Katherine Jenkins Tour 2008

Tickets on sale this week:

December
1st Sheffield City Hall
2nd Glasgow Clyde Auditorium
4th Newcastle City Hall
5th Preston Guidhall
7th Oxford New Theatre
9th Royal Albert Hall
10th Plymouth Pavillions
12 Birmingham NIA
13 Bournemouth Intl Centre
15 Brighton Center
17 Nottingham Royal Centre
18 Manchester MEN Arena
20 Harrogate Intl Centre
22 Cardiff Arena

Looks like Birmingham NIA on the 12th December it is then, shame it's not at Symphony hall this time.

UPDATE: Two tickets purchased today on the pre-booking fans link... Unfortunately, the location of the seats is not available at this time. I am really waiting with baited breath for my tickets to be delivered so I know where I will be sitting...

Strange Weekend

Well... !

Friday was our 16th wedding anniversary, and I had a table booked at 'The Bucklemaker' in town for 19:30, planning for Carole to look after the kids for us.  Then on Saturday we would be going to Blackpool with Alex and Josh as (an early) 10th birthday treat - He is now tall enough to ride 'The Big One'.

Friday morning started off quite dull, and even rained for a short while, but once it stopped - I nipped off to the golf course (My Monday rota day had been moved to Friday due to the Bank Holiday).

Unfortunately, whilst out on the course the weather really turned, and it was baking hot and sunny - and me without a cap (or any hair!) to protect the top of my head...  Result: By 17:00 I felt really lousy! Spent most of the next two days lying down or sitting on the toilet.

Not all bad tho'

The meal has been re-scheduled to the 23rd (Kids are away that weekend anyway), and Blackpool to the 30th.  Turns out Josh didn't really want to go - he does not like the 'big rides'.

Finally - Man United beat Wigan 2-0 to retain the Premier league title by two points over Chelsea - YES! 

By this morning I was feeling quite a lot better, and yes I was off work again!! So I didn't need to cancel my on the course lesson with Jon. I played four holes under his watchfull eye, and the good this is that I now have a degree of consistency with my wayward shots!  This at least makes it easier to correct them.

In the process I did manage to hit my best ever driver shot - some 200 yards absolutely up the middle of the 2nd fairway.

It was very warm out there again today, but at least this time I took a bottle of water with me, and purchased a new cap to protect my head.  I was wringing wet by the time I got back to the clubhouse, but felt better after a shower and change of clothes.

As I sit here, I am starting to feel a little delicate again, so may go and have a lie down as soon as I have finished.

Another Bank Holiday over

... back to work in the morning.

It was a bit strange today, I have had several Mondays off on the bounce recently, but because a) Amanda and Alex were at home (Amy is away for the weekend), b) Everyone else was off and c) the weather was pretty lousy, it has been a strange day.

What I have managed to do quite a bit of today is: Photoshop CS3 scripting in Javascript.  I am attempting to semi automate my monthly calendar production.

The twp difficulties are 1) I am not too familiar with Javascript syntax and 2) There is not a lot of information about the programming API available.

So far, I can open a dialog box, ask for the Month, Year, Start day and the number of days in the month, and use that information to create a separate document of the same dimensions with the date data printed on it.  This can then be copied over my template with a suitable blending mode, and it sort of works.

I do however need to spend quite a few hours yet working out some of the details.  For example, I can't yet put a drop shadow, of bevel & emboss on the dates etc.

Scout Band

Alex came home from Cubs on Thursday absolutely busting with excitement...  The Halesowen Scout Band had been to his meeting on a recruiting drive for new members, and he wants to join and play his flute in the band.

I spoke to the Band leader, Paul, tonight, and will be taking both Alex and his mate Josh to the induction meeting on Sunday afternoon. At a rate of £1 for a two hour lesson/practice session it seems like an absolute bargain.

He will be taking his DPA flute with him - at least for the first meeting, but he will need to check with DPA if they have any objections when he gets back to school - just in case (tm)

Update your AV for free

If you want a good *free* antivirus, why noy try the latest version 8 of AVG...
http://free.grisoft.com/ww.download?prd=afe

If you go directly to the AVG site, it's quite difficult to find the free version, but WAY too easy to get the paid for version.... hmmmm accident or design??

Nice MacAir parody...

Finally, it's Here...

The new picture arrived yesterday, and now has pride of place above the fireplace...

Before:

After: 

There is of course more to the new look than just the wall shown... new curtains, light fittings, display units, lamp along with a *very* different colour on the other three walls, make for a completely different feel in the room now.

Love It!

Cool Technologies

I have been playing with Dreamweaver CS3 recently, and have completed a couple of training courses on Lynda.com on AJAX and SPRY

My test sites are at

http://ajax-test.rockbox-themes.org/ and

http://spry-test.rockbox-themes.org/

The Ajax one is quite simple to look at, but was a real pain in the but to build - lots of Javascript and PHP code, all to get a page that does exactly the same of the pure HTML version it replaced!
The actual difference is that the AJAX layer makes the web page work more like an application.  When you search on a traditional site, the query is passed in the URL and the results displayed on a separate 'results.html' type page.  With AJAX, the results are posted back to the same page as the query was performed on, making multiple searches much easier.

SPRY is adobes AJAX implementation framework, it is far easier to use than hand coding everything, but at the expense of some flexibility.

One thing I was quite pleased with is the tabbed panels example:

http://spry-test.rockbox-themes.org/Tabbed_Panels.php

But what is particularly interesting on that page is the two RSS feed tabs.  They were built using yet another cool technology: XLST...  You create an XLS file, which is linked to an XML based file.  This XLS is then merged with the HTML file on the server side.  This allows you to embed XML data into your own page.

This is Funny!

New Toys...

Well sort of.

1) New Painting.  As mentioned previously I have just ordered a new Mark Spain artwork for the lounge.  I now have a delivery date of 21st of April, so I have two weeks to ensure that the decoration etc. is complete.

Today we went to the Halcyon gallery in Birmingham, where they were opening their "Figurative Collection" show, and we had chance to meet non other than Mark Spain himself.  A really nice guy, and the free champagne was rather nice too.

2) New HDD for the PC.  Lofty is in the process of reconfiguring his Media Centre PC, and as a result has a couple of 500 GB HDD's going spare.  I have taken one of them off his hands for the princely sum of £40.

I intend to put this new drive (well 12 month old actually) in this PC, and take the opportunity to completely reload Windows Vista.  I currently have C: on a 75 GB drive, and D:, P: and M: on a 240 GB drive.  The plan is to go to a single large C: on the 500 GB, with data, pictures and music in the My Documents, My Pictures and My Music, and use the 240 GB drive as a backup device for those three locations.

Has it really been a month..

... since I last posted here?  Good grief, time flies when you are having fun!

'What's been going on?' I hear you cry, well not a lot actually.  Currently decorating the lounge, in advance of a new painting - 'A Moment of tranquility' by Mark Spain

Ceiling and woodwork has been painted, walls have been re-papered with textured paper, and one wall has actually been emulsion'd to finished colour.  Still not 100% sure on other wall's or curtain colour, so some work left to do yet.

Apart from that, not a lot... Tidied out my CD collection for a recent 'Car Boot' sale, sold about 100 CD's - still *way* too many left really.

Not too much time off from work, but work itself has been pretty quiet.  That's the 'end of financial year' effect - it's either completely mad, or deadly quiet, depending on wether there is any telecom's budget left to be spent before April!

Took a day trip to see Lofty one day, he is now separated from his wife, and filling for divorce.  It's the happiest we have seen him in years!

Have been spending quite a lot of time on Photoshop, working my way thro' the tutorials in Matt Kloskowski's "Layers - The complete guide to Photoshop's most powerful feature', and a couple of online training courses ay Lynda.com.  I have been really interested in the area of 'retouching' and now need to get the camera out and take some good pic's on Amy and Alex so I have some material to work on!

The Beta version of Lightroom 2.0 is now out, and I have taken the opportunity to start from scratch again withLR.  I started importing pictures into LR before I really understood what was going on, and as such - it was always a bit of a mess.  Lets see if I can do better this time!

Golf has been a bit thin on the ground in March, every time I had a day off, the weather was terrible.  Never mind, with the clocks going forwards, evenings are fair game again now ;-) - at least they will be once the decorating is finished...

Ouch!

Car has gone in for it's first MOT today...

At 10:30 I had a phonecall - it failed!!

Seems that there was almost nothing left on the rear pads, and nothing at all on the front pads, to the extent that the actual disks were damaged :-(

The plus side is that the dealership agreed to replace them immediately, and I can still collect the car at lunchtime... The downside is that my MOT will effectively cost me £445

This is so cool...

Virtual Reality on your PC, using a Wii Remote

or if that's not your thing, how about a muti-touch white board, or interactive desktop...

Amanda's Pics online

Unlike me, Amanda does not take many pictures when away, but the few she took can be viewed online at

http://photoalbum.rockbox-themes.org/Fuerteventura2008/index.html

Last day as a single parent

Amanda is due back late tonight (actually more like early tomorrow!), so once our Golf lesson was over, it was all hands to the pumps to clean the house top to bottom.  Actually, it only took about 20 minutes, as we have kept on top of it all week ;-)

So, it's time to relax - settle down and watch Man U v Arsenal in the FA Cup, and then out for a curry...  A little TV and wait for Amanda ;-)

Firefox 3 Beta 3

I have recently installed the latest version of FF 3, and am generally quite impressed. 

I found two Issues

1) The Roboform Toolbar needed to be updated to latest version (6.9.87) which was not a major problem

2) The 'Home' button has been moved from the 'Normal' position on the Navigation bar to the bookmarks toolbar.  This was a major pain in the butt!  Fortunately there is a fix on the Mozilla Forums:

make sure you right-click on the toolbars and select 'customize' before trying to drag the 'Home' button from the 'Bookmarks Toolbar' to the 'Navigation Toolbar'. Leave that 'customize' window open while dragging buttons. If that still doesn't work, disable any weird extensions you have running that might not be completely compatible with this new build.

Unfortunately it seems that many of the developers consider this strange positioning to be 'More Logical' and this tweak may be needed more than once.

Not so much a 'new' toy...

More of a replacement.

On Saturday night -at the curry house - my iPod got smashed, and without a screen it was just not usable. I attempted to live with the Nano for a while, but it's just to darn small - 4 GB is simply not enough space.  Soooo, yesterday I became the proud owner of a 80 GB iPod Video 'Classic'.

I like a lot of the new visual 'tricks' that have been included in the updated software - Cover flow, album are displayed in a slight perspective view - complete with shaded reflection etc., but would agree with the early reviews which stated that Apple were pushing the processor in this platform to the limit.  I am sure they work a lot smoother on newer hardware - the iTouch - for example.

Trouble with the iTouch 32GB would just about be usable, but the price is ridiculous, any smaller is of no use to me. The 80Gb version of the older model was £150 - more than enough!

Still doing fine...

Tuesday - A visit to Barnett's Hill Garden Center filled the morning quite nicely, Alex and I managed to get to the Golf Course for a hour or so in the Late Afternoon.  It was Alex's fist experience of a 'Real Golf Course', we only played three holes, but he did quite well really. Amy had invited Beth over for tea / a sleep over, so it was the 'Stag' again for tea, and after a (false) fire alarm going off - just after we had finished our meals, a quiet night in watching TV.

Wednesday - A *very* late night for the girls was followed by a lie-in for the morning.  Amy, Beth and two others from the drama group went to the pictures for the afternoon, Alex played on the XBOX a lot, and George came to borrow some software - I got to go for a ride on his FJR 1300!! AWESOME!!  A simple meal of Beans-on-Toast, and an evening catching up on some more Sky+ recordings

Thursday - Amy handed over my Valentines card from Amanda, I had hidden hers in the suitcase... Another visit to Moms filled the morning, and Amy was again at the cinema in the afternoon, this time with her boyfriend and some friends from school.  Afterwards three of the girls Katherine, Alex (female) and Abbey joined us at home for a take-away Pizza.  At 19:00 I took Alex (my son!) to Cubs for a 24 hour meeting - I don't get him back till 19:00 Friday!!

Looks like I need to brave the washing machine again tomorrow ;-)

So Far So Good...

Almost three days now without Amanda to keep me in check, and both children are still alive!

Saturday was mostly taken up with two performances of the Panto, and out for a celebratory curry afterwards.

Sunday AM - A small amount of shopping for essentials (Bread, Milk, Diet Coke etc) followed by Gardening/Trampoline for me/kids, Football on TV, and then out for a 'pub Meal' at the 'Stag', finished off by a quiet evening of 'Dancing on Ice' and 'LA Ink'

Monday - I managed to escape for a hour on the Golf Course, and almost wished I had not bothered - I was CRAP!... Took Amy & Katherine to Merry Hill, Relaxed in Costa for a while with a nice 'Skinny Latte' before visiting my Mom. Chip Shop tea tonight (held over from Saturday), and Whilst Amy went back to Phoenix to assist with the 'Big Tidy' I had an hour on the PC, and Alex learnt the finer points of Sync'ing his mobile phone with Windows Media Player.

Has it been that long...

Since I last posted? Wow, time flies!

Ok, what's happened in the last two weeks...

Well, Vista with SP1 has been well behaved, and Microsoft have now released if officially.

I have (finally) been accepted onto the 21C Broadband trial by BT and hope to have 24 MB Broadband soon.

Phoenix productions have performed "Robin Hood - the panto" several times now, to good sized houses and much applause. Two performances left, this afternoon and tonight.

Bike has been for it's 7000 mile service, and fitted with new chain/sprocket set and heated grips.  It cost £600 all in, but the difference in performance, and the nice warm hands says it was worth it.

Work has been manic, we finally seem to have recovered from the "Winter Lull" (TM) and whilst the day seems to fly by whilst you are busy, the week seems to last forever!  Mind you the fact that it was a 6 day week helped that feeling, I have got used to all these 4 day weeks!!

Finally, Amanda has flow off today with some friends for a mid winter break in the Canaries.  I therefore have a week off work to keep an eye on the kids, and weather permitting - get some golf in!