Half Term Week

I booked the week off, to be able to spend some time with Amanda and the kids over the half term holiday week, unfortunately, due to her dad's continuing slow decline, we dare not go too far. The upshot of that is, I manged to get the new website to the stage where I am happy to start filling in some of the content.

The front page is near complete - still some temporary messages still on there, the menu is working pretty much how I want it to, and my page is now just about finished.

What a week...

Just a quick update...

• Amanda's dad is extremely ill, and Amanda and her auntie have been taking it in turns to spend the night with her mom.


• My mom is recovering well in hospital after her 'Total Knee Replacement' surgery, she is quite a bit of discomfort with it, but getting better rapidly.


• Alex is now 7... yesterday was his birthday. We spent an hour in the garden last night playing with our new golf clubs (9I and putter each)


• Today is Alex's swimming party at the local baths, with some of his friends from school.


• The bike is settling in nicely. I have now managed to get 60 miles on the clock, and am gradually comming to terms with the very different ridding style involved (not to mention the huge lack of power relative to the SV), but it is a much easier bike to ride in traffic.

New style menu - testing

I have used the DHTML menu builder system to create a floating menu bar on Redbreva.com, the only link that is really functional at present is the Photography one.

I have been experimenting with using Photoshop CS2 to provide the webpage slideshow for various picture albums... Works quite well, not sure if that's the final look and feel I want yet tho'

Alex not feeling well...

He is still not fit enough to return to school. The sicknes etc. has stopped, but with the amount of sleep he had yesterday, and the total lack of food he has had a lousy night... awake for long periods and having 'bad dreams'. In short, this morning he is totally knackered, and very emotional.

As 1) I am not feeling at my best - sore throat and headache, 2) the weather is awful - very windy and raining and 3) we have a high staff level in today... I am having the day off to look after him, and allow Amanda to continue with her plan to spend the day with her Mom and Dad

Got the new bike, but not a good day...

Today did NOT go as planned...

It was supposed to be a 10:00AM collection, followed by a 2-3 hour ride to get some miles on the tyres in the nice sunny weather that the BBC had forcast only the day before...

At 07:00 Alex was sick, and was pronounced not fit to go to school. Amanda arranged to go in a little later than normal - allowing me time to get to the dealers for my 10:00 pickup, so that was the morning ride out the window. When I got to the dealers, it was the salesmans day off, and he had not handed the sale over to anyone!! Neither had the bike been taxed or PDI'd...! The sales manager was very appologetic - especially after the mixup with the registration number three weeks earlier... so offered to provide the new summer weight bike trousers I was after as compensation. £127's worth of goods and the bike can still be picked up at 14:30 when Amanda gets home from work... Still time for a ride out (OK, a bit shorter, but a ride out just the same)

Amanda was then able to get to work for 11:00, in time to be useful before dinner. I then had a call from Amanda's mom, Mike is seriously ill, and the nurses are advising Amanda to take the week off from work and spend as much time with her dad as she can...
So once she got home, and I told her the news, I walked back to the dealers, rode the whole mile back home, and then Amanda went to her Mom's...

Later on I phoned my mom, who is due to go into hospital tommorrow for knee surgery, to see if everything was OK, and explain that visits may be difficult over the next week due to Mike's condition. At 15:00 today, the hospital still do not know if they have a bed available for her tommorow morning... Who said the NHS has too many office staff! She has to call again in the morning - before 08:00, to know if she still needs the ambulance that has been booked the take her!

On the plus side, by about 16:00 Alex was starting to feel a little better, managed to eat a couple of biscuits - and keep them down, and had a drink of water, so hopefully he will be fit for school again in the morning. Amanda is planning to drop the kids off, and go directly to help her mom.

Actually we did drop Lucky..

It absolutely threw it down earlier this morning, stopped and the then the sun came out and dried everything back up. It stayed that way till almost the end of the party. The Bar-B-Q went well, and Alex had some lovely presents.

Any one know of a way of stopping your kids having birthdays?

Just Our Luck...

Last weekend the weather was glorious ( I should know, I was out on my Bike with West Mids Police for most of it)

This weekend, we are having a Bar-B-Que for (what seems to be) 500 people in honour of Alex's 7th Birthday, and it has been raining on and off all morning...

When in Rome...

never mind what the Romans do... do what Dan Brown did...... Take the "Angels and Demons Tour" and see if you could have come up with the idea for the book of the same name from what you see

OMG!! What will they come out with next!!

Burn your own Vinyl at home!!

It's not much but...

In view of the hostile take over of Manchester United by Malcolm Glazier, I have today canceled my club memberships (Me, Amanda and Amy) and my MUTV subscriptions.

OK, £130 per year is not going to change his mind, but if 10's of thousands of people to the same....

I really enjoy going to matches, but sometimes principles are more important, I will not be going back to Old Trafford untill there is another change of ownership!

New game for the XBox

Forza Motorsport

Not got too much to compare it to, but...

Way more drivable than Colin McCrea on the XBox,
Just as much fun as TOCA Race Driver on the PC

Graphics are excellent, options are plentifull, fun factor is high....

Just got back from my first Bikesafe day...

I have really enjoyed it, the instructors are excellent. They have managed to explain all the principles in a simple and humerous way, lunch was good, and the ride out was an experience!

It takes a little bit of time to get used to ignoring a uniform police bike a couple of meters behind you! The one thing I did not expect was my initial feedback is that I was riding too slow! Seems that my speedo is about 5 to 6MPH too high at 50/60... So proceeded to dide at 55 in a 50 limit, 65 in a 60 limit and all was well.

Tommorow is more about cornering and overtaking with a 3 hour ride out on open roads... I am knackered after todays 2 hours, god knows what state I will be in after tommorows ride

Going to a concert in August

Today, I have booked tickets to go and see Katherine Jenkins in Concert at Ragley Hall (Alcester) on the 14th of August. All four of us are going... well it's only £5 for children, so I amy as well take Alex - Amy wanted to go anyway.

It will be Alex's first live concert, and a classical mezzo-soprano would probably not be his first choice, so it will be interesting to see how he reacts, but he does like all sorts of music... BTW he would choose BUSTED if he had any say in the matter!!

I am 'BikeSafe'ing this weekend

Over the next two days, I will be spending a lot of time in the company of the West Midlands Police Force on their BikeSafe event.

• Your day will start at 8.30am with drinks and meeting your fellow riders. This is followed by initial registration and document checks.



• You will then meet your classroom instructors who are all police motorcycle instructors. They will take you through advanced riding techniques using powerpoint, 35mm slides, videos and good old dry wipe boards. These classroom sessions have provoked some interesting and humorous discussions in the past so don’t let us down this forthcoming year!



• We also have West Midlands Ambulance Service paramedic motorcyclists who cover your actions to help yourself and other motorcyclists should the worst scenario occur.



• Lunch is between 12.30 and 1.30 (included in the course fee). This gives you an opportunity to review and discuss the classroom sessions with the other course participants prior to the afternoon road sessions.



• After lunch you will meet your road assessors who will all be advanced grade police motorcyclists on marked patrol bikes. They will follow you during your time on the road and offer observations regarding the ride on your return. You will be on the road for approx. 3hrs in total with a ratio of no more than two riders to one police officer.



• The day ends with a debrief and review of the days experiences!



• Day two follows a similar format focusing more on the aspects of open road riding, bend assessment, overtaking etc. The afternoon is again spent on the road with the police motorcyclists.



• The course finishes at 5pm on the Sunday with presentation of certificates and review of the course plus a few nice surprises for some.



• You will at no stage be asked to do anything that you are not happy with and certainly will not be forced to ride quickly (a common misconception about advanced riding).



• You should take away from the course a greater understanding of the risks involved in riding motorcycles on today's roads, and be better equipped to combat them. You will have a lot of fun with other motorcyclists and should get more enjoyment from your machine more safely.

Now it's Video Blogging...

Check out http://www.rocketboom.com, a Video Blog presented by Amanda Gongdon... It's updated daily with quirky news stories and clips, and on Amanda is rather easy on the eye to boot!

Finally getting back to the Gym

After a break of approximately 10 weeks, I finally made it back to the gym yesterday lunchtime... I am starting back gently with a short swim, but aim to be back in the gym proper by next week.

I got weighed yesterday, and I am 87.4KG - That's 13st 10lbs in real money!! I really need to start getting some regular exercise again!

Now got Instant Messaging working on Linux

Easy Peasy - Started Kopete, selected MSN Messenger format, added my Passport Username and Password - and, well, that's it...

It's really a rather smart application, and I like it a lot.... Anyone know if there is a Windows XP version?

SUSE Linux on the laptop

I have recently installed a copy of SUSE Linux 9.3 Professional on my Acer Travelmate 6600 laptop, dual booting it with XP. Each OS has 20GB of disk space to play with, which seems adequate.

I originally installed 9.2, but then found 9.3 had just been released, so updated. The only area that required any help with the initial configuration was the Wireless Networking... The Centrino chipset was recognised, but did not want to connect. I endede up disabling the fixed LAN ethernet card, and removing all security from the link. Once it connected the first time, it was happy to connect afterwards with the security re-enabled. Upgrading to 9.3 simply preserved all the settings - and it just worked!

The main reason to install Linux is to learn, and at the moment all I can seem to do is use multiple browsers to view the web, it comes with 4 graphical browsers and 1 text only browser as standard.

Guess who's getting a new bike...

Me!!!

yes, I visited Streetbike today, and took the new 650 Bandit out for an hour... I have now ordered a brand new blue one, for collection on the 23rd May, and even arranged the Insurance cover etc etc.

It was interesting riding the Bandit, after the SV1000. There was noticably lack of power, but in a good way... It was far easier to control in traffic, but still had enough 'Get up and Go' to , well, get up and go!! It seemed much better at pulling gently in the lower rev ranges (4 to 7 thousand) than the old bandit.

Summary, not as good a bike as the SV, but in this case Head says Bandit, Heart says SV1000 - Head wins.