Alex having fun

One of the benefits of the new combined "Gardeners World Live" along with the good housekeeping show etc. was the wider variety of exhibitors on show. Even Alex found thing to entertain him.

I had a go too, but no one got a camera out in time to embarrass me ;-)

New Blogging Tool

Windows Live Writer: Works fine with Vista, seem to be easy enough to set up, and will upload images to my FTP folder when I attach them to a blog...  Have a look at it, it's free

Ouch - Expensive week...

As if Bike Insurance, Holiday Balance & TV Licence bills all arriving withing two days wasn't bad enough, we had a plumbing emergency - a leaking Soil pipe that was causing the veranda to stink.

The good thing about having a plumber living next door, is at least you can get a rapid response. Steve did a great job today, but another £70 bill is definitely one I could have done without!

Just Got Back...

From Dudley Castle, where Amanda and I have been to spend an evening with the very wonderful, and *very* beautiful "Miss Katherine Jenkins".

As usual, she sang superbly, looked gorgeous and gave the audience a fantastic show - with a Dudley Zoo reference inserted into the Penguin joke.

The weather was really good, sunny, but not too hot, and the setting and sound was good. The only minor point to criticize was the traffic getting into the car park - the lights allowing traffic to turn right into the car park entrance seemed to be faulty, and we were effectively going over on Red!! Getting out was much easier, as several police officers were on traffic duty at the junction, and made sure the traffic left the site very quickly.

Golfing with Neil (Again)

Neil managed to get finished early today, and I am off (Working a 12 hour night shift tonight) and we returned to Warley Woods for a rematch.

All in all we both felt that we played much better than a few weeks ago, even if we did still have an occasional poor (well, OK very poor) hole.

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	HOLE
4	3	4	3	3	4	4	4	4	Par33
7	5	4	4	6	8	6	5	6	51

18 over... So, close to my target round of 50!! And even better was with Neil also scoring 51, it was a draw ;-)

OMG!! It's HUGE...

The 14 foot trampoline that I erected in the back garden today!!

The gods of outdoors have been kind to me, it has rained all weekend, and is due to rain again all the rest of this week, but today it's been dry and sunny, but not too warm... Just perfect weather to cut the grass and build a trampoline.

Amy and Alex don't know about it yet... only yesterday, I was responding with a firm NO to requests for a trampoline in the garden, so it should be quite a shock.

30th May, 20:00 Update: Alex is well chuffed, and has spent as much time on there as the weather will allow, Amy still knows nothing about it!!

Golfing with Neil

Monday afternoon, Neil got off from work early, and we went to Warley Woods for a quick nine holes.

He has played quite a lot in the past, but not regularly for a year or two. It was nice to have someone to walk around the course with, and a little bit of competition made it more interesting. Although to be honest neither of us were really bothered too much about winning.

In the end Neil's superior putting took the day, but with a margin of only 2 shots, I was quite pleased.

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	HOLE
4	3	4	3	3	4	4	4	4	Par
7	4	7	4	5	9	6	7	6	55

HTMLvalidator/ has just been updated to 8.04(beta) If you are responsible for a web site, and have any interest in ensuring the code is as clean and standards compliant as it can be - then this is a program you should not be without.

Changes since 8.03:
Editor
Dragging and dropping a Batch Wizard target list file (that has an lst file extension) onto the editor in the professional edition will now ask if you want to open it in the Batch Wizard.
Batch Wizard
Following links should now work when links contain ";jsessionid=".
Improved Syntax Checking
Now assume that <%...%>, and will evaluate to a text string when CSE HTML Validator tries to determine if there is text in elements such as "b". This should eliminate messages like this for source like this <% =MS.SomeRoutine %>: The "b" element contains no text and may be useless. Consider removing this element or placing text in it so that it contains text.
Recognizes more font family names as valid.
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug that calculated an incorrect absolute URI in certain rare situations.
New TreeView component to fix access violations when tool tips were on.
The tidyprofiles.xml file is now properly stored and referenced to in the user's application data folder.
Recognizes the CSS "counter-reset" property.
Other
Many Microsoft Vista improvements to better support the look and feel of Microsoft Vista.
Improvements when adding file associations.
Paths in the old 8.3 format that are passed as a filename argument to the command line processor are now, in most cases, converted to long filenames before processing.
Miscellaneous user interface improvements and fixes, including new tip messages.
Now creates the registry key that HTML-Kit looks for when it looks for CSE HTML Validator. This should cause the menu option Tools->Check Code Using CSE HTML Validator to appear in HTML-Kit when CSE HTML Validator is installed.
Minor updates to the documentation.

Champions, but...

... all is not well at Old Trafford.

ARTICLE #1

David Conn's excellent article
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2007/05/16/the_borrowers_make_united_fans.html
The Guardian
David Conn
May 16, 2007

The borrowers make United fans pay for success

Man Utd fans will be counting the cost of the Glazer takeover next season, with ticket prices increasing by 14% to service the club's debts.

ARTICLE #2
Stuart Brennan's highlight piece in the Manchester Evening News

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/sport/football/manchester_united/s/1006/1006992_the_price_isnt_right_for_reds.html

Manchester Evening News
Stuart Brennan
15/ 5/2007

The price isn't right for Reds


MANCHESTER United's ticket price increases are more than FOUR TIMES bigger than the club originally intended, according to documents leaked to the Manchester Evening News.

And the fact that the Glazer family has ripped up its initial plan to peg back prices this summer has been slammed as a cynical attempt to cash in on the club's success this season.

The documents also indicate that this year's whopping increases will not be the last, as the club has stated that it intends to `maximise revenue generated through ticket prices and enhanced stadium facility.'

That indicates that prices will continue to rise until empty seats begin to appear at Old Trafford.

ARTICLE #3
Tim Heming's piece in The Sun

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2005300000-2007220330,00.html

Stick Your Season Tickets

By TIM HEMING
Sun Money
May 15, 2007

PREMIERSHIP attendances for next season are set to plummet as fans launch a backlash on greedy clubs.

Almost a quarter of season ticket holders won't be renewing for the 2007-08 campaign as the spiralling costs price thousands out of the game.

The number unable to afford match days has risen by five per cent from this time last year, with the Premier League money machines face criticism for abandoning their loyal grassroots fans.

Fans revolt:
The top five sets who say 'stick your season ticket'

Not renewing due to Cost and/or Quality of Football…

1 West Ham United
Cost = 28%
Football quality = 7%
Total = 35%

2 Manchester United
Cost = 24%
Football Quality = 0%
Total = 24%

3 Liverpool
Cost = 22%
Football Quality = 0%
Total = 22%

4 Middlesbrough
Cost = 21%
Football Quality = 3%
Total = 24%

5 Newcastle United
Cost = 19%
Football Quality = 10%
Total = 29%

Ouch!

Took the Bandit in for a service this morning, hoping to collect it mid afternoon in exchange for about £150...

Got a phone call at about 11:00, I had mentioned that the rear brakes didn't seem to be working too well, and that if new pads were required, then fit them: Hmmm, not only were the pads down to the metal, the disc is scored and below the miminum thickness!! Seems I need a new disc too! Ahh weel, that's another £100 on top of the bill then, not to mention it will now probably be Saturday morning before I can get to the shop to recover the bike!

DO NOT play this game

Desktop Tower Defence, no don't... It is very addictive.

Champions!!

Congratulations to Manchester United on collecting their 9th Premiership title, the fact that a win over Man City, and Arsenal holding Chelsea to a draw gave the title to United is particularly satisfying. Even better is the fact that United go to Chelsea in midweek and do not have to get a result. Personally I would play a 'reserve team' to prevent a physiological effect when playing them again in the FA cup final on the 19th May.

Amanda chose to use it as an excuse to open a bottle of Champagne that has been sitting in the wine rack since her 40th Birthday, so we celebrated the title in style - toasting Sir Alex with a glass of 'bubbly'

Yet Another Record Month

Beating the record set last month by about 9,000 visitors, I have had 94,544 hits on the Rockbox-Themes web site in April. Now topping 3000 visitor per day on average.

Spiderman 3

No kids for the weekend, so today we went to the pictures by ourselves. There are several films that we want to see at the moment, but the 1st one on after we got there was Spiderman 3.

Verdict: Excellent

The special effects were *Very* good, the CGI blending seemlesly with the real life action, and enough of a romantic backstory to keep the wife happy. Oh yeh, Kirsten Dunst is HOT!

Where does the time go?

Has it really been that long since I posted here? Well I guess it must be!!

OK, two concerts booked for this year, both of which feature the most delectable Katherine Jenkins... The first is in June and is at Dudley Castle, the second is in December, at Symphony Hall, and also features the gorgeous Darcey Bussell. We have got good seats for both gigs's, so I am really chuffed.

What a load of tripe!!!

From the BBC news site:

Creationist museum challenges evolution

man, I knew this 'Creationist' thing was big in the states, but I never realised that it was so huge, took itself so seriously, or was such complete and utter CRAP!!

Golf Lesson

I had a 'Woods' lesson yesterday afternoon. Since starting back after the winter break, my fade/slice has returned with a vengance, especially with the 3 wood and fairway wood, and distance (or lack of) was a bit of an issue.

The 'cure' was two simple changes:
1) Aim the right direction!! Yep, that old one back again. Seems I was overcorrecting for my previous aligment errors.
2) Make my grip 'Stronger' ie left thumb on the rhs of the shaft, right thumb on the LHS of the shaft. Seems I had slipped into using Alex's "Thumbs Down The Centerline" grip without realising it!!

By the end of the lesson I was hitting 170 yards - straight - with a 3 wood, and about 150 with the fairway wood

Video Podcast worth watching...

If you have an interest in getting the best out of Photoshop check out the Video Podcast by Bert Monroy called Pixel Perfect, you can subscribe in iTunes, but I would suggest the Large Format version, and watch it on the PC, not the small version on the iPod.

Check out his *MASSIVE* original artwork called Damen:

This is my latest and most ambitious digital painting of a Chicago scene unveiled at Photoshop World in Miami on March 22, 2006.
It is a panorama of the Damen Station on the Blue Line of the Chicago Transit Authority.
Adobe Illustrator was used for generating the majority of the basic shapes as well as all the buildings in the Chicago skyline.
The rest was created in Photoshop.
• The image size is 40 inches by 120 inches.
• The flattened file weighs in at 1.7 Gigabytes.
• It took eleven months (close to 2,000 hours) to create.
• The painting is comprised of close to fifty individual Photoshop files.
• Taking a cumulative total of all the files, the overall image contains over 15,000 layers.
• Over 500 alpha channels were used for various effects.
• Over 250,000 paths make up the multitude of shapes throughout the scene.

Week Off

Well, I don't usually do it, but this weeks annual leave coincides with school holidays, so I have had to 'Do Things' with my days off, rather than my usual dossing around and chillin'...

So far, we have been for a game of Pitch 'n' Putt at Himley, booked Alex in for some golf lessons for the next few months, plus one for me on Friday - I really need to sort out my tee shots...

There was a family 'Gardening' session on Tuesday. A rather old tatty bed has been completely cleared, and 4 Peonys planted, complete with bark chippings etc. In addition several hanging baskets potted up.

Wednesday was a day out, firstly Cheshire Oaks outlet mall, where I treated myself to a HDD-DVD Recorder from the Toshiba outlet: A RD-XS25 for £149 (160 GB HDD!!) In addition a Tog24 jacket to replace my previous well worn warm/waterproof coat (with iPod connector and fabric controls on the arm!!)

From there we headed into North Wales and spent a few hours in Rhyl... Which to be honest was more than enough!! The one end of the town by the Sun Centre is very nice, but the other end of the promenade by the 'FunFair' was an absolute dump!!

Today, I have the house to myself, Amanda has taken the kids to Worcester for the day, and I am playing with setting up the DVD recorder. But as the sun is now starting to warm up nicely, I may have some food and then go out on the bandit for a ride later ;-)

Another Record Month

Beating the record set last month by about 19,000 visitors, I have had 85,737 hits on the Rockbox-Themes web site in March. Almost 3000 visitor per day on average.