We’ve all suffered through Christmas and of course New Years, so Happy New Year eh?

Well, that brings us to today now.  I’ve converted back to Windows (it was a sad day yesterday).  I’d finally had enough of Ubuntu.  It was a series of issues that forced me back to Windows … apps that stopped working, funny things happening since upgrading from Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10, that was a mistake for sure and generally speaking I just grew tired of missing functionality in Ubuntu when everyone you deal with uses Windows.  Oh well.  I’m not running Windows 7, 64-Bit, finally making full use of the hardware in my laptop.  The only “issue” I have right now is Win 7 doesn’t seem to support the ACPI power management stuff.. so, as a result when I pull the power and run on battery the only performance tuning that happens is the screen dims but the CPU’s run full out and thus drain the battery at an alarming rate.  I’m sure I’ll find the correct drivers for that issue at some point. 

Oh yeah, I bought a new car as well .. pics of the new motor here ..

There’s not really much else to report I suppose.  As usual, check out the photos on our flickr account for new photos and videos. Such as this one, Lisa playing her piano..

I hope I’ll have some more interesting things to blog about in the future.. just sort of lost the desire to blog.. hoping it comes back.

Lisa and Emma immediately found the horses in the fields to go and see plus a swing set to play on as well. I was a bit worried for a while, there were no other kids around. Then, a family came trooping back into camp. They’d been out to the Banham Zoo. It’s about 1/2 mile down the road. Anyhow, Lisa and Emma quickly became acquainted with Hanna, 7yrs old. They spent the next 3 or so hours playing all sorts of games and running around the farm.

The camp site itself is a small family run business. It’s run the brother of our neighbour, very nice folks. They popped around to check on us and see how we were settling in. Quite layed back, they haven’t asked for money as yet. The site is, as I mentioned, small. Only about 6 or so pitches, most with electric. We didn’t bother with that, I’d brought the 120amp battery with us. More then enough power for the week to run a laptop if needed and charge the phones. I brought a 12v florescent lamp as well but likely won’t need it.

The kids are knackered. They’ve had a busy afternoon that’s for sure. Tomorrow we’ll be walking to the zoo and checking out the animals and whatever else they have there.

Well that’s about it from here tonight I think. the big people are knackered too and ready for bed now as well.

Watch this space for the day 2 report. I won’t be posting pics on the blog, but check on facebook, flickr and mobypictures and of course Twitter.com/m1xzg for updates.

Btw, this is all from my phone, there are likely spelling errors, I will fix them later. Don’t think I have a spell check on here.

Posted by Wordmobi

In July I attended WordCampUK 2009 held in Caerdydd, Cymru (Cardiff, Wales). I was going to blog about this, but having read the huge number of postings by others that attended the event (A decent search), I figured there was nothing more that I could write to equal or better what others had already said. I will say that it was an awesome weekend though! Met loads of great people and even participated in the #Wordhack – Mobile Kubrick Theme project.

In July I also got a new phone, the Nokia N97. While it’s a very slick phone, it’s far from being without faults and bugs. To be completely honest, I’ve not been surprised by this, Nokia has made it a business mission it seems to release stunning devices that were only half thought out and loosely hacked up and released, clearly done late on a Friday afternoon after everyone had been out for a pub lunch lunch earlier in the day. For it’s flag ship phone it’s a pretty piss poor showing. Think I’m being too hard on it? See here “N97 Sucks”, “N97 Bugs”, “N97 is crap”. To contrast this however, “N97 is great”. Over all I really really love the device and it’s huge potential, but that is overshadowed by Nokia’s classic lackadaisical approach to building phones of late.

What else is new… I blogged recently about Lisa losing her first tooth… well it looks like another one is fixing to fall out soon. This is also the bottom one next to the one that fell out last month. Hehe poor kid will have a big hole in her smile for a while I think. There’s no sign yet of the new tooth showing up either.

Holiday’s… not really planned much this summer due the appalling weather we’ve been having this year. Typically British is the common phrase you’ll hear people mention. Loads of rain and grey/black skies. I have however booked a week off in August and we’re hoping to get out and do at least a couple days of camping. I’ve found a place in Suffolk that looks nice. Loads of woods to go walking through and they allow camp fire, which is very rare here. That would be nice for the kids to sit by the fire and we’ll take some marshmallows for them to roast over the fire too. We’ve done that before but it was over the BBQ, lets face it, there’s no competition between marshmallows over a BBQ or a camp fire!.

Not really much else to blog about right now. I’ll close off this posting for the time being. I hope to do more frequent blog postings, but then I’ve said that several times in the past and #failed at it

The tooth fairy left her 2 chocolate gold coins and a shiny new £2 coin, which is burning a hole in her pocket.  We’ll go to the park later today and maybe she can buy an ice cream for her and Emma

Lisa showing off her missing tooth

Thankfully, Yuki’s dad is here staying with us and he was looking after the kids.. Yuki and I managed to sleep in until nearly 9am, which was nice.  In fact, we managed to sleep in until nearly 10am Friday and Saturday.   I can’t even begin to recall sleeping in that late when vast amounts of alcohol was the direct cause of it.  So can’t really complain much.

Anyhow, the day started with breakfast as usual.. then we sent the kids up stairs with their lao ye (grandfather in Chinese, it’s more specific then that, but trust me, you don’t want me to open that can of worms here and now ).  Yuki and I took to hiding all the stuff for the kids.. candy, chocolate eggs, bunny’s, all sorts of rubbish haha.  Then it was time to unleash the kids..

First, here is a quick tour of the hiding places of all the candy

Here’s a video of the “hunt” under way .. I love Emma’s comment at one point “I’ve got so many…”

Here are a few pics…

You can see all the pics and videos taken today by CLICKING HERE.

Enjoy the pics and videos.  I hope to do more blogging in the future.. I’ve been pretty slack at getting out updates, but life has been full of upheavals that… well… frankly made blogging a chore. 

Besides, I’m booked to attend WordCamp UK in July.  It’s the second year for the event and the first year I’m going … it’s a weekend full of meeting other bloggers, some who do it for a living but most because they enjoy it (I assume anyhow).   With enjoy luck this event will encourage me to blog more, or even just give me loads of ideas to make my blogging better (which frankly wouldn’t take much, I know I suck at blogging).

This place was an incredible size!  The actual play area was easily 5 times bigger then Funky Fun House .. And so much more to do there.  You can see from clicking on the link for Activity World they have more pics and videos on their site which is why I decided to go there and check it out.

Here are some pics I took on the day, there are more in our Flickr Gallery ..

 click here to see them all.

Click the thumbnails to see the bigger images.

It was a good time there.  Emma, Lisa and Daddy went along with Yang, Oliver and Olivia.  Yuki stayed home to sleep as she was working today.  The kids all had a great time.  They made hats and decorated them with all sorts of bits and pieces that could be drawn on or glued on.  The kids also got to see Santa, sort of the main reason for going really.   They waiting in a very very short queue since we got there early, then sat with Santa and bent his ear for a few minutes no doubt giving a list longer then his arm of things they want.  Emma was actually quite quiet, she really want sure what to make of Santa… looked like she might actually cry but managed to get some courage and spoke to him haha.

(More pics on Flickr – CLICK HERE)

After we got home from this it was time to get dressed up in their party outfits for an evening at a birthday party for Ted, Emma’s classmate that turned 3.  Sorry, no pics from that

[flickr video=3043417693]

Check out all the pics and videos taken at the pool today .. CLICK HERE

We’ll have pictures later today once the kids get home from school, I’ll update this entry then.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

EMMA

Video of Emma getting her "cake" (Cup cakes)

You can see the rest of the pics in the gallery by clicking on any of the photos, it will take you to Our Flickr Gallery.

You can see all the pics and the videos from the night by CLICKING HERE.

Here’s a couple pics..

To see the rest of the pics just click on any one of them to see the full sized one and to go to the gallery where the rest of the pics are.

The kids both had a great day today.  Lisa had to wait until about 1130 or so to open her gifts because we wanted to have the webcam on so Nana Shirley, Nana Carol and Grandpa Bob in Canada could watch the opening of the gifts.  The web cast went ok but next year I really must try something better, a proper Vlog sort of thing.

Some pics of the main gift opening from this morning

At around 5pm our friends all came around with their kids (Yang with Oliver and Olivia, followed by Stuart (her partner), plus Sam and Liz with their kids Tabbie, Ted and the as yet unborn baby to be ).  Yang and Stuart gave both Lisa and Emma a “Red Pack” a typical Chinese gift, a red pack with £10 for each of them.  Liz and Sam brought over a pair of Groovy Girls dolls.  We put Emma’s away until her birthday though.

Here are some pics from the party in the afternoon

You can see all the photos including a short video by going directly to the Flickr Photo Gallery.

Thanks to everyone that sent gifts for the kids.  Lisa really enjoyed them all and I’m sure Emma will when she gets to open hers too!  Watch this space for Emma’s birthday party results

Lisa turns 5 years old today!  Happy Birthday Lisa!

Love Emma, Mummy and Daddy

I decided to take the kids to the Linton Zoo, south of Cambridge.  We’ve been there a few times before.  It’s a nice little local zoo.  We heard a talk about the tigers they have, the youngest one which is just over 2 years old will be sent to Sweden for breeding.  Apparently it’s quite common for zoos to pimp out their animals for breeding purposes

Here are some of the pics from today, see the all the pics at Linton Zoo Pics