, 05 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This script originated as part of a much wider framework of tests that we put together when I was in the API Connect SRE team. However I’ve found this set of functions to be something useful to be able to validate quickly from time to time in different contexts to give a high level answer to ‘Is it working?’

Gilbert White walk, Selborne

Sat, 31 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This walk came from the In Their Footsteps app from the South Downs National Park. The app is made in conjunction with historic venues and has a series of guides for walks across the South Downs. Each of the walks has a map, a text guide and audio clips along the walk to tell you more about what you are seeing and walking through.

We headed for Selborne for an early start before the day got too hot and arrived at the car park in the village for 7:15am. The first part of the walk was a fairly steep route up through Selborne Common from the car park taking the zig-zag path that Gilbert White and his brother had cut into the hillside. At the top the route took us along the top edge of Selborne Hangar, a woodland of mostly beech trees. When there were gaps in the trees we could see through to Selborne and Gilbert White's House. Nova seemed to have a great time exploring and played in the leaves.

Status Light

Sun, 11 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Whilst working from home it's useful for the family to know when I am on a video call or just a voice call. I was first looking at Busy bar which I came across via Hiro Report, but couldn't justify the cost of it and as I had a raspberry pi zero and a Blink! sitting around, I decided to build something simple myself. Maybe one day I could make it more complex and build a version using the Pico 2 W Unicorn Galactic?

Status Light

Sun, 11 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Updated

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 06:08:00 +0000

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 17:36:00 +0000

Isle of Wight

Sat, 12 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We decided to take a short family break on the Isle of Wight dung the school Easter holidays. We found accommodation in Yarmouth through Airbnb at a lovely spot overlooking the River Yar.

On Thursday morning we took the WightLink ferry over to the island in the morning and as we got there early they put us on the earlier ferry so we arrived to the Isle of Wight just after ten o'clock. We decided to head to Alum Bay and spend the day there. We first went to the viewpoint to see the Needles and then took the stairs down to the bay as dogs weren't allowed on the chair lift we knew we had to do this both ways!

The Needles

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 14:44:26 +0100

Sun, 16 Mar 2025 08:41:00 +0000

Mahabalipuram Shore Temple

Sat, 15 Mar 2025 16:11:01 +0530

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 19:11:00 +0000

Sunrise over Kochi InfoPark

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 06:20:51 +0530

Time with the team in Kochi

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I was fortunate to finally get a chance to visit my team in Kochi and had a fantastic few days with them, it was so great to be able to spend some time face to face after working together remotely for several years. I travelled to Kochi via Chennai with British Airways. In Chennai this meant I arrived through the international terminal and then had to clear immigration and head over to the domestic terminal next door. Immigration all went smoothly but then at the domestic terminal they didn't recognise my boarding pass for the Indigo codeshare that British Airways had given me, so I had to get help at the check in desks. Once this was all resolved I had to pass through security again and all went smoothly, efficient boarding and a short flight later I arrived in Kochi around 9 in the morning and was met by Akhil and Midhun at the airport to take me to the office.

Sun, 09 Mar 2025 14:14:00 +0000

TheCompoChallenge - Photography

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

For 5 weeks, Hiro ran a photography challenge series with the aim to focus on different techniques in photographic composition each week. I joined in from the start and found it really insightful to try and use the particular techniques during the week as I took photos. Some of these were much harder to find opportunities for than others and it was interesting to see other peoples photos shared on social media during the challenge as well.

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 20:07:00 +0000

Eidsvolls Plass

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 16:24:00 +0000

Oslo

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 14:11:00 +0000

Copenhagen

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The Little Mermaid

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 07:03:26 +0000

Tue, 25 Feb 2025 10:12:00 +0000

Piccadilly Circus

Tue, 18 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Remote Gateway on Openshift

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This post should guide you through the steps on how to deploy a datapower gateway to use as a remote gateway with API Connect Reserved instance, optionally configuring the inbound management traffic through IBM Cloud Satellite Connector.

2025 Reading Log

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Moscow X - David McCloskey
The Library of the Dead (Edinburgh Nights #1) - T L Huchu
A Reluctant Spy - David Goodman
A Clean Kill (Garrett Mann #1) - Steve Konkoly
Voyage of the Damned - Frances White
Shadow Game (Ryan Cage FBI Action Thriller #1) - Vin Strong
Twisted Pretty Things (Shadows of London #1) - Ariana Nash
Tide of Tricks (Shadows of London #2) - Ariana Nash
Trial by Fire (Shadows of London #3) - Ariana Nash
Truth or Dare (Shadows of London #4) - Ariana Nash
Without a Trace (Shadows of London #5) - Ariana Nash
The Raging Storm (Two Rivers) - Ann Cleeves
Deep Shadow (Caribbean Dive Adventures #1) - Nick Sullivan
Dominica Blue (Caribbean Adventures #29)- Wayne Stinnett
Dune - Frank Herbert
Maze of Spies (Brianna Dagger #1) - Vin Strong
Maze of Traitors (Brianna Dagger #2) - Vin Strong
The Murder Game - Tom Hindle
A Hired Kill (Garrett Mann #2) - Steven Konkoly
Murder on Lake Garda - Tom Hindle
Shadow Kill - Sam Jones
The Family Experiment - John Marrs
The Marlow Murder Club - Robert Thorogood
The Grave Artist - Isabella Maldonado & Jeff Deaver
Murder on the Marlow Belle -Robert Thorogood
Death in the Arctic - Tom Hindle
The Tourists (Mac Dekker #2) - Christopher Reich
The Moscow Brief (Travis Bishop #1) - K J Kalis

Winter sun on Portsdown hill

Mon, 30 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Winter sun in Dawlish

Sun, 22 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Thu, 05 Dec 2024 22:53:00 +0000

Eiffel Tower

Wed, 04 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 14:53:00 +0000

Thu, 24 Oct 2024 20:35:00 +0000

Sat, 19 Oct 2024 15:42:00 +0000

Fri, 27 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Wed, 25 Sep 2024 18:38:00 +0000

France 2024

Sat, 24 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

France 2024

13 Aug - Utah Beach, Journey to Fondettes
14 Aug - La Membrolle sur Choisille
15 Aug - Château de Chenonceau
16 Aug - Château d'Ussé - Château de L'Islette
17 Aug - Tours
18 Aug - Candes-Saint-Martin
19 Aug - Le Baud'Rillé
20 Aug - Villandry
21 Aug - Cherbourg

Cherbourg

Wed, 21 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

To finish off the holiday we spent a night in Cherbourg so that we didn't have such an early start for the ferry the next day. We spent a lovely evening exploring along the waters edge and had dinner in the hotel restaurant.

Tours

Wed, 21 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Villandry

Tue, 20 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We visited the Château de Villandry which has had gardens since the Renaissance. It was a lovely place to visit and see the different arrangements of vegetables and flowers that had been planted throughout the grounds.

Villandry

Tue, 20 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Le Baud'rillé

Mon, 19 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We visited Le Baud'rillé for Jessica's birthday - so her and Kai went on the high ropes whilst Laura, Nova and I watched from the forest floor. We then went out for dinner in the evening

Candes-Saint-Martin

Sun, 18 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Candes-Saint-Martin is close to the confluence of the Loire and the Vienne rivers. We went on a lovely circular walk from the town up through the nearby vineyards to the view point.

Vieux Tours

Sat, 17 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Château d'Ussé

Fri, 16 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Château de L'Islette

Fri, 16 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Chateau de l’Islette

Fri, 16 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Chateau de Chenonceau

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Château de Chenonceau

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Château de Chenonceau is built spanning the river Cher and is one of the best-known châteaux of the Loire Valley.

La Membrolle sur Choisille

Wed, 14 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

On the first day in Fondettes we headed out for an evening walk along the nearby rivers - we'd expected to be able to take a circular route, but it appeared that the return route would be through a field of sheep which we decided probably wasn't best with Nova so we retraced our steps back along the way we'd come from.

Utah Beach and journey

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We took the overnight ferry from Portsmouth to Cherbourg, arriving in Cherbourg at 8am. We then started our journey south to the Loire valley, stopping at Utah Beach on the way.

We then continued our journey to our destination of Fondettes near Tours.

Thu, 11 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Sun, 07 Jul 2024 13:23:00 +0000

Flight returned to Dallas and had to switch to another plane

Thu, 07 Mar 2024 09:28:00 +0000

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 14:29:00 +0000

Wed, 07 Feb 2024 22:07:00 +0000

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 14:32:00 +0000

2024 Reading Log

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Apex (Black Flagged #3) - Steve Konkoly
Friends of the Devil (Caribbean Mystery #3) - Wayne Stinnett & Stewart Matthews
Dam Keeper (Jayne Robinson #5) - Andrew Turpin
Vector (Black Flagged #4) - Steve Konkoly
The Love Code (Chemistry Lessons #1) - Susannah Nix
Matterhorn (Mac Dekker #1) - Christopher Reich
Call me by your name - Andre Aciman
OMEGA (The Black Flagged #5) - Steven Konkoly
A Generation of Vipers (A Dr Nell Ward Mystery #4) - Sarah Yarwood-Lovett
Steady She Goes (Caribbean Adventure Series #21) - Wayne Stinnett
Liable Charity (Caribbean Thriller #8) - Wayne Stinnett & Kimberli Bindschatel
All Ahead Full (Caribbean Adventure #22) - Wayne Stinnett
The Midnight Library - Matt Haig
Enemies of my Country - Jason Kasper
Fatal Intrusion (Sanchez & Heron #1) - Jeffery Deaver & Isabella Maldonado
Inked (Gilded Blood #1) - Rachel Rener
Jinxed (Gilded Blood #2) - Rachel Rener
Linked (Gilded Blood #3) - Rachel Rener
Fatal Intrusion - Jeffery Deaver
The Midnight Library - Matt Haig
The Apalach Affair - Wayne Stinnett
The Lost Bookshop - Evie Woods
The Elias Network - Simon Gervais
The Spy Coast - Tess Gerritsen
Damascus Station - David McCloskey
Conclave - Robert Harris

Nova at Cams Estate

Fri, 08 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Sunrise at Paw Paddock

Sat, 11 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Loch Lomond

Sun, 06 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Iona

Wed, 02 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We took the ferry to Iona from Fionnphort which is a short 10 minute crossing - mostly passengers and a few vehicles delivering supplies to the island. First we visited the Abbey which is looked after by Historic Environment Scotland and they provide audio tours.

The monastry on Iona was founded by Colomba and his 12 companions in 563. We started the tour by going up Tòrr an Aba (Abbot's mound) - the site where it is understood Colomba's writing hut originally stood overlooking the Abbey.

Ulva

Wed, 02 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Ulva is a community owned island with a current population of 6 people. The first experience visiting Ulva is the ferry which you summon using by sliding the indicator on the ferry board to show red. I didn't initially spot this, but Kai and Laura did and managed to summon the ferry for us - otherwise we'd have been waiting a long time! This ferry is for passengers only and is a very short crossing across from Mull.

Staffa and Lunga boat trip

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We headed up to Tobermory early on Tuesday morning for the StaffaTours Staffa & Treshnish Isles wildlife tour which is only available during the summer until the Puffins leave Treshnish. We were fortunate to catch them as the guide told us it would likely only be a few more days before the pufflings fledged.

After we'd headed out from Tobermory the crew were alerted to a pod of dolphins a little off our route, so we took a slight detour to see them. It was amazing seeing them so close to the boat. We also saw a lot of sea birds and an otter bobbing along beside us.

Central Mull

Sun, 30 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

For our first day on Mull we decided we'd head out and explore the central loop of the island in the car following a route described in the brochure in the farmhouse. This gave us our first real insight to driving in Mull as most of the roads are single track with passing places - although the passing places are very frequent so you can almost always see one ahead of you. The route took us along between the mountains through forests and by lochs as we wound around the hilly landscape of central Mull.

Scotland 2023

Sun, 30 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Scotland 2023

28 Jul - Glasgow
29 Jul - 5 Aug - Isle of Mull
- 30 Jul - Central Mull
- 31 Jul - Aros park
- 1 Aug - Staffa & Lunga tour
- 2 Aug - Iona
- 3 Aug - Ulva
- 4 Aug - Lochbuie
Loch Lomond - 5 - 8 Aug
- 6 Aug - Inversnaid

Red Admirals at Longstock Park

Sun, 23 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Spider plant flowers

Sun, 09 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

River Itchen

Sun, 02 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Avebury

Sat, 24 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We met my parents at Avebury and spent the day exploring the ancient landscape around the area. Avebury is one of the best preserved Neolithic monuments in Europe and is believed to have been constructed between 3100 BC - 2000 BC. The site consists of a large henge, or circular ditch, surrounded by a stone circle, two inner circles and two additional semi-circles outside the main ring.

From there we walked along the West Kennet Avenue and up over the fields. As we reached the top, we started to see a glimpse of Silbury Hill - the largest artificial mound in Europe. We then headed down towards Silbury Hill and across to the West Kennet Long Barrow which is a really impressive structure. As we took in the sights of the long barrow and the views all around the landscape we watched the swallows flying into the barrow to catch flies.

Lambda Integration in IBM API Connect on AWS

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This blog post will provide you an overview of our Lambda integration in API Connect on AWS, what you could use it for and a simple worked example of setting this up. If you’d prefer you can watch me demonstrate this in our video on YouTube.

Lambda is serverless computing platform provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) which lets you build and deploy your code in a number of different programming languages with easy integrations to AWS services without having to manage infrastructure or servers. This makes it an ideal place to build out your API implementation and when you combine this with our API Connect on AWS SaaS offering you can quickly build, manage and socialise your APIs without worrying about the infrastructure behind them.

Using our Lambda policy in the SaaS service makes this simple and straight forward to integrate these so you can build out your apis around numerous different AWS services then manage them centrally through API Connect, sharing them with consumers through our customisable developer portal.

Extending our sample API with conditionals and mocking

Wed, 08 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Video demo showing how you can use conditional logic and mocking in API Connect on AWS using our sample order tracking API as an example.

Wed, 22 Feb 2023 13:27:00 +0000

Sun, 19 Feb 2023 12:50:00 +0000

IBM Tech 2023 - Dubai

Sun, 19 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

IBM Tech 2023 was a celebration event in Dubai

Winter Scene

Sun, 22 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

2023 Reading Log

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Rip Tide (Liz Carlyle #6)
Present Danger (Liz Carlyle #5)- Stella Rimington
At Risk (Liz Carlyle #1) - Stella Rimington
Illegal Action (Liz Carlyle #3) - Stella Rimington
The Voice of the Violin - Andrea Camilleri
Triple Cross - Tom Bradby
A Mischief of Rats - Sarah Yarwood-Lovett
La Belle Sauvage (Book of Dust #1) - Philip Pullman
A Killer's Game - Isabella Maldonado
Priceless (Tropical Adventure #4) - Deborah Brown

Fri, 16 Dec 2022 10:34:00 +0000

API Days - Paris

Fri, 16 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I attended API Days in Paris to run a workshop on AI in API Testing, help man the API Connect stand and a couple of Smart Talks.

Workshop: Applying AI to API Testing across the lifecycle

Wed, 14 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I hosted a workshop at API Days in Paris about increasing developer productivity by applying AI to API Testing.

Tue, 13 Dec 2022 15:50:00 +0000

Arundel Castle

Thu, 27 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Thames by night

Wed, 26 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Workshop: Testing APIs to prevent the most common security vulnerabilities

Wed, 26 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I ran a workshop at API Days London showing how you can use API Testing to test for the OWASP top 10 API Security vulnerabilities.

Invoke IBM Cloud Functions from API Connect

Tue, 25 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Cloud functions offer an easy way to build functionality and only pay for the time they are actually running without having to worry about how it will be hosted - you just right the code, save it and it is ready to be invoked. The function can be invoked through an event trigger or as a REST API - in this case I'm going to show how you can trigger a function as part of your API Connect assembly flow - providing an easy way to manage and socialise the functionality you have built.

Webinar: Automating API Development through DevOps

Tue, 27 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

For the third webinar in our series 'API Design Master Class' I showed how you can use CI/CD with API Connect to manage your API deployments.

20 years of fun and adventure

Thu, 08 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

West Bay

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Our summer family break in West Bay, Dorset

Tue, 12 Jul 2022 23:40:00 +0000

New York

Tue, 12 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The next morning I was up early and decided to head first to the High Line - a park/walkway created from an historic raised rail line which goes along the West Side of Manhatten. It's fantastic to see the way the plants have been selected and seeing trees growing in between the old tracks with different sections having distinct settings from wild prairy to wooded sections providing a relaxed park atmosphere with a unique historic character to it. At the end of the line I headed to the Starbucks Reserve coffee roastery to have a coffee before heading back.

Sun, 10 Jul 2022 17:39:00 +0000

Webinar: Launch of new API Connect service on AWS

Wed, 29 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Sat, 18 Jun 2022 20:54:00 +0000

Mon, 13 Jun 2022 15:09:00 +0000

Thu, 21 Apr 2022 16:26:00 +0000

Garden to Glass

Wed, 20 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In the afternoon Laura and I did a 'garden to glass' experience at the Hotel, just the two of us, where Diego took us first around the gardens of the hotel to see their sustainability at work and the different plants they grow and how they can be used. We took a basket around with us and gathered lots of sprigs of herbs, flowers and even wild blackberries.

Selvatura Hanging Bridges

Wed, 20 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

After a delicious breakfast at Belmar, this time I had the breakfast sandwich of pesto, avocado, egg and roast peppers, we were picked up by the Selvatura transport to take us to the hanging bridges tour. We got there early and were assigned to a guide to take us around the park. He took us backwards around in order to avoid the other groups which seemed to work really well! We started the tour with a Coati coming across a mini bridge to us before admiring more of the beautiful cloud forest flora. Then we reached the first bridge of ?, each of which gave us a different view of the forest - some in the trees and some above the trees, all at different heights.

Finca Madre Tierra, Monteverde

Tue, 19 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Finca Madre Tierra was the first carbon-neutral farm in Costa Rica and we were really excited to visit and learn more about it. We met at reception at 2pm to travel with Oscar, one of the people who run the farm, to travel to the farm, which was about 25 minutes away from the hotel. When we arrived, we were greeted by the farm dogs and the sounds of the animals who after washing our hands we went inside the barn to meet.
First we got to feed the donkeys and then Laura and Abi had a go at milking the cow. Some of the milk was then put into bottles for the young animals and Abi and Jessica fed it to the calves and lambs. The milk from the cows is also used in making cheese for the hotel.

Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve

Tue, 19 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Early start for a quick breakfast (I had a delicious home-made granola with chia and coconut milk) and then meet our driver at 7am to take us to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. We had a private guide for the walk around the reserve with whom we saw lots of things and heard lots of birds - nightingale, 'squeaky-door bird (Solitaire), toucanettes and quetzal.

Abi spotted a female Quetzal. The guide was great at showing us everything around on the ground and in the trees and how climate change has affected the area. They used to have only 30 dry days a year and now have 90! 50% of frogs have disappeared with a knock on effect on everything else. I particularly liked the tree ferns, and the tanagers. We also saw a tarantula in its hole.

Volcán Arenal

Sun, 17 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Zip-lining, Arenal

Sun, 17 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

We started with an early breakfast at 7 with seats right by the front of the restaurant overlooking the volcano watching birds over the water and then headed over to the reception to be picked up at 8:15 for Sky trek.

When we arrived, we put our bags in the lockers and got kitted out with equipment and they gave me a special helmet with a mount for my go-pro so that I could film from there rather than from my chest strap. We were then given the briefing on how to use the equipment and importantly how to brake and were taken up to the stop of the first zip line in the tram.

Arenal Volcano Hike

Sat, 16 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This morning we had a relaxing morning in the pool enjoying the swim-up bar and the views across to the volcano whose peak kept peeping out from behind the clouds. We got wood-fired pizzas for lunch by the pool overlooking the volcano and watching wildlife by the lake.

We were picked up after lunch by Canoa Aventura for our volcano hike, which took us along the course of the 1968 lava flows to a view point where we had great views of the volcano and across to the Arenal Lake. The lake is man-made and covers the area to the west of the volcano which was destroyed by soot and gases from the eruption and is used to generate hydro-electric power.

Tirimbina - a bonus

Fri, 15 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Originally our plan had been to fly from Tortuguero to La Fortuna but, due to maintenance issues with the plane, the flight was cancelled and there were no others available. Instead, we travelled by land - initially leaving Laguna Lodge on the boat and travelling by coach to Guapilles and then being picked up by Juan Carlos to take us the rest of the way. This meant that we were able to stop off at Tirimbina on the way where we had a guide, Luis, to take us around the reserve.

Caimán in Tortuguero

Thu, 14 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Exploring Tortuguero

Thu, 14 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

We started the day with an early wake up (not too hard as we weren't adapted to the timezone yet) at 5am for coffee before an early morning boat tour leaving at 5:30 and taking us around the riverbanks and into the park spotting wildlife. The tour started with the local banks just up from the hotel where we started off with an Iguana lounging on a branch of a tree, just a little way up from a Tiger Heron (Tigrisoma fasciatum). José pointed out the different stages of coconuts growing along the side of the river as they go from green with mostly milk to brown with mostly flesh, we then saw a solitary howler monkey or 'mono congo' (Alouatta palliata).

Travel to Laguna Lodge, Tortuguero

Wed, 13 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

After an overnight stay in San José, the next part of our travels began with a coach to the docks at La Pavona, followed by a boat from there to Laguna Lodge, as Tortuguero can only be accessed by boat or plane.

We set off from Hotel Presidente at 6:10 after a quick bite for breakfast. José, our guide, had met us at the hotel and took us to meet the bus with the others who were travelling to Tortuguero. After a couple more pickups we headed out of San José along the route 32 heading higher up as we left the city, passing alongside coffee plantations.

Tue, 12 Apr 2022 09:44:00 +0000

Costa Rica 2022

Tue, 12 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Costa Rica 2022

Tortuguero (13-14 Apr)
- Travel to Laguna Lodge
- Exploring Tortuguero
Tirimbina (15 Apr)
Arenal (15-17 Apr)
- Volcano Hike
- Zip-lining
Monteverde (18-20 Apr)

2022 Reading Log

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hard Kill (Jon Reznick #2) - JB Turner
Raven Black (Shetland Island #1) - Ann Cleeves
Around the World in Eighty Days - Jules Verne
Deep Sleep (Devin Gray #1) - Steven Konkoly
Lost Charity (Charity Styles #6) - Wayne Stinnett
Graceless: A Tropical Authors Novella - Wayne Stinnett
The Rescue (Ryan Decker #1) - Steven Konkoly
The Raid (Ryan Decker #2) - Steven Konkoly
The Mountain (Ryan Decker #3) - Steven Konkoly
Skystorm (Ryan Decker #4) - Steven Konkoly
Troubled Blood (Cormoran Strike #5) - Robert Galbraith
Elusive Charity (Charity Styles #7) - Wayne Stinnett*
Breaking Cover (Liz Carlyle #9) - Stella Rimington
The Moscow Sleepers (Liz Carlyle #10) - Stella Rimington
Close Call (Liz Carlyle #8) - Stella Rimington
Man Overboard (Jesse McDermitt #23) - Wayne Stinnett
Fallen Mangrove (Jesse McDermitt #5) - Wayne Stinnett
A Murder of Crows (Nell Ward #1) - Sarah Yarwood-Lovett
The Cleaner (John Milton #1) - Mark Dawson
The Falcon (Nina Guerrera #3) - Isabella Maldonado
Exiles (Exiles #1) - Ashley & Leslie Saunders
The Heron's Cry (Two Rivers #2) - Ann Cleeves
Timeless: A Tropical Authors Novella - Wayne Stinnett
Fallen Out (Jesse McDermitt #1) - Wayne Stinnett
Ruthless Charity (Charity Styles #2)- Wayne Stinnett
Coming Dawn (Devin Gray #2) - Steven Konkoly
Cast Off (Jesse McDermitt #24) - Wayne Stinnett
A Cast of Falcons (Nell Ward #2) - Sarah Yarwood-Lovett
Dead Man's Grave (DS Max Craigie #1) - Neil Lancaster

Giant Sequoia tree planting

Sun, 26 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This weekend, to mark our 40th birthdays we planted Giant Sequoias with One Life One Tree at their planting site near Abergavenny. Sequoias are the world's largest growing tree species and capture up to 10x more carbon per hectare than a traditional woodland, so should capture the equivalent of a person's lifetime carbon footprint.

The site in Abergavenny was previously a commercial woodland grown as a mono-culture so the projects involvement there will increase biodiversity on the site with the planting of Sequoias along with the additional native species they will be planting alongside them.

Peak District Holiday

Fri, 13 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

We had a fantastic weeks holiday up in the Peak District staying in Hathersage. We fitted in lots of exploring of the surrounding area, but still a lot more to see and do.

On the way up to the Peak District, we visited my parents for a couple of days before heading on further. From there we stopped at Hardwick Hall on the way where we started with lunch before looking around the hall. We learnt about the formidable Bess of Hardwick who had built both this and Chatsworth. We then explored the grounds - particular highlights being the swifts swooping across the lawn in front of the house and the impressive stumpery.

Mam Tor Walk

Sun, 08 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Debugging jobs in kubernetes

Tue, 20 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

As jobs are often short running and finish before you can check anything within the pod, often it's helpful to make the pod run for longer to be able to inspect the environment and re-run the job manually. One way to do this is to extract the yaml definition for a previous run of the job and create a pod definition replacing the command with an endless sleep.

kubectl get pod {previous-job-pod} -o yaml > pod.yaml

Then edit the pod.yaml, removing the status block and the additional metadata referring to the previous job so the metadata only contains name and namespace

Custom e-mail notifications for your provider organisation

Mon, 05 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

First Potatoes

Sat, 03 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Today I harvested our first row of potatoes from our raised beds:

Quite pleased with them, and looking forward to tasting them!

Portsmouth Harbour

Sat, 03 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Garden Meadow

Fri, 02 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Avoid delays from validate compilation in your APIs

Thu, 01 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Castle views

Wed, 23 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Customising the API invocation hostname in v10 Reserved Instance

Fri, 28 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

API Connect toolkit with GitHub Actions - re-usable step

Wed, 31 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

API Connect Remote Gateway with IBM Cloud Satellite

Tue, 09 Mar 2021 11:15:39 +0000

API Connect Reserved instance provides the ability to add remote API gateways so that you can co-locate the gateway service with your back-end systems for improved performance. With the new announcement of IBM Cloud Satellite, you can make use of this to securely expand your API Connect footprint across cloud providers and into the on-premise datacenter close to where your applications are running.

API Connect v10 Reserved - authentication for CI/CD

Tue, 09 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Currently the v10 Reserved Instance of API Connect doesn't yet have a simple approach for headless use of the CLI toolkit. The following details how to use an IBM Cloud IAM bearer token with the API Connect CLI and REST API in a headless environment such as a CI/CD pipeline.

2021 Reading Log

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Rising Moon (Jesse McDermitt #19) - Wayne Stinnett
The Holly Lin Series - Robert Swartwood
The Dark Archive (Invisible Library #7) - Genevieve Cogman
Murder in the Caribbean (Death in Paradise #4) - Robert Thorogood
The Marlow Murder Club - Robert Thorogood
List of Secrets - DF Hart
Interference - Brad Parks
Codename Villanelle (Killing Eve #1) - Luke Jennings
No Tomorrow (Killing Eve #2) - Luke Jennings
Double Agent - Tom Bradby
Habitat Zero (Sam Reilly #15) - Christopher Cartwright
On the Run (Ryan Kaine #1) - Kerry J Donovan
On the Rocks (Ryan Kaine #2) - Kerry J Donovan
On the Defensive (Ryan Kaine #3) - Kerry J Donovan
On the Attach (Ryan Kaine #4) - Kerry J Donovan
On the Money (Ryan Kaine #5) - Kerry J Donovan
On the Wing (Ryan Kaine #7) - Kerry J Donovan
On the Hunt (Ryan Kaine #8) - Kerry J Donovan
Perfect Record (DCI Jones #1) - Kerry J Donovan
The Law of the Heart - Boris Starling
Steady As She Goes (Jesse McDermitt #21) - Wayne Stinnett
Hard Vengeance (Jon Reznick #9) - JB Turner
Dark Sky (Joe Pickett #21) - CJ Box
The Cipher (Nina Guerrera #1) - Isabella Maldonado
A Different Dawn (Nina Guerrera #2) - Isabella Maldonado
The Quantum Curators and the Fabergé Egg (Quantum Curators #1) - Eva St John
Kings of the Yukon: An Alaskan River Journey - Adam Weymouth
The Quantum Curators and the Enemy Within (Quantum Curators #2) - Eva St John
The Quantum Curators and the Missing Codex (Quantum Curators #3) - Eva St John
The Cove (Summer Suspense #1) LJ Ross
The Apollo Muders - Chris Hadfield
On The Edge (Ryan Kaine #6) - Kerry J Donovan
On the Outside (Ryan Kaine #9) - Kerry J Donovan
Wayward Sons (Jerry Snyder #1) - Wayne Stinnett
All Ahead Full (Jesse McDermitt #22) - Wayne Stinnett

Monitoring API Connect - 2020 update

Mon, 09 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Even though a lot has changed within the API Connect product and the types and numbers of stacks we're running since I first posted an overview of monitoring API Connect , the main areas we monitor haven't.

Trawler

Tue, 02 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Trawler is a metric gathering tool for IBM API Connect deployments, built to monitor Kubernetes-based API Connect cloud deployments.

It runs alongside API Connect in Kubernetes and identifies API Connect components, exposing metrics to Prometheus or other compatible monitoring tooling. The data feeds into dashboards such as Grafana for visualization.

GitHub Project

Metrics Collected

Management Subsystem

API Connect version information (apiconnect_build_info)
User and organization counts (users, provider_orgs, consumer_orgs)
Catalog and product/API counts

DataPower Subsystem

TCP connection stats
Log target stats (events processed, dropped, pending)
Object counts (SSLClientProfile, APICollection, etc.)
HTTP statistics

Analytics Subsystem

Cluster health status
Node and shard counts
Pending tasks

9 Nov 2020

Technical Monitoring API Connect - 2020 update apiconnect monitoring trawler
2 Jun 2020

Technical Trawler - Metric gathering for API Connect apiconnect monitoring trawler

Trawler - Metric gathering for API Connect

Tue, 02 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

As part of our work in running and monitoring our API Connect cloud deployments we've built some of our own tooling to assist with monitoring what is going on within the deployments. Trawler is one of these items which is used to gather metrics from a Kubernetes based deployment of API Connect.

Eiger Ink Sketch

Sun, 09 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

2020 Reading Log

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Alexander Hamilton (Great Lives) - Ron Chernow [didn't finish]
The Seven Dials Mystery (Superintendent Battle #2) - Agatha Christie
The ABC Murders (Hercule Poirot #13) - Agatha Christie
La Belle Sauvage (Book of Dust #1) - Philip Pullman
His Dark Materials: The Complete Trilogy - Philip Pullman
- Northern Lights (His Dark Materials #1)
- The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials #2)
- The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials #3)
The Secret Commonweath (Book of Dust #2 - Phillip Pullman
The Phantom of New York: Volume II - The Sword and the Circus - A.L. Janney
The Snack Thief (Inspector Montalbano Mysteries #3) - Andrea Camilleri
Future We Choose - Christiana Figueres
Rising Thunder (Jesse McDermitt #17) - Wayne Stinnett
Secret Service - Tom Bradby
Doing Time - Jodi Taylor
Interference - Brad Parks
Dark Tomorrow (Lisa Tanchik #2) - Reece Hirsch
The Adversary (Chris Bruen #1) - Reece Hirsch
Intrusion (Chris Bruen #2) - Reece Hirsch
Surveillance (Chris Bruen #3) - Reece Hirsch
Hard Road (Jon Reznick #1) - JB Turner
Hard Kill (Jon Reznick #2) - JB Turner
Hard Wired (Jon Reznick #3) - JB Turner
Hard Way (Jon Reznick #4) - JB Turner
Hard Fall (Jon Reznick #5) - JB Turner
Hard Hit (Jon Reznick #6) - JB Turner
Hard Shot (Jon Reznick #7) - JB Turner
Hard Target (Jon Reznick #8) - JB Turner
How Stella Saved the Farm: A Tale about making Innovation Happen - Vijay Govindarajan

2019 - Photos of the year

Tue, 31 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Gunwalloe Church Cove, Cornwall

Eiger

Oxford Canal

Coastal Scenes

Cornwall

West Wittering

Dawlish

The paths that beckon

Path up from Durdle Door

Ovington

Lauterbrunen

Plants

Water Avens (Geum rivale)

Cardoon

Echium Pininana

Birds

Blue Tit

Brown Pelicans

Alpine Chough

Fri, 04 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Tue, 01 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Sun, 04 Aug 2019 11:40:00 +0000

Sat, 27 Jul 2019 08:36:00 +0000

Allan King Way - Part 2, Ovington to Tichborne

Sun, 05 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

3.8 miles

Today's walk was only a short section of the route as it was my birthday which meant a later start and fitting in a lunch out. The next logical section (Ovington to Cheesefoot Head) would have taken us too long so instead we opted for a cicular route, planned as a figure of eight, but private roads made it more circular and a lot more road than hoped.

Allan King Way - Part 1, Kings Worthy to Ovington

Sat, 04 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

6.8 miles

Allan King Way

Inspired by the Wildmans' Wildmen on the borders, we were encouraged to start a walking project of our own. The Allan King Way is a 45 mile path from Portchester to Winchester. As we live in Portchester and I work near Winchester it seemed an appropriate walk to set out on, although we decided we wanted to walk towards home, so made Winchester our start point.

Canal Holiday Day 4 - Stoke Bruerne to Cosgrove

Tue, 09 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

7 locks
8.6 miles

Model boat in the Canal museum

Laura and I woke up with the dawn chorus and decided to go out first thing for an exploratory walk. We headed up over the tunnel mouth where we found an air vent tower, a field with rabbits and a group of bee hives. It was lovely being the only ones about, with just the wildlife awake with us. Later the morning started properly with the only rain we had the whole week away, so we waited for it to pass before walking back into Stoke Bruerne to visit the Canal Museum.

Canal Holiday Day 3 - Weedon to Stoke Bruerne

Mon, 08 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

No locks
10.1 miles

View through the branches

Reeds

A couple of flying ducks

This day got off to a slow start as the engine wouldn't start, although after phoning Calcutt Boats, Dad managed to get it going, so we arranged to meet the engineer at bridge 29, getting water on the way. Filling up the boat took so long with the water - they have huge tanks and the water seemed to take forever to fill so in the end the engineer met us at the next bridge after the water instead. The problem with the engine was the starter motor and the engineer had to go back and collect the part, so we were stuck in Weedon for most of the morning, but were able to have a nice walk along the towpath there.

Canal Holiday Day 2 - Braunston to Weedon

Sun, 07 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

13 locks
8 miles

Lock

Leaving Braunston tunnel

Wild Burdock

Canal Holiday Day 1 - Picking up Wild Burdock

Sat, 06 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

1 lock
6 miles

Farm buildings

We headed to Napton to meet my parents and collect the boat - on the way we saw a blackboard advertising a cider sale at the Napton Cidery as they were clearing out their stock ready for their new lines. We got to Calcutt Boats at just the right time and Wild Burdock was ready for us to load up. We unloaded the cars into the boats, got kitted out with life jackets and then had our introduction to the boat and how things worked on it.

Birds on Galveston Island

Tue, 26 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

As I hadn't adapted to Central time and still waking up close to UK time I headed out early and drove down to Galveston Island to try and see the local brown pelicans. In Galveston, they get both the brown pelicans, and the invasive white pelicans which have tried to take over.

There is a vast length of beach along the island, and it was so peaceful in the early morning, with just the birds (and the bird watchers) about! I first stopped at a beach side car park and saw the Laughing Gulls and the Willets. Then on the way back along I stopped at Galveston Fishing Pier to see what more I could see if I was a bit further out into the sea. There I was treated to a group of Pelicans flying across in front of me at the end of the pier.

Wed, 20 Mar 2019 21:06:00 +0000

Sun, 17 Mar 2019 09:07:00 +0000

Selsey Bill

Sat, 02 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This Saturday we had a lovely walk along the coast at Selsey Bill with my parents. We started off heading North up towards Pagham Harbour but made it about half way there and then headed back down to the Lifeboat Inn for lunch. After lunch we headed South round the Bill. It was striking particularly on the way back how different the sea was from the calm sheltered side to the end of the point.

Devil's Punch Bowl walk

Sun, 20 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Thu, 17 Jan 2019 11:21:00 +0000

Mon, 14 Jan 2019 09:21:00 +0000

2019 Reading Log

Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Killer Collective - Barry Eisler
Smoke and Summons (Numina #1) - Charlie N Holmberg
The Paradise Key (Harvey Bennett #5) - Nick Thacker
Mark for Blood (Mason Dixon #1) - Nick Thacker
The Mortal Word (Invisible Library #5) - Genevieve Cogman
Fallen Mangrove (Jesse McDermitt #5) - Wayne Stinnett
Unicorn Rescue (Island of Fog Legacies #1) - Keith Robinson
Sinister Roots (Island of Fog Legacies #2) - Keith Robinson
The Shape of Water (Inspector Montalbano #1) - Andrea Camilleri
Reckless Charity (Charity Styles #3) - Wayne Stinnett
Enduring Charity (Charity Styles #4) - Wayne Stinnett
Vigilent Charity (Charity Styles #5) - Wayne Stinnett, Kimberli A. Bindschatel
August Origins (Mackenzie August #1) - Alan Lee
Fatal Exchange (Fatal Series #1) - Russell Blake
Uncle and Ants (A Silicon Valley Mystery #1) - Marc Jedel
Fallen Palm (Jesse McDermitt #2) - Wayne Stinnett
Fallen Hunter (Jesse McDermitt #3) - Wayne Stinnett
Fallen King (Jesse McDermitt #6) - Wayne Stinnett
Rising Charity (Jesse McDermitt #14) - Wayne Stinnett
Rising Water (Jesse McDermitt #15) - Wayne Stinnett
The Hunger Games (Hunger Games #1) - Suzanne Collins
Catching Fire (Hunger Games #2) - Suzanne Collins
Mockingjay (Hunger Games #3) - Suzanne Collins
Fallen Honor (Jesse McDermitt #7) - Wayne Stinnett
Rising Fury (Jesse McDermitt #12) - Wayne Stinnett
What Happens In Vegas... (Dev Haskell #15) - Mike Faricy
Black Nowhere (Lisa Tanchik #1) - Reece Hirsch
Lethal White (Cormoran Strike #4) - Robert Galbraith
Inferno (Talon #5) - Julie Kagawa
The Secret Chapter (Invisible Library #6) - Genevieve Cogman
Rising Spirit (Jesse McDermitt #16) - Wayne Stinnett
The Phantom of New York: Volume I - Peter and the Crown - A.L. Janney

Dawlish Boxing Day Sunrise

Wed, 26 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Thu, 15 Nov 2018 19:19:00 +0000

Mon, 12 Nov 2018 12:26:00 +0000

Walk along Stokes Bay

Sat, 03 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

QE Park and Butser Hill Sunset

Sun, 28 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Lunchtime walk at Hursley

Mon, 22 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Lone Tree

Sat, 20 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Tue, 07 Aug 2018 23:00:00 +0000

Mon, 30 Jul 2018 11:54:00 +0000

Bee visitors

Sat, 09 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Here are a few of the bees that have visited our garden so far this weekend:

Bee from rickymoorhouse on Vimeo.

Wed, 30 May 2018 10:28:00 +0000

Tue, 29 May 2018 09:18:00 +0000

Raspberry Pi Weather Station

Sat, 12 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

For a while I've been meaning to write up the details of the Raspberry Pi weather station that I have built with my eldest daughter. This project builds on a number of examples I've seen across the internet, particularly sensing the weather. This details how our system is put together.

Temperature monitoring

We took two temperature sensors and mounted them in a garden post with one pushed down to the bottom for soil temperature and one in the cap for the air temperature. The one-wire sensors can share the same three wires, so are both connected to a wire leading back to the Raspberry Pi through a hole drilled into the side of the post. For waterproofing we surrounded the whole with hot glue. The post is situated in a shady spot and pushed about 30 centimeters deep in the soil.

Places Visited Map

Thu, 26 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

For a while I've had a variation on my map of the places I've visited - here's a summary of how my current version is working.

The whole site is currently generated by hugo, a static site generator with no server side component. The map is powered by MapBox GL which lets me choose any of the mapbox styles to use for my map. I create a markdown file for each place on the map, with the latitude and longitude in the 'front matter' for the post which looks something like this:

Introducing hem

Wed, 25 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

hem is a synthetic monitoring tool which monitors HTTP resources on a regular schedule, storing details of the time taken and the reponse code returned.

I've been using Uptime at work for a while for endpoint monitoring and over the time we've been using it made a few tweaks or plugins for it - in particular being able to send metrics from Uptime to Graphite. There were also some more substantial changes we were considering making and we'd built up a number of supporting scripts to populate the checks via the Uptime API when hosts changed. We also have all our other monitoring dashboards in Grafana. In this context I decided that what would be nice is a simple tool that could replace the checking piece and feed that data into our graphite data store to be viewed and alerted on from Grafana.

Reducing our plastic use

Sat, 21 Apr 2018 14:30:00 +0000

Over the last few months we've started to try and reduce our use of plastics - especially single use plastics. Here are some of the areas where we've made changes.

View API Error detail

Tue, 17 Apr 2018 14:21:00 +0100

To view the details of the steps in an API in Analytics to assist in debugging you can do the following:

Thu, 08 Feb 2018 18:21:00 +0000

Sun, 04 Feb 2018 10:23:00 +0000

2018 Reading Log

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Legion (Talon #4) - Julie Kagawa
Roads of Madness (Island of Fog #5)- Keith Robinson
Chamber of Ghosts (Island of Fog #6) - Keith Robinson
Valley of Monsters (Island of Fog #7) - Keith Robinson
Summer Crush (Tournament, #4) - B. B. Griffith
The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie
Against the Inquisition - Marcos Aguinis
The Nostradamus Equation (Sam Reilly #6) - Christopher Cartwright
Rising Force (Jesse McDermitt #13) - Wayne Stinnett
Wicked (Wicked Years #1) - Gregory Maguire
Son of a Witch (Wicked Years #2) - Gregory Maguire

Mon, 14 Aug 2017 14:18:00 +0000

Fri, 04 Aug 2017 16:18:00 +0000

Thu, 06 Apr 2017 20:54:00 +0000

Sun, 02 Apr 2017 10:28:00 +0000

2017 Reading Log

Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Yellow Ribbon (Dev Haskell #11) - Mike Faricy
Triple Trouble - Russell Blake
- JET (JET #1)
- JET - Betrayal (JET #2)
- JET - Vengeance (JET #3)
Fallen Series - Wayne Stinnett
- Fallen Out (Jesse McDermitt #1)
- Fallen Palm (Jesse McDermitt #2)
- Fallen Hunter (Jesse McDermitt #3)
Fallen Pride (Jesse McDermitt #4) - Wayne Stinnett
Fallen Tide (Jesse McDermitt #8) - Wayne Stinnett
Fallen Angel (Jesse McDermitt #9) - Wayne Stinnett
Fallen Hero (Jesse McDermitt #10) - Wayne Stinnett
Rising Storm (Jesse McDermitt #11) - Wayne Stinnett
The Tournament Trilogy - B. B. Griffith
- Blue Fall (Tournament #1)
- Grey Winter (Tournament #2)
- Black Spring (Tournament #3)
A Thyme To Die - Jamie Lee Scott
Rogue Wave (Sam Reilly #4) - Christopher Cartwright, Kris Densley
The Cassidy Project (Sam Reilly #5) - Christopher Cartwright, Kris Densley
The Third Temple (Sam Reilly #7) - Christopher Cartwright, Kris Densley
Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot #10) - Agatha Christie
Death on the Nile (Hercule Poirot #17) - Agatha Christie
Murder in Mesopotamia (Poirot) (Hercule Poirot #14) - Agatha Christie
Cards on the Table (Poirot) (Hercule Poirot #15) - Agatha Christie
The Lost Plot (Invisible Library #4) - Genevieve Cogman

Pi Zero as a desklight

Mon, 05 Dec 2016 21:01:12 +0000

When we set up our office earlier in the year I decided on a standing desk which I put together using the Ikea Algot system.
In order to avoid using up desk space with a light I originally planned on a clip on light but then saw my Pi Zero and Unicorn pHat and thought they could make a good alternative.

Hardware

The Raspberry Pi Zero is in a simple case, mounted onto the underside of the shelf above my working space. Attached is it's power cable, a PiHut wireless adapter connected via USB and of course the Unicorn pHat. The power cable is routed down the side of the shelf to my PowerCube, which will eventually be mounted under my work surface but it's sticky pad wasn't strong enough to hold it on the underside of the desk!

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 17:21:00 +0000

Mon, 08 Aug 2016 13:52:00 +0000

Fri, 11 Mar 2016 18:08:00 +0000

Mon, 07 Mar 2016 10:29:00 +0000

Hatching chicks at school

Wed, 24 Feb 2016 07:52:12 +0000

At Jessica's school, where I am a governor and Laura works, they've got an incubator of eggs from Living Eggs, so that the school can watch as they hatch into chicks.

On Monday I got a text from Laura wondering if it would be possible to set up a webcam to watch them hatch. We happened to have a wireless webcam that wasn't being used so that evening I got it out to make sure it was working and configured it with an FTP server to upload photos every minute and if there was motion detected.

2016 Reading Log

Fri, 01 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street - Natasha Pulley
Divergent (Divergent Trilogy, #1) - Veronica Roth
Insurgent (Divergent Trilogy, #2) - Veronica Roth
Last Shot (Dev Haskell #6) - Mike Faricy
The Chase (Isaac Bell #1) - Clive Cussler
JET - Ops Files: Prequel - Russell Blake
Mr Swirlee (Dev Haskell -#2) - Mike Faricy
The Eagle Tree - Ned Hayes
Torch Scene (Reed Ferguson #6) - Renee Pawlish
The Geronimo Breach - Russell Blake
Career of Evil (Cormoran Strike #3) - Robert Galbraith
Bite Me (Dev Haskell #3) - Mike Faricy
Soldier (Talon Saga, Book 3) - Julie Kagawa
Bulldog (Dev Haskell #9) - Mike Faricy
Insatiable (Sydney Rye #3) - Emily Kimelman
The Sam Reilly Collection - Christopher Cartwright
- The Last Airship (Sam Reilly #1)
- The Mahogany Ship (Sam Reilly #2)
- Atlantis Stolen (Sam Reilly #3)
Dying Declaration - Randy Singer
The Enigma Strain (Harvey Bennett #1) - Nick Thacker
A Blind Eye (Adam Kaminski #1) - Jane Gorman
The Solomon Curse (Fargo Adventures #7) - Clive Cussler, Russell Blake
The Cosega Sequence - Brandt Legg
- Cosega Search (Cosega Sequence #1)
- Cosega Storm (Cosega Sequence #2)
- Cosega Shift (Cosega Sequence #3)
Death By A HoneyBee (Josiah Reynolds #1) - Abigail Keam
The Last Airship (Sam Reilly #1) - Christopher Cartwright
Thunder Point (Sean Dillon Series, #2) - Jack Higgins
Dog Gone (Dev Haskell #12) - Mike Faricy
The Lady Who Sang High (Reed Ferguson #7) - Renee Pawlish
Island of Fog (Island of Fog #1) - Keith Robinson
Labyrinth of Fire (Island of Fog #2) - Keith Robinson
Mountain of Whispers (Island of Fog #3) - Keith Robinson
Murder In Paradise - Greg Wilson
Lake of Spirits (Island of Fog #4) - Keith Robinson
The Burning Page (Invisible Library #3) - Genevieve Cogman
Fly by Night (Jammer Davis #2) - Ward Larsen
The Amazon Code (Harvey Bennett #2) - Nick Thacker

Automatically publish your API when you push to github

Sat, 12 Dec 2015 08:40:57 +0000

Updated 11th October 2016 for API Connect

In less than half an hour I could update my project to automatically publish my API in IBM API Connect - Here's the steps...

Sign up for API Connect through Bluemix by creating an API Connect service instance - if you don't already have a Bluemix account you can sign up for a free trial account.

Install and configure the new toolkit CLI - replacing eu with au or us if you chose a different bluemix region:

Fri, 23 Oct 2015 21:48:00 +0000

Fri, 23 Oct 2015 18:22:00 +0000

Wed, 21 Oct 2015 19:33:00 +0000

Wed, 21 Oct 2015 12:50:00 +0000

Wed, 23 Sep 2015 16:26:00 +0000

Sat, 19 Sep 2015 17:43:00 +0000

Thu, 17 Sep 2015 17:54:00 +0000

Mon, 14 Sep 2015 10:40:00 +0000

2015 Reading Log

Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Talon (Talon Saga #1) - Julie Kagawa
Moth (Moth Saga #1) - Daniel Arenson
The Pucelle Connection (Genevieve Lenard #6) - Estelle Ryan
The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike Book 2) - Robert Galbraith
Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass #1) - Sarah J. Maas
Crown of Midnight (Throne of Glass #2) - Sarah J. Maas
Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass #3) - Sarah J. Maas
Rise of the Dragons (Kings and Sorcerers #1) - Morgan Rice
Rise of the Valiant (Kings and Sorcerers #2) - Morgan Rice
Rogue (Talon Saga #2) - Julie Kagawa
A Quest of Heroes (Sorcerer's Ring #1) - Morgan Rice
A March of Kings (Sorcerer's Ring #2) - Morgan Rice
Heat Wave (Nikki Heat #1) - Richard Castle
A Fate of Dragons (Sorcerer's Ring #3) - Morgan Rice
A Cry of Honor (Sorcerer's Ring #4) - Morgan Rice
The Léger Connection (Genevieve Lenard #7) - Estelle Ryan
A Vow of Glory (Sorcerer's Ring #5) - Morgan Rice
Five Minutes Late - Rich Amooi
A Charge of Valor (Sorcerer's Ring #6) - Morgan Rice
Arena One: Slaverunners (Survival Trilogy #1) - Morgan Rice
Holy Island (DCI Ryan #1) - LJ Ross
Tapas, Carrot Cake and a Corpse (Charlotte Denver #1) - Sherri Bryan
Arena Two (Survival Trilogy #2) - Morgan Rice
A Meditation on Murder (An original Death in Paradise story) - Robert Thorogood
Hazardous Duty - Christy Barritt
A Rite of Swords (Sorcerer's Ring #7) - Morgan Rice
The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow (Sinclair's Mysteries) - Katherine Woodfine
The Beekeeper's Apprentice (A Mary Russell & Sherlock Holmes #1) - Laurie R. King
Night of the Assassin (Assassin Series Prequel) - Russell Blake
The Tombs (Fargo Adventures #4) - Clive Cussler, Thomas Perry
Mr Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore - Robin Sloan
The Mayan Secrets (Fargo Adventures #5) - Clive Cussler, Thomas Perry
The Race (Isaac Bell #4) - Clive Cussler
Just One Damned Thing After Another (Chronicles of St Mary's #1) - Jodi Taylor
The Morisot Connection (Genevieve Lenard #8) - Estelle Ryan
A Sky of Spells (Sorcerer's Ring #9) - Morgan Rice
Spartan Gold (Fargo Adventures #1) - Clive Cussler
A Symphony of Echoes (Chronicles of St Mary's #2) - Jodi Taylor
A Second Chance (Chronicles of St Mary's #3) - Jodi Taylor
A Trail Through Time (Chronicles of St Mary's #4) - Jodi Taylor
No Time Like the Past (Chronicles of St Mary's #5) - Jodi Taylor
The Masked City (Invisible Library #2) - Genevieve Cogman
The Thief (Isaac Bell #5) - Clive Cussler, Justin Scott
Lost Empire (Fargo Adventures #2) - Clive Cussler

Great South Run 2014

Sat, 25 Oct 2014 14:49:30 +0000

Great South Run weekend is here! Today we had the 5k run which Laura, Anne and Des took part in and all did very well, and Abi's 1.5k Mini Run - even Jessica was enjoying running on the race track they had there and is keen to do the mini run next time round.

Now all that's left is my one tomorrow - I'm going to be running the 10 mile Great South Run for the first time to raise money for gain. If the technology works you should be able to watch live at http://runkeeper.com/user/rickymoorhouse and you can sponsor me at http://justgiving.com/rickymoorhouse . I'll update this again tomorrow after the race!

Disabling SSLv3

Sat, 18 Oct 2014 06:11:17 +0000

With POODLE the time has come to disable SSLv3 everywhere. There will be clients that break and need fixing but it needs doing. You can read more details and background on the vulnerability.

Here's a few useful snippets from my experience with it this week:

Apache

Make sure the combination you have for the SSLProtocol line disables SSLv2 and v3 - something like: SSLProtocol All -SSLv2 -SSLv3

DataPower

Ensure your crypto profiles have SSLv2 and v3 disabled in the options line:

Traffic Pi

Thu, 17 Jul 2014 09:23:54 +0000

Using my Raspberry Pi, Piglow and the traffic API feeds I have created a script to give me a visual representation of the journey time to work. This gives me an idea of the traffic before I leave the house in the morning, or so that when I'm working at home I can look at it and see how glad I am that I'm not sitting in traffic on the way to work :)

Review of Elasticsearch Server 2nd Edition

Thu, 26 Jun 2014 09:24:54 +0000

Elasticsearch Server Second Edition is a good book to read if you're getting started with Elasticsearch or considering using it. It goes through all the main areas of getting your data indexed and then searching and analysing it.

The book is well written and easy to read through and serves well as a reference guide to refer back to later. It has helped me get an overview of some of the features of Elasticseach that I've not yet used, some of which I hope to explore in further depth following on from the examples in the book. All of the chapters in the book include useful references to sources for further information on the topic covered and for more in-depth coverage the authors recommend going on to read their other book, Mastering Elasticsearch which I hope to read as well as a follow on.

Recovering encrypted filesystems

Tue, 25 Feb 2014 10:25:55 +0000

Boot from Live CD / USB
Decrypt the filesystem

<code class="markdown">cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda5 <span class="emphasis">*hostname*</span>
</code>

Mount filesystems

<code class="sql">mount /dev/dm-2 /mnt
mount /dev/dm-3 /mnt/home
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
mount <span class="comment">--bind /dev /mnt/dev</span>
mount <span class="comment">--bind /sys /mnt/sys</span>
mount <span class="comment">--bind /proc /mnt/proc</span>
</code>

Enter chroot chroot /mnt

/etc/crypttab should have: sda5_crypt UUID=sda5_uuid

2014 Reading Log

Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The Braque Connection (Genevieve Lenard #3) - Estelle Ryan
The Island Murder (Reluctant Detective #2) - Sinclair Macleod
The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
The Cuckoo's Calling: (Cormoran Strike #1) - Robert Galbraith
As The Crow Flies (DI Nick Dixon #1) - Damien Boyd
The Flinck Connection (Genevieve Lenard #4) - Estelle Ryan
The Armchair Detective: 'The Pilot' - Ian Shimwell
A Warrior's Redemption (Warrior Kind #1) - Guy Stanton III
A Warrior's Journey (Warrior Kind #2) - Guy Stanton III
A Warrior's Legacy (Warrior Kind #3) - Guy Stanton III
A Warrior's Return (Warrior Kind #4) - Guy Stanton III
A Warrior's Revenge (Warrior Kind #5) - Guy Stanton III
Agent in the Dark (Agents for Good #4) - Guy Stanton III
The Courbet Connection (Genevieve Lenard #5) - Estelle Ryan
Way of the Sword - Trevor Scott
The Geneva Trap (Liz Carlyle #7) - Stella Rimington
Dead Line (Liz Carlyle #4) - Stella Rimington
Secret Asset (Liz Carlyle #2) - Stella Rimington
The Invisible Library (Invisible Library #1) - Genevieve Cogman

Camping in Cornwall

Wed, 18 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

First day of school

Sat, 14 Sep 2013 10:11:16 +0000

Jessica on her first day at school

Great afternoon for a bike ride on Southsea Common

Sun, 18 Aug 2013 14:47:39 +0000

Blog hosting wonderings...

Mon, 24 Jun 2013 19:46:28 +0000

A while back I had an e-mail from my web hosting company saying they were increasing the price for the package I was using. This got me thinking about whether the route I'd taken for hosting was the best option and if I'm getting my money's worth there. For reference I had a reseller hosting package, hosting a few sites for family members using not very much disk space or bandwidth - certainly not near the allowance on the package. So I started thinking about what I would do if it was just my site, and this is my thinking out loud/somewhere to document my ideas/findings:

Measure sunlight with Raspberry Pi

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 20:54:54 +0000

For Christmas the girls gave me a Raspberry Pi, and for my first project I decided to try recording how bright the sunlight at our window is using an old Webcam.

The basic idea is:

Capture a photo
Analyse the brightness of the photo
Log it (and eventually publish to cosm)

So first of all getting the webcam set up - My webcam is a Logitech Quickcam Express, which proved to work nicely with the Raspberry Pi, after plugging it in, it showed up straight away in the output to lsusb: ricky@pi ~ $ lsusb Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9512 Standard Microsystems Corp. Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp. Bus 001 Device 004: ID 046d:0840 Logitech, Inc. QuickCam Express

Gunwharf Fireworks

Fri, 02 Nov 2012 22:59:14 +0000

Mini Great South Run

Sat, 27 Oct 2012 16:42:48 +0000

This morning I had fun doing the mini great south run with Abi, unfortunately RunKeeper crashed as we went through the start line but I think we did the 1.5k in roughly 11minutes. She had a great time and did it with a mixture of running at a good pace and then walking for a little bit until she saw too many people overtake, then she would pick up pace and dive through gaps in front of her. She enjoyed the stretch on grass much more than the road and path sections and was thrilled with her medal at the end.

Bagel making

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 21:24:46 +0000

After seeing the bagel making on "The Great British Bake Off" the other night, I decided it would be fun to give it a go myself. So this evening using this recipe I did…

Not quite as exciting as the ones they made on the programme, but they seemed to go well for a first attempt!

Dolbadarn Castle

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 11:50:28 +0000

[caption id="attachment_7453" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Sketch of Dolbadarn Castle, Wales[/caption]

Send out your light and your truth

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 21:32:15 +0000

Send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling!

Psalm 43:3

Tweeting Google Calendar reminders with Postmark

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:41:09 +0000

A while back I wrote my original script to tweet event reminders from Google Calendar and it's been through a couple of iterations since and been broken for a while. Well finally I got round to update it to use OAuth to connect to twitter using the twitteroauth library and switched to using Postmark Inbound for handling the incoming e-mail.

What you will need

Web hosting with php
A Google calendar attached to a Gmail account

Psalm 119:37

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 22:30:19 +0000

Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things; and give me life in your ways.

Psalm 119:37

Looking back on 2011

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Greg and Poppy's wedding in February with the girls as bridesmaids.
My 30th birthday and combined birthday celebrations with my mum's 60th in the Cotswolds at the end of April.
Going to the London Men's Convention with Des and some of the men from church.
Starting to get into gardening and growing lots of tomatoes.
Holiday to Malta with Des where the girls swimming really took off greatly.
Our summer Hampshire pass, visiting some of the sites around - and especially our family trip to Basingstoke to visit Basing House and Milestones museum
Our lovely anniversary weekend in Torquay thanks to Anne and Des.
Abi starting school and her space party for her birthday
Visiting the Royal Landscape and meeting up with Linda and Dave on their way back to Canada

Merry Christmas

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 10:00:06 +0000

My 2011 Christmas Card

Get your advent calendars here

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 11:58:13 +0000

Yes I know it's now the 2nd December so this is a day late, but here's a list of the online advent calendars I've seen so far (and I'll probably keep adding to it!)

24 Ways - Web development tutorial every day till Christmas

DTS Advent Devotionals - A devotional each day on the names of Jesus

Adfont Calendar - A free webfont every day in advent

Prezzo - A competition to win vouchers each day

11/11/11 11:11

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 11:11:07 +0000

What I was doing...

Fixing a bug in some SQL

But God did not permit Laban harm

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 22:45:31 +0000

You know that I have served your father with all my strength, yet your father has cheated me and changed my wages ten times. But God did not permit him to harm me. (Genesis 31:6-7)

In the many years that Jacob had worked for Laban, he had a tough time. First he agreed to work for 7 years so that he could marry Rachel and then Laban swapped his daughters so that he ended up marrying Leah instead, then he had to work a further 7 years to marry Rachel. Laban consistently deceived Jacob, and attempted to cause him harm by changing his mind and their agreements so many times, but as he did, God protected Jacob from coming to harm. Just before these verses we see God at work in the situation in that which ever marked cattle Laban said Jacob could have, God caused to prosper.

A chat with Vodafone...

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 12:54:22 +0000

The vodafone website doesn't seem to have any record of my data usage and is confused about how much I'm allowed (see screenshot below), so when I received a text from them saying I was near my limit (with no detail as to how close, just the price for going over) I decided to get in touch with them about it.

Here's the full transcript from my online chat with them, with just my personal details removed:

Firewall rules for Synergy in iptables

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 12:02:31 +0000

For a while I've been turning off iptables to let my secondary machine connect as synergy client to let me use one keyboard and mouse across both machines. Finally today I decided to set up the rules properly to do it, so here's how:

Create a new rule file in the iptables chain directory for incoming rules:

sudo vi /etc/iptables.d/filter/INPUT/53-custom-synergys.rule

with the following lines in it:

# Allows incoming flows for Synergy.
-A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 24800 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 24800 -j ACCEPT

Restart iptables for the rules to take effect

But God came to Abimilech in a dream

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 19:47:42 +0000

Abraham told Abimelech Sarah was his sister, so he'd taken her to be his wife. Before he does anything, God comes to him in a dream to warn him.

God keeps Abimelech from sinning thus resulting in him bringing fear of God to him and his people and providing for Abraham and Sarah.

Reaction: Arose early to obey

"You are a dead man...for the penalty of your sin is death"

God comes and prevents the sin from increasing - he protects Sarah where Abraham should have done, but more than that - Abimelech's nation now fears God. For God always recieves the glory.

Pray more

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 07:43:18 +0000

If we were to talk less and pray more, things would be better than they are in the world
John Owen, The Holy Spirit: His Gifts and Power [Christian Focus, 2004], 362

But God remembered Noah

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 19:53:40 +0000

He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed on the earth 150 days. But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided. (Genesis 7:23-8:1 ESV)

MySQL: From multi-master to circular replication

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:32:52 +0000

Disable anything that will write to the database
- Update the my.cnf files for all servers to support circular replication, by adding log-slave-updates and ensuring you have unique server ids and the auto increment values are suitable. Then restart mysql to pick up the config changes.
- Ensure your existing replication is up-to-date using: SHOW SLAVE STATUS
- Stop replication on both existing servers using STOP SLAVE
- Create a backup of the database from the server that will be just before your new server in the circle using: mysqldump --master-data=1 -a -c -Q {db} > {filename}

Distraction free writing - Artsy Editor or Wordpress 3.2

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 12:10:47 +0000

For a while I've been following the updates on a new plugin for Wordpress - Artsy Editor which gives you a completely clean page in which to write your post with easy access to the formatting options through a popup which appears intelligently when you select text, as seen in the image above. You can also drag an image into the editor to upload and insert it where you are typing. All in all it works really smoothly.

From around the web...

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 12:17:04 +0000

Here's a few articles I've read recently that are helpful and challenging:

In Reminders Are More Effective Than Rebukes, Tullian Tchividjian reminds us of the need as Christians to regularly remind each other of who we are in Christ, rather than focusing on our sin and that we re-focus on Jesus for "because of Christ’s work on your behalf, God does not dwell on your sin the way you do"

A prayer for strength for one of those days: Dear Lord Jesus, it’s looking like one of THOSE days ... Am I whining? Yes I am, Lord, but I’m bringing my bad attitude and my very busy day to you.

My new profile pic

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 11:47:40 +0000

Reminders are more effective than rebukes

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 16:34:11 +0000

I need to be told by those around me that every time I sin I’m momentarily suffering from an identity crisis: forgetting who I _actually_ belong to, what I _really_ want at my remade core, and all that is_ already_ mine in Christ.

Tullian Tchividjian - Reminders are more effective than rebukes

Sort by Surname

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 13:36:24 +0000

ORDER BY SUBSTRING_INDEX(full_name, ' ', -1)

Eight

Sat, 04 Jun 2011 11:00:23 +0000

Drawn in pencil, photographed with iPhone - post processed in Camera+ and Iris.

I'm 30 today!

Thu, 05 May 2011 04:00:41 +0000

So to celebrate my 30th, with thanks to my mum, here's 30 photos of me, one for each year:

Would you record a Psalm for me?

Thu, 05 May 2011 01:00:56 +0000

For a while, I've been wondering about putting together a different kind of audio bible, one with a different person reading each chapter, but I didn't get very far with it - so I've decided to test this out and collect recordings of the first 30 psalms for my 30th birthday.

So please could you record me a psalm for my birthday?

Reserve your psalm in the comments below and then you can either post a link to the recording or email me the file ( ricky at this domain). Please can you include with the recording which Psalm it is and your name.

Systems Bar

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 21:05:02 +0000

New systems bar for HostDB shows the number of systems with actions required and has quick links to recent system records viewed.

Sanctification - Rom 12:1-2

Sun, 27 Mar 2011 07:25:23 +0000

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:1-2, ESV

"Do not be conformed to this world" is in the passive as it is something that happens subconsciously so we need to make a conscious effort not to let this happen.

Hope and Fear - Psalm 56:3-4

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 18:55:01 +0000

When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me?

Psalm 56:3-4, ESV

God is Faithful - Deu 7:9

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 13:07:28 +0000

Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations.

Deuteronomy 7:9, ESV

Banana & Chocolate chip muffins

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 16:16:49 +0000

Had a lovely afternoon making these Banana & Chocolate chip muffins with Abi and Jessica:

I'd used the last 2 eggs at lunchtime so when we decided to do some cooking I searched for recipes without eggs - turns out that the best thing to search for is eggless recipes. I then found the recipe for these muffins which after I made a couple of alterations to, we had all the ingredients for. We all had fun making them and they were delicious, although unfortunately I decided to only make half the quantities so we only had 6! The recipe with my alterations is below (makes 6)

5 Minute Mug Brownie

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 22:27:40 +0000

A while back I saw that Pete had posted this on twitter, and we decided it was worth a try - since then I can't remember how many times we've made them as it's so simple and tastes good! Just posting it on my blog so it's easier to find in the future!

Ingredients

4 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil
A splash of vanilla extract (we didn't use this)

Getting more from your meetings

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 19:47:47 +0000

From the earliest days of the church, first with Jesus and his disciples, then with Paul and his protégés, and on down the line, the gospel moves forward because one generation of leaders cares enough about the next generation of leaders to invite them into the room.

Jamie Munson - Getting more from your meetings

Treasure Island

Sat, 18 Dec 2010 22:07:26 +0000

This afternoon we took the girls to the New Theatre Royal to watch Treasure Island, thanks to winning tickets in their twitter competition.

The set was really impressive with so many different things to spot with Abi before the show started, and had a fantastic ship's bridge, which doubled as the tavern entrance.

The show started with the beating of a drum and a fiddle player on stage, then the musicians took over and it developed into a big opening number, a combination which returned several times throughout, making great use of rhythmic elements intertwining with music from the excellent musicians.

Recreating swipe to reveal in HTML, CSS and JS

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:19:35 +0000

One of the things I really like about the interface in Tweetie / Twitter for iPhone is being able to swipe a tweet to reveal actions beneath it. This is my attempt to recreate it using HTML, CSS3 and Javascript. The main swiping action seems to work nicely, but to complete it, I'd like to add a bit more bounciness, a sound effect on swipe (using ?) and have better handling of non-swipe actions.

10/10/10 10:10

Sun, 10 Oct 2010 18:31:22 +0000

10/10/10 10:10 - where I was:

Review: Surprised by Grace

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 21:50:52 +0000

Surprised by Grace: God's Relentless Pursuit of Rebels by Tullian Tchividjian

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Very clear and challenging look at the book of Jonah, showing us that the gospel is not just for those who haven't yet heard it but something that we as Christians need to keep coming back to. The book of Jonah points us to God and how he deals with Jonah's rebellion and ultimately our own rebellion.

MySQL Locking

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 15:17:56 +0000

After experimenting a bit with MySQL locking today, I thought I'd make a note of what I'd discovered:

To create a lock, you need to use:

<code>LOCK TABLES table1 [READ |WRITE], table2 [READ |WRITE]</code>

READ is used to stop other people changing the table while you read from it. WRITE is used to stop other people reading the table while you write to it.

Once you have issued a LOCK TABLES statement, you will not have access to any tables you didn't include.

Jonah Header

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 16:39:57 +0000

Our new Momentum devotional series on Jonah started today - here's a glimpse of my header design.

Recover from "Failed to open the relay log"

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 14:17:12 +0000

If you find that after rebooting your MySQL slave it stops replicating with the master and you see the "Failed to open the relay log" error in the logs it is probably caused by MySQL putting it's relay logs in /var/run by default, which gets cleared out on boot.

To fix this, you need to change the location MySQL uses for the logging by adding the following line to the [mysqld] section of /etc/my.cnf

Drawing of me

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 07:20:17 +0000

Abi drew this for me. She says I'm not a monster, I just have my teeth out!

Self portrait

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 12:47:45 +0000

A traced picture on my iPhone, styled and touched up a bit for my twitter avatar and if you look closely, you can find it on my blog too... I'm really liking Adobe Ideas for quick sketches, so there might well be more pictures of family and friends coming soon!

Monster #2

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 18:00:01 +0000

Same as #1 this was sketched in Adobe Ideas and finished in Sumo paint. I will give them names eventually, but for now Abi wants to call this one "princess bird"

Monster #1

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:40:39 +0000

This is Monster #1, his outline was drawn in Adobe Ideas on the iPhone, and then the colouring was added using Sumo Paint

Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 09:56:35 +0000

Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.

Edward V Berard

Substitute fruit

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 08:17:51 +0000

Laura: Would you like some raspberries? Abi: I don't like raspberries. Can you get me ... erm ... a carrot instead? Laura: How about a banana? Abi: Oh Yeah! (excitedly)

Peacock

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 06:01:49 +0000

Whilst browsing through my pictures on Flickr, Abi saw this and said:

"I always wished I could have a pet peacock"

Only load jQuery if not already present

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 14:01:59 +0000

Very useful method of ensuring jQuery is loaded before running the code that needs it - from How to build a web widget (using jQuery) - Alex Marandon

[js] /******** Load jQuery if not present *********/ if (typeof jQuery === "undefined" || jQuery.fn.jquery !== '1.4.2') { var script_tag = document.createElement('script'); script_tag.setAttribute("type","text/javascript"); script_tag.setAttribute("src", "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js") script_tag.onload = main; // Run main() once jQuery has loaded script_tag.onreadystatechange = function () { // Same thing but for IE if (this.readyState == 'complete' || this.readyState == 'loaded') main(); } document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(script_tag); } else { main(); } [/js]

Javascript Key Codes

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 13:06:01 +0000

37: left

38: up

39: right

40: down

Doh!

Fri, 28 May 2010 09:47:06 +0000

Jessica was reaching for Laura's iPod

"You can't play with the iPod, you're too small"

Jessica: "Doh!"

Useful Ubuntu Stuff

Mon, 24 May 2010 13:50:13 +0000

This post is a dumping ground for useful Ubuntu bits and pieces that aren't worth a full post on their own.

Useful Packages

Lookit - captures screenshots and upload them to a specified server, then copies the URL to the clipboard - ppa:lookit/ppa
Teatime - simple timer, in a Unity launcher
Giver - simple file sharing within the same network - install
Docky - nice dock - install To get the file browser working nicely with the dock, you need to:

NAS Hacking

Mon, 10 May 2010 21:06:51 +0000

A while back, we close to filling up the partition on our desktop machine with photos, so I decided to get a second hard drive. In the end, instead of a hard drive, I decided to by the WD My Book World Edition which is a basic Linux server with a 1TB hard drive.

Here's my notes on what I've done with it so far:

Enable ssh
Install optware
Install some useful optware packages (e.g. cron, perl etc)

Okehampton Extended Services Website

Fri, 07 May 2010 16:29:28 +0000

Cauliflower

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 12:09:40 +0000

I don't like cauliflower. It's too white and I can't see it.

Abi (holding a piece of cauliflower)

Restore Default Panels

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 09:08:31 +0000

Been using these commands quite a bit recently as I experiment with moving the panels about.

gconftool --recursive-unset /apps/panel pkill gnome-panel

from Watching the Net

Wow

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:33:09 +0000

Octipens

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 21:05:02 +0000

While drawing aliens with Abi, I drew this octipens

Delete directories older than 90 days

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:25:16 +0000

find /var/log/hostdb/* -type d -mtime +90 -exec rm -rf {} ;

-type d only look at directories, f would be files -mtime +90 modified time greater than 90 days ago

Import key into apt

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 10:09:13 +0000

wget -q http://tools.hursley.ibm.com/repo/pubkey -O- | sudo apt-key add -

Load CSV data into MySQL

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:20:58 +0000


    load data local infile 'export.csv' into table table_name
    fields terminated by ','
    enclosed by '"'
    lines terminated by 'n'
    (field_list)

Abii monster

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:23:37 +0000

Abi drew me this monster: Her name is A-b-i-i and she is 5. She is mad because she is sick.

My graze snacks arrived!

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:03:19 +0000

My graze box arrived just before lunch and looked fantastic.Â I've had the pineapple and that was delicious and very juicy - looking forward to eating the rest of the box later!

If you want to try it for yourself, you can get your first box free.

700 chocolate bars

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:09:56 +0000

My entry for "The Art of Green and Blacks" - a picture made from 700 chocolate bars

What defines you?

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +0000

Blessed is the manâ€¨,
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.

Psalm 1:1-2 (ESV)

To be blessed is to know God's favour and experience true happiness. This blessing comes from taking counsel from God rather than from those who have rejected his counsel, the wicked. It's important to know whose advice and counsel you are following and whether it is rooted in God or in human sin and rebellion.

Useful SQL

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:00:11 +0000

update [table_name] set [field_name] = replace([field_name], '[string_to_find]', '[string_to_replace]');

Replace within a field

New desk layout

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:35:09 +0000

Google Calendar to Twitter

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:14:20 +0000

For our Momentum men's events we have a Google Calendar that we use to manage the upcoming events, and this gets pulled into our website using the Wordpress plugin ICSCalendar. Recently I set up a twitter account as well, and decided that it would be useful to provide reminders of events on there, which people could then follow and receive SMS updates for.

Initially I had a look around to see what I could find, and came across Calendar Tweet, but that didn't do quite what I was looking for. Then I remembered smtp2web.com, which you can send e-mails to and it will post them to your website over http. So I set up our gmail account to forward the event reminders to my smtp2web e-mail address and built a PHP script to receive the content, parse it and send a nicely formatted message to twitter.

Guilty Conscience

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 10:39:18 +0000

One of Abi's favorite games recently has been to pretend to be on the telephone, having a conversation with someone and then pass the phone around saying "I'll just pass you over to Daddy". Today when she passed the phone over to me, we had the following conversation:

Me (talking on the toy phone):

Hello?

Really?

Why did she do that?

Abi (protesting profusely):

I didn't!

Watch out for the Abirazzi

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:30:24 +0000

Abi wants a boat

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 12:49:59 +0000

Abi has recently decided that she wants a boat

Abi: Can you give me some money?

Me: How much do you need?

Abi: Mummy, how much do we need?

Mummy: £20,000

Abi: Yes (looking at me)

Me: Sorry I haven't got that much

Abi;s Butterfly

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 09:10:17 +0000

(Drawn on the computer with a stylus)

Currently reading…

Sun, 24 May 2009 20:54:50 +0000

I seem to have started more books than I can read at the moment, currently I've got the following on the go:

The Bible - Both NIV and ESV (currently reading through Exodus, and dipping into 1 and 2 Peter)
Know and Tell the Gospel - John Chapman
Effective Men's Ministry - NCMM
15 Minutes Alone with God for Men - Bob Barnes

My Dad’s van

Sun, 24 May 2009 20:36:58 +0000

View Larger Map

Hursley minibus mentioned on BBC News

Thu, 07 May 2009 10:30:50 +0000

I created the twitter feed based on a JSON feed of the geographic location of the minibus provided by my colleague. I then compare the coordinates of the minibus with a set of bounding boxes stored in a database. If the bus is within squares defined in the database, then the pre-defined description is sent to twitter so that anyone following the bus can receive updates as to where it is.

Linux: Extend Filesystem

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:08:34 +0000

lvextend -L +2G /dev/basevg/var_lib_mysql

Add 2GB to the logical volume var_lib_mysql in basevg

resize2fs /dev/basevg/var_lib_mysql

Resize the filesystem /dev/basevg/var_lib_mysql

Other useful commands:

vgs

list volume groups

lvs

list logical volumes

Linux: What is using up disk space?

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:50:43 +0000

du -m | sort -nr | head

du -m

summarises disk usage from current path recursively (in megabytes)

sort -nr sorts the output numerically in reverse

head restricts output to the top 10 lines

adapted from Linux Reviews

Customising Pocket Ubuntu for Windows

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:08:14 +0000

I've been playing about with Portable Ubuntu for Windows, as a replacement for my secondary machine at work, and customised the system a bit for my liking. This is going to be a working post for me to add notes on what I've changed so that I can find it again! Initially I was planning to build my own image based on Cooperative Linux, but decided that as Portable Ubuntu for Windows had most things configured it made a better starting point.

Sharing a printer from XP to Vista

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:19:01 +0000

After quite a while of not being able to print from our laptop to the shared printer on our XP desktop, I finally got it working last night thanks to my Dad.

Here's the instructions:

Make sure you can see the XP computer from Vista.

If you can't:

make sure the workgroup is the same (as the defaults are different)

In Vista, go to Computer, System Properties
make sure file and print sharing is allowed through the firewall - in our case we had to reset the firewall rules on our XP machine and re-add the ones we wanted for this to work:

Strictly Come Dancing Live Tour

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 21:51:57 +0000

Last weekend we went up to the O2 arena for the Strictly Come Dancing Tour and we had a fantastic day. Getting up there went really smoothly - the roads were clear and the views of the snow on the surrounding countryside was amazing. We got up there at about 11 o'clock and thought that we'd beat the rush and head straight to Nando's for lunch - annoyingly they didn't open till 12 so we headed back to Starbucks for coffee and a snack to give us energy for the hour before we could eat! We then explored the 'Entertainment Avenue' and headed back to Nando's for lunch. We got in there first and were glad of that as we saw how big the queue was once we'd got our food.

Another baby on the way...

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 21:15:26 +0000

At last our 12 week scan arrived. It had felt like it was a really long way, but it seemed to come round quite quickly once Christmas had gone. So this evening we finally got to see our new little baby, and it was wonderful.

It had been a bit worrying initially as we couldn't find the heartbeat with the doppler we'd rented and the midwife couldn't find it either when she tried on Tuesday. But all the other noises were as expected.

Too much CBeebies?

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:05:15 +0000

Today when I was in town with Abi, we saw a man sitting on a bench â€“ she pointed at him and said,

"It's Grandad Tumble"

I said, "It's not Grandad Tumble"

She said, "It is Grandad Tumble isn't it! Okay!

Read to you

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 21:47:21 +0000

As I was reading with Abi before she went to bed tonight, she decided that she wanted to read:

**Abi: **Abi want to read to you

**Me: **Ok, let me find you the page...

**Abi: **Angel visited Mary ... you're having a baby!

**Abi: **What's the baby called?

**Me: **Jesus

**Abi: **Yes, thats right!

Wake up…

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 20:28:30 +0000

As Abi was going to bed, we had the following conversation:

**Abi:**Abi to wake up early

**Abi:**Abi wake up at 3

**Me:**Thats too early - how about 8?

**Abi:**Abi wake up at 10 to 7

On the floor for landing

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 15:20:15 +0000

For the first part of the flight back from Malta, we had fun with Abi as she enjoyed the flight and liked her mini seat just between us as we'd folded up the arm rest.

After we'd had the in-flight meal on the return journey, and after Abi had fallen asleep, my stomach started to feel a bit funny so I got up to stretch my legs and get some water. I got as far as the galley, started to ask for some water and that's the last thing I remember until the black haze cleared enough to see some blurry shapes that resembled the stewards around me.

Chop and chomp in perl

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 10:23:28 +0000

Just a reminder, so I remember the difference! - chomp is a safer version of "chop" removes any trailing string that matches what perl thinks is a new line)

` $string = "abcdef";
chop($string) # $s is now f, $string is now abcde
chomp($string) # $string is still now abcde

$string = "abcdefn";
chomp($string) # $string is now abcdef
`

What a fun day!

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 21:33:24 +0000

We've had a fantastic day today - done loads and now I'm exhausted!

We started off with visiting the Portsmouth & Hampshire Art Society at the Portsmouth Cathedral - there were some fantastic pictures there and Abi enjoyed it particularly the boat pictures. Then we had to dash off to a Kati, Dillon and Duncan's birthday party that Abi had been invited to, which was really nice as there were lots of our friends from church there and Abi had lots of fun playing with the other children.

Abi Loves Spider

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 09:30:14 +0000

This morning Laura spotted a spider in the bath and asked me to remove it. I picked up the spider and showed it to Abi. I then took the spider outside. Abi slammed the door behind me and screamed in protest.

When I came back without the spider and shut the door, she held out her hand as if to hold the spider and said "Abi loves spider"

Blog workings

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:55:44 +0000

This blog has been through various different iterations mostly based on custom written code- I tried Wordpress for a while, but didn't get on with it - it was too complicated for what I wanted, and I got too much comment spam (mostly filtered out, but still a lot to check it wasn't filtering valid comments).

A while ago I decided that I wanted to include content that I'd created elsewhere into my blog, so initially attempted this with the timeline approach - however this took the content too far away from the front page. In this latest iteration, all content is included in the main flow of the blog with different rendering styles for different types of content.

Help Firefox set a World Record

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 12:22:25 +0000

Update- Download day is today! - go get Firefox...

When Firefox 3 is released, the Firefox team are attempting to set a world record for the highest number of downloads of a piece of software in 24 hours - why not join in?

Don’t worry

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:47:29 +0000

After we read the story of Cain and Abel with Abi this morning:

God sees everything including what you are thinking

Abi

Don't worry

Abi goes a swimming…in the bath

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 04:54:37 +0000

The other night when Abi was in the bath, she decided to do some swimming. She went down onto all fours, and then lifted her feet up to float along the surface of the water. Like this she 'swam' lengths of the bath with her hands on the bottom.

MySQL Log Rotation

Thu, 29 May 2008 15:08:27 +0000

Make sure that expire_logs_days is set to ensure that log rotation takes place

Abi’s Prayer

Fri, 02 May 2008 08:26:21 +0000

For a short while when we've been having our morning family devotional time together Abi has been repeating a prayer word by word after me - usually something intended to be like "Thank-you Lord for mummy and daddy" but usually when she's said 'mummy' and I say 'and' she adds 'Abi' but this morning I asked her if she wanted to pray and said 'repeat after me', and she says:

Extending a logical volume using reiserfs

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:08:20 +0000

Just recording this so I can find it again!

` nandu:~ # lvextend -L +2G /dev/basevg/opt

  Extending logical volume opt to 5.00 GB  

  Logical volume opt successfully resized  



**nandu:~ #** resize_reiserfs _/dev/basevg/opt_  



resize_reiserfs 3.6.19 (2003 www.namesys.com)  

resize_reiserfs: On-line resizing finished successfully.  



**nandu:~ #**

London mens convention 2008

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 11:39:13 +0000

Just had the first session entitled 'What is the gospel?' looking at Romans 1:1-6. Go Paul's introduction to the letter there is a nice summary.

From God...about Jesus...for everyone

The talks were all very good and left me with lots to think about.

I was particularly struck by the talks about heaven and hell, which gave a really clear explanation of the motives for evangelism. As when we die we are faced with either eternal life or eternal punishment as the situation is very serious. The last talk was very encouraging and challenging looking at sharing our faith with friends through the bible after prayer.

Polventon Publicity Materials

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 11:46:10 +0000

I designed these for Polventon House Care Home to be given to social workers so that they had information to hand about what care is available at Polventon. One key thing to communicate was that Assisted Living is also available alongside the care home.

Center Parcs 2008

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 22:13:09 +0000

We had a lovely holiday last week at Center Parcs - we'd booked it almost a year ago to make use of the discount they give if you rebook within 28 days of getting home so we were looking forward to it for a long time! It was so different to last time we went, as last time Abi was only tiny and not yet moving around, so we carried her around in the sling most of the time. This year she likes to walk around for herself and currently has a fascination with stairs - so every time she saw steps of any kind she would say 'up stairs' (even if she was at the top of them!) and head towards them. Also this year she was big enough to travel round in a bike trailer which after getting used to it she loved. Having bikes seemed to make everywhere seem so much closer and easier to get to.

Abi’s word of the day

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 22:25:18 +0000

"Nemo" - Abi

Milk

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 09:57:27 +0000

Abi now knows how to get her milk! First she'll use the sign for milk:

If we don't notice, she do it again with sounds and then sometimes if we're in the kitchen she'll point to her bottles followed by the fridge and the microwave (just in case we've forgotten how to!). One time she even went as far as to get the empty milk bottle out of the recycling bin and hold it up to me!

British Gas Website Regression

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I had an e-mail from British Gas today telling me that my bill is now ready to view online on their website. We use their paperless billing to reduce the junk that comes through the front door, but last time I went to their website (probably about 3 months ago when I got the previous bill) they'd move to a new 'improved' site:

However, their website now only allows me to see one of my 2 accounts (2 - I thought I only had one as a dual-fuel customer!) So if I want to manage my Gas and Electricity online I have to use 2 seperate e-mail addresses. I've phoned them up twice to ask about this and neither time could they tell me when it will be fixed. At least this time they said I could have the paper bills for free until it's sorted. Aparently each of the accounts is related to a unique customer id which is used by the website, so I guess to them I'm 2 seperate people, sharing a name, house, and dual-fuel discount. What an odd system!

Abi, gloves and shoes

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 20:05:12 +0000

Today we took Abi to get her first real shoes - we'd originally tried to go yesterday, but were too close to the closing time for Clarks so they could just measure her, but there wasn't time to sell us any shoes (huh?). Today we managed to get there in plenty of time, had her measured again and then had to choose the shoes - we ended up with these lovely ones (which Abi really likes):

Abi Swimming

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 23:00:00 +0000

//flv_ricky('video_swim','abi-swim');

I know this video has been on Laura's facebook for a while, but I wanted it here too as it's sooo cute!

Abi has been doing so well with her swimming and it's lots of fun taking her. Last week, she had her first solo underwater swim - which meant she swam between the instructor and me underwater. (It was only a very short distance, but amazing!) Tomorrow is her last session of the current term, which seems to have flown by, but we're now booked onto the next term so it'll only be a weeks gap in between.

First Step

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 08:17:43 +0000

This morning just as I was leaving for work, Abi decided that she wanted to follow me as she often does and came crawling after me towards the front door and peered round it as I opened it and then continued to go through the doorway. At this point Laura picked her up and stood her on the floor a little way back from the doorway. She took a step to the side!! I know it's only a little step but it was a big moment for us and we're very pleased with her!

“Baby”

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 23:00:00 +0000

[Baby -Abi](http://samespirit.net/ricky/audio/abibaby.mp3) (mp3)

First Little Dippers Session

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 23:00:00 +0000

After problems with the weekend workshop that we'd originally booked on we finally got round to Abi's first swimming lesson today.

She seemed a bit nervous as we were waiting to get into the pool and watching the previous class finish as they did they're underwater swims and being thrown towards their parents. However she loved it once we were in. She loved having the other babies (She was the oldest in the group for a change) around and watching them and seemed to have lots of fun with the lesson itself. She did very well with her holding onto the side and loved her splashing into the pool as usual. The highlight though was floating on her back - she's never been particularly happy with floating and I hadn't got the hang of how to hold her before, but they showed us a different way to do it and she was brilliant - she seemed to love it.

A bath-time song

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 23:00:00 +0000

Can you go splish splish splish like a little fish? splish splish A fish that goes splish splish splish

A fish goes splish splish splish
But what goes splosh?

A baby giraffe!

<img src="http://samespirit.net/ricky/images/giraffe.png" style="float:left;"></img>Can you go splash splash splash like a baby giraffe?
  splash splash
A giraffe that goes splash splash splash
when he's having his bath splash splash

A fish goes splish splish splish;
a giraffe goes splash splash splash;
but what goes splosh?

An albatross!

Can you go splosh splosh splosh like an albatross?
  splosh splosh
diving in the sea splosh splosh
when he's finding his tea splosh splosh

Watching log files for something

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 23:00:00 +0000

Found from: techblog:

tail -f /var/log/apache2/access_log | sed "s/rss/Ctrl+vCtrl+[[41;1mrssCtrl+vCtrl+[[0m/g"

This example is looking for people accessing the rss feed so I can see how frequently it gets hit (whilst still seeing what else is going on). With this I spotted that one of the Firefox extensions I was using(piclens) was automatically downloading the detected rss feed with every page access. It's a nice extension and I can see why it does that, but I don't want to be accessing rss feeds automatically and potentially multiple times as I use sites.

Abi’s messy adventure

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 23:00:00 +0000

This morning just as I was getting ready to leave for work I came back through into the dining room to see Laura and Abi, but Laura was in there on her own. - Abi had gone off for an explore as she's been doing more and more recently. When I got through to the living room, I saw Abi had got some thing in her mouth, and unusually it looked quiet big, so I went round to investigate further and discovered she had the lid to our Nandos' peri-peri ketchup in her mouth covered in ketchup and the bottle was laying on the floor next to her.

New Blog Design

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 23:00:00 +0000

Over the past few weeks I've been reading a selection of articles on design and design theory, so I decided to make some tweaks to my blog design to try out some of these ideas.

Overall the new design is pretty similar to how it looked before, but some of the key things I've changed are:

Tabs now look a lot better</h4

I've changed the tabs to use a roll-over image instead of CSS colours and hackery. This makes it look more consistent across different browsers and I think it looks tidier.

Lawn in a lunch break

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000

After a lot of annoyances with the rubber mulch that we'd decided on previously for our garden: Abi nearly choking on a piece of mulch; Cats using it as a litter tray; and it loosing it's colour; we decided we'd try a lawn instead. So last Friday I spent my lunch break laying a new lawn in our back garden.

I worked from home for the day so that I could be here for the delivery and to make it easier to get the turf down quickly. By 9 o'clock, the turf had arrived from Denmead Turf and I'd moved it all through to the back garden ready to start so at lunchtime I decided it was worth making a start at laying it and see how it went. The turf went down easily, I really enjoyed it and it was amazing the difference it makes (photos to follow)! Then we had to water it in and make sure it had plenty of water while it settled, which initially we did with a hose, but then decided it was worth getting a sprinkler to give it a better more even covering.

Adventures with Abi

Sat, 07 Jul 2007 13:40:08 +0000

Abi seems to doing so much more everyday at the moment, it's been wonderful watching her developments and seeing her different adventures. The other morning she cleaned her teeth with me after having her face washed. She's so sweet with her little toothbrush - not that there's any teeth there to clean yet. Yesterday and today she's taken to reaching up to the edge of the desk or the table on tip toes and almost hanging off it with her little fingers. Yet another set of things that need to be moved out of reach!

What's been going on...

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Abi

Abi has reached a stage where she's very mobile and getting more adventurous by the day which is lots of fun. She can now crawl really well and will explore the room we're in and venture into the rooms on either side on her own. She's also been sleeping much better - last night she slept through till 5.10, had some milk and is back asleep now. I guess all the activity is tiring her out. She's recently started to laugh in her sleep as well, which is really cute. She also now seems to eat almost as much as us for some meals!

Abi chasing feet (Video)

Sun, 13 May 2007 07:36:31 +0000

Abi seems to have a fascination with feet, and yesterday she decided to go after mine - finding them hilarious when she caught them :)

Garden Renovations

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Over Easter, we put the finishing touches to our Garden changes so we can at last use the garden again! We'd decided that we wanted to find a replacement for the paving that we'd feel happy with Abi playing on, and inevitably falling over on. We considered a few options, but the one we liked best and decided on in the end was rubber mulch.

Firstly we had to remove the paving slabs, which came up much more easily than expected, although it was still a big job as they were fairly heavy. Once we'd done that, we had to put in an edging to hold the mulch in place - for this we decided on log roll edging. We ordered the edging but then when it arrived it took us a while to get round to fitting it, but once we got round to it, it went in well - hard work as you have to hammer each one in so that it goes down to give us the depth we needed (the logs were 6 inches high and the mulch was only due to be 2 inches deep).

Abi getting up (video)

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 06:13:58 +0000

Abi Getting Up on Vimeo

300th post! Prizes to be won!

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I just noticed that this would be my 300th blog post so I decided to do something a bit different. Firstly, I'd get my wife to write this post. Secondly anyone who comments on this post within the next week will win a prize - the better the comment, the better the prize ;)

My blog started back on June 2003 with this insightful post. Since then I have explored life living in a foreign land, have pondered upon new advances in technological masterpieces such as Firefox and revealed my thoughts on life as a daddykins.

Fun at feeding time

Mon, 09 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Abi's now been on solids for over a month, and it's been great fun feeding her them. Now that she's 6 months, she can have pretty much anything, although we're still being careful and introducing things individually. She's so far had lots of purees - both vegetables - butternut squash, carrot, parsnip, potato, sweet potato, broccoli and courgette - mixed in various interesting combinations and also lots of fruit - she particularly seems to like banana and apple (not together - don't think we've tried that yet!). This week she tried natural yoghurt for the first time - which she loved - really odd as we thought it would be a bit too sour for her. It's been messy though - particularly with her raspberries and self-feeding!

Abigail Laughing (video)

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 19:32:36 +0000

No Content Found

Abi's first (typed) words

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

C bv vvc dfgjyhkjnbh rrgh nnmjjhjucxbvfgnm5hr6t

any ideas what she means?

Abigail Rolling (video)

Sun, 11 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Today we were trying to catch Abigail's cute noises on video, and didn't manage as when we pointed the camera at her, the noises changed from happy to sad. However I decided to try and record her playing on her tummy with her butterfly, and she decided to roll!!

2006 - Year of Change!

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

2006 has been quite a year for us - lots and lots has happened and changed. Laura has done a great summary of her highs and lows for the year, and here's my year...

Abi's Jabs

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Today we took Abi to the doctors for her second set of jabs. The waiting was awful - we were both dreading it, and Abi was being her usual sweet and gorgeous self. When we finally got in to see the nurse, Abi burst out in giggles - it was lovely, but we didn't think it would last.

So then it came to the injection and she was quiet, and then a few seconds afterwards had another little giggle! Unfortunatley the second injection didn't have the same effect - she wasn't happy after that one, but it didn't last and she'd soon cheered up and was smiling and giggling again

The Santa dilemma

Sun, 24 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

To Santa or not to Santa - that is the question!

This year, Abi isn't old enough to understand much of whats going on at Christmas, but we're soon going to have to make a decision about what we're going to do about Santa. I just don't like the idea of lying (directly or indirectly) to her about it. I guess I'm slightly worried that if she sees us making up something like this and then her finding out later whether she'll doubt other things that we've told her. On the other hand - Santa would bring a lot of enjoyment and excitement for her (and us), and stimulate her imagination. What does anyone else think about this? Am I just being silly?

CSS and XHTML Workshop

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 13:08:23 +0000

This week I spent the first night away from Laura and Abi, since Abi was born. I went up to London for the Carson Workshops In Depth CSS XHTML Techniques by Eric Meyer. I was quite nervous beforehand - as well as being away, the first day of the course was also when Abi had her first set of immunisations.

I'm glad I went as the workshop was brilliant. It was run in a very interactive way with Eric encouraging questions throughout. He only used slides for setting the scene for the 2 days, and the rest of the time was spent looking at source code and how it appeared in a web browser. We covered quite a few things that I'd already seen before, but there were lots of bits and pieces that were different or I hadn't done before. The main thing that got me thinking was to first think about the document source order and the best markup to describe the content, without thinking about the design. I've done a bit of this before, but always wanted to get onto adding the design, so probably rushed this stage more than I possibly should have - and resulted in a lot more divs and classes in my document source than was necessary!

Well that was an exciting nappy change...

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 21:32:24 +0000

Firstly I'll set the scene, earlier in the evening we'd given Abigail a bath, and Laura had fed her, and since then she'd been sleeping. After we'd finished watching TV Laura was ready to feed her again before we went up to bed. Well when I say ready I mean dripping milk! Abi was still sleeping, and I noticed that she was a bit smelly, so I decided to change her to wake her up a bit so she was ready to catch the milk.

Introducing...

Mon, 09 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Announcing the birth of...

Abigail Ione Moorhouse

on Sunday 8th October 2006 at 21:01

Update...

She weighed 5 lb 12 oz and was born at home in the birthing pool, just as we'd hoped. This was a particular answer to prayer, as earlier the midwives had told us that there was a possibility we would have to go into the birthing centre, as the labour ward was short staffed.
However God provided us with 2 excellent midwives who were keen to ensure we had the home birth that we wanted, and they battled for us for it with the hospital.

2 Minutes apart

Sun, 08 Oct 2006 18:20:40 +0000

Contractions are now 2 minutes apart and lasting between 60 and 90 seconds. The midwifes are here just assessing here...more later

hope it's not much longer!

Sun, 08 Oct 2006 08:35:32 +0000

Yesterday things were quite variable after the initial burst of activity.

While we were waiting for the midwife we had a surprise visit from Michael at the door, which threw us completely as he didn't look much like a midwife! By the time the midwife arrived the contractions had died down quite a bit, but she checked the usual stuff and Laura's temperature and all seemed fine.

Last night though, Laura had a very disturbed night and is now very tired, but the contractions are coming stronger. She's been finding it quite tough, but is doing really well. Thank you to those of you that are praying for us - it's greatly appreciated and I'm sure it makes a difference.

Labour has started...

Sat, 07 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Laura has gone into labour - I think it all started about 1 o'clock in the morning. She woke me up at about 5 o'clock and told me that they were getting more regular. I was completely out of it and didn't understand what she was telling me until I'd got up and come downstairs! I thought we were supposed to be going somewhere!

Well she's now all wired up to her TENS machine and contractions seem to be about every 4 minutes. We've also got the birthing pool fully inflated and ready to fill.

Butternut squash risotto

Sat, 23 Sep 2006 23:00:00 +0000

After seeing that one of the contestents on Masterchef this week had cooked butternut squash risotto, it made us fancy it ourselves. I had a look for a recipe in some of the usual places, and then decided to make one myself (with a little help from the example risotto on the back of the rice packet).

1 Onion (finely chopped)
Handful of mushrooms (chopped)
1 litre of light vegetable stock

Free Bible Software for Windows

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

After talking about different bible software with some people at life group on Sunday, I thought I'd do a bit more investigation into some of the free bible software available. The main software I've looked at so far is: In the beginning was the Word, The SWORD Project (for Windows). I also tried MyBible - but didn't get past the installation, as it failed to download the texts.

Here's my initial findings, I intend to investigate some others and post some more details as I use them a bit more later on...

Four Years and counting!

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This weekend Laura and I celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary by having a nice relaxing weekend away over at my parents caravan on Hayling Island (more on that to follow). It's amazing how time has flown by in these four years, but it's been wonderful and lots of different things in each one of them!

2002 - 2003 - My Graduation, preparing for Uruguay
2003 - 2004 - Mostly in Uruguay

Previous Post removed...

Mon, 04 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

...awaiting new content...

Matthew 18:5

Finally got my wireless (WPA) to work in Ubuntu

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 18:27:43 +0000

Last weekend I finally got my laptop to talk to my wireless network in Ubuntu, I'd tried following some instructions before when I had Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy) on the laptop, but never got anywhere with it. I know I could have changed my network to use WEP instead, but I didn't want to have to change too much just to get my laptop to work occasionaly when I booted into Linux.

Less than 2 months to go!

Sat, 12 Aug 2006 11:01:09 +0000

Time is flying by - Laura is now 32 weeks pregnent so we've got less than 2 months left before our little daughter is due to arrive. It's exciting and at the same time scary! I'm really looking forward to being a dad, but it's quite daunting at the same time

The other morning before I went to work, Laura was very tired and had drifted back off to sleep, I put my hand on her bump, and our little baby recognised my hand there and started kicking (or poking) my hand - It was lovely!

This site as a graph

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Generated using the generator at Aharef.info

Interesting image of the site - Of course - having put this post here will probably change what the result is anyway!

Here's the explanation of the colours:

blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)

green: for the DIV tag

violet: for images (the IMG tag)

yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)

We've moved!

Thu, 22 Jun 2006 20:32:12 +0000

It's now almost a month since we moved house, but I've been meaning to blog about our hectic week as we moved for a while! We completed fairly late on the Friday, and booked the removals for the Wednesday in order to give us time to get the bits and pieces done that we wanted to sort out before we moved in.

The first thing that we had planned was for someone to come in and check for woodworm, as that had come up on the survey, so we'd booked them in Friday afternoon thinking that if we'd completed at lunchtime we'd have the keys in plenty of time - as it was it was quite tight for time, but worked out ok. Unfortunately though they found traces of woodworm, so we needed to get it treated and they wouldn't have been able to do it in time - so we booked another company to come and do it on the Tuesday morning. We'd decided that we would need to clean the carpets before moving our stuff in and reserved the carpet cleaner for Monday (also when NTL were coming to install the phone and broadband).

We're Expecting!

Sun, 14 May 2006 19:56:17 +0000

It's very exciting, Laura is now 19 weeks pregnent so we're nearly halfway there. We're due on October 6th, although the scans have put it a bit later so we'll see. It's been so amazing to see our little baby on the scans and how (s)he's growing.

On my birthday as we settled down to watch "The Legend of Zorro" we both felt the baby kick for the first time (although Laura had felt movements earlier) - what a nice birthday present! Since then, there's been a lot more kicking and moving, and it's been wonderful to feel it from time to time. This morning at church just as the preacher was coming to the end of the Sermon, he was talking about being a willing volunteer for God - and the baby got quite excited and started moving and kicking quite a bit - it was almost like it was a response

New Site Launch: Latin Mission

Sat, 25 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Recently I've been working on a new community website which I've just launched:

Latin Mission is a new community site for people with an interest in Christian work in Latin America. It currently consists of:

Forums

The forum is a place members can discuss recent events, their Latin American experiences or even seek prayer support.

News

The news section collects news from across the internet and filters it to show news items relating to Latin America. The sources currently include BBC News, Google News, Newsvine and Christian News Service

Early Christmas journey.

Fri, 23 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Well I'm now on holiday for Christmas - Yippee!

As the traffic would probably be really bad to travel down to Devon if we left it till after I finished work at lunchtime, so instead we decided to head down to Okehampton early this morning - leaving Portsmouth at 4.30am! This plan worked well as the traffic was fairly sparse on the roads at that time in the morning and we made probably the best time ever for the journey, arriving at about 7.30 in time for coffee and breakfast :). I quite like travelling at the early hours of the morning, but it was surprising today how late it was before it started to get lighter.

River crossing game

Thu, 17 Nov 2005 11:08:55 +0000

Ka Ho sent me this game today - it can get frustrating but it feels quite an achievement when you finally manage! The instructions are as follows:

Only Mum Dad, or Policeman can operate the raft
Robber cannot be left alone with family
Girls cannot be left alone with dad
Boys cannot be left alone with mum
Select two people onto the raft, click red lever to operate

Useful HTML tags

Mon, 03 Oct 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Just a quick note about some useful HTML tags that have been around for a long time, but I've found particularly useful recently:

Mark text that has been deleted, optionally citing a URL for more details and a date and time of change. Useful for marking alterations to posts.

<del>Example deleted text</del>

< ins cite="url" datetime="date of change >

Mark text that has been inserted, optionally citing a URL for more details and a date and time of change. Useful for marking alterations to posts.

Example inserted text

_Term_
_Definition_

Definition list - example is this list of tags

Kinky Boots

Fri, 23 Sep 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Last week on the vue mailing list, Laura got an invitation for free tickets to the preview of "Kinky Boots", so on Wednesday we both went to see it:

Kinky Boots (12A)

Ricky Moorhouse 22nd September 2005

Rating: 5 out of 5

Brilliant northern comedy based on the true story of a Northampton shoe factory, suffering because of cheap imports from abroad; and their efforts to save the factory by making kinky boots for drag queens.
It was excellent and really funny - well worth watching!

Trip to France

Sun, 11 Sep 2005 00:00:00 +0000

When we got there, we started off by heading into Le Havre for breakfast, and found a little cafe along the seafront where we had croissant and coffee. We then headed back into town to have a look round but unfortunatly it seemed to be mostly closed at that time in the morning and then it started raining. We headed back to the car (particularly thankful that we'd got it with us) and looked at the map to decide what to do. We then headed to a supermarket so we could dry off and sort something out for lunch - which we ended up having there. In the afternoon we headed across to Rouens which was a lovely place to look round and would be nice to explore a bit more another time - hopefully when it's not raining at all!. In the evening it brightened up though - so we headed up to Etretat and had a picnic overlooking the beach

3 Year Anniversary

Thu, 08 Sep 2005 00:00:00 +0000

It's our anniversary! - The last 3 years have past quickly in some ways, but it also seems like we've been together forever! As 3 years is supposed to be leather and Laura had been wanting some boots I decided that I'd get her them as an anniversary present, but when I went to get them I found it would be much easier to go there together and get them after our anniversary. (The boots she got in the end weren't leather, but they're lovely and warm!).

Google grouping search results

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I just searched for H&B on google and it gave me this result which appears to have the results in three groups, firstly results for H&B, then for B&H and then at the bottom some others. Is this new?

Things you don't want to hear the pilot saying...

Tue, 09 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Once we take off, we'll be heading in a North Easterly direction .. No .. a North Westerly direction - I just got distracted by a plane taking off as you do.

We're now over France and should be coming in in about ... erm ... let me see ...

Both of which we heard on our way back from Kefalonia

Travelling to Sandnes, Norway

Fri, 29 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

We left Shepton Mallett early in the morning as we had to get up to Heathrow 2 hours before our flight at 10. We had quite a good drive up and there wasn't too much traffic. We dropped the car off at the airport parking and were taken by minibus to the airport. Check in was amazingly quick and easy with the e-tickets and we could do it all ourselves on the machine (apart from it failed to print the baggage label for some reason - but it was still quicker than queuing). As we were waiting we heard some other people talking about a Wedding, but didn't realise until we got to Stavanger just how many there were on the same flight going to the same wedding!

First time at New Wine

Thu, 28 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

This year we went to New Wine for the first time as we were invited to go and help man the SAMS stand in the marketplace there. We went up to Bath and West on the Friday before things started in order to get the tent up and meet up with Richard. It was surprising how many people there were there already especially as it was only exhibitors and people working there at that point.

Moving House - Chapter One

Tue, 19 Jul 2005 04:54:04 +0000

Firstly we started to look at possible property to buy just to see what we could get and where - mainly on rightmove, but we also arranged a viewing. After the viewing, we both liked the house so decided we should start looking at things more seriously.

Then we spoke to a few of estate agents and a mortgage advisor - to see what the possibilities for the flat were. We looked at both selling the flat and letting it out again, but in the end we decided that we couldn't really afford to keep the flat to let out and buy a new house. Both of the estate agents we spoke to about selling the flat valued it at the same amount, but one of them charged more commision than the other (also conveniently the one that charged the lower commision seemed more trustworhty). So finally we decided to put the flat on the market with Cubitt and West. (If you're interested it's on rightmove)

Trafalgar 200

Mon, 04 Jul 2005 14:54:14 +0000

Last week, the Solent became the destination for many boats from around the world for the International Fleet Review and the International Festival of the Sea (there was even one from Uruguay there!). This was part of the SeaBritain 2005 celebrations and particularly to celebrate 200 years since the battle of Trafalgar. It was expected that on Tuesday the city would be in deadlock with people travelling to the fleet review - so all the schools were closed and I decided to work from home to avoid the raffic. Also, Laura's mum and brother came down to watch and they all went down to the beach to watch from first thing in the morning - I managed to join them briefly at lunchtime and then again for the evenings events once I'd finished work.

Camping on the Isle of Wight

Wed, 08 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Had a really nice relaxing weekend last weekend camping over on the Isle of Wight. It was nice weather most of the time, but we had a lot of rain on the Friday afternoon, which was unfortunatly when we were at the far point of our walk (down to Alum Bay). We stayed at Stoats Farm Campsite in Totland, which was really convenient for walking, but a bit too far from the bus stop when it's raining! We managed to do both of the geocaches that we'd planned to do (Vectis W and The Lord Palmerston) which was brilliant. The walks were really nice and the views were incredible - particularly from up on top of the Tennyson Downs. It was good to be able to check out our camping gear ready for the Summer, but unfortunatly our camping stove couldn't cope with the wind. Although it did have a good side too - in that we went to the pub nextdoor to the campsite -

Happy Birthday to me!

Wed, 18 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

It was my birthday back on 5th May, I know this is a bit late – but I’ve been quite busy but still wanted to blog about my birthday! I had a great day - thanks to my lovely wife Laura. First of all she got me breakfast in bed – Egg Muffin :D then I opened my presents (well apart from the ones from my parents which I’d opened the night before). I think my favourite present has to be my smoothie maker that Laura bought me, which was totally unexpected- but has provided no end of tasty drinks!

Google SafeSearch

Wed, 20 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Today we had an interesting experience with Google's SafeSearch, in that when you searched Google for "church southsea" you got a quite different set of results with SafeSearch on and SafeSearch off, notably for us - that our church website was 2nd on the list with SafeSearch switched off, however didn't appear until the second page with SafeSearch turned on. It would be interesting to know how SafeSearch works, as from looking at the results it seemed like it was using quite a different index.

We have a new minister!

Mon, 18 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Over the past few months I've been involved in the process of finding a new minister for my church, [St. Luke's Church] - which has involved going to meetings with lots of different people from within the diocese. It's been quite an interesting process (and at times frustrating) and I'll probably write a bit more about some of my experiences along the way later. Throughout the past year and a quarter that we've been without a minister God has been providing for St Luke's in lots of different ways and has been preparing us to receive a new minister. In the past month particularly it has been really amazing to see how God has been working to lead us to the point we're at now. On Wednesday, the PCC unanimously approved the Archdeacon's proposal to appoint Andy Bridgen as our new minister, and on Sunday I had the priviledge to introduce him to the congregation.

Good news to share!

Sat, 02 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

We have good news to share! The good news that Jesus has died for sin so that we can be free to come to God and know him. The barrier is gone!

Through the last few weeks of studying Acts in our homegroup, I've particularly been struck by one main thing - what Acts can teach us about sharing the gospel. Although this is because I prayed that God would teach me more about how to share the good news with others. So what does it say?

Small Groups - Discussion or Teaching

Thu, 10 Mar 2005 15:08:08 +0000

Mark at wordandspirit started a discussion on the nature of small groups, as to whether they are more appropriate for teaching or discussion.

My personal view is that the discussions are very important - often without that people can't manage to get their own grip on the concepts. At our homegroup we generally read the passage in either one whole chunk or smaller chunks that we can look at one at a time with the reading and then working through the passage and the ideas that come from it.

Acts 1 Study

Thu, 10 Feb 2005 12:45:33 +0000

On Tuesday, we just started a new series in Home group, looking at the Book of Acts (based on John Stott's Seeing the Spirit at work Bible study guide). As it was Shrove Tuesday we started off with pancakes (and wraps) before moving on to studying Acts 1. It was a really good study and through my preparation for the study and the study itself I came across some really interesting bits that I hadn't thought about before:

New Image Toys!

Mon, 24 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Just a short note about two great new imaging toys I've found recently:

Picasa

Brilliant application which is now owned by google and has improved greatly since the first verison I tried - it now includes a search function and the star and label organisation system so you can highlight your favorite pictures and put them in virtual groups as well as in folders. It also now appears to have unlimited undo for any enhancements you make to the pictures - including the really easy to use rotating tool to sort out sloping pictures! (Picasa also produced the photo pile image at the top)

Terragen

Puncture on the motorway

Fri, 14 Jan 2005 17:35:13 +0000

Last night on the way home from work coming through the roadworks on the M27, I pulled across into the fast lane, and suddenly the car started making funny noises coming from the front drivers side wheel. It gradually got louder, so I slowed down and pulled into a gap in the cones into the area coned off for the roadworks. I got out the car and realised that I had a flat tyre. So I phoned Laura to explain and see if she knew who I needed to phone to make use of the 'free recovery zone' for the roadworks. I then tried the AA, and was sat in a queue for quite a while until I realised - "I've got a spare tyre - I can change it myself" - duh! So I got on with changing the tyre and just as I'd finished changing the tyre and phoned Laura to let her know that I'd sorted it and was about to head home, a truck with it's orange lights flashing pulled up in the roadworks section on the other side of the road - I explained to him what had happened and he told me the best way to rejoin the traffic. The car seemed to be driving strangely after changing the wheel, so I took it slowly and then took it into Kwikfit today and got it sorted.

Thunderbird Extensions

Wed, 05 Jan 2005 16:09:46 +0000

Following on from my list of firefox extensions, here's my list of Thunderbird extensions:

Minimize to Tray

Changes the minimise in Thunderbird to send it to the system tray and still check your e-mail in the background.

Contact Sidebar

Adds a list of your contacts below the folder pane

Message Faces

Show Face headers in e-mails and news groups

Quote Collapse

Makes quotes in e-mail and news messages collapsable to save space

Quote Colours

Use Multimap for Get Map links

Wed, 05 Jan 2005 12:48:31 +0000

I can't remember where I found it, so I thought I'd put this here so I don't loose it!

In user.js or about:config, find mail.addr_book.mapit_url.format and set it to:

http://www.multimap.com/map/places.cgi?addr2=

@A1&addr3=@CI&pc=@ZI&db=GB&client=public&

cname=Great+Britain&advanced=true&mapsize=big

Or for streetmap use:

http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?
postcode2map?@ZI

New Year's Challenge

Sun, 02 Jan 2005 11:24:09 +0000

Well yesterday we went out for a meal to celebrate Anne's birthday which is on Tuesday, and we decided to have a New Year's challenge. We had a few different ideas for challenges, (including my suggestion of collecting an object to represent each month throughout the coming year) but the challenge we're doing is a good idea, and that is:

To start of with £10 at the start of the year, and to try and increase it's value by this time next year, when the person who has made the most money gets 10% of everyones total, and the rest goes to their chosen charity - if that makes sense. The rules are as follows:

Gravatars

Wed, 01 Dec 2004 21:04:19 +0000

I've now implemented Gravatars for the comments on this site.

It was a bit tricky as this is coded using ASP (VBScript) - but I've managed to get it working using the code from http://www.frez.co.uk/freecode.htm#md5 - although interestingly the VBScript version wouldn't work, so I have used the javascript version - a bit of a strange way to do it, but it seems to work. I didn't realise before that you could mix languages in ASP, but it turns out you can by including one in the page using the <script runat="server"... tag, and then it can be called from within the other code on the page even if it's in a different programming language!

Water in the petrol

Sun, 28 Nov 2004 08:59:46 +0000

On Bonfire night before we went up to Portsdown hill to watch the fireworks, we filled up the car at the BP petrol station opposite All Saints church. The car was initially fine, then on Saturday it started making a loud squealing noise, which we thought was a problem with one of the belts. By Monday I'd planned to take the car to the garage, however the car wouldn't start at all, so I assumed that the battery had been worn down, so borrowed a battery charger and left it charging. However even with doing this, the car wouldn't start, so later in the week Ben towed me round to the garage. When the garage had a look, they discovered that the problem had been caused by the petrol tank containing water, so they would have to remove the tank and the fuel lines, drain them and clean and dry them thoroughly. The only place I can think of where this could have come from was when I filled it up, which apparently does occasionally happen (as I found out from the garage, from BP and from trading standards). So I contacted BP about it and after conducting an 'investigation' they said that it was highly unlikely that it came from there tanks. It's a mystery where it came from then!

Promising meeting

Fri, 12 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday I had my first meeting with the Archdeacon since becoming one of the church reps for St Luke's. It was a very promising meeting and the archdeacon said that he wants to have a lively evangelical church community at St Luke's that will reach out to the people of Somerstown and to students - which would be a good thing. They are planning to follow a similar process to that of appointing an Incumbent - but for a "Priest in Charge", which means we will have quite a say in the process and the opportunity to interview the prospective vicars. The only real difference will be that a Priest in Charge doesn't have a permanent position.

WBW 3 - Australian Shiraz

Wed, 03 Nov 2004 23:59:59 +0000

We had this over a week ago, and it's took me a long time to get round to posting it, so I'm too late for the round up anyway! We've not had Shiraz before, and weren't that keen on it.
The wine was a bottle of Wolf Blass Eaglehawk 2003, and had a slightly blackberry like smoky aroma. It was a too sharp for our tastes really, as we generally prefer something a bit smoother.
From the Wolf Blass website: The 2003 Eaglehawk Shiraz is a fruit driven style with a bouquet of lifted spice, plum and red berry fruit characters and subtle oak overtones. The palate is of medium body, showing soft complex fruit flavours with rich berry characters. Soft tannins help finish the wine with a dry lingering finish.

Firefox Extensions

Mon, 01 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

I've been thinking of putting a list of the firefox extensions I use on my blog for a while, and then Dean listed the extensions he finds useful and asked what anyone else was using - so I decided I should post it! So here is my list of firefox extensions:

All in one gestures

Extension that helps you to navigate the web just using the mouse - includes mouse gestures and extra wheel navigation

Web Developer Extension

What a hope we have!

Wed, 06 Oct 2004 12:34:24 +0000

We had a really good bible study last night on 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18:

Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words.

Which really encouraged us to see things in a right perspective, in relation to the great hope we have for the future in Christ.

First day in Bulgaria

Sat, 25 Sep 2004 08:13:27 +0000

On the plane over Des met a guy who'd recently brought property here, who could recommend an estate agent for us to contact. So in the morning he gave them a ring, and their colleagues took us for a drive round 3 of the properties for sale, and a few others that had been sold and done up, so we could see some of the things that had been achieved. The properties gradually got better throughout the day as in the amount of work that needed doing on them but they all had potential.

Going to Bulgaria

Thu, 23 Sep 2004 10:37:47 +0000

I fly today at 5 o'clock to Varna, and then I've got no idea where I'll be staying (?). I'm looking forward to it, but I'm not really sure what to expect there. I've set up my phone so I can use it there, but vodaphone charge £1.69 per minute for calls in Bulgaria, so I might get a sim card out there. A few useful links I might need:

Belkin Technical Support

Fri, 10 Sep 2004 15:54:17 +0000

The other day we were looking at buying a wireless PCMCIA card for Laura's laptop, so that she can use it at the university and at home with out new Belkin Wireless Router, which has been working well with my work Thinkpad since we got it set up. I liked the idea of getting a Belkin network card so that it is the same as the router, but according to the information I found online it doesn't support WPA - apart from an addition to the manual on the Belkin site that tells you how to configure WPA with the card. I then decided to phone up their pre-sales technical support line to check on this and I got through to an advisor immediately without being put in a queue. Also the guy I spoke to knew everything I needed to find out about the card without having to look it up on the system somewhere - Very impressive com,pared to a lot of technical support departments!

Interrailing July 1999

Sun, 05 Sep 2004 18:18:06 +0000

While sorting out all my various documents on our different computers today, I found some old webpages that I'd made back in 1999 after going interrailing around Europe with a bit of an account of some of the places we visited. So I've included them now on this site under the travel section at the side - I might try and add a few more bits that I remember from the trip and some photos soon, but for now it's just the text.

Ikea Sofa - 45 days and counting!

Wed, 01 Sep 2004 16:06:42 +0000

Well we ordered our [Ikea] [Fågelbo Sofa] on the 18th July, and received it initially when we expected - 2nd August, although instead of being in 2 parts and us just having to put it together like they told us would be the case, it was in three seperate packages and we had to put the backs on each part and join it together. After a while trying to understand the diagrams (no text on the instructions of course!) we got the first half together and then found that for the second half the bolts seemed to have a different thread to the holes for them. After phoning Ikea, and waiting a couple of days for a 'product specialist' from the store to get back to me I was told to try hitting them with a hammer to get them in as thats what they do in the store, or they could get someone to come out (which would take 7-10 days), I decided to try it and got them a bit further, but then they got stuck. Next step - get someone to come out. The upholsterer came out, was shocked at the advice we'd been given, put screws in to hold it temporarily and said he'd need some parts, we then had to wait 7-10 days for them to arrange this. When they phoned us back it turned out they couldn't get the parts, so we had two options: a discount (of 10%) or a replacement. We chose the replacement which took another 7-10 days, and arrived yesterday without the bolts to fit the replacement parts together - Aparently it will take another 7-10 days for them to find and ship out a packet of bolts for us...

Back to work

Sat, 14 Aug 2004 00:11:03 +0000

Well I've now been back at work at IBM Hursley for a week and I'm currently working in the DBDC team which will involve dealing with DB2 and database connectors installation and fixing problems. It will probably be mainly working with DB2 on the mainframe (OS/390), although the team is going to start to be more involved in DB2 on distributed platforms as well. It's been quite strange going back to a different team, having to get all the userids sorted out again and starting to learn how to do things for my new role but the team I'm working with are great and have been really helpful. It's also been strange adapting back to British life - the supermarkets seem expensive and there are lots more choices! I'm sure after a few weeks I'll have got used to life back here a bit more - although this week I've found it quite tiring commuting to work. Although with car-sharing I don't have to do all the driving, but that means finishing at times that are convenient for both of us.

Thu, 01 Jul 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Heading back home

Wed, 30 Jun 2004 15:03:22 +0000

Well we fly back home today leaving Montevideo at 5.50pm, everything is pretty much packed and Jonathan is going to give us a lift upto the airport. Just a few more goodbyes to say and check our mail before we go. It still feels strange that we´ve finished here and are heading back, but it will be nice to see our families, as we´ve definitely missed them. But it´s going to be strange adapting back to life in England after our time here.

Wed, 30 Jun 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Coming to an end

Wed, 16 Jun 2004 13:00:50 +0000

Our time in Uruguay is coming to an end, the last 9 months seem to have flown by really quickly, it's incredible. It's interesting to look back over the time we've spent here and see what's happened. Firstly, I'm amazed at how my Spanish has improved in the time we've been out here - well I say Spanish, more like Rio-de-la-plata-ish. When we came out here, I could only understand a few words of spanish and speak about the same, where as now, I have had conversations with people, taught the communion group, and preached (well writing it in English and translating it first!). God has definitely helped me to get to this point - I couldn't have done it on my own I'm sure. I still find myself falling into the same mistakes in the language though, particularly when praying in church!

Beef and Ginger Stirfry

Wed, 09 Jun 2004 13:10:46 +0000

Ingredients

thin Beef steak- cut into small strips or pieces
small piece of Ginger
Cumin
Carrots
Broccoli
Green Pepper

Heat some oil in a pan, and add the ginger and cumin.
After a few seconds cooking, add the Beef.
Once the beef is cooked, add the vegetables and stir fry for about 5 minutes.

Served in the picture with Egg fried rice:

1/2 medium sized Onion (finely chopped)

Changing flights II

Thu, 03 Jun 2004 13:42:37 +0000

So I arrived in Montevideo at 6.30 on the overnight bus from Salto, to go to the American Airlines office where I thought it would be just a case of them telling me the options and prices for them, and me selecting the one we wanted. I was wrong! I got to the office, and showed the lady in there the tickets, and she looked them up on the computer. Aparently there wasn't anything to tell her whether or not I could change the route, it just said I could change the dates for free - If I wanted to do anything else I had to speak to the original travel agent (in England), and get them to get the airline office in London to put the details on the computer system! So I went to an internet cafe and phoned our travel agent (Key Travel), who took a few details from me, and then said "you're a purple, I'm going to have to transfer you" - whatever that meant! Once she found that the other department was busy, so decided to try and help me herself, so I found out that we couldn't change the route - so what would have been the point of transfering me? In the end I got the dates changed so we don't have a stopover in Miami anymore, so that we can get through Miami before it gets too close to 4 July.

Changing Flights

Wed, 02 Jun 2004 11:49:56 +0000

Yesterday I rang up American Airlines to find out if we could change the route of our flight or not, and they got so far with it, even found all the details for our tickets on their computer and then decided that they needed to see the actual tickets! So I asked if fax would be acceptable, but no, so here I am in Montevideo. The plan is to post some of our stuff back home from here too as it should be more reliable. Hopefully we'll be able to change the route of our flights to go back via Sao Paulo instead of Miami, as that would be a much shorter route, and wouldn't have to spend as long waiting around. Just have to see what they say today, and how much they want to charge me for it. Although looking on their website, the other route looked cheaper than the route we've currently got tickets for - so hopefully that means we should be able to do it :)

Escuelita - Pentecost

Mon, 31 May 2004 02:11:49 +0000

Yesterday I looked at Pentecost with the kids - firstly I asked them "what day is it tomorrow?" and got answers such as Palm Sunday, or Day of selling 'Pasteles'! When I told them it was Pentecost, only one of them could say it and had to teach the others - despite most of them having been in the church for at least 2 years! We went on to look at Acts 2:1-13 and talked about what had happened - which went well. Then I asked them who the Holy Spirit is - to which the first answer was God, which I was pleased with. We then followed on by looking at John 16 - where Jesus told the disciples of the work of the Spirit. In the end they seemed to have a good understanding of the basics about Pentecost - we'll see next week how much they remember. At the end we finished off by doing pictures of Pentecost using tissue paper as tongues of fire.

Black and White

Sat, 29 May 2004 01:25:35 +0000

Snudge and Des

Home group was promising

Sat, 29 May 2004 01:18:23 +0000

We had a really encouraging home group on Tuesday this week - it was an answer to prayer! The group has decided to meet ever week, whether or not Gilberto (the vicar) is around. This shows quite a growth for the group, as they are always very reliant on him, and the studies often just end up to be him preaching. It was a really good study on John 1:35-42 - where Andrew goes and tells his brother Simon Peter that they've found the Messiah. It led onto all sorts of things in the area of how can we encourage growth in the church by different ways of inviting people - both within the existing congregation and outside. It was also interesting afterwards to here some of the concerns of the people in the group, and to realise that the same concerns are found here as back home - the small group who appear to do everything without any credit and keep getting given more to do, and the larger group whose involvement is restricted to services.

Preaching in Spanish!

Mon, 24 May 2004 01:54:54 +0000

Today I preached in Spanish for the first time up at the chapel. The passages were 1 Samuel 12:19-25 and John 17:20-26. While I was preparing it in the week I was very nervous, but once I'd got it finished, translated with Laura's expert help and read it through a couple of times I felt much more confident! You can read it on our website: English or Spanish. Preaching up there was interesting, as people often find it difficult to understand my Spanish, as I can't roll my R's enough for them to notice them, however I think most people followed at least some of it, and were appreciative.

Catechesis

Mon, 10 May 2004 00:38:23 +0000

Today I took the Catechesis for the first time on my own, which was quite nerve-racking, but once I started it was quite enjoyable. I started off by looking a bit at Communion - what it is, why we celebrate it, what it meant to each of them and why they want to take communion. It was interesting to hear their opinions and ideas. One of the reasons for taking communion I was given was "so I can go to youth group". After a brief discussion on these things, we went on to have a look what the Paul had written regarding the Lord's supper in 1 Corinthians 11:17-29, which was useful to get the point across to them that it was something serious.

It's my birthday!

Wed, 05 May 2004 20:14:57 +0000

Well I'm now 23! It's a bit strange having my birthday in autumn instead of spring, but it's quite nice! I love the autumn colours, and it's also great to see a different place in autumn. Unfortunatly, it's been very cloudy these last few days though, so I missed getting a photo of the yellow leaves against the blue sky, but this should do for now! It was a really nice birthday, although any post from England still hasn't got here - so it'll be a long birthday :). In the morning I opened my presents from Laura - she got me Lee Strobel's A Case for Christ, Love Actually on DVD, a pen, notebook, some sweets and later on in the day, a scarf. We then went out to a restaurant that we'd not tried before - we both had Chicken with salad, and didn't know what to expect. The salad turned out to be a sort of apple and cheese coleslaw and was really tasty.

Brrrrrrrr!

Thu, 22 Apr 2004 20:20:55 +0000

It's suddenly got cold here in Salto! I've gone from walking around in shorts and t-shirt to wearing a fleece and jeans. We've had to put the 2 blankets on the bed rather than just sheets as we'd got used to, and last night we decided that we could do with a hot water bottle. So we used Sprite bottles filled with hot water - which actually did the job quite well!!

Escuelita and Icons of Uruguay

Sat, 17 Apr 2004 20:19:45 +0000

This morning at Escuelita some of the kids were terribly behaved! It's been a long time since they have been, but I guess this week with it having rained a lot, and there being a lot more kids there it probably made quite a difference. We were looking at the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal, and how they had a contest to prove which god was real. They each prepared a bull to sacrifice and then put it on the altar and prayed. After the prophets of Baal had been praying for a day, nothing happened. When Elijah set up his altar to the Lord, they tipped water on it, and then he called out to the Lord. The Lord answered by fire, and the sacrifice, wood, stones and soil were burnt up.

Fri, 16 Apr 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Page 23

Fri, 16 Apr 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Jon told me to:

Grab the nearest book.
Open the book to page 23.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

From the NIV translation of the Bible:

As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, "Father?" > >

Chicken in a creamy garlic & mustard sauce

Tue, 13 Apr 2004 20:17:37 +0000

Just a recipe I cooked for tea tonight!

Ingredients

chicken pieces (1/2 chicken breast cut into bit size pieces)

100ml double cream
mustard
2 garlic cloves
1/4 green pepper
1/2 small zapallito (or courgette)
sweetcorn
few leaves fresh parsley
sprinkle of oregano
dash of cumin

fry the chicken and garlic in olive oil, after a few minutes, add the mustard and mix in well

once the chicken is cooked, add the cream and the herbs

Kites in the park

Sat, 10 Apr 2004 20:17:01 +0000

This morning we took the kids from the Escuelita upto Parque Solari as an Easter treat. It was a really nice time, as it was cooler than it has been - so not too hot for running around. A lot of them had home-made kites with them, made from plastic bags and sticks- which flew very well. It's a common thing for Holy Week here in Uruguay, for people to fly kites.

Youth group trip to the Zoo

Tue, 06 Apr 2004 20:16:21 +0000

We went to the local Zoo with the youth group today, as they're on holiday from school. It was nice, but quite a contrast to seeing the animals up at Iguazu. They all seemed to be in really small cages, apart from the deer, �andu and goats. The peacocks all had had their feathers cut off - possibly for selling for carnival costumes. The kids all seemed to enjoy the trip and have lots of fun, and we finished off with a ride on the spinning swings (don't know what to call it!), which was interesting as it appeared to be powered by little propellers, one on each side!

Back home & Free delivery for shopping

Fri, 26 Mar 2004 01:28:22 +0000

We arrived back in Concordia on time, even though there had been some problems with the bus causing us to have to change buses at midnight. As the bus doesn't enter Concordia on the way back and just stops at a road junction outside of town we had been worried about how we would get in, but fortunately there was a remisse there, and we could get a lift in to the bus station (10 pesos) after dropping off one of the others sharing it on the way. At the bus station we were just in time for the bus to Salto, just got our tickets and could get straight on the bus.

Back to Foz - wet paint, but still caught bus!

Thu, 25 Mar 2004 01:27:15 +0000

Today we checked out of the hotel, and headed back down to Foz ready for me and Laura to get the bus back this evening from Puerto Iguazu. We took a few detours along the way to look at a bit of the scenery, and the edge of the forest before heading back to the [Carima Hotel] where my parents had booked their last night. Surprisingly when we got to the room, the brochure had had the price of the buffet changed to the 19 real that they had charged us the previous time - don't know if this is because they knew we'd check or not though ;). We then chilled by the pool and had some drinks there before heading back. Unfortunately, the painter had just been round touching up the chairs, and my trousers got lots of white paint on them. We complained at reception, and they said they'd send someone down in the next half hour to clean them in the room (this was about 45 minutes before we needed to leave). After going back to reception once more to clear things up, eventually they sent someone who didn't really understand us, and took the trousers off to the laundry. Then the phone rang to say that the Laundry was closed. We went back up to reception to try and get the trousers back, as I needed to where them to travel in. After lots of complications we were escorted down to the laundry to get them back, and we headed off to Puerto Iguazu in a taxi (25 real). We opted for the taxi as aparently the bus doesn't always wait for you at customs and you have to wait for the next one.

Artificial Beaches

Wed, 24 Mar 2004 01:26:10 +0000

We had an early start today, and headed out through the town to a place called Santa Helena, on the edge of the reserviour We had a picnic lunch there and then went to have a look at some of the artificial beaches along the edge from there before heading back. In the evening we had dinner at the hotel, which was nice, although the 'Brazilian wine' turned out to be a not to nice Uruguayan wine, and the food seemed to cool off too quickly with the air conditioning But the food itself was really nice.

Itaipu Dam and on to Cascaval

Tue, 23 Mar 2004 22:23:31 +0000

We planned to go to the [Itaipu Dam], but spent too long thinking about it and getting ready before realising that they had set times for the tours - 8, 9, 10, 2 and 3. We checked out of the [Carima Hotel] and found that they charged us 19 real for the buffet instead of 14 as it said in the brochure in the room. When we questioned it, they didn't seem to care that the brochure was wrong but that the price was 19 no matter what. Also some how they manage to run the hotel without a manager on Tuesdays! After checking out, we went to the supermarket and then on to have lunch near the dam before waiting for it to open. After lunch, we went on the free tour of the [Itaipu Dam] - which was well worth going on, it's an incredible size construction, and interesting to hear about the building of it. After we'd finished the tour, we headed upto Cascavel where we were to stay the next 2 nights at the Deville Express Hotel there. We checked in and then headed into the town, which was much bigger than we'd expected - We thought it was a small town, but it was more like a city. We had dinner at McDonalds (I had a Salad and grape juice - which was lovely although different to the salads in Chile or Argentina.) and then drove down the main street. The main street is curvy all the way through the shopping areas, presumably as some sort of traffic calming, which was different. After this, we headed back to the hotel and found the entrance and front car park full of football fans and security guards outside the entrance to the annex where the rooms are. I guess the team were staying there or something.

Iguazu Falls (Brazilian Side)

Mon, 22 Mar 2004 02:01:03 +0000

Today we planned to go to the falls in the morning and then see how much there was there and decide the rest of the day based on that, however we found out that the park is closed on Monday mornings. We investigated the prices of helicopter rides over the falls, and found that it was too expensive, so that ruled that one out. Instead we decided to go to the bird park where they have lots of birds both native to the area and not. The leaflets say "birds in their natural habitat without the restriction of netting and cages." However a lot of the birds are in fairly small cages. It is well worth a visit though as there are also huge aviaries where you can go inside and see the birds close up. It was really great to be able to see the toucans, and amazing how close they would come to you - They look like cuddly toys with a very furry looking body and amazingly blue eyes. Once we'd finished there, we had some lunch in the cafe and headed on to the falls. It was nice to see the falls again from a different angle, although there wasn't much more there. The views were good though, and a couple of coyotes strayed onto the paths around. Annoyingly though (as at the bird park) people were ignoring the signs and petting them.

Heading across to Brazil

Sun, 21 Mar 2004 21:43:18 +0000

Today we checked out of the youth hostel and got a taxi across to Brazil to stay at the [Carima Hotel] where we relaxed until it was time for Dad to go and pick up the hire car. We spent most of the time by the pool, had a swim and cocktails which was really nice, although I got a nasty sunburn across my back :(. After Mum & Dad set off to get the car, we had lunch in the hotel coffee bar. In the afternoon we tried to go out to the [Itaipu Dam] (the biggest hydroelectric dam in the world), but found that it is closed on Sundays. However on the road to the dam there is also an 'Eco museum' which tells the story of the dam and how they have protected the wildlife and replanted trees to make up for the flooding of the area. After that we headed out to the Brazilian three frontiers park, and had a look at the monuments from there. We found the Geocache that was there which hasn't been found for almost a year, so we were quite pleased about that.

Puerto Iguazu

Sat, 20 Mar 2004 17:04:17 +0000

Having a lazier day today, caught the bus out to 3 frontiers, where you can see three posts coloured to match the flags of the three countries on the banks of the rivers in the respective countries. On the way back we went to a Orquidario which my parents had seen a sign for before when they were staying at the hotel up the road. There there were loads of local plants and birds including someof the 'air plants' that grow on tree bark. The lady there also told us about the garden of Hummingbirds, which was another hidden beauty. So after lunch, we headed up there - it was a family garden, but they'd arranged it so as it attracts hummingbirds. There must have been hundreds of hummingbirds come and go in the time we were there. It's well worth a visit if you're ever in the area. In the evening we went back (with Mum & Dad this time) to the 'Corner Restaurant' for the buffet.

Iguazu Falls (Argentinian Side) - Day 2

Fri, 19 Mar 2004 17:03:58 +0000

Today we went to the park again and had a bit of a less hectic day. We started off by doing the high tour around the tops of some of the falls - which was lovely apart from the annoying hoards of tour groups there. After that we had pizza for lunch and went back out to the devils throat to take the ecological tour boat back along the river. That was really nice and peaceful, and we saw 3 turtles, an alligator and a black splodge which was supposedly a toucan. After this we took a bit of a walk down the Macuco trail to try and see some monkeys - there were lots of giant ants, and we saw something that looked cat like but unfortunatley no monkeys. In the evening Laura & I went to the "Corner Restaurant" and had a lovely all you can eat buffet (15 pesos including desert!)

Iguazu Falls (Argentinian Side) - Day 1

Thu, 18 Mar 2004 16:59:06 +0000

We arrived today after the overnight bus, and jumped straight in to doing everything on the first day - we checked into the youth hostel and headed straight to the park. Once there, we set off on the lower trail and then went on the boat ride under the falls and got drenched - but it was fun! After that we went across to San Martin Island where we got some lovely views of the falls from. After we'd finished the lower trail, we got the train out to the devils throat which was just amazing- you could see the waterfalls all round and the big gorge with water pouring in from all sides. There were loads of butterflies all over, so hopefully I should have some nice photos of them here soon.

Politics and Religion

Thu, 11 Mar 2004 10:58:24 +0000

We had a nice chat with Marcelo yesterday, and learnt a few more interesting bits about Uruguay. The conversation started of with whether or not there is freedom of religion in England, and then went on to Politics, Computers, Voting and various other bits and pieces to compare. Here voting in the elections is compulsory, and if you don't vote there are financial sancions - loss of social benefits. It was also interesting to here how in the financial crisis here a couple of years ago, all the political parties joined together to sort things out, before seperating again once things were sorted.

Back to school

Wed, 10 Mar 2004 10:55:39 +0000

It's back to school time here in Uruguay, most of the kids go back to school today, but some went back on Monday. They've just had their summer/Christmas holiday and it's time to start the next school year, assuming they passed the last one -as here they have to repeat the year until they pass it. As it's back to school time, there's lots more stationary around in the shops, and school uniforms in many windows. But the number of people in the office shop yesterday was crazy - 4 queues to the counter filling the shop, and they'd employed 3 or 4 security guards especially for the occasion. Everyone was getting their supplies! At the weekend, we gave the kids from Escuelita books for school, and on Monday it was nice to see some of their work in their books.

PhotoTime Tuesday - Transportation

Tue, 09 Mar 2004 10:04:58 +0000

The underground in Buenos Aires

Chatting to our friends in Pompey

Sat, 06 Mar 2004 16:19:45 +0000

Last night we had a lovely chat with our friends from back home over the webcam in the internet cafe. You can see them here:

Miuerhi = Moorhouse?

Fri, 05 Mar 2004 10:04:38 +0000

The other day we had some sheets washed at the Lavadero (Launderette), and they will deliver them to you once they've been washed and dried. When I dropped the sheets off, they took my name - which I said and then spelt for them, but the lady there stopped me before I'd finished. On Wednesday, they delivered them and I had a bit of a chat with the deliverey guy, who was intrigued as to where we were from because of an unusual surname, which I thought nothing of, as it is unusual for Uruguay. He asked us if we are from far away, and whether we are Mormons, as there are lots of Mormons here and it's a usual assumption for foreigners.

Uruguayan children - observations

Tue, 02 Mar 2004 00:25:05 +0000

In the last week, we've had a few of the children round from the barrio, and it's quite interesting to see the differences between them and children back home (in general!). The children that we've had round love to clean and wash up - which I was surprised at. However we had a bag of packaging foam pieces from a parcel that we'd received and they thought that it was sweets or some other type of food - and asked where to buy them.

Bread rolls

Sun, 22 Feb 2004 11:07:01 +0000

At youth group yesterday we had lots of bread rolls left over, so we decided to leave them in the fridge at the CAIF for Sunday to see if there was anyone who needed food. This morning at the service we got through the sermon and Gilberto was just about to start the Eucaristic prayer and realised that they'd run out of wafers! I don't understand why it was left to that point for him to find out though! Anyway, he was going to send Sendi home to find some bread, but she conveniently disappeared to the toilet. Then I remembered the bread in the fridge, so I got it and we had communion using have a finger roll. He still decided to dip it in the wine and put it in peoples mouths, and it was very squidgy - surprised he managed!!

Exodus

Wed, 11 Feb 2004 08:24:40 +0000

I've just finishing reading Exodus in my personal bible studies, and whats really struck me about it is the way that everyone had their own part to play in building the tabernacle, which is particularly clear in Exodus 35. God gave each individual the gifts and materials, so that they could do the work between them. I see this as an old testament copy of 1 Corinthians 12 in many ways, and the church needs to be like this example of the Israelites. They all took their part that God had given them in order for the glory of God to be with them - so we all need to play our part in the church for the glory of God. It's also clear from these passages that God gave each individual the things that were needed, and that God gives us the things we need to what he has set before us. We need to acknowledge that they are gifts from him, and use them as for his glory.

"As an intellectual argument, evolutionary theory is in big trouble."

Tue, 03 Feb 2004 08:39:55 +0000

It appears that 'Darwinists' are getting worried about evolution not being the only option taught in schools. They're getting defensive and it appears that they're realizing that they've not got any ground, well other than stubbornness that their view is right! According to Albert Mohler:"When a scientific alternative to evolution is presented, they deny that the theory can be scientific simply because it rejects evolution. Evolutionary theory is now at the core of their definition of science itself." Even between themselves they can't agree about any of the details - just that evolution is the only thing that can be right. Berman seems to worry not only about the theory of evolution being rejected but that looking at alternatives is "jeopardizing the nature of science itself, our education system, and even our form of government". If we do follow down the evolution route, even though some of its proponents seem to be loosing their faith in it, then where does it leave us? As Mohler writes: "If human beings are not made in the image of God, and if the entire cosmos is nothing more than a freakish accident, morality is nothing but a mirage and human beings--cosmic accidents that we are--are free to negotiate whatever moral arrangement seems best to us at any given time."

Uruguayans and rain

Sun, 01 Feb 2004 08:13:50 +0000

It's interesting to see how differently people here react to rain than those in England. Here everything stops when it rains, people stay in their houses and there's no-one on the streets. A lot of the smaller shops close because of rain as well. So after talking to Gilberto, Youth Group was cancelled yesterday, because there wouldn't have been anyone there. If everything stopped when it rains in England, the country would come to a standstill!!

Outdoor service and party!

Fri, 30 Jan 2004 11:34:54 +0000

Today we had a lovely outdoor service in the church garden, because the church has been getting very hot, and last week I commented to Gilberto that it would be nice to have a service outside sometime. By the sounds of things, others had mentioned it too. It was nice, a bit noisy though -but everyone seemed to think it was good so I think we're having another one on Sunday. After the service we had a small party for Laura's birthday (a week late - but still nice) One of the unexpected guests is in the picture - he sat there quite happily while I took his picture, then jumped off!

Weather change day!

Tue, 27 Jan 2004 07:47:57 +0000

This morning I updated the weather on the [samespirit] front page to be the forecast for Salto rather than Montevideo, which I've been thinking about doing for a few days. Interestingly though, the same day - the site I was originally getting the weather forecast from changed the way they do their page so it would have broken my weather script if I hadn't changed it!

Busy but cool day!

Sat, 24 Jan 2004 23:01:00 +0000

We've had quite a busy day today - we had Escuelita this morning and then this evening at 6 we had the first meeting of the new Youth Group! (plus in-between Sylvia came round to plan the youth group with us). For the Escuelita, we looked at Creation, and we'd prepared a 2 sheets in advance - one for the older ones with blank spaces for them to draw something for each of the days of creation and one for the younger ones with pre drawn pictures to colour in. On the back of each sheet was a wordsearch, and a set of sentences with missing words for them to fill in. It went really well today compared to some of the ones we did last year. First Laura read through the story of creation from the Childrens bible and we looked at it in a bit more depth, then they worked on the sheets. For the Youth Group we looked at the topic of what it is to be a Christian - Laura did an introductory prayer and explanation of what the group was about, then we had a few games to get to know one another, then we had two groups each looking at one of the two passages (Acts2:42-50 and 1 John 2:29-3:3)Then they shared what they'd found with one another and we talked a bit about it, we sang some songs and then finished with a prayer.

Bible Study

Thu, 22 Jan 2004 23:47:00 +0000

Had a brilliant bible study in the Barrio today, looking at the 4 different set readings for today. It was really cool - I got a lot from it and felt able to contribute which was good. The readings were Genesis 11:1-9(The tower of Babel), Psalm 37:1-18, Hebrews 6:13-20, John 4:1-42(Jesus' conversation with the Samaritan women). They seemed to link together quite well - the tower of Babel, where the people sought their own achievements ignoring God; the Psalm which told us to trust in God, walk in his paths and listen to him; Hebrews which talked about the certainty of Gods promises; and in John, Jesus saying his food was to do& complete the will of his father.

Feeling much better!

Wed, 21 Jan 2004 21:00:00 +0000

Feeling much better today, back into food - Yippee! We've started reading Hebrews together which should be cool. The prayer meeting tonight was at a lady's house across the street, who we didn't know, but vaguely recognised, it was a good meeting and Gilberto talked about changing the Merendero at the church to have more spiritual content. We're going to be looking at a bible story with the kids and one of the others is going to pray at the start each week.

Laura's Birthday

Tue, 20 Jan 2004 18:00:00 +0000

Happy Birthday Laura! Unfortunatley I'm not feeling too good though

Birthday Cake, Cinema

Mon, 19 Jan 2004 20:35:00 +0000

It's Laura's birthday tomorrow so I've been making her a birthday cake. She wanted a bible shaped one, so I did my best - the shape is ok, but I encountered problems with the icing so it didn't end up with a verse on it! Then in the evening we went to see American Pie - The Wedding, - the cinema was the fullest I'd ever seen it here in Salto.

Jesus at the Wedding

Sun, 18 Jan 2004 21:00:00 +0000

First Sunday service back in Salto, and it turns out that we're going to be looking at John's gospel in the Sunday services -which is cool especially after having looked at it in depth on the camp. The passage was Jesus at the Wedding in Cana, which Gilberto had previously referred to as showing that Mary was needed to start Jesus' ministry - "If she hadn't involved him here...". However the sermon sounded quite good - no particular focus on Mary and no mention of the above - so it's promising! One thing I noticed that was particularly interesting to me, was that Mary is only referred to in John's gospel as "Jesus' mother" or similar - never by name - in the same way as he doesn't refer to himself by name. They are both only referred to in reference to Jesus, there only importance is how they are related to Jesus - The only importance we have is our relation to Jesus.

Back in Salto

Fri, 16 Jan 2004 23:10:00 +0000

Arrived back in Salto today at 7.00 - In some ways, it's nice to be back - but it's been a great trip and would be nice to just keep travelling!!

Christian bookshop, Mothers of the plaza & Lord of the rings

Thu, 15 Jan 2004 23:09:00 +0000

Left the hotel in the morning, fortunately we could leave the bag there, so we didn't have to carry it round all day. We went to find one of the Christian bookshops, and got some cool books which should help us with the youth group. Then we had lunch at McDonalds - one of there cool salads again, this time to share with 2 chicken breasts - Was lovely. It then looked as if it was going to rain, so we headed back to pick up our bag, as the hotel was a few blocks from the tube. We then went to the Plaza de Mayo and watched the Mothers of the plaza parade in there protest about the lack of information about the people who were 'disappeared'. After this we had a coffee and watched Lord of the Rings part 3 before heading to the bus station to get our bus home at 23.00

Day in Buenos Aires

Wed, 14 Jan 2004 23:08:00 +0000

Arrived at Buenos Aires first thing in the morning, left our luggage and headed straight to the hotel (Best Western Comfort Hotel) to see if we could check in - we could, so we had showers and breakfast as we decided what to do for the day.

No dollars in Mendoza!

Tue, 13 Jan 2004 23:06:00 +0000

We woke up quite early, after not much sleep as the room was very stuffy - decided to get packed up and leave the hostel as soon as possible. We tried to pay in dollars, but they wouldn't accept it as the note had got a mark on it in pen - so we had to go to the cash machine and get more pesos for them and head back to the hostel before breakfast! We had breakfast at a cafe in one of the main streets and then headed off to try and get some dollars out of the bank to pay Jorge. We looked around a bit, and in the afternoon we went to the shopping centre to pass some time before catching the bus to Buenos Aires.

Travelling back to Mendoza

Mon, 12 Jan 2004 23:06:00 +0000

Left Santiago at13.00 - The bus journey was good, but annoyingly they decided to close the curtains and shut out the view in order to watch 'die another day' with sound going on and off!! We arrived in Mendoza in the evening and it was raining. Got to the hostel we'd booked, and discovered that our' double room' was a converted bathroom with 2 bunk beds in that we had to go across a courtyard to get to! It was very hot and stuffy. We decided to leave our stuff, and head out to get some food - but the rain was too much so we left it a bit while we checked our e-mail. A bit later the rain had stopped, and we found a nice looking little cafe where we could eat. I had a chicken breast with vegetables (sweet potato, zapallo, carrot & potato) which was really nice and Laura had a salad - We swapped a bit of each and also shared a bottle of Mendozian wine. For desert I had a lovely almond ice cream with bits of almond on it, and Laura had lemon ice cream.

Day in Santiago

Sun, 11 Jan 2004 22:02:00 +0000

We met Alf Cooper - pastor of Trinity church in Santiago, who invited us to got to their newest church plant at Cantagallo for the service. What they have lots of different activities at the main church that bring in lots of people and they let it grow till it gets too big(700 is considered a reasonable size). Also alongside there are lots of ways of training up leaders, including theology courses run from the church. Once the church is too big, they'll take a group of people including leaders to form the new church plant. At Cantagallo - they normally have about 70 people, but they were expecting it to be less because it's holiday season - although it seemed to be near to that number anyway! Before the service, we helped to get things ready and convert the school hall into a church, and we prayed with a group in preparation for the service. They also prayed for us, the church in Uruguay, and the youth group that we'll be starting. After the service, we went to the bus station and got our tickets sorted out to travel to Mendoza and went for a look round Santiago. In the evening we had burgers and mashed potato, and watched Phone Booth with the others who were staying at the church

Travelling back

Sat, 10 Jan 2004 22:10:00 +0000

Travelled back to Santiago, the bus journey was fun!

Last full day

Fri, 09 Jan 2004 22:11:00 +0000

Last day at the camp :( Was a fun day though - I played lots of table tennis! We had a nice chat with Tito (Bishop of Chile) at dinner.

Did Judas have a choice?

Thu, 08 Jan 2004 22:10:00 +0000

At breakfast there was hot chocolate this morning, but I didn't like it much - probably should have had it with half milk - half water. The study on John today provoked some interesting thoughts on Judas - he was chosen to take the part he did, but did he have a choice? The teachers seemed to think he was evil and greedy anyway. I went for a nice walk round the block with Laura, then swam, played table tennis and table football. In the evening things went on a bit too late again! They want us all to go to the devotionals in the morning at8.30 - so why not finish a bit earlier that 00.30?

Waterfalls and faith

Wed, 07 Jan 2004 23:00:00 +0000

Slept really well! Had a coffee before going to the devotional on Galatians. There was scrambled egg at breakfast - really tasty! The study on John was interesting - particularly looking at the man by the pool - did he have faith? Not before being healed - it's not necessary to have faith in order to be healed - faith is a gift from God - it's not something you do. After lunch we went to the waterfall just a little way up the road - it was a bit of a climb up to it, but well worth it! Went swimming in the pool when we got back. The panoramic vision of the bible seemed to race through a bit for me today, but I still just about managed to follow it and get a lot from it. I tried to walk back to the cabin on my own at night - but I went the wrong way, heard wolves in the forest and saw bats flying past me.

First day of camp

Tue, 06 Jan 2004 22:58:00 +0000

First full day of the camp - woke up at 7.15 in plenty of time for the devotional at 8.30 which was on Galatians - the theme of Christ living in me. Then we had breakfast - which was really nice and consisted of yoghurt, hot bread and tea or coffee. Then we had the study on Johns gospel which was brilliant. In the afternoon we went up to view point where we could see mount Chillan. There were quite a few clouds, but it was brilliant. In the afternoon I went swimming. This evening I moved into the leaders cabin, as there was space there - It's huge and quite different to the others!!

Arrived at the camp

Mon, 05 Jan 2004 15:00:00 +0000

Left Santiago later than had been planned -we arrived at Rucahue at about 3 and then had lunch - salad and pork steak. We attempted to get a room together, but in the end decided it was too much hassle for everyone. The evening worship was excellent, and the sermon was on Philippians 3 - about avoiding Legalism, and that knowing Christ is what is important. I had to move beds as the one I thought I'd found once already taken! In the end I slept on the floor -quite comfy! In the evening there was a session - panoramic vision of the bible, which was really interesting and I managed to follow it!

Latest Itinerary

Fri, 02 Jan 2004 14:33:00 +0000

We now know a little bit more and actually a little bit less about our itinerary. After we arrive in Buenos Aires, we'll meet up with the others and then head to Jorge's friends house. We didn't manage to get on the direct bus from Buenos Aires to Santiago, so we don't have return tickets and are going on the way via Mendoza - so we'll leave Buenos Aires at 18.30 and arrive in Mendoza at 09.00. Then in the afternoon we'd get the 13.30 bus to Santiago. (Well something like that anyway!!) Don't know what time we'll arrive at the church now with this transport! The return journey is down to us - we'll have to sort it out in Santiago at some point!!! For what we're doing when we're there - you're best to look at Laura's Blog , cos she's got a lovely entrywith the programme translated! If you want to follow our route on the map, it may be right, or it may not, but it'll definitely have photos when we get back! Here's a site I found useful for city maps of the various places.

Chile is getting sorted...at last!

Mon, 29 Dec 2003 21:51:00 +0000

Well we've now got our tickets for the bus to Buenos Aires with a company called flechabus, It took us 4 attempts, but finally we got them - the first time we didn't have passports, the second they were closed and the third they don't take credit cards (unusually as both companies to Montevideo take credit cards!) We've also got the details by e-mail of when and where etc...We leave on Friday 2nd at 23.00 to arrive in Buenos Aires the next morning at 7.00, where we spend the morning and get the bus to Santiago via Mendoza - or it may be 2 buses!! Then we arrive in Santiago sometime on Sunday. We stay the night in La Trinidad church and then early the next morning we take the bus to Complejo Turístico Rucahue near the town of Chillán. Then we'll have lunch, and have the afternoon free before things start at 18.30. Then we're in for a busy week, until Saturday 10th when we head back to Santiago leaving at 13.30. We arrive at Santiago at 19.00 then stay the night again at the church (I think) before heading back to Buenos Aires - where we should arrive on the 14that some point. We're then going to have to spend a day in Buenos Aires before our bus to Salto leaves at 23.00 on the 15th.

People we know!

Sat, 27 Dec 2003 16:19:00 +0000

I've just added a people we know section onto samespirit so that if I mention someone in my blog, or we mention someone in our updates, you'll be able to see who it is! It will be linked properly from here soon, but for now here you go: on this site or on samespirit

Christmas in Uruguay

Sat, 27 Dec 2003 09:28:00 +0000

Well we've survived Christmas in Uruguay -actually it was really nice. On Christmas Eve we went to 2 services -one in the barrio and one at the parish, which were both really nice. Although quite exhausting particularly with playing guitar for 2 songs (Cristianos vayamos - to the tune of "Oh Come all Ye faithful" and Nochede Paz - "Silent Night") in each and trying to lead a song when I'd got different words + number of verses to everyone else!! Then we went with Jose and 2 of his grandchildren to his house before going on to the party at their house. The party was nice as it was just us, Jose, Pablo,Carmin and the two children. We watched the children open their presents and then ate party food until it got to midnight. Then we went outside to watch the fireworks which were amazing! Looking over the river to Concordia we could see fireworks going off all across the city. After the fireworks, we went back in for dessert. On Christmas Day we opened our presents and phoned our families first thing in the morning. Then we went to Alba's for Christmas lunch which was: a starter of a sort of swiss roll - but instead of Jam had Olives and Ham (the Uruguayans tend to like combining sweet and savory) followed by chicken with salad and the dessert was lovely - it was strawberry's and pieces of cake in a syrup with some sort of spirits init topped of with cream!

Chord database /viewer

Sat, 20 Dec 2003 00:00:00 +0000

Today I stumbled across Asaphfrom the worship archive forums. It's a program that lets you store songs and chords in a database, with chords and variations on the song. It will show you them, copy them as text and even transpose them!!

We're going to Chile!

Wed, 17 Dec 2003 22:58:00 +0000

While we were in Montevideo, Jorge invited us to go to the provincial youth congress in Chile - a 5 day event for youth leaders. We will be travelling by bus via Buenos Aires and will be a long (The section between Buenos Aires and Santiago is 22 hours) but very scenic journey !The event should be really helpful for us both in language, leadership and spiritually. When we get back, we're going to be starting a youth group here along with a girl who approached Gilberto about one while we were in Montevideo. Tonight Gilberto mentioned the youth group and we told him about the congress and he was really encouraging.

Back from Montevideo

Wed, 17 Dec 2003 08:59:00 +0000

After a nice (but busier than expected) few days in Montevideo, it's nice to be back to Salto. We've got loads of photos from the Synod, some of which will probably be online later on. We managed to meet up with lots of people through the 5 days we were there so it was good. We went to the Noche de los Luces which was a big firework display down by the river.

Going to Montevideo tomorrow

Wed, 10 Dec 2003 22:20:00 +0000

Well we're off to Montevideo tomorrow for the Synod (A sort of AGM for the diocese as far as I know) It's a 2 day meeting -well 4 on Friday till sometime on Saturday - Hope we get some time to sleep. I probably won't be able to update this till we get back.

Uruguay makes BBC News!!

Mon, 08 Dec 2003 23:02:00 +0000

BBC News: Uruguay vote rejects oil policy: Unusually, there's an article on BBC News about something that happened in Uruguay!! Everyone here has been talking about the referendum for the last few weeks and there's been graffiti around saying to vote "Si" ever since we arrived! Here in Salto there were 2 processions, the first one with the tambores (see picture) and the second one with hordes of pedestrians with flags chanting something that sounded like an anti US chant followed by cars hooting away. We got the perfect view from our sixth floor balcony over looking the main street.

Reading

Sun, 07 Dec 2003 00:02:00 +0000

I did the reading in church for the first time in Spanish today. It went ok, however Gilberto had originally told me a different reading, as he'd got the wrong page in his book of readings. So I'd prepared to read 1 Thessalonians 3:6-13and then when it came to the reading he realised it was a different one! So I ended up reading Philippians 1:1-11instead. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, I think I only made one major mistake!

Football crazy!

Sat, 06 Dec 2003 08:09:00 +0000

We were on our way back from the cinema, and found ourselves surrounded by football fans - and they filled the whole of the main street - cars, bikes and pedestrians. The most popular team in Salto had won the championship -so the fans were celebrating big time! Even the traffic lights were flashing!

Only in America!

Sat, 06 Dec 2003 02:22:00 +0000

BBC NEWS | UK | Woman jailed for burger attack: "A Texas woman who ran over a McDonald's manager after not getting mayonnaise on her cheeseburger has been sentenced to 10 years in jail by a court in Houston."

Diocese of Uruguay site up!

Wed, 03 Dec 2003 19:24:00 +0000

We've got the initial version of the diocese website up and running - it's been a fun day getting it all sorted. It's only got the basic information there, but will grow once we get some replies toe-mails! Have a look: Iglesia Anglicana

Home group was cool!

Tue, 02 Dec 2003 23:49:00 +0000

We had a really good home group tonight, looking at three little verses from Johns gospel on the subject "Accept Jesus as Lord and Friend" - For the first verse, I asked if we could read the verses just before and after it. With having a little bit more to look at we had a really great discussion and everyone seemed to contribute at some point. This is a great improvement from the previous weeks, where the study has been very short and not gone into much depth. We touched on all sorts of cool bits which people had seemed to have had a bit of a misunderstanding about - so that's promising! Here's a some verses that I was thinking of part of during home group when we were talking about the difference between society, and Jesus' instruction to love one another as he loves us: If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death--even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. I might add a bit more on this tomorrow, but I'm tired now!

Annoying Uruguayan Advertising &Christmas shopping!

Tue, 02 Dec 2003 22:13:00 +0000

There's an unusual form of advertising here in Uruguay - the little trucks and bikes that drive round and round the same block every few minutes all day long! They play the same advert through a speaker on top of the vehicle as loud as they can manage - or it seems that way! So we can here it right from our flat on the 6thfloor. Today we were treated to the Pink Panther theme, with random Spanish voices that we couldn't make out as it was so distorted! I wonder what it will be next time, or if we've got that for the next month! But I still managed to get my Christmas shopping done today (earliest ever I guess!) which is cool!

Advent is here!

Mon, 01 Dec 2003 18:53:00 +0000

Yesterday at church they lit the first advent candle on the wreath, and changed all the green coverings and decoration in the church to purple (apparently the liturgical colour for the season), and stopped singing songs containing Alleluia, or saying it in the liturgy of the service! Which is a bit different and seems strange -particularly avoiding songs containing Alleluia. But the idea behind it is that Advent is a season of preparation for Christmas. It's been quite interesting to see how different things are here - both in the culture of the country and the culture of the church. Gilberto encouraged people at the service to remember the real reason for Christmas and Advent, and not to let giving cards, giving presents and decorating distract from Jesus. Here they celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve (Noche Buena) and by the sounds of things they party all night.

The early church

Sun, 30 Nov 2003 17:50:00 +0000

Yesterday we went to a talk about the early church over at the Methodist church based on the book of Acts. It was really interesting, and surprisingly I managed to follow most of what the guy was saying (in Spanish) which was cool. Although I found the people asking questions difficult to understand, and when we were in smaller groups it was difficult. A very tiring day in all, but well worth it!

Concordia

Wed, 26 Nov 2003 22:54:00 +0000

We just got back from Concordia, after spending a couple of days there to renew our visas and have a bit of a break. It's amazing how different it is to Salto, there seems so much more stuff in the supermarkets (mainly in the line of cheap booze) and it seems much busier. We also felt a lot less safe there than we do in Salto - but nothing happened. We stayed in a cheap (-ú10 for a double room with breakfast) but lovely hotel, and wandered around the sites there. At some point I'll probably add some photos of the castle we went to see, and the cathedral, which looks quite different to any other Catholic cathedrals I've seen.

Our power supply is here at last!

Tue, 25 Nov 2003 05:57:00 +0000

This explains the gap in blog entries - we were without a power supply for our laptop for quite a long time since being in Salto - so we've been just about keeping up with e-mails using Gilberto's computer, and the internet cafe. But I've not got round to updating this - hopefully I'll be able to fill in a few of the major events, but things should get more interesting from now on!

Double service and guitar chords

Sun, 12 Oct 2003 16:04:00 +0000

Today we went to the 'double service' at Espíritu Santo, which is a service in Spanish, followed by a service in English. It was really helpful to be at both, and interesting to see the differences. We then went for lunch with the Carters. After lunch, Steve taught me how the guitar chords are done differently here. All the chords have different names as follows: C is DO, D is RE, E is MI, F is FA, G is SOL, A is LA, B is SI. For minor chords, sometimes lower case is used, and sometimes an 'm' is added. I'm starting to get used to it, but it's very tricky.

No Content Found

Sat, 11 Oct 2003 16:04:00 +0000

In the morning we went shopping at Montevideo Shopping - we found it this time with the map - it was much easier by foot. In the afternoon, we watched Bad Boys 2 at the cinema there. It was really empty and we thought we were going to be the only people in there, but another couple came in part way into the film. It was so different watching a film in such an empty cinema!

Colonia

Fri, 10 Oct 2003 16:03:00 +0000

Today we went to Colonia (an old town opposite Buenos Aires) for the day. It was a really nice place to visit for a day, but there wouldn't have been much more to see if we'd been there much longer. The sea views were really nice.

Trying to go shopping

Thu, 09 Oct 2003 16:04:00 +0000

We went to visit Heather in the hospital this morning - she still seemed to be quite weak, but should be going home tomorrow. Then we tried to find one of the other shopping centres nearby - either Portones or Montevideo Shopping. We caught a bus, which was going to one of them, but missed the stop, and ended up at the Rambla. We then walked along for 3-4km before we got to a bus stop where we could get a bus back home.

Spanish lesson and alpha course

Wed, 08 Oct 2003 16:01:00 +0000

This morning we had a time of prayer in the chapel, which I found very difficult. After this we went for a Spanish lesson with Gerry, which was really helpful and we did a lot. We then helped him to get things ready for the Alpha course. We stayed for the start of the Alpha course and then went home. It was interesting to see the way they ran it here - they started of with the food, then had a couple of songs before the talk and afterwards split up into smaller groups to discuss things.

No Content Found

Tue, 07 Oct 2003 16:09:00 +0000

We had another Spanish lesson with Daniel and then we went for lunch at McDonalds. After lunch we went to Tres Cruces to have a look round, but there didn't seem to be much there.

Flights changed and languages!

Mon, 06 Oct 2003 16:02:00 +0000

We got our flights changed first thing at the American Airlines office by the seafront, so we will now be travelling back at the start of July and having a one-night stopover in Miami on the way back to break up the journey. We then went down to CASA to meet Daniel and have a Spanish lesson - which was interesting as he was teaching one person English, and 3 of us Spanish at the same time! After the lesson we went for lunch together.

No Content Found

Sun, 05 Oct 2003 16:01:00 +0000

We went to the English service at the cathedral this morning - it was strange, as it seemed to take more effort than the Spanish ones we've been to! We got the bus back home, and then had lunch with Miguel, Martha & Gonzalo. In the afternoon we went to the dedication of the new church building for Espíritu Santo. It was a really nice service, with so many people that there were lots of people standing outside!! After the service, there was a reception with lots of food where we met Gilberto.

No Content Found

Sat, 04 Oct 2003 16:10:00 +0000

We got up early this morning ready to leave with Miguel at 9 o'clock to Espíritu Santo Ô?? we were ready quite early, so I went to get the bread for us all. We went by bus to the church, and when we got there only the workmen were there. Miguel showed us around. Gradually more people arrived to help with the preparations for tomorrow and we joined in helping. We then caught the bus back down to the cathedral to have lunch with Paulo before going to San Esteban. San Esteban is a house where the church looks after people with AIDS and today they had the introductory session of a course about looking after people with AIDS (which was very hard for me to follow, but interesting still).

Met the Ambassador, ate at soup kitchen

Fri, 03 Oct 2003 17:09:00 +0000

We went to the British Embassy with Steve & Miguel, as they had a meeting with the ambassador, and so that we could register as being in the country. After we'd registered, we waited downstairs forthem to have finished their meeting Ô?? when they'd finished they camedownstairs with the Ambassador, whom Miguel introduced us to. After thiswe went down to the diocesan offices, where we waited for Paulo to take us to CASA Ô?? where we went to meet the team there at their weekly team meeting. After the meeting finished, he took us to the soup kitchen??, where they were currently serving pasta, which we had forour lunch. We then went back to the offices where we joined in with thecelebrations for Lillian's birthday. Afterwards, Ana told us thedetails of the apartment that Gilberto had found for us in Salto. In theafternoon, we went with Liz to Espíritu Santo to help them with thecleaning ready for the dedication of the new chapel on Sunday. We alsodelivered some leaflets to the neighbouring blocks inviting them to theservice.

Arrival of the Bishop

Wed, 01 Oct 2003 15:08:00 +0000

Today I went on an errand with Fabio to move some plants from someone's garden to church of the Holy Spirit Ô?? They were big plants!! Then wewent on to the airport to meet Miguel and Martha as they arrived backfrom Cuba. Their flight was delayed for about 30 minutes and then whenthey arrived, we went via Espíritu Santo, and the British Hospital, as Miguel wanted to see how the building work was doing and to visitHeather in the hospital. We then all had lunch together back at thehouse.

Day off (almost)

Tue, 30 Sep 2003 15:08:00 +0000

Went to Punto Carretas Shopping with Tricia, Jonathan and Isaac. We had a chat and a drink with them Ô?? I had a Licuado, which is liquidised fruit, topped up with fruit juice, milk or water. We then went shopping on our own for a bit and got lost on the way back. This turned out to be good for ourSpanish though!!In the evening we cooked dinner for Daniel and ourselves. We were goingto make pasta bake, but ended up with just pasta in sauce.

Old city and C.A.S.A

Mon, 29 Sep 2003 16:07:00 +0000

Today we wentto the old city (Ciudad Vieja), we visited the church of the Most Holy Trinity (Santísima Trinidad) and the diocese offices, then went to see C.A.S.A (Anglican Centre for Solidarity & Help) where we met Billy, who Daniel is teaching Spanish. We did a bit of Spanish together, and then we went for lunch with Paulo & Sandra. After lunch, Paulo showed us some photos, we rested for a bit and then I drew a dove for them to use with the Alpha course. In the afternoon Luis showed us round the old town. In the evening we prayed together with Luis & Daniel in the chapel which is part of the house. We went through the service for daily prayer from the Book of Common Prayer in Spanish and it was really good.

No Content Found

Sun, 28 Sep 2003 15:07:00 +0000

Today we went to Church of the Holy Spirit (Espíritu Santo) in Carrasco Ô?? it was much easier to follow, with Steve being English. For some reason it just makes his Spanish easier to understand. The church meets in a room in what used to be a house, but is moving next week to a chapel next to it, which is beingbuilt where the garage was. The service was fairly lively and all of thecongregation speak English, but the service is in Spanish. For lunch, wehad a barbecue at Ana (The bishop's secretary)'s house with herfamily. They were really nice, and the food was all really tasty.In the afternoon, we went along to a youth group which was made up ofChristians from the British and American schools Ô?? We talked aboutfears, and how we as Christians should deal with fears. Then we wentoutside and had some food, and played with various balls and animals! I spent most of the time learning how to throw an American Football using a rugby ball. In the evening we went to see Bruce Almighty at the cinema, which was cool as it the cinema here is in English with Spanish subtitles.

First day - very busy already!

Sat, 27 Sep 2003 16:34:00 +0000

For the day after arriving, 8 o'clock was a very early start, but we had to get the bus with Daniel to Colon ready for the Escuelita?? (a bit like Sunday School) at 9 o'clock. When 9 o'clock came suddenly a hoard of kids turned up - 14 in all. They sang songs, did some drawing, and we gave them milk and biscuits Ô?? then they went off to play. After this Daniel took us through the "Feria"??, which was a bit like a big car boot sale Ô?? without the cars! There was allsorts of junk for sale, along with caged birds and pretty much anything you can think of. We had lunch together at a restaurant. In the afternoon, there was a confirmation class and a youth alpha group?? and we met the members of each group Ô?? which turned out to be mostly the same young people. Alpha was cancelled, so we played games instead Ô?? which was great fun! After this, there was a service "Misa"??, which was very difficult to understand, as the guy who was leading the service and preaching had a strong accent, seemed to run his words together and it was Spanish! We had communion at the service with no wine because the bishop was away, and there was no consecrated wine left.

After 36 hours travelling!

Fri, 26 Sep 2003 17:05:00 +0000

After along journey we arrived in Montevideo around lunchtime where we were met at the airport by Daniel (from Texas) and Fabio. We got through the airport so quickly that we had left before Steve Carter (one of the other SAMS missionaries) got there. When we got to the Bishops house, Fabio cooked lunch for us. In the early evening, we went to the beach with Daniel and Luis and had our first "Maté"?? inUruguay!

Thu, 25 Sep 2003 00:00:00 +0000

First flight!

Wed, 24 Sep 2003 21:01:00 +0000

We left Devonat about 6 in the morning in order to drop Greg off on the way to theairport. Got to the airport in plenty of time, and we were allowed tocheck in straight away Ô?? without having to queue much! Got boardingcards for all the planes for our whole journey! The British Airwaysflight was good, had a choice of 13 different channels we could watch with about 6 different films! I watched X-Men 2, Anger Management and the last section of Italian Job.

Going to Uruguay tomorrow!!!

Wed, 24 Sep 2003 18:05:00 +0000

We're flying out to Uruguay tomorrow afternoon- well we don't get there till Friday lunchtime their time! I'm a bit nervous, but very excited!! I'm looking forward to getting there, and looking forward to some of the travelling, but don't really fancy 36hours travelling!!

We've planted a geocache!

Sat, 20 Sep 2003 04:01:00 +0000

Preaching Post is our newly planted geocache!! The coordinates are a bit off, so it may be difficult to find!

In Devon, and first to find a cache!

Fri, 19 Sep 2003 16:44:00 +0000

Well we're now in Devon - the drive down didn't seem too bad, the roads were pretty clear, and it took about the same length of time as we'd expected. Even the time we told my Grandma for stopping to see her on the way down worked out right! :)Today we were the first to find a geocache - it was hidden by the side of the road, so not the most interesting place for a cache, but still cool being the first to find it!

In Nottingham, Icons, etc...

Mon, 15 Sep 2003 04:05:00 +0000

I'm now up in Nottingham, well I've been here since last Tuesday, been having a good time. Got ourselves a travel adapter, and been attempting to find a cheap external CD-Writer - so far no luck! We went to Beeston Evangelical Free Church yesterday evening, which was really nice, and seemed very friendly. The sermon was on Acts 24:22-26:32,and was interesting - particularly the links between the Herrods, and Agrippa, Drusilla and Bernice and how they had all reacted to Paul's message. Also, on this site I've added some of my icons to my portfolio pages!

Last day at work!

Fri, 05 Sep 2003 07:48:00 +0000

Just winding down and clearing up (again) - I'm going to miss it here, but I'm going to keep in touch. Well all there is now is to give back my laptop, hand in my badge and head to the pub!!

Lots of geocaches!

Mon, 01 Sep 2003 18:59:00 +0000

We found 8 over the weekend! Lots and lots of fun, and loads of nice places around the area that I didn't realise were there.

Barbecue and sermon

Wed, 27 Aug 2003 17:58:00 +0000

At last! - I finished my sermon this morning - before leaving for the morning service. I've had a very hectic week - all cumulating in this one day! Katrina's fundraising barbecue for us was brilliant - It was fun, and managed to raise 311.36 through it! It was really nice that my parents were able to come along too. Then this evening I did my sermon. Preaching for the first time was scary - I was very nervous. I felt it had gone badly, but everyone else thought it was good - so I guess it must have been.

Found it at last!

Sun, 24 Aug 2003 05:59:00 +0000

We decided to go back to the Kench for a walk with my parents last night and have another look for the geocache.After a bit of searching we found it though - Maybe it's easier with a bit more experience!

Chile and Uruguay most stable in the region

Mon, 18 Aug 2003 06:32:00 +0000

MercoPress :"Chile and Uruguay the most stable in the region Chile and Uruguay have the highest democratic development index of Latin America, while Paraguay and Venezuela stand at the extreme opposite according to the latest report from the German Foundation Konrad Adenauer simultaneously released last week in several continental capitals. "

Companies can be annoying!

Tue, 12 Aug 2003 16:35:00 +0000

After phoning O2 at the weekend to arrange to have my phone disconnected in October when the contract runs out - they very quickly and efficiently disconnected my phone immediately! I phoned them back later on and they said they'd reconnect it for me. Still nothings happened - so tonight I phoned again and after holding for 30 minutes they told me they couldn't do anything until the cancellations team were in tomorrow!

Photo Gallery

Sat, 09 Aug 2003 16:17:00 +0000

I've added a photos section to my website portfolio now -which I'm quite pleased with. It will grow gradually as I take more photos - I'm trying to take one for each letter of the alphabet. Laura suggested the fish shape - which I thought was cool so I then had the challenge of creating it!

Geocaching is cool!

Sun, 03 Aug 2003 09:51:00 +0000

We went Geocaching for the first time yesterday - It was great fun!! We didn't manage to find the first one (The Kench)unfortunately, but when we decided to try Millennium Sails,we had much better luck (eventually), as you can see from our photos.

We're in the paper!

Fri, 27 Jun 2003 17:48:00 +0000

After all those days we bought the paper to see if we were in there - the day we almost didn't get a copy was the one!! You can see the article here.

Bits and bobs

Wed, 25 Jun 2003 20:07:00 +0000

Found a link to this cool colour toy today -which I prefer to the previous one I'd seen as this will work in Mozillla too! Got a rough draft of my sermon together, now just to neaten it up around the edges, and probably add some illustrations. Also went to see Comedy of Errors at Stanstead House tonight - it was brilliant, really funny - I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Laura is home! yippee!

Fri, 20 Jun 2003 13:38:00 +0000

We'd arranged to meet up halfway there, but because of traffic I got delayed - so we changed the plan to meet closer to my end at the McDonalds near the M27. But I'm happy, cos Laura is back!

navigation & sermon title!

Wed, 18 Jun 2003 15:53:00 +0000

Well, [samespirit] now has a navigation side bar- I was only intending to surf a bit to relax after going shopping, but that's fine - I think it looks better with it there -see for yourself! I've also got a working title and a rough idea of the structure for my sermon now so that's getting on well. Annoyingly though, the estate agents didn't return my call earlier, so I guess I'll try another one tomorrow or next week.

The most watched filmï¿½

Wed, 18 Jun 2003 00:00:00 +0000

BBC News is reporting on the most watched film in history! It was made to take the gospel to far corners of the world and has been translated into 760 different languages, but hardly heard of in the UK. Sounds interesting to get a copy of to watch. There's clips on it's website

missing Laura...and party

Sat, 14 Jun 2003 11:07:00 +0000

Laura's gone back home to spend the week looking after her sister - so it feels empty around the house. Tonight I'm going to my Uncles 60th birthday - which should be good, just have to remember how to get there again!! I really should have brought my camera to work so I'd have it with me for the party, anyway I'm sure we'll go over there again before we go away!

server dead...now back to life

Tue, 10 Jun 2003 10:39:00 +0000

My server at work died yesterday, but at last I've got most of it back! Surprisingly most scripts are back up and running, although some have died totally - maybe I'll get them working, but I don't like hunting through other peoples code!

My Firebird Extensions

Sun, 08 Jun 2003 00:00:00 +0000

All-in-one gestures

Style Selector 0.3.0

User Styles 0.3.0

LinkIt 0.0.4

Web Developer 0.2

Link Toolbar 2003-05-04

x 0.1

My new blog!

Sat, 07 Jun 2003 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome!

Wed, 04 Apr 2001 00:00:00 +0000

Tue, 12 Aug 1997 00:00:00 +0000

Fri, 25 Jul 1997 00:00:00 +0000