Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category

I would just like to point out that I have had a very uncomfortable day in 35degC with blazing sunshine… the thunderstorms at home look much cooler!!! And now on to the point of this post…. One of my friends from overseas has managed to discover my secret! This is terrible news really as I can no longer use my ‘Media Powers’ to avoid the toilet except for some of the benefits he has highlighted in the post linked above! Can you guess which ones?

I have to point out though, that his photo of me is out of date… I have recently shaved the moustache and as a result look much younger!!

What I can’t figure out though, Allan is…. ‘Why did that film come straight to mind??’… I had never even heard of it!!

A panoramic stitch made from 5 portrait images of the Colloseum in Rome… where else??!

Although I still have a heap of photos to sort out, you can now read my write up of our dive down to the HMS Maori on our holiday in Malta. This article has been posted in the Travelogue and includes all of the photos so you wont be missing out. There is plenty more tell about the trip so stay tuned for more excitement and adventure!

The rest and relaxation I got on holiday is now slowly wearing off as I trawl through the numerous photos and other media that we took whilst on holiday. Hopefully soon there will be an article posted in the Travelogue but for now I have completed a 360 panoramic image of the azure window on Gozo. Having finally managed to deal with about 100 emails I am now up to date but I feel like I need another holiday!! Things from the trip will slowly start to appear but trying to decide what is rubbish and what should be kept is the current priority. Holidays are very hard work… but I cant wait till the next one already!!

Another milestone reached today. We successfully completed the ‘PADI Advanced Open Water’ course and are now qualified to dive down to 40 meters should we wish to. This was a cool course that involved swimming through a wreck, around another one, seahorse hunting and even doing mental arithmatic down at 30m next to a big anchor! Going to have a few days off then early next week… wreck diving again but with a camera to get some pics in the crystal clear waters!

Exciting day today… we dived a couple of wrecks and had our sunglasses stolen by some sponging miscreant youths! It was lucky that a police car drove past and we were able to report the theft as soon as we realised it had happened. To put a positive side on things, ‘H’ did point out that its a good excuse to buy some more so Thursday afternoon is sunnie shopping. As it turns out, the oxygen tank had been taken from the truck aswell so its lucky no one needed it.

The wreck dives were excellent, the first was a ship called X131 that had been sunk during WWII by a submarine. It’s stern was down at 21m and the bow up at 5m. The second wreck was HMS Maori, a British destroyer that has been broken in two. We dived the bow section and were able to swim through one of the internal passages of the ship. This wreck was lying in the sand down at 18m.

Sunday this week was very successful on the web-development front as it involved the very successful completion of a long running project and the chance to drink some nice coffee with my friend! Although not quite polished to absolute perfection yet, my ATP (Adventure, Travel and Photography) theme/plugin for wordpress is pretty much complete. The area that needed my attention was the photo display part. To give you some background, here was my own design brief;

1. Front page to show a dynamic map of some sort that plots the positions of the articles.
2. Small excerpts with a thumbnail image of each entry.
3. A self generating menu that cross references location and activities.
4. A random image of only my travel photos.
5. Each article was to have an album of photos displayed within it that would create a neat pop-up viewer, rather than link to my gallery.
6. The design had to be ‘compatible’ with my existing website.

After about 3 months of coding and tweaking, I had everything working. The only aspect I was not 100% happy with was the implementation of the photos. I was using an application that involved loading the photos into the post itself and from there, would create a pop-up viewer and could even generate the random image I was after. What concerned me was that if I wanted the photos in my main gallery, they would be duplicated there. What I needed was a way of pulling in my gallery photos and a new way of viewing them. This was solved by actually writing a plugin that would pull the images from the gallery album and display them. A new seperate pop-up viewer was needed so that a clean-popup window could show the images with a navigation system to browse through the pictures.

I had spent all of Sunday morning creating these parts and was working on the viewer when Gringod showed up. Fueled by proper Italian coffee, we polished off the pop-up viewer and even found the time to include some Javascript that would dynamically resize the window to the photo contained within. Now the system is complete, I have added one story about when I went shark diving in South Africa. To see how the system works, browse over to http://adventure.phrixus.co.uk. As I am leaving for my holiday on Saturday, expect it to start growing soon. For major updates I will post on this part of the site but the main stories will be found there.

I really like the World66 website and now that it is growing they are adding some nifty new features. Below is the result of a test I took to see what kind of traveller I am. It has to be said that the result was very accurate!

	Your travel type: Travel Yup The Travel Yup likes exotic and adventurous travel, but prefers big cities with fast paced life. He has a keen interest in other cultures and always brings home a few souvenirs. Shopping in Bangkok, getting a tailor made suite in Kuala Lumpur, that’s the kind of thing the Travel Yup is into. Even though he likes to get away, he prefers his travels to be comfortable.
	top destinations: Paris New York Beirut	stay away from: North Korea Ciudad Perdida Darien Gap

get your own travel profile

Over the weekend, H, Leigh and myself went to Jersey on Mystere to do some shopping, drink some Guiness and as it turns out nearly end up returning deaf!! This could have been appropriate as the actual travel elements included enough fog to realistically allow you to call yourself blind aswell. To read in detail about the problems we had with the boat and how we fixed them in our usual ‘At least it works’ kind of way, head over to the sailing bug! I would just like to reinforce a couple Leigh’s view aswell… the KFC was awful and Constantine was a very good film.

Aidy also went on a holiday over the weekend on his motor bike. He has made a few posts about his experience if you are interested.

Whilst in Jersey, ‘H’ and I completed another Cache. This time it was a webcam cache in which we had to get our picture taken. Thanks to Leigh for sitting there and taking the time to direct us around the square at 1 minute intervals, at least he was able to sit in the dry and warm unlike us! This was our second cache and we have plans to complete some more in the next few weeks. This post is also a test for a new Gallery plugin from geoffhutchison.net. With any luck the image of the cows will link direct to the gallery!

At some stage in the future, it is my aim to take some time from the hustle and bustle of modern living, and venture out onto the ocean so that I can spend some time visiting the far off shores of tropical islands and experiencing a life of freedom in more pleasing climates than I am currently situated. The emporer stated that ‘The lure of adventure and exploration is strong in this one’ and I would have to agree. This impulse is now higher in my priorities, especially as I nearly got electrocuted through a dodgy socket near my foot and I am forced to realise that my time may end at any time!

My friend Leigh has started a website to document the preperation and plans for this trip starting from our current position… i.e Square one! If you are interested in what is going on… visit thesailingbug.com and keep up with where we are in our plans and how we go about preparing for the real ‘trip of a lifetime’!!!

The morning of Thursday 8th April brings with it uncertainty.  The trip to Beaulieu and the Scilly Isles, (which was going to be the proper maiden voyage for Mystere, her new co-owners and crew) had to be abandoned, as the re-fit was unable to be completed in time.  To say Guernsey is supposed to be a “tropical island” (so long as you look in the right holiday brochures that is, live here and the residents will tell you that it’s not all palm trees, white sands, relaxation and cocktail drinking- my view of tropical!) the recent cold weather meant the exterior work on the boats hull was nigh on impossible due to the temperature.  The minimum of 5 degrees was far off for several important months on the run up to the boat going back in the water, and when it was above 5 degrees it was pouring down with rain and blowing a gale at the same time, making any sort of outdoor activity more than a challenge!

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Whilst in London, I came accross a camera shop on Tottenham Court Road that was selling the ‘Canon EOS 20D’ for only £20 more than Amazon.co.uk. Rather than wait 4-6 weeks for Amazon to deliver, I bought it there and they even had the Lowepro photo rucksack I wanted and so I bought that aswell!! With any luck, I will be able to get a few test pictures taken over the week-end and I will post them up here for you to view! First impression is that I am going to really like this camera!!

I am sitting at the same computer I used when I was flying out on holiday to Spain. Having missed my connecting flight back to Guernsey due to fog in Amsterdam, I am now having a free beer in the executive lounge of the Gatwick Hilton. When I have fully recovered from my power walk through the north and south terminals, I am going to go and spend some time in the shops!! In fact they will probably be closed so I will just get some food and head back to my room to watch a film!

I have just spent an evening in central Amsterdam. The group of 60 I was with had a trip around the canals and then a meal where we had a magic show. All in all, quite good fun if you take into account the few beers I managed to drink.