Mike Riversdale

St Austell here in the still sunny UK (although about to stop being so sunny and pee down) has just put its Christmas lights up .. I kid you not, the BBC and many others will give you the low down. I feel for Jonah , must be a real tough time as his dream slips away . And finally, following up from the Star Wars auction , check out the goodies at the Star Trek fire sale.

Only a few weeks ... hang on, let me get that in days ... 19 until we land in Christchurch. Fug me! That means I have only 27 until I finally land back in my home, my happy place, my tūrangawaewae - Wellington

Be prepared for a bit of a Nanna moment from me. Feet. I have a great pair of shoes that are causing my feet to absolutely positively stink to high heaven and back down the A40 to my nose. It's a shame as the shoes are (quite) new, very comfortable and the only ones I've got that I can wear without socks. That's probably the issue, no socks. I've now taken to leaving them outside the moment I get back from a walk into town. And subsequently leaving them outside overnight for the slugs to crawl all over which isn't going to assist. I then shoot upstairs to the bath and wash the weapons of mass destruction before I am discovered by Hans Blik or his predecessors. And this is the Nanna moment. It is sooooooooooo good. My feet love me after their moment in the sun (bath). They tingle with happiness and relax with gratitude. So, if you're home from a stressful day at the office/road/clinic I recommend a 30 second foot wash, a gentle rub to cleanse and wee pad with a f

Just to keep those that want to know up to date - Meg has been a crawler for the past week or so and she is as fast as a fast thing. In fact, she's now onto standing and is visibly jealous of Jack and his walking ability and has made it priority number 1!

This Film Is Not Yet Rated ( Wikipedia ) If so, what's it like?

And long may it continue! I'd never heard of Robin Cooper until one of the visits to Hay-on-Wye , the worlds first (and possibly only) village/town dedicated to books ... sort of, if you read and believe the tourist propaganda and festival readings. Anywho, one of the many shops has all books for £1 and whilst you'll never find much to actually spend your pound upon there are a few silly type books in there (see the majority of my reading list for the past few weeks). One author, however, is not silly in the slightest. He has take upon itself the highest calling of completely wasting the precious (allegedly) time of a myriad tiny and probably highly worthy (although I doubt it) UK societies and associations dedicated to many a niche market. How? By writing some of the silliest and funniest letters in the hope of generating an ongoing (and timewasting) conversation. I would not do the man justice so pop along and read some extracts from the book (pdf, 2.5Mb) As Ricky Gervais

As you probably know the UK jaunt is rapidly coming to an end (as is the money ... in fact we're all living on bread and cheese at the moment) and so we'll be flying out of Heathrow mid-October to land in Christchurch after a 2 day "where the hell are we" catch-up in Singapore. The focus then is to catch-up with the Mainlander family, get rid off the jet lag and get up to Wellington as fast as possible. I'm actually booked to fly into Wellington on Tuesday 24th October (love to catch-up if you're keen) and have two vital jobs to perform: Get job (ICT contracting with $$$'s is the ideal) Get home The first I'm working on. The second I haven't started. And so, the first point to clarify is where in Wellington to live. We loved Miramar and are probably looking to that side of Wellington once again but we both have a hankering for Island Bay. What do you think? It would have to be "kiddie winkle" friendly and we probably have to start thin

Have it up on eBay UK - go on, make a bid and get yourself a cheap and very reliable family car for pennies! Fuel: Petrol Transmission: Manual Colour: Red Engine Size (cc): 1391 Doors: 4 Seats: 5 Number of Previous Owners: 5 (incl. us) Model Year: 1995 Type: Standard Car MOT expires: June 2007 Road Tax expires: November 2006 Mileage: 118,108

Plum Creek

Schmap - Photo Inclusion (not sure the link will work so I will explain more once I get this BLOODY COMPUTER TO WORK! ... calm, breath ... you know I can't get the Flickr Uploadr (!) to work, man I am annoyed ...)

What's it all about? Why , when and what now and more of your nosey questions answered . How to talk like a pirate The ancient art of Pirate speech was almost lost. Thankfully we now have the following helpful guides to keep the language alive and well: The basics - Ahoy!, Avast! and Arr! Advanced - Bilge rat, grog and lubber Top 10 pickup lines : Example - 5) Pardon me, but would ya mind if fired me cannon through your porthole? For the kids The full on "Talk Like A Pirate" kit You can throw a party with (all in pdf): invitations , posters , badges and eyepatches ... You might even want to get yourself a Pirate name Add these banners/links to your site http://www.yarr.org.uk/ | http://www.talklikeapirate.com | http://www.yaaarrr.com/

The 30 Boxes blog : The Impact of the Social Web on Personal Organization article sparked a eureka moment for me - finally Web 2.0 (the nuts-and-bolts) is dropping away as it becomes the "norm" and is being replaced by what it can actually do and particularly the concept of "social" (social web, social networks, social clubs ...). Whilst I'm not convinced the use of "social" will be any more universe changing than adding "e-" to the front of everything was a few years ago I'm sure it will move us all a few steps towards a more connected and "life online" existence - if you want that, it's good, if you don't it'll something very scary. One of the "battle grounds" for this shift in how we use these computer thingys will be what "email" is for and how we use it ('computers' are anything that asks you to "Please wait..." when you go to turn it off be they PC, WiFi laptops, mobile ph

We spent last Sunday afternoon (afer watching the Monmouth Raft Race, check out the photo's ) up in the Forest Of Dean at the local volunteer steam railway place ... and why, because they had a special set of visitors that Jack is still talking about. After a brief ride on Thomas and Clarabel (the Carriage) we hopped on to the longer journey with Daisy (the Diesel) ... in first class, of course

If this email from the phone to Flickr works it'll be blogged. Enjoy many more to come (it didn't - I had to manually blog it - made it to Flickr though)

But, one is Google-famous whereas the other has faded into obscurity ( page 9 ). (I don't have enough time to blog properly. Yeah, right!)

[Updated 6-Sep-2006] Aha, the wind of change has whistled past and I won't have to look for a replacement ... this comment at their blog: We are not going to shut down the site. We are just slowing down the pace of development of new features. We built this site as a service to the world, more than as a business, and we intent to keep this service running. As noted on the iRows blog they have been a long time off the air and with the following statement I am forced into rethinking my online numbers solution: But (and this is a big but) it is not generating enough money to keep us alive. The banners barely cover the cost of hosting. We tried a few ideas, but so far we are short on cash. To address this issue, we had to do other things that generate immediate revenues. Since time is a limited resource, we had to reduce the work we do on the iRows site (at least on the free internet edition). There are a few exiting I'll probably ("probably") go straight to Google Spre

:-)