Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category

I am currently using the internet at the Dorint Sofitel in Amsterdam. I have just been monitoring my download rates and it is about 300kbs!!! Not bad at all!!!

As I am planning to do some travelling at some point in the future, I was considering how to record the journey for people to read about and allow them to communicate back. The obvious way to do this is via a blog like this one. The next feature I felt that would be great, is if people could see my location on a map. Stories about particular areas could be marked on the map and all could be linked together in a harmony of hyperlinks. As this part is the most challenging to build, I have started to plan out how the location could be stored, how it could be displayed and how it could be updated. All manner of ideas are crossing my mind from using emails, text messages, radio broadcasts and even old fashioned phone calls! The next challenge will be to find a way of displaying these on a map. I have a lot of ideas about this aswell but some good ‘old fashioned’ googling will be needed to look at options. I think this could be an interesting winter project for a couple of years. If you have any ideas for this (Or if it has been done before!) let me know!

Made it home from my trip to Spain. An excellent time was had by all of us. The write up is underway and will be posted here soon with plenty of pictures. I will post a picture I took of a sunset at Port Aventura for the meantime. Out sailing tomorrow morning but hopefully might get some admin done in the afternoon!

There is no way I can get up at 5 tomorrow morning… I am half asleep still from my early start this morning… checkin for my flight to London was at 6.15. Aidy had a problem and very nearly didn’t make it to England, let alone Spain! He missed the flight this morning!! Luckily he only missed a morning shopping but finally arrived just in time for lunch at a vegan chinese restaurant called Tai. I have managed to get myself some new trainers from Niketown, a timer remote release for my camera, a couple of magazines and a few gifts.

I am currently sitting in the Gatwick Hilton executive lounge with Aidy and we are both updating our Blogs!

Bad news though… at some stage my iPaq has done a hardware reset and all of the GPS software has been deleted… we are now on the net looking for maps so that we can find our hotels for the next couple of weeks!!

Have to go now as ‘Happy Hour’ (Free drinks!) is about to end and I need to go and get some food!!

I have just returned from a week in France. It was a good trip on Mystere even though the weather was a bit dull for most of the time. I will try to get some photos online when I have had a chance to sort them out. I will post a link here when completed! I will probably write up a brief travelogue when I have some time aswell. Oh well… back to work!

It is now Tuesday and we have had a bank holiday!! What a week-end… it started last Friday lunchtime when my new camera arrived by DHL… at last… it was ordered on 17th March!!! I had the lens for it on about the 20th march so it was nice to finally get my hands on it… I wrote an article about it ages ago… its here if you are interested. The week-end was also great, the Aquasail.net website was progressed, a day in Herm, seeds planted for the vegetable garden and my friends left for a 3 year trip around the world on their yacht Spinalonga, their story is going to be recorded on the Aquasail site at http://spinalonga.aquasail.net. I have written a short story from Helen’s notes about the trip to Herm so Have a look here… it was a really nice sail.

Some days are truly inspirational. Sunday 2nd May 2004 at 15.30 is one of those days. The weather is great, there is a nice breeze and everyone is cheerful. There can even be small problems that are solved easily and quickly with a bit of teamwork and it just makes things better. These days are remembered for their carefree and enjoyable atmospheres.
(more…)

Its been a while since I last updated the site. I have been very busy over the last couple of weeks. Our boat Mystere had the final maintenance completed and she was put back into the Marina. After 5 solid days of working on board… she was ready for a test. We headed off to Jersey for a couple of days then headed back. It was a nice trip involving tourist activities and a great game of crazy golf!! Dave also bought a night vision scope… very cool toy!! A log of the trip is being written so I will link to it and the pictures when they are uploaded. My family can expect an email soon as I have decided that an email to all my relatives in England is a good idea… I just hope you don’t all start deleting it like Spam!!!

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. Instead… a trip to the not too distant Jersey!
(more…)

This years summer holiday planning is off to a great start. At about 1.30 this morning, Helen, Aidy, Karen and Myself booked various flights in September for a holiday to Spain! See the Calendar here! We are going to fly to Alicante and leave from Barcelona nearly two weeks later! This is as far as we have got and now the real hard work of booking hotels etc needs to be done!!!!

In 3 days time I am flying to Bulgaria. I get to do 2 presentations to a total of 80 people. I get to see a magic show by the ‘Most famous Magician’ in Bulgaria (interested to see this actually), I get triple airmiles till march, I get more Hilton HHonors points I even get to eat good food be with good people and go bowling and skiing! As a top up bonus.. I get a free day off work for travelling on a week-end and I probably wont spend a penny (or Lev). Did I mention the cocktail parties and club class flights?

Does anyone want my job?

So here I am in Croatia. I am working, but that doesnt mean I cant do some interesting things. For a start, I am using a keyboard with the Y & Z keys inverted! The second interesting thing I have done is that I got to chop off the top of a Champagne bottle with a sword, just like the movies! I have always wanted to try that! I am getting the pics of this occasion on CD soon so I will try and post one up later.
My final thought for the day is that I would like to say Congrats to Gringod for getting his degree! Well done mate!
Later today I will be travelling by train to Slovenia. Sounds like fun!

Finished my ‘PADI Scuba Diver’ today after two open water dives. I felt like I was swimming in the biggest tropical fish tank ever… I was actually, the sea! It would be impossible to describe the 20 meters of visibilty and the sheer variety of marine life was just astonishing. No time left now so I will write more soon!!!