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

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.

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

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.

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.

Now I find the ketchup quite hot, so can only have a small amount - but she didn't seem to have a problem with it! Fortunately the bottle hadn't spilt on the carpet - just on the leg of her sleep suit.

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.

Typography

The whole design has much more of a vertical rhythm to it than the previous version and the font sizes and colours have been more thought out.

Background Image

I thought the main content area looked a bit white, so I decided to add a bit more colour with a nautical chart (well a tracing of one) of Kefalonia - the same place as the original photo for the header image was taken.

Removal of timeline

I was finding that it I was just having to click an extra time to get to the latest entries in my blog, so I've decided to go back to a more traditional blog front page.

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.

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!

Today I went with her and Laura to Baby Gym, and it was really nice to see the sort of things they have there and how Abi plays with everything. Today they had feathers out and initally Abi was happy playing with the 3 that we had near her - but then she saw the box that they came from and crawled over to play with it. She emptied all the feathers out of the box onto the mat and then played with the box :). She also liked playing with the balls and rings that they had and she climbed up a 5 step staircase and went forwards (almost head over heels) down the slope the other side. It's also nice to see her interact with other kids. At one point after all the toys had been put away her and the other girl that was there seemed to be looking at each other and started crawling towards each other, only to go straight past each other to their parents. It was all lots of fun!

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!

Work

I'm currently helping out with some Linux support alongside my normal work developing, maintaining and supporting HostDB. This has mainly involved installs, upgrades and Linux admin tasks. Soon I'm going to be getting involved in some portal development which I'm looking forward to learning.

Photography

With the money I got for my birthday, I bought myself a new camera - the Panasonic Lumix FZ7, so I've been taking lots of random photos. Lots of these are of Abi, but there's also general randomness as I explore its features - some of which are on flickr (also in my timeline).

Marketing

Laura and I have been marketing her parents Cornish holiday cottage, through the web. Firstly we built the website, and then we've been exploring advertising it in different ways. So far ebay seems to be by far the best at bringing us enquiries / bookings. It's been really interesting to do and Google Analytics has been great for seeing what is happening with the site. I might right a bit more about our findings later on.

Development

For a while I've been thinking about developing a web application for storing and sharing bible study notes. The intention is that it will use the ESV API and have some or all of the following features:

• Easy to read interface

• Remember where you've got to for next time

• Store notes relating to verses, chapters etc.

• Share notes with friends

Currently I've been playing with a prototype as a facebook platform application, as that will provide the login and networking functions for me. If you have any ideas or want to join in - let me know! So far it only does the first two of the list above, but want to try it, it's at http://apps.facebook.com/bible_esv/

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